I was absolutely unprepared to get out of the military and was clueless about that fact. I hadn’t planned anything. I just knew I wanted to get away. I was a broken and crotchety 26 year old Iraq veteran that didn’t care about much of anything when I got out.
I had a bunch of money saved and invested so I traveled for a while, which was really great. I was always heavily drinking wherever I went, though.
My eight years of constant military drinking (except for deployments) had implanted the habit deep within me. I don’t place blame anymore though. I take responsibility for every drink and bong rip now. My alcohol abuse would probably have embedded itself whether I was in the military or not.
I had been back from my second Iraq tour for just a few months before being released into the wild. Nearly all the people I knew had moved on except for my one fellow drunk veteran friend, which was not helpful. I lived in a city, so there way always a bar open somewhere.
My main goal as a civilian was to drink and get high as often as I could. I was a shiny, new pothead with a weed card. The marijuana worked great for about two years until I started falling into paranoid psychosis while studying conspiracies.
I grew in sickness and misery over the years. My depression and PTSD went untreated as I simply drowned my discomforts. There were only two things that kept me from offing myself at the time. They were my curiosity about the future of humanity and the disdain I had for people that killed themselves.
I also didn’t have any beliefs, so I thought that it was just oblivion after this life. I don’t think that anymore. Maybe recovery reconnected me to my soul. I don’t know. I will have to ponder that for a few more years.
I often write about cycles or feedback loops that happen with veterans and their addictions. In my case, I lost my military identity which left me solely identifying as a drunken pothead. I drank and smoked more weed, isolated even more, became more unhinged, drifted away from healthy human contact, and felt worse about myself. This led to me seeking more escape through my substances. That was how I flushed myself down the toilet.
In this article, I will share some of my main problems I had as a battered new civilian that was drinking and smoking way too much pot. Then I will give some hindsight with what I should have done instead. In recovery, this is called “contrary actions”.
Problem: My isolation was intense. I had disdain for civilians and was too anxious and paranoid to get a full time job. I would try to go back to school, but couldn’t focus. I taught myself to build websites so I could work at home. I would barely talk to anybody for weeks on end.
A Better Way: Get a job in something that interests you and where you can be social, integrating into the civilian world. It doesn’t have to be a fancy new career. It can be simple for a little while. Volunteer and find hobbies where you can interact with like minded people. Go to your church often if you are into that.
College is great too. You can live well on the GI Bill and the grants provided by the states or federal government. I took lots of random classes over the years without much of a goal, but finally focused on a topic and graduated. That was after I got sober.
So, think deeply about a career goal or an industry you want to join. You can take general education classes that can be applied to many degrees until you find one that fits. I also had a lot of fun in study groups.
Problem: Losing my identity. All of a sudden when I got out, my military identity was gone. I didn’t realize how my military ego was the majority of what I knew about myself.
Solution: When getting out, I should have pondered what I really wanted to do. I just fell into learning about building websites and digital marketing.
At the time, it wasn’t the best for me because it allowed me to isolate, drink, and smoke weed while I was working. I really should have gotten a job where I could go somewhere and actually interact with people. What a concept!
I think it’s the best for veterans to quickly find a new identity, whether that is through intense study of a subject at college or a new career. The successful ones do this, in my opinion. I failed for a long time because I drifted from one thing to another.
Problem: Dipping in and out of depression. Did you know that pouring gallons of a depressent called “alcohol” onto a depressed brain makes it way worse?
I would get deep down into hopelessness for weeks on end. The world would turn gray and the hours seemed to stretch for days. I obsessed about all the dead I saw at our field hospital in Iraq. I ruminated about their families left behind. I kept all this bottled up and let it fester in me.
Solution: I should have recognized my depression and alcohol problem, gotten into recovery, and sought help from the VA and therapy. My misery was all wrapped up in my isolation and avoiding society.
Problem: Dipping into psychosis. I fell down the conpsiracy and paranoia hole in the years right after gettting out. It was fueled by my love of research and my out of control imagination made ridiculous by alcohol and especially weed.
I felt helpless and hopeless. I thought I was completely right about every conspiracy, even though my beliefs would change every day. Every institution seemed to be evil.
Solution: Sitting alone researching dumb shit online every day while drinking and getting high was a terrible idea. I should have had something more constructive for my focus such as a specific college degree or a new job. My denial told me that weed was healing me, though it was obviously driving me insane.
As my years of recovery have progressed, my conspiracy focus has disappeared, weird!
Problem: My sleep was pure shit for years. My mind would swim with worry, paranoia, ridiculous plans, anxiety, regrets, and conspiracies. I would toss and turn until midnight, often waking up around three or four a.m. My nightmares were way out in sci-fi land. They were debilitating and made me dread going to sleep at times. It was a rare and awesome night if I got a solid four hours.
Solution: I wasn’t getting much exercise at the time. I should have kept working out every day in some way. Walking from bar to bar wasn’t cutting it!
The alcohol and weed kept my mind screaming at itself. It wasn’t until ten years after leaving the military that I sobered up in AA and finally got a full night’s sleep again. I should have been studying productive things that were down to earth.
Those were my main problems after leaving the military. Don’t do what I did with isolation, denial, and substance abuse madness. That is a ticket to hell.
Jump into your civilian life completely with a brand new identity that you choose. Consider recovery if your drinking or drugging is harming your life. Learn from my mistakes.
Feel free to leave a comment with your own struggles and share this post with someone that might need it.
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