Military service and substance abuse

[Threshold]

It's Memorial Day in the US, and I've been thinking, as many here have shared their struggles with holiday parties and the drinking that so often accompanies those events, that there has always been a connection between war/military svc and substance abuse.

The rigors, hardships and terror of war, the loneliness and uncertainty of military svc, and the longing for escape, release and comraderie has led many a soldier to seek solace in substances. Likewise many lonely and grieving family members.

Many have left battle with their bodies intact but minds and spirits shattered, giving their lives, not on the field, but lost to drugs or alcohol in a desperate effort quiet the memories; in an attempt to lay the ghosts to rest.

So very many soldiers return home only to fight the lifelong battle of addiction.

For those lives too...we remember.

Our military need care and support to help them live sober lives while in service, in the throws of battle and after they return home.

Let us all strive for peace, within and without, that no more lives be lost to the horrors of battle or the bottle.

[WillS]

Originally Posted by Threshold

It's Memorial Day in the US, and I've been thinking, as many here have shared their struggles with holiday parties and the drinking that so often accompanies those events, that there has always been a connection between war/military svc and substance abuse.

The rigors, hardships and terror of war, the loneliness and uncertainty of military svc, and the longing for escape, release and comraderie has led many a soldier to seek solace in substances. Likewise many lonely and grieving family members.

Many have left battle with their bodies intact but minds and spirits shattered, giving their lives, not on the field, but lost to drugs or alcohol in a desperate effort quiet the memories; in an attempt to lay the ghosts to rest.

So very many soldiers return home only to fight the lifelong battle of addiction.

For those lives too...we remember.

Our military need care and support to help them live sober lives while in service, in the throws of battle and after they return home.

Let us all strive for peace, within and without, that no more lives be lost to the horrors of battle or the bottle.

wow,what an amazing post!

I've been to war all my life,the war against myself,my mind and body being the battlefields...
I feel like a veteran of that war against myself,and I also am a vet of the drug war,too many people I knew died in it.

Now those battles lie behind and I am finding something I thought I never could... peace of mind!