ABC News is out with a very important investigation into alcohol and drug abuse among soldiers who've served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ABC investigation is centered on Fort Carson, a massive Army base in Colorado Springs, which is home to 17,500 active duty personell.
Among the soldiers who spoke to ABC
News was William Swenson,
who was injured in his final mission in Iraq.
Prescription drugs provided little relief from physical and emotional
pain, Swenson said, so he turned to marijuana and tried cocaine. The
Army responded by court-martialling him and throwing him in jail for
20 days.
If the Pentagon was really interested
in helping people who've served overseas, they'd give them adequate
treatment for their physical and emotional pain instead of throwing
them in prison. It's a common occurrence that I've covered numerous
times.
You can check out my story about Private Cody Miranda here. He returned from a tour in Iraq and divorced his wife and pulled away from his son. He started drinking too much and was found in possession of cocaine.
"He never received any of the post-deployment questionnaires that now are mandatory for all troops," said Amanda Newman, a licensed family therapist who's been seeing Miranda on a pro-bono basis for the past few weeks. "He couldn't understand why all of a sudden his life was falling apart."
In 2005, Miranda went absent without leave from Camp Pendleton in California for nearly a year and lived homeless on the street. When he returned, Camp Pendleton. officials threw him in prison and only released him after his story was exposed by the media.
You can also check out the story of Staff Sgt. Michael Hall here. He returned from a tour in Iraq and started using meth to dull the pain. Soon after he was living homeless on the street.
Things look pretty serious
Things look pretty serious back there, somebody should give some answers in this issue. All these soldiers should be included in an effective drug rehab program, we need them healthy and they need help.
The fact that the soldiers
The fact that the soldiers take drugs is not a new thing, I don’t agree with that but I comprehend that some of them just don’t know how to deal with all that chaos around them.
Glangy
Colorado Drug Addiction