“When you wake up, you won’t remember any of this. You won’t remember getting kicked out of the restaurant, having a stranger sign your bar tab because you couldn’t write a fucking tip…you won’t remember getting back to the room, and throwing me headfirst into the mirror. You won’t remember, trying to kill me.”
Words that will forever be burnt into his brain, John* reads the words that were written on the back of the worn receipt that he found that morning.
“And she was right, I didn’t remember a damn thing,” recalls John, a former Army Ranger.
Staring blankly into the piece of paper in his hands, John fights every shadow to try and remember anything from that night seven years ago.
“Blackouts weren’t a new thing for me. I would drink myself to sleep almost every night – it was the only way that I could get myself to actually pass out. But this time was different, I lost an entire evening…I lost my best friend, I lost everything that night.”
“Blackouts weren’t a new thing for me. I would drink myself to sleep almost every night – it was the only way that I could get myself to actually pass out. But this time was different, I lost an entire evening…I lost my best friend, I lost everything that night.”
John’s relationship with his then girlfriend, Alexis, was always somewhat tumultuous. They met long after he had left the military, but she witnessed so much of what still lingered deep down.
Like many of his military brethren, John signed a contract into the Army a week after the attacks on 9/11. He felt a calling to defend something greater than himself, and never looked back.
His career path in the military was a quick trajectory into the coveted 1st Ranger Battalion, a part of the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment. With a multitude of deployments ranging from 2001-2008, John’s time was nothing short of active. Like many, John wasn’t fully equipped or prepared for everything he saw and did while overseas.
In 2008, John left the military. “I couldn’t do it anymore. I tried so hard to push it down, but it got to be too much.”
Entering a career as far from the military that he could find, John climbed the corporate ladder quickly. His skills as a team lead, easily transferred to an executive role. But the inevitable flashbacks of what he’d experienced during his time in the Army, became his incessant personal nightmare. He served his country, protecting his teammates, and erasing the enemy as a threat, but the only thing that lived in his mind were the visions of everything he experienced.
“I’d close my eyes and see bodies; every kind of corpse lived rent free in my brain – and drinking was the only thing that would silence them.”
As the relationship with Alexis progressed, John’s bouts of real anger also grew. He would quickly point his finger to the stresses from work and lack of sleep – but he knew deep down that it was something more.
“I broke her hand one night,” remembers John. “She was trying to get me to come to bed from the couch where I had fallen asleep, and I didn’t want to go. So rather than explaining that to her, we fought. I stood up, grabbed her hand and remember screaming in her face that she wasn’t my fucking mom.”
Through broken words, John went on to explain the feeling of the tiny bones of Alexi’s hand crushing in his fist. “I couldn’t’ even drive her to the hospital…I was too drunk.”
Functioning through each day, “only partially sober,” John was able to pull himself together for work and his social obligation. He was confident that people would think there was nothing wrong with him because he looked and acted normal.
What they didn’t see, was that when he was home alone, or with Alexis, the demon that lived inside was screaming to get out – and with it, came every memory he would drink to try and suppress. “I would walk into the kitchen and pour a drink in the same metal Yeti tumbler. I’d hear the clang of the ice hitting the floor of that stupid cup, and I was cleared hot to find the bottom of another bottle, just to black out the memories of his past.”
The battlefield at home has proven to be a far greater a foe than any frontline – domestic or overseas. Veterans, active members of the military, first responders, and firefighters are often faced with traumatic events during their service. The experiences they live each day slowly cause a feeling of dread that can lead to PTS and unravel into a dependency on alcohol and substance abuse as they seek comfort from nightmares, flashbacks, and more; further heightening the damage caused by the memories of those events.
Many of our nation’s heroes are faced with fighting this personal war, every day. They’ve used alcohol, prescription medication or self-medication to reduce the impact of these memories. However, life hasn’t become easier. In fact, these surface level managements only seem to drive deeper into that darkness. Have you ever pulled a weed from the ground only to see a new weed spring up in its place a few weeks later? This is how it is with the struggles our heroes face – if you don’t dig deep to grab the issue by the root, it will continue to exist and grow out of control.
Warriors Heart – a private treatment facility, exclusively for Warriors, providing care for addiction, chemical dependency & PTS for active military, veterans, law enforcement and first responders – understands the unique demands of our warriors, and works to successfully navigate healing and recovery while in the company of people who personally understand each experience.
The role of a warrior requires you to be combat-ready, while maintaining the capacity to serve as a counselor, executioner, priest, lawyer or social worker all at once. This deep sense of dignity, respect and courage is more often the reason why so many of these men and women are unwilling to seek help, fearing it will jeopardize their jobs or make them look weak.
Warriors Heart recognizes the need for a cultural shift to provide these warriors with the support they deserve, without the stigma of appearing fragile, offering a sanctuary for sick and suffering members of the Warrior community to come together under one common goal – to recover.
Having experienced or witnessed a deeply distressing or terrifying event, seen innocent life taken, witnessed friends being wounded or being caught for what seemed like days in the heat of a firefight, some memories you’d rather forget. Some of your experiences leave a mark on you that changes the way you see the world.
“There are many different forms of PTS,” stated Tom Spooner, Co-Founder of Warriors Heart. “You can’t simply look at someone suffering from trauma and expect to treat them the same. Volunteer PTS, which is most common in Military and First Responders, requires a much different level of care than that of victim PTS. The trauma is different; therefore, the healing must be as well.”
One of the main concerns of dealing with those suffering with PTS is that it’s not visible. “You don’t see a missing a limb, scars or burns,” stated Spooner. “To the outside world, you don’t appear any different from the person standing beside you. You’re not special, you have no issue, no disability to really claim. For many, they don’t feel as though their issue, isn’t severe enough.”
When John woke up that morning and read the note that was scribbled on the back of a bar receipt, he stood there alone. “I reread that note a dozen times – and remember being angry with her. How could she just leave me alone in a hotel room?! Then I started to walk around. The mirror, the one she said I threw her into, wasn’t even attached to the wall anymore. There was a dent in the wall, that I later learned was the imprint of her shoulder when I shoved her. I remember falling to my knees and screaming for God to make it a dream…to make this all go away.”
Humiliated, and with a trembling voice John called the front desk, trying to find any foundation to help guide him through the past 12 hours. “I didn’t even know what the name of the hotel I was at. I was terrified.”
Eventually making his was back home, John had to face Alexis. “She opened the door, and the moment I saw her, I crumbled. HOW could I have done THAT to someone I loved more than anything? What happened to me?”
Alexis eventually walked John through the night’s events, explaining every detail – which John recalled nothing of. Once she finished, she asked him to leave, and never contact her again.
“There was always an excuse as to why it was okay to drink. The weekend, bad day at work, time to relax…I didn’t realize the toll it had actually taken on everything around me, until that morning.
There is a well-known saying among veterans and first responders, “The only one that knows what a soldier is going through is another soldier.”
Despite her best efforts to forget John, Alexis sought out the help of his friends, behind his back. Learning of this outreach, John angrily demanded she “Keep my name out of your mouth!”
“I couldn’t imagine how she would betray me that way and throw me under the bus. I was SO angry.” Then one morning, there was a knock on John’s door. Hungover and refusing to get out of bed to answer it – he fell back asleep. Moments later, he awoke to four of his former teammates standing over him.
“No one said a word. They just stared at me. Then Sean* looked at me and told me that I was going to rehab, and that he wasn’t asking me.”
John’s friends stood in his room, watching him pack a bag for the “most humiliating walk of shame I’ve ever had to do in my life. They had to carry me down the stairs because I was still too drunk to walk.”
Three years later, John is sober and thankful for every day. “When word got out of what happened that night, the downfall came hard and fast. I lost my job, I lost friends…I lost my self-respect. But my time in treatment taught me that I didn’t have to be that person, I wasn’t that person. But I had to actively choose daily, to not shake his hand ever again.
Regardless of how strong you are, how fit for battle you might believe yourself to be, some battles require a force.
Warriors Heart knows first-hand the magnitudes of being in battle, and provides a place where that mentality, warriors helping warriors, resides in the hearts of every member of the team. Other warriors and team members personally connect with those who have reached a point in their life where they think they have nothing to live for; showing them that strength is found in this unique facility, that simply and truly believes in the power of the warrior community, the power of each human who walks through the door of Warriors Heart and the power of each graduate who proudly emerges through the gates after graduation.
Ecclesiastes 4:12 And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.