Have you returned from deployment with high expectations that life can now return to normal? You’re looking forward to getting back to normal everyday life things. Your family is anxiously awaiting you and needs your help and you genuinely want to be there and helping. You won’t be constantly worried about being shot at, awakened in the middle of the night, seeing death, and that smell, will you ever get it out of your nose? You have seen and done things that are just going to be left over here. Never to be spoken of again. You are ready for a break from all of this. Ready to step off that plane, cross that runway and see everyone you love standing with Welcome Home signs. It will be the best. Only to find out that just about as soon as you did step off that plane all you felt was lost, disconnected, irritated. You’re not sure why. Your family tries, but your mind just isn’t in it. You might do and say things that aren’t like you at all. Some Veterans at this point might start drinking alcohol heavily, racing cars at high speeds, start an affair, begin obsessively planning their next deployment. Sleep? Not happening. Why? What happened to the relaxation and getting back in to the “normal” life you had assumed would naturally occur? Why were you SO BORED?
Adrenaline Pumps and Dumps!
Let’s think for one moment about what deployment was like…although dangerous, scary, traumatic (which many future blogs will cover), there was SO MUCH adrenaline!! So much “excitement”. There was always something to do. Never a dull moment. You were operating on a constant adrenaline rush for months! Similar if I might be so bold as to compare the chemical adrenaline just for an example to cocaine…you got addicted to the feeling and high the adrenaline had provided you just as an addict gets addicted to cocaine. When you stepped off that air plane imagine them stripping you of your adrenaline (cocaine) with no warning. No detox program provided. No wonder you were acting in ways that were uncharacteristic of you, fantasizing of returning to deployment, having an affair when you never would have. You were going through withdrawals and your body would do anything for your adrenaline high. It is very difficult to reproduce the adrenaline pump and dump of combat by the way. That’s an extreme high that is rare to reproduce, so no wonder you feel unfulfilled in everything you attempt, then feel guilty, then try another thing to get the adrenaline dump to help with the negative emotion of guilt…cycle has begun.
YOU DESERVE BETTER!!
This cycle can end. It ends with first recognizing you’re in this cycle and then finding ways to have this need for adrenaline and healthy chemicals such as endorphins pumping through your body on a regular basis. Talk to those you served with. And the sooner you’re willing to talk to your family or another trusted person about what you are experiencing it will help as well.
To read more for Veterans click here. Also please remember the Veterans Crisis hotline number should you be in need of immediate assistance 1-800-273-8255.
-Holly
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