Vets Best Outside VA
by Marine Farker
Issue 129 - April 8, 2009

Note: Humor site www.fark.com recently posted comments to the story about the Marine vet being treated for PTSD who was denied a gun permit in Omaha and won on appeal. In the midst of the commentary, a former Marine named Farker posted the following. Food for thought and perhaps an interesting way to come at the government health care issue, since there is always a lot of exposure to veterans across nearly all lines. No apologies for spelling or vulgarity, I am reposting word for word. Kent Nielsen

Of course. You can tell who the wackjobs are, as was mentioned you disarm them. But I think everyone feels combat, at least to some degree, you just don't have time for it then. Your buds are counting on you and you don't want to be the weak link or the limp dick letting everyone down. Even when you get back and you are still in you have that support, the half dozen other guys who cant sleep that are out sitting on a picnic table at zero-dark-thirty and shooting the chit, things like that.

Once you are a civilian you are done thou, your "blood" family doesn't even know you any more, so despite how much they care about you all they tend to do is make it worse and your real family is still in. Your average civilian is freaking clueless, as the farkers posts here demonstrate.

When coupled with the huge blow to self esteem from getting out, its rough. I know to most that sounds silly, but when you go from being an action star, knee deep in it, carrying your own weight, helping complete strangers, doing things that will matter long after you are dust to not even being able to hold down a crappy job because you can't sleep for days at a atime... It can be rough.

And once you get over the ingrained stoicism and go to the Va, like texasjoe said, you are in for it. The VA is undeniable proof that Government based healthcare will never work. If they can't even treat and care for the Veterans adequately to think that they can care for everyone is lunacy.

The VA was good in getting me cleaned up, I had crawled into the bottle and bottomed out by the time I went for help. But when it came to diagnosing the PTSD and TBI its just six flavors of suck.

You go threw all the pain to get clean then they start stringing you out on this laundry list of prescription dope that makes my experiments with meth and heroin look like high school ditch weed.

Then they mix you in with "group" which is a quarter of guys like you, with the eyes and no desire to talk to anyone because it doesn't help. Another quarter of nancy's who saw a dead body once and break down in every session over the same dead skinny, haji, or fellow soldier. The best is the last half, these sea lawyer chit birds who are just making it up as they go to get some kind of disability check and a free ride. Don't get me wrong, I might have glamorised a war story to get some ass now and again but the crap that they spew, in a room of guys who have really done it? If I was every going to hurt someone, thats where I would start.

And for as far as theropy, my god. The VA is a clearing house for new shrinks looking to get there paper work and internships out of the way, so they are half your age, have been indoctrinated in liberal academia, never seen the third world and are just so out of touch with what you are doing that you are really better off talking to your self. There is a reason that the VA has so many suicides, and I don't blame it on the guys looking for help.

I was never a suicide risk, it was far to chicken chit for my well indoctrinated Marine self to contemplate, but I did have a pretty rough go of it in a few spots. And I am sure, if I had not gone outside the VA it would have taken a lot longer for me to get my act together. The guy that pointed me outside the VA was a old shrink who had been helping since the 70's that knew the failings of the system and pointed me to a veterans group on the outside.