After he returned from his final deployment to Iraq and made the transition from active duty to veteran, a Navy Seal buddy of mine who lived down the street from me in Pacific Beach started taking his motorcycle out every night. And every time he took off, I wondered if he'd make it back.
When I'd see him pull up to his driveway, I always felt a sense of relief. Sometimes I'd ask him how fast he got his bike up to. "About 130 or so," he'd typically say with a smile. But it never seemed to be enough. Seems he was always looking to go a little faster.
Thankfully, my friend and former neighbor is still alive and doing well. But sadly, many of his fellow young veterans aren't so lucky. A report from journalist Aaron Glantz in New America Media, a non-partisan news organization, in partnership with The Bay Citizen, which examines the most recent death certificates filed by coroners, medical examiners, physicians and funeral homes from California's 58 counties, concludes that veteran fatalities actually exceeded the number of combat deaths involving service members from almost every county from 2005 through 2008, and that veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan were five and a half times as likely to die in a motorcycle accident as Californians of the same age with no military service.
The report, which was reprinted over the weekend in the New York Times, affirms what I've observed since the Gulf War. Countless young veterans have told me that the adrenaline surge they feel while in combat becomes a sort of addiction, and this rush is virtually impossible to duplicate in the civilian world. This leads to some obviously dangerous situations, namely riding motorcycles and cars at absurdly high speeds, as well as taking drugs.
As Glantz's piece points out, an analysis of official death certificates on file at the State Department of Public Health reveals that more than 1,000 California veterans under 35 died between 2005 and 2008. That figure is three times higher than the number of California service members who were killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts over the same period. Motorcycle crashes, drug overdoses and suicides are all contributing to this.
Paul Sullivan, a Gulf War veteran and executive director of Veterans for Common Sense who consulted with Glantz on this story, tells me that the Veterans Administration would not provide Glantz any national statistics on how young veterans died. "Aaron fought the Feds to get national numbers, but couldn't get any, so he went to the states," Sullivan says. "He started digging at the local level, and his suspicions were confirmed. This is a tragic trend, and it's only going to get worse as more troops come home."
Michele Rosenthal, an author and healing coach who helps people overcome post-traumatic stress (PTSD) and other trauma, says that for combat veterans suffering with PTSD, "the feeling of danger becomes life-defining.A survivor feels safest, most alive, most familiarand connected to himselfin moments of danger. When that adrenaline high is not present there can be a feeling of loss and fear. The goal, then,becomes recreating that feeling of danger in order to create a feeling of normalcy and connection. Unfortunately, this habitoften leads to the destruction of a life rather thanthe post-trauma reconstruction of it."
