Avoiding the Alcohol Trap: Veteran Finds Healthy Ways To Cope
2 minute read
Avoiding the Alcohol Trap: Veteran Finds Healthy Ways To Cope
2 minute read
Jenn didn’t know how she was going to handle the feelings she experienced after coming back from her U.S. Marine Corps deployment to Afghanistan. But she feared how she might try.
“I remember the moment, being on that plane coming back from Afghanistan, and I was terrified,” Jenn says. “I knew my only coping mechanism is alcohol and drugs. I had no idea how to comprehend what I had just seen and been through.”
Losing and regaining control
Jenn served as a broadcast journalist and combat correspondent in Afghanistan. After that experience, learning how to live as a civilian wasn’t easy.
“I was out of control,” says Jenn. “I scared the people that I love, and they didn’t know how to interact with me.”
Fortunately, she found several treatments that helped her regain control and address posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety:
A 30-day inpatient program for PTSD. “I did the treatment where you tell your stories and listen to them over and over again, and that really worked for me, and it taught me a lot about disproportionate reactions,” she says. “Something will happen, and I’ll make it level 10 when it’s just simply not.”
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. Through EMDR, Jenn says she found healing by talking through her deepest, darkest memories. “I was able to let go of not only military trauma but [also] childhood trauma,” she says.
Weekly talk therapy. “I’ve gone through bouts of not minding my mental health, and it comes back in spades,” she says. “Bouncing my thoughts and fears off someone else is just such an important part of my life.”
Even so, grief brought back the lure of alcohol and drug use.
Stopping substance misuse through residential rehabilitation
“In 2022, I unexpectedly lost my father, and I didn’t handle it well,” Jenn says. To recover, she enrolled in VA’s Substance Abuse Residential Rehabilitation Treatment Program.
Jenn’s residential rehabilitation program lasted 3 months and grouped her with about 12 other Veterans for daily classes, individual therapy, and many other types of support. It’s also where she discovered VA recreational therapy programs, which she now uses to participate in activities like snowboarding and river rafting, relax, and stay connected with other Veterans.
Now Jenn, who once feared she wouldn’t find any healthy ways to cope, has instead discovered many. “I found so much healing,” she says.
