Page 27 - Total War on PTSD_FINAL

At one point, Joe began drinking heavily when he came home from work. When I called it to his attention, he became uncharacteristically angry toward me. Next morning, I found a note taped to the bathroom mirror. “Sorry, Jeff. See you tonight.”
But the drinking just got worse. I wanted to be of help but I’m a nondrinker and at the time I wasn’t smart enough to suggest we both attend a nearby meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if I had. The stories of his repeated exposure to danger death and unspeakable horror that Joe told me in between drinks painted an invisible picture of what I now know to have been severe untreated PTSD. The gunfire. The screams. The growing sense of personal isolation that came home with him from Vietnam were all haunting Joe. I felt powerless to help. I was ignorant and back then there was little in print that could have guided me to help Joe.
I thanked him the night before I moved out of his spare bedroom and into my new apartment on Capitol Hill only four blocks from the U.S. Senate. After that, Joe never returned my calls. I figured he was deployed or otherwise engaged and maybe he’d had enough of me whining about my marriage. Gradually, I stopped calling him and leaving messages.
Less than three months after I said goodbye to Joe, I received a phone call from a mutual friend. “Sorry, Jeff. I gotta tell you our pal ate his gun last night. The poor maid found him this morning when she came to do her monthly clean. I showed up to get him a little while after she did because he didn’t show up for work and wasn’t answering his phone. Cops were already there when I arrived. Place was trashed. Lots of empties and cigarette butts. Joe left a note. All it said was, “Fuck it.’”
I now know that what it should have read was, “Score another one for untreated PTSD.”
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