A Rose of a Different Color

Some people think, and still do, that the veterans of the Vietnam War were crazed baby killers who came home loaded dopers or alcoholics with no outlet but to do menial tasks, work for the government or post office, or any job that they didn't have to deal with people. And for the most part, it was true! The real truth is that they were children, seventeen to nineteen years of age, given a rifle and flown into a foreign country and told, "Don't shoot anybody unless they shoot first."

After seeing most of their friends killed and surviving in a jungle full of chemicals that caused a myriad of diseases, they came home to an unwelcome public, confused and wounded. I was one of these boys. Yes, me, a man now, and with a different perspective on what human life was worth. The one thing that all of us did return home with was trauma, severe trauma. But this trauma was sneaky. It wouldn't raise its head, in some cases, for twenty years. And when it did, boom! You had to be locked up in a rubber room and loaded with Thorazine. The diagnosis then was either manic depressive, bipolar, or both. Some of us got psychotherapy, and some joined groups to control the anger of rejection by doing what they thought was the right thing. "Weren't we the good guys?" There is a rainbow behind most clouds, and the good news is there is treatment available. PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder can appear without warning and with the least amount of provocation, but the results are always the same-disaster.

-- Albert Rayn