Transcript
When I was in Iraq, I was equipping all the Iraqi police,
the Iraqi army, as well, and all the security forces for the Iraq people.
At one point I had a 1.5 billion-dollar budget.
Colonel Reedy Hopkins, United States Air Force.
I still remember February 18th of 2005, we had a large convoy mission.
It was really a goat rope the whole way down, we took fire.
As we were heading back, the enemy detonated mortar rounds,
they had buried them in the ground, and blew this
very heavily armored tractor trailer about 100 yards into the desert.
Killed one individual instantly and hurt two others pretty badly.
I started helping with the combat lifesaving.
There was a point in there when we first came up to the truck that was burning
that I hesitated to go try and find out if there was still a third person in the truck,
and that has haunted me ever since because I basically froze.
It was probably not until I came back and was in the Pentagon,
in probably January, February of '06,
before I even thought that I might need some help.
I was in the greatest city in the world, Washington, DC.,
but there were days it was a struggle to get up and out of bed.
And you don't really want to go outside and mix with crowds,
don't want to do much of anything.
Just kind of sit and veg out and no contact with people.
It sucks the life out of you.
Finally I just said, "I gotta stop this."
Went to the mental health clinic,
started getting into the Prolonged Exposure therapy.
So, we zeroed in on the February, 2005, incident.
And you walk through, second by second, everything that happened,
and you painstakingly step through it.
You're right in the middle of it, you're re-living it.
To keep going through something that is very painful
is very painful.
It's not fun.
Did it help? Absolutely.
The therapist, she was able to start asking questions to make me think
in a different way about the whole incident.
And the upshot was, that probably was only a split second,
and if we went back and asked everybody who was standing there,
they'd all laugh and go, "What are you talking about?"
I could have done nothing differently to save that individual.
It was just my perception.
Before I started therapy I would just avoid any type of crowded situation.
Part of the Prolonged Exposure homework is
to place yourself in those situations.
I've gone to the local trade market, which is always full of people.
When I first started going, scale of zero to 100,
100 being the worst anxiety level, probably 100.
You're tense, your head is on that proverbial swivel,
always looking for those telltale signs of problems with people,
so you're really aware.
It's very physical in the sense of sweats, maybe, and my tic,
I'll feel a little something, or my hands will start.
Towards the end of the therapy, it probably was the 25 to 50 scale.
To say that I can go and do these things is liberating.
There's that stigma out there that says,
"Well, a real man, or a real soldier, or a real airman, whatever, won't go seek help."
And to say, "Well, I could lose my career because I go seek help,"
well, you don't have a career if you don't get help
because you're going to either implode yourself
or you're going to screw your career, and you're going to be out anyway.
If I can help anybody, I don't mind talking about it.
If I can help young people who are being told by their commanders
or by their senior NCOs that real men or real women don't go seek help
for PTSD or traumatic brain injuries, I figure I need to help.
And if I can help somebody, then life is good.