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I got fired from a job, and I kind of lost it from there.

Jeremiah Civil, US Marine Corps 2001 - 2005, talks about when he knew he needed to get help for PTSD.

Transcript

I drank a lot and I partied a lot and did a decent job

of covering it up and it didn't really kick in.

I could have the nightmares, I could have the other things

and it was OK in my party lifestyle.

And it was OK, it wasn't that stuff causing it,

it was this fact that I was drinking

so much and was partying.

So the signs didn't really show up until a couple years

after being back, or they were there before.

I made a suicide attempt and so that was a wake up.

I got fired from a job and I kind of lost it from there.

Was having nightmares like crazy and I couldn't talk to anybody

about it 'cause I didn't want to.

I didn't want to tell anybody about it.

Hadn't at that point decided that I was going

to say anything to anybody.

And so at that point the signs were pretty close

and in my face.

I think sometimes they bite you in the butt and that's

when you got to realize, you know,

you gotta swallow a little bit of your pride and realize

that getting help is not a bad thing.

It's not a bad thing and it doesn't mean that you're weak

and it doesn't mean that you're a failure in any means.

It just means that you need help understanding what happened

so that you can reprocess it and you can come

out with not only a stronger point of view

but now you have all that life experience behind you too,

that other people just don't have.

And get put back on a stable road and be able

to use your experiences to your advantage rather

than letting them pick you apart.

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