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I turned to alcohol to suppress my feelings of guilt, shame, anger…

Nicholas Provenza (US Marine Corps, 2018 - 2022) talks about how he started to drink to cope with his moral injury symptoms.

Transcript

I turned to alcohol to suppress
my feelings of guilt, shame,

anger, sadness and anxiety
and all that stuff.

Because in the military,
especially being a marine,

you know, one of the

best warriors out there,
you know, mental health is

kind of a weakness,
you know, from your higher ups.

You know, some people,

you know, if you
if you're saying, you know,

I'm depressed, I'm you know, I'm
going through all this stuff,

you know, I lost...everyone's
going, okay, you're a Marine,

suck it up. You know, drink,
go have a drink.

You know, and it's like,
all right, yeah.

So then, you know,

I started following
what everyone else was doing

and just drinking and,
you know, partying and just

it spiraled me out of control.

It got to the
point where, you know, just

I couldn't even - I could
not function without alcohol.

And it just

because I, cause you know,

once you have a moral injury,
there's no suppressing it.

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