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My adrenaline just spiked.

MAJ Joshua Brandon, US Army 2002 - present, talks about how he knew he had PTSD.

Transcript

The sanitation in Iraq isn't the best

and so everybody burns a lot of trash

and you burn a lot of plastic.

I could remember in Tennessee driving and there was a burn pit

out behind somebody's house.

And all of a sudden I started smelling the burning plastic,

the burning garbage and it was hot outside

and while driving it immediately took me back to walking

down the streets of Baghdad or riding on a vehicle in Baghdad.

And probably for a good two minutes I was back

in Iraq driving on the road and started looking

for threats from all directions.

My adrenaline just spiked.

And when you're used to that and you can control it,

that's one thing but when you're heading out to the store

and buy steaks for dinner and the adrenaline spikes,

all of a sudden I'm looking for threats

in all directions just waiting to get hit.

And I literally had to like pull over and talk myself down out

of it and just kind of take some deep breaths,

take a drink of water.

Eventually I got over it but yeah,

the smell immediately triggered that.

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