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My name's Mike.
I was in the United States Army.
I served from January of '74 to February of '76.
I was stationed in a red-eye platoon.
We had to go to Frankfurt, actually, to Rhein-Main.
The first night there, I went downtown and just wanted to
absorb the atmosphere.
I had drank a few beers.
And I wasn't feeling any pain.
And when I got back to the barracks where we were at, I
was attacked by my platoon Sergeant--
assaulted both physically and sexually--
and then threatened with my life if I was to say anything
to anybody.
From where that happened in the restroom, I had to walk
into where everybody was staying, into this dorm room.
And I just told them that I had been physically assaulted.
And so they encouraged me to report it to a First Sergeant.
And I was scared, man.
And I just transferred out.
So then I went to a line company.
And that's when things started escalating as far as substance
abuse and alcohol abuse.
When I got out in '76, I was just so happy to be away from
the military it wasn't funny.
But from that point on, I mean, I was just
balls to the wall.
I'd get loaded in any and every way that was possible.
I had tried a number of times to get sober.
And I did succeed at getting sober to a certain extent.
But I always had something that I hid.
I took that understanding and knowledge and put it in the
same box, that compartment, that held that other
[INAUDIBLE] that I didn't want anybody else to know about.
About 1980 or so is when I first went into
treatment into VA.
I went to substance abuse treatment three times.
So I didn't have a whole lot of success.
I headed South and hooked up with the VA again, went to the
outpatient treatment and was referred to an in patient
treatment in Eugene, Oregon.
I actually got assigned a counselor for the CBT, and
that was for depression.
And when we were going through that, I had to
open that box up.
I was moved to a different counselor.
She was an alcohol and drug counselor that was doing
*** therapy.
Fortunately, that counselor was able to help me out and
get me on the idea of understanding the fact that
the substance abuse is what I used during the majority of my
life to mask what was really bugging me.
Probably the biggest milestone is when I sat down with her
and went over the whole incident.
And I wrote that down and submitted it to the VA to get
things straightened out.
That was a pretty big thing for me.
It took a long time.
I found that professional therapists were what I wanted
to talk to, because they can understand.
I have a much better understanding of why things
are happening now.
And I think--
no, I don't think, I know I've learned how to ask for help.
One of the best things I ever heard from the VA was a drug
counselor in Eugene.
He said, when you got a problem, you
can't go around it.
You can't pretend it doesn't exist and make a detour.
You have to go right back through that problem and
understand why it's a problem, and also learn and find out
what you can do to deal with that problem.