Starting off I would like to say that I had a horrible time while I was there. I would actually consider it a waste of time all together. I was supposed to go there to be demobilized and to be medically retired. I will let you know now that it wasn’t that way at all. First of all I was put in a Super 8 motel and I was told it would be for a temporary stay. I was there for six months. I was put in a hotel and forgotten about. Oh they also gave me a bunch of pain pills it seemed to me they just wanted me to die. Maybe if they tucked me away in a little room they wouldn’t have to help me.
I wrote many complaints to the Senator and to other “accomplished personnel” but nothing came back. Not even a “sorry to hear that” letter. That is when I realized how small I was in this world. The pain didn’t go away and either did the nightmares, sleeplessness, anxiety and depression. I didn’t have to go to war to get PTSD I could have got it just by being there where they were “taking care” of me. In the part of Fayetteville NC I was in I heard gunshots every night, prostitutes were all over yelling obscenities in my window at night, and someone cut the screen cover on my window cause I didn’t want any drugs. I think I was attacked more there than in Iraq.
I really was in a hole there. I think I even might have hit rock bottom. All I did was sleep until it was time to take drugs watch TV or movies until I fell asleep again. Then it was time to eat and take more drugs again repeating every 4-6 hours. Anyone who has been on pain pills before knows that you always need more to take away the pain. At first I was taking 1 every 4 hours then it went to 2 all in about 3 weeks. By the time October came around I was probably taking 6 pills every 4 hours. Then as you probably guessed I mixed in other things as well. Muscle relaxants, different kinds of pain pills, sleeping pills, and finally alcohol. Anything to keep the pain away, but not just physical pain I was hurting mentally. Mixing pain killers with alcohol and all the rest were the only things that would numb me after all that time.
I was severely depressed and dieing inside and Uncle Sam didn’t care. I didn’t understand why the government “lost me” and why they didn’t care. I know my family was there and so were a lot of friends in a matter of speaking, but there was no one there physically with me. No one came to visit I just talked on my cell phone and to my roommate who was just as doped up as I was. I was totally falling apart and felt like I was going to literally die there alone. “In a Super 8 motel here lies umm… what was his name again?”
