Mike felt isolated from his buddies and guilt for not being on deployment with them. Being out of the military made him feel alone and not in control, so he started drinking to mask the feelings. See how he reached out for help and was able to get his life on a better track.
View Video TranscriptMike:
About a year passed and things started to get goofy again and I was drinking, you know, I mean I was drinking quite a bit. And I don't think that's uncommon for a lot of guys. I mean, you know, people do it all the time, but you know, drinking to forget about those memories is not the way to go about it I found. Because, yeah, I mean you kinda start to look at the other people in your life, you know, your girlfriend, your siblings, your parents.
You know, I remember one night I just sat there and talked to my parents at the dinner table. I was just over there, you know, having dinner with them, and this is after kind of a couple heavy nights of drinking and I just said, “You guys, I think I need to talk to somebody.” You know, I don’t want to be one of those folks that, you know, waited until it was too late and then things are totally spun out of control. And so… you know, not to sit here and puff out my chest about trying to be proactive about it but I was… I mean, you know, in a real way I was kinda scared because you don’t ever really feel like you’re outta control about yourself at least, you know, while you are in the service usually, but then when you’re separated from it, you don’t really have all these… you know, all your comrades and brothers in arms around you. You know, you kinda start to feel a little bit alone. I was feeling that way and I think that I was, you know, consuming alcohol to try to, you know, fill a little bit of a void there. Because of the, you know, because of guilt about not being overseas with your buddies, because you are angry about how a lot of people, you know, kinda treat, you know, the military. And that was an outlet for me.
And so it was around that time, this is like last winter, you know, that I ended up calling up Military OneSource, which is just one of the many resources obviously that guys have access to.
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