It has been 5 years now since I was put on medication, and it changes all the time. I go to regular therapy and try to work on my traumas. I have also under guidance tried to reduce the amount of medication I am on, but it leaves me ready to tear everyone's heads off.
Some people may be on medication their entire life. Some won't. Some may need it at stressful points within their life only.
The first thing every veteran must understand is that healing trauma will be the most difficult thing you ever do in your life. Its not about just talking about it. Far from it actually. Its about finding resolution to what distresses you, then applying that answer into your life. Change takes time, and especially when you are trying to change things that are useless in society, yet your brain has accepted as required due to it saving your life in combat. Vast difference between the two.
Then you have people who hold onto their military. People go past soldiers, yell out "put your hat on" and so forth... all signs that a person hasn't let go of their past. If you're no longer in the military, then you must let it go and become a civilian to truly understand how to heal. The only thing that makes a soldier feel better with PTSD is by putting them back within the very hostile environment that their brain is used to in order to function.
but what guarantee is there??
There are no guarantee's with mental health and well-being. Every single person is their own best and worst enemy. That may sound blaming, but its true. I am my own best and worst enemy at times. I am responsible for me and my health, nobody else. If I do something that is hurting me, then I must change me, I must let go, I must adapt.
I have mates who sit around the RSL, pub, etc, drink heavily, talk military BS constantly... all been out of the military for years, yet they just cannot let go of it. They wonder why they're still haunted... because they refuse to move beyond their past and history, and continuously and intentionally try to relive it, as though they're still in the military. Its behaviour... and behaviour is hard to change. If you sat in the pub often during the military, talking military, then you either change that behaviour or not.
One of the starting points to healing trauma is shifting past denial. Denial is broad, it encompasses quite a vast and expanse realm of possibilities.
Just working with veterans helping them with PTSD, having PTSD yourself, is enough to keep you within that military mindset if you aren't strong enough to change and say no, showing others you are no longer military, you don't live military now, you are civilian with a military past and combat experience.
There are veterans, especially from Vietnam, who live and function because they bought land, built defenses, tunnels, etc... they replicated their hostile environment, which allows them to function. Put them in a shopping center to choose which cereal and they have no idea.
Moral of the story... people deal with trauma and their military past uniquely. Whether its healthy or not is debatable, but each person finds their unique comfort zone. If that comfort zone is not helping you, instead only hindering you, then you need to change your decisions and choices.
