Warning, this article may raise your blood pressure or cause depression – at least briefly – particularly if you are involved in any way with the armed forces. Please read it carefully. Any writers interested in the subject for character development should look at it with an eye to future projects as well.
God bless the United States of America and all those who serve in our armed forces.
On the Edge
By Ken Olsen
Mar 20, 2014
By the time Justin Minyard discovered the video of himself stoned, drooling and unable to help his daughter unwrap her Christmas presents, he was taking enough OxyContin, oxycodone and Valium every day to deaden the pain of several terminally ill cancer patients.
“Heroin addicts call it the nod,” the former Special Forces soldier says of his demeanor in that video. “My head went back. My eyes rolled back in my head.
I started drooling on myself. My daughter was asking why I wasn’t helping her, why I wasn’t listening to her.”
Seeing that video jolted Minyard out of a two-year opiate stupor. He asked a Fort Bragg pain specialist to help him get off the painkillers his primary care physician had prescribed. “I was extremely disappointed in myself,” he says. “I knew I couldn’t do that to my family again.”
There are thousands of post-9/11 veterans like Minyard – men and women whose bodies were broken by roadside bombs, bullets or jumping out of helicopters and Humvees day after day, deployment after deployment, wearing 80 pounds of body armor and battle gear. Some have traumatic brain injuries. Some have PTSD. Some have deteriorating knees, shoulders or spines. All have pain.
A Song of Joy by Caroline Furlong 