Letter to Vets - July 4th

Sunday, 04 July 2010 08:08

Open Letter to the Military Veterans of the United States

“You and I are responsible for our brothers' care.”

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That's what I said to the disabled vet who asked me why he should help get cannabis approved by our government for the treatment of PTSd.

And that means you as well.

As you sit and read this essay active duty members of our armed forces are being denied treatment that would likely help them survive the unrelenting horrors that post traumatic stress bestows daily on those who we as a nation should revere.

I hear it everywhere, “support the troops.” Ribbons, yellow, some faded, circle trees in Bode, Iowa. In Keene, Virginia a pick-up sits covered, for the third time, with a tarp and a yellow ribbon. On I-40 as I pass by Tucumcari, NM a Southern Pacific truck turns off the interstate, four ribbons pasted on the rear door.

The Veterans Administration of the US will not let the wounded use cannabis. In Israel, Dr. Mechoulam, the grandfather of medical cannabis research heads a program that has the Israeli government growing cannabis and using it to help their soldiers, men and women. The US Veterans Administration denies, removes from the role of care, any veteran whose urine shows the past use of cannabis. A Soldier who lost his left leg in Iraq uses cannabis for “phantom pain.” When his urine shows his use he is removed from the hospital grounds, all treatment denied. He is, you see, a drug user.

If the Soldier swallows the 15 prescribed pills every day, all big pharmaceutical company products and all full of chemicals that may be harmful to his liver, spleen or brain, he is a good soldier. If he replaces the synthetically derived compounds with a plant that mimics and supports his endocannabinoid system, he is a bum.

Yesterday I spoke at length with the mom of a Marine. He came back from his third tour with a brain injury and PTS. He was placed in a group of others, injured, in Lejuene, NC, a wounded warrior battalion. A battalion put in place to assist, help, support those who have given their best for us. For us. He took their pills, handfuls. He went nuts and he knew it. So did his mom and so did the guys with him. The friends called his mom. He was getting ready to kill himself and his buddies watched him night and day, because they know that as a soldier, he could get done a thing like that.

He gave up the pills, all of them. He smoked cannabis. His world was better. Facing the inevitable “piss test”, the military unable to find fault in behavior or attitude, concluding improper activity at the end of a penis instead, he turned himself in to his authority figures. Help him, no. Respect him, listen to his experience with cannabis, no.

His mom has a full length cardboard cutout of her son in his full dress blues. It was a stunning figure of a Marine, sergeant stripes and combat action awards proudly worn. A newer cardboard cutout shows a demoted and fined corporal, racked by prescription drugs and sporting a Mohawk. His mom said to me, “Al, I gave the Marine Corps a fine young man, eager to serve his fellow Marines and his country and look what they gave me back.”

I too served in combat, my war was in Nam. Doctors told me years ago I had PTSD and it was then I knew why my sister had introduced me to cannabis when I returned from my war. I have been self medicating for years. No pills. All the while the Navy promoted me earlier than normal, presented me with a bronze star, medals for valor and competency and a retirement check for the rest of my life. If the Navy had known I had used cannabis to achieve in my daily routine I would have been turned into a bum.

But they did not know and five years after leaving active duty I went to work for the VA and the Agent Orange Program as an administrator and peer counselor for Nam vets in Appalachia. Over five years I worked with around 200 guys and a few women (all nurses) with PTS. I dropped the D. What I have and what they have is not a disorder; it is an understandable and normal reaction to continuous abnormal threats or trauma to your life. In my case it was daily for 365 days. Most of us had the same experiences of a long time waiting to die, watching others die and possibly killing the potential threats. Every day for a year.

They all used cannabis. Most gave up their pills, a lot of them, most, gave up alcohol abuse.

The use of cannabis by veterans of all wars is legend. If you have worked a day in any VA hospital in the US you know of the use of cannabis by vets. These are the hospitals that have ordered the care givers to identify and refuse treatment to combat veterans who have found a medicine that helps them. A medicine that the medically ignorant and morally biased of our society have declared not of God's nature but of the devil's.

A great disgrace is the action of the medical professionals on active duty that either support such grievous punishment or ignore it. And if you are a vet or one of those who “support our troops” I place you in the category of disgraceful behavior alongside the active duty traitors of the brotherhood if you stand aside as well. If you are retired or have served and walk away from your brothers' plight I damn you too. We are all responsible for our brothers and sisters in arms once we accept the title of sailor or soldier, airman or marine. That responsibility never leaves, is not vacated by distance or age, brotherhood is rather to be reinforced and rekindled as the need arises.

The need is now, the responsibility is ours.

Help them. Do your part. Let every member of every government body be urged, and required, to halt the removal of health care to vets because of their medicinal cannabis use. That's how to really support our troops.

That is what being a vet means you must do.

Al Byrne, Lcdr., USN, ret.

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