Headline, August25, 2013

''' !!! WARS -&- WORMS -&- 

WINNINGS !!! '''

I had changed my mind about going out and seeing Zodiac, so my ass was on the sofa and Apolcalypse Now was on the flat screen, and I said,''Oh yeah, I went out today and got a medical-marijuana card.''

My wife was confused. ''How the hell did you get one of those?'' 

''I have PTSD,'' I said taking another bite from a brownie.

''What?! Are you serious?!''

''Totally.''

I liked the marijuana a lot because it helped me sleep, and if I could sleep all day and all night I would, and I slept all that weekend, probably the best sleep I'd had since the War, and on Monday, I felt like a new person.

Todd Vance, a friend of mine from my old platoon, called me up to see how I was doing. I told him about the divorce. In shock he exclaimed : ''No way!'' Not because he was surprised that I was divorced now but because this meant that almost every single one of us who was married now wasn't!!

When I told Vance about the new line of medication that I was on, at first he chuckled at me, but later on he called me back that he's been thinking about M.J, as well as about an advertisement he saw in the back of the weekly paper that was targeting veterans.

I got in contact with the marketing director for Medicann, who came up with the ad campaign, and in an e-mail exchange told me that  ''a high percentage of our veteran patients have the diagnosis of PTSD. The most popular effect is that marijuana stops the night terrors or flashbacks associated with PTSD. Patients with this diagnosis typically use marijuana at night to help get to sleep and stay asleep without being woken up by the nightmares.''

I WORE A MINI Combat Infantry Badge lapel pin the day I decided to go to the VA to go through with my testing. At the VA hospital in Los Angeles, I asked to see somebody for help with PTSD. The lady wrote down a name and a phone number for me to call, and I politely told her that I wasn't to go through that hell again, and that I wanted to see somebody that day. 

An individual then walked me to an office that had a paper note taped on its door that read, Out Till Monday, then he walked me over to another office that had a paper note taped on its door that read, Out To A Meeting.

He then handed me a map of the hospital and told me to go to a separate building across the way. Once at the building, I was told to go to yet another building, and that building, after signing in, and taking an elevator up to the second floor, a guy there then told me to go back down and go to yet another building next door. 

I was getting PTSD all over again, and right about the time I was about to say to hell with this and head down to the nearest medical-marijuana facility so I could restock and medicate myself into a coma, I decided to keep on going, and I walked into the cuckoo's nest of the mental health ward.

I told the lady behind the counter that I was told to come here to see somebody for PTSD, and she asked for my name and some basic info, and then she asked where I slept last night, and I told her the truth : ''Believe it or not, I slept in my rental car.''

I had driven the previous night from San Francisco, leaving late at night down the Highway 5, and whenever I got tired I pulled off the freeway into the rest stops, and I'd sleep for a couple of hours until I awoke, then I'd drive again until I couldn't. She gestured for me to take a seat. I thanked her and glanced at my swatch to see what time it was, and with a smile she warned me not to do that, and that I was going to be waiting for a while.

There were about a dozen of us in the waiting-room lobby. One gut was mumbling to himself about something and all the others looked totally homeless and defeated. Above the television set was a red-white-and-blue sign: Welcome Veterans From OIF/ OEF. I was the only there who looked like he participated in that conflict, everybody else looked considerably older.

A guy came around with sack lunches and started handing them out to everybody. When he came to me, I told him I wasn't hungry, and he said that I should take one anyway, if I wasn't hungry now, I would be. Inside the brown bags were sandwiches, chips, an apple, a drink. What people couldn't eat they handed to somebody else, the same exact way the soldiers do when sitting around eating MREs.

 A soldier will eat what he wants and hand out what he can't, so nothing is wasted. Across a range of combat and life experience, it was quiet heartwarming to see that go on here in the ''Mental Ward.''

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of Poland. See ya all on the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless : ''Changing The World Every Day''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless