All Is Not Forgotten(20)

I have treated many patients like Sean, though he was an exceptional case. It can be a difficult choice to prescribe these patients with the appropriate medication. I can make them come back down to earth, but there they will remain. While the rest of us flow through normal patterns of these elevated emotions and then the return to normalcy, these patients have to choose. I suppose it’s akin to addiction and the choice to be in recovery. Would you rather live a life of total sobriety or be in a constant state of inebriation? I would certainly choose sobriety.

I did not know Sean before he joined the navy. He was just seventeen years old and, as he describes himself, jumping out of his own skin. He cycled through girlfriends, drank and got high every day, even through school. His mother was overwhelmed. Two of the older siblings had returned home to live, one after graduating from college and the other after dropping out. The younger three were always in need of something, a meal or a ride or a clean shirt. His oldest sister got pregnant at twenty-three, unmarried. She sometimes dropped the baby off with her mother so she could go to her job as an office assistant. What I am trying to convey is that Sean did not know how to help himself, and there was no one else up to the task. After his senior year, he enlisted.

Military life was not a bad option for Sean. The physical demands of his training and the endless opportunities to strain his body afforded him a different kind of medication for his anxiety. Endorphins and adrenaline produced from anaerobic exercise are chemicals that cause the body to feel good. That’s the simplest way to explain it. For someone with anxiety, extreme physical exertion can provide significant relief. Sean excelled, making it through the process in just over eighteen months. He did one tour in Iraq at age eighteen and returned home just after his nineteenth birthday. His parents were proud, his siblings conflicted by pride and envy. But without his regimen, and the constant natural high from being in danger, he was again reeling with his anxiety.

Have you ever done coke, Doc? He asked me this already knowing the answer. He was playful that way. Well, you get real jumpy.

I can still see him sitting on the couch in my office, legs straddled, hands in two fists. He began to shake.

It’s like that. Like you have to keep moving some part of your body to get rid of your nerves. You can’t sleep. You’re not hungry. Could talk for hours about stupid shit.

“That doesn’t sound enjoyable,” I said.

Sean laughed. I know, Doc. Cup of tea and a good book. We can’t all be saints.

“When did you use cocaine?” I asked.

Aw, not since tenth grade. I’m just saying that’s what I felt like all the time. I’d forgotten what it was like before, you know, after being in the desert for so long. I slept like a baby there. Never thought about what was churning in my gut.

“And when you did come home, the times before that last mission?”

Fuck, man. It was like being in a cage. Like some wild animal in a zoo. I’d wake up and have like a second of peace. Then I’d feel it creeping in until I had a full belly of acid. I’d jump up and get the hell out of the house, go for a run until I was wheezing for breath. I’d kiss my ma on the cheek and grab a beer, take it to the basement to lift until my muscles were shaking. That’d do me okay for a few hours. Spent the rest of the day drinking. I don’t touch the weed anymore. Can’t risk it, you know?

“And Tammy, your wife? You said you met her on one of your leaves? How did she come into the picture?”

Sean smiled and winked at me. Well, I’d put f*cking right up there with drinking. Fucking and drinking at the same time—that just about got me through the day. I’d just be in some bar and then see some chick catching my eye. It was too easy. I sound like an *. But they were into it. I don’t know. Never had that kind of luck in school. Maybe they felt sorry for me, having to go back.

I did not doubt one word of what he told me. Sean was a perfect cocktail for attracting women.

I guess I just got careless. Next time I came home, I had a kid and a wife.

In spite of his promiscuity, I am willing to say that I believe Sean Logan was a profoundly good man. And not simply because he married the mother of his child. Sean was a fighter. He fought for his life, for his sanity. For him, the only thing he knew that made life tolerable was being deployed, and so he came home when he was told, and he did his best to love his wife and know his child. But he feared this time—not like the men in the other stories you know, the men who are suffering from PTSD or who become addicted to the adrenaline high. Those men, for the most part, had been normal before leaving for war. For Sean, it was quite the opposite. He had sought war to escape himself.

Tammy described it like this:

I love him. Please don’t doubt that. Seriously—I would die if he ever thought I didn’t love him, from the first time I saw him, as stupid as that sounds, I did, I just loved him. You can’t imagine what it was like that afternoon. It was a rainy day, hot and muggy. I’d gone with some friends to drink some beers and shoot pool. It was Saturday, you know? There wasn’t much else to do. He was at the bar, had the whole place in fits of laughter, telling some story about some crazy thing he’d done to one of his buddies, some prank over in Iraq. He never dwelled on the bad stuff. He always wanted to make people laugh. He could lift the spirit of an entire room all at once, with one story and his enormous smile. So I walked in and he saw me. He stopped for a second telling his story, but his audience was waiting, so he continued, even though his eyes kept moving around the room, following me. I didn’t know it about him then, but when he sets his mind on something, or someone, he’s like a pit bull. He won’t let go until he gets what he wants. And that afternoon, he wanted me.