Soldiers Are Coming Home Injured and Addicted -- Will We Pay Our Debt to Our Vets?

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Soldiers come home from the two wars with a staggering rate of brain injuries and the addictions paired with them, but to treat them could cost $1 trillion.


http://www.alternet.org/drugs/155635/soldiers_are_coming_home_injured_and_addicted_--_will_we_pay_our_debt_to_our_vets/?page=entire

Soldiers Are Coming Home Injured and Addicted -- Will We Pay Our Debt to Our Vets?
The Fix / By Katie Drummond
May 29, 2012

Robert LeHeup will be the first to admit that he's an alcoholic. “I drink so that I don't go to shit,” says LeHeup, a 30-year-old bartender living in Columbus, South Carolina. “I drink because I have to.”

LeHeup is a former Marine sergeant, who served two grueling tours in Afghanistan during the US invasion and early occupation. He drinks to dull memories of the everyday chaos and carnage. He drinks to tolerate his disgust at the raucous bar-goers who have no idea how easy life is in America, compared to the casual violence and grinding poverty of Afghanistan. He drinks because, in the Marines, that is just what everybody does.

LeHeup, in his ongoing struggle with alcoholism, is anything but an outlier among this generation of military service-members. In fact, more than a decade after the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, an unprecedented number of men and women in the US military are currently in the throes of addiction.

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America claims to be committed to taking care of ailing veterans for their entire lives if need be. For the generation of veterans of the war in Vietnam, which ended in 1975, the peak in healthcare costs and disability payments has not yet been reached. For the new generation of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the peak is not due for another 40 or 50 years. By one estimate, the total price tag for this care will be $1 trillion. Yet budget hawks in Congress, especially among the Republicans, have already proposed cutting funds for veteran affairs.