About Us

Who We Are and What We’re Doing Here

Last Updated 10/1/2016

We are an informal, anonymous band of Combat Veterans, come together to help one another address our problems around Post Traumatic Soul Distress (PTSD) and related issues – most particularly, Veteran Suicide.  We’re here to help one another work through the various issues that we all brought home with us from deployment.  We Warriors share experiences that cannot be replicated anywhere else, and which the civilian population, no matter how eager to help us in one way or another, no matter how well educated or trained, cannot comprehend – much less empathize with us.  It’s up there because 22 of us are said to commit suicide every day!  That’s north of 8000 a year!  But we all know that, and we’ve all done the math.  There doesn’t seem to be much being done about it if we look real close at results.  Like in 2006 or 2007, the suicide rate was 18 a day (and that’s the VA’s number ~ we’re pretty sure it’s higher).  Now, fast forward: after six or eight years of maximum effort and throwing everything they have at it, they’ve driven that number all the way down to 22 a day.  And about a third of those guys are said to have been in treatment by the VA for PTSD when they cap themselves.  Now . . . try to imagine if birth control pills or boner pills or Cardiac Bypass surgery or Appendectomy surgery had that kind of failure rate.  Do you really think that would be allowed to stand?  No!  It would NOT!   Soooo . . . it appears to me that, at the end of the day, we’re pretty much on our own here.

With that in mind, this site (and any locations where we meet) are meant to be places of refuge, a safe place to just hang  with our brethren and be who we are, without being judged or having to worry about offending anyone or hurting anyone’s feelings.  Here we can relax and speak freely with our brothers who understand us and who we understand.  Here we can figure out amongst ourselves how to deal with the issues we all brought back with us, to a greater or lesser degree, from deployment.  We’re also quite capable, thank you very much, of figuring out when we are over our heads with a brother’s problem and where to take him for such other help he may need.

Quite apart from PTSD,  we can help each other pretty much any related problems we might have: Education and Job Training, Health and Substance issues, family relationships, and pretty much anything we’ve got that’s holding us back.  PTSD will always reside at the top of the list, but we all know that these other issues are often related to and/or driven by PTSD and have to be dealt with as well. They all lend themselves to peer support groups.

The BAD news:        We can’t rely on the VA or the Medical Establishment or any Government Agency for much of anything useful around these issues.

The GOOD news:    We can still have each other, to cover our six, help us up when we’re down.  Just like when we were deployed, we take care of our own.  That’s always been what we’re about.