The Wedged Bear

I dead right meow 🙀 #hedgehogdickonyobaby stolen from @illmatic.af btw

I never smoked cannabis growing up. It wasn’t that it wasn’t available, my stepdad grew it or sold it since I could remember, I just equated the weed with the person. I thought that by smoking this plant I would become what he was, an abusive bully with a talented mind squandered away on drugs and alcohol. As I got older it was easy to explain away because nobody pushes the star athlete to smoke pot, gotta get into college gotta stay clean rah rah rah. I went into the army right out of high school so into my twenties I was property of Uncle Sam and Uncle Sam Says No to Drugs. 5000mg of Motrin a day is cool and Sam is okay with you getting SoJu fucked up on the daily when your not in the field but a joint with the buddies while home on leave will end your army career quickly. In the army I was referred to as a field soldier meaning I was great out tromping around in the woods with a ruck and a gun but back in the rear I was a fuck up. Now that I’m older I realize it was ptsd related because out in the field all I had to worry about was walking from point a to point b. I was surrounded by brothers that I respected and respected me. I was a light infantryman I had one job, find and destroy the enemy with what I have on my back, a gun and a radio. In the rear I have real world responsibilities, a wife that doesn’t understand me, a child I’ve never really seen and a myriad of other things I just wasn’t good at dealing with. Under pressure I changed to a garrison job in an attempt to save my marriage which of course dissolved in a tragic fireball that would have made Michael Bay envious this was followed quickly by my career in the army due to aforementioned inferno. Life out of the army was even more difficult for me. The army had always taken care of me, fed me, clothed me, housed me, gave me money, wiped my nose when I was sick now it was just me and I really didnt have a plan. To make matters worse my brothers were gone as well I was left to fend for myself and the army really didn’t have the programs in place at the time to help with your transition into the real world. My family helped me get my feet on the ground and put some cash in my pocket but it was understood that this was a one time deal. I struggled both with the loss of my kids which my ex wife took to California and the fact that I was alone, I mean I’d never really ever been alone. No more roommates or teammates or friends just you and your thoughts. I began to drink and fill my bed with anything cute and willing but eventually even that’s not distracting enough to the voices in your head. How could she ever understand the dark wave that rolls over you at 4:30 in the morning after she’s passed out you know that one that makes you want to scream and cry and kill all at once. It was also hard to make friends because I looked down on most people, not because I was better but more akin to a sheepdog looking at sheep. How could anyone else measure up to men you’d been in combat with? I drifted in and out of relationships and jobs even trying my hand at marriage again and college, both of which ended quickly I even managed to throw a botched attempt at suicide in there as I wandered lost through the world. It’s about this time that cannabis entered my life again. I had dropped out of college and was just trying to pay my rent, working a couple of part time jobs one of which was DJing at a local strip club so one night one of the girls tips me out in weed now I don’t want to seem like a douche so I pocket it like its cool. I get home and pull it out I sit and look at it for probably ten minutes then I find some foil to make a pipe out of put on some music and begin to smoke. My life changed that night, for the first time in as many years as I could remember everything slowed down for me, I didn’t feel like my skin was crawling off, that anxious gnawing in the back of my mind was still and I felt something. To feel anything after feeling so numb for so long is something I can’t even put into words. I say with the utmost of conviction that cannabis saved my life, i’ve had a steady job for 13 years and pretty healthy relationship for 6+ years. No more nightmares, no more feeling like I’m going to lose it at the mall/store/public, I’m more social and open, takes the edge off the aches and pains…you get the point. I don’t need you to legalize cannabis for me, I’m a strip club DJ I will always get mine, but please consider it for the hundreds of service members that commit suicide each year. To withhold it from even one of those it could help seems criminal to me.

While out partying down range in Korea one night a PFC drunkly confessed to me that the night we flew into Panama for Operation Just Cause he was so scared and honestly thought he was going to die. He was part of about 15+ soldiers assigned to our light infantry unit to replace gaps in platoons before the Invasion. We were a COHORT unit so we had been together as a unit from basic/AIT to Ft. Ord California right down to Alpha Company 1st of the 9th Infantry Regiment, I can’t imagine how much of an outsider they must have felt first off. To come into a group of brothers who had been together for a year and a half enduring some of the most intense training the Army offered at the time and try to fit in would be intimidating to any man. On top of that we are now going to send you into combat with a fraction of the training. So he tells me in the middle of his contemplating the horrible death he thinks is sure to come that he looks up amongst all the somber faces to see me, Crater, and Gower grabassing and cracking jokes, and he thinks to himself that “Hey these guys don’t look like it’s anything but a normal day so maybe it’s not as bad as I’m making it out to be” he said he immediately felt better and quit thinking about it. At the time it made me feel proud that I instilled courage into another. As I’ve aged I realized what a false sense of confidence it was, Crater wasn’t brave, I just don’t think it ever occurred to him to fail, he could’ve have been a SEAL, a PJ, Force Recon, you can’t describe it to civilians but he was just one of those guys. Gower wasn’t brave, he was slightly insane and wanted nothing more than to live up to the stories his dad, a highly decorated Ranger from the Vietnam War, would tell about hiding in bushes with grenade pins pulled surrounded by Vietcong and nights in Brothels swimming in whiskey. I was the least brave, in fact looking back I was as cowardly as they come. You see I had a secret, I was way ahead of the curve already, I came into the Army with PTSD. At the age of 15 I shot my best friend in chest with a pistol and killed him, it was an accident of course I know that now, but I never received any counseling after the fact, I was left to deal with all of that guilt and rage on my own and at the age of 18 I ran off to the Army. I wasn’t scared that day in the plane because almost everyday I woke up I would have welcomed death. I found a unit that was almost assured to deploy if combat kicked off and a year and half later I was flying into Panama as the sounds of rounds slapped against the aircraft skin. I wasn’t brave I just wanted to die and I hoped maybe that my death could save someone else. I was a coward. Luckily, for me and my fellow soldiers, the opportunity never presented itself. I realize now that I could have cost others their lives and that I was only thinking of myself. I also realized once the rounds started snapping that maybe life wasn’t entirely all bad and I should stick around at least for a bit longer. I don’t really know what brave is? I’ve seen men do amazingly brave things but maybe they were just as fucked up on the inside as me, maybe they didn’t do them because they were brave but scared, scared of failure, of loss, of disappointing someone or maybe some of us just didn’t give a fuck about ourselves? I cringe when someone shakes my hand and thanks me for my service, I don’t really know how to respond. I did it for me, like most of my life, it was about me. “I didn’t do it for God or Country or the GI Bill I did it because I’m a selfish dick” is what I want to scream at them but I don’t I smile awkwardly shake their hand and move away. I was just a grunt.

This account @USMCfligher was started then filled with photos stolen off of an actual service members Facebook as his own. He also has a twitter by the same name. #stolenvalor #predator

No matter how hard you are #ptsd will make you it's bitch if you let it...#gosilent #educateyourself #speakout #brotherskeepers #operationzeus

Never forget why we celebrate, the 849,000 men and women that have given their lives so you can enjoy your #memorialday weekend #veteran #sacrifice #duty #honor #brotherhood