BOULDER, Colo.—Iraq war veteran Ryan Nieto had lived in Boulder for about a month when he watched a documentary about an Army company going back to Iraq.
It had been about five years since he served, but he found himself getting more and more upset.
“I started to cry. I was crying harder than I could (ever) remember,” he says. “It was almost an anxiety attack. My chest got so hard, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t stop shaking. I felt like a huge weight was on my shoulders.”
Among the many things he was feeling, he realizes now, was survivor’s guilt.
“I felt so bad for these guys. I had left. I still felt like I had some responsibility to be there. There’s this bond you have with other Marines. It’s something that never goes away.”
Nieto realized he needed help and needed it quickly.
“I knew something was wrong. I pulled myself together and went to the (Boulder) Vet Center and said, ‘I need to talk to somebody right now.'”
While Nieto’s reaction to his war experience was not unusual—about 20 to 30 percent of veterans have post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD—deciding to seek help is less common.
That’s something Vietnam War veteran Ray Meyers knows about. He’s the founder of Veterans Helping Veterans Now, a Boulder-based group that reaches out to veterans to help them find and access the services they need.
“We can hook them up if they need job help, if they need benefits help, if they need counseling,” he says.
Meyers stresses that he’s not a psychologist or a therapist, but a fellow veteran who knows what it’s like to return home traumatized and angry.
“When I see a kid in jail who wants help, I don’t start with a question about how they feel. I say, ‘I’m going to tell you my story.’ There’s this language of trauma and war. You can’t expect the average, normal person to understand.”
Meyers’ story is a compelling one. He served in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, spending weeks in extreme combat situations with bullets zinging all around. Most of his fellow soldiers were killed. When he came home, he spent years drinking, doing drugs and denying he had a problem related to the war. He bounced from job to job and ended up in jail several times. Around 2000, decades after his military service, he began to realize he might die as angry and damaged as he had lived since he left Vietnam in 1968.
“I can go to (veterans) and say, ‘I was 53 before I woke up. I can help you wake up now. I understand why you don’t want help, but guess what? You can’t do it on your own.'”
While PTSD is most often associated with combat, it can also happen to civilians, most often when they’re victims of a crime or natural disaster.
“It’s a normal and natural reaction to being in a life-threatening event or events,” says Michael Pantaleo, a psychologist with the Boulder Vet Center.
Symptoms include problems with sleep and appetite, intrusive thoughts, a desire to isolate yourself emotionally and physically, and anger and frustration when you’re unable to control a situation.
For many soldiers, PTSD is particularly severe because they are exposed to trauma many, many times.
“Combat is, and I think always has been an experience on the outer limits of what human beings are asked to endure,” says Stew Brown, associated regional manager of the Vet Center program. Brown formerly worked at the Boulder center, a Department of Veterans Affairs facility that provides counseling to veterans.
“An author wrote that the experience is so horrific that you can’t forget about it, but also so horrific that you can’t talk about it,” Brown says. “What’s been proven to help with this is to create an atmosphere where people feel safe, comfortable and respected, where there’s trust, dignity and honesty. Within that context you have a chance to process the experience.”
Meyers remembers going to a Vet Center lecture about PTSD.
“This is 33 years after the fact, and I’m still going, ‘Hey, Vietnam had no effect on me. I’m just a drunk and a drug addict. Nothing that happened there has affected my life.’
“Then the guy starts going down the list (of symptoms) and I’m like ‘Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.’ He lists 10 of them. I had all of them. It was kind of an epiphany.”
Psychologist Brown urged Meyers to apply for PTSD disability. The process requires a “stressor statement,” in which the veteran explains the traumatic event or events that caused the disorder. In the somewhat cynical world of such applications, Meyers explains, the fastest way to be approved for benefits is to be able to name a dead body. When he sat down to list the soldiers he knew who had died, he had an important realization: Virtually every day since he had left Vietnam, he had been running over the list of the dead in his mind.
“In order to honor their deaths, I had to remember them every day,” he says. “Every day I would get up and I’d say to myself, ‘I gotta remember (Lt. Samuel) Hannah. I gotta remember (Cpl. Thomas) Meade. I gotta remember (Sgt. Clark) Henson.’ When I wrote the stressor statement, I put it on paper. I realized this piece of paper is my record. Maybe 100 years from now, someone will see it.
“That was the beginning of my recovery.”
Meyers began speaking at schools and reaching out to fellow veterans. He founded VHVnow last year. The group is loosely structured. Meyers talks to veterans at the Carriage House, which provides day services for the homeless, and the Boulder County Jail. Often, the veterans refuse help just as stubbornly as Meyers once did. Other times, they accept his help—whether it’s repairing a water heater or aid in setting up an appointment for counseling.
“You work as a buffer between them and the agency,” says Meyers, who has worked with about 65 clients and made contact with 120 others.
Derrick Duran, an Iraq war veteran, volunteers for VHVnow.
“I’m still in treatment. I’m by no means a counselor, therapist or psychologist,” he says. “But what hit me when I came back, I had all these (people) telling me what I (had) to do, but I didn’t know where to go. That’s what Veterans Helping Veterans is. We’re getting them in the right direction.”
For those who aren’t yet ready to seek help, Meyers says he will be there waiting.
“When they decide they have a problem, there will be something in place to help them,” he says.
Sometimes, the help is just in knowing that help exists.
Nieto says the counseling he received and developing a support system in Boulder has allowed him to stabilize his life.
But he says of Meyers, “He would be the first person I would call if something happened.”
As any veteran will tell you, the experience doesn’t go away, but its impact can lessen.
“For me, that monster is still under the bed,” Nieto says. “But now the lights are on and not off. I know the monster won’t come out when the lights are on.”
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