everything we owned. I took all my tools and bits and pieces to Cash Converters which was so difficult, but I had to do it because we just couldn’t afford to transport all this stuff all the way back. We were still struggling financially. We’d acquired so many debts from the military life. The military lures you into a false sense of security because you’ve got a pay check coming every week and you can always get cheap rent and you just pick up these bad habits. And Lisa and I, we were buying and selling cars because we were trying to treat ourselves when we were down and we just made things worse. It was the worst time: I had just quit my job and I wasn’t coping and Lisa had to have a major operation before we took off again. It was too much and I knew I just wasn’t going right, so I booked myself into a mental hospital for two weeks and left Lisa at home, you know, all sore from the operation and everything and trying to pack up a house and having complications and going back into hospital herself. And, you know, I’m supposed to be the loving, supportive husband and I’m not there for her: I’m in the nut house. She carried on. As soon as we got back east, Lisa moved hell and high water to get me on the PTSD course, which was the best thing that had happened to me, and we got our own little place and we set ourselves up. The course went for seven weeks and I was the youngest guy there but now most of the courses have guys in their twenties. On one course that Lisa came to with me, we saw a guy and he’d come back from Iraq and he just sat there. He was just a blob on a seat. And if you said something to him, you wouldn’t get much of a reaction. Lisa sat down and talked to his wife and sort of said to her, ‘You know, you need to get him to a PTSD course and some couples counselling.’ You could see the wife was desperate to get her husband back. There’s more and more young guys and girls coming through the courses and a lot of the guys I’ve met who have turned up for things like anger management, turn up in uniform. They’re still serving. The military is a lot more switched on now and they’re actually getting these guys the treatment they need. And what’s good for a lot of the guys is they’re getting medically discharged
The military is a lot more switched on now and they’re actually getting these guys the treatment they need… they’re getting medically discharged and getting the support and the rehabilitation as soon as they leave…
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