Effective Ways I Have Found To Deal With My Mental And Emotional Problems

At this point in time, I feel happier and I am more content than I have ever been in my adult life -- and for me that is saying a lot because I have been an adult for over 40 years and I have suffered a great deal of trauma.

Before I go on, I will briefly discuss my background.

I was born in 1946 in Los Angeles, California and grew up in the rundown, crime-ridden section of the city that is presently called South-Central L.A. When I was nine years old, my father died suddenly from a heart attack and following that, my mother’s life went into a tailspin. She started drinking heavily, hanging out in bars and getting involved with quite a number of men. As a result, my home was not a very pleasant place and I became a very insecure, frightened and unhappy little boy.

Thus, by the time I was 12 years old, I was doing such things as associating with the “wrong crowd”, smoking cigarettes and drinking a whole lot of cheap wine. And when I turned 16, I was already a stone-cold alcoholic and drug addict, regularly ingesting such substances as vodka, rum, marijuana and “uppers and downers”. And making matters worse, I was a member of a tough street gang.

In 1964, I graduated from high school (barely) and a little over a year after that -- in October, 1965 -- I was drafted into the U.S. Army. I ended up being assigned to the infantry branch and went on to serve in an infantry division in Germany on what was then called the Iron Curtain, facing off against thousands of Soviet and other Eastern Bloc troops. That was a very stressful situation which caused my drinking and drugging to become even more intense than they already were. Nearly every day, I drank a liter or two of hard liquor and smoked a sizable amount of hashish.

After serving in Germany for a little over a year, I volunteered to be sent to Vietnam where I was assigned to an infantry division that was positioned in the Mekong Delta. As things turned out, I served two one-year tours of duty (back-to-back) in that theater and I saw a whole lot of action and fought in some of the biggest and worst battles of the war. And largely because of all that, I drank even more alcohol than I did in Germany, and among other things, I frequently smoked marijuana and used opium and heroin. Much of the time, I was as high as a kite.

In November, 1969, I returned to the “States” from Vietnam and I was a mess.I was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), I was plagued by high anxiety, suffered frequent spells of depression, and was filled with fear, anger and resentment. Adding fuel to those problems, I refused to seek help. Because of such factors as being psychologically conditioned to never complain and to never show any signs of weakness, I went about the business of sucking it up and gutting it out. I went right on suffering, all by myself, which only caused things to get even worse than they already were.

While still burdened with addiction to various narcotic substances and weighed down by a myriad of mental and emotional disorders, I was honorably discharged from the Army in early 1970. However, I did manage to “keep on keeping on”. I landed a job as an entry-level claim examiner with a large Los Angeles-based life insurance company and began attending college on the G.I. Bill.

On the other hand though, or beneath the surface, my life was still a mess. The high anxiety and frequent bouts with depression were still there. I continued to be consumed by fear, anger and resentments. I was in and out of relationships with women and those relationships almost always ended in disaster. And I continued to be a heavy drinker and drug user.

In summation, all the way from my early childhood up until not so very long ago, I was miserable almost all of the time, wracked with excruciating mental and emotional pain, unable to function anywhere near my potential, often lonely and living in despair, and constantly exhibiting and carrying out self-destructive behavior.

I must say it one more time: My life was a mess.

However, things have changed. As I stated at the beginning of this article, today, I feel happier and I am more content than I have ever been in my adult life.

One of the primary reasons why that is the case is I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. I made the decision to start crawling out of the deep, dark, dingy pit that I had been trapped in for most of my life. Also, I finally got off my high horse and sought help from others by doing such things obtaining professional and spiritual guidance. And I adopted and began practicing positive ways of thinking, working as hard as I could to rid myself of fear, anger and resentments, and putting a stop to the drinking and drugging.

Presently, I rise early each morning and one of the first things I do when I get out of bed is meditate about all the things that I have to be grateful for -- such as I live in a very worthy place, I have my sight, I can walk and run, I have enough money to cover my needs, and I have people in my life who are pulling for me.

In other words, I am effectively dealing with chronic anxiety, depression and PTSD by being grateful, thinking positively, constantly seeking the help of others, and completely staying away from alcohol and drugs.