Army 'losing battalion' to drugs

[Tokis-Phoenix]

"The Army is dismissing the equivalent of almost a battalion of soldiers every year for taking drugs, a report says.

The Royal United Services Institute said the number of positive tests for illegal drugs, like ecstasy and heroin, rose from 517 in 2003 to 769 last year.

Positive tests for cocaine use rose four-fold during the same period. A dishonourable discharge is likely after a positive test for illegal drug use.

The MoD said drug abuse was less common among forces personnel than civilians";


Full story;


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7142413.stm?lsm




Hm to be honest this doesn't surprise me that much, i think there has always been a fair amount of drug taking in the army for as long as anyone can remember...I think a lot of it comes about probably from soldiers suffering from stress in combat, and feel they can only rely on themselves even when they are suffering, so they turn to drugs to cope with their stresses and problems.

But this quote below interests me a lot in particular;


"However, a former chief of staff, Chris Parker, told BBC Radio Oxford that some soldiers who were "not stupid" took drugs to cut short their contract with the Armed Forces.

"Young soldiers if they want to leave the Army have to give a year's notice, and if you take drugs, and you are basically found out by the Army's drug testing programme - which is a regular and random programme that's run - you could be discharged almost immediately," he said"


I have met many soldiers in my lifetime who have fought in all sorts of wars, i have met ex-SAS soldiers who fought in the faulklands to young guys in their twenties and thirties who have fought in more recent wars like the war in Iraq.
Whenever i met someone who is in the army or was in the army i always like to talk to them about their experiences- when it comes to guys who have fought in the war in Iraq though, they often seem to be regrettful or unhappy or generally disheartened about it or the army in one way or another (don't get me wrong though, this isn't always the case).
One guy i know who fought in Iraq for 3 years as a soldier said that he thoroughly enjoyed his time in the army, however he said he was very naive when he first went to Iraq to fight in the war over there, he said he went to Iraq because he wanted to help the people over there. However he said when he actually got there he got the strong impression that the people didn't want him or his men over there, and that he believed that their presence often only worsened things for the general civilians since their pressence only agrivated religious extremists and terrorists etc. So basically he felt very disheartened about the whole thing and he said there were times when he really wanted to leave, because he didn't think that the things they were being asked to do were actually helping the people much, although he didn't know what else to do either sometimes.

I think if you had some naive guy going to fight in the war in iraq who then went through some major moral dilema's and all of a sudden badly wanted to leave, i guess i could understand some solidiers taking extreme actions like taking drugs so they can be removed from the army and their situation much quicker than trying to cut their contract short the legal way etc.


I do think that the army should do a lot more to mentally prepare solidiers for things like wars in foriegn countries, and i think solidiers should be offered better treatments for tramatic stress disorders.

There are many soldiers who have lost their lives in this war, but you could say it is worse for those that get horrifically injured and survive; i have seen some guys who have had their limbs amputated or have been blinded and deafened by explosions or have been horrifically burnt on parts of their body like their face- these are the guys that have to live with their injuries for the rest of their lives, they have to live with the misery, they are unlikely to get married and have children and a lot of people forget them completely after a while.
I just think there are too many young guys that just don't fully seem to understand and comprehend that they can get hurt really bad and they may just survive and have to live with their permanent injuries for the rest of their lives.
And that doesn't even go into the mental scars some ex-solidiers have to live with, i.e. you know somethings wrong when mummys holding a birthday party for the kids and someone bursts a balloon making it go bang and all of a sudden daddy turns into a shivering nervous wreck cowering on the floor. Its just an example, but stuff like that happens.



When i was a teenager and i was living in a rented large shared accomodation house, there was a guy who lived across the corridor from me who was an ex-SAS soldier. Even though he was a fair bit older than me, i considered him a good friend- he had a REALLY bad stutter though and his hands often shook and he often looked stressed and on edge though a lot of the time.
When i got to know him more i realised that he had suffered some really traumatic stress though from being a soldier (its where things like his bad stutter came from) and had seen some really f*cked up stuff, he had fought in the faulklands war and many other wars (there was one in bosnia i think that he fought in)- he said that many of the battles he had fought in were not really known about in the general public, since the government is always fighting many battles which are kept secret from the media and public eye.

Although i was interested in everything he told me about his soldier years, i also realised that i was probably doing him a some good therapy by listening to him about his storys, i don't think he ever got any help from the army or anyone else...He had a photo album, full of pictures he had taken of things he had seen during his SAS years, apparently he was not supposed to have this photo album and that it would have been taken from him if he had been found out to have it. The photo album had some really shocking photo's in it, like pictures of piles of dead rotting bodies and stuff from battles that apparently never happened. I'm not exactly sure why the guy had this photo album, but i think it helped him cope somehow with what he had gone through.

Anyways, i always really sympathised for him and i really respected him for everything that he went through and fought for. But i did feel really sorry for him sometimes...He was pretty much a war hero for some of the things he did, but it was like society had forgotten him, and he had just ended up living in a grotty shared accomondation house with few friends and struggling with an alcohol problem (he wasn't much of a drinker, not an alcoholic, but he would go through bad phases sometimes where like all of a sudden one day his nerves would just look particularly wrecked and he would just go through a whole bottle of whisky or something, however during the time i knew him i do think i was good for him because he stopped drinking so much when he started to talk to me more).

Anyways...Thats just my story and experiences. I shant name the ex-SAS guy, but i can say that he was a really good guy, he had a heart of gold and was very caring and considerate and had a good sense of humor, but i knew he had some really bad scars (and not just physical ones) and had really suffered at many points. I think while he was a soldier he didn't suffer that much mentally even though he had to do some really bad things, actually i don't even think he thought that much at all about what he was doing back then at all, maybe kind of like having a mental defence- but it was when he left the army, that was when things caught up with him.
I don't think he did drugs although i don't know for sure, but i have known many ex-soldiers to turn to alchohol in a bad way at the very least.


Anyhoo, i appologise if i waffle on a bit too much- what do you think about the article and all of this subject in general etc? Do you have any experiences/stories to share on this subject etc?

[Liver Shot]

Very interesting story. I understand the frustration of soldiers stuck in Iraq, who though they were going to liberate a people, and soon realized they were viewed as invaders. Vietnam Part Deux, at least for the Americans. Time to get out of there before anymore of our friends or family members are killed/wounded, on either side of the fight.