One of the questions I’ve been asked over the years since my deployment is about the conduct of the soldiers who I was with. Many people apparently have a bit of a misconception about life during a deployment that in my experience isn’t quite true. Some seem to think that we were placed into the Wild West and it was basically a free for all of debauchery, drugs, alcohol and indiscriminate killing with lots of looting and stealing. I’ve also heard things like we were there stashing oil in our water bottles to bring home, or smuggle drugs back to sell. I won’t even address the last two statements due to a policy I abide by not to dignify ridiculously stupid comments with a response for fear of encouraging more stupid comments.

Drugs and alcohol were certainly present when I was deployed. They weren’t supposed to be, but as is the nature of those two things, they tend to show up in a lot of places they probably shouldn’t. But were they a problem? I guess I don’t have a good answer as they were definitely present but they never caused any problems for me or the guys I was with. I knew guys that would drink occasionally, and smoke pot occasionally, and one or two that used chemicals of a harder nature, but they were the exception. Alcohol was never very difficult to get despite it being banned from military bases and supposedly being illegal in the country we were in. In my fifteen months in Iraq I drank only one time. Two days after one of my friends was shot and killed by a sniper while next to me, we stayed in the area for another day and a half to repel continued ambushes against us while loading my friend into a body bag and carrying him to be taken away. Staying there, with his blood still on the ground for the next day and half was an extremely unpleasant experience and one I can’t forget. So when we got back to our base a friend of mine who was up on the roof with me fighting off repeated attacks got a bottle of rum. We drank it while we sat up at night watching a movie on a computer and had one of those talks about our future lives that we weren’t sure would ever happen because you’re already convinced you’re not leaving that place alive.

On the other hand, the Iraqi Army and Police forces we worked with spent the majority of their days smoking pot, drinking fairly heavily, and many of them injecting some form of heroine. I guess they needed to somehow dull their mind to the knowledge of one day not having us there to do their work for them. I probably would have suggested yoga or something, but they went another direction with heroine. Both apparently have great calming effects on the body, but one seems to have a lot more positive results than the other.

So yes, drugs and alcohol were definitely present while I was deployed, but at least with the guys that I was with, there was never an issue with abuse or people going on patrols while under the influence of any substances. I suppose it could be argued that any amount of drugs and alcohol in that setting should be considered a problem. But as a person who was deployed for fifteen months, had a couple dozen buddies get killed, spent every day expecting it to be your last, worrying about unseen bombs under the road, houses rigged with artillery shells, some of the most accurate and battle tested snipers in the world hunting you, car bombs, chemical attacks, random mortar rounds, friendly fire from our Iraqi Army attachments, and having to live in the never ending scenario of kill or be killed; it takes its toll on you, and a very heavy toll at that. I never cared how someone chose to dull their nerves for a bit so long as it didn’t carry over to our missions, when we needed everyone to be sharp. You simply had to find a way to come down from being so high strung and on alert for every second of the day or you just wouldn’t last.

It should be noted that I’m not at all advocating that drugs and alcohol are an acceptable solution for dealing with any problems, but when you’re in a messed up situation you’re going to use the means that are available to you at the time. And that’s what a lot of people did.