• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • TP について/About
  • Topics/トピクス
    • Gender/ジェンダー
    • Globalisation/グローバリゼーション
    • Japan and Asia/日本とアジア
    • Japanese/日本語
    • Media/メディア
    • News/ニュース
    • Social Justice/社会正義
    • War and Empire/戦争&支配権力
    • Environment/環境
    • Other Stories/他の記事
  • Links/リンク
  • Contact

TokyoProgressive

Linking Progressives East and West Since 1997

東西のプログレッシブをつなぐ − 1997年設立  |  Linking Progressives East and West Since 1997

Former State Department Official Asks Military Members to Speak Out

March 5, 2018 by tokyoprogressive Leave a Comment

USMC Iraq veteran, former Afghanistan Foreign Service Officer, former State Department official, advisory board member of Veterans For Peace and an antiwar activist Matthew Hoh (@MatthewPHoh)is asking military members to speak out before its too late. Matt has spent years speaking about PTSD, Moral Injury, and life after combat to help others who might be seeking some answers. Worth a listen. Might save a life or two…  From The Peace Report 

 

Listen to Matthew Hoh speak more on PTSD, Moral Injury, and veteran suicides:

Talk on Moral Injury and PTSD

December 16, 2015 MatthewHoh Recovery, War and ConflictAlcohol Abuse, Babe Ruth, Darkness Visible, Depression, John Shuford, LPC, LPCANC, Moral Injury, PTSD, Recovery, Suicidality, VA, Veteran, William Styron

From a talk I gave to the Licensed Professional Counselors Association of North Carolina in October on my own issues with PTSD, depression, moral injury, alcohol abuse and suicidality. Please feel free to share this video with others. Other men and women sharing their stories with me has helped in my recovery and I want to do my part and pass that kind of assistance along.

Prior to giving this talk, as I was driving to the conference and walking into the venue, I planned on drinking as soon as I was done. Not just a few beers to watch my Mets play the Dodgers in the playoffs, but a medicinal drowning and extinguishment of that all too familiar, exhausting and debilitating anguish in my head, heart and soul. When I was finished with my talk, although tired, the plan was still there. I drove to a bar, got out of my car, and walked to the bar door. My desire, at that moment, not to be a liar was stronger than my need to drink, and I got back in my car and drove home.

From watching the video I doubt you can tell the pain I was in during this talk, an emotional, existential pain, unlike any known physical pain, and a sort of pain that seems to have no hope or end to it. It is as if a wedge or filter is placed into my head, not allowing me to access the functional, rational, more evolutionary modern parts of my brain. I am living in the poisonous fog that William Styron so masterfully articulated in his Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness;  a book that I can’t recommend enough to help friends and family understand how such mental pain and torment seems inescapable and unending, and drives otherwise very strong men and women to levels of despair that self-euthanizing becomes, in that ill and pained mind, a prudent, practical and necessary option.

My greatest gratitude to my good friend John Shuford who organized this talk and provided me with the video. I hope, in the future, to provide more information on an initiative John is working on to provide greater clinical training to therapists assisting veterans with combat related issues of PTSD, moral injury, depression, alcohol abuse and suicidality.

[Note: The introduction to the video gives a bit of a distorted summary of my career. You can find a professional biography on the About Me page of this blog. Not that it really matters though, as Babe Ruth said: “yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s ball games”]

 

Filed Under: Featured, War and Empire/戦争&支配権力 Tagged With: Afghanistan, Iraq, Matthew How, PTSD, Suicide, Veterans for Peace

Join the Discussion

Comment on this article or respond to others' comments.

You can post below or send to the mailing list at discuss@list.tokyoprogressive.org.

a) Please sign you name at the bottom of your comment, so that we know who wrote it.

b) To prevent spam, comments need to be manually approved.

c) Comments which are insulting, racist, homophobic or submitted in bad faith will not be published.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Primary Sidebar

Search the site

Archives

Main Categories (old and most recent)

Alternative News Contributors/投稿者 creative Democracy Now Environment/環境 Featured Gender/ジェンダー Globalisation/グローバリゼーション Jacobin Japan/日本 Japan and Asia/日本とアジア Japanese/日本語 Japan Focus Japan News Korea/韓国 latest latest-j links Media/メディア Mp3 National Security Archive neoliberalism new News/ニュース Other Stories/他の記事 Social Justice/社会正義 Topics Uncategorized Video War and Empire/戦争&支配権力

Search deeper

Abe Afghanistan alternative news Bush class issues and homelessness Environmental research fukushima gaza health care Henoko human rights Iraq Iraq, Afganistan and the War on Terror Iraq and Afghanistan, opposing the wars Israel Japan Japan news English Korea labor issues Latin America Middle East military North Korea nuclear nuclear waste Obama Okinawa Okinawa Palestine peace protest protest and resistance racism/human rights radiation state crimes Syria Takae Tepco Trump U.S. War world news English ニュース/社会問題 人権 平和、憲法9条

Design and Hosting for Progressives

Donate/寄付

Please support our work. This includes costs involved in producing this news site as well as our free hosting service for activists, teachers and students. Donations/寄付 can be sent to us via PayPal or Donately. You can also click on the buttons below to make a one-time donation.




Work with us

TokyoProgressive
supports and participates in projects of like-minded people and groups directly (technical, editing, design) and not-so directly (financial or moral support). Likewise, we also welcome contributions by readers that are consistent with promoting social justice. If you have a project you would like help with, or if you would like to submit an article, link, or report on a protest activity, please contact us here.

Footer

All opinions are those of the original authors and may not reflect the views of TokyoProgressive. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for by copyright law in several countries. The material on this site is distributed without profit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyleft 1997-present: tokyoprogressive dot org

TokyoProgressive supports and participates in projects of like-minded people and groups directly (technical, editing, design) and not-so directly (financial or moral support). Likewise, we also welcome contributions by readers that are consistent with promoting social justice. If you have a project you would like help with, or if you would like to submit an article, link, or report on a protest activity, please contact us here.

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in