For veterans home from Iraq, sleep is now the enemy
In Mira Mesa, a former Marine fights nightmares by struggling to stay awake. He finds compassion from fellow veterans but little relief.
SAN DIEGO — By the time the sun began to rise one recent Friday over his Mira Mesa neighborhood, Mitch Hood had been up for about 18 hours.
He punched a caffeine tablet out of a blister pack and washed it down with two cans of Red Bull. He finished it off with a gulp of Pepsi.
He figured this would keep him awake four more hours. Then, he jumped back into his video game.
Hood, 25, spent two tours with the Marines in Iraq. Now, like many other veterans and millions of civilians, he faces a new enemy: sleep.
"I'm afraid I'm going to have nightmares and I'm going to get stuck there," he said. "I try with all my strength not to sleep."
When he eventually crashes and sleep overtakes him, Hood relives combat, or sometimes his mind creates new horror-filled scenarios. Once, he punched his fiancee, Natalya Gibson, while having a nightmare. She insisted it didn't hurt, but Hood has not stopped apologizing.
Sleep and wakefulness issues were the most common health problems described by recently returned soldiers, researchers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center found in a study published last year.
About 36% of Army troops who have been back from Iraq for a year said they struggled nearly every day with feeling tired. About 34% said they had difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep or sleeping too much nearly every day. About one-third of the total U.S. adult population report sleep problems, but studies have shown that such problems are much more common in combat veterans than in other young adults, said Steve Woodward, a sleep expert at the Department of Veterans Affairs center on post-traumatic stress disorder. About 70% of veterans being treated for the disorder have sleep problems, he said.
Sleep is a vulnerable state, Woodward said. "When animals are exposed to a severe threat . . . the basic adaptation is to wake up more frequently," he said.
Bill Rider, a 63-year-old Vietnam veteran, knows the signs. He's seen Hood and others like him in group meetings he helps organize in Oceanside for combat veterans of different generations.
Some veterans have told him of how they long for sleep, bingeing on alcohol for sedation. Others, like Hood, fear it. Rider has seen veterans stay up for 72 hours and work themselves into a delirious, manic state.
"I gave up my tranquillity, as many of the other warriors did, so the rest of America can have theirs," he said.
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