Veteran Jonathan Warren: I Didn’t Know What Was Wrong with Me

For me when I came home, it’s frustrating to a degree with both TBI and PTSD, because imaging doesn’t really show it very well, a lot of times. So my CAT Scan said I was fine, my MRI said I was fine, so I got home thinking well, my brain’s intact, but here I am drinking to excess, I can’t focus, I can’t sleep, I'm having nightmares, my anxiety is through the roof. The quality of life was absolutely horrible. And I just thought I was a bad person, making bad decisions and I didn’t know how to cope anymore. So for me it was initially meds. Medicine was the first line of defense. And unfortunately there were so many of us coming back with PTSD and TBI that there wasn’t much time for counseling. They just didn’t have the supply for it to match the demand. But you know for me after I got out of the military I thought well I can just put all this behind me, move on with my civilian life and we’ll be fine. And that was not the case. You know, going forward I pushed loved ones away and just started isolating more and more and again very frustrated that I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I knew something was off. And I just held onto the fact that I haven’t’ always felt this way, I don’t always have to feel this way. So I became very proactive in looking for ways to get better. So it was cognitive behavioral therapy and speech therapy and occupational therapy in both rehab and transcendental meditation and mindfulness therapy and yoga, acupuncture. And then a plethora of medication on top of that. Virtual reality therapy. Stellate ganglion block injections. So I did a lot of experimental stuff too to see if maybe there’s something new that could help. And eventually my journey took me to a place called the Brain Treatment Center where they were actually able to show me what was causing my symptoms and then help address it from there.