Overdose in Iraq
During the Vietnam War drug abuse by GIs was rampant. There are no reports of marijuana or heroin consumption in Iraq, but the drugs of this war may just be different ones.
A German magazine reports today about a suicide by overdose of Sergeant Worster in Iraq. Additionally the magazine reports of frequent drug parties within Woster's medical unit.
The weekly Stern, reliable but for certain diaries, claims that Sgt. James R. Worster died from a self administered injection of Propofol, an anesthetic agent used in intensive care.
Alcohol is officially not available and off limits for soldiers in Iraq. As most troops are working in enclosed bases, the usual illegal stuff may be hard to come by.
But pharmaceutical drugs seem to be everywhere. Speed and downers are officially used by U.S. pilots and special forces despite well known side effects. Psychotropics are officially prescribed in PTSD cases and used in self medication.
Sgt. Georg Anderas Pogany told Salon that after he broke down in Iraq, his team sergeant told him “to pull himself together, gave him two Ambien, a prescription sleep aid, and ordered him to sleep.”
Other soldiers self-medicate. “We were so junked out on Valium, we had no emotions anymore,” Iraq vet John Crawford told “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross. He and others in his unit in Iraq became addicted to Valium.
But Better living through chemistry did not work for Sergeant Worster. According to Stern, his comrades found him with the needle still sticking in his arm.
The Pentagon announced Worster's death as a "non-combat related incident" on September 19, 2006. It said, "the incident is under investigation."
The Stern reporter interviewed seven of the Sergeant's comrades, his mother, siblings and his wife.
Worster was on his second tour in Iraq, had marriage problems and suffered from his depressing job as shift supervisor in a busy Army emergency room unit near Baghdad.
According to the magazine's sources there were frequent drug parties throughout the unit. Alcohol was sent from the U.S. disguised as mouthwash and bought from Iraqi suppliers. The soldiers, including noncommissioned officers and junior officers, additionally consumed large amounts of Ambien, Percocet and other opiate derivatives. Doctors are said to have sold drugs from the unit's pharmacy.
iCasualties.org, which takes its data from Pentagon casualties announcements, only lists 5 suicide death throughout the war on Iraq. Others report at least 81.
Stern reports that there was an investigation of Worster's death by Military Police, and a Colonel of the unit was prematurely retired. But the overdose and suicide of Sergeant Worster was never officially acknowledged. Officials answered the reporters' questions with "No comment."
Posted by b on February 8, 2007 at 19:39 UTC | Permalink
Don't forget amphetamine psychosis...scary stuff.
Posted by: Dr. Wellington Yueh | Feb 8 2007 23:51 utc | 3
LETS GET DOWN THE REAL PROBLEM: WE SHOULD NOT HAVE GONE TO IRAQ AND WE SHOULD HAVE LEFT A LONG TIME AGO.
I am a 2 tour Vietnam Veteran who recently retired after 36 years of working in the Defense Industrial Complex on many of the weapons systems being used by our forces as we speak.
The U.S. Department of Defense, headquartered in the Pentagon, is one of the most massive organizations on the planet, with net annual operating costs of $635 billion, assets worth $1.3 trillion, liabilities of $1.9 trillion and more that 2.9 million military and civilian personnel as of fiscal year 2005.
It is difficult to convey the complexity of the way DOD works to someone who has not experienced it. This is a massive machine with so many departments and so much beaurocracy that no president, including Bush totally understands it.
Presidents, Congressmen, Cabinet Members and Appointees project a knowledgeable demeanor but they are spouting what they are told by career people who never go away and who train their replacements carefully. These are military and civil servants with enormous collective power, armed with the Federal Acquisition Regulation, Defense Industrial Security Manuals, compartmentalized classification structures and "Rice Bowls" which are never mixed.
Our society has slowly given this power structure its momentum which is constant and extraordinarily tough to bend. The cost to the average American is exhorbitant in terms of real dollars and bad decisions. Every major power structure member in the Pentagon's many Washington Offices and Field locations in the US and Overseas has a counterpart in Defense Industry Corporate America. That collective body has undergone major consolidation in the last 10 years.
What used to be a broad base of competitive firms is now a few huge monoliths, such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Boeing.
Government oversight committees are carefully stroked. Sam Nunn and others who were around for years in military and policy oversight roles have been cajoled, given into on occasion but kept in the dark about the real status of things until it is too late to do anything but what the establishment wants. This still continues - with increasing high technology and potential for abuse.
Please examine the following link to testimony given by Franklin C. Spinney before Congress in 2002. It provides very specific information from a whistle blower who is still blowing his whistle (Look him up in your browser and you get lots of feedback) Frank spent the same amount of time as I did in the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) but in government quarters. His job in government was a similar role to mine in defense companies. Frank's emphasis in this testimony is on the money the machine costs us. It is compelling and it is noteworthy that he was still a staff analyst at the Pentagon when he gave this speech. I still can't figure out how he got his superior's permission to say such blunt things. He was extremely highly respected and is now retired.
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/spinney_testimony_060402.htm
The brick wall I often refer to is the Pentagon's own arrogance. It will implode by it's own volition, go broke, or so drastically let down the American people that it will fall in shambles. Rest assured the day of the implosion is coming. The machine is out of control.
If you are interested in a view of the inside of the Pentagon procurement process from Vietnam to Iraq please check the posting on this blog entitled, "Odyssey of Armaments"
On the same subject, you may also be interested in the following sites from the "Project On Government Oversight", observing it's 25th Anniversary and from "Defense In the National Interest", inspired by Franklin Spinney and contributed to by active/reserve, former, or retired military personnel. More facts on the Military Industrial Complex can be gleaned from "The Dissident" link, also posted below:
http://www.d-n-i.net/top_level/about_us.htm
Posted by: Ken Larson | Feb 9 2007 0:51 utc | 4
John Crawford, in his brutal and heartbroken memoir* of the year and a half he spent in Iraq with his Florida National Guard company, reports that there were "plenty of blue and white pills around--whatever pharmaceuticals we could get our hands on."
He also learns that a complaint of dysentery at the medical tent would get him an IV of saline with morphine. His commander Kreed shares this ploy with him when Crawford finds Kreed stumbling back to the barracks one day. Crawford observes that "none [of the pills] gave the results Kreed was showing. I didn't know what it was but I knew I wanted in."
In another stunt, Crawford's unit "confiscates" some local beer and binges all night.
Crawford describes the texture of monotonous cruelty and random violence of the days as occupiers in Baghdad, months after invasion.
While the occasional sniper fire from across the river did keep us honest, for the most part OP 1 was a dull way to spend the evening. It did allow for a lot of introspective thought, but when your life has turned to complete shit, you don't really want to spend too much time thinking about it. Even the constant pondering about our homecoming had died out. We were never going home.Still we sat in a city that seethed around us. Warriors were replaced by occupiers, peacekeepers, while we slept every night in the dragon's den, stirred by its fiery breath. We were riding a crest of hatred two thousand years old in a storm that no one who hasn't experienced it can understand. ... I watched as we devolved into animals, and all this time there was a sinking feeling that we were changing from hunter to hunted."
He writes a fictional story of homecoming, while still in Iraq.
Like Joseph Campbell's hero with a thousand faces, I retured victorious. I told tales of my exploits and people listened. They cared.
Actual homecoming had no part of magical thinking.
It wasn't until I got back that truth engulfed me like a storm cloud. Dreams and truth are never intertwined.
Crawford describes "a lingering, wasting sickness" that lasted months. No way for a reader to know what part was drug withdrawal and what part war trauma.
*The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell, John Crawford, c.2005
Posted by: small coke | Feb 9 2007 1:29 utc | 5
"Trigger Time" itself is a hell of a high.
God Almighty wears some effin' big shoes, and just standing in 'em, watching your rounds impact is worth all the shit in the world.
Posted by: Antifa | Feb 9 2007 9:29 utc | 7
Thanks Ken Larson.
I just read an interesting tale, it is written with a subtle style much like yours.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/ST.html
Posted by: jonku | Feb 9 2007 10:06 utc | 8
Square one (drug wise) in war is adrenaline. It's the natural high of war, it keeps you alive in war, and after it does, its what you need to feel alive. All the other drugs are mere footnotes to the antecedent high, either to mimic it, change it, or to make it go away.
Posted by: anna missed | Feb 9 2007 10:18 utc | 9
The same adrenaline high comes from doing something hard, I mean going into a situation that might be socially intimidating. Rejoining life in the mainstream is difficult after extreme experiences.
I can't even imagine troops trapped in Iraq right now. I heard second hand from a young canuck soldier in the middle east war zone of afghanistan and iraq, he came home wide-eyed. His idea was to eradicate the poppy fields.
Reminded me of another young man who was sent as a reservist to gulf war 1. He said he lived in a hole in the sand for months, then lived in a tent on top of the sand for months after the war was won.
At that point they received tvs and radios from japan. No mention of drugs however he never reported back after returning to the US.
This war is going on since 2003 so they have been there for 3 years and counting, an eternity when you are 20 years old. No sex no drugs no wine no women. The reported aberrations are nothing to waste your time on.
Posted by: jonku | Feb 9 2007 10:40 utc | 11
Jonku,
I am familiar with the work. Rather than an organized conspiracy, my 36 years on the industry side in the classified and unclassified areas led me to the realization that the problem is SYSTEMIC in its size and complexity. It has been created by apathy on the part of the public and threat scenarios by those who really simply want to finish their careers just like we do. Here's another demonstration:
, USA Today has recently reported in its Washington Section that the CIA plans to utilize more open sources and blogs in its intelligence work and outsource more of its intelligence software development to commercial contractors in an attempt to re-establish itself as the premiere world intelligence agency.
The "Strategic Intent" is posted on the CIA public web site. Defense Industry Daily further reports that General Electric is gobbling up Smith's Industries for $4.8B.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2007/01/ge-buys-smiths-aerospace-for-48b/index.php
Let's look at this for a moment and do our patriotic duty by reading along with the CIA (after all, they have announced they are reading this blog)
1. The new CIA approach comes exactly at the formation of the agency’s new "External Advisory Board", which consists of the following:
* A former Pentagon Chairman of the Joints Chief who is now a Northrop Grumman Corporation Board Member
* A deposed Chairman of the Board of Hewlett Packard Corporation (HP)
* A Former Deputy Secretary of Defense who now heads up a Washington think tank with Henry Kissinger
2. Northrop Grumman Corporation and Hewlett Packard are two huge government contractors in the Pentagon and CIA custom software development arena. Their combined contracts with the government just for IT are in the multiples of millions. I wonder what the advisory board is filling the CIA's ear with?
3. Washington "Think Tanks" are fronts for big time lobbies, sophisticated in their operations, claiming non-partisanship, but tremendously influential on K Street. If a lobby cannot buy its way in, why not sit on the advisory board?
4. GE already has the military aircraft jet engine market. In buying Smith's, it takes one more major defense corporation out of the opposition and further reduces the government's leverage through competition. GE now joins the other monoliths such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon with tremendous leverage in the $500B +++ per year defense market.
5. Note the synergy that now exists between the Pentagon and the CIA. Note the influence by the major corporations.
6. Also note the balance in your bank account and your aspirations for the generations of the future. Both are going down.
7. The huge Military Industrial Complex (MIC) continues to march. Taxes and national debt will be forced to march straight up the wall to support it. Do you have any "Intelligence” to offer the Pentagon, the CIA and the MIC? For further inspiration please see:
http://www.rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com
Posted by: Ken Larson | Feb 9 2007 22:22 utc | 12
interesting blog ken. i picked up this link to the budget graph in you comment section.
Posted by: annie | Feb 10 2007 0:02 utc | 13
I knew SGT Worster, he was an exceptional soldier and person and we served together in Iraq. I've heard of many soldiers taking medication to releive feelings of depression and what not. I also have witnessed soldiers being admitted for an overdose of medication to be seen by their command and heard. Many soldiers have issues going on at home that the unit Commanders would not let them return for to take care of, so in order to go home, soldiers would OD or do some other act to get noticed and go home. Soldiers get harrassed and go through so much hell, so much little nit picky shit, that can just push you overboard. I've been looking for more information on how many soldiers have overdosed while serving in the Middle East. I'm writing a paper for college and wanted to add this side to it. Thanks.
Posted by: Bree | Mar 5 2007 20:30 utc | 14
The comments to this entry are closed.
"The preponderance of testimony indicates that Lieutenant Gnade was 'a Nazi by conviction' and an anti-Semite. He was also unpredictable --affable and approachable at times, brutal and vicious at others. His worst traits become more pronounced under the influence of alcohol, and by all accounts that afternoon in Lomazy Gnade was drunk senseless. In Poland he in fact degenerated into a 'drunkard.' Gnade's increasing dependence on alcohol was not unusual in the battalion. As one nondrinking policeman noted, 'Most of the other comrades drank so much solely because of the many shootings of the Jews, for such a life was quite intolerable sober."
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
Christopher Browning
Posted by: A | Feb 8 2007 23:28 utc | 1