BULLY PULPIT

Post traumatic stress disorder was first recognized as an anxiety disorder in 1980, but has been known by different names to combat veterans throughout history. Vietnam War vets had more than their share of PTSD -- flashbacks, situational anxiety, alienation, substance abuse. Now Iraq War vets, like Eugene Simpson and Nicholas Orchowski [see cover story], are dealing with it. But PTSD is also known to rape victims and survivors of natural disasters and violent accidents. As many as one-third of spinal cord injury survivors have experienced PTSD. In fact, many of you reading this are familiar with the symptomology.

Exposure to a traumatic event in which death or serious injury is imminent is the main enemy. A reaction of intense fear, helplessness or horror has a way of imprinting itself in our psyches. The problem comes when we become afraid of the memory itself. Intrusive images, thoughts or dreams begin to disrupt our emotions, and we cope by either avoiding situations that remind us of the trauma or seeking escape with alcohol or drugs.

The plane crash that paralyzed me and killed my friend, who was piloting the Cessna 120, still stands out as the most terrifying moment of my life -- and it happened more than 40 years ago, 15 years prior to official recognition of PTSD. My symptoms wandered like homeless orphans, beginning with nightmares of being violently thrown about in blackness. To cope, I turned to morphine, readily available in the hospital. When I was discharged, alcohol and other drugs became the masking agents. The violent memory wanted to surface, but I would not let it.

Over the years fragments of the memory surfaced -- mountain rushing up, blackness, dizziness and disorientation, my friend’s last gasp, thinking I had been cut in half.

The memory of the entire day tried to force its way up from my subconscious over decades. When I first tried to write about it, I became a fictional character with long hair, an eye patch and one stiff leg, a kind of hip Long John Silver of the ’60s. No wheelchair allowed. In my dreams I limped, glided or flew. That was 1971. Six years post-injury, still in denial.

In 1976 I wrote another fictional story about a plane crash, close to the truth, with one major exception. Just before crashing, the main character jumped out of the fuselage. The story literally ended in mid-air.

In 1985 the memory came out again as fiction, this time faithful to what happened the day of the crash but with a twist, once again, at the end. The plane flew into the sunset with pilot, passenger and plane intact. Intimations of immortality.

Finally, in 1990, I faced the truth. The nonfiction account took five years to write and consumed several hundred pages. Today it sits in a bottom drawer gathering dust, where it belongs. It has served its purpose. It made me face the horror of a single moment and put it into the proper context of an entire life.

And that is precisely what psychologists do when they treat PTSD. Whether they call it cognitive therapy, group therapy, virtual reality reprocessing or whatever, they coax the feared memory out in a safe context, in its entirety, and discuss it. Then dismiss it.

--Tim Gilmer