Since I mentioned getting meds late in an earlier post figured I'd back up a minute. I don't talk about this stuff a great deal but if it helps someone then I'm totally down being open about it. My last year active, '12, the big push from SOCOM was destigmatizing mental health... https://twitter.com/MikePerryavatar/status/1252681655476781059

..issues by leaders being forthcoming about their own experiences, which is a huge change from the normal "keep a good poker face no matter what" which is kind of a leadership 101 rule in the military. "The mask of command" and all that.

When I got to Bragg for my 3rd tour in 2010 I was told "one of the big challenges now is 40% of SF is on AD meds, ADD meds, or both." I was working at the Advanced Skills Battalion and these meds would disqualify one from attending advanced skills training, thus the challenge...

..when I asked why we were continuing to enforce a policy which discouraged people from seeking the help that they needed, or inadvertently encouraging people to either come off meds for training (or doctor their records), I was inevitably met with "those guys need to man up"...

..or similar mentality. At one point my battalion commander said "taking pills is for women" which pretty much summed up the prevailing attitude from higher at the time. Later we threw a guy out from Military Free Fall school for being on antidepressants and I challenged the...

..dismissal and got the same old "he's weak" commentary, did some homework. CW: there's dark shit ahead. The guy was a master sergeant, pretty senior dude, and had been deployed to combat for like his 5th time IIRC. The cable guy came over and raped his wife and daughter and...

..then set the house on fire with them in it. I pointed out that we'd just thrown this dude out in front of an entire class and forced him to go back to his unit early, which probably didn't help him any in trying to reclaim some semblance of a normal life. C'est la guerre.

I should add that the "40%" number was a ballpark, as it became apparent in 2012 we really didn't have any idea how much of the force was medicated because no one was tracking those numbers.