Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder before he was kicked out of Marines for failing a drug test, Austinite carrys on without counseling.
Kelly West/AMERICAN-STATESMAN: Karp, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, has several Marine honors but says a VA hospital wouldn't help him.
Oct. 3, 2010 - The drinking began in earnest after his first deployment, when he served as a mortarman in the 2004 Battle of Fallujah, a bloody, savage fight that left him with dead friends and mental scars. After his second tour, this time in Afghanistan, James Karp and his fellow Marines regularly drank to excess to blot out the pain, he said.
"It's numbing," said Karp, a 2003 graduate of Cedar Park High School. "You sleep so much better. There's no dreams. ... It was like, you come back from war, you get drunk. You're having issues? Have a beer."
But Karp's alcohol use took a bad turn one night in early November 2006. He said he was drunk at a party and snorted cocaine for the first time.
The drug turned up on a random test, and Karp was promptly court-martialed, sentenced to a month in the brig and kicked out of the Marines with an "other than honorable" discharge for misconduct.
But before he was discharged, he checked himself into a clinic at his Hawaii base, where he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and told doctors of suicidal thoughts and nightmares.
"It appears he has been using alcohol to self-medicate his underlying anxiety and more recently PTSD symptoms," his doctor wrote in his hospital discharge notes.
Today, the Austin resident says his discharge, commonly referred to as "bad paper," has prevented him from getting the Department of Veterans Affairs health care to which he might be entitled. {read rest}
Monday, October 4, 2010
'Bad paper' discharges
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