Adjusting to a new sleep cycle after deployment

Adjusting to a new sleep cycle after deployment

Mike:

Sleeplessness, for sure. You know, it's not as though you get used to sleeping over there, you know, like you would call that your home, but I think you probably do adjust in a way so that when you come back here and you wake up in a different environment and you're thinking about things that happened over in Iraq you don't know how to react, and it's not necessarily the most pleasant experience to wake up like that, so I think that probably causes a little bit of it, and plus just the distortion. I mean, we worked mostly at night, you know, while I was there. I mean, it was seldom that we were working during the day, and that was a good thing over there but, you know, when you get over here and you're used to, you know, going to hit the gym or eating at, like, three or four o'clock in the morning your body doesn't always adjust, or maybe your mind's telling yourself, “Well, I should be awake right now,” and that goes on for a long time, and really it...

You know, I feel like I mentioned the anger issue, but that is a real—I mean, that kind of permeates your thinking about everything because, you know, you end up coming back and for me, one of my biggest struggles, and I’ve talked about this a couple different times, you know, publicly in forums is you almost feel like folks are kind of apathetic about what’s going on, and that’s not good, and it makes you sad, it makes you angry, it makes you, you know, antisocial. I mean, it mimics all these other symptoms that folks talk about when they mention PTSD or their, you know, psychological, you know, disorders that folks are dealing with when they come back from a, you know, from a combat zone.