
Being a part of the American Dream, most people are disgusted by the use of hard drugs. But little do most Americans know that soldiers during the Vietnam war were corrupted by the conditions of the war and left with no choice but to use hard drugs such as heroin in order to cope with their pain. Looking through Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried the charactered troops in his novel were guilty of using hard drugs in order to cope with the war.  The Vietnam war was a highly disputed war in the United States, many Americans were against the fact that we were participating in this war in the first place. It infuriated the American population because  their men were going to be stripped from them in order to fight in a war, they had no business being in. To understand why soldiers submitted themselves to such harmful things and how it affected them, one must understand  the origin of their depression, stress, and loneliness.

It was 1954 when it all began, South Vietnam initiated its rise to freedom against the more communist North Vietnam. Being a part of the South Asia Treaty Organization the united states heard South Vietnams cry and desire for independence and decided to join forces with the republic of South Vietnam. As the United states entered the war, they needed to gather troops in order to fulfill their promise for South Vietnam. This resulted in a Draft Lottery, arguably the most catastrophic setback to the modern American family during that time. Men born from 1944 through 1950 were going to be sent to war, the United States of America ripped these men apart from their families, sending them to an dismal jungle.  Living in the jungle for an unknown period of time, these men began to develop mental illnesses such as depression stress and loneliness. With such sicknesses looming over their heads, troops needed to develop ways to cope. Conveniently enough these troops were being stations near the most plentiful poppy fields in all of the world, making heroin the greatest dopamine boosting drug very easy for them to get ahold of .

 In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried his character Tim was affected by the use of heroin in a non direct way. A good friend of Tim's became addicted to the substance. Ted Lavender, the friend of Tim insisted on fighting throughout the war high, to alleviate his pain.The article Hard Drugs in the Military by Harold E. Hughes directly relates to the historical context used in The Things They Carried because it speaks about the large volume of troops and families affected by the Vietnam war. We can see from the point of view of a drafted troop in the Vietnam war, that they war scene and conditions can take a toll on your mind and soul. This then led to the troops to experiment with  the  most commonly known dopamine raising drug heroin. The drug made the troops feel good and forget about the pain that the were feeling in Vietnam. The article Hard Drugs in the Military, supports the argument that heroin usage during the Vietnam war were drastically effective but also was time sensitive. This is because if and when the troops returned home, they would be sick from the withdrawals because the high quality dopamine raising heroin is not as readily available in the United stated as it was in Southeast Asia (Hughes, 2). The more that troops used heroin, the less they actually felt during the war like Ted Lavender described (O’Brien, 96). If the troops had not used heroin during the war, they would have faced constant stress, depression and loneliness and those are not the emotions a troop wants to experience. The better they feel, the more likely they are to do their job and come home safe  (Hughes,2).

Looking at a new angle of Drug use in Vietnam Willson Quarterly’s article Not So High in Vietnam disputed the quote “The media linked "wasted" Vietnam veterans to a rise in the nation's crime rate.” (Quarterly, 1) Through Wilsons research, he concluded that “less than one half of one percent of Vietnam veterans committed a single crime after they returned from the war.” (Quarterly, 1) It was argued that participating in an illegal activity leads to more illegal activities later down the road. Taking note from Harold E. Hughes article Hard Drugs In The Military it was said that using drugs such as heroin during the Vietnam War would lead you to a life of crime back in America if you were so lucky to come home (Hughes, 1). The point made was that as a troop your drug addiction would be baggage that came home with you to America, and that in order to support and afford a drug addiction after the war, you would need to rob, scam and participate in mischievous activities. But little evidence found this to be true because many of the troops did not relapse there addiction upon their return. The troops came back to the life they left, alternatively leaving their war life behind. As seen in The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien came home to live a normal life along with the rest of the drug using troops in his combat unit, with the exception of ted lavender. Their Drug usage was suspended because it was not needed, had ted lavender made it home from his tour, he would have been greeted by the same love he left behind, ultimately eliminating his need for dopamine enhancers.

Although it is perceived that many soldiers during the war exposed themselves to lethal drugs such as heroin. Willson Quarterly’s article Not So High in Vietnam highlights that there were hundreds of thousands of troops that did not expose themselves to drugs. Quarterly suggested in his article that the troops that did do drugs only ten percent of them did so more than a few times (Quarterly,1). The suggestion that Vietnam troops were not as drug oriented as people thought was captured through Tim O’Briens character in The Things They Carried. Tim O’Brien was perceived to be a kid lost from home on a journey defending his pride. He was fighting in a war that he did not belong in. Unlike his counterpart ted lavender, Tim did not expose himself to drugs. He decided to cope in other ways. This allowed readers to conceptualize that not all troops experimented with dopamine raising drugs in order to alleviate their newly generated mental illnesses. 

After reading The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien one would suppose that the Vietnam war was responsible for corrupting the life of troops leading them to a social downturn. Curtsey of the Draft lottery troops were taken away from their families, which then led them to develop mental illnesses such as depression stress and loneliness. To cope with these newfound mental illnesses members of Tim O’Brien’s combat unit experimented with dopamine enhancing drugs such as heroin (O’Brien,108). It was concluded that their usage derived stickily from their mental and emotional struggles created by the Vietnam War. It had also been discussed that their heroin usage would not doom them for eternity, and not only that many troops were not affected because they did not participate in this course of treatment. The usage of heroin was not the worst thing that happened during the war, for one because it certainly helped the troops and allowed them to continue their mission on fighting for south vietnams Independence (O’Brien, 108). Finally the historical aspect must be observed to interpret why members of Tim O’Brien’s combat used or decided not to use heroin in order to cope with being drafted into the Vietnam War and how it only impacted them while at war.
