The Vietnam War and its effects left many long-term and devastating effects for citizens and soldiers on both sides; Vietnam and the United States. As for the United States, many soldiers came back with various health issues, the most significant being post-traumatic stress disorder. By looking at the historical background of the Vietnam War and relating it to Tim O’Brien’s The Things We Carried, we can see that there is a close relationship between combat exposure, substance abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder within the soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War. This is significant because many soldiers developed serious psychological problems after the war and an addiction to substances due to the traumatic combat exposure that the experienced in the war. 

Post-traumatic stress disorders have many different forms and effects on those who suffer from it. It occurs after someone has experienced a trauma, which can be described as “a shocking and dangerous event that you see or that happens to you” where your life or someone else’s life is in danger (National Center for PTSD). Specifically, for Vietnam veterans, these experiences include the exposure to the death of others, the requirement to kill, disease and deprivation, the feeling of helplessness when something is beyond their control, and many more (Laufer). Because of this, many suffered with depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. In The Things They Carried, Jimmy Cross (or O’Brien) is constantly daydreaming about Martha, a woman who he is in love with from back home, even in very serious and tense situations. This clearly shows the effects of his post-traumatic stress disorder because he is thinking of Martha to try and escape the real horrors happening in front of him. The psychological effects are grouped into three clusters: intrusive re-experiencing, avoidance and numbing, and arousal. Some of the symptoms of these clusters include:

“efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations related to the trauma; efforts to avoid activities, places, or people reminiscent of the trauma; inability to recall important aspects of the trauma; greatly decreased interest in important activities; feeling detached or estranged; restricted affect; and a sense of a foreshortened future" (Encyclopedia).

Post-traumatic does not only effect a small minority of those that fought either. According to the National Center for PTSD, approximately thirty percent of Vietnam Veterans have experienced post-traumatic stress disorder in their lifetime, which is a significant number of people to suffer from such an illness due to one event. To put this number in perspective, some even estimate the number ranges up to 1.5 million (Kamienski).

Post-traumatic stress disorder can also lead to other issues, one of the most significant being substance abuse. Soldiers experiences in the war were extremely traumatizing and so they needed to find a way to cope and forget. During the war, the use of marijuana and alcohol was extremely prevalent among soldiers. However, when the military found the issue to be a major problem, marijuana was banned and because of this, many soldiers turned to heroin because it was so inexpensive in Vietnam. (Hochgesang, Lawyer, and Stevenson). The price of heroin ranged from as little as two dollars to ten dollars and took away feelings of fatigue, homesickness, worry, tension, anxiety, and more (University of Ottawa). The military was also to blame and was responsible for generating drug addictions within the soldiers. The military issued psychoactive substances to the soldiers to try and prevent breakdowns due to combat stress, without considering the long-term effects of these highly addictive drugs (Kamienski). They failed to realize that the drugs did not eliminate the soldiers stress, they only suppressed it, which is why many of them developed PTSD only a few weeks or months after coming back. 

Many of the soldiers in Vietnam suffered from a serious addiction to drugs and alcohol as a result of PTSD. To try and deal with the stress of war in Vietnam, they were drawn to drugs and alcohol to cope with the things they were experiencing around them. The use of drugs to deal with the traumas of war is extremely prevalent in O’Brien’s The Things We Carried. Throughout the book, the author describes the things that the soldiers carried and besides weapons, the soldiers most commonly carried drugs. One of the first examples of this is Ted Lavender, who is revealed to have carried around “6 or 7 ounces of premium dope” (O’Brien). Because of the inexpensiveness of drugs in Vietnam, we can assume that even though he carries a significant amount of drugs at all times, he still probably didn’t spend much money on it. After he was shot, the other soldiers joked about Lavender’s supply of tranquilizers and even speculated that “the poor guy didn’t feel a thing” when he died. It is assumed that Lavender relied so heavily on tranquilizers because he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. This is significant because it truly shows how some soldiers relied so much on drugs to numb themselves from the pain of war. When O’Brien talks more about the figurative things that the soldiers carried, we can see a lot of symptoms and precursors of post-traumatic stress disorder. The “emotional baggage” the soldiers carried was described as such:

“Grief, terror, love, longing — these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture.” (O’Brien). 

With this, we get a real sense of the fear that the soldiers experienced in Vietnam. They fear weakness and describe it as their heaviest burden, implying that they would rather die than face the dishonor of living when everyone else around them is dying.  This kind of pressure can be serious detrimental to someone’s health and because of the frequency of this, it’s obvious why so many soldier’s developed psychological issues. 

The Vietnam War and its events were very complicated and traumatic for all parties involved; both Vietnam and the United States. However, the events of the war took a huge toll on the American military because of their unfamiliarity with the environment and tactics of the opposing side. Guerrilla Warfare was very common during the Vietnam War being described as “fast-moving, small-scale actions against orthodox military and police forces” (Guerrilla Warfare). The Vietnamese used the element of surprise to “sneak up on unaware U.S. troops, attack them, and leave before risking capture” and would sometimes pose as regular citizens or farmers (Guerrilla Warfare and War of Attrition). Obviously, this would leave American soldiers with a lot of stress and anxiety about dying because death could strike them at any moment. Much of the war was fought in dense jungles where soldiers would have very little visibility. Because of this, the soldiers were left feeling “feeling helpless and frustrated at being unable to face their attackers in a set-battle” (University of Ottawa). Again, it is shown that these soldiers had to fight in overwhelming and distressing circumstances and thus led to various cases of substance abuse and PTSD within those who fought in Vietnam. Guerrilla Warfare is also seen in The Things They Carried, specifically in the death of Ted Lavender. When one of the soldiers comes out of a tunnel after searching it and finds it clear, they all are relieved and begin to joke around (O’Brien). However, Ted Lavender is then suddenly shot in the head from an enemy force. No one saw it coming and Lavender was dead before anyone could comprehend what had happened. One of the other soldiers, Kiowa, described it by saying “it was like watching a rock fall” and keeps repeating the words “boom” and “down” (O’Brien). Looking at this, we see that they were not expecting Lavender’s death and it was a shock and surprise for them. This is a clear example of guerilla warfare and how it was used in the Vietnam War. 

Another major effect of post-traumatic stress disorder is the desensitization of soldiers because of the traumas that they experienced in war. Desensitization makes people less sensitize and emotional to shocking or traumatic events. During the war, the soldiers were constantly surrounded with death and the fear of dying and because of this, they eventually grew very accustomed to it. The Vietnam War was unlike many others. American soldiers were in a foreign environment that they were completely unfamiliar with and therefore, everything they experienced was very new and took them by surprise, even the circumstances of death. In The Things They Carried, there are many instances of the desensitization that the soldiers experienced. Firstly, O’Brien describes the vast amounts of weapons and ammunition that the soldiers carry such as “M-14s and CAR 15s and Swedish Ks and grease guns and captured AK-47s and Chi-Coms and RPGs” and so on. Weapons like these can take away a human life in an instance. Soldiers were completely normalized to carrying around such deadly weapons. One of the most prominent examples of desensitization was when one of the soldiers, Mitchell Sanders, used a hatchet to remove a young Vietnam boy’s thumb to keep and kicked his head in (O’Brien). This is extremely significant because the soldier treats the boy’s dead body as if it is just that, a body, not a human life that was taken away. The young boy may also have been dehumanized by the soldiers because he was Vietnamese, who they usually saw as the enemy because they “did not know who to shoot and who to protect” (Hochgesang). With all of this, it is obvious that the idea of death is very common to these soldiers. As a way to try and suppress the traumatic events they see, they become desensitized to death and the fear of dying. This was a necessary tactic for many to get through their tour without breaking down. 

The fact that the Vietnam War was extremely unpopular also did not help the soldiers in their return home. The spread of communism in the 1950’s and the 1960’s was a huge problem for the United States and tensions from the Cold War were at an all-time high. The United States was trying to do everything in their power to contain in, even if it meant another war. At the beginning, many Americans supported the cause to help South Vietnam in the war; however, as the cost and causalities of the war grew, so did the American public’s opposition (US History). Even with all of this, the United States did not announce the end of their involvement until January 1973 (History, 2010). Because of the ill feelings people had towards the war, many Vietnam veterans were treated very badly when they came home and their drug addiction and post-traumatic stress disorders were not seen as legitimate. Vietnam veterans were left frustrated by the “lack of respect” that they experienced when they came home (Hochgesang). Many people in the United States did not support the war and held much resentment towards the soldiers and thus, many of their disorders and drug addictions were not taken seriously and swept under the rug even though it was the traumas and stresses of their experiences that caused these issues.

Because of their various psychological issues, adjusting to life back home was very difficult for many soldiers. While some Vietnam veterans avoided drugs when they came home, others found it difficult because they needed “to forget what they saw in Vietnam” and “cope with the frustration and anguish of not being accepted into society” (Hochgesang). While veterans from previous wars received warm-welcomes and were treated as heroes, this was not the same for the Vietnam War. The country was split between people who did and did not support the war and therefore there were mixed opinions towards the soldiers. Although this did not represent the majority of the population, there were some instances where protestors spit on veterans and called them “baby-killers” (Encyclopedia). It is also important to mention that post-traumatic stress disorder wasn’t as understood as it is today. Many of the soldier’s disorders went undiagnosed for a long period of time before they were able to get help and because of this, their drug addictions were not understood by the general public. They had to endure all of this while still trying to recover from the horrors that they experienced in Vietnam. When dealing with such harsh and traumatic memories, it is important to have support, which they clearly did not have.
