Who are these doctors/administrators at the VA?

Most of them in the shrink business are puppets on a string. The VA regional administrators yank them up and down, depending on the budget. The psych sociologists are paid to listen to crazy veterans for 50 minutes, hand out Kleenex, and provide advice straight out of Dale Carnegie's "How to be happy." Then they write up a report to the VA administrator on how they perceived the veteran to be. Is he going to kill himself? Is he going to kill somebody else? No? Well, OK then! We're off the hook.

The psychiatrists are for medication only. No couch. A vet will see a VA psychiatrist probably once a year if that. They'll give out a scrip for any number of different antidepressants and anti-anxiety pills.

The remarkable thing is that none of these people ever served in combat and damn few of them were ever in the military. So when a vet starts talking crazy stuff that seems normal to him, the P-docs don't know how to deal with it. It's frightening for a civilian to sit there and listen to a guy who has walked up to a dying enemy soldier and casually blown the man's brains out, point blank, and felt absolutely nothing, as if he just stepped on a bug.

Hand that vet a Kleenex and give him the old Dale Carnegie "Don't worry, be happy" routine and have the shrink dose him down good with Paxil or Welbutrin or Lithium, whatever. Come back and see us in 3 months. And remember, be happy!

Sometimes I think the VA administrators really do wish that these walking time bombs would commit suicide. That would get them off the streets and off the VA books so they wouldn't be sucking up compensation money for the rest of their lives.

I've got another theory too about the VA general practice doctors. A 60 year-old vet on disability goes in for an annual physical checkup and the nurse looks at his dark moles, raised, flaking, uneven, red around the edges. Is that a melanoma? After all, the guy was virtually living in an environment of Agent Orange for a whole year in Vietnam and now he's got spots on his lungs and a lot of skin lesions. But she says, "It's nothing to worry about. Just keep an eye on it." Right. Keep an eye on it until it metastases and spreads all through your body so you'll die a horrible death from non-operable lymphoma cancer! Keep an eye on it, indeed. Instead of sending these vets to the dermatology clinic where some intern could be kept busy removing dangerous moles, the VA administrators send the man home because they want to keep their costs down. And the bonus is, if the man gets cancer and dies, he'll be off the VA books and won't cost them more over the long run.

It's a cynical system run by bureaucrats who drag their sorry asses to work five days a week not including federal holidays and they are overloaded with people to see and treat and they soon become just as numb as the guy who walked up to an wounded enemy soldier, looked him straight in the eye, and blew his head apart like a ripe watermelon with his M-16 and didn't feel a thing.

Welcome home, support the troops, blah blah blah.

You are welcome. I hope your dad is doing well.

You imagine me, sipping champagne from your boot

For taste of your elegant pride

I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe

But at least I'm enjoying the ride

You analyze me, tend to despise me

You laugh when I stumble and fall

There may come a day when I'll dance on your grave

Unable to dance I'll still crawl across it

Unable to dance I'll still crawl

Unable to dance I will crawl.

(Sung so passionately by Bobby, written so appropriately by The Bard, John Barlow.)

I must take my leave now. There's a pint of Guinness awaiting my attention at the pub.

As a matter of fact, you're not far off, old man. I take my rage to the gym. Guns, pecs, abs, and gluts. Lookin' good is the best revenge without getting busted.

Yeah, the RAND Corp. I was one of their guinea pigs back in the '60s, trying to make a few bucks as a test subject. What the hell, it beat trying to bolt the check at restaurants in Westwood. That got old. So did crashing at UCLA dormatories instead of sleeping outside. But as I sat there taking their mental acuity tests, there was a strange buzzing coming from somewhere and a faint whiff of ozone. That's what the test was really all about. I felt sick and dizzy and had to leave. They paid me anyway.

But those were the days my friend. Fuckin' around in Santa Monica, hustling and being a Rebel without a Clue. That's when they nailed me for ignoring my Draft notice. That was the origin, the beginning of the making of Garry Owen.

Yeah, Sgt. Celery, I stirred the flaming steel drum shit pots, washed my ass in a bomb crater full of rainwater and leeches. I ate freeze dried Spaghetti with Meat Balls over a hot tin can of C-4. The original California surfer dude turned baby killer.

It's true, I'm getting old. Like Jerry said, I may be going to hell in a bucket, but at least I'm enjoyin' the ride.