LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
Missed Opportunities
N THIS WEEK’S issue,
we feature the latest in
our “Invisible Casualties” series on suicide
in the military, which is running
on The Huffington Post throughout the month of September.
In this installment, David Wood
tells the story of Navy Petty Officer Joshua Lipstein, an Iraq war
veteran whose struggle with drugs
and depression ended when he
took his own life at 23.
When Joshua was diagnosed
with a brain tumor in 2009, he
was prescribed a dizzying array of
painkillers from Valium to Percocet, and eventually became addicted. That addiction, which carried
on for five months while he was
on active duty, only deepened the
depression he was already experi-
ART STREIBER
I
encing. One day, he put a pistol to
his temple and pulled the trigger.
Joshua’s death and the circumstances surrounding it still haunt
his family and friends, who wonder if the story might have ended
HUFFINGTON
09.22.13