HUFFINGTON
09.22.13
INVISIBLE CASUALTIES
when he pleaded with Joshua to
acknowledge to Navy doctors the
full extent of his drug problem,
Joshua told him: no way. “He was
afraid he would lose everything he
had worked so hard to earn,” Don
told me. “Respect, rank, honorable discharge, benefits — all of
this weighed heavily on his mind.”
On June 8, Joshua was discharged with a referral to the
Navy’s Level III substance abuse
rehab program.
But he didn’t go to rehab, because there was no space, Don
said. Instead, Joshua went back
to the townhouse, back to his
dead-end job, back to his addictions. His Navy buddies were
gone, deployed overseas or stationed elsewhere. “I tried calling
him from Bahrain a few times,”
said one of Joshua’s close friends,
who asked not to be identified
because he is still on active duty.
“On the phone he sounded like he
was good. I think he didn’t want
to worry me so he said he was doing good when he really wasn’t.”
They’d all had Navy suicideprevention training, but some
described it as meaningless,
a computer exercise you had
“How did that information
not get passed on, that
he was in the ER because
he’s having withdrawal
from opiates and he’s
active duty? There
should be no ifs ands or
buts about this.’’
to click through in order to be
granted time off.
It was 56 days before Joshua
was admitted into the Navy’s intensive drug rehab program at the
Portsmouth naval hospital. In preadmission exams he tested positive for benzodiazepine, opiates
and cocaine, according to notes
taken Aug. 4 by William C. Rodriguez, a Navy physician. Joshua admitted to having thoughts of suicide “over the past few months,”
but “he denied any active plans or
intent to kill himself.”
Joshua’s growing drug use between detox and when he checked
int o drug rehab on Aug. 4 was
not the Navy’s fault, it said in a
statement to The Huffington Post.
It said a delay between detox and
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