A Veteran's True Battle: Staying Sane After Returning Home

Can a single injection save thousands of soldiers suffering from severe PTSD? An Afghanistan combat vet goes under the needle to find out if there really is a cure for war.

- Matt Farwell

I would be pissed I didn’t get this shot earlier if I weren’t so grateful I got it at all. I haven’t been quite right since the war, posttraumatic stress and all. Nothing I did in seven years of trying to get back to normal—therapy, meds, madcap schemes—really helped. It turns out a big part of the cure was under my nose the whole time. Well, six or seven inches under my nose and a couple of inches back and to the right, in a cluster of nerves by the spinal column called the stellate ganglion. Two injections of a couple of local anesthetics— lidocaine, the same thing dentists use, and bupivacaine—into that part of the neck and I was pretty much back to my old self.

Dr. Eugene Lipov, the man who administered my shot and who has pioneered the use of the so-called stellate ganglion block for PTSD, tells me the Navy SEALs call it the God shot. Well, SEALs have their sea stories. Here is mine.

I came back from Afghanistan in the spring of 2007, developed insomnia that was eventually diagnosed as PTSD in 2008 and every few months for the next five years had either a major legal or psychological issue—the kind that led to hospitalization or jail time. As hard as I had to fight in Afghanistan, I had to fight doubly hard to get here, a place where I’m celebrating two years without getting locked in a loony bin or a cell.

During my 16 months as a U.S. Army combat infantryman in Afghanistan, the enemy lived outside the wire and had no face. He hid in plain sight and used IEDs or indirect fire. Back in the States, the enemy also hid in plain sight. The thing is, he wore my face and occupied my brain. This isn’t a war story. This is a postwar story.