They thought I was weird because I don’t drink. One soldier said: “How can you be in the Army and don’t drink?” Yeah, everyone around me drank and/or smoked. Everyone around me had sex. I didn’t do any of these things. I heard it was even more rampant the further you go overseas. You put a bunch of bored soldiers living together 24/7 and it’s like a cesspool of debauchery and sin. Even married soldiers cheated on their spouses so much. I heard someone had an affair inside of a porto-potty.
My husband served for 10 years. None of this rings true. Hubby picked his MOS based on a selection available to him based on test scores. He then had further training in his niche field and had to get a clearance. Need determined where he ended up.
Have to ask: were you in San Antonio? They’ve closed a couple of bases. I used to watch air shows there. And, of course, we all knew what Blue Angels sounded like. I don’t hear them up north.
When I was in the army in Germany everyone in our company drank heavily, me especially. There was one guy who didn’t. I think he might have been Jewish. We also had problems with heroin. A lot of people in my platoon were doing it. There were a couple of junkies who were great drivers. They were the type of guys who could just look at a machine and know how to take it apart and put it back together. They got kicked out of the army, and that was a big loss, because those kinds of skills are very valuable in a mechanized infantry unit. They eventually weeded out most of the junkies in our company. One time I was at the CO desk and the phone rang. I picked up the phone, and a feminine voice asked, “Is Sergeant Terill there?” I told her he wasn’t. She said, “Well tell Sgt. Terill his old lady called.” So when I next saw Sgt. Terill I told him his wife had called. The next day he looked at me and said, “Why did you tell me my wife called? That was my old lady, not my wife you talked to.” I realized I’d just gotten him into a lot of trouble with his wife. Oops. That happened when I was at Ft. Hood, Texas, after I had come back from Germany. One time a few of my friends were hiding a couple of bottles of Bacardi in the tiles of the drop cieling, and they found this grenade that had the pin pulled, the thumb safety clip removed, and there was a single strand of scotch tape holding the spoon in place. If they hadn’t found that grenade the tape would have dry rotted, and the grenade would have exploded, killing or maiming everyone in the room. My friends took the grenade out and detonated it. That just goes to show you that there are some real sick ■■■■■■■■ in the world.
I was at Ft. Hood, Texas.
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My husband had to help with substance screening. He says he always gave the maximum sentence for failed tests.
Thanks for your service. Its a tough thing to leave home to serve your country.
Ive worked since i was 14. I lined soccer fields and cleaned up trash and put the flags out. Then i worked ina grocery sotre for a summer stocking shelves overnight. Then i worked as a supervisor in college. Then i got a job at none other than…A Psych Ward! (Ha. Little did i know id end up a patient in one) dropped that job for a restaurant job at Olive Garden. Spent 5 years as a cook for Olive Garden then landscaped. Spent 3 years landscaping till i hurt my back and got a cushy sit down job at a factory. I didnt last there long though. Got diagnosed with schizophrenia after using all my sicktime and PTO and just quit. I thought theybwere trying to kill me.
Long story short. I bounced around. Never really using my college degree except for about a month at the psych ward.
Alcohol was about as big a problem as any other drug around the barracks. People were always getting drunk and acting stupid, me included. I think alcohol had as big an effect on combat readiness as any other drug, maybe not, but alcohol did have a very detrimental effect. There were all these soldiers bummed out because they had to submit to military discipline while they were hung over.
May I ask what your degree is in?
@crimby I DID hear drinking stories. I know there were bowling alleys and theaters for the base hubby was at for the longest. And a pizza place that didn’t take orders. You just had to hope they made something edible that night.
Edited to add: Sorry. I was trying to remember the activities offered in lieu of drinking. It wasn’t much.
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For me at the time alcohol was the major issue in my life. I drank a LOT. Today I haven’t drank since February 2017, and I feel much better. Mixing psychotropic drugs with alcohol really took its toll.
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I’m glad you have been sober. Five years is a huge accomplishment!!! Hubby drank a lot early on but then a guy he knew kinda threatened him if he didn’t stop. He stopped and to this day won’t have a sip.
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I know a couple of women, one of them my sister, who got a bachelor’s degree at Oklahoma State University and went on to become stupendously successful. They came early and stayed late at work. There are a lot of women in positions of power. A lot of them are bank presidents. That still doesn’t give them the right to jack me around on the money I have in my accounts. If I had any legal recourse I would flatten them.
My degree is in…oddly enough. Psychology! I knew i was schizophrenic before the doctors knew!
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It wasn’t that way where I was stationed in Wildflecken, Germany. As far as military duties go, Wildflecken was much harder than Fr. Hood. Wildflecken was a training area, so we were able to go to the field a lot. We got a hard core battalion commander, and every time a soldier got picked up downtown by the MP’s he would take the whole battalion out to the field. He had us running five miles a day for a while, but it was at a slow pace.
Love it. 
I got a degree in English so I could better read up on and analyze the disorders that I would develop a few years after earning said degree.
I remember thinking, i think i have schizophrenia. That was early on when i could still function and act “normal”. I was always either singing at work or telling jokes. Eventually psychosis kicked in and well, i lost my ■■■■.
I remember when I went to Basic at Ft. Jackson and a Drill Sergeant walked by me in the chow line and wondered if I was going to be at Ft. Hood (apparently, that’s where he has been). The Drill Sergeants and even some of soldiers seemed to know about my clean record. Hint Hint. It’s difficult to deploy the good soldier to low-life-expectancy areas.
In retrospect, I definitely would rather be stationed in the States, although you can get stuff cheap overseas. I bought a BMW for $1,000 but then had to sell it because I found I suck at driving a manual stick-shift. Ha.
In Ansbach, it was small and no bowling alley although I did bowl a couple times at nearby Katterbach (which was bigger). In Ansbach, it looked like there used to be a movie theater but was shut down? In Katterbach, I don’t remember there being a movie theater. I watched all my movies on DVD, anyway, by renting lots of movies at places like PX. They actually were able to monitor everything I did in my barracks room. There was a hidden mini-camera somewhere. They seemed to not like what I did in my spare time, which wasn’t much. Just extra PT and watching a lot of movies and playing video games. Another temp said to me: “we know that’s all you do. You ready to go to Africa?” Some people are complete dill-holes. What difference does it make what I choose to do in my spare time? Good lord. But see, it’s that constant implied theme: They want to deploy the “most expendable” to some forward areas. The theme does not apply to all service members, just some. There was a Burger Bar in my installation but closed at 1700 or 1800. There was a high-class dining facility that they shut down because the word got out on the street that I may get discharged early, so higher officers heard and were jerks and shut down that Di-Fac, as if to imply: “why should we serve you food if you’re not going to be serving us in the Army?” WOW. Some people are complete jerky jerk-faces who have little-to-no understanding about severe mental illness. And probably never will. Some Army Officers are so arrogant that they think they know everything about people and won’t bother expanding their knowledge about things they know nothing about, such as Schizophrenia.
Yes, I scored 93 QT on my ASVAB and the ball was in my court as far as picking my MOS when I was being recruited. Somehow, after Basic/AIT, that’s when my Schizophrenia all of a sudden seemed to limit my ability to learn and function like everyone else, so they thought I was completely expendable. Sending me to Liberia (by myself) back in 2003 actually would have been a terrible idea for various reasons. One reason is you can’t even deploy a new soldier until he/she has served a full year in Europe first. WOW. I chose to be stationed in Europe/Germany because I had fond childhood memories when my dad was stationed at Heidelberg for 3 years. Needless to say, my military experience was nothing like my father’s.
TBH, the ASVAB is more like a literacy test.
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