A study in contrast between two military members with PTSD: one alcoholic, who kills, and one non-addict, who succumbs as victim.
According to Rorke Denver, a reserve Navy SEAL team lieutenant commander, former SEAL teammate and military sniper Chris Kyle, 38, worked “with other veterans, folks with PTSD, trying to help them get better.” Kyle was known to take such troubled veterans to gun ranges, shooting and hanging out for therapy. It was one of these, unemployed Marine veteran Eddie Ray Routh, 25, who shot and killed Kyle. While officials couldn’t confirm whether Routh suffered from PTSD, Denver fielded questions from civilians who “couldn’t understand why Kyle would have taken someone with PTSD to a shooting range.” Routh had been in mental hospitals twice during the year preceding the murder and told authorities he has PTSD. However, he was first taken to a mental hospital only after he threatened to kill his family and himself. His mother told police he had been drinking when she reported the threat; authorities found him walking nearby shirtless and shoeless and smelling of booze. In another incident, his mother reported a burglary involving Routh in her own home; among the stolen items were nine pill bottles.
According to the Los Angeles Times, in his 2009 book, American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History, Kyle “hinted at the struggles he faced…mentally replaying the times he’d been shot, brooding over his mortality….” He took prescribed drugs to help him cope with the stress after his tours of duty were over. Kyle and Routh both may have suffered from PTSD. The difference between them was Kyle was not an alcoholic, while Routh clearly has this disease. Alcoholism exacerbated the destructive aspects of PTSD and unfortunately cost Kyle, who didn’t understand this risk, his life.