I have written here before about this struggle -- namely, truckers dealing with mental health issues and isolation, and how that can lead to burnout and increased accident risk, job dissatisfaction, declining achievement, even poor health.
After three years trucking and following a divorce, in 1996 I packed everything I owned, put it in storage and climbed into my truck. I was essentially homeless for the next nine years.
Yes, your heard that right. Homeless. I remained homeless and held only a P.O. Box for an address. Though I did not know it at the time, I had some major mental health issues. In 2007 I was finally diagnosed with chronic PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Some of the symptoms of PTSD are depression and anxiety, and the isolation of trucking amplified these symptoms, leading to some very dark times.
[Related: You are not alone in the fight against mental health]
Up until ’96, I had for years self-medicated the PTSD. It worked to an extent, but of course it was an unhealthy temporary fix that did not mix with trucking. Before I became homeless, I had checked myself into treatment and, thanks to the VA, got clean for the first time in almost 25 years. Still, the first couple years of my homelessness the PTSD went unchecked and untreated. I was a very private person when it came to my past and the hell I was raised in. Because I was a Marine, surrender was not part of my mentality. I believed that it was my fight, and my fight alone.
When I say I went through some very dark times it is truly an understatement. I had no spiritual foundation. I had always been an extreme risk-taker with underlying suicidal tendencies -- another symptom of PTSD -- and I began to push, doing more than a thousand miles in a day yet never outrunning the darkness.
After two years in it, I found my way to Christ in 1998. My fight was far from over, though. After pastoral counseling I finally sought out medical treatment for my depression. One of the side effects of depression medication is drowsiness and fatigue. I had no choice but to run legal and sleep, so I began to try to understand more about what I was fighting.
