It's easy for soldiers to score heroin in Afghanistan

"They don't do anything to you [for using]," a reservist tells me. "Two from my unit were sent home after they got caught more than once." What happened to them? "Nothing. They're still in the unit. Just got sent home." Are they still using? "Don't know. I never asked."

According to Maj. Belcher, soldiers are "subject to drug-testing procedures and if they test positive for illegal substances, they are dealt with appropriately by their chain of command under the Uniform Code of Military Justice." But in a military stretched thin, with reservists a significant portion of the forces being deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, the threat of such disciplinary measures has little bite. As long as soldiers themselves refuse to speak out there is no reason for action.

I made arrangements to speak with three young men about their heroin problems. All were veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom and outpatients of the methadone clinic at the West Los Angeles VA hospital. They had all become addicted during their deployments.

When the time came to meet, however, one of the men had disappeared. The other two said their VA counselors had told them not to do the interviews. Realizing there are stages of recovery, and there might be a clinical reason for the enforced silence, I contacted the methadone clinic directly. I was referred to a social worker, who said she would be happy to speak with me after clearing it with her superiors. She referred me to the hospital's press person for permission.

The hospital's press person referred me to VA headquarters in Washington. The Washington office told me a VA representative would have to sit in on any interviews -- and I would also need to get approval for the interviews from the physician who supervises the clinic, the doctor who supervises the counselors who had scotched the interviews in the first place. I gave up on getting on-the-record interviews.

The VA also declined, through a spokesperson, to provide any national estimate of the level of heroin use among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. What numbers are available from the military, meanwhile, do not point to a significant problem. A spokesperson for the Pentagon referred Salon to the individual service branches for data on heroin use by military personnel. Air Force Capt. Tom Wenz emphasized that the number of Air Force personnel serving in Afghanistan is quite small, and said there had been no reports of positive drug tests for heroin among Air Force personnel in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Maj. Cheryl Phillips of the Army, which accounts for the bulk of the Afghanistan and Iraq forces, said that in 2006 not one of the Army soldiers in either theater tested positive for heroin, and that all positive drug-test results are in line with historic norms. "The Army randomly tests soldiers for use of illicit/unauthorized drugs on a regular basis and, on average, has maintained a 98 percent 'clean' rate ... over the past 20 years, including the periods of OEF and OIF." The Navy's level of positive drug tests for all personnel worldwide was less than 1 percent as of 2005. A representative of the Marine Corps did not respond by deadline to an e-mailed request for information on levels of heroin use, if any, by Marines.

My own experience among young veterans in Southern California, however, suggests that drug tests do not tell the story. New Directions, situated on the grounds of the West Los Angeles VA hospital, is an organization offering programs for homeless veterans. It has a 24-bed detox unit. In the past year, according to outreach director Anthony Belcher (no relation to Maj. Belcher), New Directions has seen approximately 15 Afghanistan and Iraq veterans, six of them "needing a methadone detox."

The methadone clinic in the West Los Angeles VA hospital itself has seen significantly more. An individual familiar with the methadone program at the hospital says they are "lined up 50 or 60 deep each morning." While the source does not know the service record of the patients, the source says, "These are young guys." The VA has 250 substance abuse centers nationwide.

Belcher of New Directions expects the caseload to pick up later, echoing Jodie Trafton's words about a delay between addiction and treatment. The Afghanistan and Iraq veterans Belcher's group has been seeing have been discharged about two years on average. "That's how long it takes for them to be forced into a detox unit by family, or law enforcement, or circumstances."

Greg Spencer, a representative of the nonprofit National Veterans Foundation, calls the phenomenon "lag time." "We won't know the enormity of this problem for some time," he says, because "there is a period between the beginning stages and the so-called bottom out, where one seeks treatment. We are just starting, in the past two years or so, to see OEF/OIF vets coming to treatment facilities for heroin addiction."

Both Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are coming home with substance problems. But the reasons behind their addictions are frequently different.

Because the deployment to Iraq is so much larger than the deployment to Afghanistan, with more than five times as many troops in country at any given time, the VA is likely to be treating more Iraq veterans than Afghanistan veterans for substance abuse. Anecdotally, addiction among veterans returning from Iraq seems largely linked to post-traumatic stress disorder. Overall, more than a third of the VA's 350,000 substance abuse patients from every era also suffer from PTSD. For soldiers suffering from PTSD, the use of heroin and other illicit drugs is frequently a form of self-medication, and a way to keep their stress and trauma at bay.

Many of the addicts returning from Afghanistan, however, point to sheer boredom as the reason for their use. "I had to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, but half the time there was nothing to do," one reservist who served at Bagram complained. Another expressed frustration at the number of contractors sharing their positions. "It really pissed us off that we were there doing the same job as KBR guys who were making three or four times as much. It sucked." Bored and disillusioned with the process and mission at hand, many soldiers turn to heroin to pass the time and escape the monotony. While heroin is available in Iraq, it is that much easier to obtain in Afghanistan, a source country.

But both conflicts have something in common with a prior war -- Vietnam. Whereas the first Gulf War involved a long deployment by troops inside the austere, puritanical nation of Saudi Arabia, followed by a short war and a relatively rapid return home, both the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts are protracted occupations of countries where heroin has long been available. Afghanistan is a source country, à la the nations of Southeast Asia. As Mark Benjamin reported in Salon last December, combat in Iraq also shares certain features with combat in Vietnam -- constant patrols punctuated by ambushes, a deteriorating sense of mission -- that are likely to produce high levels of PTSD.

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