My release was interesting, due to the fact I was probably one of the very first people of the CFB Shilo base to be released on grounds of mental illness, though I wasn't the first person in the JPSU. Surprisingly, I could do all of the stack of paperwork they presented to me, because I was a college graduate.
You put this into perspective. I was an infantry guy who could actually do the job, who had no charges in the military and no criminal charges outside the military, but who couldn't have a job because I asked for help. The paperwork for most people, infantry-wide...? I get it; it's hard. Even 80% of the higher-ranked master corporals and sergeants could barely do a memorandum, let alone do regular-ass paper work, yet you're asking them to look at legal doctrine, which surprisingly I was rather interested in, so I researched a lot of this information.
Even my research came across as.... I didn't know everything. You can't look through enough Veterans Affairs doctrine to know everything. I kept asking questions and more questions. The next thing you know, I got led in circles. This is what ended up happening. All your paperwork indicated that I could be led into a complete circle by asking different questions.
My example of that is the service dog program. I've had a service dog since I was released from the military. My doctor at the time, who is now deceased, wrote a massive letter to Veterans Affairs stating that Corporal Veltri required a service dog, because this medical information—and the United States does extensive research on service animals, because they already have it there—states that it will help offset a lot of the prescription opiate-based medication that physicians were feeding us. They were not just giving it to us; they were feeding us this medication.
I was tired. I was tired of being a drug addict, and being in the infantry we're very well-promoted on alcoholism: it gets put to us. We get it handed to us hand over fist. So not only are we in an environment in which drugs are easily accessible—and I'm talking about high-base OxyContin, Percocet, and Tylenol 3s—
I'll get to my point.
The fact is that you guys leave us in paperwork and you lead us in circles with this paperwork, and now we get nowhere. Because we get nowhere, we get frustrated. And I get frustrated, because I swear at Veterans Affairs—pretty much daily, if I have to.
But now, you guys have a security council that contacts me because I get pissed off and angry because the person on the phone doesn't know what they're talking about. I don't know if Jody has ever had to deal with this problem or anybody else in the council, but I had security guards—your makeshift Veterans Affairs security guards—telling me that I'm being inappropriate because your people on staff don't know what they're talking about and lead me around in circles.
For example, medical marijuana is one of those things I've had since I've been released, because it offsets the drugs that you guys gave me and the alcohol that was fed to me. I don't do any of these things anymore. I lead a somewhat stabler lifestyle, in that I have a service dog and medical marijuana. The service dog isn't approved, even though you guys state you will look after me because of my medical condition—and I will get to that.
Once again, your doctors state that if I need a prescription by a doctor, you will look after it. I'm not asking you to purchase a service animal, because that was never part of the agreement; it was to look after my service animals, which is $130 a month. But you would feed me $500 worth of opiate-based medication instead and pay for that?
I'm confused with all the paperwork and doctrines you guys present to us, but once again, we get stuck in circles, because you guys don't know what you're talking about. We have written this information to you and you lead us back to, “Well, DND doesn't do this”, and “we don't do that”, and “SISIP doesn't do this”, and this doesn't do that. Once again we get stuck in circles, and with all this paperwork we're presented, I'm surprised that 95% of even the educated ones get lost in this paperwork that you guys present to us because you think it's easy.