Harvard, Sperry and I begin a series of conversations over Skype. But heâs struggling too. Like me, heâs using alcohol to self-medicate, but also pot and the dozen prescription medications that are part of his daily postwar routine. He sometimes disappears for weeks at a time without picking up for our calls. I plead with him by e-mail but still silence. Eventually he reemerges, but I know it will take meeting face-to-face if Iâm ever going to get his complete story. When he finally resurfaces, I convince him to allow me to visit him over Christmas break on a one-day stopover on my way to see my parents in Arizona. He agrees but then disappears again. Just when Iâm about to give up on him, he surfaces and confirms my visit, just five days before Iâm scheduled to arrive.
Itâs already dark at five thirty P.M . when I pull up to James Sperryâs house on a small, unlighted cul-de-sac in a small southern Illinois town about forty-five minutes east of downtown Saint Louis. Itâs two days before Christmas and my flights have been predictably delayed by weather and overbooking this time of year. I was supposed to arrive nearly five hours ago. I double-check the address because there are no cars in the driveway and no lights on in the house. Several of the other houses on the cul-de-sac are wired for the holidays, plastic Santas and candy canes putting off the only illumination on the street. Sperryâs house is bare. I knock on the door and already begin to feel a little strange and intrusive. Though our paths crossed six years ago on the embattled streets of Fallujah, we were strangers then, as well as now.
Sperry and I have been building trust, over the last two months, trying to peel back the years and details of what happened since we last met. It has been a humbling and trying process beset by the challenges of both his responsibilities, which include a wife and three-year-old daughter, as well as the physical and psychological wounds that require a chefâs salad worth of drugs every day, including clonazepam for anger (Sperry calls it his chill pill), citalopram for adrenaline deficiency (overtaxed during his deployment), hydrocodone for headaches, mirtazapine and Ambien to sleep, prazosin to head off his nightmares and a self-injecting EpiPen-type device like those carried by people allergic to bee stings, which Sperry administers in the case of debilitating migraines that send him quivering into a dark closet with a blanket over his head until he can fall asleep. Sperry, admittedly, also heavily self-medicated with alcohol back at Camp Pendleton for nearly two years after his return from Iraq, drinking with other Iraqi vets from early morning until he passed out at night, filling the days with death-seeking stunts like gunning his Japanese sport motorcycle (a nearly stereotypical impulse buy for many returning vets) down the freeway at over a hundred miles an hourâdrunk.
He said heâd probably be dead already if it hadnât been for the Vietnam-era veterans he met after being committed to a VA psych ward for a month following a failed suicide attempt. They helped convince him that while alcohol could temporarily numb his feelings, its long-term depressant effect would eventually kill him. Sperry said he had since mostly replaced alcohol with marijuana (the exception, supposedly, is a few beers now and then). While it was actually VA doctors who recommended he start using marijuana medicinally, Sperry said, it was unlawful for them to dispense it. Instead he now buys it from a former high school buddy. âItâs the only thing that has really helped me,â he said.
Sperry said while the pot leveled him out, it was his daughter Hannah that really gave him any reason to live. He explained the challenges he faced daily in an e-mail before my visit.
November 2009 (e-mail from Sperry to me)
I have lost twenty friends and would love to have any photos available.
Itâs already dark at five thirty P.M . when I pull up to James Sperryâs house on a small, unlighted cul-de-sac in a small southern Illinois town about forty-five minutes east of downtown Saint Louis. Itâs two days before Christmas and my flights have been predictably delayed by weather and overbooking this time of year. I was supposed to arrive nearly five hours ago. I double-check the address because there are no cars in the driveway and no lights on in the house. Several of the other houses on the cul-de-sac are wired for the holidays, plastic Santas and candy canes putting off the only illumination on the street. Sperryâs house is bare. I knock on the door and already begin to feel a little strange and intrusive. Though our paths crossed six years ago on the embattled streets of Fallujah, we were strangers then, as well as now.
Sperry and I have been building trust, over the last two months, trying to peel back the years and details of what happened since we last met. It has been a humbling and trying process beset by the challenges of both his responsibilities, which include a wife and three-year-old daughter, as well as the physical and psychological wounds that require a chefâs salad worth of drugs every day, including clonazepam for anger (Sperry calls it his chill pill), citalopram for adrenaline deficiency (overtaxed during his deployment), hydrocodone for headaches, mirtazapine and Ambien to sleep, prazosin to head off his nightmares and a self-injecting EpiPen-type device like those carried by people allergic to bee stings, which Sperry administers in the case of debilitating migraines that send him quivering into a dark closet with a blanket over his head until he can fall asleep. Sperry, admittedly, also heavily self-medicated with alcohol back at Camp Pendleton for nearly two years after his return from Iraq, drinking with other Iraqi vets from early morning until he passed out at night, filling the days with death-seeking stunts like gunning his Japanese sport motorcycle (a nearly stereotypical impulse buy for many returning vets) down the freeway at over a hundred miles an hourâdrunk.
He said heâd probably be dead already if it hadnât been for the Vietnam-era veterans he met after being committed to a VA psych ward for a month following a failed suicide attempt. They helped convince him that while alcohol could temporarily numb his feelings, its long-term depressant effect would eventually kill him. Sperry said he had since mostly replaced alcohol with marijuana (the exception, supposedly, is a few beers now and then). While it was actually VA doctors who recommended he start using marijuana medicinally, Sperry said, it was unlawful for them to dispense it. Instead he now buys it from a former high school buddy. âItâs the only thing that has really helped me,â he said.
Sperry said while the pot leveled him out, it was his daughter Hannah that really gave him any reason to live. He explained the challenges he faced daily in an e-mail before my visit.
November 2009 (e-mail from Sperry to me)
I have lost twenty friends and would love to have any photos available.
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