This vet’s on a mission to heal Helps addicted comrades s
They came to the veterans center in Queens to hear a tale of redemption — and Jeff Swansen was ready for them.
“Good evening, family,” the former Navy man from Brooklyn bellowed to the roomful of former soldiers grappling with everything from posttraumatic stress disorder to addiction to homelessness. “How ya doin?”
Swansen, 62, wearing a blue “Navy Veteran” cap studded with American flag pins, told the veterans how he had climbed from the depths of a two-decade-long drug and alcohol binge, homelessness and jail with the help of the Ed Thompson Veterans Center, a residential treatment facility in Richmond Hill run by Samaritan Daytop Village.
“I am living proof that this program works,” said the fast-talking vet, now one of the organizers of the city’s annual Veterans Day Parade, which was held Sunday on Fifth Avenue and drew hundreds of thousands of supporters.
Eleven years clean, Swansen helps other former military members get back on their feet.
While the city’s Department of Homeless Services says it has reduced the homeless veteran population by 60 percent in the past four years, hundreds of vets still remain on the street.
Most US veterans grapple with substance abuse and about half suffer from mental illness, according to government statistics.
Even worse, an average of 20 American vets a day take their own lives, the numbers show.
Mitchell Netburn, Samaritan Daytop’s president and CEO, says the Ed Thompson Veterans Center works to reverse that grim statistic, veteran by veteran.
“It’s not just getting a job, it’s not just getting housing,” he said. “It’s literally saving a life.”
As for Swansen, he served in the Navy from 1975 to 1981. He got addicted to cocaine shortly after getting out of the service, when his mom died at 54. He was 26.
For the next 23 years, Swansen used coke daily and began selling it out of a Brooklyn bar where he worked, eventually developing a $200 daily habit.
In August 2007, he was busted by investigators from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office as part of a yearlong narcotics investigation and sent to Rikers Island.
The arrest turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
As part of an agreement with the DA, he was allowed to leave Rikers after just 4¹/2 months to go to Samaritan Village.
Rebuilding his life was hard, but Swansen soldiered on, fueled by a flicker of hope and the discipline he learned in the military.
Arriving at the center, “all I had was a sweatshirt,” he recalled. “I had no heavy jacket, no nothing, and I’m walking around outside, and it’s freezing, and I says, ‘Man, something’s gotta change in my life.’ Then things just started clicking.”
Swansen is now living a brandnew life while sharing his story with other vets, such as Samaritan resident Kevin Gianninoto.
“With the PTSD, I was having nightmares. It was constant depression. I didn’t recognize the man in the mirror,’’ said the 32year-old ex-Marine, who got hooked on painkillers and heroin.
He said he is now clean, and “it feels like everything I want to accomplish is possible.”
He has also found a new camaraderie with others at the facility.
“It’s not just that we all have the fact that we’re addicts in common, we all signed that dotted line to protect our country,” Gianninoto said.
Mark Pritchard, 46, who served in Kuwait with the Army after Desert Storm, said he did drugs to drown out the memory of the destruction he had witnessed. He lost his family in the process.
“Sometimes, you don’t feel that success” is within reach, Pritchard said. “Hearing Jeff ’s story just brings it back to light again that it is possible.”