Opioids changing Memorial Day
You won’t find Jesse Snider’s name on a list of soldiers killed in action.
But he is one of the faces of the new wartime dead, those who die months or years after they return home.
Jesse was eager to join the Army after Sept. 11, 2001. He served with the Rakkasans in Iraq but hurt his back lugging heavy gear. His lungs were damaged by the dust.
The VA prescribed pain pills. Jesse also quietly struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, but if you knew him casually, you probably never would have guessed it. He was as kind, gentle and generous after his deployment as he was before it — always outdoors, always with friends, always working on a gun.
Maybe all three at once.
But those who knew him best could see subtle changes. Buried deep beneath that golden smile and happy-golucky attitude was a sadness, a desperation that wasn’t there before.
Nevertheless, Jesse thrived back home — for a while. He landed a job at the post office and bought a house with some property outside a small Indiana town.
Then his life began to unravel one night in 2007. A conservation officer mistook the noise of a paintball game in his garage for a gunshot. He entered Jesse’s home without a warrant and found a few marijuana plants.
Jesse was arrested. His many firearms were seized. And media reports made it sound like he was some sort of domestic terrorist.
The charges were later dropped, but Jesse lost his job and his house in the legal fight.
Meanwhile, the VA kept giving him stronger pain medication for his back and lungs. This wasn’t uncommon at the time: Nearly half a million VA patients were prescribed opioids in fiscal 2012 alone.
Jesse became addicted to the fentanyl patches he was prescribed. He moved to California to help a friend with his medical marijuana business and began living out of his truck as his addiction grew worse.
Jesse’s family tried to get him to move home. A few of us in Phoenix offered to pay for rehab here.
He refused.
Then, on March 20, 2014, Jesse fatally overdosed. Another casualty of the growing opioid epidemic, which now kills more than 175 people a day.
His story is part of “Mile Marker,” a documentary about how soldiers across the country are dealing with PTSD. (Full disclosure: My husband, Jesse’s friend since kindergarten, appears in the film). The movie hammers home the need to break stigmas, to get help — and, ultimately, our responsibility as a nation to ensure struggling soldiers don’t fall through the cracks.
I wish I could end there and say that’s the lesson we should ponder on Memorial Day. Because so often, that’s what we do. We end with a soldier’s death and don’t talk about what happens after the untimely loss.
That’s why, with the family’s permission, I am including this postscript.
Jesse’s mother also hid the pain of losing her eldest son. Like Jesse, you could talk to her casually and assume she was fine — until just before Christmas in 2015, when she took her life.
The family has struggled without Mama Snider, the glue that held them together.
Jesse’s dad and brothers have had trouble paying back the loan that was taken out to help Jesse’s legal fight.
That’s the brutal reality I will remember this and every Memorial Day since Jesse died.
Substance abuse and PTSD are the unseen enemies attacking today’s military. And they destroy so much more than the lives of those who gave everything to fight for this country.