I had terrible PTSD after Bosnia but fishing like Paul and Bob saved my life
The crunch of footsteps on gravel behind him was all it took to trigger the flight response in Steve Johnston’s mind. He spooked, dropped the rods and bait he was unloading tentatively from his car, and sprinted, terrified, 15 metres across the car park. Finally stopping at the confused “Sorry, mate” from the guy walking innocently behind him, he shook uncontrollably as he struggled to even form the words to explain his surprising reaction.
A veteran of the war in Bosnia, and crippled by post-traumatic stress disorder, this was the very first time Steve had ventured from his flat for more than two years, aside from night-time scuttles to a supermarket.
Once a keen fisherman, he had given the hobby up along with the rest of his life when his mental health deteriorated into a torment of flashbacks, anxiety and plans of suicide. But he had been coaxed back to the riverbank that day by veterans’ support charities Combat Stress and Care After Combat. And within just one hour of casting, it became clear Steve’s brave decision to pack his fishing gear would not only change, but save, his life.
“I was a gibbering wreck,” he recalls of that August morning three years ago. “But I started fishing and it was absolutely unbelievable, an hour in and I was a different person.
“All the pressure totally deflated. You start fishing and the peace flooded into me.” Angling was one of the very first activities allowed to commence when lockdown eased. Since then, Environment Agency stats reveal licence sales soared – with 100,000 more people taking it up. Steve, 61, from Hemel Hempstead, Herts, believes fishing can provide therapy and
It was so barbaric... when I saw the bodies, I vomited
boost wellbeing. It’s a view championed on hit BBC Two show Gone Fishing, with Bob Mortimer, 61, and 62-year-old Paul Whitehouse, in which the two comics get away from it all, fish and have a good old chat.
Whitehouse has said that the show – the concept of which came to them after they spent time by the river together after Mortimer’s 2015 heart surgery – “isn’t primarily about fishing” but also about the “joys of being alive”.
It certainly proved to be the case for Steve. “There’s more to fishing than catching fish. That night I felt a lot better. You can’t be cured of PTSD but
you learn to manage it. Fishing has been fantastic therapy. It saved my life.”
The unexpected popularity of Gone Fishing has proved there’s certainly something about the peaceful pastime which the nation is responding to.
The show highlights the effects on wellbeing the sport can have, and experts agree. Dr Antonis Kousoulis, director of the Mental Health Foundation, explains: “Growing evidence suggests that spending time in ‘green’ and ‘ blue’ spaces has a very positive effect on our mental health, providing protective and restorative benefits.”
Steve served in the RAF for 22 years and deployed to Bosnia in the summer of 1995.
There, the young corporal saw some of the most harrowing scenes of his career, including civilian deaths from missile attacks in Sarajevo and mass graves, the result of genocide.
“It was so barbaric, it was unbelievable,” he recalls, quietly. “If those people blown up and lying dead, bits everywhere... if they had been wearing military fatigues I would probably have processed it better. But civilians?
“When I saw the bodies, I vomited round the back of the Land Rover but it was ‘OK, let’s go’. I didn’t get the chance to process the trauma.”
It was not until 2014, many years after he left the RAF and was working as a training manager for a logistics company, that PTSD struck.
He recalls: “I started losing my temper. I’d wake up in the morning and my bedroom was a mess, I’d smashed it up, fighting in my sleep.”
Steve was sectioned, received therapy and took medication, but little seemed to work. He considered suicide. “Twice I sat up on the railway line. I didn’t want to end my life but I wanted the pain to go away,” he admits. Only thoughts of his younger brother stopped him. Weeks of lockdown were hard but back at the riverside at least once a month he is in a much better place. Through the charity iCarp, working with veterans, he is now a professional angling coach helping others.
He recalls fishing last summer with a young veteran of the Afghanistan conflict. “I saw this lad and thought, the mess he looks in –probably how I looked two years earlier.
“He had never fished before. In that first hour he caught seven roach and five rudd. I looked at him and he started puffing his chest up a bit.
“People relax once they start to fish. You concentrate on fishing so you’re not ruminating about your problems.”
The Environment Agency wants people to give the sport a go and see the benefits for themselves. To find out more about how to get a licence, visit www.gov.uk/fishing-licences
Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing, BBC Two, tomorrow at 8pm.
STEVE RECALLS MISSILE ATTACKS IN SARAJEVO