JUDY WOODRUFF: Two decades of U.S. wars in the Middle East have taken a heavy toll on
those who served. One consequence of the conflict is still not well understood: survivor's guilt.
Former Sergeant Adam Linehan served in Afghanistan and Iraq as an Army medic. He's now a journalist.
One of his most recent articles was published in The New York Times. And it was titled "I
Watched Friends Die in Afghanistan. The Guilt Has Nearly Killed Me."
Linehan recently sat down with our Nick Schifrin.
NICK SCHIFRIN: As you sit here, do you feel guilty about surviving?
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN (RET.), Journalist: I don't feel guilty about surviving. I feel guilty
that I'm on camera talking about my deployment.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Because other people can't keep doing that?
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: Yes, yes, because other people can't.
Guilt is a kind of catalyst. You come back feeling guilty, and so you start drinking
to repress it. Maybe you start, in my case, like abusing drugs.
For me, it just felt like nihilism. What's the point of being alive?
NICK SCHIFRIN: Take me back to 2010. Take me back to Kandahar. Tell me what happened
in the village of Sangsar.
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: One day, they just -- they hit us with a suicide bomber, and we just
were completely blindsided by that.
The guy walked right up to my squad leader. And it killed five people and it wounded,
you know, several more.
And I remember thinking like immediately, I'm in some way kind of responsible for this.
NICK SCHIFRIN: You had 18 people killed during your deployment, right? That is a lot of people.
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: Yes. Our battalion lost, yes, 18, 18 people.
NICK SCHIFRIN: What you experienced was traumatic, and it deeply affected you. How much despair
did you go through?
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: The way it manifested for me was, I mean, drinking.
You know, alcoholism is a problem in my family, on my father's side of the family. And my
grandfather kind of set the tone for that when he came back from World War II. And so
I just kind of -- maybe that was just the subconscious blueprint that I had to follow.
And so I drank an excessive amount. Drug abuse, right? I was like, why am I going to go get
-- you know, what's the point of getting enrolled in the VA if -- and going, seeing -- going
to a therapist and stuff, because they're going to tell me that, you know, life is worth
living?
Like, show me the evidence.
NICK SCHIFRIN: At this point, you understand that some of the guilt you felt was irrational.
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: Mm-hmm.
NICK SCHIFRIN: You talk about existential survivor guilt being resistant to logic.
What does that mean, and why is it resistant to logic?
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: So, if you would ask me if I felt guilty for anything I did in Afghanistan
around the time that I started to kind of have this breakdown, I would have said no.
The guilt is masking something else, because when I was over there, and I saw these things,
I felt afraid, and -- but I didn't feel sad. And so I thought, I don't have a right to
say I have PTSD, because, when I saw it happen, I didn't feel anything. I was numb.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Meaning you know guys who went through worse.
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: Yes.
Trauma was a guy getting his leg blown off or people getting shot or people getting killed.
That was trauma. That's traumatic. Simply witnessing it, that's -- I mean, there are
light years between those two experiences.
And so me kind of -- that's something I wrestle with a lot.
NICK SCHIFRIN: How did you lose the feeling of doom?
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: I remembered that, when I left Afghanistan, I had this really kind
of, like, life was incredible.
And you see people you see people do bad things, but you also see people do extraordinarily
good things, you know? So it's good to be reminded of that, you know?
And trying to get back a little bit of that way that I felt, because, at the end of the
deployment, you just -- you're looking forward to life.
NICK SCHIFRIN: And it seems to me that this is where your grandfather's story comes in.
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: So, my grandfather was a B-24 pilot in Europe, and he flew somewhere
between 44 and 50 missions.
And he flew D-Day with the 8th Air Force. He came home, his brother came home from the
Pacific, and they started at a company together. And it was really successful.
And somewhere around the age I am now, things started to, you know, turn in the other direction.
And when it -- when it happened, it happened really fast.
I mean, if you don't have any other ways of coping with this stuff, if you don't believe
that there is a any other way to cope with it, you're just going to continue drinking.
I mean, my grandfather didn't see the point of getting sober.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Do you feel at some point you realized there was a point to staying sober?
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: Yes.
I mean, at some point I realized that if I just keep doing what I'm going to -- what
I'm doing, my life is going to turn out like his.
NICK SCHIFRIN: And so you realized, as you write, that moving on isn't running away.
What does that mean?
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: For me, that's like -- that was like a really profound realization.
I was trying to put as much distance between myself and all of the kind of the guilt and
drama of going to war that's inevitable, the people who got wounded and killed, even the
personal dramas between people who are so -- who are living so closely together and
get to know each other.
You feel like you're kind of abandoning them, you know, just repress the memory of them
too, and sever contact and stuff. And so reconnecting has been like a -- it's been incredible.
NICK SCHIFRIN: So now you have made those contacts. You have thought about what you
have done.
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: Yes.
NICK SCHIFRIN: You understand a little bit more.
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: I understand a little bit more. That's all there is, you know? You understand
a little bit more.
That is -- in itself, can just dial the pressure down, and you just kind of shift your way
of thinking about these things. And you will see that there are other -- you will see possibilities.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Someone who's felt the despair that you felt, when they read this piece,
what understanding do you want them to have?
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: That the stuff that you saw over there, and what you learned over
there about yourself, about the way that the world works, it doesn't go away.
You're never going to be able to forget that. So, you have to figure out how to integrate
that wisdom into your life, because that's what it is. It's wisdom, if you let it be.
The challenge is to be able to carry that gracefully, with courage, to be an example
for other people. And I think, like, you can really become someone extraordinary if you
are able to kind of leverage that for good.
So, I think that's what I -- yes, that's what I want them to understand.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Adam, the piece you have written is extraordinary.
SGT. ADAM LINEHAN: Thank you.