LETTERS: Monday

Pill after pill no solution

I was angered by the Aug. 30 headline: “PTSD drug draws concern.”

We are still failing our soldiers with inadequate medical care after their deployment. They return home after months of horror — sights no human should be exposed to. Picking up body parts is the worst job I can imagine, as one of their daily tasks.

We then send them home with pill after pill until many die from the drugs interactions that are supposed to help them return to a normal army/family life or they commit suicide because they think that if this is the best I can ever be again, I want out. If there is no help but drugs or talk therapy, you can see the world as too hard to live with after war.

I have had PTSD, suffering nightmares, flashbacks and was offered EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) by a psychiatrist in the Springs. It takes away years spent on talk therapy and desensitizes your brain to reprocess the horrible events into just memories. After 8-12 half-hour sessions you can once again cope with normal life. The flashbacks, night sweats, insomnia can be greatly reduced. You don’t need to be on a dangerous amount of medication.

If your son or daughter comes back from war not the person you raised because of what he or she experienced in deployment, stand by him or her and act as his best advocate for his health until he is healthy in mind and spirit. Don’t let strangers who don’t know him as a individual decide his fate. We owe our soldiers the best health care and chance of recovery for themselves, their children and spouses.

Linda Terry

Colorado Springs

Where’s the common sense?

Recently we took what we thought would be a pleasant ride up to the beautiful Estes Park, and were amazed by what I consider ignorance, stupidity and disrespect for other people sharing the road with the cyclist groups riding in the same direction.

I was just beside myself trying to figure out why they take such chances on a busy road, riding two and three abreast, when if they rode single file, they would be much safer and traffic would flow much better. This highway barely provides enough lane for one bike, let alone two or three, yet they persist in riding almost half way into the traffic lanes and take the chance of getting hit by a car.

I know there are 3-foot laws that protect this breed of risk takers, but there should also be laws to protect the car drivers and keep the cyclists in a single file. There were several instances where traffic was stopped, because the road did not lend enough width for two cars to pass in opposite directions and two or three cyclists riding side by side that were not going to change.

I don’t know what it is, but when they put that helmet on their heads and slip into their colorful Spandex outfits, they seem to get stupid and numb between the ears.

What ever happened to that 7th sense, called common sense?

Robert Raskey

Falcon

City’s face is just fine

I guess Bob Armintor (Letters, Aug. 31) doesn’t like Colorado Springs’ face. He is entitled to his opinion of course, but I like the city’s face just fine.

His complaint, I guess, is religion. He wrote “where are the moderate religious voices in our community?”

Bob, they are everywhere. You are just not looking or listening. They are in the church on the corner, they are people in the malls, they are driving past you and in front of you on the streets. They are in the military at Fort Carson and Peterson AFB; they are all over the place. They speak with their actions, deeds, and kindness. Are you listening?

Much of what you wrote I agree with, i.e., “reach out to those you may not know, etc.” But to compare intolerance to the Holocaust was just plain wrong.

Armintor wrote “Let’s join together to change the national public face of Colorado Springs.” No, I like our face just fine.

Steve Sinn

Manitou Springs

‘Too extreme for Colorado’

A Democratic TV ad accuses Ken B uck of wanting to “rewrite” the Constitution by having U.S. senators elected by the state legislature, and calling that “too extreme for Colorado.”

They correctly point out that the current way we elect senators has worked for close to one hundred years, but how did we select senators before that? By the founding fathers original intent, the state legislatures! Do our Democratic friends think the founding fathers are “too extreme for Colorado?” Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution was changed in 1913 by the 17th Amendment to allow direct election of senators. Perhaps Buck is not trying to “rewrite” the Constitution, but “restore” it. Think about it.

Jon Ainsworth

Colorado Springs