In military culture, resilience is often framed as endurance — pushing through, carrying on, not slowing down. Strength is measured by how much stress an individual can shoulder without falling apart.
Have you ever felt anxious because you weren’t confident with how to treat a specific patient? Join the club! This anxiety with new professionals, though, seems to lead to low confidence as a professional overall. So how do you gain professional confidence? Is it in knowing how to treat each patient you encounter or something else? This week I explore this question and content that professional confidence doesn’t lie in “knowing what to do” but knowing how to figure it out.
When we think about alcohol or substance abuse in the military, most of us jump to familiar explanations: PTSD, deployment trauma, combat stress. These are the headline drivers we expect to see on intake forms and clinical assessments. But lurking quietly, often unnoticed and unspoken, is another powerful risk factor, one that rarely makes it onto the paperwork or into clinical interviews: boredom.
Parts I and II explored how opioids act on the brain and how American history — particularly its wars — helped fuel cycles of addiction. Now, we turn to the present. This final installment of “Who Can? We Can, Narcan!” focuses on the lifesaving tools that can interrupt that cycle, from medication-assisted treatment to emergency overdose reversal. In the military and veteran communities, where resilience is both a strength and a barrier to care, these interventions are transforming how we talk about and respond to overdose risk.
Hopefully, the title hooked you. Now what am I talking about? And who is “us”? The “what” is conversations about firearm safety and suicide prevention. The “who” is healthcare providers. Let’s take a few steps back…