Rob is a Navy veteran who lives in Woodstock, NY. In 1986, he was on a Navy ship off of Libya, pulling watermines out of the Gulf. Rob was one of two men on the ship authorized to carry a loaded firearm.

Sometimes the watermines were on the surface of the water. Other times, Rob recalled, “they put ‘em on anchors, so they’ll be 50 feet below the surface, so you can’t even see ‘em, so they’re very difficult to find.”

“It was a very, very stressful, super high stress time,” Rob said.

Rob is one of the U.S. veterans using marijuana to treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

It was first suggested to him by a Veterans Affairs doctor at the end of an appointment, who started the illicit conversation by saying, “Now I want to talk to you frankly.”

Cannabis has helped him “tremendously,”Rob said said, with his anger issues, anxiety, sleeping disorder, and ”just generally not being able to concentrate, my mind would often wander back into situations I didn’t necessarily want to always be remembering.”

Rob also did anger management and talk therapy, but was opposed to taking pharmaceutical medications, especially anti-depressants.

“I didn’t like how they made me feel,” he said.

When he started talking anti-depressants, he found himself growing increasingly depressed, reclusive, withdrawn from society, and even suicidal. Before the drugs, depression had never really been a factor in his PTSD.

When he first got out of the Navy, he was supposed to be an air traffic controller, but he “couldn’t handle the job,” he said.

He ended up not working for a while, then took on occasional landscaping and construction odd jobs, but couldn’t keep a regular schedule with his anxiety and sleeping issues.

Once he started using marijuana in 1991 or 1992, Rob said, he was able to get a 40-hour-a-week job with a construction firm “and progress my life to where I wanted it to go.”

“My ability to interact with the regular world was back,” he explained. ”It was helping me re-integrate into society after being in the military and being in situations in the military that were clearly uncomfortable.”

Rob said the marijuana helped him be able to talk to a therapist about the overwhelming guilt and anger that was plaguing him.

Back then he used it on a daily basis, but now he said it’s “probably more like once a week, if it’s been a rough week, maybe two or three times a week.”

“Honestly, knowing it’s there as an option makes it less necessary, but it nice to know that it’s there,” he said.

Rob is one of the New Yorkers, and also one of the U.S. veterans, who is hopeful for the legislation being looked at in the NY State Senate that could legalize marijuana for medicinal use in NY State.

“Basically, I’m telling you I do a criminal act to treat myself,” Rob emphasized. “And I will indeed break the law to make sure that I’m a better society member, but if that’s what the government forces me to do, then that’s a shame.”

“It’s a shame that I can serve my country and not get the treatment that even my doctors say I need,” Rob said.

But then he added: “I’m not ashamed, and I’m very proud to have served by country in the US Navy. I just think our government is fearful of something that maybe they should just let physicians take command of instead of a law enforcement aspect.”

Medical marijuana: the political

Medical marijuana: a doctor’s perspective

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

The post Medical marijuana: the personal appeared first on Metro.us.

Their wait to get help for disabilities might be longer than their deployments.

Veterans in New York regularly wait nearly two years for their disability claims to be processed, city officials said yesterday.

The New York office of the Department of Veterans Affairs faces an alarming backlog of disability claims, City Council members said in a letter Tuesday.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Veterans Chair and Councilman Mathieu Eugene wrote to U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, detailing a “massive backlog” of claims at the New York Regional Office.

A veteran applying for service-related benefits waits an average of 642 days before that first claim is processed, officials said.

“If true, this puts the New York Regional Office in the dubious position of having the second-longest average processing time in the country,” Quinn and Eugene wrote.

They added that 642 days “is a lifetime for those who are suffering and is simply unacceptable.”

More than 12,000 veterans have waited more than a year to even hear the decision on their claims, they added.

Meanwhile, the office has fewer employees than it did two years ago.

Shinseki has promised that the Department will clear the backlog of disability claims by 2015.

Follow Alison Bowen on Twitter @reporteralison.

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo and top lawmakers outlined Thursday an agreement for the state budget that closes a $1.3 billion gap with no new taxes or fees.

This budget, if it passes by the April 1 deadline, will be the third consecutive on-time or early budget under the Cuomo administration.

New York has not had a budget on track this far in advance of the deadline since 1976. The last time there were three consecutive on-time budgets was in 1984.

The budget affords $1.125 billion in new tax cuts to middle class families over three years, as well as a new child tax credit of $350 per year for three years for families earning between $40,000 and $300,000.

It also includes nearly $800 million over three years in tax breaks for businesses, a move the lawmakers hope will “help reverse New York’s longstanding reputation as the tax capital of the nation.”

Just as the New York City Council recently approved a measure to help veterans get licensed for employment when they return home, the state budget adds additional incentive for hiring those just home from serving: a permanent tax credit for hiring veterans.

Lawmakers have also allocated $181 million in tax credits over three years for businesses hiring young people, and the minimum wage is set to increase to $8 per hour by the end of this year, and ultimately to $9 by the end of 2015.

Some more experimental education initiatives are receiving a support from the Capitol, including $4 million for early college high school programs, like Bard High School Early College on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, once of the first such programs established in partnership with Bard College and the Department of Education in 2001.

Another $15 million is going to “an innovative program designed to transform schools into community hubs that integrate social, health and other services, as well as after-school programming to support students and their families,” a seemingly salient allocation in light of the calls for more community programs for young people in areas like East Flatbush, where violence broke out last week following the shooting of allegedly armed 16-year-old Kimani Gray by plainclothes NYPD officers.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

The post NY state budget agreement on track and time — again appeared first on Metro.us.

For the second time in two years, Kevin Kirwan, a logistics specialist for the Navy for 14 years in places like North Africa, can’t find a job.

Kirwan, 37, is one of an estimated 210,000 veterans in the city, many struggling to find employment after years of service.

The City Council met Monday to discuss ways to help them get hired.

According to the Council, the unemployment rate for recent veterans rose from 9.1 percent to 11.7 percent from 2012 to 2013. Meanwhile, the general unemployment rate fell from 8.3 percent to 7.9, percent.

“People who go out to fight for us, that protect our country, deserve the best, and we need to continue to give them the tools that are going to make them viable when they return,” Brooklyn Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez said.

Many vets struggle to translate battlefield experience for civilian jobs. And even if they were trained for jobs that exist in civilian life, they return only to find they are qualified to fix plumbing in Iraq, but not Queens.

To apply for a license, many city jobs require experience in the city or U.S. — meaning overseas military experience does not apply.

“If your work as a plumber or an electrician was good enough for the armed forces, it should be good enough for New York City,” Veterans Committee chair Mathieu Eugene said in the Monday hearing.

Metro profiled Kirwan in a 2011 story. After the article, his experience with logistics and administration landed him a job at Chase, but his project ended in January.

After three months of job fairs, visits to veterans’ help centers and countless applications—and with a 13-month-old son – he is worried about paying the bills.

“It’s frustrating,” he told Metro.

Kirwan is also trained as a safety inspector. Despite those skills, he would likely need local experience to get a job. But the Council bill might streamline skipping that step.

“This will definitely help,” he said, adding, “There’s just not get enough jobs until you get yourself in front of the right manager.”

The post An electrician in Iraq, but not in Queens appeared first on Metro.us.

The City Council will meet today to discuss ways to help veterans get hired.

Council members hope to streamline the process for vets who return to New York only to find they were qualified to fix electrical problems in Iraq, but not Queens.

For example, an electrician in the Army would have to get re-certified to use those same skills in the civilian world.

“If you’ve had the experience of working as an electrician in a war zone, you’re more than qualified to be an electrician in New York City,” Council Speaker Christine Quinn said.

Just last week, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America reported that new veterans’ unemployment rate is stubbornly higher than the national rate. Post-9/11 veterans’ unemployment was 9.4 percent in February — 1.7 percent higher than the rest of the country, the group said.

Metro has previously written about veterans struggling to get jobs in New York — often, they can have trouble translating skills on the battlefield to the civilian world.

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