EPISODE #42  |  December 20th, 2019

Guest: Angie Peacock, MSW, United States Army Veteran

It was right after 9/11, when Angie Peacock of the United States Army received orders for combat duty in Iraq. But the designated warzone proved to be only one segment of the battle that she was about to endure. Prior to deployment, Angie was sexually assaulted. With the unspoken toll that such trauma was taking mentally and emotionally, and with the call of duty involved in the Middle East, a new war was beginning to wage from within. Angie began to significantly lose weight. Panic attacks blindsided her. She was fighting for survival. Angie had to be medevacked to Germany for essential medical care.

The tour of duty required for her healing has been years in the making. Having been immediately treated with 18 different medications when she arrived in Germany, Angie’s life was halted. She was told she could never go to school again, that she would be on medication for the rest of her life, that the PTSD was getting worse. She wouldn’t leave her house and eventually became homeless. She was a war veteran who had suffered normal reactions to trauma, yet she felt like she had fallen hostage to the treatment that was supposed to help her. After years of significant struggle, she took up her most strategic maneuver yet. See – in our first-ever Mental Health Matters remote video podcast – how Angie has pulled herself up by her bootstraps with copious outside help and support to go the distance with a new documentary that tells her story, in an RV, all across the Southwest.