Air Force Veteran Credits VA With Saving His Life
Air Force Veteran George E. Carter, 66, credits the VA Maryland Health Care System with saving his life.
He says he cheated death multiple times. While serving in Korea during the tail end of the Vietnam Era, he became addicted to opium. “They had opium dens there, and that’s where I learned to ‘chase the dragon.’ That means a number of people are lying down in the den, smoking and then trying to discern dragons and other shapes in the smoke that filled the room. At the den, they also rented cheap rooms where you can stay, and that’s where I began spending all my free time.”
He returned from duty addicted to opium. “I’ve been a functional addict for a lot of my life,” said Carter. “I always worked, no matter what was going on in my life and despite being addicted.”
This work ethic came from his parents. As a teen, he had helped his father, Geroge H. Carter, then a renowned DJ in Baltimore, by hauling equipment to and from the truck his father had used for gigs and setting up the equipment. He held many other jobs because his parents had separated, and he helped his mother support the family long before he enlisted in the military.
After returning from service, he learned that one of his brothers had become a major drug dealer in Baltimore. “One morning, I was home alone when someone banged on the door. As soon as I opened it to answer, I was shot in the chest.” That was the first time Carter cheated death, and he remembers the near-death experience of being outside his body, watching the scene from above as paramedics worked on him and loaded him in the ambulance. “I was bleeding profusely and was in and out of body for the ambulance ride. I really believed I was going to die. Everything went light. I was being taken out of the ambulance, and my mother was waiting there. I remember telling her, ‘Don’t worry, I will be all right.” Carter woke up in a hospital bed at Bon Secure.
The close-range gunshot to the chest damaged his lungs, one of which collapsed. He suffered from broken ribs, severe lacerations on his arm, and one of his elbows was slashed open. Yet, he survived and recovered, but untreated addiction led him straight back to the same cycle of working hard and playing hard, and that meant continuing to “chase the dragon.”
He thought he could handle the addiction, that he could work and function at the same time he used substances. He tried drug rehab several times, to no avail. And he had been handling it all—being a functional addict since his return from military duty—holding a job, helping his mother support the family—until he reached a point where he couldn’t handle it anymore. “I lost a lot. I lost my job, my house, my car. My mother took the house key away from me and that cut. She would also feed me, but she wouldn’t allow me back inside the family house.” For good reason, during a four-year period of being homeless, he was beaten up, robbed, lived in abandoned houses and stayed warm during cold winters in those houses when others would light fires.
“I got sick of who I was,” he said. That’s when Carter sought help at the VA Maryland Health Care System and that became the turning point in his life. He spent weeks in the residential treatment program at the Perry Point VA Medical Center and then at the Baltimore VA Medical Center. He then started one of VA programs for transitional work and joined the compensated work therapy program. He worked in the health care system’s Medical Media Service, supporting audio visual and photography requests.
“Working in Medical Media was like being at home for me. That is what I did anyway, what I learned to do working with my dad setting up and operating his DJ equipment. I worked with audio-visual, and I was good at it.”
After three years, he was hired as a Medical Media employee and worked as an audio-visual production technician where he stayed for 23 years before retiring in 2022. “I can’t tell you how meaningful it was to me when my mother gave me a little box with the house key in it. That meant she trusted me again.”
Kellyanne Gibson, social work supervisor, who was part of the team that treated Carter when he arrived at the VA Maryland Health Care System said, “I’ve been working in the area of Substance Use Disorders and related mental health conditions with Veterans for over 25 years and Mr. Carter’s recovery journey has stayed with me because we had the opportunity to go from having a therapist/client relationship to becoming co-workers when he started as a VA employee.” She added, “Recovery is not linear, and it’s not always easy, but George’s story is a great example of how life-changing recovery can be! He puts in the work and is living the results.”
During the time he worked in Medical Media, Carter was able to buy a house and “marry my childhood sweetheart, the woman I had wanted to marry in my 20s. We’ve been married for four years now.”
Now retired, VA continues to help Carter, who recently suffered loss of five toes due to complications of diabetes. “I lost half of my left foot. Despite the amputation, I feel blessed. I want to give back. In the thick of my addiction, I never thought I’d be living the life I now live, married to my childhood sweetheart, living in my own house.”
Carter adds, “I don’t know what would have happened to me without the VA. What I do know is that addiction is a mental condition. One you can rise up from. I’m so grateful to the VA for the freedom from addiction and a chance for another chance.”
Carter hopes that this story reaches the hearts of Veterans who want to change.
Veterans who need assistance or who want information on treatment options for Substance Use Disorder (SUD), can call the Mental Health Triage Clinic at