The Vietnam War In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Being a part of the American Dream, most people are disgusted by the use of hard drugs. But little do most Americans know that soldiers during the Vietnam War were corrupted by the conditions of the war and left with no choice but to use hard drugs such as heroin in order to cope with their pain. Looking through Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried the troops in his novel were guilty of using hard drugs in order to cope with the war. The Vietnam war was a highly disputed war in the United States many Americans were against the fact that we were participating in this war in the first place. It infuriated the American population because their men were going to be stripped from them in order to fight in a War, they had no business being in. At first it was thought that drug use in Vietnam derived from the inability to withstand the temptation of an easily accessible drug. But when analyzing the behaviors and actions
Like Hughes he is making the argument that troops strictly used heroin to cope with the war. In addition to finding the source of their usage, Robins also found little to no evidence that their usage was actually an addiction because many of the troops did not relapse upon their return. According to Robins “most of them had no difficulty giving up heroin, and that should not have been surprising.” (Robins, 1) The troops came back to the life they left, alternatively leaving their war life behind. As seen in The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien came home to live a normal life along with the rest of the drug using troops in his combat unit, with the exception of Ted Lavender. Their Drug usage was suspended because it was not needed, had ted lavender made it home from his tour, he would have been greeted by the same love he left behind, ultimately eliminating his need for dopamine