Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner spoke with MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” about his struggles with PTSD after he returned from the war, after clinching the Democratic nomination last night.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: With all of the controversies, the scandals, so-called scandals – it depends on voters’ point of view and whether they’re controversies or scandals – a lot of it, you have said, had to do with PTSD when you came back from service. And my God, I know families, I think for generations, have seen loved ones experience this, even when they didn’t call it PTSD. The lawyer in me, though, wants to try to figure out: What’s the timeline? I was going to say without getting too personal, but I guess you kind of need to get very personal if you want to represent the people of Maine in the United States Senate. Give us a timeline for your struggles with PTSD and how you believe it impacted you personally and explains many of the character failings that you yourself have talked about as you’ve tried working through. What is the timeframe for that PTSD, and where are you now? Are you still experiencing – again, I speak in ignorance because I didn’t fight in Iraq or Afghanistan or any war, so forgive me if this last part is ignorant – do you ever get past PTSD, or does it stay with – GRAHAM PLATNER: Much like getting over any kind of trauma, there isn’t like one day where you wake up, and you feel better. It’s a journey, a long journey. It required, at least in my case, a lot of love and support from my community and my family. It required a lot of support from the VA, which I’m very lucky that I got. I got home from my fourth deployment in 2011, and I got out of the Army in 2012. 2012-2016 was pretty dark for me. I was in Washington DC going to college, but I felt very isolated, very alone, and at that point was receiving no treatment at all. I got out of the infantry at a time when we just didn’t really talk about the fact that we were all suffering. It was this whole idea that we are just going to be tough and get through it, and it was not an effective solution. In 2016, I moved back to Maine. When I came back here, for one, I got involved in the VA – talked about the VA system – which then gave me access to a lot more treatment than I had access to in D.C., and things began to improve. But it’s a journey. I left D.C. in a pretty dark place, and it took me a number of years back here in Maine to really kind of find myself. I will say the single best thing that happened to me is, in 2017, I was exposed to oyster farming, and in 2018, I started to do that full time. From 2018 to last summer, that’s what I did. Sitting on the boat out in Frenchman Bay, looking across at Acadia National Park, talking to the seals and the eagles and relaxing with the bivalves – honestly, it did almost more for me than anything else. But it is continuous, and I wake up every single morning just trying to be a little bit better and kinder than the way I was before. Eventually, you get to a point where you begin to feel much more fulfilled, and I want to be much happier. For me, around 2021 was when I really started to feel like I was myself. I’m going to talk to my doc. My wife, Amy, and I, we still share and communicate our kind of true selves to each other. I think it’s a bit of a struggle, which of course, as you guys probably know, is always a bit of a struggle. But it’s one that is incredibly, incredibly fulfilling and well worth it. It’s made me, I think, a very happy and very fulfilled person. MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Well, first of all, the sights and sounds that you described, from Frenchman Bay to Acadia National Park, I know very well. And I could see how that would actually bring a lot of clarity. It’s a beautiful, incredible way of life in Maine – the way life should be. I also think that a lot of families who have struggled with their tours of duty in the years after can really appreciate what you’re sharing, and also showing that therapy is not a weakness. Therapy is building strength, and I can appreciate all of that.
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