If my plastic brain (see my last two blogs) has been stamped with some ugly combat images, why not drop a couple of pleasant, high-adrenaline memories on top of the bad ones?

That’s the premise that X Sports 4 Vets is based on, and the program based out of Missoula, Mont., seems to be helping a number of vets.  You can learn more about the program at http://xsports4vets.org/

One form of therapy is whitewater rafting down the Lochsa River, a 20-mile stretch of wild and scenic river in western Idaho that boasts 25 class 3-4-and-5 rapids. I floated the Lochsa a few years ago, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill for me.

“When I got out on the river, it was like team-building,” says Brandon Bryant, an Air Force vet. “It was exciting without the inherent danger of going out in the field.”

During five and a half years in the Air Force, Bryant fought the war from a cubicle in Las Vegas, where he was the co-pilot of a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) Predator.  “When we shot missiles, I was the one who guided them into the target,” he told me.

But the first deaths he witnessed were American soldiers returning from a mission in Iraq just after dawn.  “We saw something that looked like a buried IED (improvised explosive device) in the road, but we couldn’t stop them. The first vehicle went over it. Then the second went over it. It exploded, and everyone died,” he says. “I was 19 at the time and I felt guilty, as though I was responsible for the deaths of our military members. That’s when I knew I would never be the same again.”

In one sense, it was like being a bombardier in Vietnam. In another, it was a lot worse.

“We flew the Predator by satellite in Iraq and Afghanistan, gathering intelligence for a week or so unless our guys were under attack,” he says. “Then we found out where the bad guys were shooting from, and we would drop bombs on them.  I could see the aftermath of every strike.”

When Bryant returned home, he was diagnosed with 100 percent PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). He carried a lot of guilt and a lot of anger at people who had little regard for their own lives or the lives of others. And he isolated himself from most civilians, including his own family, who couldn’t understand what he’d been through.

That changed on the river.

“Being in combat, that adrenaline rush comes with worry,” says Bryant. “Deep in your gut, you’re not sure if something bad is going to happen until it’s all over. But out on the river, you know that if something bad happens, you’ve got a lot of guys around to help you. So there’s no risk of dying.”

I’m with Bryant to a point, but when I floated the Lochsa, I knew there was a risk of death. I felt we were challenging a huge natural element, something that was dangerous but not malevolent, something that could kill you but didn’t necessarily want to.

There was a lot of teamwork involved in pulling the oars together strongly so we could power the raft over a curl of boiling whitewater without it flipping backward and dumping us into the frigid water.

And when one of my friends, sitting in the seat directly in front of me, got washed into the river, I jumped to my feet, pushed an oar at him, pulled him over to the side of the raft, grabbed the shoulder pads of his life vest, lifted him as high as I could and then fell backward, dragging him on top of me into the raft. What a rush that was!

Adrenaline is a huge part of floating the Lochsa River, just as it’s a huge part of surviving combat. But we now know that adrenaline also plays a large role in enhancing memory for emotional events, so that voluntary exercise that involves an adrenaline rush may facilitate the “learning” of safety and the consolidation of new, positive memories.

Paul Gasser, a neuroscientist at Marquette University in Milwaukee, says that just the exercise from extreme sports reduces stress. “Exercise is at least as effective an antidepressant as any of the pharmaceutical treatments,” he told me recently.

Gasser and his colleagues have been tracking adrenaline and a hormone called cortisol in both humans and laboratory animals. Adrenaline is secreted into the bloodstream instantly by the adrenal gland during “fight-or-flight” situations because it enhances quick bursts of energy for survival purposes, heightened memory function, and a lower sensitivity to pain. Cortisol, an important stress hormone also secreted by the adrenal gland, acts more slowly to facilitate adaption and recovery after stress.

After reading Dr. Norman Doidge’s remarkable book, The Brain that Changes Itself,  I tracked Doidge down by phone at his office in the University of Toronto to ask whether neuroplasticity (see my previous blog, “The Plastic Brain”) could be used as a therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“Yes,” he said immediately, adding that EMDR was the most promising treatment that he was aware of.

A number of counselors are already using eye movement and desensitization reprogramming with promising results. EMDR involves remembering a painful incident, but stripping it of its emotional content by asking the patient to follow the therapist’s fingers with his or her eyes. Then when the memory is stored away again, it’s in a less threatening form. Dr. Francine Shapiro, the founder of EMDR, found that three 90-minute sessions could alleviate symptoms of civilian PTSD in more than 77 percent of the patients she treated.

Several years ago, I interviewed Heather Krysak, who had recently ended a nine-year career with the New York National Guard in which she had been involved in heavy combat in Iraq that left her battling anxiety, fear, nightmares, depression and anger.

“Eye movement desensitization was really weird,” she told me. “It brought things out of my memory that I had been totally repressing from Iraq. One moment I was laughing, and the next moment I was crying.”

While she still experiences nightmares, she said, they were less intense and much less frequent after her EMDR therapy.

A related alternative is emotional freedom techniques (EFT), which involves remembering a painful incident. Four elements are generally components of this trauma: 1) it’s a perceived threat to survival; 2) it overwhelms the coping capacity, creating a sense of powerlessness; 3) it violates expectations; and 4) it creates a feeling of isolation and aloneness. While remembering this trauma, the vet puts a positive spin on it and begins tapping a series of acupressure points (the same points that the Chinese have used for acupuncture over the past five millennia).  A vet might say, “I had to shoot the kid who ran toward my Humvee wearing an explosive vest, but I completely and fully accept myself” and begin tapping his way through five acupressure points on his face and three on his torso. For exact locations, check out the EFT Web site: http://www.emofree.com/

One of the most passionate advocates of EFT is Ken Self of Boston, a veteran of 11 years in the Marine Corps who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and two more tours in Iraq. He had three issues that were crippling him emotionally, including being forced to shoot a child.  “That came back to me night after night for years,” he told me recently. Before he started the therapy, he rated his anxiety levels as 8 on a scale of 10, but after tapping them out, they were reduced to 0, he said.

“After tapping, you still have the emotion, but it doesn’t own you,” he said.  “It’s not overwhelming. It’s just a memory.”

For more information, visit the Veterans’ Stress Project at http://www.stressproject.org/

The Veterans Stress Project has completed a study in which 59 vets with PTSD received EFT. EFT is a drug-free coaching technique which can be done via Skype. It involves brief cognitive and exposure protocols but adds the novel element of the vet’s own physical stimulation by light tapping. Before treatment, the group averaged 66 on the Traumatic
Stress Disorder Checklist-Military (PCL-M) test on which 50 or above is considered PTSD, but after six one-hour coaching sessions, the average score dropped to 35. On follow up, average scores remained far below the clinical criteria for PTSD at 35 on three-month follow-up and 38 on six-month follow up.

Dawson Church, founder of the non-profit, concluded: “The wait-list group’s results were unchanged over time, while the EFT group demonstrated statistically significant drops in PTSD, from clinical to subclinical scores, as well as improvement in the severity and breadth of a range of comorbid psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. The results of the present study are consistent with previous trials showing that brief EFT interventions improve PTSD as well as co-occurring conditions, with gains maintained over time.”

The Veterans Stress Project is looking for vets with military-related stress who are willing to participate in further studies, including an exact replication of the trial described above. For more information, visit the Veterans’ Stress Project Web site, listed above, or call 707-237-6951.

While I’m not affiliated with EFT in any way, I should say that I have personally benefited from it. In 1997, I was driving my rig along a frontage road outside of Great Falls, Mont., when a battered old car slowed down in the approaching traffic lane and the left turn signal came on.  Just as I approached it, the car edged into my lane and broadsided me on the driver’s side door. My rig dropped into the ditch, came up over a driveway and became airborne. It landed on its passenger side wheels and rolled; I remember seeing the windshield blow out in slow motion. The rig was totaled. I was unharmed but very shaken up.

For the next few years, I had an unusual reaction every time I approached a car signaling to cross my lane of traffic. My heart started pounding, my throat constricted, my mouth got dry and my gut twisted. I generally had a strong urge to stop dead in the road and wave the guy in front of me across the road.

Then a friend introduced me to EFT. The next time an approaching car signaled a left-hand turn, I told myself, “This scares me, but I totally believe that driver will obey the traffic laws.” Tapping seven pressure points seemed too complicated, so I just tapped my own breastbone, right over my thumping heart. After four or five encounters, I was totally surprised to realize that I no longer needed to do it. And it has not been a problem since.

I wondered at the time if that was like PTSD so I asked a local counselor about it. “You were probably suffering a small stress disorder, but a tiny one compared to most vets,” he said. “You were in an accident, but you weren’t harmed, nor was anyone else. You weren’t out in the field, picking up pieces of your friends and putting them in body bags. And this happened to you once, not two or three times a day for 12 or 15 months.”

That gave me a whole new appreciation for what our combat vets are going through.

After reading Dr. Norman Doidge’s remarkable book, The Brain that Changes Itself,  I tracked Doidge down by phone at his office in the University of Toronto to ask whether neuroplasticity (see my previous blog, “The Plastic Brain”) could be used as a therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“Yes,” he said immediately, adding that EMDR was the most promising treatment that he was aware of.

A number of counselors are already using eye movement and desensitization reprogramming with promising results. EMDR involves remembering a painful incident, but stripping it of its emotional content by asking the patient to follow the therapist’s fingers with his or her eyes. Then when the memory is stored away again, it’s in a less threatening form. Dr. Francine Shapiro, the founder of EMDR, found that three 90-minute sessions could alleviate symptoms of civilian PTSD in more than 77 percent of the patients she treated.

Several years ago, I interviewed Heather Krysak, who had recently ended a nine-year career with the New York National Guard in which she had been involved in heavy combat in Iraq that left her battling anxiety, fear, nightmares, depression and anger.

“Eye movement desensitization was really weird,” she told me. “It brought things out of my memory that I had been totally repressing from Iraq. One moment I was laughing, and the next moment I was crying.”

While she still experiences nightmares, she said, they were less intense and much less frequent after her EMDR therapy.

A related alternative is emotional freedom techniques (EFT), which involves remembering a painful incident. Four elements are generally components of this trauma: 1) it’s a perceived threat to survival; 2) it overwhelms the coping capacity, creating a sense of powerlessness; 3) it violates expectations; and 4) it creates a feeling of isolation and aloneness. While remembering this trauma, the vet puts a positive spin on it and begins tapping a series of acupressure points (the same points that the Chinese have used for acupuncture over the past five millennia).  A vet might say, “I had to shoot the kid who ran toward my Humvee wearing an explosive vest, but I completely and fully accept myself” and begin tapping his way through five acupressure points on his face and three on his torso. For exact locations, check out the EFT Web site: http://www.emofree.com/

One of the most passionate advocates of EFT is Ken Self of Boston, a veteran of 11 years in the Marine Corps who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and two more tours in Iraq. He had three issues that were crippling him emotionally, including being forced to shoot a child.  “That came back to me night after night for years,” he told me recently. Before he started the therapy, he rated his anxiety levels as 8 on a scale of 10, but after tapping them out, they were reduced to 0, he said.

“After tapping, you still have the emotion, but it doesn’t own you,” he said.  “It’s not overwhelming. It’s just a memory.”

For more information, visit the Veterans’ Stress Project at http://www.stressproject.org/

The Veterans Stress Project has completed a study in which 59 vets with PTSD received EFT. EFT is a drug-free coaching technique which can be done via Skype. It involves brief cognitive and exposure protocols but adds the novel element of the vet’s own physical stimulation by light tapping. Before treatment, the group averaged 66 on the Traumatic
Stress Disorder Checklist-Military (PCL-M) test on which 50 or above is considered PTSD, but after six one-hour coaching sessions, the average score dropped to 35. On follow up, average scores remained far below the clinical criteria for PTSD at 35 on three-month follow-up and 38 on six-month follow up.

Dawson Church, founder of the non-profit, concluded: “The wait-list group’s results were unchanged over time, while the EFT group demonstrated statistically significant drops in PTSD, from clinical to subclinical scores, as well as improvement in the severity and breadth of a range of comorbid psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. The results of the present study are consistent with previous trials showing that brief EFT interventions improve PTSD as well as co-occurring conditions, with gains maintained over time.”

The Veterans Stress Project is looking for vets with military-related stress who are willing to participate in further studies, including an exact replication of the trial described above. For more information, visit the Veterans’ Stress Project Web site, listed above, or call 707-237-6951.

While I’m not affiliated with EFT in any way, I should say that I have personally benefited from it. In 1997, I was driving my rig along a frontage road outside of Great Falls, Mont., when a battered old car slowed down in the approaching traffic lane and the left turn signal came on.  Just as I approached it, the car edged into my lane and broadsided me on the driver’s side door. My rig dropped into the ditch, came up over a driveway and became airborne. It landed on its passenger side wheels and rolled; I remember seeing the windshield blow out in slow motion. The rig was totaled. I was unharmed but very shaken up.

For the next few years, I had an unusual reaction every time I approached a car signaling to cross my lane of traffic. My heart started pounding, my throat constricted, my mouth got dry and my gut twisted. I generally had a strong urge to stop dead in the road and wave the guy in front of me across the road.

Then a friend introduced me to EFT. The next time an approaching car signaled a left-hand turn, I told myself, “This scares me, but I totally believe that driver will obey the traffic laws.” Tapping seven pressure points seemed too complicated, so I just tapped my own breastbone, right over my thumping heart. After four or five encounters, I was totally surprised to realize that I no longer needed to do it. And it has not been a problem since.

I wondered at the time if that was like PTSD so I asked a local counselor about it. “You were probably suffering a small stress disorder, but a tiny one compared to most vets,” he said. “You were in an accident, but you weren’t harmed, nor was anyone else. You weren’t out in the field, picking up pieces of your friends and putting them in body bags. And this happened to you once, not two or three times a day for 12 or 15 months.”

That gave me a whole new appreciation for what our combat vets are going through.