This. A LOT of this. There’s a reason why the VFW has/had a lot of alcohol available, cigarettes were super popular, and why biker clubs became a thing post-war. The “greatest generation” was doing a lot of self-medication without managing to fix anything.
You can kind of see boomers become aware of how that’s not okay, as the tone of war movies shifts dramatically from WWII to Vietnam. They still missed the mark, but at least the idea of vets having “flashbacks” was something in popular media from that point forward. It was progress, if however minimal and incremental.
While society collectively knew very little about proper nutrition, and many of them were also inadvertently ingesting a fuckton of lead. In that light, it’s actually kind of insane we’re not on an even worse timeline…
Totally underrated topic is how many Boomers were raised by WWII veterans with severe, untreated PTSD
This. A LOT of this. There’s a reason why the VFW has/had a lot of alcohol available, cigarettes were super popular, and why biker clubs became a thing post-war. The “greatest generation” was doing a lot of self-medication without managing to fix anything.
You can kind of see boomers become aware of how that’s not okay, as the tone of war movies shifts dramatically from WWII to Vietnam. They still missed the mark, but at least the idea of vets having “flashbacks” was something in popular media from that point forward. It was progress, if however minimal and incremental.
While society collectively knew very little about proper nutrition, and many of them were also inadvertently ingesting a fuckton of lead. In that light, it’s actually kind of insane we’re not on an even worse timeline…