Jennifer Barnhill is a columnist for Military.com writing about military families.
In 2023, the Surgeon General of the United States said that loneliness is more deadly than smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Given the deployments, long work hours and other demands of uniformed life, military spouses may be more at risk for developing dangerous coping mechanisms than the average American.
But many do not ask for help because they don't know they have a problem.
When we think about substance abuse and the military, we typically think about service members and veterans with stories that end with a dishonorable discharge or homelessness. But that's only one side of the story.
“From the outside perspective, things looked fine,” said Liv, a Coast Guard spouse of 15 years who has no family history of substance abuse. She shared that, growing up in the Northeast, drinking was as ubiquitous as eating processed food: not great for you, but an accepted — if not embraced — part of life. After she met and married her husband in 2009 at the height of the recession, military deployments, moves and kids slowly entered the equation. Liv found herself juggling more and more. And the more she juggled, the more she felt the need to decompress with a glass of wine at the end of each night.
Because Liv and others in this piece have not made their struggles public within their communities, Military.com has omitted last names to maintain their privacy.
To deal…
