Jason Kander on War, Politics, and PTSD

Episode notes

Jason Kander had heard of post-traumatic stress disorder. He just didn’t think he had it. After all, he hadn’t been in any firefights while stationed in wartime Afghanistan, he had merely worked as an intelligence officer. And even though that job put him in positions of tremendous vulnerability where he may have to kill or be killed in an instant, it never occurred to him that he was experiencing trauma.

So when Jason got back stateside and remained hypervigilant, was destroyed by night terrors, patrolled his house with a gun, and was generally a mess, he figured it was something that would soon go away. As he waited for that to happen, he climbed the ranks of Democratic politics, eventually being told by Barack Obama that he should consider running for the highest office in the land.

But you can’t run from mental illness forever. It catches you. It caught Jason in the middle of a race for Mayor of Kansas City. That’s when he hit bottom and got help. It’s a story told in his new book, Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD.

Get your copy of Jason’s book, Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD, wherever books are sold. Listen to Majority 54, Jason’s podcast with Ravi Gupta, wherever fine pods are cast. Visit Jason Kander’s website at JasonKander.com. Follow Jason on Twitter @JasonKander and on Instagram @jasonkander.

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