Out of the shadows: One Veteran’s journey through trauma, substance use and renewal 

The lingering trauma from his service in Desert Shield and Desert Storm followed him home, silent but suffocating. The memories—walking through unfamiliar neighborhoods, uncertain who may attack—were ever-present. The stress, fear and unknowns never faded.

“Just collecting intelligence and seeing what the effects were,” Brian Treasure recalled, “it’s not as clean and clinical as you would see on the news.”

After leaving the Navy, Treasure found work as an executive assistant. The job allowed him to buy a house and settle into a routine. On the surface, life was good—at least, it looked that way.

But the past doesn’t always stay in the past. 

A dark descent

Despite his success, Treasure couldn’t escape the nightmares. They came relentlessly, night after night, dragging him back to places he wanted to forget. Then came his introduction to drugs.

What started as a way to cope quickly spiraled into something much darker. His life unraveled. The job disappeared, the house was gone and he found himself homeless. His first attempt at rehab ended in relapse. With nowhere else to go, he fell back into old habits.

“I really had no place to go,” he said. “So I found myself right back down here in this neighborhood. And unfortunately, back with the same people, around the same influences. And it was a very short period of time before I had relapsed again.”

Meth became his escape. It kept him awake for days, sometimes weeks at a time. Most importantly, it kept the nightmares away.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “And my main thing was it kept me from having the nightmares. It made me feel good. And I didn’t have to dream.”

But addiction came with consequences. Arrests piled up. His health declined.

During his last stint in jail, his health reached a critical point. “I had a lot of difficulties breathing. I couldn’t lay down. Didn’t have the energy to walk up a flight of stairs,” Treasure shared. “First night out, I got released and realized I really had a problem, and I was really struggling. I got into the emergency department, and that’s when they discovered that I was in heart failure. They immediately admitted me to telemetry and started treating me there.”

A turning point

That hospital stay was the turning point.

While recovering, Treasure was assigned a telehealth nurse who treated him kindly and patiently.

“This is also where I started reconnecting with other Veterans and feeling that camaraderie again, feeling that comfort, that being welcome,” he said.

He felt like he belonged again for the first time in a long time.

A new path forward

At VA, Treasure learned about the Compensated Work Therapy (CWT) program—a way for Veterans battling addiction, homelessness and mental health struggles to reenter the workforce. He saw a bulletin board about safety inspections and immediately saw an opportunity.

His enthusiasm paid off. When Treasure met program supervisor Carlos Aguilar, he came prepared. Treasure brought a notebook filled with safety procedures and policies he had written himself.

“He handed me a notebook, and it was all the previous work he’d done in the safety room,” said Aguilar, a former occupational safety and health chief and Army Veteran. “He had procedures. He had policies. That impressed me right out the gate.”

Treasure was hired full-time to a position just for him.

“They actually established a position so that they could hire me,” he said. “And now I’m the safety manager.”

But Treasure’s journey didn’t stop there. Now he helps others in the same situation he was once in. Veterans coming through the CWT program work under him, and many have moved on to full-time jobs, either at VA or elsewhere.

Now he’s giving back to the system that helped save him.

Treasure has also used his experiences to help shape programs at VA, including participating in developing a needle exchange program. His firsthand knowledge of addiction gave him a unique perspective on what the initiative needed to succeed.

“I was able to use my experience as a former drug abuser to help them understand some of the nuances that the program needed to have,” he added.

Redemption and giving back

Today, Treasure stands as proof that redemption is possible. He is no longer the man who was lost, wandering the streets. He is a leader, a mentor and a Veteran who fought his way back.

For Veterans like Treasure, the battle doesn’t always end when the uniform comes off. Sometimes the hardest fight is the one to reclaim your life. With the proper support, that battle can be won.