A little introduction...

I always go by an alias name when posting on boards and interacting with others I'm not well familiar with over the net, so 'Steve Knight' is not my real name (you may have already figured so much), but feel free to call me 'Steve', anyway.

I am a veteran of the gulf war. I served in the National Guard for several years as a military police personnel. My company was one of several which served at one of the two American enemy prisoner of war camps...(we babysat the Iraqi prisoners). As I recall, we were roughly 50 miles or so from the border.

One thing I can tell you from personal experience, is that a lot of the stories are true...the sky going black for three days straight from the oil fires, remember that well...the 'malfunctioning' of chemical and biological detection gear, we had at least one incident where detections were made...inoculations, supposedly they were 'voluntary', wish someone had informed me (and the other 200 of us) of that. In reality, they were not...

I can see several things mentioned here in other peoples' posts, which I know something about...both theories on the causes, and various symptoms.

I could have told you that GWS was real almost a decade ago, by now...It's as real as a heart attack and it's slowly ruined my life.

The effects it's had on me have been far reaching, and still linger (to some extent) till this day.

It started off about 8 or 9 months after returning home, with fatigue and very deep depression. Within a matter of months, my life had deteriorated to the point to where I was merely living in a constant daze, never completely clear headed, always dead tired. Life was an endless blur. It did not matter in the least how many hours I slept, the only thing I ever wanted to do once I woke up, was go back to sleep.

I went through stretches where I would sleep all but about 4 hours or so out of the day...This was just falling asleep, and basically not waking up, or just getting up briefly to get something to eat, etc.

The worst of it lasted roughly 2 years straight. During this time, every single waking hour was accompanied by a never ending headache.  It was not unbearable, in fact, it was quite minor...but it was always there.

I started having migraine headaches whenever I worked out and exercised. Now, I've had them ever since I was a young boy, but up till that point, it was never like that. Back then, we'd be talking about 2 to 6 times in any given year...not every single time I physically exerted myself...I had to give up all strenuous exercising.

My mental capacity really plummeted. Short term memory was ever really bad...Had a very hard time concentrating and staying focused on things...especially stuff like reading.

I was only 22 years old at the time, and yet I experienced a complete loss of my sex drive.  This also lasted about 2 years straight.

I cant say as I've experienced the burning semen phenomenon, but I have had a few awkward occasions of experiencing a painful ejaculation...This was after my 'dark period', when I started to take an upturn. It was so rare (maybe a couple of times), that I don't generally refer to it as a symptom...It's just that it sorta stood out in my mind, after experiencing them.

I've found that I do not heal like I used to. I inherited a bad case of acne from my father, and I have a long history of dealing with it. Boils which used to commonly spring up and be gone within a week to ten days, can now be an amazing difficult thing to get rid of. Now, we're talking more along the lines of a matter of months...maybe 2, or even 3.

Not all of them even leave me then. I've had several of them turn into permanent lumps...not really doing anything, mind you...Some of them have even shrunk down in size to almost nothing...but they're still there, as a permanent fixture on various parts of my body.

I've had diarrhea quite frequently since returning, but not quite so much in recent months.

God!...What else?...There are a few other things I'm leaving out, I'm sure.

Initially, what broke me out of this was an act of desperation where I started using a high quality line of nutritional supplements (aphanizomenon flos-aquae algae, to be more specific). It worked quite well initially...though I did find that when I got back into the workforce, having to physically exert myself again greatly negated a lot of the effects...and I ended up just taking the stuff to get by (actually, I lost that job, because I could not keep up with the demand).

Since that time, I quite taking the supplements, because they aren't giving me much noticeable effect, for the kind of money it costs.

I have yet to fall back into the pattern of my 'dark years'...though I have some lingering effects which have reappeared to a lesser degree.

My stamina is very low...and even though I am actively stretching my 'awake' hours, I still cant seem to finally get used to being up all these hours...I'm just that much more tired all the time. I can try to stay up most of the day, like 'everybody else', but after several days it catches up with me, and hits me very hard.

I think the psychological effects have been the hardest to deal with...God!...Where do I even begin with that?...I've become increasingly anti-social (probably to an extreme), much of which I'm sure is due to the fact that I've spent an enormous amount of the last decade sleeping and/or away from other people...avoiding them, even...What this does to your nerves (I think I've perhaps had 'minor' panic attacks in the past), and even just the way you think...I'm not even sure if I can explain this accurately to someone who doesn't already understand.

At times, I feel like I've gone mad...or 'wild'...This really makes it hell trying to get back into the job market and successfully stay there...Not even certain I can get past 'myself' (much less the qualifications process), anymore.

The theories on the causes are...'interesting'...I know about squalene (known for several years, actually)...the vaccines...biological and chemical poisoning (and cover-ups, there of)...the oil fires...sand flies and the insects...Anybody herd the one about the experimental 'aids vaccine'?...that ones quite disturbing (but aren't they all?).

The 'warm soda' theory is a new one...to me, anyway. This is the first I've seen of that. I had no idea a soft drink could be so toxic...but I can verify that we were given tons of the stuff...and it was not uncommonly warm (a few times, I even drank it while it was almost hot from having set in the sun so long)...It sat around, uncooled for days and weeks at a time...and it was not uncommon to have 2 or 3 cans a day.

Mostly, I've just been leaning towards the shots, and chemical poisoning, as being the likely culprits...but this gives more food for thought.

One thing I know for certain, I do not trust the US government anymore...but please don't mistake that as an implication that I was ever a huge fan of government to begin with...I just now have something concrete on which to base my views that governments are basically evil...but they're an evil which is necessary to tolerate at some level...(Yes, I'm a libertarian).

With love...
Steve Knight

post on expiring discussion forum - in 2000