For Tyler Wright, sheriff’s deputy with Florida Law Enforcement, the anxiety and flashbacks that came with PTSD were becoming unbearable.
Wright had responded to traumatic incidents throughout his career — violent homicides, suicides, child sexual abuse investigations — but one two-month period in particular stuck with him.
During that time, he was involved in a shooting and he responded to a car crash where he crawled through flames in an attempt to recover the family who had been in the vehicle.
After these incidents, he began experiencing nightmares and flashbacks. He remembers standing in the kitchen one day preparing breakfast for his daughter and feeling transported back to the crash.
‘I would think, ‘please, don’t let me die,’ he said. ‘I was deemed unable to return to work, because of the trauma and the ramifications of that trauma, and how it bled over to my personal life.’