I served in the military twice: first in the Marine Corps as a loadmaster on C-130s and C-9s from 1995 to 1999, and then as a sergeant in the Army. I deployed with my artillery unit to Iraq; we were there from October 2005 through October 2006.

My unit was on Balad Air Base, in the center of the Sunni Triangle, in the middle of the sectarian violence during Saddam’s trial. That was probably either the worst time in Iraq or second worst, after the initial invasion. The base got mortared so often it was known as Mortaritaville.

The base I was on had a concrete plant, and we needed a lot of gravel delivered. Every morning, there was a giant lineup of about 200 dump trucks waiting to get on the base and drop off gravel. One morning, we opened the gate for everyone to come in, but none of the trucks moved. So we sent out a team and went truck by truck, and every single person had been shot in the head.

That was a bad day.

In April 2006, I got blown up in a porta-john. A mortar landed and threw shrapnel through the walls while I was using the toilet in the middle of the night — I’m actually alive because I was tired and sat down to pee. All the shrapnel missed me, but I was knocked out for a little bit. That’s probably where my traumatic brain injury came from.

When I came home from the war, I watched every single person in my unit go to somebody — a parent, a child, a sibling, a girlfriend, a wife. My wife’s not there. I go out into the rain, turn on my cellphone for the first time in a year, and call her. There’s no answer. I end up having to take a taxi to my house, which is empty. My dog’s gone. My motorcycle’s gone. She apparently moved in with someone else two weeks earlier.

Christmas Eve 2006, I went to a bar that I frequented in Raleigh. I had two drinks and heard the church bells for midnight mass. I thought, “I don’t need to be in a bar on Christmas. I need to go there.” So I went to a Catholic church in downtown Raleigh, and they said, “We’re full, come back in the morning.” By this time, I’ve got tears streaming down my face. I’m like, “I just got back from Iraq. I really just need to go in there. I’ll stand in the back.” They’re like, “No, we’re full. The fire marshal will get us in trouble. Go away.”

So I went to sit on the war memorial on the state capitol grounds in downtown Raleigh for about an hour, coming up with new and inventive ways to end my life. The Army kept giving us briefings that said if you were thinking like this, you should go to the hospital. So I got in my car and drove to Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg, and I told them, “I’m going to kill myself.”

They asked if I have guns. I said, “Yes, a lot.”

They said, “Do you have ammo for those guns?”

I said, “Yes, a lot.”

They said, “Okay, here are six Xanax. Don’t take them all at the same time because it’ll kill you. When you get home, give your guns to a neighbor and come back after the holiday.”

So I went back to my house, chugged a fifth of vodka, and loaded a Beretta nine millimeter. I put it to my temple and pulled the trigger. As the hammer fell, it was the most peace I had felt in my whole life. But it was a squib load — there wasn’t enough gunpowder in the bullet, so it didn’t go all the way down the barrel.

That was the first of five suicide attempts that should have been successful.

For eight years, that was my life. Every second of every day, I was either thinking of killing myself or planning to kill myself.

During that time, I tried exposure therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, all kinds of antidepressants. Nothing worked. Employment-wise, I had been trying to do what I did before I deployed: transportation logistics. But that requires a lot of math ability and mental acuity that kind of got blown away in the porta-john. So I kept getting jobs and getting fired. Mental health issues didn’t help.

I started working on legislation to improve VA benefits, and I went to school at the Citadel to begin a political career. I met Rand Paul when he came to speak there, and he noticed the bandages on my wrists. He asked what happened, and I said, “Oh, a week ago I tried to kill myself and I cut my wrists.” He pulled me aside and said, “Forget I’m a senator. I’m also a doctor. I want to know what’s going on right now.” We talked for 20 minutes, and at the end of it, he gave me his right-hand man’s cellphone number and said, “If you ever feel that way again, I want you to call that phone number, and we will use the full weight of my office and the federal government to fix whatever problem you have.” (Two years later, I ended up working for his presidential campaign.)