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I had this 'War and Peace' thing of wanting to experience war as a kind of incredible human enterprise. I even applied to Officer Candidate School. Then the practical side of me kicked in and I thought, 'I really don't want to get drafted.' So I went down to the physical and checked every psychological disorder and drug on the medical history form.

After I was discharged from the military, it was difficult trying to become a civilian.

When I first went to school, I was fighting all the time. The soldier mentality was still in me. I kept getting expelled. I found it hard to take instructions from anyone who wasn't a military commander.

In the past I've had a bad injury, and then struggled when I've got back because I've been unfit.

The other thing that happened was my last military assignment - this was in the air force; I had enlisted in order to avoid being drafted as a private, and of course I only practiced medicine or psychiatry in the air force so I was never in any kind of violent combat.

I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.

When I was 17, I was told I had the choice of enlisting in the Navy or going to jail, so I spent the next three years in the Navy.

It's hard for people sometimes to relate to me. They weren't in the military, they weren't injured overseas in Iraq, they weren't burned, they didn't go through 33 surgeries, or two and a half years in the hospital.

Being exposed to the enlisted Army was an eye-opener. I thought everyone was like me, but the enlisted Army is a constituency of the dispossessed.

I was drafted during the Korean War.