Fishing For Freedom

Project Healing Waters helps veterans suffering from PTSD find healing, one cast at time.

By Braeden Lowe

During a deployment in Afghanistan, Alan Fitzpatrick’s life changed in an immeasurable way. After suffering a traumatic brain injury, the young man came back home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), an often devastating disorder with symptoms such as hypervigilance, flashbacks, and nightmares. Fitzpatrick himself was dealing with hypervigilance, causing him to be overly aware of everything going on around him, always on edge, and expecting the worst in every situation.

In 2014, a man named Chuck Tye, a volunteer for Project Healing Waters at the time, asked him to join a program that could help him cope with some of the symptoms. After refusing multiple times, Fitzpatrick says, “he literally grabbed me by the collar and dragged me to a Project Healing Waters booth.”

One in 11 people will be diagnosed with PTSD in their lifetime. This disorder is not curable, however, it can be managed with a combination of psychiatry and medication. While it affects everyone differently, people with PTSD often suffer from unwanted thoughts or memories as they try to sleep, work, eat, or do anything most people take for granted.

Project Healing Waters is a nonprofit organization that was established in 2005, focusing on creating programs that serve veterans with PTSD by taking them on numerous fishing trips throughout the year. The program does everything from helping them build rods and taking them fishing to helping build camaraderie with other members of the community.

As Fitzpatrick went through the program, he became noticeably less angry and more easygoing. The experience allowed him to focus on the present and escape constant distress. Though he still sometimes experienced symptoms, the program gave him an outlet to manage the stress: fly fishing. “Fly fishing helps connect the left and right brain and makes new pathways, but for me, it makes me focus,” says Fitzpatrick.

Having witnessed many horrible things throughout his time in the military, Fitzpatrick has had to deal with heightened levels of anxiety and paranoia in his everyday life. Fly fishing gives him something else to focus on, allowing him to do something fun and productive, rather than always feeling overwhelmed by hypervigilance. The new hobby he found through Project Healing Waters became such an impactful part of his life that Fitzpatrick decided to help others on the same journey. In 2018, Fitzpatrick started working for the organization as the Northwest regional coordinator.

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Research shows the presence of nature has various positive impacts on humans, especially relating to personal stress and mental health. Fishing specifically has been a focus, especially for veterans’ hospitals around the Pacific Northwest. Programs like Project Healing Waters work to introduce, or reintroduce, people to the power of the outdoors, and teaches them how to use it as an outlet for emotional struggles in their daily lives.

People with PTSD have experienced a significant life trauma, sometimes leaving them with memories they don’t want. These memories can cause violent and jarring flashbacks that place some people in an almost unconscious state. This is not the only negative effect of PTSD. Nightmares, eating disorders, and cognitive delays sometimes result and indirectly affect the people around those suffering.

These problems are heightened with veterans because of the things they have witnessed. As many as 30 percent of veterans have struggled with PTSD. The closest thing to a cure consists of a cocktail of drugs, also called selective serotonin retake inhibitors (SSRIs), that can be hard on the body. SSRIs limit the amount of serotonin reabsorbed into the body, thus increasing the amount of the chemical available for the brain, sometimes to dangerous levels. Additionally, the drugs often cause side effects such as irritability, drowsiness, appetite change, and dry mouth, yet medications are still not always effective on their own. Medication, combined with therapy, is the most common way to treat PTSD, but this combination can be very expensive.

Ecotherapy is a growing area of treatment. This type of dynamic healing refers to a wide range of treatments that involves activities within nature, such as hiking, meditating, and fishing. Fishing has been found to reduce stress in 56 percent of veterans, and decrease flashbacks or other forms of re-experiences by 60 percent. Part of the reason Project Healing Waters and organizations like it are so effective is because the experience brings people together, providing an added level of support. “It is difficult to find people who are my peers because they don’t know what it's like to be worried about something bad happening the whole time, but when I'm with people from Project Healing Waters we are [all] able to have each other's back and that's pretty unique,” says Fitzpatrick.

While ecotherapy is used more commonly for veterans than other at-risk people in the community, there is evidence that it could also help people struggling with other mental illnesses. Nature is an accessible outlet for almost everyone and is free in most cases. Many other forms of ecotherapy work just as well as fishing, such as biking, kayaking, and swimming.

Over 18 million adults suffer from depression at any point in the year. Mental health is just as important as physical health, and people need to know about different techniques to treat disorders from PTSD to depression and anxiety. For Fitzpatrick, that means getting outside and fly fishing. “There's something special about standing kneedeep in the water and experiencing the nature around you,” says Fitzpatrick. “I think it's something everyone should experience.”