The One Major Failure I Will Take to My Grave

On July 31, 2025, The Wall Street Journal featured an investigative article by Shalini Ramachandran and Betsy McKay titled “’Combat Cocktail’: How America Overmedicates Veterans.” I immediately knew 2 things: a) these reporters were going for a Pulitzer Prize in investigative journalism and b) even if they won the prize, this issue would go nowhere.

The article, besides point out that veterans have twice the suicide rate of the U.S. population, includes this statement: “Prescribing cocktails of such drugs is one of the VA’s most common treatments for veterans with PTSD, and the number of veterans on multiple psychiatric drugs is a growing concern at the agency.”

And why won’t this investigative article of the VA handing out bunches of psychiatric drugs make any difference?

Because this has been reported, including by The Wall Street Journal, for many, many years with no obvious changes.

I have been trying for probably the  same number of years to bring this to the public’s attention in perhaps a rather “novel” way – a fictional TV series called SOLOMON’S JUSTICE about the real-life Veterans Court in Los Angeles. This is a court that could be set up anywhere in the U.S. if the option were more widely known.

 The court requires that veterans first plead guilty and then go to Veterans Court for sentencing. And what a difference this can make: Sentencing means the two opposing attorneys working with the judge and social workers to get appropriate treatment.

My TV pilot script SOLOMON’S JUSTICE consists almost entirely of actual situations – no matter how outrageous these may seem – of actual people.

The fear, for example, that a wife has that her husband might harm her and her young child or the sleepwalking that a veteran can’t even remember undertaking.

 Why now? Why does this issue mean so much to me at this exact moment in time?

 Because I’m dying of an aggressive malignant brain tumor

 In the early hours of April 26, 2025, I learned that the CT scan just administered to me in the ER showed an aggressive malignant brain tumor known as a Glioblastoma. Although surgically removed, there is no cure – it’s only a possible prolonging of life for a few months.

I’m 77 years old and dying doesn’t scare me. Yet what does scare me is the realization that I never got produced my fictional TV series SOLOMON’S JUSTICE.

The pain of not accomplishing this one project haunts me. Why? Because a fictional TV series is a very effective medium to engage viewers with diverse fictional characters and their problems. (Think of any major TV series and you’ll hear viewers talking about those characters as if they were real people.)

Let’s rewind for a moment and explain why this project means so much to me:

In the spring of 1967, on my third date with my future husband (we met on the editorial staff of the State News at Michigan State), he told me he was an ROTC cadet and going to Vietnam when he graduated. (In the end the army stationed him in Munich and he didn’t go to Vietnam. I will admit that, if by some miracle he had come home in one piece physically, he would never have been the same mentally.)

Now let’s fast forward to the spring of 2008, when I self-published my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT inspired by my husband and my nine weeks at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, for Army Armor Officers Basic.

A former female Marine on the other side of the country reached out to me and asked me to co-host with her a BlogTalkRadio show about the military. We interviewed veterans and active duty personnel for a year. And that’s when I first because aware of the high rate of suicide among veterans and what is now called the “combat cocktail.”

As one of my personal responses to this horrifying situation, I created the website www.InSupportOfOurTroops.com that includes suicide help information. Then after I published MRS. LIEUTENANT, I learned about an amazing military court – called Veterans’ Courts – and that one existed in Los Angeles.

I attended a court session and could not believe the difference in the treatment of vets who had pled guilty to non-violent crimes. (The opposing lawyers worked together to get help for the veteran, and the judge had those who “slipped” write 500-word essays on their backsliding!) I also learned that such courts could legally be set up across the U.S. 

I started blogging about this option and got invited to participate on the Department of Defense’s Bloggers Roundtable. I then moved on to writing a pilot TV script inspired by this court – SOLOMON’S JUSTICE.  I wrote and rewrote this script based on critiques from professional TV writers until it deserved a shot at “prime time.”

And I pitched the TV series project – except no one was interested. One person told me that a courtroom drama had to have new court cases. Others also didn’t “get it” – this is not a courtroom drama. It is a drama about veterans who appear in veterans courts. (Almost everything in the pilot script – no matter how outrageous it may seem — is actually based on someone’s experience.)

Hoping to get more interest in this TV project, I adapted the TV pilot script into a short story (available on Amazon) that has done well in short story competitions. (The opening of the short story SOLOMON’S JUSTICE is different than the opening of the TV pilot script due to the parameters of writing for TV.)

Yet I have come to accept that this script will not be produced even though the subplot of PTSD, TBI, and drug addiction has figured occasionally in TV series such as “Blue Bloods” (Danny Reagan character — PTSD) and “Seal Team” (Jason Hayes character — TBI).

Now imagine how I felt when The Wall Street Journal of July 31, 2025, featured an investigative article by Shalini Ramachandran and Betsy McKay about the rampant “combat cocktail” overdosing of veterans. I immediately knew: a) these reporters were going for a Pulitzer Prize in investigative journalism and b) even if they won the prize, this issue would go nowhere.

Why do I know this? Because investigative newspaper articles don’t get much traction (or action).

Fictional stories often do get traction. Think, for example, of Upton Sinclair’s 1906 “muckraking” novel THE JUNGLE, an expose of the appalling and unsanitary conditions in the meat-packing industry.

Besides Veterans Courts, there are many experimental treatment programs for PTSD and TBI that can “wean” active duty and veterans off “combat cocktails.” Without investing in fictional characters who struggle with these issues, the public’s empathy has little chance to be engaged. (This is especially true due to the small percentage of the U.S. population today with any connection to military personnel.)

The TV series SOLOMON’S JUSTICE could make the difference in the same way that Upton Sinclair’s novel did. Yet I now have to accept that I will die without ever getting this fictional TV series produced. It is the one major failure I will carry to my grave.