Editor’s note: Across New Jersey, hospitals, clinics and treatment centers are providing care to thousands of active military personnel, veterans and first responders who are dealing with mental health issues.
This is the first in a continuing series about heroes who sought help for their problems and are now actively becoming part of the solution.
The day of reckoning had come for Rony Caballero.
The former soldier who had done a 15-month tour of duty in war-torn Iraq sat in the driveway of his home on an October evening last year, He was drinking. In fact, he had been drinking more and more to deal with his issues and problems.
He now found it necessary to drink before he went inside to see his wife and three kids. By his own admission, he was drunk that evening.
“I went into the house and told my wife Nicole that I was hungry and asked her to go out and get me something to eat,” he said. “She said, ‘No, we had enough food in the house.’
“In truth, she did not want to leave me alone with the kids.”
The story didn’t end there.
“I wanted a burger, so, I said I would go get the food myself,” Caballero said. “She hid my keys, but I found them. Then she said she would call the police because she said I was in no shape to drive.
“I did not listen to her.”
Caballero left his house and walked toward his car. As he did, a police cruiser pulled up.
Two officers emerged and greeted Caballero. After engaging in some conversation, the officers told Caballero they could not let him get behind the wheel of a car.
“I was heartbroken that my wife would call the cops on me,” Caballero reflected.
But the incident forced Caballero to do some additional reflection.
“I asked myself, ‘What are you doing?’
“I had had enough. My wife had had enough. I realized I did not want to lose my wife and children. That was when I decided to get some help.”
***
Caballero is a native of Jersey City. He grew up in a single-mom home with one sibling.
“It wasn’t the most comfortable life, but we got by,” he said.
After moving to California in 1988, he returned to New Jersey in 2005 admitting homesickness. He enlisted in the army the following year.
“I always wanted to be a soldier,” Caballero said.
He did his basic training at Fort Knox. His first assignment was to Fort Hood in Texas.
“I was a little disappointed in garrison life there,” Caballero said. “I never drank much before I enlisted, I didn’t think much of it at the time, but in the army, everybody drank.”
Caballero was deployed to Iraq for 15 months.
“I thought deployment was more of the real thing, more of what I signed up for.,” he said.
His tour in Iraq was “very active” and left him with more than his share of difficult memories.
“When I got home and transitioned out of the army, I noticed how quiet everything seemed. I was very alert to noises and smells and other sensations – much more so than I was before I deployed.”
Caballero noted that his drinking got worse.
I was drinking to forget the issues I was experiencing,” he said.
Caballero took a job at a pest control company because “the money was pretty good.”
He wanted to concentrate on the job, so he quit school, he said. He soon realized things on the job triggered him.
“A sound in the basement of a house … the smell of a dead rodent … I started going right to the hard liquor to forget my problems,” he said.
Caballero met his wife-to-be Nicole in 2011 and married her in 2013.
“I was drinking more heavily now; I was drunk when we had our first child,” he said.
Caballero said his wife was getting more concerned with his drinking and asked him to get help. He refused.
“I didn’t want to get help, I didn’t want to pay someone to listen to my problems, I was going to face my problems.”
In 2014, Caballero did go to a Veterans Administration hospital where he was diagnosed with chronic PTSD.
“By that time my paranoia had hit the roof, they recommended a course of treatment, but I was not interested,” he said.
***
Things with Caballero continued to escalate until his day of reckoning in October of last year.
“I started researching and heard good things about the Rescu program and RCA (Recovery Centers of America),” he said. The Recovery Centers of America at Raritan Bay which is located in South Amboy offers a “Rescu” program – Resilience, Empowerment, Safety and Care for our Uniformed Heroes.
It is an addiction treatment program for active-military, veterans and first responders.
The program essentially immerses patients in a community of fellow military and first responders who have similar life and professional experiences. The program focuses on helping patients recover from substance abuse by addressing professional-related obstacles that could hamper their recovery. The program promises complete anonymity to patients.
“They had me participate in a 30-day detox program,” Caballero said. “At one point in my life, I would not have gone for this, but now I was ready to take any advice from anyone who could help me, I was willing to proceed one hundred percent.”
Caballero admitted it was a lot to deal with but “it started to work for me, and I made it through.”
Caballero then participated in an outpatient treatment from November of 2023 through April of this year.
“It worked so well, I was inspired to look for a better quality of life,” he said. “I started to think what would be best for me. My counsellor at Rescu started me thinking that the pest control job might not be best for me because of the way it could trigger me.”
Caballero left the job and enrolled at Hilbert College in Buffalo for virtual classes, He earned an Associated Degree in Substance Abuse Counselling in one year instead of the normal two years.
Now, in the autumn of 2024, Caballero’s life has completely turned around. He no longer drinks and instead, he works out every day.
“Working out is a good coping skill,” he said. “I feel I am in better shape physically and mentally.”
“My family life is like night and day,” he said, “Just the other day I was outside with my kids while they were playing on the trampoline, and I was laughing and having a good time.
“My wife really enjoyed seeing that. She trusts me now.”
Caballero is now working on getting a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
“My goal is to work with the first responders, like the ones who first helped me at the RESCU program,” Caballero said. “Climbing up the ladder allowed me to look down and see who I could help.”
