Why can't I adjust to civilian life?

Somewhere on your way out there is a counter. You push a pile of gear across it, and a person who has never once been in a hurry checks it against a list. The helmet is not clean enough. It is never clean enough. You scrub it, you come back, you sign, and that is that. You are a civilian with a folder.

Here is what was not on the list: the people who knew where you were every morning. The calendar somebody else filled in. The job that explained you to strangers in two words. The reason any of it mattered. You handed those back too. Nobody signed for them, and nobody issued replacements.

That is our whole argument, and we did not come up with it. It is what Veterans keep telling us on camera. In interviews filmed by Vegas Veteran Voices, a Las Vegas nonprofit, fifteen of them described getting out. They do not agree on what to do about it. They agree on more than they think.

You are not the first. It just feels that way.

More than 200,000 service members leave every year, according to the Department of Labor. When Pew Research Center surveyed Veterans in 2019, about half of those who served after 9/11 said readjusting to civilian life was somewhat or very difficult. Among those who served before, it was about one in five.

Crowded room. It does not feel like one. Emilio Mackie, a U.S. Navy Veteran and surface warfare officer, did five years:

“Every time you get out, it feels like you’re the first person to ever leave the military.”

Hear it at 3:50

It also hits people who were sure it would not. Daniel Coffeen, a U.S. Army Veteran and Ranger School graduate:

“I had a very rough transition. And I did not think I was going to be one of those people that had a rough transition. And I certainly was.”

Hear it at 45:59

“Cheeks” Aguillon, a U.S. Army Veteran and former chaplain assistant who now serves on the Vegas Veteran Voices board, spent his service being the guy other soldiers brought their problems to.

“I know how to handle my stuff because I tell guys how to manage their stuff all the time, right? I’m fine. When I got out, I wasn’t fine.”

Hear it at 1:23:38

It was his mother who told him.

What you actually turned in

Juan Valdez, a Marine Corps Veteran and Purple Heart recipient who works with Wounded Warrior Project, went in at 19 and came out at 29.

“I felt like Ricky Bobby. I didn’t know what to do with my hands.”

Hear it at 8:23

He laughs when he says it. Then he calls what came next some really dark times, and he is exact about what went missing: Marines always around, and a battalion that had already decided where he would be for the next month. Out here, he says, you have to build the structure and the community yourself.

Nobody misses field day. What they miss is what field day came with. Michael D’Angelo, a Marine Corps Veteran, machine gunner and stand-up comic, does not dress it up:

“It sucks to not be a Marine anymore.”

Hear it at 32:59

“That environment is harsh and rough and, you know, you hate life a lot, but it’s consistent. It’s consistent and it’s predictable.”

Hear it at 33:06

The real world, he says, comes with a lot of alone time.

Then there is rank, which turns out to be a currency accepted in exactly one country. AJ Kehl, a U.S. Air Force Veteran with more than 22 years of service and a career firefighter, was two months from his official retirement date when he was interviewed. One minute, he says, he had the big office and people asking what he thought.

“The next, I walk outside here in Vegas and I’m like, hello, does anybody need me? Can I help anybody?”

Hear it at 38:43

Caitlin Duffy, a U.S. Army Veteran and 50 cal gunner who is now a VA loan specialist, has a name for the same thing.

“I call it the I used to be coolism. That was hard as a civilian, to be like, I used to be cool.”

Hear it at 35:55

And under the rank and the cool stories is the plain question of who you are. Tommy Nutzmann, a retired U.S. Navy Chief and creator of After the Uniform, does the math:

“I joined the Navy at 17 years old. I left at 37 and I didn’t know who I was.”

Hear it at 43:39

People. Schedule. Standing. Identity. Four things, zero hand receipts.

The class comes three days too early

In fairness, there is a class. The Transition Assistance Program is mandatory for anyone leaving after 180 or more continuous days on active duty, and the counseling is supposed to start no later than 365 days before you go, according to Military OneSource.

“Supposed to” is carrying a full combat load in that sentence. When the Government Accountability Office checked a year of records ending in March 2022, 70 percent of service members had not started more than a year out.

Bobi Pike-Oates, a retired Air Force Senior Master Sergeant, went through hers before she retired in 1999.

“I asked, are we going to learn how to write resumes? ‘It’s in your book.’ Okay. So this is like useless.”

Hear it at 32:49

Duffy does not blame the class. She blames the calendar. She was leaving on bad terms with her unit and, in her words, a little salty.

“Three days before you sign out of the military and you’re having to turn in all your uniforms and your helmet’s not clean enough and your weapon’s not clean enough and you’re just done, that is not the time to tell me how to use my VA benefits.”

Hear it at 40:25

Offer her the same class a year later, she says, and she would have taken it. And even a perfect class is about resumes, benefits and budgets. All useful. None of it is the four things from the counter.

Then you meet the civilians

Duffy led troops. Then she led civilians. In the Army, she says, everybody had the same playbook. Civilian leadership is like football practice “where half of them haven’t read the playbook and two of them thought they were showing up to bowling night.”

Hear it at 33:41

Edward Haines, a retired Marine Master Sergeant who spent 20 years in signals intelligence and now works as an athletic trainer, solved it from the other end. He is done being in charge.

“My bosses now as an athletic trainer, they’ve tried to talk me into taking on a responsibility role. I’m like, dude, I’m just here to work, man.”

Hear it at 38:30

Travis Jewell, a Marine Corps Veteran and mortarman with 1/6, did it the way the brochure draws it. He got out in 2019, tested into a Microsoft training program for people leaving the military, and came out a software engineer with, by his own account, great money and a good family. A grunt writing software, which he found as unlikely as you do. Then he describes sitting in it.

“I like the idea of it, but do I feel like I belong? Is this really where I belong? And it’s like, no, dude.”

Hear it at 8:11

Where he felt grounded, he says, was with his platoon. He worked corporate until late 2025. Now he makes military comedy skits.

Some people just walk out fine

We would be lying if we said everyone struggles. Dean Goble Jr., a retired Army Green Beret and Black Rifle Coffee philanthropy director, says he cleared his gear in about an hour, which may be the least believable thing anyone has told us.

“The transition for me, and maybe I’m very fortunate, but I thought it was pretty easy.”

Hear it at 11:21

Curtez Riggs, a retired Army First Sergeant and founder of Military Influencer Conference, left after 21 years.

“If you want to talk about my transition journey, I’m one of those weird guys that got lucky.”

Hear it at 40:56

Listen to why, though. Riggs says years of recruiting duty in his hometown had him living among civilians long before he left. And Goble works at a company full of Veterans:

“I really didn’t care what I was doing as long as I was with people that I wanted to be with doing it.”

Hear it at 11:48

Neither of them skipped the problem. One replaced his people before the gap opened. The other had a running start on being a civilian.

Cut the cord, or go back to the bar

Here is the real fight. Duffy says the best thing she did was leave all the way.

“My biggest advice for transitioning from military to civilian is to, and I say this delicately, separate yourself from the military as fast as possible.”

Hear it at 33:48

For a while she did not even tell people she had served. She spent two or three years as a civilian first, and only then came back to the Veteran community.

Nutzmann went the other way. He took the civilian job. He ran a company. He hated it. What changed it was other Veterans.

“Stepping into this Veteran advocacy space brought me to my brothers and sisters, and I was like, ‘Oh, dude, I’m home.’”

Hear it at 43:47

Tom “Ghost” Martin, a Marine Corps Veteran of Desert Storm, owns The Leatherneck Club and keeps a case of crayons behind the bar in place of a dessert menu. (Vegas Veteran Voices shares an address with The Leatherneck Club.) He has watched both camps walk through his door, and he says they are the same people on different clocks. The sergeant major shows up the week after retirement. The lance corporal got out for a reason and wants to go live. Martin does not expect to see that one for five or six years.

“When do I start pining for my history? When do I start discovering there’s something in my life I’m missing?”

Hear it at 35:29

“Eventually, we see most Veterans eventually come back around and be like, ‘You know what? I do miss it.’”

Hear it at 36:08

So Duffy and Nutzmann disagree about when. Read them again and they do not disagree about what. Both ended up with people who speak the language. One of them needed a few years of quiet first.

So why do I miss the military?

Because it was doing four jobs for you and you only noticed the one with the paycheck. That is not us playing doctor. It is the pattern in what fifteen people said.

Joe “Doc” Worley, a U.S. Navy corpsman who holds a Bronze Star with valor and a Purple Heart, started speaking to kids after he was wounded.

“What a blessing that is, to find something that matters again when you get out of a military where you know what you’re doing matters, at least to 40 guys.”

Hear it at 20:23

Forty guys. That is what was on the other side of the counter. Mackie, the one who felt like the first person ever to leave, took a break when he got out and found a therapist through Military OneSource. He also said the thing we would put on the wall of every checkout office:

“One way or another, we all get out.”

Hear it at 5:14