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Catch-22
The most telling thing that M ever told me reflected this sadness. There are two. M is a Romantic man, a man with soul and genius. He told me once that there is such a focus on letting him and his team know that there are many formal structures for therapy and support. The catch is, any attempt at reaching out for help in dealing with stress, depression, and feelings of being disconnected and living a lie is dealt with suspicion and worse. If an elite operator reaches out for help, be it a counselor or a psychologist, that man is labeled broken and his career is fucked. So the smart men and women who live on the frontlines of the war against terror have to stuff their hurt, their stress, their feelings of meaninglessness, their existential crises, and just suck it up soldier, complete the mission. But of course in this community, it isn't just three or four years of being an on-the-front soldier, but it is a lifetime of innuendo, of subterfuge, of half-truths, of cover stories, and so forth.
So these folks do what men and women do from the beginning of time. They go to bars, they go to whores, they get laid, they get soused, and they self-medicate to the best of their ability.