First Responders Addiction Treatment Program Director Andy Callaghan talks addiction, trauma, and PTSD with Philadelphia Daily News

FRAT Director Andy Callaghan On Philadelphia Daily News

Two decades later, Andy Callaghan, a 25-year veteran police sergeant, still can’t forget the sound of the bullet whizzing by his ear.

It was winter 1995. As he had done dozens – maybe even hundreds – of times, he geared up to serve a warrant, this time in Southwest Philadelphia. He knew that facing gunfire and having to shoot back to stay alive was always a possibility. But he didn’t anticipate it that night.

“It was a Thursday. I was exhausted from court and work,” Callaghan, 48, recalled recently in his office at the Livengrin Foundation for Addiction Recovery campus in Bensalem, where he serves as director of the First Responders Addiction Treatment Program. “I remember suiting up for the warrant, saying, ‘I don’t feel like doing this tonight. I want to go home and go to sleep.’ ”

Read more: Shell Shocked: Stress Lingers for Cops Who Fired Guns