Huffing War You feel dirty, choked by the stifling heat, panic rising in your chest, and you are almost frozen in that moment of the deepest intensity, and you’re only watching a movie. The Hurt Locker is a situation you would never want to be in. how could anyone want to? However there are soldiers whom go back to it again and again and again. Doing 3-4 tours putting themselves right back in the thick of danger. These Soldiers we refer to as brave are often the victims of an addiction, it is adrenaline and that rush that pulls many back. The Hurt Locker shows you, “It is about the universal soldier who becomes addicted to war. It is about war as a drug.”(Roeper) To these soldiers it becomes all that they know, and home, family, friends and the normal realities become unbearable and foreign to them.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines addiction as: The state or condition of being dedicated or devoted to a thing, esp. an activity or occupation; adherence or attachment, esp. of an immoderate or compulsive kind. Addiction has become a huge topic in the US and around the world. As more and more drugs are developed and evolved, more people are becoming addicts. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, as of 2011 an estimated 22.5 Million, 8.7% of the population 12 and older had tried illicit drugs. 16.7 million Americans, 6.5% percent of the population, were dependent on alcohol or had problems related to their use of alcohol. It has become a huge issue with Soldiers returning from and still in active duty in what they call “The Sand Box”, Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers in war often experience adrenaline highs from the combat that they are involved in. Specialist Alan Hartmann was a gunner on a Chinook helicopter flying missions from Kuwait into Iraq in 2003. He described the high of flying and the feeling that "nothing can touch you," as well as the terror of being shot at. (Lewis/McCarthy) The need for this high carries over once they arrive home and things are so vastly different than they were while in combat, they turn to other means of finding that high or a way of coping with the aftermath of nightmares and depression.
The opening scenes of The Hurt Locker set the tone for the intensity and the danger that Soldiers experience on a daily basis. As Thompson is suited up and is walking towards the bomb, you can feel the heat of the situation and of the air there. As the bomb explodes you feel it as you gasp at the way it hits him full force.

Why would anyone want to do this? Why would anyone want to put themselves in that situation? Sgt. James want to be there, he is so at ease, and eager about the situations he is in, you realize that he goes back day after day, into these extreme situations, because he is comfortable with it completely. He even keeps a box full of souvenirs from the bombs he has defused. Like little trophies, that he clearly holds a deeps fascination of. This war has