On the life and death of a haunted journalist. The tragic death of Michael Hastings also gave birth to a number of conspiracy theories:
“Hastings never identified himself in his writing as someone suffering from PTSD. The closest he came to such an admission was in May, when he retweeted an article about using pot to treat PTSD. In fact, according to the coroner’s report, that is exactly what he was doing.
“Still, PTSD was not something he discussed even with his close friends. Matt Farwell, a freelance writer and Army veteran, worked with Hastings on two stories for Rolling Stone. The second involved a CIA station chief with PTSD, but even then Hastings did not open up on the subject, Farwell says.
“The death of Hastings’ fiancée clearly had a traumatic effect on him. When asked a few years later on C-SPAN what it was like writing the memoir, he answered, ‘I wrote it in — I was so screwed up when I wrote that book.’”
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