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A lot of the guys I met in the YPG had seen way more combat than that and still yearned for it. One of them was retired foreign legion that did this as his retirement. When we were getting shot at one of the older guys would get viscerally excited and joyful, and he had seen many dead.

Junky is a good description of what they were. They wanted another taste. I can't imagine after 5+ years of that life how you would detox from that, not easily I imagine.

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I think you have to distinguish between militant groups filled with highly motivated ideological volunteers and state militaries which are often primarily filled with people from poor families who have graduated high school and then don't know what to do with their lives. In war time it's an even uglier picture where you may have armies filled with people who were literally dragged kicking and screaming off the streets and then beat into obedience or death.

See also My War Gone By, I Miss It So - a book about the author’s time as a war correspondent in Bosnia during the Yugoslavian War. After the war, he became addicted to heroin for lack of the excitement that the war brought.

https://septemberpublishing.org/product/my-war-gone-by-i-mis...

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