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Controling adrenaline, and dealing with the post adrenaline crash are learned behaviors.  In my experience greener Officers sometimes have troubles with both.  But most seasoned Officers don't.  Also in my experience seasoned Officers usually understand the greener guy's situation and provide guidence when they see issues.

Whether it's harmful or helpful is a matter of training. It can't be avoided, you only learn how to deal with it.

You need a balanced team in order for adrenaline to be truely beneficial.  That adrenaline rush allows you to prevail in combat.  Hence, I like teaming up with a "greener" agent full of youthful energy.  While his/her adrenaline rushes out of control, I am able to control my adrenaline rush by taking responsibility to for my partner.  Slowing things down to my speed helps control stressful/dangerous situations.  This also helps channel my partner's subsequent crash in to a controlled free-fall, much like sky-diving.  It also helps me in channeling my rush.

Make sense to anyone but me?

Breathing.

I use to get excited when I was on patrol and get in a foot or car chase. Most of the time it wasn't even from being scared just excited.

During my first tour in Iraq I was an Infantry Company Commander. I had a few seconds to react when something happened; i.e. when we were ambushed while my men were conducting their battle drills I would be assessing the situation. During this time I made myself take three deep breathes before saying a word over the radio. Its not a lot of time but an eternity when the world around you is blowing up. I think the most important thing it did was keep me calm, take time to make a decent decision(not a rash one that would have to be changed) and my voice was calm over the radio which helps keep the Soldiers from getting overly excited.

When I returned to work I had planned on going back to plain clothes but due to two patrol sgts out on medical I went to the midnight shift as a supervisor. The first week I stopped a kid who was lying about his name, this is normally one of my favorite types of people to deal with on the street. I was working my way into finding out who he was when he started getting nervous and fidgety. He started walking away when I laid hands on him and ended up in a physical altercation. I cuffed him and realized I was sweating and shaking even though it was a cool spring night. Later I spent a lot of time thinking about why I had been through so much and to have something that was common like this shake me up so bad. The two things I came up with was that one; I didn't have time to take any deep breaths and two I realized I was by myself and didn't have 150 Soldiers backing me up.

As time went on I got better and didn't have any problems handling things on the street and went back to plain clothes. Over the next year I had several people comment that I was a lot calmer than before I had left.

I also realized that a lot of things that LTC Grossman had taught or I read about had helped. He talks extensively about the effects of adrenaline on the eyes and ears, just knowing helped me a lot.  It's amazing what you hear and don't hear in a gun fight. To this day I can still hear a magazine that was dropped when a Soldier came up behind me during an ambush with a lot of machinegun fire, RPGs and other explosions.

Adrenaline can help or hurt; if you know what it is and can do you can help use it, experience is another key factor in controlling it to your advantage.

TXPD says ...

So far, for me, it has been quite useful.  Everything seems to slow down and becomes more focused.  I used to suffer from really bad auditory loss but that has been less and less lately.

And I dont know about anyone else but the "post adrenaline crash" seems to come several hours later for me.  I still remember the first time it happened and it was kind of a suprise.  I went through the incident, helped load the guy on the ambulance, processed the scene, took statements, told the story multiple times to different supervisors, then as I was standing there laughing with another officer I started to shake.  It kind of scared me at first because I didnt know what was happening.  The other officer explained I was just coming down from the adrenaline and that helped calm me down.

I think mine always came much later, we would have our maintenance, reports and then we would sit around and discuss what happened and what went well and what didn't. Then I would read or watch a little bit of  a movie on my laptop and then crash.  One morning after we were ambushed I found my platoon leader sitting up in his bunk, still had his vest and gear on. He said he came in and sat down on his bed that night, took off his kevlar and that was the last thing he remembered.

I don't know about you guys, but I tried a different appoach and it's done me wonders.  The way I figured, the high-adrenaline situations and rushes drains certain nutrients from the body the same way that the body burns other nutrients and calories and you replenish it with food. 

On days where I had situations leading to rushes of adrenaline, I started taking something called CoEnzyme A in addition to Vitamin B50.  The former specifically assists the body with recovering from adrenaline fatigue and the latter provides the necessary nutrients to replenish the nervous system.  I kid you not, this works big time--and the best part is you can go to any vitamin store and pick these up for cheap. 

I also agree with BMORGAN--dealing with adrenaline rush and fatigue are definitely learned behaviors--but this supplemental approach really helps in properly regulating your body so you can more effectively put things into perspective.   I also found myself having far more energy off-duty and I was sharper both on the street and in training.  Just some food for thought. 

bmorgan says ...

Controling adrenaline, and dealing with the post adrenaline crash are learned behaviors.  In my experience greener Officers sometimes have troubles with both.  But most seasoned Officers don't.  Also in my experience seasoned Officers usually understand the greener guy's situation and provide guidence when they see issues.

I also agree 100% with this comment.