These Three Stories Illustrate The Healing Power Of Psychedelic Treatment
Combat veterans and first responders are on the front lines of the battle to expand access to psychedelic medicine. Here are three recent accounts—two from combat veterans, and one from a New York firefighter who responded to the 9/11 attack—detailing why those who serve our country at great personal cost to their own mental health are now showing by example the promise that psychedelic medicine holds:
1. “It's Been Nine Years [Since My Psychedelic Treatment] And Now I've Been PTSD Free Longer Than I Had PTSD.”
Jonathan Lubecky, a U.S. combat veteran who served in both the Marines and the Army, recently joined Dr. Shereef Elnahal, the Under Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, for the inaugural episode of the V.A’s new veteran healthcare podcast to discuss his profound healing through psychedelic-assisted treatment. The entire interview is worth a listen, but here are two highlights:
Lubecky on the mental health crisis he experienced after returning home from combat:
“I came home [from Iraq] with crippling PTSD. I didn't really realize how bad it was until after I got home. You know, I'd be laying on my couch asleep and hear mortars or rockets coming in, things like that… I was given some medication and told to give my neighbors the guns and sent home and told to come back after the holidays. I didn't really have many [healthcare] options [and] nothing was working. So I went home and I drank a fifth of vodka, loaded a nine millimeter, put it to my temple, and I pulled the trigger. That was the first of five attempts that I made to take my life. And that doesn't include the hundreds of times I thought about it or stood on a bridge or had a plan…”
Lubecky on the psychedelic medicine clinical trial that changed the course of his life:
“I took my first dose [of MDMA] exactly eight years after I came back from Iraq. It's been nine years, and now I've been PTSD free longer than I had PTSD. MDMA is a tool that can [help you] heal and process all those memories and trauma that is causing you issues. It puts you in a place where you can talk about trauma without having panic attacks, without your body betraying you, and look at it from a different perspective and understanding … And over the past nine years, I haven't thought of suicide once at all—and this was a constant daily occurrence for me for eight years.”
2. “How Psychedelic Medicine Turned A Texas Veteran’s Life Around…”
That’s the headline from a story reported by Mike Rush for KXAN, Austin’s local NBC news affiliate, profiling C.T. Thompson, a veteran of the U.S. Army’s “elite Green Beret” unit who served through “seven combat deployments” across “more than a dozen years in the military and as a military contractor.” As Rush reports:
“[Thompson] believes it was the prolonged exposure to the terrors of war that wore him down … [He felt] a lack of feeling for things [and said he] ‘was just struggling to get through a lot of days.’ [He felt] everything from ‘anger, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance’ [and] had trouble sleeping, drank too much and, in his darkest moments, considered suicide. ‘I felt like I had no place on this planet… and it’s a really dark place to go to feel like you just don’t belong here anymore.’”
Fortunately, Thompson connected with a group of veterans called “Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions,” which helped him to obtain psychedelic-assisted therapy. Today, he has “stopped drinking alcohol, finished his degree, started a business and reconnected with his family.” As Thompson told KXAN:
“‘It changed my life. I can’t really explain exactly how it works, other than just how it worked for me… just being able to be, in my family, a better husband, a better father.’”
3. “Psychedelic Therapies Could Be Transformative For Ailing First Responders.”
Joe McKay, a New York City Firefighter, writes for CalMatters that he “lost 26 friends” on September 11, 2001, and “the trauma of that experience put me on a long path of misery and despair. Over the next 15 years, daily life was a constant struggle, and on many occasions, I thought about ending my life.” But, McKay writes, “my world completely changed when I found the healing power of psilocybin…”:
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that psilocybin gave me my life back. It’s been transformative, and allowed me to feel happiness and joy in a way I never thought I would again. Several years after being medically retired from the FDNY, it became clear that none of the prescription drugs and typical medical interventions I was being offered would help, [so] I decided to try psilocybin, and to my amazement, my headaches vanished. For the first time in many years, I felt hopeful about my health. Since then, psilocybin has been extremely effective at preventing my cluster headaches. Psilocybin also helped me get back in touch with my former, happy-go-lucky self—the Joe that my friends and family hadn’t seen since 9/11.”
McKay explains that his experience with psilocybin therapy isn’t unique, but rather there is a robust body of high quality medical research demonstrating that psilocybin can effectively treat a range of mental health issues ranging from treatment resistant depression to end-of-life anxiety. McKay writes:
“For first responders like me, as well as veterans and health care workers, the research represents a tremendous source of hope. People in our lines of work are disproportionately impacted by our nation’s mental health crisis, and sadly suicide rates among these communities are much higher than the general population. While daily medications and other coping mechanisms help some people get by, these options aren’t working for many of us.”
