With the existing treatments for mental health issues like PTSD, treatment-resistant depression and suicidal thoughts having limited, if any, beneficial effect, U.S. veterans have decided to take matters into their own hands and are helping one another to explore DIY approaches to using psychedelics to find relief from their symptoms.
Lena Ramsay, who lives in rural Maine, is one such veteran. During her tour in Afghanistan, she suffered a broken vertebra, shattered an ankle and suffered a TBI (traumatic brain injury). VA doctors gave her antidepressants, sleep medication, sedatives and pain medication to help with the different health challenges she was facing. The anguish she felt only seemed to get worse despite all these medications, and she only got relief when a friend introduced her to ayahuasca. She described the experience as equivalent to having a decade’s worth of therapy distilled into a single session.
Reenergized, she immersed herself into learning about various psychedelics. She vaped DMT, brewed ayahuasca at home, and got information on how to cultivate psilocybin mushrooms at home. Well aware that what she was doing was illegal, she felt no remorse because she finally had an approach that promised to banish her despair for good.
Keenly aware that she wasn’t the only veteran going through what she was going through, she teamed up with another veteran and the duo created a Facebook group called Veterans Psychedelic Network. The group was aimed at helping fellow veterans to get access to other veterans who could help them learn about these hallucinogenic substances and how they could be leveraged to address mental health issues.
Ramsay isn’t alone in this search for relief from debilitating combat-linked mental health issues. Throughout the U.S., several groups have come up with the objective of veterans helping one another to explore how to use psychedelics to address the mental health challenges that they live with.
These groups are clearly distinctive from those that organize trips to foreign countries on so-called “psychedelic retreats.” Such trips are very expensive and not many veterans can afford them. Some veterans even describe such retreats as “cult-like” and are reluctant to participate in them. The DIY approach exemplified by Lena Ramsay appeals to many veterans since costs are minimal and one can take charge of their experimentation without leaving the community in which they live.
This DIY approach isn’t without risk. Psychedelics are potent drugs and there have been cases of psychotic episodes experienced by some individuals who took a larger dose than they should have. The ongoing psychedelic drug development efforts by companies like atai Life Sciences N.V. (NASDAQ: ATAI) could yield approved treatments that those in dire need can legally access through licensed medical practitioners so that avoidable risks can be sidestepped while reaping the therapeutic benefits of these once-maligned substances.
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