Growing up as an Army brat, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was a term I heard often. It was talked about among my parents’ friends, within military communities, and even in my own home. My dad enlisted in the Army at nineteen and retired twenty years later as a Sergeant First Class. His role involved transporting soldiers, vehicles, weapons, and ammunition in and out of active war zones. He completed multiple tours throughout the Middle East and spent additional time stationed in South Korea, Germany, and Austria. For the first eight years of my life, he was mostly absent, not by choice, but because that was what service required. The Army gave him purpose and a fulfilling career, but when he returned home, his mind often remained on the front lines, replaying trauma long after the battles ended.
My mom’s story mirrors his in many ways. She enlisted at seventeen and retired two decades later as a Staff Sergeant. Her job was intelligence, details she jokes she can never share unless I’m prepared to “disappear afterward.” She completed a tour in Bosnia and was stationed in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Like my dad, she found meaning, community, and love through service. But she also carried invisible wounds that did not fade when her uniform came off. In their era, acknowledging mental health struggles in the Army was considered taboo and a sign of weakness. Few sought help, even when they desperately needed it. My parents lost battle buddies to suicide, people who could not escape the weight of their own memories. When I ask how they made it through, their answer is always the same: “We had four kids. We didn’t have time to break down.”
Like my parents, many veterans suffer from PTSD. It is a mental disorder that develops after exposure to traumatic events, often causing the mind to replay the trauma and trigger intense fight-or-flight responses (Mann et al., 2024). Like many mental health conditions, existing treatments are not universally effective and may take years to optimize. Recently, Stanford University has begun exploring innovative treatments for veterans with PTSD using psychedelics. One therapy under investigation is ibogaine, which has shown promising improvements in symptoms, functional ability, and overall will to live. The early results have been compelling enough that Texas invested $50 million into ibogaine clinical trials (Williams, 2024), and the Department of Veterans Affairs is now closely watching these developments as a potential breakthrough in PTSD care for veterans.
What was once dismissed as a recreational drug that “fried your brain” may now become a groundbreaking treatment for the very people who risked everything for America’s freedom. Does the growing research on psychedelics intimidate you? Or does it offer hope for expanding treatments for mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, or bipolar disorder? Should we continue pursuing psychedelic research despite its controversial history?
In my opinion, veterans deserve access to every possible treatment that could help them heal, regardless of how unconventional or controversial it may be. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has a responsibility to invest fully and intentionally in treatments that can restore veterans’ mental and physical well-being. They gave everything for us; the LEAST we can do is explore every option to give them their lives back.
Williams, S. C. P. (2024, January 5). Psychoactive drug ibogaine effectively treats traumatic brain injury in special ops military vets. Stanford Medicine. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/01/ibogaine-ptsd.html
Mann, S. K., Marwaha, R., & Torrico, T. J. (2024). Posttraumatic stress disorder. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559129/
Cool read, it’s awesome that both your parents served. Tell them I said thanks!
ReplyDeleteDo you know what specific area of the brain ibogaine targets, and what is the mechanism behind its effects?