Honoring the Fallen that are Still Alive

Happy Memorial Day!

In the United States, today is a day we honor all the US soldiers who have died in wars.

Regardless of politics, it is a tragedy to hear about so many young men and women lose their lives at such a young age. It is wonderful to remember them.

What we don’t often remember is the young (and probably older) men and women who are still alive and struggling with the mental injuries caused by war. They are suffering the effects of seeing death on a large scale every day.

Today we diagnose those men and women as having Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD.

They estimate that about 22 veterans take their own lives every day because their PTSD becomes too much for them.

How do we treat these veterans with PTSD? Our Veteran’s administration generally prescribes them anti-depressants. That’s about 2 million veterans.

One thing we know about anti-depressants. You can’t just stop them without serious withdrawal symptoms. Many veterans will be on the anti-depressants for a long time, maybe for the rest of their lives.

Especially if their lives end abruptly through suicide.

There are some other promising treatments that are showing success. One such treatment is MDMA-assisted therapy. MDMA stands for methylenedioxymethamphetamine. You probably have heard of it as the street drug Ecstasy. Sounds a bit scary with that ‘methamphetamine’ at the end.

Well, we’re not talking a street drug. The treatment involves very careful dosing under medical supervision. A randomized, placebo-controlled trial recently determined that “participants with moderate to severe PTSD experienced significantly improved PTSD symptoms and functional impairment”.

A beautiful aspect of this treatment is that it just takes one treatment with the drug to see these significant improvements.

So guess what the US Food and Drug Administration did? Yup. They rejected it. They said there needs to be more studies.

Hard to make a lot of money with just one treatment. Better to stick with drugs that require people to take them over and over again.

MDMA-assisted treatment are part of a class of treatments called psychodelics. There are other psychedelics like Ibogaine and psylocybin are also showing promise for improving the symptoms of PTSD.

Of course both of these substances are illegal in the United States. Psylocybin is also interesting to me because it has potential use for Parkinson’s disease.

It is amazing to me that people who are at such high-risk of death are not allowed to experiment a little. The very same people who we celebrate for fighting for our freedom are the ones having their freedom restricted.

People are fighting back. Even Robert F Kennedy is aware of the MDMA restrictions.

The Heroic Hearts Project is working to make psychodelic programs more accessible to veterans. If you feel so inclined, please consider making a donation.

And please if you’re a US citizen, take a moment to remember our veterans who have fallen today. Both those who have fallen physically, and those that continue to fall mentally.