The two hallucinogenic drugs are also being used to treat addiction and other serious mental health issues.
Before going any further I'm going to turn the clock back to the 1970s when both of those drugs were readily available in California where I lived at the time.
I know it sounds cliche, but it seemed like everyone was using them and other great psychedelics like LSD. I certainly had my share of magic mushrooms, LSD, peyote, and other mind-addling drugs. None of them cured my yet to be diagnosed PTSD.
Back to the present.
I'm a Vietnam veteran (1970). When I got out of the Army I went in search of sanity and serenity. I took psychedelic drugs hoping for deliverance every day at 3:00, but it never came to me.
The VA's newfound interest in hallucinogenic therapies seems funny to me. When I was going through an in-house counseling program for PTSD at Ft. Miley in San Francisco I had to go through a drug rehab segment because I smoked marijuana. Drugs were a Bozo no-no back in 1992.
How things change.
There are now at least five studies to gain more insight into the now promising drugs, according to a report in The New York Times.
Research has shown therapeutic benefits, particularly for serious mental health conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, according to a study published in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Psychiatry in 2020.
I suspect this new willingness to allow research has led to a push to study psychedelics as medicine for the nation's military veterans, whose challenges with mental illness has led to a suicide rate among vets that's higher than that of civilians.
I'm not endorsing the new treatments. But the hippie in me is like "Cool man!" I'm sharing this new approach with the hope it does help the men and women out there who need it.
As it stands, that marijuana they didn't want me to smoke back at Ft. Miley is now a permanent part of my PTSD treatment program.
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