Lawmakers find it hard to "just say no" to combat veterans seeking support for drug decriminalization efforts gaining traction around the country.
..."I will not be told no on something that prevents human beings from killing themselves," Mr. Martinez said.
Jesse Gould, a former Army Ranger who started Heroic Hearts Project, an organization that connects veterans to psychedelic therapies available in Latin America, also measures the desperation in the daily barrage of emails he gets from vets seeking help.
The waiting list for a treatment slot, he said, has stretched to 850 people.
"The federal health care system has failed us, which is why veterans have to seek care outside the country," he said. "They are already turning to psychedelic options in droves so we can either decide to call these veterans criminals, which is what we do now, or we can make sure they can get effective care here at home."
Recent studies have buttressed anecdotal accounts of benefit and helped to quantify the therapeutic value of substances like LSD, psilocybin and MDMA, the drug better known as Ecstasy. A study in Nature Medicine found that MDMA paired with counseling brought marked relief to patients with severe PTSD. Another in the New England Journal of Medicine highlighted the potential of psilocybin therapy for treating severe depression.
Although current federal law largely prohibits the medical use of these compounds, researchers expect MDMA-assisted talk therapy to win approval from the Food and Drug Administration in the next year or two, followed soon after by psilocybin, which has already received agency approval as a "breakthrough therapy" for severe depression. In 2019, the F.D.A. gave approval to esketamine, a nasal spray derived from the anesthetic ketamine, for treatment-resistant depression. Off-label use of ketamine for depression has also become increasingly popular... nyt
..."I will not be told no on something that prevents human beings from killing themselves," Mr. Martinez said.
Jesse Gould, a former Army Ranger who started Heroic Hearts Project, an organization that connects veterans to psychedelic therapies available in Latin America, also measures the desperation in the daily barrage of emails he gets from vets seeking help.
The waiting list for a treatment slot, he said, has stretched to 850 people.
"The federal health care system has failed us, which is why veterans have to seek care outside the country," he said. "They are already turning to psychedelic options in droves so we can either decide to call these veterans criminals, which is what we do now, or we can make sure they can get effective care here at home."
Recent studies have buttressed anecdotal accounts of benefit and helped to quantify the therapeutic value of substances like LSD, psilocybin and MDMA, the drug better known as Ecstasy. A study in Nature Medicine found that MDMA paired with counseling brought marked relief to patients with severe PTSD. Another in the New England Journal of Medicine highlighted the potential of psilocybin therapy for treating severe depression.
Although current federal law largely prohibits the medical use of these compounds, researchers expect MDMA-assisted talk therapy to win approval from the Food and Drug Administration in the next year or two, followed soon after by psilocybin, which has already received agency approval as a "breakthrough therapy" for severe depression. In 2019, the F.D.A. gave approval to esketamine, a nasal spray derived from the anesthetic ketamine, for treatment-resistant depression. Off-label use of ketamine for depression has also become increasingly popular... nyt
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