‘In Waves and War’Participant Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen ‘s at times emotionally overwhelming documentary gets its title via a quote from “The Odyssey” that opens the film .
“By now, I am used to suffering. I have endured so much in waves and war. Let this next adventure follow.”
The Navy SEALs who are the subjects of “In Waves and War” aren’t just used to suffering. Many long thought that bearing the emotional cost of suffering was their only option. Multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq over years left unseen scars as wall as visible ones, and PTSD can be so intractable an enemy, despite multiple therapies and prescription drugs, that a lot are left to think that just “bearing it” is all they can do.
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Shenk and Cohen ‘s film makes a powerful case that there may be another option: Psychedelic drugs, not approved for use in the U.S., may help break through these vets’ psychological barriers and offer a reset. It makes the case so forcefully that there are moments “In Waves and War” almost feels like a commercial: No downside to these drugs, ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT, is mentioned other than that they may help “crack you open” and face your unresolved traumas and guilt and grief directly — and then it’s up to you lay a new foundation to live a different way after treatment, or you might revert to the way you were before. It’s unclear in the film just how advisable this treatment — which usually involves vets traveling to a clinic in Mexico to receive it — is for everyone. And maybe it isn’t for everyone. But the key is that it offers hope.
The SEALs we meet in “In Waves and War” had each reached a point where they’d given up on hope. Their stories of their years and years fighting overseas, being […]
‘In Waves and War’ Review: A Moving Documentary About Wartime PTSD That Actually Offers Hope
