Marine veteran and firefighter Ed Glover appeared caught between rapture and deep sorrow an hour after drinking a psilocybin tea during a retreat in Mexico.
He and other veterans, desperate for help, are attending psychedelic retreats in countries where the drugs are legal to use, mostly in indigenous ceremonies. Glover came home from Afghanistan angry, anxious, hyper-vigilant and struggling with suicidal ideations.
"I feel like one or two traumatic events you may be able to recover from, but kind of seeing it day in, day out really takes its toll," Glover said. Dealing with PTSD
The trip into the unknown was a risk worth taking for TJ Duff, a former Navy sailor. Duff was 18 when he joined the Navy. Months into his first deployment aboard the USS Cole, he says he narrowly escaped death when two suicide bombers attacked the ship in Yemen, killing 17 sailors.
"Being optimistic is hard for me," he said. "Because I’ve been through a lot of therapy, a lot of different treatments. And not a lot of success."
Randy Weaver, a police officer in New York and a former staff sergeant in the Army, was diagnosed with PTSD in 2007 after returning home from tours in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. He described his PTSD as "kind of a self-destructive form." Weaver told 60 Minutes he constantly thinks about traumatic events from his service, ruminating on how they could’ve gone differently. These events were something he hoped to revisit while taking psilocybin. Randy Weaver speaks with Anderson Cooper Weaver said he’s tried nearly every treatment for PTSD the VA offers, including talk therapy, exposure therapy, meditation and antidepressants.
"You get to a point where you’re so mentally exhausted and you’ve…created so much destruction that your demons tell yourself that these, your family would be better off without you, and when those demons tell you those things every day… it’s something hard to ignore," he said.
Some of the veterans’ struggles began long before they joined the military. Navy vet Michael Giardina had an emotionally abusive father who killed himself 15 years ago. Giardina’s sister died by suicide five months before […]
Why these U.S. veterans with PTSD are crossing the border for help
