60 Minutes - 02/02/2025: What Will Mitch Do?, Robert Lighthizer, A Psychedelic Journey

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Now that President Donald Trump has retaken the White House and is shaking up Washington with an onslaught of executive orders and controversial nominees for his Cabinet, correspondent Lesley Stahl profiles the longest-serving Senate party leader, Mitch McConnell, on his life, legacy and what he will do next since stepping down from Senate leadership. Tariffs were a signature of President Trump’s campaign and are now part of his economic agenda promising to protect American trade and recover manufacturing jobs. Correspondent Scott Pelley interviews Robert Lighthizer, the top trade negotiator during Trump’s first term who continues to be an informal advisor and confidant of the president. Last year, the Veterans Administration announced it would begin funding clinical trials to explore the use of psychedelic drugs for treating post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and addiction. However, these trials are small, and even if successful, it will likely be years before veterans can access psychedelics at the VA. Many U.S. veterans struggling with PTSD aren’t waiting. Thousands of veterans are traveling overseas seeking relief at psychedelic retreats where these substances are legal to use, mostly in indigenous ceremonies. Correspondent Anderson Cooper follows nine veterans on a psychedelic journey to the west coast of Mexico, where they hope to find healing. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, eco-friendly towels? And they're quick-dry. Yeah, you know, HomeSense always has a lot of great towels. Let me see that. Quick-dry? Will it dry quickly enough that I won't notice when you use my towel? Okay, that happened once. Maybe more than once. Anyways, these are only $13. $13? Okay.

Let's get you this navy one, and for me, this soft beige one. Deal so good, everyone approves only at home sense from commutes that become learning sessions to dishwashing filled with laughs podcasts can help you make the most out of your every day and when it comes to everyday spending you can count on the pc insiders world elite mastercard to help you earn the most pc optimum points everywhere you shop the pc insiders world eliteard, the card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit pcfinancial.ca for details. How do you feel about the Senate? Glad to be in the majority. At age 82 and after 18 years as the longest serving Senate leader ever,

Mitch McConnell is thinking about his legacy. And that includes his long-running feud with President Trump. You have said some pretty harsh things about him. You've said he's nasty. You've said he's not very smart. You've said he's a sleazeball. Well, those were private comments. Well, but they're in your biography. Yeah.

You add it all up, you can get to around a trillion dollars a year of wealth from the United States being transferred through a geopolitical adversary. It's insane. You don't know Robert Lighthizer, but his influence with President Trump could change America's insane. You don't know Robert Lighthizer, but his influence with President Trump could change America's economy. He's an evangelist for trade tariffs, which he says might just save the country. The way you paint it, it seems like tariffs are magic. The vets drank psilocybin, a psychoactive compound found in some mushrooms,

put on blindfolds to shut out distractions, and lay down. The retreat was organized and paid for by the Heroic Hearts Project, a nonprofit that's helped more than 1,000 U.S. veterans with combat-related PTSD access psychedelics. Them seeking this type of unauthorized therapy is just another indication on why we need to study this further and get it to a safe and effective medical environment. I'm Leslie Stahl.

I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4.

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Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. After 18 years as the longest-serving Senate leader ever, Mitch McConnell is starting the year as a backbencher. At 82, he's thinking about his legacy. He recently cooperated on a book about his life,

relinquishing his personal papers to the biographer. After voting against Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, the question is, how much more will McConnell defy President Donald Trump? Everybody wants to know. What will Mitch do? You have said that you feel liberated, like Martin Luther King, free at last. Yeah. Free for what? For the do what?

Well, I will be more outspoken about things that I particularly care about than I have been in the past. Particularly the resurgence of isolationism in today's Republican Party. America first, that's what they used in the 30s. And I'm hopeful the new administration will understand and act, not with just language that says America first, but funding that underscores the nature of the threat. Look, what is the situation? North Korea, China, Russia, Iran. This is a huge threat, a fight between the autocrats and the democracies. And when it comes to the democratic world, only one country can lead. That's us.

That's fundamental to the difference between what you're saying and what this administration seems to be saying, which is we don't want to be the leader of the free world anymore. Well, I can only speak for myself. I think it's dangerous to step aside and assume that by speaking to autocrats, they will somehow treat you better. What about tariffs against our allies? It will drive the cost of everything up. In other words, it'll be paid for by American consumers.

I mean, why would you want to get in a fight with your allies over this? What about the encroachment on the independence of the Senate, for example? Will you be speaking out about that? I sure will. When I was majority leader and he was president, he tried to get me to change the filibuster. I said I had a one-word answer, no. In the book, it says that you had a couple of screaming matches on the phone with the president. We had a candid relationship.

Candid. The Trump-McConnell feud has been roiling for a long time. We do have to do something about Mitch McConnell. He's a disaster. He's a disaster. President Trump called you, among other things, a sullen, unsmiling political hack. You have said some pretty harsh things about him.

You've said he's nasty. You've said he's not very him. You've said he's nasty. You've said he's not very smart. You've said he's a sleazeball. Well, those were private comments. Well, but they're in your biography. Yeah. He vented about Donald Trump to his biographer, Michael Tackett, who interviewed him over the last three years.

What's the most courageous thing he did as leader? The most courageous thing he did as leader was stand up for aid for Ukraine. It wasn't popular within his party. It wasn't popular with Donald Trump. It wasn't popular with J.D. Vance, but he did it anyway. What's the most despicable thing he did? The most contentious thing he did was to block Merrick Garland, not simply from getting a vote in the Senate, but from even having a hearing in the Senate. McConnell single-handedly blocked President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. One of my proudest moments

is when I looked at Barack Obama in the eye and I said, Mr. President, you will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy. This was the first step in McConnell's engineering of a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court. What about the way you went about imposing these justices into the system? How do you feel as you look back on your legacy? I feel fine about it. I knew that if the shoe was on the other foot...

But is that a good reason? They would have done the same thing. Your biographer, and I'm quoting him, said, it was a brutish exercise of power, brutish. I just don't agree. I know, but what do you think about that sort of image of you? I decided political popularity was not my motivation. I was going to try to help right-of-center America have a voice,

and that was what I thought was the most important thing I could do. Do you take any responsibility that the court has lost so much credibility? There's been a recent poll that says 70% of the American people think that justices are more influenced by ideology than by being fair and impartial. Yeah. The reason their popularity is down is because the Democrats are criticizing them all the time. Okay, but I'm not talking about popularity.

I'm talking about credibility of a major institution. But Leslie, their job is not to seek public approval. It's to follow the law. So this is your beloved Senate. How do you feel about the Senate? Glad to be in the majority. At 82, he has slowed down, looks frail. There have been questions about his health

ever since he froze at the microphones in the Capitol over a year ago. He told us the freeze was caused by a concussion that he suffered from a fall. Seven months later, this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate. When he was leader, his trademark was inscrutability. Any comments, Leader McConnell? How do you feel today went? I'm not going to answer questions about when. He earned the nickname Darth Vader. I'm suggesting that I'm not going to answer your question.

I want to control the message if I can. Are you doing that right now? Yeah. McConnell's has been a long and improbable journey. Born in 1942 in rural Alabama, he was stricken with polio at age two. His mother drove him to Warm Springs, Georgia, to the polio facility established by Franklin Roosevelt. The treatment? He wasn't allowed to walk for two years. I was lucky to have a mother who was absolutely determined to do everything she could to get me back to normal. They moved to Louisville, Kentucky, and when Mitch was in high school, he found his niche in student government.

So he'd been developing his political skills and acumen from the youngest age. He was almost born 40 years old in a suit. I mean, he wanted to be in politics. McConnell mastered the inside game over his 40 years in the Senate, so much so that Tackett says he's the most impactful Senate leader since Lyndon Johnson. You can draw a straight line from what he did to shape the courts to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, to the overturning of affirmative action. By changing the court, changing the composition of the court, he changed American life. But his job became more difficult as his party became more MAGA, and even worse after President Trump used a racial slur against his second wife, Elaine Chao.

Did you ever confront him about what he said about your wife, Elaine? No. I chose not to engage with him. And today? You feel okay about that? No, I don't feel okay about it. How would you describe your relationship with President Trump? Well, we haven't spoken for quite a while. I was very upset about what happened January 6th.

Go, go! about what happened January 6th. You had to be evacuated from the Senate along with other leaders. Your staff was in your office. The rioters were banging on your door. Someone with a flagpole broke a window into your office. Well, my staff in the Capitol was putting furniture up against the doors. To prevent them from coming in? To prevent the rioters from outside

from breaking the doors and getting at them. And what was it about? To try to prevent the orderly transfer of government, which had never happened in our country. Your staff, after the crisis was over, you went and spoke with them. It was a highly emotional situation. You remember? Oh, I remember well.

Do you remember what you told them? That, uh, yeah, I remember what I told them. That emotion turned to fury. President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. That's the way I still feel about it. What are your views on President Trump and his supporters trying to change what happened on January 6th? They're calling it a day of love.

They call the rioters martyrs. Yeah, no, it was an insurrection. What about the pardons for the people who stormed the Capitol that day? I think pardoning people who've been convicted is a mistake. But while he has been critical of the president, he has almost always wound up retracting his clause. Take the impeachment battle. The question is on the article of impeachment. McConnell ended up voting against convicting Mr. Trump

at the Senate trial that took place after he had just left office. A conviction could have disqualified the ex-president from running for reelection. McConnell thought that the criminal and civil justice system would be there to hold Trump to account for his actions. And as we know, it didn't happen. And partly because of him. The court he created ended up being the court that helped to enable Donald Trump to not

eventually face prosecution. It was the biggest miscalculation of his political career and no doubt will be a stain on his legacy. So now Donald Trump is president again, issuing an onslaught of executive orders and controversial nominees for his cabinet. McConnell was one of only three Republicans who voted against Pete Hegseth for defense secretary. And while he won't tip his hand on how he'll vote on the others... I don't have any news to make on that run. He did signal some reluctance about the nominee who would oversee the nation's health care

system. You're a polio survivor. There is one of the cabinet nominees, RFK Jr., who says that the polio vaccine killed more people than polio. What are your views about that? Well, the polio vaccine, it's been a huge success. But what about all of them? Measles, mumps, I mean, chickenpox? Oh, vaccines are critically important to health, to having normal lives.

How important is that issue to you? You know, we're talking about things you would fight for. You're free at last. You're free to speak your mind. Well, it's no surprise that it's a big deal with me. So what will Mitch do now? Will he lead an opposition to the head of his party? Not likely. I expect to support most of what this administration is trying to accomplish.

So what happened in the past is irrelevant to me. You said that January 6th was evidence of Donald Trump's complete unfitness for office. I said shortly after January 6th that if he were the nominee for president, I would support him. Even if he's unfit for office? I'm support him. Even if he's unfit for office? I'm a Republican. I don't get to decide who gets to be president. The American people do.

And you have to admit, they did. And he's back. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping, history-telling podcast, chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the

1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. You don't know Robert Lighthizer, but his influence with President Trump could change America's economy. Lighthizer was the top U.S. trade negotiator in the first Trump administration, and he's an evangelist for tariffs, taxes on imported goods. Yesterday, the president declared an emergency and imposed unusually high 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada and 10% on China to coerce them to stop the flow of the deadly drug fentanyl. That's unusual because tariffs are normally used to balance trade. And in Lighthizer's opinion, America has little choice.

He says China's three-to-one dominance in trade is a threat to our way of life. China, to me, is an existential threat to the United States. It is a very, very competent adversary. China views itself as number one in the world and wants to be that way. They view us as in the way. They have the biggest army in the world, and they're growing it, the biggest navy in the world, and they're growing it. They view us as in the way. They have the biggest army in the world and they're growing it, the biggest navy in the world and they're growing it. They're spying on us, they're taking our technology. They've been waging an economic war against the United States and winning that war for at least the last three decades. So your tariff regime for China would be what? I believe in strategic decoupling. I'm not saying no economic relationship

with China. That's not my position at all. I think you want balanced trade. And how do you get balanced trade? You're going to get balanced trade by having large tariffs on most of what they send us. What's large? You know, the president has floated numbers, 50, 60 percent, but I think they're big numbers like that. Wait a minute. You're talking about decoupling from China. What would that look like? So it is strategic decoupling. So we would still have trade.

So I would say, we sell you $150 billion. We buy $150 billion from you. No more. We don't allow investments in China, except in circumstances where we believe that's in the interest of the United States. We don't allow inbound investments, so we begin to disentangle. We disentangle our technology. You could ask yourself, what is China's policy towards us? It is exactly a mirror image of what I just said. So what I'm suggesting we do to China is what they do to us. Ronald Reagan gave the young trade lawyer his first White House job,

and 77-year-old Bob Lighthizer has been advising Republicans since. In Trump's first term, Lighthizer was in charge of negotiating trade agreements. In Trump 2.0, he's an unofficial advisor, but a passionate one. We noticed when he apologized for chewing up time. Just because I talk too much. It is 60 minutes after all, and we don't get all of it. It's not 60 days. Is that what you're thinking? It's not days, but centuries that tariffs have been debated. Every U.S. president has used them.

But in the 1930s, tariffs deepened the Great Depression, and after World War II, America led a broken world toward free trade. U.S. manufacturing jobs were stable until around the year 2000. Then, in 10 years, a third of manufacturing jobs were lost, nearly 6 million. There was a modest rebound under Obama, Trump, and Biden. That dip is COVID. But fewer than 1.5 million jobs are back. You don't know how much you love going to work until you can't go there anymore. Stacey Dahl, Michelle Lopez, and Matt Franson are among 1,200 workers laid off in 2023

when the Belvedere, Illinois, auto assembly plant shut down. This is my home. And when they told me that we were done, it hurt. It really did. We've got a community of 24,000 people, and there's probably not a street you can go down that somebody's not tied to this plant. We've been here since 1965.

It's a good job, provides a great living, and we would just like to see it come back. Come back from Mexico. In 2016, carmaker Stellantis moved one of Belvedere's Jeep models south of the border. In 2023, Belvedere closed. We've lost electronics, we've lost textiles, we've lost chemicals in a large way. We invented the semiconductor. Now we make 8% of semiconductors for the world and none of the really high-tech ones. More than half of the cars sold in America are now imports. Mexico, Canada, and China are America's largest trading partners. But China, Bob Lighthizer says, has an enormous advantage

because of the trade imbalance and Chinese espionage stealing U.S. trade secrets. You add it all up, you can get to around a trillion dollars a year of wealth from the United States being transferred to a geopolitical adversary. It's insane and it's working. And then you ask yourself with the national security issue, how do you fight a war, if God help us, we ever have a war with China, when they're now four times more likely to be able to produce what is needed in a war? But isn't trade one of the ways we avoid a hot war?

The way you prevent wars is by having the strongest, biggest, best army, biggest, best navy, best economy in the world, best technology. You do those things, the allies come to you, they see you as the future. Already, China's manufacturing sector is bigger than that of the United States, Germany, and Japan combined. Isn't China too big to snub? We should never have that attitude. There are things we can do. The genius of America combined with our allies, we can turn this around. But what do we need? We need to change the relationship with them. We need tariffs. In my judgment, we need subsidies in certain areas,

and we need an economic policy and a military strategic policy that rises up to the challenge. Everyone will prosper. Every family will thrive. On the campaign, Trump proposed historic tariffs, 10 to 20 percent on all imports, 25 percent on Mexico and Canada, 60 percent on China. He said America would grow wealthy collecting taxes from overseas. A tariff is a tax on a foreign country. That's the way it is, whether you like it or not. A lot of people like to say, oh, it's a tax on us. No, no, no. It's a tax on a foreign country. It's a tax on a country that's ripping us off and stealing our jobs. But most any importer or economist will tell you the president is mistaken.

Tariffs are not a tax on a foreign country. The tax is paid by the importer in the United States. For example, Walmart imports goods from China, and when those goods cross into the United States, Walmart pays the tariff. If Walmart decides to pass the cost to consumers, then you paid the tariff, not China. So if you go to Walmart, if you go to Target, you're going to see higher prices for imported goods. Economist Mary Lovely studied Trump's proposals for the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a leader in nonpartisan research. The argument is made that if tariffs are imposed, American consumers will buy less of the foreign goods, more domestically produced goods, and that's a great thing for consumers and for jobs. Well, it's a great thing for consumers if you don't care about how much they are able to buy

because the prices of everything they buy will go up. Will they substitute toward domestic goods? Let's just take that to start. Yes, to some extent they will. But the prices of those domestic goods will also rise because they no longer have to compete with imported goods. Lovely's research estimates the tariffs Trump talks about would cost an average household around $200 a month. Footwear, toys, home goods, certain types of machinery, certain active ingredients in pharmaceuticals, certain types of chemicals. We're still very dependent in certain categories.

But worse, Lovely says, tariffs can kill jobs. She points to Trump's first-term tariffs on imported steel. As intended, steel prices rose, U.S. mills were protected, but the higher prices hurt steel buyers, like carmakers. Economists estimate that the tariffs created 1,000 jobs in steel, but cost 75,000 jobs among U.S. companies overall. This idea that it creates jobs, yes, in a few places for a few people, but for the majority of us, it's more pressure on employers, it's more pressure on our wages, it's more pressure on our jobs, and obviously more pressure on our wallets when we go to the cash register. The argument is made that when you increase the cost of parts and supplies coming into the country, you're hurting Apple, you're hurting Ford, you're hurting American companies.

Will these very highly paid CEOs have to figure out how to make a profit in a new environment, one that helps workers and helps innovation and is more American-focused, America first? The answer is yeah, they're going to have to figure it out. Will they figure it out? Of course they'll figure it out. They're going to learn how to make money. One of the ways they figure it out is by laying people off. Well, no.

You see, I don't believe that's true. I think, to me, the exact opposite will happen. You will see more production in the United States. You will see more jobs, better jobs, more pressure, upward pressure on wages, which is my objective. The way you paint it, it seems like tariffs are magic. Well, I wouldn't say magic. Remember, the tariffs are part of an economic policy. The policy has tax cuts, it has spending cuts, it has energy production, it has regulatory reduction, and it has tariffs. The combination of that, I think, and tariffs are an important

part of it, has the potential to have this kind of renaissance. We saw some of that combination he talks about back in Belvedere, where turbocharged tariffs have been hitched to a big taxpayer investment. When you were putting that t-shirt on Joe Biden, did you think, that's it, the plant's opening again? In 2023, Matt Franson, president of the UAW Local, welcomed President Biden to Belvedere with a union shirt. I thought we were well on our way. You know, Belvedere has always fought for themselves.

And in this scenario, we needed... we needed everybody to fight for us, and they did. Biden did. He increased Trump's earlier 25% tariff on Chinese cars to 100% for Chinese electric vehicles. Then Biden gave carmaker Stellantis a $335 million grant to convert Belvedere to electric cars. We don't know how much that helped, but last month, Stellantis said it would reopen in 2027. They need to realize that whether you're Democrat, Republican, Independent, we need to work on the middle class. If the middle class is strong, that helps so many different

areas. So it's not just going to be the tariffs. It's got to be policy that's set for the middle class. But tariffs cut both ways. Canada and Mexico now say they will retaliate against Trump's new tariffs with their own tariffs on U.S. goods, the opening shots of a trade war. The real fear that I have is that we have real problems. And I'm afraid that tariffs have time and time again proven to not deliver. So in the long run, I'm afraid it will just increase cynicism among the American public about whether the government is able to deliver and make their lives better. What are the chances that you're wrong?

Well, once again, we tried it the other way, Scott. If we do this, in 10 years it doesn't work, we can go back and always fail again with the way we have in the past. Last year, for the first time, the Veterans Administration announced it would begin funding its own clinical trials to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and addiction using two psychedelic drugs, psilocybin and MDMA. Even if these trials are successful, it would be years before the VA could prescribe either drug for its patients. Thousands of veterans who are suffering aren't waiting. Desperate for help, they're attending psychedelic retreats in countries where the drugs are legal to use, mostly in indigenous ceremonies. This past March, we were invited to join nine veterans who traveled to the west coast of Mexico for a psychedelic journey they hoped would finally help ease their pain. They came to Mexico from all over the United States, a group of nine veterans with invisible wounds that are hard to heal.

Their destination, a remote village near Puerto Vallarta for a week-long psychedelic retreat. It was a voyage into the unknown, but a risk worth taking for T.J. Duff, a former Navy sailor. Are you optimistic? Being optimistic is hard for me because I've been through a lot of therapy, a lot of different treatments, and not a lot of success. 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. Everyone around me was killed. There's bodies alive and dead being piled up in the midships, and I think that's really where I just started holding everything in. I don't have it where I'm jumping in ditches when I hear loud noises. My PTSD is kind of a self-destructive form. Randy Weaver is a police officer in New York.

A former staff sergeant in the Army, he was diagnosed with PTSD in 2007 after returning home from tours in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. It's the constant, you know, what if I had done this? What if we did that? You know. Are those things you want to revisit while you're taking the psilocybin? Yeah, if I could revisit them and see them maybe from a different perspective, like not where I failed somebody. Is there a particular incident that you feel you failed somebody? Yeah, so March 18th, 20 years ago.

In 2004, Weaver's platoon was caught in a firefight in an Afghan village. Two soldiers were killed, one of them his friend, Staff Sergeant Anthony Lagman. Weaver's worn this bracelet with Lagman's name on it since coming home. You've been wearing that for 20 years? Yeah, every day. Weaver says 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 your family would be better off without you.

And when those demons tell you those things every day, it's something hard to ignore. Will this help with that? I hope so. The retreat was organized and paid for by the Heroic Hearts Project, a nonprofit that's helped more than 1,000 U.S. veterans with combat-related PTSD access psychedelics. I came home super angry, super anxious, hypervigilant. You know, that led to a pretty nasty divorce.

Ed Glover was in Afghanistan with the Marines. He's been a firefighter for 22 years. 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. As the vets talked, it became clear some of their struggles began long before they joined the military. My family life was just always this constant conflict. Navy vet Michael Giardina had an emotionally abusive father who killed himself 16 years ago. His sister died by suicide five months before he came here.

My daughter asked my ex-wife if I was going to kill myself, and I'm not. I just want to get better. To qualify for this retreat, they had to work with their doctors to wean off any antidepressant or anxiety medication they might be taking because of how it could interact with the psychedelics. They also had to have a medical screening and no family history of psychosis or schizophrenia. When we were there, a local doctor was on site, but no mental health professionals. I appreciate you guys for putting the faith in me, the faith in us, coming here. Jesse Gould, a former Army Ranger, founded the Heroic Hearts Project in 2017 after he tried another psychedelic, ayahuasca, at a retreat in Peru. Gould says psychedelics can help veterans revisit traumatic moments

in ways they may be unable to with other therapies. The value of what we're finding with psychedelics is it's a very individualistic journey. You know, it comes at you. It brings up the emotions. It heightens your senses. And so you're having to face it. And so that's why you see such big revelations, because it's giving you the tools to actually get there. Do you worry that some who see this as sort of the last hope may end up disappointed? I worry that we're at the situation where people are having to go to other countries for their last hope.

That indicates a major flaw in the system. The orange one? Okay. Heroic Hearts hired traditional healers to conduct three psychedelic ceremonies. The first two with psilocybin, a psychoactive compound found in some mushrooms. It's been used as medicine by indigenous communities in Mexico and elsewhere for centuries. You don't need to be strong. All we need for this experience and to receive the healing

is humbleness. The healers stirred ground-up mushrooms into a tea. The vets drank it, put on blindfolds to shut out distractions, and lay down. At first, it seemed like the group might have traveled thousands of miles for a midday nap. But then, about an hour in, we saw Michael Giardina raise his hand for help. His foot soon started to shake, followed by his whole body. By hour three, it was clear the psilocybin had kicked in. Randy Weaver and T.J. Duff barely seemed to move, while firefighter Ed Glover appeared caught between rapture and deep sorrow. When you let go of me, the truth will appear so simple and clear.

Five hours later, when the psilocybin began to wear off, the vets removed their eye masks and found the heat of the afternoon sun. The next day, the group gathered to discuss what they'd gone through. It literally felt like an exorcism. My foot was going crazy. I could kind of feel like my body was convulsing. I felt like I was taking every last breath

of any victim, patient, or friend that I had lost. So I really struggled to breathe yesterday. I've never done anything like that before. Randy Weaver appeared to find some of what he traveled all this way for. One thing that I remember very vividly was flying back with the guys that we lost. Like being on that medevac, even though I wasn't there in the real world, I was there spiritually with them.

TJ Duff, however, found it unsettling and at times scary. I've heard a lot of your guys' stories, and I did not get as immersive as you guys did. I'm kind of glad I didn't, honestly, because I was kind of afraid of that. That night, Duff took part in another psilocybin ceremony, but the next day he left. He later told us the whole experience caused a dangerous decline in his mental health. He's now back on antidepressant medication. The last ceremony of the retreat was with 5-MeO-DMT, a powerful and fast-acting psychedelic

secreted from a toad. After returning home, the vets had several virtual meetings with a Heroic Hearts Project counselor. I think my biggest takeaway was making sure I make the time to take care of myself. The Veterans Administration warns against self-medicating with psychedelics or using them as part of a self-treatment program. But in December, when we spoke to its top doctor, Sharif El-Mahal, he was enthusiastic about their potential.

Do these retreats concern you? They can concern me because there's no way to monitor, certify, make sure that they're actually safe environments. They're seeking these therapies because they do not see our current options for them to be effective enough, and they're in a state of desperation. And that in and of itself, them seeking this type of unauthorized therapy, is just another indication on why we need to study this further and get it to a safe and effective medical environment. In August, the FDA rejected a pharmaceutical company's application to use the psychedelic MDMA in combination with therapy as a treatment for PTSD,

after an FDA advisory panel said there wasn't enough evidence it was safe or effective. The VA is now conducting nine clinical trials using MDMA and psilocybin to treat PTSD, depression, and addiction. Dr. Elnahal told us a small Phase II trial by the VA using MDMA and therapy to treat PTSD completed last year showed real promise. Forty-five percent have gone into complete remission, which is essentially a normal emotional state that is unheard of with prolonged exposure, cognitive processing, and certainly SSRIs, the current standard of care options. Almost half of the people who came in with PTSD and did MDMA therapy at the VA were cured? Yes. So you have no doubt that this works? We need to do larger phase three clinical trials.

That's the best way scientifically to understand what the true adverse events are and whether we can reproduce these results in larger populations of veterans. I'm very optimistic we will be able to demonstrate that. How long do you think it will be before veterans can go to the VA and get this therapy? It could be another couple of years. The incoming administration is going to take a pretty bold stance on this. What makes you optimistic that the new administration is going to be a believer in this? We've heard the nominee for HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., talk about what he thinks the

potential breakthrough therapy is. We'll see what the stance is potential breakthrough therapy is. We'll see what the stance is of other health officials. That's really promising. Nearly a year after that retreat in Mexico, we checked in with the nine veterans who attended. Eight of them told us their symptoms have improved and called their experience with psychedelics life-changing. Ed Glover says he still feels like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. How are you doing? Very well.

Shortly after coming home from the retreat, he decided to retire as a firefighter. Prior to the retreat, I thought about taking my life just about every day. I had a very close call. You know, the note, the gun, that is no longer the case. You haven't had thoughts of killing yourself since then? Not one. And Randy Weaver says his suicidal ideations have stopped as well. I don't have any of those thoughts since going through this journey.

That's remarkable. I would say, yeah. You had told the group afterward that you had visualized people on a medevac helicopter that you had served with. What was the impact of that? In combat, things happen quickly. One minute you're talking to your friend, and the next minute you're putting them in a body bag. That causes a gap in your psyche.

So to be able to revisit those incidences, seeing those helicopters come back with friends, it brings a little peace to you. Yeah. I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.