The Daily - The Veterans Fighting to Legalize Psychedelics

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

In a major shift that would modify laws set half a decade ago, states and cities around the United States are moving to legalize psychedelics for use as a medical treatment.The sudden change of heart has a lot to do with who is asking for the substances.Guest: Andrew Jacobs, a health and science reporter for The New York Times.Background reading: Lawmakers find it hard to “just say no” to combat veterans seeking support for drug decriminalization efforts.In January, Oregon became the first state to allow adult use of psilocybin “magic” mushrooms.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. More than 50 years ago, the United States outlawed psychedelic drugs. Now, in a major shift, states and cities across the country are moving to legalize them as a medical treatment. States and cities across the country are moving to legalize them as a medical treatment. According to my colleague, Andrew Jacobs, the sudden change of heart has a lot to do with who is now asking for these drugs. It's Wednesday, February 22nd.

Andy, tell us about this woman, Juliana Mercer, and her path to these medical treatments that you have been reporting on. So Juliana is 40 and lives in San Diego, but she went to high school in Arizona. I was in my senior year of high school. I had a track scholarship and was going to go to college and run. And one day she was visiting her local strip mall in Arizona and noticed all these military recruiter offices. I was bored and curious. And she wandered in and started talking to the various recruiters. And the last office in that row was the Marine Corps office. And I knew what the Army and the Navy and the Air Force was, but didn't know what the Marine Corps was. And she ended up talking to the Marine Corps recruiter. And everything that they told me about being a Marine was something that I wanted to be.

And that day, I signed on the dotted line and committed to going to boot camp. And by the end of that conversation, she had signed up. And soon after finishing boot camp, 9-11 happened. I watched the towers fall. I hadn't even checked into my first unit yet. And in 2005, she was deployed to Iraq, and she saw a lot of disturbing things in her time there. Day in and day out, I saw the true cost of our country being at war.

And after about six months, she was transferred to a military hospital in San Diego. There, she worked with young soldiers who had been horribly injured in the war. I'm working with Marines that were mostly very, very young and missing multiple limbs, coming back with brain injuries, post-traumatic stress, multiple limbs, coming back with brain injuries, post-traumatic stress, and then working with them to help them reintegrate back into a life post-injury. She was dealing with these young men and women who were sort of in the prime of their life and were not only physically sort of maimed, but also emotionally very scarred and damaged. So we had a lot of injuries, a lot of brain injuries, which were really new to us, and a lot of post-traumatic stress, which we hadn't

really dealt with before in mass. So after five years working at that military hospital in San Diego, she was sent back to the battlefield. She went to Afghanistan. In 2010, I deployed to Helmand, Afghanistan. And it was there that she really started to experience some of these sort of psychological repercussions of the previous few years of her work. And really shortly after I got there, I started hallucinating that some of my wounded Marines were out there and I would see them walking towards me. She said that she would see soldiers that she thought were the very men and women she'd been working with in the hospital in San Diego. And I would get really scared and run towards towards them and ask them, like thinking that

it was one of my guys that was, you know, an amputee or, and say, why are you here? And then I'd get closer and realize that it wasn't them, that I was hallucinating. And so I realized really quickly that something was wrong. And at the same time, she was continuing to experience a lot of horror soldiers being killed. We would have these ceremonies where you'd go out to the flight line and pay final respects to coffins that were covered with flags draped over them. And I eventually lost track of how many coffins that I had saluted. And as she tells it, she was sort of bottling it all up.

And then she returns to the U.S. and she finds herself sort of unmoored. Around 2018, 2019, I found myself in a place where I didn't have purpose. Depressed, anxious, just not really able to function in civilian life. Right. All of which seem like pretty classic signs of PTSD. Exactly. So I started talk therapy, and that helped a little.

It's not like she ignored these problems. She did go to see a therapist. She was being treated for depression, but didn't really alleviate the suffering she was experiencing. It just wasn't moving the needle for me and helping me to connect with what the actual problem was. And that's when she turned to psychedelics. Yeah. So it was a really high dose of psilocybin called a hero's dose. So she took a single dose of psilocybin mushrooms, also known as magic mushrooms, in her home. You know, you wear an eye mask, you listen to music, and you allow it to do what the psilocybin does.

And the way she describes it is it really lifted the veil on her depression and anxiety. What I was able to do was to just finally feel all of those emotions that had been stuck inside. It wasn't like she was reliving her past trauma. It was more like she just had a new perspective. Every time I wasn't able to cry when we saluted a Marine that was going home in a coffin, every time that I wasn't able to show that I was upset and having empathy for my Marines that were struggling,

figuring out their prosthetics and their family life and all of those things that had been stuck inside of me because I never gave myself the opportunity to actually feel them. I was able to release them through crying for hours and hours. What you described is really just an enormous sort of pent-up emotional release of everything that had been bottled up the previous few years. That one session overnight, few years. That one session overnight, 20 years of that collected trauma and grief and pain just completely left my body. And I woke up and looked in the mirror and didn't recognize who I saw. I was connected to, reconnected to my loving, joyful, authentic self.

And it was somebody that I hadn't seen in a really long time. And I just looked at myself. I was like, what just happened to me? So Andy, help me understand what kind of mechanically was happening to Juliana when she took this single dose of psychedelic mushrooms and why it allowed her to access all this grief that seemed to have been locked away for so long. Well, one thing I'll say is that the science on psychedelics is still sort of evolving, and there's a lot scientists don't understand about the mechanisms of psychedelics. But most experts would say that it promotes what is called neuroplasticity, which is essentially a rewiring of the brain. Because what happens in a lot of mental health conditions, depression,

anxiety, OCD, PTSD, is your thinking gets stuck in sort of a loop. And most experts would say what psychedelics do is they help you sort of break that loop and allow you to see your life and your experiences and your trauma from an entirely new perspective. out that is just looping and cycling. The idea of this elasticity here is that suddenly it's giving you the space to step outside of that and experience something different. What psychedelics do is they sort of allow you to stand on the side almost and dispassionately look at those experiences, those traumas, and allows you to revisit and process and talk about them and think about them in a way that doesn't cause debilitating pain and anxiety. Which is exactly what Juliana said happened to her. Yeah, that's right. For her, it was such a revelatory experience. It was so profound that she decided she was going to spread the gospel, as it were, and bring these compounds

to other people. But there's one pesky problem, and that is under federal law. These drugs are all illegal. And when I was doing my research, I found out that this was not always the case. And there was a time when there was a real thriving field in psychedelic research in the U.S. And the results were really promising. And that is until the federal government shut it all down. We'll be right back. so andy help us understand when and why these kinds of psychedelic treatments become illegal in the united states well i think it's helpful to first look at how these drugs first came to the U.S. In the 1940s, a Swiss chemist was experimenting with another psychedelic compound, LSD, and ingested it. And on a bike ride home, started to experience the full effects of that compound.

The weirdest, perhaps most wonderful bike ride in history? Yes, it sounds like it. And he was so taken with that experience and the promise that LSD could have for mental health conditions, that he sent it to universities around the world to encourage other researchers to do experiments. And this really sets off the golden age of psychedelic research. And what does that era look like? Here is part of an interview with a subject just before LSD is to be administered. There was just a flourishing of studies and research.

Everything is in color and I can feel the air. I can see it. I can see all the molecules. Going on all across the world, but especially in the United States and Canada. And researchers were experimenting with patients who had a range of mental health conditions, from depression to anxiety to alcoholism. After all of these years of us looking for this secret drug, this was the only thing that began to look for the first time like it might be something like that. And it seemed that these drugs

were going to have this profound impact on the field of psychiatry. And then the drugs leapt out of the lab and into society. This is the now generation. And young Americans who were at the time protesting the Vietnam War... They feel disenchanted with the world around them. ...really embraced these drugs. Tune in with natural things.

Take off your shoes. Get back in tune with God's harmony. And they became an integral part of the counterculture movement. And they can tell us we're crazy. And we can say, well, you haven't seen anything yet. And a real catalyst for deeper societal change. America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. And that alarmed the powers that be.

In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive. protesting the war in Vietnam, that he became convinced that these drugs were the fuel that was sort of propelling this anti-war movement. I have asked the Congress to provide the legislative authority and the funds to fuel this kind of an offensive. Nixon declares a war on drugs, this kind of an offensive? Nixon declares a war on drugs. And in 1970, at his behest, Congress passes the Controlled Substances Act, which effectively bans these compounds by putting them on the list of the most serious illegal drugs. And while the goal was to criminalize recreational use, it also shut down research. So the government's response to what it saw as really out-of-control recreational use of these drugs is to so thoroughly crack down on all of its uses that it even shuts down medical treatment using psychedelics. So the idea of them as a medicine that can really help people with mental illness becomes collateral damage. Yeah, and funding drives up. Universities decide they can't do this kind of research anymore.

It's too risky. And so it really ushered in a period where most of the research ends up happening underground. Hmm. And what does that look like, given the risks of using an illegal drug? band of renegade researchers, basically, who continued doing this work, who were able to obtain these drugs illicitly. And they continued doing research because they believed in the promise of psychedelics and decided it was too important to just put on ice. So that's the situation for almost 50 years until 2017, which is when the Food and Drug Administration grants something called Breakthrough Therapy Status to the compound MDMA, which is better known as ecstasy, which basically allowed the first sort of government-sanctioned research trials on a psychedelic drug. And reopens the door to widespread medical research

on psychedelic compounds for mental health conditions. And one of the groups that is really benefiting from these studies are veterans. Which makes sense given how widespread a phenomenon PTSD is among veterans. So what are some of the results of these studies? One recent study with MDMA, for example, that enrolled patients with PTSD found that two months after the treatment, two-thirds of those patients no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis. Wow. So the patients in those studies are showing results that look kind of like a cure. Yes.

And he has this research, especially since it has picked up in light of the FDA's special status for psychedelics. Has it produced evidence of meaningful risks or drawbacks to psychedelics as a medical treatment? Well, I think the answer is that it's too early to really know the full scope of how these compounds are going to affect people. But most researchers will issue a note of caution in that it's still very early on in this new phase of research. And we don't really know, for example, what the long-term impacts of these drugs will be. And we also don't know how they'll play out with people who have pre-existing psychiatric issues. For example, people who are schizophrenic, bipolar. But most of the research so far suggests that these drugs are effective and they're relatively safe. And for the veterans

who have experienced this profound benefit, it's become sort of a focus of their efforts to bring them to a wider audience, to more veterans, so they can also experience the healing. What exactly are veterans seeking? Mostly they're seeking decriminalization, and they're seeking more programs that allow veterans to access them, more opportunities to have this therapy and not have to wait, you know, the two, three, four years it might take before the FDA approves of these drugs. Right. And it's hard to get into a clinical trial. So if you want to experience the benefit of these drugs, it's difficult unless you're one of the very lucky few

who gets chosen to enter one of these research programs. That's right. And the veterans pushing for wider access have coalesced into a powerful advocacy group. And that's what Juliana is doing right now. She's working as an advocate and she's trying to push the Veterans Administration to more fully embrace psychedelic therapies and ensure that veterans get access to these new treatments. I made a decision a couple of years ago that I was going to be really open about my experience because I understood how valuable the veteran voice was. And Andy, what's been the response to this advocacy from veterans like Juliana? Well, the response has been remarkably positive. You have elected officials from both sides of the aisle really embracing the message and the sort of issue at heart here. And that's what's been the most surprising about this movement.

The elected officials that I talk to, I know that because I am a veteran myself, that they hear me and that my voice carries weight when it comes to talking about veteran issues. And it's really tied to who the messenger is here. You know, I can speculate that, you know, their decisions are part of the reason that we ended up in Iraq and Afghanistan. we ended up in Iraq and Afghanistan. So I think that because of that sacrifice, people feel an obligation to help find a way for us to heal. You know, let's face it. We are a very patriotic country that sort of looks up to our military veterans and sort of cherishes them. And having veterans as the face of this movement to decriminalize psychedelics

has really been very successful. You have conservative Republicans like Rick Perry, the former Republican governor of Texas, Republicans like Rick Perry, the former Republican governor of Texas, and others who have taken up this cause in a very vocal and visible way. And this has led to a wave of legislative accomplishments from Washington, D.C. to Seattle, Washington, Oakland, Santa Cruz, California. Seattle, Washington, Oakland, Santa Cruz, California. Over the past three or four years, cities across the country have decriminalized, for example, psilocybin mushrooms, which is the drug that Juliana took. And more recently, Oregon and Colorado have decriminalized psychedelics. have decriminalized psychedelics. And in the case of Oregon, has already set up a system for therapeutic use of psilocybin mushrooms. And state legislatures across the country are now considering similar measures that would decriminalize psychedelics and also other bills that direct state funding to research

on these compounds. So it's really a sea change in the way this country sees these drugs. Right. And I'm curious what Juliana makes of the pace of this change that she's been pushing for. I am, I'm feeling incredible. Well, she's dumbfounded. I pinch myself every day because it doesn't, it doesn't seem real. So I'm, I'm stoked. real. So I'm stoked. So are most people involved in this movement. I think there's this sense of disbelief that the nation could turn so quickly in terms of its attitudes regarding psychedelics. The excitement of having these solutions is one thing, but the idea that we're going to be able to, in a couple of years,

treat veterans for post-traumatic stress in the VA system is not anything that I ever had dreamed of in my wildest dreams. So in your mind, Andy, what is the future of these psychedelic drugs now, given the trajectory that they very much seem to be on? Yeah, I think it's undeniable. There is really incredible momentum and promise here.

researchers I spoke to are also nervous because they've seen this show before and they worry, you know, there could be a repeat of the shutdown of the field that happened in the 70s. That said, this time there are things that are I think there's a sense that this time could be different and that these drugs really could revolutionize mental health treatment in the years to come. Well, Andy, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. But there should be no doubt.

Our support for Ukraine will not waver. NATO will not be divided, and we will not tire. In a pointed back-and-forth on Tuesday, President Biden traveled to Poland, a member of NATO, to deliver his strongest rebuke yet to Russian President Vladimir Putin over his brutal invasion of Ukraine one year ago this week. President Putin's craving

lust for land and power will fail and the Ukrainian people's love for their country will prevail. While Putin, speaking in Moscow, blamed the United States and Ukraine for the war's high death toll and in a rebuke of his own to Biden, suspended Russia's participation in a major nuclear arms control treaty. In this regard, I am forced to say today that Russia is stopping its participation in the Treaty on Strategic Advanced Weapons. That treaty caps the number of nuclear weapons that both Russia and the United States can possess. As a result, Putin's decision could eventually allow Russia

to create as many nuclear weapons as it wants and potentially trigger a new nuclear arms race. Today's episode was produced by Nina Feldman and Eric Krupke with help from Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Patricia Willans with help from MJ Davis-Lynn. Fact-Checked by Susan Lee contains original music by Diane Wong, Alisha Ba'itouk, Marion Lozano, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Dan Powell. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.