Zach Skiles is a veteran and clinical psychologist who, informed by his own experiences, is helping other veterans deal with PTSD, depression, and drug addiction. As a researcher with University of California at San Francisco, Skiles leads veterans through psychedelic experiences to help alleviate some of their suffering. The participants are first given ibogaine—a natural stimulant with psychedelic properties found in the West African shrub iboga. After a long "group healing" session, they are administered 5-MeO-DMT, an extremely powerful and short-lasting psychedelic found in the venom of the Sonoran Desert toad. (Both compounds can also be synthesized in a laboratory.) Unfortunately. both of these compounds are illegal in the United States so the veterans must travel to Mexico for the actual treatments. In honor of Veteran's Day, the always-excellent Microdose republished Jan C. Hu's 2021 interview with Skiles:
What aspects of psychedelic therapy might help treat veterans in particular?
In treating PTSD, psychedelics enhance your ability to bring up trauma and simultaneously see it from different angles. Everything feels new, more revelatory and connected. There's the ability to take a step back and experience something in a totally new way.
One of the cooler things about psychedelic assisted therapies is you're not only getting those cognitive pieces, but you're also getting somatic, cathartic experiences at the same time. For people who've experienced sexual assault or combat exposure, you cut off a lot of sensation from your body and reconnecting to it is actually one of the main goals of all therapies. Having that experience along with these cognitive pieces is something that they call a codex condensed experience — it's happening in different constellations of the mind and body[…]
These therapies aren't legal in the U.S. What drove you and other vets to seek out these experiences in Mexico?
There's a bit of desperation; people have to leave the country to be able to get these therapies. These are folks who have spent careers in the U.S. Special Forces, with blast injuries or lesions on their brain. It's a group of folks who have tried every single therapy that's offered in the United States and have come up wanting more. They had to leave the country in order to have a therapeutic experience, and not be arrested for it.
It's important to give guys an ability to have the most up to date therapeutic access, but in the U.S.; it's also important for this to become regulated. We operate in the underground because that's the only place we can do this kind of thing.
Previously:
• FDA denies approval of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD
• These psychonauts are in training to take DMT trips that last hours or even days and report back… for science
• 'Please refrain from licking' toads, says National Park Service in unusual warning
