Plant Medicine: What If We Have Been Looking in the Wrong Damn Place?

For decades, veterans struggling with PTSD, traumatic brain injury, addiction and suicidal thoughts have been handed the same playbook.

Take this pill. Try this therapy. Come back in six weeks. Try another pill.

For some veterans, that works.

For a whole lot of us, it does not.

That is why a recent study on ibogaine and veterans deserves some serious attention.

Researchers at Stanford studied 30 U.S. Special Operations veterans with predominantly mild traumatic brain injury. One month after a single magnesium-assisted ibogaine treatment, researchers reported an average 88 percent reduction in PTSD symptoms, an 87 percent reduction in depression and an 81 percent reduction in anxiety.

Their measure of overall functional disability dropped from 30.2 to 5.1.

Those are not small numbers.

They are the kind of numbers that make you stop and say, “Wait a damn minute.”

When a group of veterans who have already tried “conventional” approaches shows this kind of improvement, we believe it deserves more than a shrug.

It deserves research.

It deserves honest conversation.

And veterans deserve the right to have more tools on the table.

That is part of why Irreverent Warriors is working to expand access to psychedelic research and treatment for veterans in the United States. We are not interested in hype. We are interested in finding what actually helps veterans heal and making sure veterans have access to the best evidence based options available.

If you want to see what this can look like on a very human level, watch the documentary In Waves & War. The film follows Navy SEAL veterans dealing with the psychological and physical consequences of war and their journey through psychedelic treatment.

Our own IW board member Waco Hoover served as an advisor on the film. One of our IW Missouri members, Trey Warren, went through this exact protocol with the same team. IW isn’t sitting on the sidelines. We are ACTIVE.

This conversation is getting bigger.

The Pentagon is funding psychedelic therapy now. Universities are expanding these treatments. Veterans are telling their stories. And researchers are beginning to put some actual numbers behind what veterans have been experiencing for years.

Psychedelics will turn out to be one piece of the puzzle.

Some may find one plant helpful, while someone else may find another more useful.

Maybe the answer will be different for every veteran.

But after everything we have asked veterans to carry, we damn sure owe them the courage to investigate every legitimate path toward healing.

IW is going to keep pushing for that.

Semper Silkies. Always Healing.