Veteran's Journal: One Session, Sixty Days Later

I'm a Marine veteran, two deployments — Iraq and Afghanistan. I was diagnosed with PTSD in 2018 but didn't fully accept it until 2022. Three years of VA care helped some. A friend told me about a clinical trial at a university. This is what happened.

The screening process took eight weeks. Extensive psychiatric evaluation, medical history, interviews with two different clinicians. They were thorough in a way the VA rarely has time to be. I was cleared. The medication would be synthetic psilocybin — measured precisely, a known dose, no variation.

The session itself was six hours at the facility. Two therapists in the room. Eyeshades, music, a reclining chair that was more comfortable than I expected. They told me: go inside. See what's there.

What's there, it turned out, was 2007. Fallujah. Moments I had worked for years not to look at directly. But now I wasn't running. The way I'd describe it to another vet: it was like reviewing the record with the volume turned all the way down and the lights all the way up. I could see it. I wasn't in it.

At hour three I started sobbing. Not from sadness exactly — more like release. Like setting down something I'd been holding at combat-ready for fifteen years. One of the therapists held my hand without speaking. That was enough.

I wasn't cured after one session. PTSD is not something that dissolves in six hours. But the relationship changed. The memories lost some of their teeth. In the sixty days since: sleep has improved measurably. My family has noticed. I haven't had a hypervigilance episode in three weeks — the longest stretch I can remember.

I have a second session scheduled.