AOC, Crenshaw want Pentagon to study use of psychedelics to treat PTSD

Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, want the Pentagon to conduct a study on the use of psychedelics to treat military members suffering from ailments like traumatic brain injuries. The duo hope to get a measure approved in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require the Pentagon to study the effects of psychedelics on active duty service members in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Space Force who suffer from PTSD, a traumatic brain injury, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). 

“This is a really wild coalition,” Crenshaw said. “Everyone’s on the same page because there’s a realization that these therapies are working.”  

“If we prohibit these promising drugs from being studied we are being led by stigma, not science,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

“Start with our service members, start with our veterans, but the possibilities are endless from there,” Crenshaw said. “There’s promise in drug addiction, there’s promise for victims of sexual trauma, what about law enforcement officers who deal with what they deal with every single day.”

The covered substances include MDMA, psilocybin, ibogaine and DMT.

“At least one in two PTSD patients cannot tolerate or do not respond adequately to existing treatments,” Ocasio-Cortez said. 

The lawmakers say initial research shows promising results.

“I had so many friends, either current or former service members, who were going down to a specific clinic and doing ibogaine,” Crenshaw added. “One treatment of ibogaine would cure them, cure them of addiction, cure them of their inner demons, of their PTSD. They were balanced afterwards.”

If the measure gets approved, the research would begin in less than three months and the report would be due in one year. 

The study requirements were written directly into the House version of the NDAA. But Ocasio-Cortez said she expects the provision to meet resistance in the Senate and encouraged people who support it to contact their senator’s office.