Trauma and the Psychedelic Renaissance

Military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the wildly imaginative British writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley are increasingly finding common ground. In 1954, Huxley published The Doors of Perception, a short monograph detailing his psychedelic experiences on mescaline the previous May, and the book became a bible for the “turn on, tune in, drop out” movement of the 1960s counterculture. Now, the arguments Huxley made in defence of psychoactive drug use are being consulted by doctors exploring innovative ways to treat psychological wounds and mental health problems resulting from military service and trauma. Research into the therapeutic potential of drugs such as MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine) and LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) collapsed when the drugs were made illegal worldwide in the early seventies. However, the merits of psychedelic science are currently undergoing an international reappraisal and renaissance, gaining media attention and traction among scientists, doctors, and in the wider public sphere.

Psychedelics first appeared on my radar after I left the British Army in 2010 following tours in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. As I wrestled with the fallout of these experiences, I found myself enrolled in a graduate journalism school in the land of Timothy Leary, the American psychologist and counterculture writer made famous by his passionate advocacy of psychedelics during the 1960s. Leary—whom Allen Ginsburg once called “a hero of American consciousness”—had argued that LSD showed potential for therapeutic use in psychiatry. At the time, I was in regular email contact with a friend from the army who had left after our Iraq tour, and we shared concerns over the hair-trigger feelings of volatility we were both experiencing. My friend described it as “The Rage.” Neither of us had known anything like it before, but now it could suddenly surge out of the blue like a Hellfire missile, often in the most mundane situations.

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