Taking trips to get beyond trauma
Psychedelics help some female vets work toward peace
TIJUANA, Mexico — Plumes of incense swirled through the dimly lit living room as seven women took turns explaining what drove them to sign up for a weekend of psychedelic therapy at a villa in northern Mexico with sweeping ocean views.
A former U.S. Marine said she hoped to connect with the spirit of her mother, who killed herself 11 years ago. An Army veteran said she had been sexually assaulted by a relative as a child. A handful of veterans said they had been sexually assaulted by fellow service members.
The wife of a Navy bomb disposal expert choked up as she lamented that years of unrelenting combat missions had turned her husband into an absent, dysfunctional father.
Kristine Bostwick, 38, a former Navy corpsman, said she hoped that putting her mind through ceremonies with mind-altering substances would help her make peace with the end of a turbulent marriage and perhaps ease the migraines that had become a daily torment.
“I want to reset my brain from the bottom up,” she said during the introductory session of a recent three-day retreat, wiping away tears. “My kids deserve it. I deserve it.”
A growing body of research into the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic therapy has generated enthusiasm among some psychiatrists and venture capitalists.
Measures to decriminalize psychedelics, fund research into their healing potential and establish frameworks for their medicinal use have been passed with bipartisan support in city councils and state legislatures
across the United States in recent years.
Much of the expanding appeal of such treatments has been driven by veterans of America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Having turned to experimental therapies to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries, addiction and depression, many former military members have become effusive advocates for a wider embrace of psychedelics.
Psychedelic retreat participants often pay thousands of dollars for the experience. But these female veterans and spouses of veterans who had traveled to Mexico for treatment at the Mission Within were attending for free, courtesy of the Heroic Hearts Project and the Hope Project. The groups, raise money to make psychedelic therapy affordable for people from military backgrounds.
The Mission Within, on
the outskirts of Tijuana, is run by Dr. Martín Polanco, who since 2017 has focused almost exclusively on treating veterans.
“I became aware early on that if we focused our work on veterans, we would have a greater impact,” said Polanco, who said he had treated more than 600 U.S. veterans in Mexico. “They understand what it takes to achieve peak performance.”
At first, he said, he treated male veterans almost exclusively. But after he started receiving requests from female veterans and military wives he began running female-only retreats.
With the exception of clinical trials, psychedelic therapy is currently performed underground or under nebulous legality.
In Mexico, two of the substances that Polanco administers — ibogaine, a plant-based psychoactive commonly used to treat addiction, and 5-MeO-DMT,
a powerful hallucinogen derived from the poison of the Sonoran desert toad — are neither unlawful nor approved for medical use. The third, psilocybin mushrooms, may be taken legally in ceremonies that follow Indigenous traditions.
By the time the seven women gathered in a circle for the mushroom ceremony on a recent Saturday, each had signed a hold-harmless waiver. They had filled out questionnaires that measure post-traumatic stress and other psychological ailments and had undergone a medical checkup.
Leading the ceremony was Andrea Lucie, a Chilean American expert in mindbody medicine who spent most of her career working with wounded U.S. veterans. After blowing burning sage onto cups of mushroom tea served on a tray, Lucie read a poem by María Sabina, a Mexican Indigenous healer.
“Heal yourself with beautiful love, and always remember, you are the medicine,” recited Lucie, who is from a Mapuche Indigenous family in Chile.
After imbibing, the women lay on mattresses on the floor and put on eye shades as soothing music played on a speaker.
The first stirrings came about 40 minutes into the ceremony. A couple of women lowered their shades and wept. One giggled and then roared with laughter.
Then the wails began. Jenna Lombardo-Grosso, the former Marine who lost her mother to suicide, stormed out of the room and huddled with Lucie.
Lombardo-Grosso, 37, sobbed and screamed: “Why, why, why!” She later explained that the mushrooms had revealed traumatic childhood episodes of sexual abuse.
Inside the ceremony room, Samantha Juan, the Army veteran who was sexually abused as a child, began crying and pulled out her journal. It was her third time at a retreat administered by Polanco, where she said she had confronted a lifetime of traumatic memories that led her to drink heavily and lean on drugs to escape her pain after leaving the Army in 2014.
“I’ve learned how to give myself empathy and show myself grace,” said Juan, 37.
Her goal on this retreat, she said, was to make peace with a sexual assault she said she endured in the Army.
“In today’s journey, the focus is forgiveness,” Juan had said shortly before taking the mushrooms. “I don’t want that kind of grip on me anymore.”
As the effects of the mushrooms wore off, there was a prevailing sense of calm. The women swapped stories about their trips, cracked jokes and got lost in long embraces.
The jitters returned the next morning as the women waited for their turn to smoke 5-MeO-DMT, a trip that Polanco calls “the slingshot” for the speed and intensity of the experience.
That night, Alison Logan, the wife of a Navy explosive ordnance disposal expert who was on the brink of getting divorced, looked downcast. The trips, she said, had brought her sadness to the fore, but provided no insights nor sense of resolution.
“It felt like a lot of pain without any answers,” she said.
But the other participants said their physical ailments had vanished and their mood had brightened.
Lombardo-Grosso said the retreat had helped her make peace with the loss of her mother and tilted her outlook toward the future from a sense of dread to one of optimism.
“I feel whole,” she said a few days later from her home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “Nothing is missing anymore.”