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here's something you probably don't know as many as one in five veterans suffers
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from ptsd post-traumatic stress disorder is a leading cause of suicide among vets but
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david martin has word of a surprising treatment that could lead them out of the dark
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i stab myself in the neck and the wrist with a knife and um i just wanted the pain to stop
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a series of pulitzer prize-winning photographs captured the agony of former marine scott ostrom his life overwhelmed
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by ptsd after two tours in iraq 12 years of nightmares panic attacks and failed relationships
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a danger not only to himself but to others deep down i was angry so really i i think i was just looking for
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a fight what were you angry about i was angry with myself i felt guilty for some of the things that i failed to do
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when i was overseas failed to do how i watched my friend burn alive inside of a humvee
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and the fire was too hot and i couldn't get to him so um i felt like i needed to be punished for
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that you're being haunted by your a memory of something that happened to you rachel
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yehuda of mount sinai hospital in new york has spent 30 years working with veterans and other victims of ptsd the
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standard treatment for ptsd has been psychotherapy and there are two medications that are fda approved for
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the treatment of ptsd both of which are antidepressants how effective is the treatment these
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treatments tend not to really solve the problem for most people but they are better than nothing
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desperate for relief scott ostrom answered a facebook ad seeking volunteers for an fda approved trial
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using a psychedelic drug called mdma better known by its street name ecstasy it really did change my life come on
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buddy in a short period of time in six months when i first heard about this i thought
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to myself how could this possibly be a good idea psychedelics were illegal and designated
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by our government as being of potential harm and no medical benefit then at the annual burning man festival
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in nevada she met rick doblin i knew that mdma was great for ptsd in 1984. domlin heads a psychedelic
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research organization called maps and for decades has been fighting laws which made psychedelics illegal when we think
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now about how many people over the last 50 years could have been saved from suicide or depression if the
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research hadn't been shut down it's a tragedy it was not until 2016 that the food and
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drug administration authorized phase 3 trials for mdma the same kind of phase 3 trials covid
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vaccines went through to prove they are safe and effective the results from the latest phase 3
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trial of mdma were just astounding so these studies have they produce specific results two-thirds of the people that
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were treated with a course of mdma no longer have ptsd would you call this a breakthrough i would absolutely call
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this a breakthrough what does the fda think they've designated mdma-assisted psychotherapy as a breakthrough approach
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what does that mean in terms of what you can do now well it doesn't mean you can start
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taking mdma on your own it means that the data are so good that let's get this on a fast track for approval
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but life on that fast track costs money the biggest obstacle really for us was raising the funds to do the research
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because the pharmaceutical companies were not interested the major foundations were not interested it was
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all too controversial thank you enter bob parsons a maverick billionaire who first took psychedelics
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three years ago how much of a difference did psychedelics make in your life the quality of my life has increased
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immeasurably never a good student parsons joined the marines at 17 and was sent to vietnam
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a month later he was wounded this is a picture of me in the field hospital it was the last he saw of
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combat but the war continued to haunt him i was completely different guy that came home than the guy that left
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the guy that came home he had a short temper never felt like he belonged no matter
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where he was or who he was with was it getting better was it getting worse i believe it was getting worse somebody
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would ask me if i served in vietnam i started crying parsons made his fortune from godaddy go
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daddy.com an internet company which he turned into must-see tv with risque super bowl ads
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now you're a billionaire what are you going to do with all that money i'm going to do what i can to get
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psychedelics approved for therapeutic use parsons has donated more than seven million dollars to psychedelic research
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under the influence of mdma scott ostrom was able to actually visualize his inner demons this spinning
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black ball started to open itself up to me in different layers like an onion and then each layer
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revealed like a new memory and it was almost like the layers were just opening and opening
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and opening at the center he found a part of him he calls the bully it was a terribly
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frightening creature the bully is basically the person you had to become in order to
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survive two tours in iraq that's right that's who the marine corps trains you to be a fighter and a killer
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and that's who i had to become to survive those deployments with the aid of two psychotherapists he
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was able to come to terms with it after those three mdma sessions i haven't had a nightmare about the war
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since do you suffer panic attacks anymore no do you have any thoughts of suicide
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no but like a drunk getting sober he can't undo all the damage done all the years lost
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you know i spent over a decade pushing people away and making my life harder on myself and not
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loving myself so as far as dealing with the combat part of my ptsd we were successful in that
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but i i still think i can be a better person i still think there's room to grow mdma may be a breakthrough but it's
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still a trial drug not likely to be available to the estimated 1 million veterans suffering from ptsd
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until 2024 what the breakthrough means to me is that we have a meaningful way to
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spend our time now so that we can bring a new paradigm of care to the people that need it most it just means that
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there's real hope out there that may really end up being a game changer for people that have suffered for way too
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long you