‘Psychedelics saved our lives’: Ex-Navy SEALs credit drugs for helping them readjust to normal life

A GOP legislator, and ex-Navy SEAL, credits psychedelic drug treatment with his adjustment to normal life after brutal combat, insisting it saved his life and his marriage and should be more widely available to military personnel.

A new bipartisan bill spearheaded by Representative Dan Crenshaw — also a former Navy SEAL — would create a $75 million research grant program to study the therapeutic side of mushrooms.

“If you’re in a place where you were lost and other modalities haven’t worked, this could potentially be that resource,” said Rep. Morgan Luttrell at a press conference this week.

“And I can honestly say for all of you and for the American public that I am born again. This has changed my life. It saved my marriage. It’s one of the greatest things that ever happened to me.”

From 2018 to 2021, the use of psychedelic drugs, excluding LSD, has almost doubled, rising from 3.4 percent to 6.6 percent

His twin brother Marcus Luttrell, known as the “Lone Survivor,” added that “in our family they weren’t allowed to do drugs, it was all about service.”

The boys grew up on a rural horse farm and learned from an early age that “hard work, determination, integrity, character and tact” were important in becoming men.

But he followed his brother Morgan and did the treatment when he left the army, which he says just gave him “complete balance.”

Luttrell’s harrowing experience during a 2005 mission in Afghanistan, where he emerged as the sole survivor, was featured in an infamous film starring Mark Wahlberg.

The drugs of choice for the Luttrells were ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT. However, they had to travel outside the US to receive the treatments as they are currently illegal.

Made from the root of a West African shrub, ibogaine is a psychedelic drug commonly used in religious ceremonies in some countries, but is illegal in the US.

As a result, research on these substances has ceased since the drugs were banned in the 1970s.

Lawmakers are urging the Pentagon to allow the research and clinical trials “in a controlled environment,” without making the drugs over-the-counter.

Crenshaw said psychedelic therapy is “important” to help treat service members suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI).

He said the “demons that followed” a former wartime SEAL Mike Day home led to his eventual suicide.

“We have to think outside the box, we have to do something new,” Crenshaw said.

The number of young adults using psychedelics has doubled in just three years in the United States, a new study suggests.

Rep. Morgan Luttrell is a former Navy SEAL representing a district on the East Side of Texas

Marcus Luttrell (far left) and Morgan Luttrell (center) support using psychedelic drugs to help service members

Researchers led by the University of Michigan found that 6.6 percent of 19- to 30-year-olds said they had used a hallucinogenic drug in the past year in 2021, other than LSD, the latest figures show.

In comparison, only 3.4 percent admitted to having used the drugs less than half a decade earlier – in 2018.

The uptick, which scientists warned was a “dramatic” increase, comes amid studies suggesting psychedelics like magic mushrooms could help treat depression and other mental illnesses.

There has been a wealth of research recently on how the drugs can help alleviate mental illness, which may lead some to take the drugs.

Dr. Megan Patrick, a substance use expert at the university who was involved in the study, said: ‘While non-LSD use of hallucinogens is significantly less common than use of substances such as alcohol and cannabis, the prevalence in only doubled in three years. is a dramatic increase and raises potential public health concerns.”

Psychedelics such as magic mushrooms are Schedule III drugs in the US and their use, sale and possession are illegal under federal law.

But some areas — including California’s Oakland and Santa Cruz — have decriminalized use of the drug.