It might surprise you to learn that more and more military combat veterans are looking to psychedelics and plant medicines for help. For a lot of vets, returning into society is the beginning of a long and arduous process of coming back home to themselves. In one major study of 60,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, 13.5% of deployed and non-deployed veterans screened positive for PTSD, while other studies show the rate to be as high as 20% to 30%. As many as 500,000 U.S. troops who served in these wars over the past 13 years have been diagnosed with PTSD.

PTSD, C-PTSD, and other life-threatening mental health issues, including addiction, depression, anxiety, and suicide have been the result for military and police men and women serving in combat zones, and under dangerous working conditions as part of their jobs. This week on the podcast, we are speaking with USMC Veteran Ray Murphy, Founder of Warriors Healing Network. Ray is a U.S. Marine Veteran who served in Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and has since worked extensively as a consultant for law enforcement as a K9 unit trainer.  

Ray has firsthand experience with C-PTSD and the shortfalls of finding treatment and relief inside the system, especially through the VA. Earlier this year, Ray attended a plant medicine retreat in Costa Rica where he worked with ayahuasca in ceremony, and found it to be an effective treatment for PTSD in his own life. This healing experience led him to found Warriors Healing Network, a nonprofit organization that helps facilitate psychedelic treatment for combat veterans and police officers who have been diagnosed with PTSD and need financial support to access medicine.

In this episode, Ray shares about his own personal experience with PTSD as a military veteran, his many failed treatment attempts through traditional healthcare, and finally feeling called to experience ayahuasca for himself, which led to healing his PTSD. We talk about the hardships of being in military and police service, and how the traditional system is leaving people behind, which is why psychedelics are so promising as a treatment for this specific population.