Mental health industry watchdog calls for an end to federal funding for psychedelic drug research on active-duty service members and veterans, likening it to the risky covert hallucinogenic experiments of 70 years ago.

By Jan Eastgate
President CCHR International
January 12, 2024

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International has condemned the use of active military and veterans in what it calls “guinea pig psychedelic drug research.” As part of the $886 billion fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, there is a provision directing the Pentagon to study the effects of psychedelic drugs on veterans experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, insomnia and traumatic brain injuries. The legislation also says the Pentagon may make an authorization for “any member of the armed forces serving active duty who is diagnosed” with such a condition to “participate in a clinical trial” using psychedelic treatment.[1] Military research and clinical trials will receive $10 million in funding under provisions of the Act.[2]

The Department of Veteran Affairs also announced new funding for research into the potential use of psychedelic substances such as MDMA (Ecstasy), and psilocybin (magic mushrooms)—to treat PTSD and depression—the first funding of this kind in nearly six decades, according to the VA.[3] On January 10, 2024, Deseret News reported the VA said it is funding a large-scale trial on the effectiveness and safety of the compounds as mental-health treatment. Veterans will receive treatments in medically supervised settings, in addition to mental-health counseling to address persistent negative thoughts and flashbacks resulting from life-threatening experiences and injuries from their military service.[4]

CCHR says this is another example of servicemen and women and veterans being used for risky psychotropic drug experiments, a practice that dates back at least 70 years. This includes psychedelic drugs such as LSD. According to psychiatrist, Colin Ross in a study published in the journal History of Psychiatry, “Extensive LSD testing was conducted by the U.S. Army at Edgewood Arsenal [in Maryland] and other locations from 1955 to 1967.” Citing several official reports regarding this, he says, these glossed over and minimized the short and long-term side effects and complications of this testing. “However, the reports themselves document frequent, severe complications of the LSD. These side effects were regarded by the Army as having been directly caused by the LSD exposure. In view of the current resurgence of interest in hallucinogens within psychiatry, the sanitized version of the effects of LSD exposure on U.S. soldiers needs to be replaced with a more accurate account.”[5]

Experiments ranged from LSD to potentially lethal nerve and incapacitating agents like BZ, which can lead to hallucinations and confusion.[6] Declassified military films show soldiers being given drugs and then monitored to see if they could do basic tasks like run an obstacle course. “Shortly after receiving the drug, he is grossly impaired,” a narrator said of a soldier struggling through an obstacle course. “About 7,000 soldiers took part in the experiments that involved exposures to more than 250 chemicals,” according to the VA’s website.[7]

CCHR has documented the abuse of service members and vets in its documentary Hidden Enemy: Inside Psychiatry’s Covert Agenda. Beginning in the 1950s, the U.S. government collaborated with pharmaceutical companies, research universities, and psychiatrists to develop LSD as part of a campaign of psychological warfare. The program instead exploited U.S. service members to develop hallucinogens as a form of chemical warfare that could render enemy troops mentally incapacitated. According to a 2022 article in Federal Practitioner, “This program was rife with violations of research ethics and human rights….”[8]

Military settings have long been a target for psychiatric research. British military psychiatrist John Rawlings Rees, who co-founded the World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH) in 1948, stated: “The army and other fighting services form rather unique experimental groups since they are complete communities and it is possible to arrange experiments that would be very difficult to do in civilian life.”^[9]

There was wide use of brain-damaging electroshock treatment (ECT) during World War II. Between 1943 and 1951, nearly 3,000 U.S. veterans sacrificed their frontal lobes to psychosurgery operations.[10] Between 1953 and 1965, U.S. military psychiatrists also drugged over 5,700 American servicemen.[11]

In 2019, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) invested $27 million in the Focused Pharma program to develop new, rapid-acting drugs, including hallucinogens. In 2022, the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) psychedelics program research included clinical trials.[12]

Esketamine, a ketamine-compound nasal spray depression drug, was touted as the answer to veteran suicides, although the drug hasn’t been proven to reduce the risk of suicide. Rather, there are reports of esketamine inducing “psychosis-like” effects.[13] Esketamine has potentially serious risks because of its molecular similarity to ketamine, a “club” and “date rape” drug that can cause disassociation.[14] The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) high-risk black box on the drug’s labeling warns it can cause sedation, dissociation, abuse, and misuse.[15]

By 2022, the FDA was alerting healthcare professionals to the potentially serious risks of the nasal spray, including hemodynamic [cardiovascular function] instability, emergence reactions (vivid dreams, hallucinations, or delirium), respiratory depression, and drug-induced liver injury, among others.[16]

Yet, in April 2023, the Department of Veterans Affairs awarded $40 million in research funding to study the effectiveness of esketamine for veterans and others. The study will be a randomized clinical trial in which more than 900 veterans across 25 VA sites will receive either intranasal esketamine or oral aripiprazole, the antipsychotic Abilify, for up to six months of treatment.[17]

Veterans have also received free ketamine treatments until the company providing it, facing financial troubles, closed all 13 of its ketamine infusion clinics in March 2023. However, the VA said it has other providers who offer ketamine services.[18]

An article published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in January 2024 disputes the effectiveness of “psychedelic-assisted therapy” that the VA and Department of Defense (DOD) want to conduct experiments on—not because of the potential dangers of the mind-altering drugs but the assertion that psychotherapy is wrong. The researchers, including psychiatrists steeped in conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical companies, state, “Unregulated psychotherapy practice regularly leads to ethical violations. The risk that such practice could become the natural partner in ‘psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy’ has been highlighted recently.”[19] Australian psychiatrist Niall McLaren pointed out that one of the researchers, Texas-based psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff, “has been paid by practically every drug and other company making money from mental disorder in the U.S. In about 2007 or so, he was investigated by his university for not declaring payments from drug companies and was forced to resign….”[20]

Nemeroff and his group concluded that any benefit is “all a drug effect and ‘psychotherapy’ has nothing to do with it.” They are proponents of what McLaren refers to as “the biological cult of psychiatry.”

As such, psychedelic research can be predicted to be biased towards claims that it is necessary, despite years of ineffective psychotropic drug use. This makes the current clinical trials all the more troubling. While some of the studies aim at addressing the flashbacks of bad military experiences, the drugs being prescribed to treat this cause flashbacks. A 2022 study published in Psychopharmacology pointed out, “LSD and psilocybin are increasingly used in phase I trials and evaluated as therapeutic agents for mental disorders. The phenomenon of reoccurring drug-like experiences after the acute substance effects have worn off was described for both substances and especially attributed to LSD.” The study of 142 subjects found that “Reoccurring drug-like experiences after the administration of LSD and psilocybin are a common phenomenon occurring in up to 9.2% of healthy subjects (7.8% for LSD, 8.3% for psilocybin and 14.3% if both substances are administered).”[21]

A 2017 article in VICE, headlined: “We’re Starting to Understand How Psychedelic Flashbacks Work,” pointed out a 5% flashback rate. Further, “But just as TV ads for antidepressants tend to be all happiness and sunshine, speeding through the fine print of side effects and potential dangers, psychedelic advocates also risk glossing over the potential downsides of taking these drugs. Namely, one risk in particular: Flashbacks—the brief, spontaneous return of that mind-bending change in consciousness that can occur weeks, or even months later.”[22]

A September 2023 study reported, “Unpleasant acute psychological experiences under psychedelics are not rare—even in research environments. For example, one notable study reported an approximately 40% prevalence of moderate to severe anxiety, panic or distress with high dose psilocybin in healthy volunteers.”[23] 

With the massive push right now for psychedelics to replace unworkable antidepressants and other prescription psychiatric drugs, media is now reporting a little publicized invented mental disorder: “Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder” or HPPD, which is, in effect, drug-induced side effects.[24] This is not unique; the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders cashes in on the adverse effects of psychiatric drugs, turning these into “disorders” such as “Substance/Medication-Induced Mental Disorders.” This means prescription psychiatric drugs can induce depressive, anxiety, psychotic, or manic symptoms, to name but a few. Simply put, psychotropic drugs—and now psychedelics—produce side effects that are redefined as another psychiatric disorder, which is further treated and for which health insurance is further billed.  

While HPPD was coined in the 1970s, it was only given weight when the APA “officially recognized” it in 2013, the year it released its DSM-5.[25]

With the staggering statistic that over 1.8 million veterans have held active prescriptions filled by a VA pharmacy for psychiatric drugs, it becomes increasingly evident that the reliance on such drugs has not proven effective in mitigating the alarming rates of veteran suicides and mental distress.[26]

In June 2021, Brown University’s “Costs of War” report revealed continuing startling trends in suicide rates of veterans who served in wars after the 9/11 terror attacks as well as deployments in five other spots around the world. “Active service member suicide rates have grown during the Global War on Terror to surpass any service member suicide rates since before World War II,” according to the report.[27]

Former sergeant Hannis Latham, who served in the U.S. Army in the 1960s in the “Green Beret” special forces, stated: “Psychiatric drugs are that one thing that makes our modern warfare so much more deadly for our returning soldiers than any past war…. Instead of creating recovery programs for returning vets where they are recognized as normal people who have been through a very abnormal experience, our vets are often prescribed antipsychotics, tranquilizers, and antidepressants and told to suck it up and pull it together.”[28]

Incorporating psychedelics will merely worsen the current situation, according to CCHR. The group calls for the immediate cessation of psychedelic drug trials on military personnel and veterans. It also advocates for an end to federal funding for any further psychedelic trials or research involving active-duty service members and veterans, urging a reevaluation of priorities to ensure the well-being of those who have valiantly served our nation.

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[1] “A ‘milestone’ for psychedelics: Pentagon directed to study alternative treatments for veterans: Bipartisan Hill caucus says new law will offer support for those dealing with service trauma,” Washington Times, 2 Jan. 2024, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/jan/2/milestone-for-psychedelics-pentagon-directed-to-st/

[2] “VA to fund large-scale studies of magic mushrooms, ecstasy to treat PTSD,” Dayton Daily News, 10 Jan. 2024, https://www.daytondailynews.com/local/va-to-fund-large-scale-studies-of-magic-mushrooms-ecstasy-to-treat-ptsd/RTTF2ZMMZ5A5HPNWFMJC7J2JZU/  

[3] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/01/08/va-fund-research-using-mdma-psilocybin-address-mental-health-disorders-veterans.html

[4] Op. cit., Dayton Daily News, 10 Jan. 2024

[5] Colin A. Ross, “LSD experiments by the United States Army,” History of Psychiatry, Dec. 2017, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28686061/

[6] David S. Martin, “Vets feel abandoned after secret drug experiments,” CNN, 1 Mar. 2012, https://www.cnn.com/2012/03/01/health/human-test-subjects/index.html

[7] Ben Hall, “U.S. soldiers used as ‘human guinea pigs’ in top-secret chemical testing program,” News Channel 5, 11 Nov. 2021, https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/u-s-soldiers-used-as-human-guinea-pigs-in-top-secret-chemical-testing-program

[8] Cynthia Geppert, “Psychedelics and the Military: What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been,” Federal Practitioner, Oct. 2022, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9896363/

^[9] John Rawlings Rees, M.D., The Shaping of Psychiatry by War, 1945, https://archive.org/stream/shapingofpsychia029218mbp/shapingofpsychia029218mbp_djvu.txt

[10] Glen Frankel, “Psychosurgery’s Effects Still Linger,” Washington Post, 6 Apr. 1980, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/04/06/psychosurgerys-effects-still-linger/59614c3d-f2f4-4831-aeb2-85aa51833aab/

[11] Henry Samuel, “French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment,” The Telegraph, 11 Mar. 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7415082/French-bread-spiked-with-LSD-in-CIA-experiment.html

[12] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9896363/

[13] https://www.cchrint.org/2019/06/26/cchr-warns-about-antidepressant-nasal-spray-esketamine-spravato-use-on-veterans/ citing: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-13/trump-offer-to-negotiate-j-j-depression-drug-for-vets-is-all-show; https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2009/nov/heavy-ketamine-use-affects-short-term-memory

[14] https://www.cchrint.org/2019/06/26/cchr-warns-about-antidepressant-nasal-spray-esketamine-spravato-use-on-veterans/ citing: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320409.php; https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-05/ketamine-could-soon-be-used-to-treat-suicidal-ideation

[15] https://www.fda.gov/drugs/human-drug-compounding/fda-alerts-health-care-professionals-potential-risks-associated-compounded-ketamine-nasal-spray#:~:text=There%20is%20no%20FDA-approved%20ketamine%20nasal%20spray%20product.,needs%20cannot%20be%20met%20by%20an%20FDA-approved%20drug

[16] Ibid.

[17] https://www.research.va.gov/currents/0423-New-VA-study-to-determine-best-drug-for-Veterans-with-treatment-resistant-depression.cfm

[18] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/abrupt-closure-ketamine-clinic-chain-blindsides-veterans-others-severe-rcna75901

[19] Must Psilocybin Always “Assist Psychotherapy”? | American Journal of Psychiatry (psychiatryonline.org), Niall McLaren, M.D., “Seeing Stars,” Niall McLaren on Critical Psychiatry, 9 Jan. 2024, https://www.niallmclaren.com/p/seeing-stars

[20] Ibid.

[21] “Flashback phenomena after administration of LSD and psilocybin in controlled studies with healthy participants,” Psychopharmacology, 25 Jan. 2022, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9166883/

[22] Kevin Franciotti, “We’re Starting to Understand How Psychedelic Flashbacks Work,” VICE, 19 May 2017, https://www.vice.com/en/article/gvzkw9/were-starting-to-understand-how-psychedelic-flashbacks-work

[23] “Case analysis of long-term negative psychological responses to psychedelics,” Open Access, 25 Sept. 2023, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-41145-x

[24] Op. cit., VICE, 19 May 2017

[25] Ibid.

[26] https://news.va.gov/27099/program-focuses-safe-psychiatric-medication/

[27] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/09/13/cchrs-foia-request-to-veteran-health-administration-reveals-4-2-million-vets-prescribed-dangerous-drugs-costing-2-4-billion/, citing Ken Silva, “America’s Veterans Are Killing Themselves at an Alarming Rate: Report,” The Epoch Times, 26 July 2021, https://www.theepochtimes.com/americas-veterans-are-killing-themselves-at-an-alarming-rate_3918982.html?utm_source=sharenewsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-07-26-2

[28] https://www.cchrint.org/2014/05/05/petition-psychiatric-drugs-military-suicides/