How psychedelics are moving from fringe care to VA policy fights

“Your brain is physically growing new connections 24 to 72 hours after you have the experience.” — Michael Applegate

Michael Applegate opened with that line and didn’t let it go. He’s a licensed clinical professional counselor, art therapist, veteran, and a recent graduate of a psychedelic-assisted therapy certification. On Double V, he walked Chaz through where the science is, how veterans are currently accessing these therapies, and the political currents already forming around them.

Why vets are showing up for psychedelics

Applegate repeated a research-backed intuition: many veterans try everything else first. About 30% of people with depression are treatment-resistant, he said — and psychedelics are the tool people reach for when standard therapies fail. He cited VA and research findings that psilocybin and MDMA trials show dramatic drops in PTSD symptom scores within weeks, often sustained at six months to a year.

That’s why veterans are traveling to retreats in Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica, or paying for ketamine-infused therapy domestically. Applegate described the process plainly: retreat work involves medical screening, tapering medications under supervision, dietary prep, and structured integration afterward. He’s pairing art therapy with psychedelic sessions to help veterans translate nonverbal experience into something they can process and use during the brain’s “window of opportunity.”

“People lose their inhibitions and become vulnerable — they say the thing they couldn’t say for years.” — Michael Applegate

Applegate also shared a striking usage stat from recent surveys: roughly 75% of veterans who use psychedelics report doing so for healing or spiritual purposes. That’s not recreational data — it’s an argument that veterans view this as therapy, not a party drug.

Access today: clinical trials, ketamine, and cross-border retreats

Right now access looks like three paths:

• Ketamine therapy, which is legal and widely available in clinical settings;

• State-limited psilocybin programs (Oregon, Colorado and a few others) or clinical trial participation; and

• Veteran-focused nonprofit retreats abroad where screening and integration happen off-shore.

Applegate has been to DC advocating for access with Healing Breakthroughs and the Heroic Hearts–adjacent network. He says the VA is running clinical trials in some hospitals (psilocybin and MDMA trials have been active since about 2020), but access inside the system remains limited. For most vets today, the realistic routes are trials, trips to permissive states, or nonprofit retreats.

The politics nobody’s neutral about

What surprised Chaz and Applegate alike was the political realignment they saw at last summer’s psychedelic science convention in Denver — roughly 10,000 attendees and an oddly large contingent of Republican legislators and conservative funders. Applegate named former Texas governor Rick Perry and ex-Senator Kyrsten Sinema among prominent figures showing up; he also flagged the emergence of profit-seeking nonprofits backed by conservative donors.

That raises two linked concerns:

• If psychedelics become mainstream, who controls the delivery model — nonprofit, VA, or private industry? and

• Will one party’s financial interest shape policy in ways that leave veterans behind?

Applegate framed it bluntly: veterans push the needle. When veterans show up in congressional offices, lawmakers listen. He described bipartisan openness in meetings with Illinois representatives, but warned public momentum doesn’t guarantee ethical or equitable implementation.

Where therapy and creativity meet

A unique thread in the conversation was Applegate’s emphasis on art as clinical integration. He used his capstone project — art generated from his own ketamine sessions — as an example: creating nonverbal pathways to reach trauma that talk therapy alone often can’t. Neuroscience, he said, shows psychedelics open new neural connections and creativity both reinforces those pathways.

That’s why Applegate isn’t selling psychedelics as a cure-all. He stressed screening: certain personality disorders or unstable conditions can be worsened by psychedelic sessions. The work is preparation, administration, and integration — not a single-night miracle. He also acknowledged that not every veteran will want it; many say “that’s not for me.”

Bigger picture: veterans as the political lever

The episode kept swinging back to power: how local Chicago fights (school boards, union splits, and billionaires influencing races) and national struggles (privatization of the VA, silence from party leaders on threats to democracy) shape whether innovations actually reach people. Chaz named Michael Sacks and Rahm Emanuel as examples of billionaire influence and policy continuity that frustrate grassroots movements; Applegate pointed out that veterans’ testimonies in DC cut through partisan noise.

If you take one concrete thing from the conversation: veterans are driving the policy conversation on psychedelics, and their credibility is prompting lawmakers from both parties to pay attention. That’s why the implementation debate — VA-led, nonprofit retreats, or private clinics — matters now, not later.

If you want the episode’s resources, Michael offered to share links to Healing Breakthroughs, VA trial listings, and veteran-focused retreat groups; Chaz will post those on his site. For anyone living with PTSD or caring for someone who is, Applegate’s message was clear: there’s cautious optimism grounded in data and careful clinical practice, and the veteran voice is what moves federal policy.

Listen to the full conversation for the stories that didn’t make this note — the Vietnam veterans Applegate spoke with, the capstone art he created, and his firsthand account of advocacy in DC. The sharper takeaway: when veterans show up, policy follows. The question for Chicago and the country is whether that policy will be equitable, clinical, and driven by care — or shaped by private profit and partisan advantage.

Website information https://psychedelicvets.com