Oregon Measure 109 — Psilocybin therapy is legal and regulated in Oregon. Find a licensed facilitator →
Veterans are disproportionately affected by treatment-resistant PTSD. The clinical evidence for psilocybin-assisted therapy in this population is among the strongest in the field. We cover it with the seriousness it deserves.
PTSD is characterized by a failure of fear extinction — the inability to update threat-associated memories even when the threat is gone. Standard treatments help many veterans process these memories. But for a significant subset, the memories remain stubbornly resistant to therapeutic intervention.
Psilocybin's disruption of the default mode network — the system that maintains rigid self-referential beliefs — creates a brief window in which traumatic memories can be revisited without the same activation of the fear response. Combined with a skilled facilitator and appropriate preparation, this window enables a kind of reprocessing that standard modalities haven't been able to achieve.
The MAPS Phase 3 data isn't a promise. But 67% symptom reduction in a treatment-resistant population, with no serious adverse events, is a result that deserves serious attention.