A decorated Marine told me he had to step outside the law to save his own life. After years of following the rules, the only therapy that worked for his trauma was one he was not allowed to receive legally. His story is not an outlier. It is the predictable result of a system that forces people who are out of options to choose between suffering and breaking the law.

There is a particular kind of cruelty in telling someone who has exhausted every approved treatment that they must simply wait. Wait for another trial. Wait for another committee. Wait for a system that is moving slower than their suffering.

I have met veterans who did everything their country asked of them and then some. They survived war. They came home. They went to therapy, took the pills, followed the rules. And still they woke up every morning with panic, despair, or a quiet sense that life had slipped out of reach. For some of them, the only thing that helped was a therapy they were not legally allowed to receive.

I most recently heard this story from Gary Hess, a decorated Marine Corps infantry officer who served in combat and spent years afterward trying, and failing, to find relief from severe trauma. Like many veterans, Gary did everything the system asked of him. He went through conventional therapies. He took the prescribed medications. None of it worked.

What finally helped was psychedelic-assisted therapy. But there was a catch.

To access it, Gary had to step outside the law, or........

© Townhall