World-class wrestler and Army combat veteran Sally Roberts knows a lot about fighting. But she nearly lost her battle with post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD].
Roberts is among the veterans and advocates who visited Raleigh this week to lobby lawmakers for more access to psychedelic therapy for PTSD. She said psychedelic-assisted therapy saved her life.
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“I didn't know where to go,” Roberts said. “I didn't know who to talk to.”
Advocates like Roberts said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA] could soon approve MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy, and other drugs as breakthrough therapies. Many of them want the state to be ready to authorize those drugs in North Carolina.
PTSD is a psychiatric condition that may occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event or series of traumatic events.
Roberts said her PTSD was getting worse before she underwent psychedelic-assisted therapy. She said her regular therapy and the VA's standard cocktail of medications didn’t help.
“At first, it felt like I was on rocket boosters and I could achieve everything, and I was this super woman, and eventually, the rocket ran out of gas, and I had an epic implosion,” Roberts said.
Roberts’ friend suggested psychedelic therapy. She went to Mexico for treatment with ibogaine, a hallucinogen that’s not legal in the U.S. She said it changed everything.
“[It] absolutely saved my life,” Roberts said. “I had made the decision that if, for any reason, I went down to Mexico for ibogaine, and it did not work, that I was not going to come back alive because I could no longer live in the state of despair that I was in.”
An estimated 182 veterans commit suicide every year in North Carolina alone, according to state Sen. Sophia Chitlik, D-Durham.
“We don't have perfect numbers on that, but I would argue that every single one of those is a preventable tragedy,” Chitlik said.
Chitlik said North Carolina has the highest number of veterans per capita in the country, so the state should be at the forefront of research into these types of drugs when they get FDA approval. She said the goal is for veterans to be able receive treatment close to home.
“We have world-class universities like UNC, NC State and Duke of course, which is in my district,” Chitlik said. “We have that infrastructure in the city of medicine and beyond to be the leading researchers on this topic.”
Chitlik has filed a bill to create a task force of experts to figure out what North Carolina will need to do to make these therapies available.
Other states are creating legislation as well.
Advocates say MDMA could win FDA approval as a breakthrough drug by the end of the year.