Now is the Time to Advocate for Change

In the 60’s and 70’s, psychedelic research in the U.S. was completely shut down for an entire generation due to the optics of the War on Drugs. Fortunately, voter attitudes have changed significantly since the early 1970’s. In a recent YouGov survey, 54% of Americans support the use of psychedelics in medical research and treatment. Today, the scientific study of psychedelics and PTSD are advancing at an unprecedented clip. However, despite the benefits already demonstrated by research, access to potentially beneficial psychedelic programs and experiences is extremely limited in the US.  

Veteran PTSD is now a huge problem in the U.S. 50 years later, 271,000 Vietnam veterans still have PTSD. It’s no different today if you are one of the 500,000 veterans of the War on Terror who currently have PTSD. The social cost is even greater when you factor in side effects like depression and substance abuse and the trauma that can be passed down through generations epigenetically. The huge tragedy right now is that PTSD has already killed more U.S. veterans through suicide than were killed in all the wars since 9/11. Traditional veteran treatment programs are stretched thin and have low success rates.  

Psychedelics work. There’s already a growing body of evidence that psychedelics can be used to reduce fear of death, depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Preliminary independent research of our process, specifically, suggests that over 80% of veterans with PTSD experience improvement after participating in just one psychedelic program.  

Because these programs are, in many cases, not legal in the US, suffering veterans must often travel to retreats in other countries in order to use these modalities, which limits access.  Currently HHP has a backlog of 1000+ veterans waiting for retreats to open up. We need increased availability of and access to psychedelic programs here in the United States. This requires visionary advocates at the national level.

Part of our work at HHP is contributing to research in order to validate program effectiveness and spread the word about these results to the health care establishment, other researchers, the therapy community, scientists, the news media, military and veterans organizations, and especially, to government leaders and government regulatory agencies. We believe that psychedelic research should be enabled and funded and that programs should be affordable and easily available to those in need. Our goal is to reduce the suffering of veterans with PTSD here in the U.S. right now.

Advocacy Efforts are Starting to Pay Off

Senators Cory Booker (Democrat-New Jersey) and Rand Paul (Republican-Kentucky) jointly filed a bill for a “Breakthrough Therapies Act”. HHP was part of the Reason for Hope and Hope for Reason and the Veteran’s Mental Health Leadership Coalition that introduced the Breakthrough Therapies Act. Bipartisan House lawmakers also announced the start of a congressional psychedelics caucus to encourage the development of new treatments from controlled substances.

Some of the ways we’re using our platform to further this movement: 

• Joined Veterans’ Mental Health Leadership Coalition formed by Reason for Hope and supported the Breakthrough Therapies Act with senators Cory Booker and Rand Paul.
• Heroic Hearts Project Veteran Alliance was created to support and promote Colorado’s Natural Medicine Health Act which passed in November, 2022.
• The Connecticut Governor signed the Expanded Access bill, creating the Psychedelic Treatment Program, after our CEO was one of the leaders who testified.
• Supported the decriminalization efforts in Washington D.C. 
• Supported education campaigns in Colorado and Oregon which lead to the successful passing of historic legislation in each state.