Amy Rising worked at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois in a squadron that helped coordinate and support fighter jets in Iraq and Afghanistan from afar during the early 2000s. After dealing with her own physical and mental health struggles after leaving the Air Force, Rising found herself on Vicodin and Percocets while raising her toddler as a single mother.
“I couldn’t take care of my kid, I was way too loopy,” Rising said. “It was like, do I want to take this medicine to help me feel better because I’m in bed all day? I’m like, dying and coming back from organ failure or do I want to look after my 3 year old?”
Rising quit prescription meds and turned to cannabis — the only thing she found to help her anxiety and organ swelling. Around the same time, Rising left her job at Boeing, where she started working after leaving the Air Force in 2005 as a senior airman, and began doing veteran healthcare policy work behind the scenes, helping to pass New York state’s medical cannabis law.
Now, her mission is to expand access to psychedelic therapy for veterans. On Thursday, a bipartisan bill that Rising helped craft was introduced to do just that.
“I was on the front page of the Washington Post in 2014 smoking a blunt in a dress, talking about veterans’ health care on the Sunday edition,” she said. “I’ve been here doing this ever since.”
The legislation, introduced by Rep. Lou Correa, a Democrat from California, and Rep. Jack Bergman, a Republican from Michigan, would create an “integrated national system” within the Department of Veterans Affairs to oversee education, clinical, and research activities with MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine, ibogaine, DMT and other potential therapies. Rising described it as “stateside access for veterans in a clinical setting.”
The legislation is co-sponsored by Reps. Morgan Luttrell (R-Texas), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and endorsed by the American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Wounded Warrior Project.
The “innovative therapies centers of excellence,” as they would be called, would also develop a group of medical providers who use those therapies to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, substance use disorder, chronic pain, bipolar disorder, Parkinson’s disease, and more.
Beyond her own use of nontraditional medicine, Rising said she wants to see greater access to psychedelics after watching veteran friends who served in Iraq and Afghanistan deal with their own mental health issues, which ultimately led to suicide.
“I would like to say that this is a desperate act of love for Matt Kahl, Brandon Ketchum, Ethan Kreutzer, Jacob David George — so many of my brothers that have gone on that I have loved. This is for them. I want to help these people want to wake up the next day,” Rising said. “My hope for the bill is that there’s fast action for fast relief.”
The VA already has several centers of excellence on topics like suicide prevention, veterans returning from war, mental health research, epilepsy, and multiple sclerosis. Under the bill, the VA would be directed to designate at least five “innovative therapies centers of excellence” across the U.S.
Having the centers would mean a more formal research infrastructure as well as dedicated funding for these types of treatments, according to a policy expert familiar with the legislation. Those centers would partner with universities and have a panel of experts in those fields to advise on their activities, the bill states.
“It’s a centralized more efficient system, instead of just everybody in their little silos and then having to aggregate these reports,” Rising said.
Expanding access inside the U.S.
The bill is a step toward expanding veteran care options for “innovative therapies” — a space that advocates have long pushed for and that has gained momentum in the federal government within the last year. In November, the Food and Drug Administration greenlit a study on the impacts of smoking marijuana for veterans with PTSD and in December, the VA announced it would fund its first psychedelic therapy study since the 1960s looking at MDMA for veterans with PTSD and substance use disorders.
“We’ve spent years pushing the VA to explore breakthrough treatments like psychedelic-assisted therapies because too many of our men and women in uniform return home different than how they left,” Correa said in a press release about the bill. “Now that the VA has heeded our call to make funding available to study these treatments, it’s past time they build dedicated centers to study the therapeutic uses of psychedelic substances that our Veterans have been asking for. Veterans deserve real solutions, not more of the same.”
In February, the Grunt Style Foundation called for greater accountability around veteran suicide prevention efforts, noting the steady veteran suicide rates over the last two decades despite the hundreds of millions spent on programs in the VA. Between 2001 and 2022, on average, 6,000 or more veterans committed suicide each year, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“The number continues to rise despite all of the actions, efforts and money and resources being put towards these things,” Tim Jensen, president of the Grunt Style Foundation, told Task & Purpose in February. Like other groups, they have been critical of the overreliance on pharmaceuticals to address veterans’ mental health and have wanted to see more treatment options outside of psychiatric drugs.
With the bill, Jensen told Task & Purpose that the proposed VA centers would give veterans access to new or alternative treatment options within the U.S. instead of going abroad.
“What it provides is the opportunity for getting this treatment, or having access to this treatment, and not having to leave the United States,” Jensen said. “It can be administered locally, so we’re not having to go from potentially distant parts of the country, depending on where these five locations will be designated.”
Because of legal limitations in the U.S., veterans with PTSD and other mental health concerns have sought relief through healing retreats abroad where psychedelics are legal. Heroic Hearts, founded by a former Army Ranger, has hosted more than 1,000 veterans at retreats in Peru, Mexico, and Jamaica,” according to their website.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency categorizes psilocybin, MDMA, DMT and ibogaine as Schedule I drugs or “compounds with the highest potential for abuse.” However, researchers are still able to conduct studies with these drugs by applying for controlled substance research licenses with the DEA. The bill does not change any of the federal scheduling laws around these drugs but since the centers would be within the VA, the research and trials would be “controlled and regulated in a way that the government would be satisfied,” Jensen said.
The bill directs the VA to designate centers of excellence at medical facilities that partner with accredited universities with medical, psychiatry and social work schools that have expertise and research focused on innovative therapy treatments.
“Some focus on MDMA, some focus on ketamine and other things so the idea is that these universities that are already doing research on these specific substances would be able to fit under that umbrella and they would have different focuses most likely,” a policy expert familiar with the legislation said.
The bill also calls for the VA to report back on its findings and recommendations on how to improve the delivery of these therapies, which could impact drug policies down the line.
A copy of the bill can be read below.
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