The last time the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) experimented with psychedelics as a means of psychological therapy for troubled vets was in 1963.

That year, “Sugar Shack” was the number one rock and roll song; the second James Bond movie “From Russia, With Love” was breaking box office records; and President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

Notably, in one study conducted in 1963, patients at a VA clinic in Kansas took lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to treat alcoholism.

The early 1960s also was a time when the CIA and U.S. Army were experimenting with psychedelics on human subjects (many of them unwitting) as a possible method of mind control, via the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program. The effort was eventually abandoned by the time Lyndon Johnson became president.

Fast forward to June 2022, and the VA once again began researching the psychological effects of psychedelics, but this time under far safer parameters (see the following tweet):

It’s ironic that the VA is now studying psychedelics as a means of legitimate mental health therapy. The CIA and U.S. Army inadvertently popularized LSD and in so doing, revolutionized civilian society.

People who took LSD under the auspices of MK-ULTRA went on to become enthusiastic advocates of the drug. Their evangelizing for LSD kick-started the psychedelics counterculture of the 1960s. The anti-establishment psychedelics movement despised everything that the spy agencies represented…and vice versa.

As Beatle John Lennon once said: “We must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD.”

LSD for PTSD…

The VA has begun administering psychedelic substances to patients as a part of clinical trials in search of new treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, and a host of other ailments that disproportionately affect veterans of recent wars.

The American medical establishment is increasingly embracing psychedelics for their therapeutic value. These substances remain illegal at the federal level, but more and more states and localities are lifting restrictions.

In 2020, voters in Oregon passed two ballot measures that decriminalized possession of small amounts of psychedelics and created a regulatory framework for psilocybin treatment. Since then, Connecticut and Texas have approved measures permitting the study of psilocybin and MDMA for psychiatric therapy.

University research centers from coast to coast are studying psychedelics, and entrepreneurs are launching psychedelics tourism retreats in Latin America and Europe, where the laws regarding these drugs are looser. Big Pharma is making significant forays into psychedelics research and biotech investors are filing for patents.

According to a report by Global Industry Analysts, the psychedelic drugs market is set to reach a value of $6.3 billion in 2026, up from $3.2 billion in 2021. That’s a compound annual growth rate of 14.5% during a five-year period.

The World Health Organization estimates that 264 million people around the world suffer from depression, often chronic and resistant to treatment. Psychedelics, in conjunction with talk therapy, are a proven remedy.

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John Persinos is the editorial director of Investing Daily.

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