It's been almost a year since the FDA slammed the door on approving MDMA, more commonly known as ecstasy, as a treatment for PTSD. It was a big setback for advocates of psychedelic assisted therapy who believe it can help treat depression or drug addiction when administered safely. But it's been six months since President Donald Trump returned to the White House and some in the psychedelic community are feeling optimistic. Especially with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In charge of Health and Human Services.

Martin and Terry has told me that we don't want to wait two years to get this done. These are people who badly need some kind of therapy, nothing else is working for them.

'Kennedy and McCarrie, his FDA chief, have promised to prioritize psychedelics and fast-track review times. What's more, Deep Red Texas is pouring millions of taxpayer dollars into researching a powerful drug called Ibogaine. Podcasters like Theo Vaughn and Joe Rogan have even expressed interest. We should be paying attention to.

Of the people that report great benefits. Like, there's just too many.

'Now this push to get Washington to pay attention to mind-altering substances isn't new. Government research for therapeutic use of psilocybin and LSD goes back to the 1960s. But some believe WHO is showing support now may be. So is this moment actually different for psychedelics? And will the backing from Trump world hurt? Today in part one of a two-part series, I'm going to talk to an army veteran who says psychedelics helped her get off drugs for good. From CNN, this is One Thing, I am David Reind, we're back in a bit.

So I'm an immigrant. I was born and raised in Bahrain. I moved to California from Bahrain in 1998 to start high school.

Samantha Juan didn't know much about the military when she came to the U.S. But then a recruiter came to her school towards the end of her senior year. She gave it some thought, figured it could be a way to make a little money for college down the line. Eventually she enlisted, moved her way up the ranks, became a U. S. Citizen along the way. And in 2010, Samantha saw a poster for a new initiative called the Cultural Support Team Program.

Even as elusive as it was, I was like, sign me up. I wanna know all about it. And the program eventually I learned was to assign women to special operations teams.

A few years later in 2012, she deployed to Afghanistan to support a group of elite Navy SEALs.

My job was to question and search the women and kids on target. If you were working day ops or day operations, you were doing the village stability ops. So going out in the villages, making relationships and that kind of thing. And if you're working at night, which was what I was doing, direct action missions or your night raids, it's pretty much in and out. Just gather the intel as fast as possible. We'll collect the high value target.

So you're having direct interface with villagers, locals. I mean, it sounds intense. How intense did it get?

An example of a mission that, where there was action, you know, there's a protocol that we follow. We ask them to come out two, three times, whatever it is. And if they don't, we are allowed to escalate it. Before I even got to that, we were receiving fire. Two of our men got hit. And so obviously we are backtracking or, you know, and calling for a medevac. But the mission still had to continue. So the medevack comes, the two team members were taken out and we pursue on. Hellfire was called in, did what it does, and the target was annihilated, destroyed, completely flattened. But we went in for survivors to see. If there were any, and there were two women who survived who, as you can imagine, stuck under the rubble. Just not cooperative and rightfully so. And so after discovering them and getting orders to take them back to the base, it was my job to continue to question them. Having to be asked to do that, it was just, it was definitely very challenging. What we did was part of the mission in our job and we did exactly what we were told to do, but. As a human being, she watched her entire family die. You know, both of them. They couldn't do anything. You know? Just like stuck under the rubble. She, one of the women, one the mothers, she was crying for us to like leave her there to die. Like screaming, like, you're gonna rape me, you're going to rape me. Leave me here, leave me here. Like, what do you say? What can you say to like console somebody when they're saying like, hey, you destroyed my home. I couldn't help my own children because I'm stuck in the rubble and I just watched each of them.

I appreciate you sharing that. I can hear in your voice, it doesn't sound easy to relive something like that.

It's not. And it's just something that I think a lot of veterans struggle with, right? Like, you're asked to do the mission, you're doing what you're supposed to do, you've been a good soldier, but that moral injury that you take home... You can't make the memories go away, you know? How do you come back to society and be okay with it?

Well, so tell me how you approach that when you got back home.

'Initially I left active duty about six months after I came back from deployment and I did what I thought was best and I didn't take a break and I went right into school for art. So I thought, okay, this is something that I can release, but I wasn't really releasing. I was self-medicating. I was distracting. I was disconnecting. I wasn't really processing. When I got back from Afghanistan, there wasn't really a good... Transition, coming back home program, integration program, I don't know what it's called, but you were just doing, or I was just doing all of that, and now you expect me to turn it off and come back to regular society like normal.

You can't just flip a switch.

'So I didn't know how to process my emotions, my thoughts, you know, all that trauma. And so I would self-medicate, drink, drugs, you name it, until it all caught up to me and I was just not the high performer that I was used to being.

At what point did you realize that what I'm doing isn't working and I'm going to have to try to figure out something else here?

I think it was, it was March of 2020. I remember the day clears as if it was yesterday. And I was like, I need to do something. I've never talked to a therapist. I've ever expressed my feelings other than into my art. But I know that I need to do some because this isn't working anymore. I honestly, I made these two TikToks, as silly as that may sound, but I express my trauma through these videos, things that only happened in Afghanistan, but in my childhood.

For those who may have had the chance to watch my last two videos, I just wanted to say...

Thank you. When I shared that, I got an overwhelming response. People wanted to help, people had connections, like, hey, you should talk to this person, you know, all that good stuff. And so that's how I got connected to a man out here in the DC area who introduced me to my first psychedelic.

That first psychedelic was peyote.

I didn't know anything about it, I didn't know anything about biote, but he was like, I think this might help you. And I had nothing to lose, so I've done every other drug.

Peyote is actually a small cactus that contains the hallucinogenic compound mescaline. It's a Schedule I controlled substance in the U.S., it's an illegal drug. But under the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, Native Americans are allowed to use Peyote for spiritual ceremonies, as they've done for centuries. So Samantha joined one such ceremony and tried Peyote, for the first time.

So what I took away, the element of ritual and ceremony and process and symbols, and then how I physically felt after the ceremony, it felt like, I mean, I think I still have photos, but they're like, you look like a completely different person, like refreshed, rejuvenated. I just felt like I had released so much within me. And through the process, I was feeling it was really intense. Whether it was because I brought a lot to process or the medicine or combination, I felt like I let a lot go and it was magical. I don't know how else to describe it. And then a couple of years later, that's when I, unfortunately, I got back into drug use. But this time instead of my uppers, it was opiates and I didn't realize how much that would really affect my body and the withdrawals I underestimated the power of opiates.

Samantha was in a bad spot, but she was hearing more and more about another psychedelic, one more potent than Peyote, something called Ibogaine.

What I heard about it before was that it was, it's a very strong medicine for drug addiction, especially like opioid use and alcoholism. People were telling me, you know, I haven't touched a drop of alcohol and all I did at one time, or I haven't touched an opiate since. I was willing to go through whatever intense experience to not feel what I was feeling then, to not fell the withdrawals, the shakes, the clammy skin, all of that. No, thank you.

Ibogaine is a compound extracted from the roots of an ancient African shrub, and like peyote, has been used for centuries in healing and religious ceremonies. But recently, some professional football players in the U.S. Have reported using it to treat mental health struggles and head trauma. Veterans treatment groups like The Mission Within have been using it as a possible treatment for PTSD. And the founder of that clinic, psychedelic researcher Dr. Martine Polanco, told Samantha that Ibogaine might be right for her.

He had recommended me to do Ibogaine years before, but I was too afraid, just because I've heard it's so intense. But I was at such a low point in my life that I was like, again, what do I have to lose?

Now, like peyote, ibogaine is a schedule one controlled substance. It's been banned in the US since the 1960s. People who want to use it have to leave the country, and they have to cough up a lot of money. Treatments can cost up to 7,500 bucks. Samantha called Dr. Polanco and said she was ready to try it. He said they had a slot open if she could come up with the money and get herself down to Mexico in three days. Samantha didn't have the money. But one of her friends at a veterans charity foundation stepped up to sponsor her trip.

And so I was able to go, thankfully, to Mexico by that Friday and by that Friday evening, I was taking the medicine. So when you're there, there's a facilitator and medical staff, you're going through your screening. They make sure that you're clean and a good candidate to receive the medicine. From drug tests to EKG, prior to actually receiving the medicine, you go through a mini ceremony as well where you're setting your intention, you're doing prayer, you're lighting the Palo Santo and the sage. It's quite an experience. And then once you get into that mindset, you drop in and the medicine is given to you through pills. After we took the medicine, we went upstairs to where the mattresses are and laid down and they start playing the music if it's not already playing and you just let the medicine take you. It's nothing like any of the other medicines, not like biote, it's like psilocybin, not like DMT. This lasted 14, 15 hours for me. 14 hours. I think I got up once to use the bathroom.

The entire time you're experiencing what?

So as the medicine is starting to ramp up, I would say the body highs are starting at first. And then once it starts affecting your mind, I think the music had a lot to do with how I received the medicine. It was very intense. It was like staticky, clangy, almost like, I don't want to make the noise because it was really annoying. Like, like, like. Imagine a very loud aang aang for like the first four hours.

Oh my lord, wow.

Yes, I thought we were at a psych ward and they're doing experiments like it was just so in your face I went to a very dark, dark place, a very deep, dark place where shadows started like hovering over me. And I would take my eye mask off to like double check that am I really, are the shadows really here? Am I tripping? They weren't there. And then when I would try to open my eyes to see what it felt like or looked like with my eyes opened, it looked like if I moved my hand, It would be like the trails of a mirror that was shattered. Just cut glass. So it was very nauseating. But what I took away from like all of that, all the negative or evil, dark whispers, the breaking of the mirror is that all those elements are me. You know, all the things that are scaring myself, those are my shadows. The mirror that was breaking, that's the medicine breaking my past identities. Those things that I wanna let go. That I need to let go to like move past this and move past my addiction. I have not touched an opiate since. I haven't thought about it. I haven't even tried to be around it or like.

That's obviously the result you wanted, right?

So when people ask like if it's worth it, like for me, I guess 100% is worth it.

And so you've only done it the one time? The one time. And how long has it been since you took it?

Uh... July twenty three

and that was it. Kicked the habit entirely.

'Yes, mm-hmm.

I guess I could see a lot of people hearing about this, that the fact that you have to kind of run off to Mexico to do it, it has kind of this underground feel, I think to most people, that that could be a hangup for folks.

It's definitely for those that may not be as adventurous or willing to leave their home or they might be a little sketched out. It would be great if it was more available stateside and a lot more people had access and it was affordable.

And there are health risks too, right? There is a cardiac risk element and a possible dependency. I know this is all part of what they're trying to study, but does that scare you at all?

Um, personally, no, one because the organizations that I went through, uh, primarily the mission within, they do all those screenings. They have medical staff that ensure that you are a good candidate for the medicine. And I've seen candidates show up like ready to go through the retreat and they're still high or like there's traces of whatever and there's some, and they will turn them down so that they're upholding their standards and ensuring that the patient or candidate is a good candidates and that they are safe.

Are you surprised at all that some of the voices that have really kind of pushed this more into the mainstream are voices that folks might not expect? You know, RFK at HHS, Texas, you know, some of these red states, does that surprise you at all?

Oh, I'm very surprised, but I'm, I am very motivated by that. Like it's encouraging that people who are not your standard personality or character that would talk about these types of things, I think it'll reach further because they do understand the power and benefit and healing potential that all these medicines have. It just needs to be done in the right way.

U.S. Army veteran Samantha Juam. Next Sunday, we're gonna dig deeper into the push to get these substances federally approved as treatments and whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is an asset or an albatross. That's next Sunday.

One Thing is a CNN podcast production. This episode was produced by Paola Ortiz and me, David Rind. Our show runner is Felicia Patinkin. Our senior producer is Faiz Jamil. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan DeZula is our technical director and Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN podcasts. We get support from Alex Manasseri, Mark Duffy, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Leni Steinhart, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Wendy Brundage. We'll be back on Wednesday. I'll talk to you then.