Home | Friday 15th February 2008 | Issue 620

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...AND FINALLY...

There are 25 million army veterans in the US (and a whole lot more to come back from Iraq and Afghanistan...eventually) and their experience of life in the US military does not on the whole seem a happy one. Whether it’s a failure to come to terms with no longer being able to kill people indiscriminately to a hard rock soundtrack or, more likely, post traumatic stress from being subjected to the full horrors of war as a naive teen, the suicide rate among the vets is now twice that of the non-military population.

Officials may not be focussing on pro-active solutions like not going to war in the first place, but at least some help could be on the way. Three years ago the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) was given the go-ahead to trial giving MDMA to ex-soldiers – a trial which has gone pretty well (unsuprisingly, some pill-popping party-goers may claim).

They are now ready to submit their findings to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with the hope that they will shortly approve it for medical use. Maybe one day soon, marines will be swapping guns for gurns...

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