Opinion: I was traumatized by my time in Afghanistan and Iraq. Psychedelic therapy changed my life.
BY JULIANA MERCER
JULY 1, 2021 10:34 AM PT
Mercer is a former U.S. Marine. She lives in Mission Hills.
Throughout my 16 years in the Marine Corps, including a decade of active duty and tours to both Iraq and Afghanistan, I witnessed many tragedies. Between those deployments I spent five years working with wounded Marines, seeing the true physical, mental and emotional cost of war, absorbing that trauma every day.
I saw firsthand the trauma, both physical and emotional, that service members carried with them as they began to integrate back into their communities. Deploying back to the Middle East after seeing the consequences of war everyday triggered fear and anxiety when I watched young Marines gear up to leave the wire. That year was the bloodiest of the post 9/11 conflicts for Marines; I lost track of how many flag-draped coffins I saluted as they were solemnly lifted onto the C-130s that flew service members’ remains back to their families in the states.
When I returned to San Diego and continued my work with veterans, I observed increasing levels of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder suicide among veterans. For myself, I found that I had been suppressing the loss and associated grief of war. I lost friends in battle and Marines to mental illness and suicide at home. I did not know it at the time, but that pain and grief began to spill over, and I found myself feeling alone and without a sense of purpose.
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