Psychedelics veterans PTSD
Sgt. Toby Miller pictured on his last tour in Afghanistan in 2011, when he was wounded. (Photo supplied by Sgt. Toby Miller.)

Retired Sergeant Toby Miller was at one point taking 26 psychoactive pills a day for his complex post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He’s a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, but insists he isn’t a victim. 

“I don’t view it as having been damaged. I just survived something traumatic,” he told Canadian Affairs. 

That experience was one of the reasons he joined the military in 2002. He wanted to protect people, including the children who were being abused by the Taliban in Afghanistan. He says he’s not the only person in the Canadian Armed Forces to have had abuse as a factor for enlisting.

“There is a correlation that you see with all these guys who’ve been traumatized in childhood, and what they want is to be a protector,” Miller said. "There was no one there to protect them when they were harmed, and so they don’t want that to happen to anybody else.” 

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Hadassah Alencar is a bilingual journalist based near Montreal. She recently completed the journalism program at Concordia University, where she worked as a teaching assistant and became editor-in-chief...

Fin DePencier is a journalist, photographer and filmmaker based in Toronto. Over the past few years, he has reported on the ground from Ukraine, Armenia, Lebanon and Kazakhstan as a correspondent for Palladium...