For years, Pedram Dara had seen men talk about trauma one-on-one, but rarely in a group.
That changed during a wellness retreat in Costa Rica in 2018, when about two dozen men gathered around a campfire.
After one man disclosed he had been sexually abused as a child, the floodgates opened. Dara watched as nearly every other man there acknowledged they had experienced something similar.
“If that one person hadn’t had the courage to say it,” he recalled, “none of us would have talked about it.”
For Dara, the experience underscored that healing is often about creating spaces where people feel seen, heard and understood.
Dara is the founder and director of Psychedelic Lived Experiences, a group that advocates for patient access to psychedelic-assisted therapy.
In North America, veterans have become the public face of psychedelic-assisted therapy. But Dara is among those who say veterans represent just one group of many who need access to this therapy.
“The vast majority of people who are actually seeking this work are not veterans — it’s just that veterans and first responders get a lot of the coverage,” said Dara.
Limited access
Psychedelic-assisted therapy combines the use of substances such as psilocybin or MDMA with psychotherapy. It typically involves much more than simply taking a drug.
Patients usually prepare with a therapist beforehand, undergo a supervised dosing session — often wearing a blindfold and headphones to encourage focus — and then participate in one or more “integration sessions” to process what emerged.
Researchers have increasingly studied substances such as psilocybin and MDMA as potential treatments for conditions including PTSD, depression and end-of-life distress.
But despite growing interest, access remains limited.
In Canada, psilocybin remains largely restricted to clinical trials or individual approvals through Health Canada’s Special Access Program. Some Canadians travel abroad, including to jurisdictions such as Colorado, where regulated psychedelic services are available.
Veterans — who frequently struggle with PTSD and trauma — have often been at the forefront of efforts to broaden access to psychedelic therapy. Their efforts have led to some lawmakers from across the political spectrum taking up their cause.
In March, Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski introduced a private member’s bill that seeks to reduce bureaucratic delays for clinicians seeking psychedelic-assisted therapies.
In June, Tory MP Corey Tochor introduced a private member’s bill that would create a regulated pathway for prescribing psilocybin. If passed, the bill would replace the current Special Access Program with a more streamlined process for accessing psilocybin therapy.
“[The bill] will … allow physicians to prescribe [psilocybin] and … will also pave a path … [into the] priority review program that already exists with Health Canada, and within 180 days, they’ll have to render a decision,” Tochor said during a June 18 panel in Toronto.
South of the border, the Trump administration has also embraced psychedelic research for veterans. In April, the president signed an executive order to accelerate studies of ibogaine — a powerful, naturally occurring psychedelic — and other therapies for military personnel.
But clinicians and advocates say the focus on veterans has created the impression that veterans are the typical patient.
Dara says the true picture is more complicated. He is part of a 20-person support group that mainly includes women in their 50s and 60s who often have histories of sexual trauma.
“Public narratives sometimes treat trauma that comes through [military or first responder] service as more honourable or socially legitimate, even though many veterans and first responders also feel misunderstood or reduced to stereotypes,” he said.
“The problem is not that their trauma matters too much. It is that survivors of sexual assault, childhood abuse, domestic violence, and other forms of interpersonal trauma often get less coverage.”
Heather Lee, a Colorado-based psychotherapist who specializes in psychedelic-assisted therapy for women over 50, agrees. She regularly works with Canadians who travel to Colorado as part of a growing form of “psychedelic tourism.”
Not one-size-fits-all
Experts say expanding access cannot simply mean opening existing programs to more people. Different forms of trauma require different approaches.
“Having PTSD from military service is not the same thing as having PTSD from sexual assault or rape,” said Dara.
“Although these populations can overlap, [the therapeutic process] is different, from preparation all the way through integration.”
A veteran, Dara says, may not think twice about whether their therapist is male or female. For someone whose trauma involved a loss of bodily autonomy, that detail can be critical.
“The very first thing [a sexual assault survivor will] want to know is: Who’s going to be in the room?” Dara said. “You’re going to put a blindfold on me and put headphones on me? That sounds terrifying to someone who has experienced loss of agency and trauma.”
Lee, the Colorado-based psychotherapist, says many of her clients are not suffering from a single traumatic event but rather decades of life transitions that have accumulated into a profound sense of loss.
“They’re aware that there’s a lot they continue to carry,” she said, pointing to grief, divorce, caregiving, retirement, menopause and aging. “There’s a cumulative amount of grief and life transitions.”
Many women, she says, describe wanting to reconnect with parts of themselves they feel have disappeared after years spent caring for others.
For people facing a life-limiting illness or end-of-life, the therapeutic goal may be different altogether. Psychedelic-assisted therapy may be used to address existential distress, fear of death or a search for meaning.
Scott Paul Wright is the director of a new documentary, The Next Chapter, which follows older adults exploring psychedelic-assisted therapy as they reflect on trauma, grief and unresolved experiences later in life.
“My generation … we didn’t go to therapy,” said Wright, 69, during the June 18 panel in Toronto that followed his film’s screening. “You stuffed it down, you didn’t deal with it.”
Wright believes many people approaching the end of their lives have unprocessed grief or trauma.
“The plant medicine seems to be — for lack of a better metaphor — putting some dynamite in the hole to blow things open,” he said.
Community is medicine
While the psychedelic experience often makes headlines, experts say the dosing session is only the beginning.
Equally important is what happens afterward, as people process the experience alongside others with shared life experiences.
“[I]ntegration happens in community,” said Sumit Bhatia, a policy expert and advisory board member of the Psychedelic Association of Canada, during the June 18 panel.
“That’s where we really experience the value of what our learnings are, and how we are going to show up in the world and be held by the people we care about.”
Lee has seen that dynamic unfold repeatedly in the women’s retreats she leads in Colorado.
Many participants initially describe themselves as introverts who are hesitant about joining a group. But their sense of shared vulnerability often becomes part of the healing.
“The group is medicine unto itself,” Lee said, noting women frequently remain in touch long afterwards.
For Bhatia, that communal element is ultimately what distinguishes psychedelic-assisted therapy from many other forms of mental health treatment.
“When people are thinking about healing, it’s not just treatment,” he said. “They’re looking for connection, for belonging, or something to believe in and root themselves in — and that’s where community comes in.”
