In Waves and War review – Navy SEALs fight PTSD with psychedelic therapy | film

A A group of former Navy SEALs talk about post-traumatic stress in this entertaining, if somewhat stereotypical, documentary by John Schenk and Bonnie Cohen. Ultimately, it was like an announcement of a new treatment protocol involving veterans taking the hallucinogens ibogaine (derived from an African shrub) and 5-MeO-DMT (derived, like something out of a William S. Burroughs novel, from a river frog); A treatment that, if you hear people here describe it, can work wonders on the suicidal, battle-torn minds of its users. Currently, the treatment is only available in a Mexican clinic because the drugs haven’t been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, but a group of experts associated with Stanford University’s Brain Stimulation Laboratory are studying its clinical implications and the film is working hard to make the whole thing look as legitimate as possible.

To be clear, we’re not necessarily questioning the effectiveness of drugs, but this particular film seems barely interested in cognitive science and offers up interviews with scientists with interesting spectacles and fancy vocabulary as guarantors that it all actually works. Even more compelling is the testimony of six men we meet, who courageously discuss their pain and distress as the cameras roll.

What former soldiers experienced in the theater of war, especially in Afghanistan in the early 2000s, left many feeling like shells of their former selves and plagued by persistent thoughts of suicide. One soldier testifies that the abuse he suffered as a child, which greatly contributed to his decision to become a soldier in the first place, was a larger part of the trauma he carried and something he could only face while under the influence of these drugs.

Since there are few things more boring than watching someone else have a drug experience, the film chooses to illustrate the journeys with gorgeous animation featuring images of our subjects orbiting in space, surrounded by memories that assault their senses. At one point, we see a vision of a soldier spending hours on the couch watching the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, a detail that feels deliciously amusing and belies the often bleak nature of the film. This seriousness is emphasized by the music, which seems mostly to consist of Philip Glass-style strings played over endlessly repeated violins, a style of musical shorthand that immediately suggests tragic cycles of pain.

In Waves and War is on Netflix starting November 3.