Army ranger Jesse Gould founded the nonprofit Heroic Hearts Project in 2017 to provide psychedelic-assisted retreats for U.S. veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. The organization hosts retreats where veterans can take ayahuasca or psilocybin, and Gould said it has served more than 1,500 veterans and their spouses, with a waiting list of more than 2,000.

Gould served three combat deployments in Afghanistan and suffered traumatic brain injuries from concussive blasts during his service. He developed PTSD and said he lost more than a dozen people he served alongside to suicide. "I drank almost every night to cope." he said. "I was still very young. I didn't want to be on medication the rest of my life."

In February 2017, he traveled to Peru and tried ayahuasca. "The PTSD, the depression, the hyper vigilance no longer affected me to the same degree." he said. He founded Heroic Hearts Project later that year.

In 2023, the suicide rate among U.S. veterans was 35 per 100,000 people, more than double the rate in the general population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A study published in 2025 in the Journal of Psychopharmacology involving 22 adults with PTSD found that psilocybin administered with psychological support may be safe, well-tolerated and associated with symptomatic improvement. Joseph Zamaria, a clinical psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, said ingesting psilocybin can cause a heightened state of learning and disrupt the brain's default mode network, allowing people to become detached from their sense of self and identity. "People who have experienced trauma [often] internalize the trauma. So they will say, 'I am this person. I'm ashamed of this thing,'" Zamaria said. "If we can loosen the hold of those narratives on somebody's mind, they may be able to work through the trauma more easily."

Albert Garcia-Romeu, associate director of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University, noted potential risks. "People have taken [psilocybin] for thousands of years, but there are some small subsets of people that if they take it – or if they take it at the wrong time – they can become psychotic or manic or even violent." Garcia-Romeu said. "Each one is going to be slightly different." He added: "I think it would make sense to do the FDA-approved medication route because that is going to come with a set of authoritative guidelines from major medical and regulatory bodies."

Heroic Hearts Project uses an intake process that excludes people with schizophrenia and certain bipolar or personality disorders from attending its retreats, and none of the participants had experienced a psychotic episode, according to Gould.

Colorado, New Mexico and Oregon have legalized psilocybin for therapeutic use, and in Colorado, psilocybin is also legal for personal use. Minnesota state Representative Andy Smith co-sponsored legislation with a Republican to allow residents aged 21 and over with conditions such as PTSD and depression to use psilocybin with a licensed facilitator. Lawmakers in Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York have introduced bills to allow residents to use psilocybin for therapeutic purposes. At least eight states in total are considering such legislation.