America’s veterans deserve the best care possible. They’ve endured the unthinkable in service to our country—and when they return home, they should be met with compassion, time, and therapies that work, not a haze of prescription drugs.
Yet as The Wall Street Journal recently reported, the VA has leaned heavily on what’s been called the “combat cocktail”—the routine prescribing of multiple psychiatric drugs at once to treat PTSD. For many veterans, this approach has left them feeling sedated, disconnected, and in some cases, suicidal. The VA’s own numbers show that veterans in its care have a 22% higher suicide rate than the general population. If that doesn’t tell us something is wrong, I don’t know what will.
Why Drug Cocktails Fail Veterans
Polypharmacy—being on two, three, or even six psychiatric medications at a time—is not true treatment. These drugs can dull emotion, impair cognition, and make it harder for veterans to engage with life, family, and recovery. They mask symptoms without addressing the root cause of trauma. Worse, the side effects—weight gain, dizziness, emotional blunting, suicidal thoughts—can compound the suffering.
As one former VA official described, “You’d see veterans walking around like zombies.” That is not healing. That is chemical restraint.
The Alternative: Therapies That Work
Instead of drugging veterans into submission, we need to prioritize therapies that actually process trauma and rewire the brain’s response to it. Three stand out for their effectiveness:
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR helps the brain reprocess traumatic memories so they lose their emotional charge. It’s backed by decades of research and can deliver rapid, lasting relief from PTSD symptoms without a single pill. - Brainspotting
By identifying and processing “brainspots”—eye positions linked to stored trauma—this therapy accesses and resolves experiences that talk therapy alone often can’t touch. It’s especially effective for veterans because it goes straight to the source of body-based and neurological trauma. - The Infinity-Brain-Method
My own approach, the Infinity-Brain-Method, integrates advanced neuro-processing techniques with a whole-body approach to healing. It is designed to restore a sense of agency, clarity, and resilience—helping veterans reconnect with their lives without dependence on psychiatric medication.
These therapies share a core principle: they work with the brain’s innate capacity to heal itself. They do not numb, sedate, or disconnect. They restore, integrate, and empower.
The Path Forward
We need a VA mental health system where:
- Therapy is the first-line treatment for PTSD—not medication.
- Veterans are informed about non-drug options like EMDR, Brainspotting, and the Infinity-Brain-Method before a prescription is ever written.
- Resources are directed toward training more trauma therapists, not filling more pill bottles.
- Polypharmacy is the exception, not the norm, and deprescribing programs are actively supported.
Veterans have already survived the battlefield. They should not have to fight a second war against a medical system that overmedicates and under-treats.
If we truly honor their service, we must offer them care that brings them home—to themselves, their families, and their futures—fully awake and fully alive.
