In 2014, I suffered a severe polytrauma while serving in the United States Military. A wide variety of fractured bones, a broken neck, severed nerves, artery damage, and a severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) left me with what appeared to be a very bleak future, if I survived at all. Thanks to a timely helicopter rescue and several skilled surgeons utilizing cutting-edge procedures, I was miraculously kept alive. They managed to salvage my limbs to prevent amputation. After two weeks in a coma, I awoke paralyzed and mentally debilitated by the head injury and a wide array of pain medications.

While it was amazing I was alive, the docs said I would never walk or use my arms again, and my military career was most certainly over. My daily driving force was to prove them wrong. After three months of intense rehabilitation as an inpatient in a VA polytrauma center, I was able to get around on a walker well enough to be discharged. My therapy continued as I slowly regained strength. After two years of more surgeries, endless rehabilitation, and overcoming prescription drug addiction, I was back to active duty. I had proved the docs wrong on all predictions. It seemed like the ultimate comeback. I was on top of the world until I wasn’t.

Through my recovery, I had compartmentalized all the trauma. I had packed every bit of it into a lockbox and shoved it down into the abyss. This immense amount of unresolved trauma began to leak to the surface until it became unignorable. After a mission, I realized I could not remember much of what happened. That night, I could not sleep as my anxiety spiked. I tried to ignore it through the next day, but it continued to worsen. Something was seriously wrong. The first thought that made any sense was that perhaps I was suffering from decompression sickness (DCS). DCS is caused when nitrogen in our blood comes out of solution, like rapidly opening a soda bottle. One of these bubbles might have been trapped in my brain.

That night, I was rushed to a nearby dive base and placed into a hyperbaric chamber for treatment. It seemed to help slightly, however the doc suspected there was more going on, considering my past of TBI and extensive trauma. I reluctantly went into the base physician, knowing this could end my career I had worked so hard to regain.

Dealing with an invisible wound that I couldn’t see or PT my way out of proved incredibly frustrating. This was all just in my head, right? Why could I not just get over it? It turns out that dealing with this ailment would prove far more challenging than regaining the use of my scar-ridden body.

The doc’s first recommendation was to make an appointment with the base psychologist. This only spiked my anxiety worse as I knew that mental health problems were almost certain doom for jobs like mine. After a few appointments, the only solution was a few apps for my phone. One for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), another for exposure therapy, and a meditation app. Each appointment with the inexperienced psychologist, reviewed what I had done on my phone. My frustration grew as my sleep and cognitive function degraded into paranoia and hypervigilance. I imagined someone was following me; something was out to get me. I was trapped in a permanent state of fight or flight. My nervous system was out of control.

No surprise, the apps did nothing to help. The base psychiatrist decided it was time to try some psychotropic medications. After my long battle to rid my system of the cornucopia of pain meds I was prescribed, the last thing I wanted was more medication. It was painted as the only viable option to get better. Clinical study this, peer-reviewed that. Arguing with someone who had devoted decades to digesting pharmaceutical propaganda was difficult. I did what I thought was right and trusted their expertise.

The medication of choice was called Seroquel or Quetiapine. It was an anti-psychotic medication that could be used at low doses for insomnia. If only I could get some decent sleep, I could get better. At first, it seemed to help. It at least knocked me into a medication-induced form of unconsciousness.

The same thing that had happened with the pain meds began happening with Seroquel. I built tolerance, requiring higher and higher doses. With the increased dose came increased side effects. A few months of this cycle with heavy-duty psychotropic drugs led me into a full-blown psychosis. I became convinced government assassins were hunting me. My life was a living nightmare, all created in my head. I cowered in the house, away from the windows. I stopped eating or drinking because I thought the food and water was poisoned. The government was poisoning me; it just happened to be in the FDA-approved pills I was prescribed.

The insanity spiraled out of control as the only remedy provided by the medical staff to get me out of psychosis was more Seroquel. My wife had just given birth to our first child. She was now tasked with caring for a newborn and a full-grown, capable adult convinced he was in some dark version of the Truman Show. Our little boy was a breeze in comparison.

Seeing the doors closing on my career made me feel like I was letting everyone down who believed in me. I was letting down my already undermanned command. In my mind, I was a complete failure. One stormy night, as I churned restlessly in agitation and depression, my mind turned to the Glock 19 I kept in an end table next to the bed. I quietly opened the drawer and felt the weapon’s weight in my hand. I began to wonder what the barrel would feel like on my teeth and what the gun oil might taste like on my tongue. This could painlessly end my suffering right here and right now. The world would be a better place without me.

Before placing the muzzle into my mouth, I saw my wife sleeping peacefully with my first child. I placed the handgun back into the drawer and stared at the only spark of joy still in my life. The only thing that stopped me was I did not want to wake them up. Had they not been there in that moment, I would not be writing this.
This cycle of insanity continued until I was eventually medically retired after a long battle through a medical board. Despite having a stack of detailed medical records and the support of my command, the medical board seemed riddled with cracks meant to derail a service member from attaining a medical retirement. It seemed like the bureaucratic equivalent of the Temple of Doom. After a nearly two-year-long fight, I received my discharge orders. I narrowly escaped being left homeless like countless other decorated veterans who have done far more in their service than I ever had.

My wife, son, and I moved back close to family to gain some support in our difficult circumstances. There, I continued the same cycle with more Seroquel and worsening symptoms. The VA psychiatrist assured us this medication was the best option. Within two days of having my dosage of Seroquel increased from 300 milligrams to 450 milligrams per night, my wife returned home from a job interview to hear me rustling around our house. For some reason, I had shaved my hair off in chunks. My eyebrows were missing. I was completely naked except for a black plastic garbage bag I had tied around my shoulders like a cape. I was convinced I would go out into the snowy winter weather and fight crime like Batman.

My wife called the VA, who said they were hanging up and calling the police. A squad car pulled into our driveway. The officer explained he would have to handcuff me and place me in the back. My wife thought this was unacceptable treatment for someone experiencing a mental health emergency. She opted to load up our one-year-old son and drive to the nearest emergency room herself.

I was in intense psychosis throughout the drive. It appeared there had been a nuclear explosion behind us, and we were narrowly escaping the blast. Trees, animals, cars, boats, and debris flew through the air, at least in my mind. Upon arrival, I was placed in a plexiglass room and received IV meds. That night was an out-of-body experience. My soul departed my lifeless body.

I was driven by ambulance to a VA inpatient psych facility and admitted. After a few days, I regained consciousness on the floor of a dim, cold room alone. Between the meds and the psychosis, it took me several days to get my bearings, but I gradually became more lucid. The small facility was filled with other veterans suffering from a variety of mental health ailments. Sleep was a serious challenge. The florescent-lit hallways had concrete walls and glossy tile floors. As the medical staff patrolled the halls, you could hear their keys and footsteps echo loudly. Several veterans were pacing the halls, mumbling and moaning to themselves or hollering throughout the long nights. As a policy, the staff was required to shine a flashlight in my face every fifteen minutes to ensure I was “safe.” I needed sleep more than anything, yet it was made impossible.

We were confined in the cramped facility and were lucky to go outside into a concrete yard surrounded by tall metal gates once a week. Patients’ wardrobes comprised the same scrubs issued to prisoners, while the staff wore white lab coats like a version of the Stanford prison experiments. Meals consisted of highly processed slop, lacking natural nutrients essential for healing. There was not a fresh fruit or vegetable in sight. Instead, this food was leaching our bodies just to be digested, making us sicker. To boost morale, we occasionally were gifted Nutter Butters and Oreos. Several staff members treated us less than human. Medication was mandatory.

Several of the veterans had been in and out of prison during their struggles with homelessness and drug addiction. They all agreed they would rather be in federal prison than this place. The food and living conditions are better in prison than in a VA facility that’s supposed to be helping American veterans heal from injuries caused mainly by their military service. Many of these men had been held captive in this hell for decades, drugged out of their minds. The inhumane treatment left me boiling with rage.
Though I wish I had just imagined all of this, what I am telling you is accurate and happening to this day. The same techniques used to break the will of enemy combatants in a prisoner-of-war situation are being used to make veterans compliant with mandatory drugging. We were detained, sleep-deprived, malnourished, and treated as less than human. Even a highly trained service member in peak fitness will begin having visual and aural hallucinations after just a few days of captivity and sleep deprivation while undergoing survival training. The veterans in the VA inpatient psych facility were coming out of rock bottom. How could these conditions make sense to anyone for healing?

In fully lucid moments, I became convinced these conditions were intentionally implemented to make us compliant. We would be loaded up on enough drugs to boost the pharmaceutical industry’s profits until we eventually took our own lives. It is a highly profitable business for big pharma, and one less vet receives long-term VA benefits.

I was voluntarily admitted but ignored when I said I was ready to leave. I had not committed any crime. I was simply an American veteran trying to get help. When I was repeatedly denied my legal right to leave, I planned an escape.

Late one night after weeks in captivity, a staff member barged into my room with a flashlight. The continuous fifteen-minute sleep intervals had taken a toll on me, and I was burning with rage as I sprang up from my bed. I got within inches of the smug staff member’s face. I don’t know what stopped me from ripping their throat out and smashing their skull into the tile, but I managed to stare them in the eye and told them they reeked instead. If only they knew how close to death they were. The arrogant lab coat closed my door for another fifteen minutes of poor rest.

Just as I started to drift into sleep, they swung the door open again, flashlight beam directed into my eyes—fifteen minutes on the mark. As I squinted, I ran into the hallway and pulled the fire alarm, hoping the staff would be required to evacuate. Those of us veterans who were not yet complete zombies could make a run for it. Someone had tried this trick in the past, and we were immediately put back on lockdown.

For my attempted escape, the base police arrived. I was forced to be injected with a medication called Haldol. As the drug entered my bloodstream, it felt like ants were gnawing out from beneath my skin across my entire body. All I wanted to do was run, scream, and tear my skin off. Instead of receiving care, I was being tortured.
After an hour of severe discomfort, I collapsed. The following day, I awoke drooling on myself. I don’t know what meds they all had me on at this point, but I had become yet another zombie, like many of the others shuffling throughout the halls. I was escorted into a room with a woman who said she was my attorney. She passed me a stack of paperwork I could not comprehend, handed me a pen, and recommended I sign each document. Wiping the drool from my face, I scribbled onto each form as she shuffled through them.

I did not know it at the time, but I had just been declared permanently mentally defective and committed to the VA facility. It also stripped me of my constitutional right to bear arms and placed me on the Law Enforcement Information Network like I had committed a crime. Just a few years prior, I had proudly occupied one of the most highly trained, challenging-to-obtain positions in the military and was entrusted with some of the most valuable equipment in our arsenal. Now, I was less than nobody.
Eventually, my family advocated getting me released into their care. Without them, I would have either died in that facility or been locked in prison after attacking one of the lab coats. Once home, I was an empty shell of a man. A letter promptly informed me that my concealed carry permit was being revoked. If I did not comply, I faced imprisonment. The only emotion I seemed to feel at all was anger.

My little boy would come up asking me to play. I was so broken I would scold him to leave me alone. I was short-tempered and bitter. I felt betrayed by everything I had ever believed in. My wife was figuring out the best steps to execute a divorce peacefully. She told me the only reason she did not want to go through with it was because of the off chance I got any custody; she feared I would kill our son if I slipped into another psychosis unexpectedly.

Brokenhearted and lost, my mental function had declined drastically. Simply washing the dishes was overwhelming. I was trying to stay active, but the Seroquel was poisoning me. I was losing strength and gaining unwanted weight, no matter what I tried. I felt dead inside and was desperate for anything that might help. The VA offered nothing but medications. My hope was lost.

One day, after years of struggle, I stumbled upon the book “How to Change Your Mind” by Michael Pollan. It was the author’s account of how entheogens were showing great promise for healing the brain and overcoming trauma. My focus and memory were so bad it was nearly impossible to digest even one paragraph at a time. I persisted and was able to absorb enough to realize there might be some hope if I could gain access to psychedelics.

Written by Kegan Gill

Kegan “SMURF” Gill, a former US Navy F/A-18E pilot, overcame life-altering injuries sustained during a high-speed ejection into the sound barrier in 2014. After undergoing multiple surgeries and a two-year recovery process, he triumphantly returned to flying Super Hornets.
Kegan eventually struggled with delayed-onset PTSD and cognitive issues from a severe traumatic brain injury. Traditional pharmaceutical treatments exacerbated his condition, leading to hospitalization. Frustrated with the limitations of the VA healthcare system and grappling with overwhelming mental health ailments, Kegan found renewed hope through alternative therapies, including the use of psychedelics. Now medication-free, he continues his holistic healing journey and participates in ultra-endurance events. He also speaks and writes about his transformative experiences, focusing on mind, body, and soul wellness while raising a family.

You can get all the details of Kegan’s amazing story of survival and resilience in his upcoming book, Phoenix Revival. Due out soon!