Sept. 18, 2018 -- Jon Lubecky was running out of options when he checked into a small house-turned-clinic outside Charleston, SC.

The onetime Army artillery sergeant had been struggling with post-traumatic stress since he got home from Iraq, where his post had been shelled so often it was nicknamed “Mortaritaville.” In 2006, near the height of the insurgency and religious violence that followed the U.S. invasion, one of those shells sent shrapnel tearing through the outhouse where he was sitting in the middle of the night.

The shrapnel missed, but the shock of the blast knocked Lubecky out and left him with a traumatic brain injury. When he came home that fall, he found his wife had left him. He made the first of what would be five suicide attempts that Christmas.

“My life was a country song,” Lubecky says.

By the time he got to the clinic door in November 2014, doctors at a Veterans Affairs hospital had him taking half a dozen medications to treat his PTSD, and it wasn’t working. So Lubecky signed up for an experimental treatment he hoped would help: MDMA, a psychedelic drug commonly known as ecstasy or Molly -- a compound that’s been banned for decades.

“And that’s when everything went weird,” he says. “Good, but weird.”

After years underground, psychedelic drugs are getting attention as a potential treatment for depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

MDMA, also known as ecstasy, has shown promise in studies of combat veterans. Psilocybin, the compound in “magic mushrooms” that gets you high, has been tested as a potential boost for people struggling to quit smoking. Researchers in Europe are conducting a survey of how “microdoses” of LSD or other drugs affect mental activity without altering perception. And the American Psychological Association held a symposium in early August on the potential uses of psychedelics.

“This is a very interesting, intriguing moment in psychiatric drug development,” says John Krystal, MD, chairman of the psychiatry department at the Yale University School of Medicine.

Lubecky was part of a trial conducted with the government’s blessing. He went to the house-turned-clinic three times, taking a dose of MDMA in combination with an extensive psychotherapy session. The drug is a form of amphetamine known for producing a sense of openness and emotional warmth, and Lubecky said it helped him discuss his experiences without producing the kind of intense physical responses of PTSD.