For Angela Graham, it all started eight years ago.

Nearly two decades of encountering disturbing scenes while on the job triggered extreme anxiety, nightmares and uncontrollable anger in the retired Santa Clara County firefighter. She tried talk therapy, medication and a treatment that involves moving one’s eyes in a specific pattern while processing traumatic memories called EMDR.

But none of it really worked for her.

Then, through an acquaintance, Graham discovered a clinic in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico, that offers guided psychedelic trips with mushrooms and DMT to help people heal from mental health problems. The psychedelic journey she took last year felt like “being turned inside out” — and jumpstarted her road to recovery.

“You know, I’m not a hippie,” said Graham, who retired in June after 17 years. “But they might have been on to something.”

The experience was so life-altering and cathartic that it pushed Graham to form the S.I.R.E.N. Project, which funds psychedelic trips for Bay Area first responders who are seeking alternative ways to treat their mental health issues.

Angela Graham co-founder of the S.I.R.E.N. Project on Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023, in Gilroy, Calif. Graham, a retired Santa Clara County firefighter started the nonprofit to provide funding for first responders seeking psychedelic treatment for mental health issues like PTSD. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group) 

Graham co-founded the nonprofit with her husband, an active firefighter who has yet to announce his involvement publicly out of fear it could jeopardize his job. They will have sent 15 firefighters, a spouse of a firefighter and a police officer on psychedelic journeys by the end of the year.

Though some states and cities have loosened laws around certain psychedelics, many are still listed as Schedule 1 drugs, which the federal government has determined have no current accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. The S.I.R.E.N. Project sends first responders to Mexico — where the laws are not as strict — and a church in Texas that is legally allowed to hand out the medicine through an exemption in the laws.

The couple has poured their own money into the nonprofit, along with outside funding from a secretive and well-known tech billionaire whose name they wouldn’t share. Each trip costs between $2,000 and $5,000. The active duty first responders who participate have not informed their departments since there is often a zero-tolerance drug policy. However, two retired firefighters involved in the nonprofit agreed to talk to the Mercury News.

Graham’s project comes amid a renewed scientific movement to push psychedelics further into mainstream medicine and as more first responders face mental health crises.

State Sen. Scott Wiener also is trying to pass SB 58, which would decriminalize certain psychedelics. In an interview, Wiener said he’s known people personally who have benefitted from them — and his goal with the legislation is to “reduce the stigma” around their use.

But a group called the California Coalition for Psychedelic Safety and Education wants Wiener’s bill to include more guardrails around personal use so that the drugs don’t get into the hands of those who could be harmed.

Lisa Hudson, a member of the coalition, lost her son in 2020 after he took mushrooms. Thinking he could fly, 16-year-old Shayne Rebbetoy jumped off the family’s 40-foot-tall deck in San Anselmo and plunged to his death. Hudson said she’s listened to and supports those who have benefitted from the drugs — like the first responders — but thinks the state is moving too quickly.

Lisa Hudson holds a photograph of her son Shayne Rebbetoy in her home on Monday, Aug. 21, 2023, in San Anselmo, Calif. At age 16 Rebbetoy took a dose of psychedelic mushrooms that ended up resulting in his death. Hudson and a coalition of other California residents are raising concerns about SB58, a bill that would decriminalize certain psychedelics in California. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group) 

“They got their lives back, and that’s incredible, but they were in a safe and controlled therapeutic setting. But that’s not all this bill does,” said Hudson. “The bill as currently written legalizes recreational use and is a recipe for more heartbreak. More loss. More deaths. Kids will never be the same.”

Though researchers have studied psychedelics for decades — and indigenous communities have used them for millennia — it’s generally accepted that UCLA psychiatrist Charles Grob spun the wheels in motion for more recent scientific inquiries to emerge after his small study of cancer patients with advanced-stage cancer showed promising results for combatting anxiety.

That opened the door for research at other top American universities to study their efficacy in combatting PTSD, depression and addiction. There are some hypotheses as to why psychedelics may help with those ailments. Some think it puts the brain in a state in which it can form new thought patterns, but multiple researchers at Bay Area universities who are conducting clinical trials said in interviews it’s too early to tell what’s really going on.

“There are people who think it’s all just the drug and everything else is sort of a happy accident,” said Dr. Boris Heifets, who runs a lab at Stanford that investigates the therapeutic uses of psychedelics. “And there are other groups of people that think this is an experience-dependent thing. Where it doesn’t even matter how the drug works, per se, just that you have an intense experience and that in the context of preparation and integrating those experiences, that’s really what catalyzes psychological transformation.”

Stanford University professor Boris Dov Heifets with an image of a mouse brain from a mouse treated with MDMA as part of a study to understand how MDMA fosters social connection, on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023 at Stanford University. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group) 

The latest trend toward the use of psychedelics also coincides with a rise in mental health crises among first responders.

A 2021 study that examined data from the National Occupational Mortality Surveillance System revealed that firefighters are 72% more likely to commit suicide than the general working population. A heightened risk was also found among EMTs and law enforcement officers.

The S.I.R.E.N. Project’s Graham knows of seven California first responders who have taken their lives — and explained that firefighting isn’t just putting out blazes but responding to emergency medical situations, many of which can be brutally traumatic. On top of that, the rigid and still largely macho culture within some fire departments doesn’t always encourage opportunities to be open about one’s mental health struggles.

For retired Mountain View firefighter Wade Trammell, his three-decade career was like a slow war that brought him to a breaking point.

Retired firefighter Wade Trammell, of Danville, worked as a firefighter with the Mountain View Fire Department for 29 years and retired in 2015. Trammell suffers from PTSD and participated in a psychedelic treatment in Mexico that he says helped him heal from his PTSD. He was able to get access to the treatment through nonprofit organization called SIREN which was started by a South Bay firefighter couple. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group) 

He witnessed many gory and devastating scenes, but one in particular shook him to his core.

It was an early summer morning and Trammell and his crew responded to a semi-truck on Highway 101 that had rammed into a freeway sign, skewering the driver’s abdomen as flames surrounded the vehicle. Trammell was assigned to get the driver out but was unsuccessful.

“There was physically no way to move this man out of the cab and there was no time,” recalled Trammell. “He continued to scream until he quite literally burned alive in my arms.”

In the years since he retired in 2015, Trammell was drinking excessively, not sleeping and going through crying spells. Through former colleagues, he was linked up with the S.I.R.E.N. Project.

“She said, ‘Wade, I had the exact same symptoms as you,’” Trammell recalls Graham telling him. “‘You need to do this.’”

Graham sent him this year to the same retreat center she went to, where a guided experience was overseen by Andrea Lucie, a healer with experience working with military veterans. Along with a handful of other Bay Area firefighters, Trammell drank orange juice with mushrooms in it and then smoked 5‐MeO‐DMT, which is dried Sonoran Desert toad venom. That’s when he experienced the “eureka moment.”

“Right at the end, it came to me,” said Trammell. “Thirty years of firefighting and seeing what you saw, you have to guard your heart. Always be fully alert. I wasn’t feeling any emotions. It just came to me that I must open my heart again to my family, friends and wife.”

Scott Sorensen, who retired from the city of Santa Clara’s fire department in 2019 after 29 years, joined Trammell in Mexico. Sorensen had experienced equally gut-wrenching episodes during this career. He recalled rescuing an injured three-year-old baby who was found under some train tracks after his mother had tried to kill them both. The mother died and the child lost a leg.

Scott Sorensen, a retired captain from the Santa Clara Fire Department, sits in his living room with his 8-year-old Leonberger and Saint Bernard mix rescue dog, that he has had for about a year, at his home in Santa Cruz, Calif., on Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2023. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group) 

To help with his PTSD, Sorensen tried EMDR, which he described as his first “life-changing” moment. He had never used drugs but tried MDMA, or ecstasy, which he said helped him reconnect with his empathy and changed the dynamic of his relationships in a “profoundly” positive way. Then, in Mexico, mushrooms helped Sorensen deal with the emotions of his son’s ongoing and life-threatening medical condition.

“It lowered the walls and the fences and the fears and allowed me to start working on that stress and the trauma,” said Sorensen about the experience. “It’s just been remarkably beneficial.” He stressed that the medicine wasn’t a silver bullet — and that his recovery involved multiple therapies aside from psychedelics.

For the S.I.R.E.N. Project’s Graham, her experience — along with Trammell and Sorensen’s — marks a paradigm shift in how first responders can find help.

“I think that (it) totally changes the morale in a department and heals a lot of people,” Graham said. “This needs to change. This needs to be legal. And we’re going to do that one first responder at a time.”

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The newest member of the Newton Fire Department has a ruff job.

When the fire station gets a call from dispatch, she gets to take a nap while the others suit up. And every so often she has to socialize with all the firefighters and paramedics. This new employee is awful demanding, too. She insists everybody scratches her ears or gives her a belly rub. Not even the chief asks for that!

Captain Steve Ashing says her name is River, and when the four-month-old German Shepherd puppy is fully grown she will play an important role at the fire department as a therapy dog. Even now the pup is going through extensive training to identify and respond to individuals going through stress or trauma.

“Our obedience training is slightly different,” Ashing said. “It’s the same heel, sit, stay, come — all that kind of stuff. Eventually, if you are in crisis, I can put her by you and she’ll just kind of be there for you … Her No. 1 job will be to take care of firefighters here and give some support to them.”

River accompanied Ashing when he announced the therapy canine program to city council members at their meeting on June 5. The big-eared Shepherd stood obediently at her human’s heel, cocking her head ever so slightly at audience members as Ashing explained what she would do when she grows up.

“She will do multiple things not only in the station but out in the community,” Ashing said, noting therapy dogs have a storied history of helping firefighters. “…Seventy percent of citizens will experience one catastrophic event in their life, so either a major fire or car wreck or medical emergency.”

Emergency responders will see anywhere between 500 to 600 catastrophic events in their careers. Ashing said anything that can help firefighters and paramedics better recover from these events is a wise investment. It will be about a year until River can be fully utilized for therapeutic purposes.

“In the station, she’s basically going to be a pet,” Ashing said. “…But when she’s all said and done, she’ll be able to sense (stress). Stress response in the body gives off different hormones. So she’ll be trained to go to that person. So that’s a simple way to think about that.”

Captain Steve Ashing stands with River, a German Shepherd puppy and a therapy canine in-training, outside the Newton Fire Department. River is to play an important role in helping the mental health of first responders, as well as residents who may have experienced a traumatic event. (Christopher Braunschweig)

LOCAL NONPROFIT SPEARHEADING CRISIS RESPONSE DOG PROGRAM

Crisis Canines of the Midlands, a Colfax-based nonprofit, provided River in partnership with Adelhorst Kennels in Altoona. Ashing said Crisis Canines’s goal is to place a dog in every county in Iowa to provide crisis response, peer support and stress relief, as well as becoming agency ambassadors for public outreach.

Justin Smith, of Crisis Canines, approached Ashing about raising a puppy for the fire department. As an owner of a 9-year-old German Shepherd named Sadie, Ashing was already well-accustomed to the dog breed and its temperament. In February, he brought Sadie to the fire station to gauge staff response.

“It went really well and everyone had positive things to say, but since she was old enough it may not have been worth it to go through all of the extensive training,” Ashing said. “Then River became available. She’s fantastic. She’s the calmest, best little puppy I’ve ever had. And she loves people.”

The craze of therapy dogs in first responder offices seems to be catching on. Another fire captain is also getting a puppy to be trained as a therapy dog. Earlier this month the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office announced Lt. Mike Gunsaulus and Deputy TJ Decker would welcoming Poppy and Delta to the squad.

RIVER’S PRESENCE CAN PUT EMERGENCY RESPONDERS AT EASE

As a crisis response canine, River will be brought to critical incident stress debriefings, which Ashing said is the “fancy term” for the beginning of the therapy process after a major call. First responders who take part in a catastrophic or traumatic incidents have a hotwash to evaluate performance.

“Everyone gets together right after the call and just kind of talk about it, what you’re feeling, what went well, what went bad. It’s just a talk and you kind of gauge how people are handling it,” Ashing said. “Everybody handles everything differently. There’s no wrong way to process.”

From there, first responder personnel — whether it’s police officers, dispatchers, EMS or firefighters — begin a more formal debrief. Some individuals may be more closed off than others, which is where River fits in to all this. Ashing said the simple act of petting a dog can put people at ease more quickly.

“In the past, us emergency responders have not done well with dealing with our feelings,” Ashing said. “Those debriefings are where she really comes into play … It snaps them out of their head for a little bit to engage with the fluffy puppy that comes in and puts them at ease a little bit, open up a little more.”

‘IT’S ALL ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH’ FOR FIRST RESPONDERS

As a member of the advanced life support team at the county sheriff’s office, Ashing believes the one of the best ways for emergency responders to take care of their communities is to make sure they are taken care of, too. Ashing coined an expression frequently used by Jasper County Sheriff John Halferty:

“If you don’t take care of your people, how do you expect them to take care of others? That’s where my thought process is with this,” Ashing said. “…It’s all about mental health. First responders see so many catastrophic events. If you don’t figure out how to deal with that, your career is going to be pretty short.”

According to the National Institutes of Health, the tenure for paramedics in private ambulance companies is about seven years, and the tenure for fire-based EMS agencies is, at most, 10 years. Ashing said a good number may leave after six years. There are two main reasons why paramedics leave the profession.

“One, they advance in health care. So they advance to be nurses or doctors or whatever. Then the second leading cause of people leaving is mental health,” he said. “They just can’t handle the job anymore. It’s too much. It’s too stressful. This program is supposed to help curb that as much as we can.”

River, a four-month-old German Shepherd puppy and therapy dog in-training, gets an ear scratch that feels so good she taps her foot, leading to the Ashing family to call her “Rabbit.” (Christopher Braunschweig)

GET TO KNOW RIVER AS A COMMUNITY AMBASSADOR

It’s a good thing River loves people, because she is going to get accustomed to a lot of folks in the emergency response teams throughout Jasper County. Ashing is a member of the critical incident stress debriefing team for the county, and River will be joining him during those sessions.

“Any agency,” Ashing said. “Anything from the jail to the Newton Police Department to agencies in Colfax or Kellogg or wherever. We’ve even opened it up to other counties. We’ve gone down as far as Lineville (Wayne County) and Leon (Decatur County) and that kind of stuff.”

Of course, having a dog at the fire station also means River will be quite popular at elementary schools in Newton. Through River’s public relations work, the fire department wants the community to get to know her. Ashing wants to make it a point to introduce her to people before she is really needed.

“That way they know her before she’s there in a working capacity,” he said. “We’ll do school events and visit nursing homes and hospital staff … She’ll also go to some calls. But she won’t be sticking her head out the window as the lights and sires go off on the road to a call.”

RIVER WILL BE THERE WHEN COMMUNITY NEEDS HER MOST

In the event a catastrophic incident occurs, Ashing said after the call is taken care of is when River would be able to visit a victim and work her magic.

“We would kind of start that healing process,” Ashing said. “…It’s more of a distraction, especially in a death situation. Of course the handlers are trained in how to comfort people in crisis and how to do things to get their brains processing right out of the gate instead of just being in trauma the whole time.”

While the presence of a dog may not fix the problem, Ashing said it makes it a little better. Therapy dogs are always generally used after a traumatic event takes place to help people heal from their trauma. Having a dog nearby to pet or pay attention to may just distract them enough to move forward.

Outside of a traumatic event, Ashing just hopes River brings joy to the community and to the staff of the Newton Fire Department.

“To bring joy to everyone she’s around and be an uplifting presence.”

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