It’s Veterans Day 2021, and I’m sitting in a lavish ballroom in the Hotel del Coronado in the tiny island resort community that sits on the western flank of San Diego Bay. The posh crowd skews model-hot and dozens of Navy SEALs and other US special operations warriors, veterans, and their spouses are mingling with business leaders, entertainers, artists, and politicians less than a mile from the Naval Special Warfare Training Center, where thousands of SEALs have completed Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training.

It’s exactly four years to the day that SEAL veteran Marcus Capone underwent psychedelic-assisted therapy in Mexico, which he and his wife, Amber, believe saved his life. Inspired to connect others in the special operations community to the seemingly miraculous treatment, the Capones founded Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS) the following year. The nonprofit provides resources, research, and advocacy for US military veterans seeking treatment with psychedelic-assisted therapies; on this special anniversary, the Capones have brought together an elite crowd for a fundraising gala. The gala’s theme,“Strength in Numbers,” speaks to the organization’s ambitious goal of “ending the veteran suicide epidemic by helping veterans heal from traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”

In the summer of 2008, Farah province was the wild west of the war-torn nation known as “the Graveyard of Empires.” The province borders Iran, spanning roughly 19,000 square miles in a mostly desert region, and is home to more than half a million Afghans spread across 11 districts. When Marines from Golf, 2/7, deployed to Farah and Helmand provinces from Twentynine Palms, California, the war in Afghanistan was an afterthought in America’s collective consciousness. The news cycle was consumed by a rapidly accelerating financial collapse and a race for the White House between John McCain and a junior senator from Illinois named Barack Obama. Many of the 2/7 Marines had seen combat in Iraq, but when they arrived in Afghanistan in April 2008, they found themselves spread thin over a massive area of responsibility. The unforgiving topography of the desolate, landlocked region provided an endless stream of logistical and operational challenges. “We were drinking well water, eating fried potatoes and rice, and trying to find goats to eat,” recalls Steven Carper, a police officer in Greenville, Texas, who served as a corporal with Golf Company’s 2nd Platoon during the unit’s 2008 deployment. “We requested bullets and batteries, and they were sending us O’Doul’s and rotten fruit. There were points where we were carrying AK-47s and stuff because we could get them.” Carper’s reinforced platoon of roughly 60 Marines was dispatched to a remote combat outpost in Farah’s Bala Buluk district. The small outpost marked the southwestern boundary of America’s conventional military presence in Afghanistan. The nearest friendly unit was another Golf Company platoon — nearly five hours by vehicle to the southeast.

In 2007, Staff Sgt. Stacy Pearsall, a member of the Air Force’s elite 1st Combat Camera Squadron, was named Military Photographer of the Year, making her the first and only woman in American history to win the title twice. But just as she appeared to be hitting her professional stride, beneath the surface, Pearsall was beginning to break. She had suffered another improvised explosive device blast in Iraq and lived through a bloody ambush during which she was knocked off her feet while rushing to aid a gravely wounded soldier. Her neck slammed into the edge of an ICV Stryker ramp, aggravating the cervical spine trauma she suffered on her first combat deployment. With adrenaline surging through her, Pearsall jumped up and dragged the soldier out of the street and into the Stryker before pinching closed a severed artery in his neck until a medic arrived.

They get around with canes and prosthetics. Some are bound to wheelchairs, oxygen tanks in tow. Those who carry these reminders of aging and affliction seem to be the ones most drawn to the woman at the dusty grand piano, her nimble fingers striking notes that stoke nostalgia in the lobby of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Portland, Oregon.