One of the most important truths the documentary captures is that these veterans are not experiencing just one problem. They are living with layers of overlapping injuries.

On the psychological side, many live with post-traumatic stress: intrusive memories, distressing dreams, startle responses, emotional shutdown and persistent alertness. On the neurological side, mild traumatic brain injury can bring headaches, foggy thinking, dizziness, disrupted sleep and volatile moods.

In former service personnel, PTSD and mTBI almost always intermingle. Data from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and organisations such as Wounded Warrior Project show that:

• Symptoms of mild traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress overlap to the point that they are often misidentified or overlooked.
• Head trauma increases the likelihood of later PTSD and depressive symptoms.

Relying solely on traditional talking therapies is therefore often insufficient, because the person in front of you may be living with several overlapping burdens at once: physical injury to the brain; profound psychological and moral trauma arising from events experienced or actions taken; chronically disturbed sleep and wider autonomic nervous system dysregulation; and substance use layered on top as a hard-won but ultimately unsustainable coping strategy.

In the film, one veteran’s wife describes how her husband went through the full Veterans Affairs pathway: sleep studies, scans, psychological assessments, multiple prescriptions “for energy, for nightmares, for depression, for anxiety”. He followed the recommendations, attended sessions, took the medication, and still deteriorated.

Later in the documentary we see him describing his ibogaine session. He speaks about an intense cascade of images from childhood and combat, almost like cards flipping rapidly in front of his mind’s eye.

From that vantage point he realises that many events he has carried as personal failure were never his fault, and with that recognition comes a sensation that the “weight” on his system is lifting. He likens it to a kind of mental “defrag”, where armour and defensive walls dissolve and a softer, more open self re-emerges. Afterward he tells his wife that friends who are still suffering “need to know about this”.

Another veteran explains that the chronic tension he had lived with for more than a decade, along with constant headaches, vanished after his treatment, describing it as if his brain were “regenerating”.

A third reflects that ibogaine helped him link early childhood pain with his decision to become a Navy SEAL. He recognises that the role he chose was partly about becoming someone dangerous so that he would never again feel like a victim. In his words, he realises that he has long been “even more afraid of life than death”.

These accounts point to something that makes ibogaine especially intriguing in trauma work: it appears to engage both the neurological injury and the personal narrative, making ibogaine for traumatic brain injury and PTSD a genuinely compelling avenue for careful investigation.

“In Waves and War” sits inside a much broader surge of attention around this medicine.

Stanford Medicine has reported that ibogaine-assisted therapy for special operations veterans delivered with intensive medical supervision produced marked improvements in depression, anxiety and day-to-day functioning among special operations veterans with traumatic brain injury.

Ambio Life Sciences, the clinic featured in the film, has been instrumental in bringing ibogaine into a more structured, physician-led environment.

The combination of rigorous research and real-world patient stories is understandably compelling.

Across the field, many of us are no longer debating whether ibogaine therapy for PTSD and TBI can be helpful for some people. The more urgent debate has become how to offer it in ways that are as safe, ethical and holistic as possible.

At Iboga Tree Healing House, our centre for ibogaine treatment in Europe, we are grateful for the role clinics like Ambio have played in advancing the science. Our model is different, though not adversarial.