BURN SLOW
First Article
"Fear and Loathing at the VA Pharmacy Window: A Dispatch from the Margins”
By Ricardo Pereyda
This is a true story.
When I hit U.S. soil after playing soldier in Germany and tasting Baghdad’s dust in 2005, I came back with souvenirs: two ticking time bombs called pharmaceuticals and alcohol.
They were courteous at first—pills like little government pamphlets suggesting calm, booze like a smiling grenade—and then suddenly you’re forgetting how to breathe between doctor appointments. Not a thing I’m looking to parade on a Sunday sermon, just laying asphalt for the road we’re about to drive full-throttle down.
Fast-forward and I’d done the long, slow conversion: three years as a full-time patient at the VA, swapping pharmacy faith for the blunt religion. Pills out, smoke in. A couple more years between sessions at home and lectures at the University of Arizona, and I had cobbled myself into something resembling a civic leader: college classes, volunteer work, fellowships, plaques with my name on ‘em, the whole absurd post-service meritocracy. I was, by most metrics, “doing well”.
Then 2013 happened—the year I decided to stop whispering about what got me through the night. I came out as a medical cannabis patient, and the world performed an immediate striptease of hypocrisy. Overnight, I went from a paraded hero to persona non grata. Flags that had been waving turned into handkerchiefs for fainting. People who had sung praises suddenly clutched their pearls when I walked into a room.
Veterans using cannabis for sleep, pain, PTSD? Shock and horror, as if none of this had been happening for generations on “walks” and around kitchen tables.
A breakdown isn’t poetic; it’s arithmetic. Add a hundred ignored pleas, subtract a thousand condolences, multiply by the bodybags you can’t unsee—you get a meltdown so raw it rearranges your priorities. And this is after therapy! I watched ladder-climbing grifters in the veteran space perform like we were in a talent show, and I watched the bodies stack on the horizon like bad souvenirs. I got fed up. Not the kind of fed-up that tweets passive-aggressive tripe, but a fed-up that bangs its fist through drywall.
Civil disobedience, being a “break in case of emergency" tool in my toolbox, I came up with something equal parts legal theory and bad poetry: I’d go to the place Americans entrust their wounded veterans to and light the signal flare. The obvious mission: the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Tucson, Arizona. My Hospital.
Not the doctor’s office, not the rose garden—the pharmacy. Straight into the machine. If the system wouldn’t prescribe it, if they refused to acknowledge that people were dying while bureaucrats played dress-up, then I’d make them an exhibit in my circus.
I wanted to force a conversation by making the stakes personal and public—my body as evidence, my record as testimony.
That’s the twisted bit of calculus behind the following act I’m fixin to describe: if I couldn’t get a doctor to sign a script, maybe I could get a jury to do it. If the institution preferred denial, I’d find the limit where denial becomes action.
There was no plan, not really—just a line crossed in the sand and the sudden, visceral need to light it on fire. By that point, I’d already been bled dry by the church of clinical betrayal. The whole psychedelic R&D missionary cult, promising salvation for a footnote in their next grant proposal.
And I wasn’t just mad. I was revelatory. Out of patience. Out of favors.
Out of fucks.
So I did what any red-blooded, spiritually naked, strategically dangerous bastard might do under the flicker of the American Dream in decline:
I dressed for jail.
Flip-flops. Gym shorts. Wallet at home. ID in the pocket like a last will and testament.
And the tank top? Oh, the tank top. Fresh off the mail route of fate itself. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, bug-eyed and stoned, clutching an Uzi like a paranoid Boy Scout. Space cats floating through constellations of marijuana leaves. It didn’t say “arrest me”—
It screamed:
“I DARE YOU TO UNDERSTAND THIS.”
Before I left my home, I rolled a joint fat enough to earn its own Social Security number. Called my girl, and told her she might need to lawyer up on my behalf by sundown. Didn't explain why.
And then—
The VA.
Pharmacy entrance. No hesitation. I walked in, straight to the window.
The pharmacist asked how she could help. I sparked it.
I took a long, deviant inhale.
Blew the smoke through the security glass slit,
and told her absolutely nothing.
Because the message was already airborne.
She stammered. Blinked. Asked what I was doing.
So I did it again—bigger.
And told her I’d be finishing “my business” just over there.
Seated. In the middle of the fucking pharmacy. Packed.
I sat down like it was a confessional booth and I was absolving myself in smoke.
That’s when the murmurs started. People catching the scent. Heads swiveling.
The aroma of righteous disobedience making its way down the prescription queue.
A woman asked what I was doing.
“I’m making a statement,” I said.
She nodded. She fucking nodded.
Then went back to scrolling like it made perfect sense.
A tap on the shoulder came next...
Not the iron grip of armed response. Not the stern voice of Uniformed Authority.
No.
Just an old-timer. White hair, soft eyes, volunteer badge. A grandfather of the system that broke me.
He asked, politely—politely!—if I wouldn’t mind moving to the designated smoking area.
I blinked. Reality broke like a bad molar.
I expected a chokehold. I got a park bench. So I left.
Obedient as a dejected seeing eye dog.
Puffing on my doobie in a desolate VA parking lot while pigeons dodged the truth.
And that, dear reader, is how I failed to get arrested for smoking my cannabis at the Southern Arizona VA Hospital.
I didn’t get a mugshot. I didn’t get a charge.
I got... validation. Confusing, psychedelic non-opposition.
No headlines. No cuffs. Just a man in a Sessions tank top and flip-flops,
smoking a joint so loud the system decided to mute itself. And that’s when I knew:
They don’t know how to fight us.
They only know how to ignore the fire until it burns through the walls.
So I went home. Stared at the ceiling. Then I picked up my pen.
That was about a decade ago. Since then, I have refined my tactics. I truly have embraced writing as an effective medium to share stories, to be heard, to shine a light on important issues within the veteran community, and by extension, the cannabis culture itself.
Color me in gratitude.
Because the revolution doesn’t always look like a riot.
Sometimes it looks like a parking lot... and the joint that didn’t get you arrested. Onward.
*Disclaimer: No pharmacists were harmed in the making of this protest. Also, the statute of limitations has long since expired. God bless America.*
Reflection
What does civil disobedience look like in an age where institutions have become desensitized to outrage?
How do we reframe veteran identity outside of sanitized "hero" tropes?
What does it mean to find healing outside the bounds of what's "officially sanctioned"?
How can writing—as a tool of activism—have more staying power than protest?
Second Article
THE MATCH
Written By Ricardo Pereyda
Waking from a fever dream
I came across this poem in Orwell’s world, not written down and taken with me, but remembered in my soul. The first thing I felt was a sense of incredible weight—like I had just touched something both sacred and dangerous. The fact that it was in a book, hidden, means someone else has already decided to challenge the darkness. Someone dared to keep the flame alive long enough to pass it on.
I felt a deep chill run through me, mixed with a rush of fear. In a world where the Thought Police are everywhere and even thinking something subversive is dangerous, this poem is like a call to arms—but one that demands courage and conviction. It forced me to confront the idea that, maybe, I’m living in a lie. That all the “safety” I’ve been promised in the dark room is just another trick, and the truth—painful and dangerous—is something I should not only seek, but fight for.
It made me wonder: Am I willing to hold the match? It’s easy to pretend the flame isn’t worth it, that ignorance is peace, that everything can be soothed with a little more compliance. But the poem’s message is clear: To choose to see is to choose change.
So, I felt a pull to take action. But the question immediately arose: What action? There’s so much at stake. I’ve been torn between a fear of getting caught, of losing everything, and a growing sense of urgency to do something with this knowledge.
In Orwell’s world, though, even whispering dissent could be enough to draw the Party’s attention. The idea of "passing the flame" made me pause and think: Could I dare to share this? To spread it, not in some overt, obvious way, but quietly—like a seed planted in the minds of others who might understand?
Ultimately, something stirred inside me—a longing for resistance, for freedom—but also a deep dread about what it might cost. When I pass that flame on, it might ignite something much bigger than I can control. But maybe that’s the point, too: if you don’t dare, if you don’t act, you’re letting the darkness win.
In short, I wrestled with that delicate balance of fear and hope—wondering if I could find the courage to take a stand, no matter the cost.
Then I did the fucking thing.
It starts small. Always does.
A flick.
A hiss.
A fragile flame dancing on the tip of something disposable.
That’s what truth looks like in a dark room: Not a spotlight.
Not a revelation.
Just a single match between fingers,
the smell of sulfur,
and the quiet decision to see.
Most people blow it out.
They say it’s safer not to know,
that darkness keeps us calm.
But — if you hold it steady
You watch the walls begin to appear.
You notice the cracks, the dust, the things you weren’t supposed to see. That’s when it hits:
Ignorance isn’t peace.
It’s camouflage.
The match burns down faster than you’d like.
The flame starts licking your fingers.
Pain asks if you’re serious about this illumination thing. You can drop it and go back to black —
or let it burn until it lights something bigger.
That’s how revolutions start.
Not with a bang,
but with someone refusing to let go of a burning match.
And when you finally touch that flame to paper — policy drafts, old propaganda,
the sacred files of hypocrisy —
you realize the match was never meant to last.
It was meant to be passed on.
One spark. Then another. And another.
Until the dark room isn’t dark anymore — it’s a field of small, stubborn fires.
Each one a person who chose to see. Each one a testimony.
Each one saying, softly but unmistakably:
“I dare you to understand this.”
Passing the Flame
I hold the ember
between trembling fingers—
a fragile truth too sharp to touch, yet too urgent to ignore.
The dark whispers,
tempting me to close my eyes, to tuck the flame away,
to silence the hiss,
and pretend the night is calm.
But in this quiet burn,
a promise flickers—
that pain is the price of knowing,
and knowing is the first breath of change.
So I pass the flame,
not as a torchbearer,
but as a keeper of sparks— a guardian of small fires waiting to become a blaze.
And in the spreading glow,
I find the courage
to look beyond the shadows—
to dare the dark to keep its secrets no longer.
Reflection
What’s your match moment?
What stops you from passing the flame? Where do you see light beginning to spread?
Third Article
Uncle Rico’s Dojo: The Burn Slow Doctrine
Civil disobedience isn’t what you think it is anymore. Forget the grainy footage of Bull Connor’s dogs or some kid standing in front of a tank. The institutions have evolved—they’ve grown calluses. Outrage, protest, hashtags—just background noise now, like Muzak in an elevator to hell. The bureaucrats sip their coffee and nod sympathetically while the system grinds forward, immune to the noise. So the rebellion has to mutate.
It’s not Molotov cocktails—it’s absurdist theater in waiting rooms. A joint lit in a VA pharmacy. Not for spectacle, not for YouTube views, but as a precise act of sabotage: a reminder that the rulebook and reality are at war. The pharmacy tech can’t arrest you, can’t heal you, can’t reconcile the contradiction. All they can do is blink. That’s the power. Not the riot, but the paralysis.
And then the bigger question: who are veterans supposed to be in this country? We’ve been taxidermied into mascots. The “hero” trope—polished, sanitized, neutered. Waving flags, halftime tributes, discount codes. Meanwhile, the reality for many is messier: trauma, addiction,
rage, survival. To honor veterans, you don’t slap another bumper sticker on your SUV—you tell the truth. Some vets come home broken. Some come home radical. Some light up in pharmacies because the system won’t let them heal any other way. That’s not unpatriotic—that’s the most American thing left.
Healing outside the “official” channels is its own form of dissent. The government says “here, take these pills”—and people say no. They find cannabis, or art, or community, or rituals older than the nation-state. They reclaim autonomy molecule by molecule, story by story. And the gatekeepers hate it, because it strips away their monopoly on legitimacy. Once you realize the prescription pad isn’t the only ticket to survival, the whole edifice looks like a scam.
And writing—people, the writing. Protests flare and fade, swallowed by the news cycle, but words have half-life. A slogan dies on the street corner, but an essay can ricochet through decades. Writing is a weapon you can reload forever. It archives the madness. It makes sure no bureaucrat or lobbyist can claim “we didn’t know.” It gives the next wave of rebels a map.
Civil disobedience today isn’t about volume. It’s about precision strikes in the heart of the machine, followed by words that outlast the moment. Light the joint. Write it down. Force them to confront the contradictions, and then make sure the record survives. That’s how you outmaneuver apathy. That’s how you outlive the nine-to-five empire of managed decline.
Because the truth doesn’t march in the parade. The truth smokes in the pharmacy and scribbles in the margins.
They say every warfighter brings the war home with them. Me? I brought it into a small room with stained glass windows, psychedelic brushstrokes, and a desk that’s carried more weight than most people know.
For the last decade, this space—this room—has been the womb, the war room, and the witness to my fuckery.
It didn’t start with a plan. It started with memory. With pain. With survival. I didn’t set out to design a workspace. I set out to stay alive, to stay grounded, and to keep telling the truth even when no one wanted to hear it.
This room has seen me write policy briefs that Congress probably ignored—until they didn’t. It held court while I recorded spoken word, digitized Robert Randall’s archives, and shared Zoomies with veterans from multiple continents while a ceiling fan spun above like a rotating compass needle, reminding me I’m still here.
The walls don’t just have murals—they are murals. A sun that burns hotter than Baghdad’s asphalt. Camouflage blobs that drip down like melted ideals. A wizard painted into the corner
like a spiritual security force. This isn’t paint—it’s protection. Layers of self-repair disguised as expression.
The bookshelves groan under the weight of truth: Thompson, Baldwin, Ginsberg, The Green Paper. Diplomas and lanyards hang not to impress, but to remind. Not of what I’ve earned, but what I’ve survived.
You’ll find artifacts tucked into every corner. An old MP patch. A holster. A bottle of water next to a record crate. A bar stool that’s more storytelling perch than place to sit. Every item here has a past and a pulse.
People walk in and say it’s colorful. I say it’s coded.
This room has been the launchpad for Arizona Garden Month, the International Veterans Leadership Committee, the Veterans Action Council, the takedown of fake allies, the sanctuary for the truth behind MAPS, and a thousand emails that started with “Dear Editor...” or “To Whom It Damn Well Should Concern.”
This room never judged me for smoking in grief, for crying mid-draft, for skipping class to transcribe government lies into Google Docs. It held space when the world wouldn’t.
I didn’t design an office. I grew one. Like a garden. This room is the physical embodiment of the Burn Slow Doctrine—sit with the soil, feel the storm, and make something useful out of the wreckage.
Warrior Ethos.
It’s not a slogan. It’s not marketing. It’s a way of moving through the world — especially when the battles aren't on a battlefield.
What it is:
● Discipline when no one’s watching.
We don’t need orders — the mission is in our bones.● Purpose bigger than self.
We didn’t serve to collect ribbons. We served to protect, uplift, and defend what mattered.● Integrity under pressure.
When systems collapse, the warrior stands — not because it’s easy, but because they said they would.● Sacrifice without applause.
No parade, no parade needed. Just a quiet, unshakable oath.
● Adaptation without abandonment.
Retired? Maybe. But the ethos doesn’t retire — it just evolves.
And now?
The next expression of that ethos may be silence. Stillness. Stewardship.
But make no mistake — those are weapons too.
The garden, the puppies, the peace — that’s not stepping away. That’s sovereignty.
We’ve earned the space to choose silence, rest, and presence — not as retreat, but as clarity.
The ethos doesn’t vanish. It roots deeper. And if it’s ever needed again?
We’ll know.
And the next arrow will fly.
Reflection
What does it mean to design a space for survival, not success?
How does your physical environment support (or inhibit) your truth-telling, your healing, your resistance?
How do we turn writing into action with staying power?
If protest signs fade and tweets vanish, what writing will still speak ten years from now? How
can your story become part of a permanent public record?
What does the “burn slow doctrine” mean for activism in a world addicted to urgency?
What might change if more movements prioritized longevity over virality?
How do we move beyond the “hero” stereotype for veterans—and instead honor the full, complicated truth?
What stories need telling that haven’t yet been welcomed in the mainstream veteran narrative? Can rest, joy, or art be protest?
If burnout is the enemy of resistance, how do we reframe sustainability—not as retreat, but as revolutionary self-possession?
-Rico
Veteran. Archivist. Storyteller. Dissident.
Ricardo Pereyda works out of a sun-soaked command post in Tucson, Arizona—a room painted in psychedelic camo and rebellion. The walls are alive with sunflowers, swirling blues, and watchful wizards. It’s part archive, part war room, part shrine to survival.
A medically retired Military Police veteran, Ricardo traded in his rifle for records—federal court filings, forgotten proclamations, and testimonies buried by bureaucracy. His mission: to expose what’s been hidden, honor what’s been erased, and fight for those still being silenced.
He is the principal author of the Veterans Action Council’s Green Paper, helped launch the International Veterans Leadership Committee, and led the push behind Arizona Garden Month. His work bridges veteran advocacy, cannabis policy, global treaty reform, and poetic resistance. He’s been featured in Truthdig, Military Times, and Tucson Weekly, and is known for calling out institutions that exploit veterans while claiming to serve them.
His office reflects the work: colorful, chaotic, sacred. Books stacked with intention. Diplomas and lanyards hanging like old flags. A desk where truth is written, erased, rewritten—and never surrendered.
If you’re looking for a soundbite, keep moving. If you want unfiltered testimony from the frontlines of healing and policy reform—pull up a chair.
Fourth Article
The Clock: A reckoning with juvenile injustice
By Ricardo Pereyda
They passed around the pencils and asked a simple question:
"Who do you look up to, and why?"
I was locked up in juvenile hall at the time. Young, angry, sharp-eyed, tired of being told to respect systems that never once respected me.
Most kids wrote about their mom, or a coach, or a soldier. I wrote about my cousin Jorge... and Al Capone.
Jorge wasn’t flashy. He didn’t roll deep or flex heavy. But he got up early, went to work, stacked paper, and did something nobody in our circle had really done before—he saved. Not just for shoes or rims. He saved for freedom. For mobility. For something more than surviving paycheck to paycheck.
At that age, I didn’t have the words for it, but what Jorge showed me was compound interest in motion—financial, moral, and personal. He wasn’t loud. But his discipline spoke volumes. He made the grind look honorable. That stuck with me.
Then there was Al Capone. I didn’t admire his violence. I didn’t fantasize about becoming him. But I saw the game he played for what it was: Prohibition made alcohol illegal—but it didn’t stop demand. The law said "no" while the people said "pour me another." Capone read the room and monetized hypocrisy.
I argued—probably too confidently—that Capone could’ve crushed it as a legitimate businessman if the economy wasn’t rigged to reward the outlaw over the entrepreneur. But bootlegging was too profitable. Whoring was too fun. And being treated like royalty? That shit’s addictive.
“Se la vi,” I wrote. I meant c’est la vie—such is life—but I spelled it how it sounded in my head. Even then, I understood: the system molds the gangster as much as it does the banker.
Jorge and Capone weren’t opposites. They were two sides of a truth I was just starting to grasp: People follow incentives. If the system rewards exploitation, you’ll get exploiters. If it rewards quiet discipline, you’ll get Jorge.
But the sad truth? In America, the Capones usually win. And the Jorges? They grind in silence. No headlines. No mansions. Just dignity.
That essay? It wasn’t just admiration. It was my first real analysis of power, profit, and pathology. I didn’t know I’d grow up fighting corrupt research institutions, digging through court rulings, launching veteran-led policy campaigns, obsessed with archives, gardens, and uncovering cannabis criminalization’s real history.
But I knew this: I didn’t want to become Capone. And I didn’t want Jorge’s story forgotten. I wanted to fix the game that forced kids like me to choose between them.
Power doesn’t always look like a badge, a bank, or a ballot. Sometimes, it looks like a cousin who keeps showing up. Sometimes, it looks like a kid in a cell, writing his way out. And if the system won’t reward the right things? We build one that does.
They would’ve kept me indefinitely if they could have. Not because I was dangerous. Not because I was out of control. But because I refused to become small in a system designed to shrink people.
My time on juvenile probation didn’t start with a crime spree or violence. It started with weed.
I got caught one night—maybe 15 and a half years old—smoking after work in a place I wasn’t supposed to be. That one moment spiraled into two and a half years of drug tests, surveillance, and system contact that never once led to help.
I smoked cannabis daily. Heavily. Not to be cool. Not to be rebellious. To function. To quiet the noise. To feel normal—whatever that meant back then.
From the first test to the last, I never dropped clean. Not once. But the system kept me anyway. Clocked me in. Marked me down. I wasn’t getting better—I was just getting older.
Before probation, I’d already done time inside Charter Behavioral Health, a so-called treatment center. They drugged me into silence—loaded me up with pills, held me down under a different kind of force. I left numb and warped, no toolkit, no guidance, just growing mistrust in anything calling itself help.
They handed me off to the courts like I was a defective product, not a kid trying to make sense of what had just happened to him.
Probation didn’t offer answers either. They offered piss tests. Sent me to counseling that didn’t ask real questions. Pushed me into scared-straight programs—as if fear could undo trauma.
They enrolled me in a military-style reform school for delinquents. When I tested positive for THC there—not because I brought anything in, not because I broke any rules, but because my body was still carrying the weight of survival—they kicked me out.
I remember asking:
“Isn’t that why I’m here? To get clean?
If I can’t get weed on this campus, why not let me stay? Why send me back to the same streets where I can?”
They didn’t answer. They just sent me home.
That was the pattern. At every turn, rejection—not rehabilitation. Discipline without understanding. Structure without care. Judgment without context.
And when I turned 18, it ended. Just like that. Not because I got better. Not because I found peace or made progress. It ended because the state ran out of legal claim over me.
If they could’ve kept me longer, they would have. But the clock saved me. Not the system. I think about that a lot. Because I wasn’t trying to be defiant—I was trying not to collapse.
No one ever asked what the weed was doing for me. They only punished what it was doing to me.
The truth? I didn’t need to be fixed. I needed to be heard. I needed to be safe. I needed to detox from more than THC—I needed to detox from despair.
That’s why I write. That’s why I tell this story—not to glorify the past, but to account for it. Because there are still kids being cycled through the same machinery I barely escaped.
And I use that word deliberately: escaped. Because it wasn’t healing that got me out. It was time. It was age. It was luck.
And I’ll be damned if I let the system claim that as a win.
This is my message to those still locked down. From someone who knows—because they were you.
I see you. Right now. Knees to chest on that cold concrete bench, steel pressing into your back, fluorescents humming like they’re trying to hypnotize you.
You think this is the end of the line. But I’m here to tell you—it’s not.
I’m speaking from the other side of the cage. Not just the bars—but the silence. The shame. The systems that said you'd either disappear or detonate.
I’m here because I didn’t. And you don’t have to either.
They gave me a number. A rap sheet. A clock running out. Said I was broken, dangerous, too far gone.
But I was a blueprint. And so are you.
They don’t see it yet. But I do. Because I was you.
Yeah, it’s wild. But not in the fairy tale way. Not in the “someone came and saved me” way. This was the gravity-defying, soul-defending, system-hacking kind of wild.
It was bruises turned into battle cries. Rules learned just to reveal the game. Pain alchemized into purpose.
They thought I’d stay quiet. Stay broken.
But I turned my silence into structure. My file into a flame. My time into testimony.
And one day—you will too.
I know the nights are long. That loneliness is a weight no scale can measure.
I know what it means to pray with your teeth clenched, to hold back tears ‘cause even water feels too expensive.
But hear me—you are not your worst mistake. You are not the box they checked. You are not the chain they tightened.
You are potential, compressed. You are a storm in incubation.
And if you can survive this? You won’t just walk free.
You’ll fly.
You’ll build platforms out of rubble. Testify in rooms that once locked you out. Turn your story into a torch for others still sitting where you are now.
You’re not a case file. You’re a case builder.
And yeah—looking back will hurt. But looking forward? That’s where the world oughta be afraid.
Because you?
You weren’t supposed to make it.
But you will.
And when you do—you’ll change everything. Hold on.
We’re waiting for you.
Reflection
What systems in our society mistake survival for defiance?
How do we design systems that ask the right questions before they punish?
How do early encounters with institutions shape our sense of what’s possible?
Think about school, law enforcement, healthcare, etc. What messages do these systems send about who is worth saving?
What does real rehabilitation look like?
Is it even possible inside systems focused on compliance over care? What would a healing-first model look like for juvenile justice?
Can time ever be a form of justice?
If someone "gets better" or escapes only because of time—not intervention—can we really say the system worked?
What stories are we not hearing from system-involved youth? And who benefits from their silence?
About the author
Ricardo Pereyda is a U.S. Army veteran, policy strategist, and unapologetic storyteller. Before he was any of those things, he was a teenager in a system that mistook survival for defiance. Now, he writes to rewrite the record. His work spans veteran advocacy, cannabis policy, and radical storytelling rooted in lived truth. He’s spent the last decade fighting to make the invisible seen—from the halls of Congress to the margins of the so-called justice system.
Fifth Article
The Audacity of Survival
By Ricardo Pereyda
LET’S TALK ABOUT RECOVERY AND CIVIC LEADERSHIP
I came back from Baghdad in 2005 in a fog so thick you could cut it with a KA-BAR. Two years overseas between Europe and the Middle East, and the re-entry felt like smashing face-first into civilian life at 70 mph with no seatbelt. Panic attacks. Valium. Booze. Therapy sessions where you don’t want to open your mouth because you know the moment you admit weakness, your military career is dead in the water. So I drank. From sunrise to blackout. Pilled up, liquored up, strung out. The VA was my drug dealer with a badge, and I was their favorite customer.
The next three years were a demolition derby of self-destruction: bar fights, ER visits, psych wards, jail cells, divorce papers, foreclosure notices. The final stop was back home in Tucson, in the same childhood bedroom I once swore I’d never return to. That’s when I pressed a pistol to my temple, letters written, blankets on the floor to catch the blood. My parents walking in on that scene flashed across my mind, and shame ripped the gun from my hand. I collapsed into the fetal position and sobbed myself unconscious.
When I woke up, I knew: the pills were killing me, the booze was drowning me, and the only way out was a hard pivot. I moved out, ditched the VA cocktail, and lit up my first real ally—cannabis.
Cannabis didn’t just dull the pain. It cracked open a window to something resembling life. Suddenly I could wake up, breathe, walk to school, maybe even think about the future. I took what I had started at Cochise Community College, clawed my way to the University of Arizona, and found a tribe in the VETS Center. I learned my service didn’t end with the uniform; it just shifted targets. Helping other veterans became my rehab, my purpose. Volunteer, show up, give back—repeat.
And here’s the thing: all that progress, all that productivity—the leadership roles, the grades, the speeches, the organizing—was fueled by cannabis. Medicate before class, after class, between volunteer shifts. It wasn’t a crutch. It was a tool. My record speaks louder than any DEA scheduling chart: cannabis kept me alive and functional when the VA’s chemical cocktail had me one bad night away from the morgue.
By 2013, I was flying high in another way. Accepted into the Flinn-Brown Fellowship—Arizona’s so-called pipeline for civic leaders—and working with Dr. Sue Sisley on the nation’s first federally approved study of cannabis for treatment-resistant PTSD. This was history in the making, and I was ready to carry the torch.
But civic leadership in this country is a snake pit wrapped in a smile.
I played the game for the better part of a decade. I shook hands. I listened to the lectures about bipartisanship and “wicked problems.” But behind the curtain, it was the same old hypocrisy factory. At UofA, before I accepted my Fellowship, I blew the whistle on a mentor of mine who faked combat service and conned the Pat Tillman Foundation. The institution tried to bury it. When I exposed the fraud, I became radioactive on campus. Combine that with openly admitting to using cannabis, not just supporting Sisley’s research, and suddenly I was persona non grata in polite civic society.
Gatekeeping in civic circles often masquerades as ‘professionalism’—when in reality, it’s a thin veil over cowardice and control.
Meanwhile, MAPS and Dr. Sisley (also a Flinn-Brown Fellow) weren’t saints either. I thought I was helping pioneer breakthrough research. Instead, I watched veterans’ stories twisted, simplified, exploited for grant money and headlines. When I deviated from the script somewhere around 2015, the machine turned on me—blacklists, slander, canceled speaking gigs. The veteran becomes a prop until they stop playing ball, then they’re tossed to the curb like a broken rifle.
The Flinn-Brown Fellowship? They loved my résumé but hated my truth. At first it was subtle—cold shoulders, polite rejections, the kind of exclusion that feels like being erased in real time. Then it escalated at the end: threats from lawyers, letters promising “all available legal remedies” if I so much as spoke to another Fellow. A veterans’ leader blackballed for talking about cannabis while the state marched toward legalization. Irony so thick it choked.
By 2020, the hypocrisy hit full technicolor absurdity. Arizona voters were about to legalize recreational cannabis. Everything I’d been told for a decade—“too radical, too political, never going to happen”—was suddenly happening. You’d think the state’s flagship civic leadership program would want to discuss this tectonic shift. I begged them for a serious conversation. Dawn Wallace, the new VP, responded with gaslighting and ghosting. Their grand gesture? A limp Capitol Times webinar with all the urgency of a book club meeting.
Within a year of me calling out the bullshit, the Flinn Foundation clutched pearls, called lawyers, and iced me out for good. Not just kicked out of the cool kids’ party—scrubbed from the yearbook like I never even went to the school. Erasure as punishment, hazed for my civic leadership pursuit.
So here I am: a veteran who crawled out of the suicide pit, traded the VA’s pharmaceutical chains for a plant, built a life on recovery and civic service, and got punished for it at every institutional checkpoint. The Army broke me, the VA numbed me, cannabis saved me, and civic leaders shunned me.
But I’m still here. Still fighting. Still telling the story. Because if I don’t, they get away with burying it.
I don’t care if I never get another invitation to their banquets or back-patting ceremonies. I don’t care if my name’s stricken from their polished directories. What I won’t accept is being whitewashed out of existence, erased for daring to say what too many vets already know: the system is broken, hypocrisy is killing us, and cannabis works.
Recovery isn’t a straight line. It’s jagged, chaotic, laced with betrayal and breakthroughs. I’ve been laughed at, threatened, lied about, and smeared. But I’ve also stood shoulder to shoulder with amazing people who know the same war in their veins, the same bureaucratic meat grinder, the same desperate need for something—anything—that keeps the gun off their temple, the rope from their necks, and pharma-narcotics from their guts.
What if the most revolutionary thing we can do... is tell the truth?
Cannabis isn’t the only answer, but for me it was the bridge between death and a second chance. Without it, none of this story would exist. With it, I’ve built a life, a purpose, a voice.
And that’s why I keep going. Because every time some suit tells me to shut up, every time an institution tries to erase me, every time I watch veterans used as pawns in the great civic chess game, I remember that night on the floor in Tucson, gun thrown across the room, crying myself to sleep.
I survived that. The rest is just politics.
Before I became a national cannabis policy advocate, I was building systems of veteran support on college campuses — expanding reintegration services, negotiating infrastructure, coordinating remembrance ceremonies, and organizing alumni leadership. That groundwork shaped my approach to drug policy: practical, principled, and rooted in care. Cannabis reform became the next chapter of my service, not a departure from it.
So let them blacklist me. Let them lawyer up and hide behind tax codes and 501(c)(3) excuses. I’ll keep pushing toward the light, fighting for what I believe in, and calling bullshit on the contradictions—because I didn’t come this far to be disappeared by wanna-be patriots.
Onward.
Reflection
What happens when a system rewards suffering but punishes healing? How does a veteran transition from survivor to storyteller to subversive?
In what ways does polite society become complicit in violence through silence? Can an institution claim neutrality while suppressing dissent?
What would it look like if civic leadership was built on radical honesty, not optics?
About the author
Ricardo Pereyda is a U.S. Army veteran and long-standing advocate for veterans' rights and holistic healing. Since 2010, he has been an active leader in the veteran space, beginning with his involvement in the University of Arizona's VETS program—one of the nation’s most respected models for veteran transition support in higher education. His work spans policy, education, community organizing, and cannabis reform. With over a decade of interdisciplinary leadership, Ricardo brings lived experience, strategic insight, and unapologetic storytelling to the forefront of national conversations around veteran care and civil disobedience.
Last Article
Because nobody likes somebody who just bitches and moans all the time, without offering suggestions on how to address whatever they're complaining about, ... I present to you:
The Petition for redress of grievances:
This has evolved since it was first created in 2014, fighting for PTSD research using cannabis. What follows is essentially a position paper, a policy primer, and a statement for the record.
THE ASK:
We are calling on Congress, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Health and Human Services to:
Recognize veterans as federal patients;
Apply the Randall precedent to protect medical cannabis access;
End the systemic denial of cannabis as life-saving care;
Create a federal program that reflects both medical science and moral obligation.
If you believe veterans deserve access to the medicine that helps them live—sign this. Share this. Demand this.
U.S. military veterans who receive care through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are federal patients. Full stop. As such, the federal government bears legal, moral, and medical responsibility for their care—including access to life-saving treatments like medical cannabis when other therapies fail.
The Randall precedent—where the U.S. government authorized marijuana use for a federal patient—proves this obligation. The denial of cannabis access to veterans today isn’t just medical negligence—it’s institutional betrayal.
The Core Argument:
If the federal government could authorize cannabis access for one civilian in 1976, it can—and must—do the same for its own patients today.
Robert C. Randall was: A medically documented patient; Under federal oversight; Supported by a physician; Using cannabis when no other treatment worked. The federal courts ruled that when no other treatment worked, cannabis was not only medically necessary—it was legally defensible. That ruling hasn’t been revoked. It has been ignored.
Today’s veterans are: Medically documented patients; Under federal oversight via the VA; Supported by physicians in legal states; Using cannabis when other treatments fail or cause harm.
The difference?
Randall got a federal exception.
Veterans get gaslighted, punished, or ignored.
Why It Matters That Veterans Are Federal Patients
1. Federal Duty of Care
The VA is a federal agency. By enrolling in VA healthcare, veterans become federally recognized medical beneficiaries—not state-level patients.
That means: Their constitutional rights as patients fall under federal jurisdiction. The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and its enforcement affect them directly. Inconsistent access across states violates equal protection and continuity of care.
2. Uncle Sam Is Already Their Healthcare Provider
You broke it, you bought it. Uncle Sam: Recruited them; Trained them for war; Exposed them to trauma and injury.
And now denies them cannabis—a plant shown to help with: PTSD; Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI); Chronic pain; Opioid withdrawal; Moral injury; Sleep disruption; Suicidal ideation.
If the VA can prescribe fentanyl, benzos, SSRIs, and stimulants... Why can’t it authorize cannabis, which has less risk and more efficacy in many cases?
3. Medical Necessity Is a Protected Legal Concept
The Randall ruling carved out federal medical necessity as a viable defense and policy path.
Veterans with documented treatment resistance qualify under the same logic. Yet there is no Compassionate Use pathway for VA patients, even though they are the most systemically burdened group in U.S. healthcare.
4. This Is a Federal Civil Rights Issue
Denying veterans access to cannabis when they are under exclusive federal care constitutes: Disparate treatment based on jurisdiction (state vs federal); Discrimination based on medical choice; Violation of bodily autonomy for patients who can’t “opt out” of federal care without losing benefits
1. Create the Federal Veterans Cannabis Access Program Administered by the VA & HHS
Authorize cannabis as a federally protected therapy under VA supervision
Include a federal patient ID for legal interstate travel, care continuity, and protection
2. Reinstate the Compassionate IND Program
Veterans meet all criteria: No effective alternatives; Documented use; Medical supervision Federal care eligibility.
3. Deschedule Cannabis
Schedule I is scientifically invalid and legally contradictory given the IND precedent
Descheduling allows: Interstate access; Prescribing by VA doctors; Research across federal institutions.
4. Recognize Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD) as a Weaponized Diagnosis
Enact protections so that cannabis use cannot be used to:Deny access to care or housing; Block participation in VA programs or trials; Reduce disability ratings or discharge status.
Supporting Evidence
RANDALL: Granted legal federal cannabis access under IND #13-387 after proving medical necessity
VETERANS: Over 9 million enrolled, with many using cannabis therapeutically
VA: Has acknowledged benefits of cannabis in limited studies but remains barred from recommending it
STATES: Nearly 40 allow medical cannabis, many for PTSD—but federal patients can’t receive it through their provider
Key Talking Point
If the federal government allowed Robert Randall to access cannabis in 1976 to avoid going blind, it can’t deny veterans today the same right—to save their lives.
Veterans didn’t stop being federal property when they left active duty. Uncle Sam just swapped their uniform for a VA card—and kept the leash.
If we call them heroes, we owe them more than folded flags and over prescribed pills. We owe them real medicine.
We owe them cannabis.
“That’s exactly what should be done. Should have been done a long time ago.” — Noam Chomsky
Stay tuned, stay loud, and if you’ve got a little light, now’s the time to let it shine.
Reflection
Why hasn’t the Randall precedent been widely invoked in cannabis reform movements?
What are the legal implications of redefining veterans as federal patients?
How does this framing disrupt typical red-state/blue-state divides around cannabis?
How do we protect whistleblowers from institutional erasure?
Can a federal patient bill of rights be established—and what would it look like?
In Service,
—Ricardo Pereyda
International Veterans Leadership Committee (IVLC) Founding Member U.S. Army Veteran, Combat MP
Desert-grown dissident
