'It was important to stop surviving and start living'

Katya, a former medic, was shattered by the horrors of war in Ukraine. Now, thanks to pioneering ketamine therapy, she is finding hope again along with hundreds of other veterans

- SAM KILEY

Katya’s brain was swollen. She had been blown up so many times she had hernias on her spine. Her whole skeleton was twisted and distorted after being thrown about like a doll.

She often stuttered. She had an explosive temper after years as a special forces medic. But things got better when she went to “Valhalla”. She didn’t take the usual route to the Viking Hall of Heroes, where she undoubtedly belongs, by being killed on a Ukrainian battlefield. Instead she hitched a hallucinogenic ride.

On ketamine.

The illegal party drug, animal tranquiliser and battlefield anaesthetic, is being used to bring Ukraine’s living dead back to real life. Pioneering ketamine therapy offers hope of a fast-track cure for post-traumatic stress disorder in a nation grappling with widespread trauma.

Katya is about 5ft 4in. At 23, she is a veteran of years of extreme combat in Ukraine’s most secretive and elite units, having enlisted at 19 and joined the marines. She’s alternately diffident and steely – holding an unblinking gaze with the ease of a killer.

She spent two years running medical evacuations under fire in Ukraine’s special forces. She remembers the first time she was hit by an explosion and thrown several yards, smashing her head. She also remembers when a 155mm artillery shell crashed into the ground next to her but did not explode. The rest of her injuries are a blur: “I got concussions on every mission.”

Brain scans of physical traumatic brain injury look very similar to PTSD scans. The symptoms can be similar. PTSD is a vicious circle of glitching between the brain’s memory bank – the hippocampus and the amygdala that controls threat responses – and the front of the brain that’s supposed to put data into rational context.