Air Force veteran Chris Jachimiec was on his first deployment to Kuwait in 2000 when he found out his mother had passed away. He returned to the states and was prescribed an antidepressant.
For nearly two decades, Jachimiec was prescribed Lexapro on and off as he dealt with a number of personal tragedies, losing his grandmother and brother to suicide, and work stress. As those stressors compounded with hurricane response missions and needing to account for airmen after the 2017 mass shooting at a festival in Las Vegas, Jachimiec’s drinking habits also picked up. He was arrested for drinking and driving in 2018. He spent three months in and out of partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs for substance use and post-traumatic stress. He was given more antidepressants and Buspirone, which is used to treat anxiety.
Jachimiec said whenever he sought therapy while in the Air Force or through the Department of Veterans Affairs when he left the service in 2020, it was always accompanied by discussions of prescriptions. Unbeknownst to Jachimiec, increased alcohol cravings are a reported side effect of Zoloft for some patients, a medication he’d been on since 2018.
None of his military or VA care providers had ever told him about it, he said, adding that it “led to a real slippery slope for me that ultimately got me on a really bad path.” But now, a new piece of legislation introduced in the Senate on Tuesday aims to change that for vets like Jachimiec.
“The Written Consent Act” would require signed consent from veterans who acknowledge the side effects and risks of prescribed antipsychotics, stimulants, antidepressants, anxiolytics, and narcotics. A version of the bill was introduced in the House in August and referred to the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.
The legislation is supported by veteran service organizations like the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and Disabled American Veterans, according to a release by Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), who is sponsoring the bill.
“Post-9/11 veterans live in a world where it’s normal to juggle half a dozen psychiatric prescriptions written by three or four different clinicians,” Lou Elliott-Cysewski, the vice president of external affairs for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America said in a statement. “We would never sign a mortgage or a car loan without seeing the terms in writing, yet we routinely ask veterans to say yes to powerful mind-altering drugs with nothing more than a quick conversation.”
Officials with the VA declined to comment on pending legislation.
After being medically separated from the Air Force in 2020, Jachimiec became a patient at the Department of Veterans Affairs, where he was again prescribed Zoloft — along with a batch of other medications.
Jachimiec said the fact that he was routinely prescribed medications for mental health treatment while in the Air Force and then the VA is not unusual. He referred to it as a “cocktail of medications,” a common enough refrain among veterans, and one used to describe the range of different meds they sometimes get prescribed through the VA. Jachimiec’s voice is one in a growing chorus that has gained more mainstream media attention and advocacy support as veterans call for access to more alternative mental health treatments in direct opposition to what some call an “overprescription” of psychiatric drugs.
Meggan Coleman, the national legislative associate director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars said that veterans have expressed concerns about overprescription and that “VFW urges VA to provide written informed consent to all veterans before starting long-term treatment with psychiatric medications.”
Despite the name, antidepressants may increase the risk of suicidal thoughts or behaviors, according to drug manufacturers and the Food and Drug Administration. Those black box warnings had existed for Zoloft and Lexapro which Jachimiec was prescribed by providers while he was in the Air Force and as a VA patient. But he was never counseled by his doctors about those effects.
“If I would have known, seeing that in writing and had that fully explained, like whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second, hey, this doesn’t sound safe,” Jachimiec said. “You’re telling me like I’m having these thoughts already and you wanna put me on something that increases these thoughts? Why are we doing this?”
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The legislation would amend a VA policy that requires providers who prescribe “long-term opioids” to educate patients about the risks, benefits, and alternatives, and obtain their written consent. In essence, the bill would require doctors take the same precautions when giving certain psychiatric drugs to veterans.
In a 2018 Government Accountability report, the agency reviewed a sample of 103 veterans at five facilities and found 70% had written consent after receiving opioid prescriptions. The GAO described review of the VA’s risk mitigation and clinical guidelines, including written consent, as “strong evidence-based strategies for reducing the potential health risks associated with opioid use.”
With new legislation, veterans like Derek Blumke, who investigates “overprescription” as a fellow with the Grunt Style Foundation, hopes it will give patients a better understanding of the risks that come with taking certain prescribed drugs.
Blumke said that written consent “shouldn’t even need to be required because doctors should be doing this already,” under federal law. The law which governs the rights of VA patients states that providers “must explain in language understandable” about the “expected benefits” and “reasonably foreseeable associated risks, complications or side effects” for a proposed treatment.
However, evidence from the VA’s Office of Inspector General has highlighted an existing information gap. IG reports from 2024 and 2025 found a lack of evidence or documentation from prescribers discussing the risk and benefits of medications for patients at VA hospitals in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Massachusetts.
Blumke, who was also prescribed some of the same kinds of medication as Jachimiec by his VA doctors, emphasized that this policy is “not saying don’t prescribe it,” but rather informing patients that these drugs can cause experiences that are “not natural,” he said.
“When I was coming off of Zoloft, there was a little dude on my shoulder telling me ‘you don’t belong. You should go away.’ You don’t ignore that,” Blumke said. “You know that thought is manufactured. It’s not your thought. It’s the medication. And you can identify it on the spot.”
“The Written Consent Act” was introduced on Tuesday and referred to the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, which would have to approve the bill before it goes to the full Senate.
