few years ago, former Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry traveled to Mexico to take a psychedelic. During his youth, Perry experienced three concussions and has dealt with mild insomnia and anxiety since his early 20s – around the same time he began serving in the Air Force.
After years of his own research and having been evaluated by a neuroscientist who told him he had mild atrophy, Perry decided to leave the country and undergo psychedelic-assisted therapy, hoping to alleviate some of his health conditions. The hallucinogen was ibogaine – a psychoactive compound extracted from the Tabernanthe iboga plant and a Schedule I substance in the U.S., which meant he had to leave the country to legally pursue the treatment.
Studies have shown that the substance can help reduce opioid dependence and produce “long-term positive psychological outcomes,” specifically for individuals with traumatic brain injuries. However, there are serious risks that come with consuming the substance. Without suitable screening and expert supervision, evidence shows that taking the substance can result in cardiac arrest.
He told the Chronicle that his experience with the substance took him on a “journey through outer space.” During his mental excursion, he saw different Mesoamerican emblems, hieroglyphics, and a satanic figure. “[It] was just a fascinating coursing through the universe and seeing a lot of things,” Perry said.
After Perry returned home, the same neuroscientist conducted two sets of scans on his brain – one just a week after the treatment and another six months later. There was progress. “A neurosurgeon, who was a respectful skeptic initially, who has become a complete believer in this medicine, look[ed] at my before and after scans and said, ‘Your atrophy is gone. Your brain looks like a 40-year-old individual’s brain,’” Perry said.
The now 76-year-old told us that he no longer battles with the mild cases of insomnia and anxiety that he had to manage for about 50 years while in the Air Force and later serving in multiple positions within the Texas government. “I don’t suffer from those,” he explained. “I don’t have to deal with those anymore.”
Now, Perry is one of the country’s leading advocates for the plant-based medicine, working with Americans for Ibogaine, an Austin-based nonprofit that works with lawmakers to spread awareness about the treatment in order to advance research on the plant, with the hope that clinical access will one day become available in the States. But why did Perry, who’s known as a traditional conservative, take this leap of faith to go to another country to consume psychedelics, which have long been stigmatized by the Republican Party? And why have extreme right-wingers – including Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Speaker Dustin Burrows, and most recently President Donald Trump – hopped on the ibogaine train, too?
For Perry, his relationship with Morgan and Marcus Luttrell, brothers and former Navy SEALs who testified to the plant’s benefits, played the largest role in shaping his outlook. “Those two individuals’ personal experience with this plant-based medicine is what really convinced me,” Perry explained. Morgan, who went to Mexico to partake in the therapy in 2018, is now a U.S. Rep. in District 8 and is the only currently serving Texas politician to make his experiences with the substance known to the public.
Having built a 40-year legacy in the Texas GOP, Perry coming out and supporting a Schedule I substance seemed like the perfect way to sabotage his conservative legacy, at least that’s what a consultant of his warned. If it meant that he could potentially help save veteran lives, that was a risk he was willing to take. “My reputation is not worth more than these young people’s lives,” he said.
Logan Davidson, legislative director for Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions, a San Diego-based nonprofit that sends veterans in need to Mexico for ibogaine treatment through private donations and engages in policymaking across the country, said that the state’s commitment to the research was an “enormous leap” for the psychedelic research realm. He believes that veteran testimonies played a major role in Abbott signing Senate Bill 1802 in 2021 to pursue psilocybin, MDMA, and ketamine research and Senate Bill 2308 in 2025 to put $50 million in state funding toward ibogaine clinical trials; Patrick’s and Burrows’ intentions to proceed with the ibogaine research in Texas; and Trump’s April executive order to accelerate research on ibogaine.
“Especially to Republicans, the idea that American veterans are going to Mexico to access the healthcare treatment that they cannot get in the United States, there is something almost offensive about that to the American sensibility,” Davidson told the Chronicle. “So they took action to resolve that.”
While Katharine Neill Harris, a drug policy fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, agreed that veterans were a “driving force” behind the recent movement, she thinks that a couple of other factors have contributed to this attitude shift toward the substance: a combination of “widespread dissatisfaction” with available addiction treatment and influence from leading figures of the manosphere, one of which being Joe Rogan, who encouraged Trump to sign the executive order. According to NPR, after Rogan texted Trump about ibogaine’s potential benefits, the president responded with, “Sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let’s do it.”
“The whole sort of right-wing influencer space, some people call it the manosphere, whatever you want to call it,” Harris said. “But the sort of online podcast community that I think is pretty supportive of alternative therapies. And then of course, if you look at RFK, another one.”
So how does a veteran looking to utilize the alternative medicine initiate that process? They don’t just take off for Mexico and start asking for ibogaine on street corners. Organizations around the country receive private donations and occasionally grants that fund the physician-supervised treatment, which costs thousands of dollars.
Brian Mosley, a former Green Beret who was deployed six times on missions where he was tasked to kill and capture high-profile individuals, had many ups and downs during his service and the years that followed. On top of the traumatic experiences he endured while serving the country, he also lost a child and had a rocky home relationship with his wife and three children. He said that his post-traumatic stress and chronic pain resulted in him lashing out at his family, breaking the bond that they once had, and put him in a depressive state where he felt like he had no one to turn to. “You didn’t know what you were gonna get [out of me]. … More than likely, it wasn’t gonna be anything positive,” Mosley told the Chronicle. “You never knew what was gonna set me off.”
For years, he took opioids to manage his conditions while indulging in alcohol and cannabis. He also suffered from unexplained meningitis. When he’d return home from work, Mosley fell victim to routine: His family would go to their rooms, he would load his pipe with weed, and then he’d sit on a rock in his backyard as he played fetch with his dog, all while contemplating suicide. “The whole time I’m sitting out there smoking weed, throwing the ball for the dog, daydreaming in microscopic detail about blowing my fucking brains out,” he remembered.
It wasn’t until Mosley finally opened up about his struggles with another veteran he served with that he learned about VETS. During that time, he was “desperate for anything to provide relief.” After looking into their work, he signed up for the program and was flown down to Mexico with a group of other veterans in 2024. “I was like, ‘If you guys tell me this is gonna help, then I’m gonna do everything you tell me to do,’” Mosley explained.
During his psychedelic encounter, which lasted about a full day, he mentally walked through generational trauma that has been passed on through his family and times when he negatively impacted other people’s lives. “It’s like, ‘What we are gonna do is take all these biochemical functions in your endocrine system and your nervous system, and we’re gonna take all that shit and reset it back to zero,’” he said.
When Mosley came back, things were different. He told us that he dropped nearly all of his medication and has not suffered from meningitis since. His attitude and demeanor were remarkably more positive. He said that the process saved his life, his marriage, and his family. But it wasn’t the psychedelic experience that did this for him. It was what followed.
He explained that after the treatment, individuals must instill the practices and thoughts gained on the journey to actually emerge on the other side a different person. Through one-on-one coaching and group therapy sessions, individuals are instructed to apply the insights that they gained during the psychedelic experience. This common practice among organizations that facilitate the therapy is known as the integration component of the treatment. “This kind of led into what they’re kind of referred to as the integration stuff, which was, in my opinion, wholly critical to psychedelic-assisted therapy,” he said. “You consider that the acute phase of intervention.” He now works with VETS to assist other former service members through the treatment.
Christian Lé, an Oregon- and Costa Rica-based psychedelic practitioner, echoed Mosley’s remarks, stating that the true change comes after the experience itself. “You don’t just learn the ABCs, you have to go back and learn how to write, then you’re gonna have to go back and learn how to write a novel. … It’s a lifelong study process,” Lé explained.
While state lawmakers continue to push for the advancement of the substance, the same individuals are trying to tightly restrict the hemp industry, which has also proven beneficial for veterans in the state on a much smaller scale. Davidson attributed this to how the two diverging industries currently operate.
“I think if they had taken steps to pursue clinical research and evidence to take the tack that the psychedelic-assisted therapy movement has … then maybe you’d be having a different conversation about hemp,” he said. But hemp and cannabis have never gotten such a large endorsement that the state has granted ibogaine. While research has been conducted in other states and at the federal level, Texas has never pushed for a multimillion-dollar research program on the plant.
Harris agreed with Davidson’s comments, stating that the two routes are quite different, as the psychedelic legislation results in a “specific research pathway that is not an access-focused pathway.” And although there is little to no chance that an individual could overdose on pure cannabis, there are still concerns with the state’s loosely regulated hemp framework that could potentially allow contaminated products to get into the hands of the public. “[The regulations are] not sufficient to guarantee the safety of the products,” Harris said. “I don’t really just mean the potency of the products, but also the other kinds of ingredients that they might contain. The market does require some correction.”
To both Davidson and Harris, the two substances are substantially different from one another. While both have proven to show medicinal benefits, hemp and cannabis can also be used in a more recreational manner. They said that this is not happening with ibogaine.
“It seems, from what I understand, to be, let’s call it the least fun of the psychedelics,” Harris explained. “And I think that might, in part, be one reason that it perhaps resonates more with conservatives who are suspicious of liberalizing drug laws more generally.”
“They are not just the recreational, you know, hippie drugs or fun rave drugs that people think they are,” Davidson said. “When taken in a medically controlled environment with supervision from a physician in a safe container, folks are able to really heal from conditions that we don’t have effective treatments for.”
Chris Lynch, owner of Austin-area hemp manufacturer True Hemp Science, is not surprised that lawmakers are working to move the psychedelic sector forward as they continue to batter small hemp businesses. Looking at the Texas Compassionate Use Program, Texas’ legal medicinal cannabis industry with tight guidelines and steep licensing fees that cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars, a minute number of businesses have been able to obtain licenses, allowing the state to heavily control who can provide access to the plant and who can receive that access.
“They have a lot of money at stake and they want to try and lock the industry down,” Lynch said. But with minimal regulations, the hemp market hinders that ability. As a result, lawmakers have continuously attempted to place restrictions on hemp, which has led to months of legal battles between the state and business owners – the most recent being the Texas 15th Court of Appeals decision to reinstate rules that were brought forward this year that significantly impact local businesses’ sales.
He believes that Texas is heading in a similar direction with ibogaine. He thinks that it boils down to the state having total control over access to the medicine, which could create a monopoly over access to the treatment and drive costs up. “That’s the dilemma,” he said. “And that’s kind of what I’m beginning to see get set up on a federal level. That’s where I expect a lot of challenges on that, because they’re gonna do the same thing, and then they’ll pick the winners and losers, and then the price of the medicine goes up substantially.”
SB 2308 created a consortium of state universities, hospitals, and developers to conduct U.S. Food and Drug Administration clinical trials on ibogaine, with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission overseeing the program. Late last year, the HHSC awarded UTHealth Houston, in partnership with the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, the $50 million to lead the initiative. The consortium is made up of notable universities throughout the state, including UT-Austin, which has been studying psychedelics since 2021.
Greg Fonzo, co-director of UT’s McGill Center for Psychedelic Research and Therapy, said that the state’s actions could open up restrictions that have limited the university’s research. “If money was devoted to developing ibogaine to a drug that could be administered in clinical trials … that would open up potentially opportunities for us to conduct on-site clinical trials,” he said.
However, to get the program up and running, the bill states that Texas would need to partner with a private drug developer that would match the $50 million commitment, among other obligations. Following the HHSC’s announcement that none of the applicants were selected to help advance the program, Patrick and Burrows said that the state will still move forward with the plan. “Texas will proceed with our own research program,” the two said in a March statement. “We intend to fully fund this program, and will work in partnership with our great medical research teams in Texas to conduct the research.” It is still unclear how the state will pursue the research without a company to match the $50 million. The HHSC and Abbott declined to provide comment for the story. UTHealth Houston, Patrick, and Burrows did not respond to multiple requests to comment for the story.
Just weeks after Burrows’ and Patrick’s decision to continue pursuing the program, Trump signed his executive order, which directs Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services, to allocate funds – coincidentally, at least $50 million – to support state governments that are working on this kind of research. Harris believes that the state is poised to capitalize on the executive order.
“I’m not saying for sure that it was directed to Texas,” she said. “But I think certainly Texas is pretty well-positioned to benefit from that announcement from the administration.”
When SB 2308 was up for consideration in the House last legislative session, not all Republicans were eager to join the ibogaine parade. Out of the 140 votes, only two House reps. opposed the bill: Republicans Brian Harrison of District 10 and David Lowe of District 91.
Harrison criticized the bill, saying it “is absolutely outrageous. It is not the role of government.” While he told the Chronicle that he does support advancing research of the alternative care, the congressman believes that the work should be conducted in the private sector. “The idea that the state of Texas, the Texas government, has any idea what they’re doing trying to get a drug through the FDA approval process is almost laughable to me,” Harrison said.
He also said that some of his Republican colleagues “were just duped” when considering passing the bill. Calling it a “betrayal of their taxpayers,” Harrison believes that there is “some special interest promoting it. You don’t get certainly high-profile lobbyists to do this out of the goodness of their heart,” alluding to Perry’s role in advancing the legislation.
Credit: Photos courtesy of Perry, Harrison, Lowe
“There’s more going on here than meets the eye,” Harrison said. “This is not simply somebody being concerned about veterans. I’m concerned about veterans. … Somebody’s probably gonna get really rich as a result of this.”
Lowe, who also told the Chronicle that he “love[s] the idea of ibogaine research,” agreed with Harrison, stating that the pursuit simply should not be spearheaded by the state. “I believe that the VA, the FDA, private companies, private organizations should be funding this research,” he said. “Not Texas, not my constituents.”
It would make sense for lawmakers to approach Lowe, a veteran himself, seeking his personal opinion on the bill when it was making its way through the Legislature. He said that didn’t happen. “There was no real effort to even come to my office and schedule a meeting to say, ‘Hey, David, I know you’re a veteran. I would like to explain why the state of Texas should vote for ibogaine,’” he said.
Harris also questions if this was the right move by the state. With hundreds of thousands of Texans impacted by healthcare cuts due to the Big Beautiful Bill, she wonders if that $50 million could’ve been spent in areas that would lead to quicker benefits for those in the state. “When we look at how the state has responded to people that are suffering from addiction right now, there are other investments that I would argue would be more cost effective and more efficient,” she said.
Because the state is taking a path that is intended to lead to FDA approval, rather than states like Oregon and Colorado that have enacted state-regulated psychedelic treatment, she said that the process will take a good amount of time, considering that the FDA approves drugs, not treatments or therapies. So, while Texas could accumulate data that proves the efficacy of the monitored ibogaine treatment through its research, at the end of the day, the evidence would have to be persuasive enough for FDA officials to give the drug the stamp of approval rather than the treatment. And taking into account the potential life-threatening consequences that come with the substance, Harris thinks that one of the other psychedelics – psilocybin, MDMA, LSD – would have made for a better selection over ibogaine.
“There’s not really a possibility to say that, safely, this could be administered without oversight,” she explained. “So in that sense, I would say you could argue that there are more challenges to FDA approval for this psychedelic drug over other psychedelic drugs.”
While available research and testimonies show that there is true potential for ibogaine if used under the proper monitoring and dosing, the dangers still remain. According to Ibogaine Advisor, a media outlet that tracks treatment and policy efforts, consuming the substance has led to around 40 known deaths.
“It’s an incredibly effective, but an incredibly powerful, psychedelic compound,” Davidson explained. “It is riskier than some of the other [psychedelics] as a cardiotoxic risk, so there needs to be significant health screening, significant medical supervision.”
One of the most effective ways to prove efficacy to the FDA is through randomized, blind clinical trials. Carlos Tirado, an Austin psychiatrist who provides addiction-focused care, questions how possible this standard practice is for ibogaine. “How do you come up with another experience that duplicates it so that the patient could not tell the difference between ibogaine versus a placebo treatment?” Tirado asked.
Damian Thomas, an Oregon-based psychedelic practitioner, said that there are numerous companies currently working to create ibogaine analogs that do not necessarily carry the cardiotoxic risks and psychoactive effects that the substance in its purer form brings, while maintaining its addiction-interrupting properties. Whether losing the psychoactive impacts that caused the former governor of Texas to experience what he previously described as a rush through the cosmos would diminish the substance’s effectiveness is still unknown, he said.
“People see their trauma from a different angle or see things that definitely, like, switch stuff for them in a profound way,” Thomas said. “But it doesn’t always happen, and it’s not necessarily a guarantee that it’s gonna help, but I think it could be an extra added benefit if it does happen.”
Say the drug does get approved by the FDA after this research is conducted – what would the treatment process look like here in Texas? The Indigenous communities that pioneered psychedelic use have traditionally practiced in tribal settings, using specific methods that heighten the experience as a whole. “They’re activating the medicine using tones, and songs, and other kinds of chants … that seem to produce an effect that is quite profound compared to just taking the pure compound yourself, let’s say, laying down in a clinic room in a hospital experiencing it,” Lé said. “It’s a very different experience.”
If the state were to get to a point where the psychedelic was readily available for Texans in need, what would that mean for traditional addiction treatments that are currently available? Considering the costs that come with the treatment and the overall vigor and duration of the treatment that could intimidate some patients, Tirado doesn’t see the conventional methods going anywhere. “I don’t see that ever happening,” he said. “I think, if anything, [psychedelics are] gonna be another tool in the toolbox for practitioners and for patients.”
The state’s goal of this research is to one day make the treatment available here in Texas. So when will Texans have access? Harris said that’s most likely quite a ways away. “The research is still really in infancy as it relates to the clinical trial stage, looking at the application of ibogaine for different disorders, and looking at its safety profile for different populations,” she said. “We really have a long way to go on that.”
This article appears in July 3 • 2026.
