#2251 - Rick Perry & W. Bryan Hubbard

The Joe Rogan experience

Governor Perry, thank you very much for being here. It's a pleasure and honor to meet you. And Brian, would you explain your relationship and how you guys know each other? I had a public service career in the state of Kentucky, and the last stint of it involved my role as the Chairman and Executive Director of the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission. Within that role, I designed for what, by lack of a better term, was the Kentucky Abigay Initiative.

The state had received $842 million in settlements that will be paid out over the next 15 years by opioid distributors and manufacturers for their role in the creation and perpetuation of the opioid epidemic. And as the Kentucky Abigame Project was developed and executed, I was introduced to Governor Perry as someone who was a believer and advocate in the medicine. He and I developed

professional relationship. He was a vocal supporter and participant in the initiative itself. He appeared by video to give a testimonial about the immense potential around the development of Ibogaine. And he also was so wonderfully helpful as to procure an op-ed in Newsweek magazine in October of last year endorsing the initiative.

He has been a tremendous supporter, mentor, and I am privileged to call him my friend. And, Governor, how did you get involved in this?

It's kind of a long story, so we got the time, if you don't mind, I'll just take you back. 2006. My wife made me go on vacation, which I don't necessarily do very good, because I have a little bit of ADHD and vacations are sitting on the beach someplace. It's not high on my list of good things to do. But anyway, I went with her and she took me to Carnotta Island and the Hotel Dell, which is a fascinatingly interesting place. But my security detail went out early.

And they were stopped there, I think, on orange. And Orange Drive, the little breakfast nook. And they walked in where they were supposed to meet the California Highway Patrol to do our advance. And there was this big guy that looked about like you all buff and slicked off head and a pretty healthy looking boy. And they thought that was the patrol when they were supposed to meet. They went over and introduced themselves and said, are you here to meet Governor Perry? Any guy went

No, but I vote for him every chance I get. And this kid happened to be a JTAC with Seal Team 5, who was a former or was an F-18 driver who was assigned to Seal Team 5 to go out on their next assignment. And they just met him by the grace of God. And the kid gave him his card and said, hey, if the governor would like to go on a tour of the Special Warfare Center, I'd love to give him a tour.

Well, the detail shows up next day, says, hey, we met this kid. And that's right down my alley, right? Rather than sitting on the beach, take me over and show me what the Special Warfare Center does. And on Saturday morning,

We went over, got that tour, and this young man led the tour. And he had a big old tall drink of water with him in his cammies that assisted with the tour. Took about three hours to finish this tour. We finish it. And this young man says, did Marcus tell you where he was last weekend? I said, no. He said, yes or once and no, sir once. He said, well, he was at the White House receiving the Navy Cross.

I know what the Navy Cross is, and I went back to the hotel room, looked it up on my computer. There's no mention of this Marcus Latrell anywhere on my computer. And we had asked them to go have dinner with us that night, just to say thank you for their time and what have you. And that evening, as we get back to the restaurant,

His friend is asking him all questions about what was it that he did. During the conversation, Operation Red Wing came up and we finished dinner.

I tell them, I said, look, give me your mom's phone number. I'll call her when we get back to Texas. And if you're ever through Austin, come by and see me, right? Which I would tell to, I probably told hundreds of people, Joe, if we hadn't known each other in those days, I said, hey, Joe, if you're ever through Austin, come by and see me. Fat chance you're going to come and knock on the door of the governor's mansion, right? You can't do it. So it's a nice thing to say, but realizing that they're not going to show up.

Well, I went back, looked up Operation Red Wing, and that's when my computer kind of blew up, and I figured out who this young man was. And you remember, in 2006, nobody had heard of this, didn't know who Marcus Latrell was, what have you. So go on about our business. They leave, they deploy, go back to Iraq. With his twin brother, Morgan, I might add, Morgan and Marcus, they deployed together on that. And the young man who led that tour that day,

was a lieutenant commander in the Navy, F-18 pilot, by the name of Jake Elsie. Jake Elsie is now a member of Congress. So incredible small world for me that started totally by the grace of God of meeting these boys in Carnata Island. And I called his mom when I got back to Austin, said, hey, saw your son. He's doing all right. And if I never help you, let me know. Went on about my business.

That was in August of 06, the following May of 07, the phone rang and the governor's mansion. The security detail said, there's a young man down here who said, you told him the next time he's through Austin, Texas, come by and see you, and he's here. I said, that's hilarious. I said, what's his name? And Marcus LaTrell. I said, yeah, I told him that. Well, it's any man.

That was in May of 07, and he lived with us for the next two and a half years. In August of 09, he left, and that's what started me and my wife.

On this long journey, this adventure that has taken me to sitting at Joe Rogan's table, talking about veterans mental health, we've been down literally dozens of rabbit trails. Frankly, the bulk of them, they were interesting, but they really didn't bring any relief, didn't bring any help.

We learned about the brokenness of our government's ability to help these young men and women. I mean, Marcus literally was separated from the Navy without the ability to have TriCare even. The only place he could get his healthcare job was at the VA.

And he had to have some very specific surgeries on his back, highly technical surgeries. And I told him, I said, I'm not going to let you go to the VA and have that done, no offense. But I said, I'll go raise the money and find somebody that we can get you the type of help that you need. And I went to Houston. I talked to a doctor there, Stan Jones, who's the chief medical officer for a stem cell company now called CellTechs.

He had heard of Marcus by then. Marcus's book had come out, I think, in OH when it came out and went to number one on the New York Times bestseller list. So people started to know who Marcus Latrell was, knew his story, and we were able to get him the medical help that he needed. I also intervened at that time.

with the secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus. And I called Ray. Ray was the former governor of Mississippi, so I knew him through that role. And I told him, I said, here's what I've got. And I said, this kid is a legit American hero.

And I said, our government's just completely dropped the ball and being able to take care of him. And I said, I don't want to embarrass your boss. But I said, you need to get this kid back in, re-evaluate him, get him not fit for duty so he can get eligible for track here, of which they did. And my hat's off to him for doing that and doing it. It just took us.

The sadness of all of this, Joe, from my perspective, is Marcus O'Trell was just fortunate in a lot of different ways, that by the grace of God, he met a governor, a guy that could actually intervene and make a difference. There's literally thousands, thousands of young men and women out there today who have mental health issues that don't know a governor, don't have anybody to help. And that's why I've spent however many years, that's been 17 years,

helping be an open to all the different ways that we could help these young men and women. Back in 07, I helped create a foundation that buys homes. It's called Military Heroes Support Foundation. And they've given away a thousand homes now. George Strait gives away one of their homes at every one of his concerts.

But even if you're living in a great home, if you're in a mansion and your mind's not where it needs to be.

You're just a lonely person, a sad person, a broken person in a beautiful home. But I become a complete believer in plant medicine over the course of the last five or six years in particular. And the compound Ibogaine, I-B-O-G-A-I-N-E,

that most people never heard of before. That's good and bad because it doesn't have a bad rap because nobody's heard of it before. My job and our job is to be able to educate the public about this plant medicine, this psychoactive

plant medicine that absolutely is showing stunning ability to bring people back to normalcy, to reset their brains, to literally give them their lives back. I've made the decision that that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my, however many years I got left. This is where I want to spend the bulk of my time

telling people about it explaining to people how this you know conservative right wing knuckle dragon republican governor became a spokesperson willing to go publicly talk about this plant medicine that literally the data is i mean i i think the data is you can argue with the data uh... we'll talk about a clinical trial that uh... they did out of stanford this last year but that's how i went from

basically being a guy that wasn't even open to having a conversation about in 2013 I got talked into

talking to a mother who had a son who's an epileptic, and she said the only thing that we can give our son that's relieved him of this is THC. And I was against any of the use of marijuana, medical or otherwise in 2013. That mother came and sat down to me, I looked at the data, I listened to her powerful story, and we passed in Texas

medical use of THC for the cases of epilepsy. And that's my point with all of this, is that I'll never be, I know, you know, I may not agree on this. I'm not for the legalization of drugs. I love Rick Doblin. Rick and I have been on multiple stages together. A lot of the works that he did at MAPS is I'm a big supporter of.

And I tell him, I said, but I'm not going to get there on the legalization of drugs. I'm just not. And I don't want to get that confused with what we're doing here. This is medically diagnosed, medically dosed, having the proper medical people there, the treatment, the follow up, all of that. And that's one of the reasons that I think that our government

And thank God, Donald Trump won. I'm very open about this. That Donald Trump won this election. He's putting people into place that are open to plant medicine being used for our veteran's mental health. And so I know I've covered a pretty broad piece of landscape in all of that that I've just talked about.

That's how I got here. Over a 17-year period of time, I went from an absolute, don't even talk to me about these drugs to be in the Johnny Appleseed of Ibogaine today, where my wife probably gets tired of going places with me. And the next thing she knows, I'm talking to somebody about plant-based medicine.

and what I've seen and why we as society need to be really pushing this, talking to our congressmen, talking to our senators, talking to the people that are decision makers, and the private sector educating the public about this so that they know that there is help out there. And when you add to this the clear evidence that this works on addictions, and we're talking across the board, then

the populations that could be affected in a powerful and a positive way is substantial. And I, you know, that's what God put us on this earth for, is to be good servants. And this, I believe, has the most powerful way to affect the most people in a positive way of anything that I've ever seen in my public service, my 40 years of public service.

I am committed to it. I'm completely and absolutely convinced that the data will back up what we're talking about. And we'll visit about this clinical trial, I'm sure, in the next couple hours. All right, folks, it's that time of year. Everyone is on a mission to improve their health and wellness habits and set the tone for 2025 by sticking to a routine. And while sticking to a healthy routine isn't always easy, it's so worth it.

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introduction to people that don't understand the concept of plant medicine because Ibogaine is one of those drugs that is not a party drug. No one uses it recreationally. There's no potential whatsoever for addiction to that drug. As a matter of fact, it actually cures addiction somehow or another. It rewires the brain. Do you know how Ibogaine was introduced into the zeitgeist?

I don't. It was a hundred thousand. Joe, you gave it. No, a hundred is Thompson in the 1970s when it was Ed Muskie and George McGovern when McGovern was running for president when during the primaries he he spread this rumor that Muskie was addicted to Ibogaine and then he had a Brazilian witch doctor come to visit him and it tanked Muskie's political career.

I thought fake news was a new thing. No, no, no. Hunter S. Thompson was the beginning of fake news. Well, he called it gonzo journalism, you know? And what he would do is just mix in a bunch of very obviously fake things along with real things. But he was on the Dick Cavett Show. See if you can find that clip. It's actually pretty funny. That's hilarious. This is him on the Dick. I mean, he literally decided to tank this guy's political career by making up a rumor about him.

People really believe that Muskie was eating even game. I never said he was. I said there was a rumor and a walkie that he was. Which was true when I started the rumor and a walkie. I finally said, well, you made it all out. I couldn't believe that people really believe that Muskie was eating even. Yeah, it's just repeating itself over and over again. But yeah, it's in the gonzo, the documentary. He goes into in depth. He just decided that the guy was a big phony. And so he made up the story about the guy being addicted to Ibogaine of all drugs, which is kind of crazy.

And so that's how the public got introduced to Ibogaine. Now, Schedule 1 says that there is no medical purpose for this compound, whatever it might be, and that it's addictive. And Ibogaine is neither of those. Clearly evidence, as a matter of fact, if there was a definition of a compound that was not Schedule 1, Ibogaine would be

the top of the list most likely. Yes, but yet it's schedule one. Yeah, and I think for the purpose of educating the public we go back and understand the early 70s what Nixon was using these compounds for for a political purpose and he gathered them all up swept them all up and put everything under schedule one so he could go after his political enemies using these compounds as the vehicle to do that.

Yeah, and for the last 50 plus years, people have been imprisoned by that. And that's a giant problem for

Particularly for veterans, which is, I think, the most important use of these things, because it's going to open eyes to people that would never consider the concept of plant medicine or psychedelics. They would never consider it. But most people are so compassionate about the needs of veterans, the demands that they face, and the trials that they face when they return, the mental struggles.

the amount of suicides, the amount of addictions, it's overwhelming and they don't get any support. And people are kind of desperate and that's what opens up the door to people considering things like yourself, considering things that would not have normally entered into your landscape. You look at the history of how I got there and I grew up on a

dry land cotton farm, about as conservative a part of the world as you could be. I went to school at Texas A&M. I wanted to be a pilot in the United States Air Force. I mean, drugs were absolutely not anything that I wanted to have anything to do with because at that particular point in time in the early 70s and in the mid 70s, we got drug tested on a monthly basis.

No notice drug testing. You go pee in a bottle and they test you. And if there was one time that you didn't pass that drug test, you were done. And so the fear factor of drugs was driven into us. You go forward with the political messaging through those years, your brain on drugs, the just say no to drugs.

On one hand, that's a good message. On the other hand, when they're used just for political purposes, and you put compounds on Schedule 1, like Abigayne, and it can't even be used for clinical trials. It can't be medically used to see, is there some good that can come out of this?

And the fascinating thing for me, Joe, is that Mexico, this is a compound that can be used. Canada, I think Australia, France, I mean, there's a host of countries around the world that allow for Ibogaine to be used for clinical trials and for medical purposes. Yet, we're sitting here with 20 plus veterans a day, killing themselves.

Yet we have a compound that clearly, the data, clearly the data shows that this compound appropriately used and appropriately overseen can absolutely change lives.

and save lives. And for me, to be able to know that and then still see government say, no, we're not interested, it's really frustrating. And it's why I'm so excited about Bobby Kennedy, Jay Bakachara.

Dr. Oz mean Nolan Williams, individuals who may come into this administration at some very high levels that are supportive of plant medicine. So I think we've got this great opportunity we've been given this gift and I hope you know you got members of Congress that are supportive of this on both sides of the aisle. This isn't a

partisan issue of any sense of imagination. So I'm really excited about the potential of being able to get clinical trials done, move this off of schedule one into worst case scenario schedule two, even schedule three, so that we get a broad amount of trials done so that

People who have questions about it, those can be answered, and they can see the data. I mean, we'll talk about this clinical trial out of Stanford that it's just stunning results. Well, let's talk about that. When was that before? Brian, you want to hit that one? You want me to take it?

I don't mind to take it. In 2018. Pull that microphone up too fast a little bit. There you go. How's that? Perfect. All right. In 2018, individuals by the name of Amber and Marcus Capone founded an organization called VETs, Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions.

Marcus Capone had been a special operator and he had done multiple tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq. When he came home, finally from war, Amber described an individual who bore no resemblance to the man that she married.

He came home as a severely traumatized individual and was met by a system which could not in any way effectively address the nature of his trauma. Recognizing that his life was at stake as well as the future of her family, she became desperate and went online and discovered the existence of a compound called Ibogaine.

She made arrangements for Marcus to receive treatment from an individual by the name of Martin Polanco who operated a clinical operation called Mission Within. Amber, as a last shot at saving her family, sent him to Mexico to receive either game treatment. She said when he returned, he came back as the man she remembered Marion before he ever went to war.

as they learned about other friends of theirs who were coming back home with similar circumstances on the verge of familial dissolution.

with Marcus and his friends at the verge of suicide. They began just as a friend group to put money together to send their close circle of individuals down to receive this treatment. They came together to form vets and since 2018, over 1,000 veterans have trampled to the Ambio clinic south of Tijuana to receive Ibogaine treatment for symptoms of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Because of the miraculous outcomes which were endorsed by the veterans who were receiving this treatment, a group of philanthropists funded a study out of Stanford University, which was led by Dr. Nolan Williams. And over the course of several years, a cohort of 30 veterans were evaluated.

before and after Ibogaine treatment. They were evaluated comprehensively, the administration of a battery of psychological tests to quantify the nature and duration of their symptoms. They underwent pre- and post-treatment MRI scans. These scans were compared against a database which had been compiled of hundreds of thousands of healthy adult brains covering the human lifespan.

and through an algorithmic assessment the question was, what was the physiological effect upon the human brain, if any, to explain these miraculous outcomes were

Veterans who had been on the verge of suicide, who had been paralyzed by symptomatology associated with profound anxiety, profound depression. In many cases, veterans who were prescribed an array of habituate and pharmacology, which then effectively addressed their symptomatology, were not just back to what they could remember being before they experienced their trauma, but had been liberated from that pharmacology.

The results of that study are nothing short of miraculous when it comes to the way in which I began has been revealed to have significant neuro regenerative properties that impact the human brain with profound implications for conditions for which there are no current effective treatments. Specifically, the white matter that covers the surface of our brains

which is the highway across which all of our thoughts and impulses travel.

grew and thickened in size across the entire surface of each of these veterans' brains. The centers of the brain responsible for emotional regulation and executive functioning grew in size. The average reversal of brain age among this cohort of 30 veterans was one and a half years. With the top five among that cohort seeing a reversal of brain age of almost five years.

Right now, there are individuals who live offshore from the United States who are using Ibogaine to effectively treat symptoms associated with multiple sclerosis, Lyme disease, and Parkinson's disease. Just about two weeks ago, Governor Perry and I had the privilege of spending some time with a researcher who is based out of the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

This researcher has developed a protocol for the treatment of Parkinson's symptoms with Ibogaine. We had the privilege of visiting with one of his patients who wishes to remain anonymous, as well as a family member of this patient. We were shown a video whereby this individual had developed Parkinson's disease at the age of 41.

It had advanced so aggressively that by age 51, this gentleman was completely bed-fast. As a life resort, he underwent an invasive intracranial surgical procedure called deep brain stimulation, where they drilled holes through his skull and implanted electrodes, which were designed to stimulate the production of what is called

glio-neurotropic growth factor, which essentially stimulates the dopamine receptors to produce dopamine, the absence of which is implicated in the development of Parkinson's disease. And while this gentleman was no longer bed-fast, he was not able to volitionally control his bodily movements. For the video that we saw demonstrated his attempts to stand and walk.

and the ability to walk was nonexistent. After he had undergone the deep brain stimulation, he signed up for euthanasia services in the country in which he lives because it is legal and he was at the end of his rope. He underwent a four-week course of upward titration with low dose

Ibogaine that did not produce a psychoactive experience and at the end of those four weeks, that gentleman was able to stand, walk, and function as a normal human being. The outcome is nothing short of miraculous. His mother said that he rode his bike

uh, every day now. I mean, I'm telling you, Joe, this is the most stunning. I mean, it's a short video. I get it. It's anecdotal. But for my purposes, it was just backing up what we have seen and what we've learned about how Ibogaine now

the treatments down in Mexico are flood doses. This was a microdosing that they did over there. But again, it gets to my point of this is exactly why we as the United States and with our medical capacity in this country need to be doing this type of clinical trial so that we find out, is this

really what we think it is, and if it is, this needs to be widespread treatment for MS, for Parkinson's, for addictions, for PTSD, for traumatic brain injury. I think we're on the cusp of some extraordinary medical breakthroughs because of this compound, Ibogaine.

Dr. Williams has said, and I agree, that I began is the most sophisticated medication on the planet. The results of that Stanford study were published in a top five medical research journal called Nature Medicine on January 5th, 2024. An organization called the Brain and Behavioral Research Foundation named that study as its number two study in terms of

neuropharmacology in the world for the year 2024. I have become convinced that any system which maintains Ibogaine's criminality is in fact criminal and needs to be tore apart brick by brick.

It does seem like a miraculous compound. And what's fascinating to me is that how little was known about it until just basically a decade or so, it started making its way into the zeitgeist. Primarily, I heard about it from people, my friend Ed Clay was the first person I heard about it. He became addicted to pills, he had a back injury, and he started talking about it, and he went to Mexico, got treated, and then he wound up opening up a center in Mexico.

And since then I've known quite a few veterans, mostly veterans, that they've been led there by other veterans, guys who have gotten help or new friends that had gotten help that way and sent them down there and every single one of them that I've known that have come back from there has had a miraculous result.

It's almost like too good to promise. It's like when you're talking about it, people are like, oh, you know, there's so many people probably listening to this that are at the end of the rope. And they're hearing this like, oh, come on, don't get my hopes up for this miraculous thing. Because nothing miraculous works. It's too good to be true. It's probably too good to be true. Right. But I would have said that myself until I've seen with my own eyes,

I've been studying this. You ask a little bit more about in 2017, I went to Washington to be the Secretary of Energy. I asked Morgan LaTrell, Marcus's twin brother, Farmer Navy Seal, was working on his PhD in brain science. If he would put that on hold and come with me up to DC to work at the Department of

of energy, and Morgan did, and he was over in a part of the agency where we have oversight of all the supercomputers in the, or the bulk of the supercomputers in the United States, our national labs have, and we have some partnerships with different universities, the University of San Francisco

University of California San Francisco and a researcher out there named Jeffrey Manley, MD, PhD and he was doing some studies on the brain for traumatic brain injury and they were scanning the brain using our supercomputers at the Department of Energy and Morgan was helping him oversee that as they were going through it because of his obvious background and his study on brain science and what have you.

And that's the first time I ever heard about anyone going to Mexico to be treated with this plant medicine was through Morgan. And I kind of picked it up in a conversation that he was having. And it kind of put me back on my heels a little bit. And I was like,

Morgan, you need to be careful with that now. Yes, sir. But anyway, that was where I heard about Ibogaine for the first time, was in probably late 2017, early 2018. And then as I started educating myself about it, I was curious about it. Does this work and why does it work? Then it's led to this study, Nolan

Dr. Nolan Williams, Ph.D., MD at Stanford, oversaw the study that Brian just did a fabulous job of laying out there. 30 Vats, they all had moderate to severe PTSD.

They were all given a clinical psychological exam that put them into the moderate to Zafir PTSD range. Some of them had traumatic brain injury, some of them had alcohol issues. I think eight out of the 30 had tried to kill themselves. I mean, this was a highly overseen group

that were treated, and the results, 88% Joe, 88% of those individuals, six months later, had zero. Not a little bit better. They had zero symptoms of PTSD. And I talked to Nolan within a few days ago, and it appears that even after a year that these

symptoms are gone. I mean, this is stunningly powerful work, and again, I sound like a broken record, but this is the reason that this country needs to put this into place so that we can clinically trial it at variousness and replaces across this country, at the VA, at some of our great medical institutions, the private sector. If this is what we think it is, this could be the greatest

The greatest medicine brought to mankind in history. You know, and it takes someone like you. It takes a Republican, straight-laced guy, he was a governor. When you're coming out and talking about something like this, that's going to open up a lot of people's eyes. I had a political consultant when I first started being public about this.

A young man, in this case, called me up and he said, hey, hey, governor, I heard you talking about this plant-based medicine and the use of psychedelics for what are you doing? He said, you're fixing to throw away 40 years of building up a good conservative reputation. He said, you know, you need to be really, really careful with this. What are you doing?

And I told him, I said, listen, I get your concern. I understand it. But I said, two things. Number one, I've spent a lot of time studying this. I said, I've read, I've talked to people. I've been to Mexico multiple times to observe this and to see it. And I said, I'm convinced

of what I've seen is true, and that what I've studied and what I've gone down and really put my arms around. I said, I'm convinced that this data is what it is, and we need to move forward with this. But I said, I'll tell you what's even more important for me.

My reputation is not worth more than their lives. And that's what drives me, is that

What I've seen, I believe, and I'm willing to put my reputation on the line. And I think, you know, when we see people like Marcus LaTrell and Morgan LaTrell and other members of Congress who have been treated and have publicly talked about that they have been to Mexico and they've been treated, Morgan will tell you it saved his marriage. Marcus will tell you it saved his life.

That's powerful stuff. It's powerful stuff. Yeah. Um, do you know Sean Ryan? I know who he is. Yeah. Sean Ryan had a very similar experience and, you know, obviously veteran Navy seal. Yeah. Um, pod sester. Yeah. Huge podcaster.

It's just there's so many stories. There's just it's too much to ignore and it's again It's veterans the people that we owe the most to that have been ignored the most and They come back with the biggest burden and there's no help for them. Yeah, but yet there's this thing and for some asinine reason

from 1970 was put on a Schedule I list. And because of that, we can't look at it and consider it as a treatment option. It's interesting what you just said, how we mistreated our veterans. And I think this is really important. And Brian saw it firsthand over in Kentucky. I mean, you think about, I started going down to Brooks Army Medical Center and the Burn Center down there.

in 05 when kids started coming back from IED last and they were burned, they're traumatized and my sister-in-law worked down there. I'm the governor, I go down checking on some of the Texas kids who show up there and kids for other places as well. But that's where I started seeing, I'd walk in the burn center and there'd be a kid with a lollipop. There was an opioid.

And our government started literally handing out sackfuls of opioids and patting these kids on the butt and saying, you know, we'll see you. And we literally addicted a generation of our warfighters who got wounded both physically and mentally.

and the government was giving them all of these opioids. Then they're masking that with alcohol, and we're sitting around going, gosh, I wonder why Billy and Bobby killed themselves.

And we were the reason because the government did such a poor job of dealing with this issue in the mid-2000s as we were at the—you know, we've been at war for 20 years now. I mean, when I think about the history of civilization,

has there ever been a time when a group of warfighters were ever in this much conflict for this long period of time? I can't think of it. You go back all the way to prehistoric times. We fought wars for a short period of time, then we spend a lot of time walking from one place to another. You just go back into America's history.

and the Revolutionary War, and then the Civil War. You know, my grandfather was engaged in that conflict, and he wrote a book about it, and he talked about walking for weeks through mud and bad conditions, and then they fought for maybe 48 hours, and then they spent, then you go through up into World War I, spend a little bit more time in combat, World War II, and we started seeing

people who were affected, what we call it, shell shock in World War II. Then Vietnam came along and these young men were in conflict for a little period. We have literally had, particularly our special operators, the force recon guys, the Delta force guys, the Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, where they literally are in combat for weeks at a time, months at a time, and even when they're

out of direct conflict because of that environment that they're in, they're always, you know, they're, they're hormone levels, you know, or through the roof because they're always on head on a swivel looking around. Is that person walking in here with the, you know, with the, with the shawl on? Does it have a, you know, explosive in it? I mean, always on

the fear of being attacked being harmed through the roof and that's these kids are all a bunch of guinea pigs from the standpoint of how

this these traumatic events affect them and our governments failed and and i this is this is an opportunity for our government both at the federal level and in the state level that's the reason that brian has come to texas to help us uh... with the texas ibegaine initiative uh... we're going to be introducing to the texas legislature uh... a an initiative for clinical trial on ibegaine

I don't know all the details of it. Brian's probably got a better handle on it than me from that standpoint.

I look at this as we've been given this great gift of a parallel track with the federal government, with these individuals, hopefully you're going to be coming in at HHS, at all of the under agencies that are involved there, and at the same time Texas going with a parallel legislation to both educate the public about Ibogaine and to do clinical trials so that we've got the data to back up.

the education process that's going on. Brian, could you explain what is the unique pathway that allows Ibogaine to help people with addictions? Because it's a very unusual thing that it does to people. If I might provide some historical context on the reality that you have just articulated in 1962,

a heroin addict by the name of Howard Lottsoff, whose widow, Norma, is still living in New York City. He was part of an underground subculture in the early 60s, known as the Yippies. And Howard came into contact with Ibogaine in 1962, and he took it out of curiosity just to see what would occur.

After he took it, he discovered that his desire for heroin had vanished despite a nine-year hardcore dependency. Howard, along with a guy by the name of Stanley Glick, a gentleman by the name of Dana Beale, joined also by a guy by the name of Dr. Kenneth Alper with the original pioneers.

who essentially engaged in a decades-long process of developing observational field data which demonstrated that Ibogaine had the unique ability to resolve physiological dependence on opioids. The mechanism of action was not understood and is still not understood.

What is known is that the opioid-dependent brain does not have the capacity to produce its own dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine and serotonin are our baseline survival chemicals. They drive all of our most fundamental human instincts. The drive to eat, the drive to drink, the drive to procreate.

The human body's natural physical capacity to produce dopamine at its maximum, as measured in what's called nanograms per deciliter, is 125 nanograms per deciliter.

Opioids produce adopamine response of 925 nanograms per deciliter, exceeded only by myth, which produces adopamine response of 1100 nanograms per deciliter. For years, individuals, as the opioid epidemic has played out in this country,

With the detonation of OxyContin and the Appalachian Mountains in 1996, for years we looked at this problem as one of profound mineral failure by those who found themselves trapped in addiction. What I learned in my roles in government was that that was completely wrong. What we are seeing are the results of a profound neurochemical brain injury expressed by the shutdown of dopamine and serotonin in the brain due to opioid exposure.

I began as the unique ability to restore the brain's dopamine and serotonin production to its pre-opioid exposure levels within 36 to 48 hours, thereby fully resolving physiological opioid dependence with a single administration for 80 percent of individuals the first time. That number goes to 97 percent with a second supportive dose.

It is extraordinary, especially when we consider the outcomes that are produced by our existing treatment system. Addiction currently, you have two pathways. One is abstinence only, and the other is what's called medication for opioid use disorder, or what I refer to as opioid maintenance treatment.

Outcomes associated with abstinence treatment are essentially a rate of success of 7%. And the reason for that is because it takes the brain 18 months of complete abstinence from opioids to recover its own individual dopamine and serotonin production. You have to be completely abstinent for 18 months before the brain begins to heal.

I've regained shortens that to 48 hours. It is something that is not understood, but is concrete and real. One other thing is important to mention about its physiological properties.

Ibogaine can produce miraculous outcomes for individuals who find themselves substance dependent. Its applications haven't just been successful when it comes to opioid dependency. It is the only known substance to successfully treat meth dependency.

And when we consider that the current street economy, the prevailing combination is fentanyl and meth, there is no more compelling circumstance to demand the accelerated development of this therapeutic than the current reality of drug dependency and death in America. The risk comes with misadministration. There is a significant cardiac risk which accompanies Ibogaine.

It has the propensity to prolong the beats between the heart or what is called prolonged QT interval. The fancy word for it is torsad syndrome.

If an individual is given Ibogaine improperly, it will slow and stop their heart and they will die. This is a very serious medication and it must at all times be administered by a medical professional with a background in interventional cardiology supported by a nursing team that can deliver the administration of atropine to stabilize the heart's rhythm if it goes out of whack.

during the course of treatment. The other important thing to know is, though that risk exists, it can be fully and completely mitigated by the co-administration of magnesium.

a methodology that the best practice clinics in Mexico, I've been, had the privilege of going to two. The first was previously mentioned, which is Ambio South of Tijuana, and the other is called Beyond, and it is in Cancun. B-E-O-N. B-E-O-N-D. B-E-O-N-D. Yes, sir.

Both of those clinics utilize the co-administration of magnesium in order to prevent the development of torsons. I explain all this to say to your audience, do not, under any circumstances, try to order Ibogaine online for self-administration. Do not, free venture out into the world looking for any old clinic. Be very careful and selective.

There are informational websites. One is maintained by a lady by the name of Julianna Mulligan called Intervision Ibogaine, which has a list of providers. As I said, I have been to both Ambio and beyond. They are clinical operations that adhere to the absolute best, highest standards of safety. And you want to make sure, if you have a family member, that you're sending them to a place that recognizes

that I began is the very best possible beginning that you can give an individual to restore their lives in the aftermath of the devastation associated with addiction. You want to make sure that the clinical staff is comprised of highly credentialed physicians, nurses with intensive care background and certification who are also believers in the advancement of this particular medication and who also have experience with it.

It needs to be delivered within a supportive therapeutic environment, whereby you are within a community that is connected to your humanity, where you have the ability to receive services that heal your mind, your body, and most importantly, your soul. Amen. And it can actually be done.

It sounds so crazy that this is illegal and it sounds so crazy that this is so beneficial and that it's taken so long that here we are in 2024, you know, all the 54 years after all this stuff was made illegal and we're still dealing with the repercussions of this political decision, essentially, you know, by the Nixon administration. Is it all right if I talk about how I came to learn about this?

I'm going to have to start at the beginning and I will try to be as economical with the use of words as possible. I was raised in one of Virginia's five coal mining counties, Russell County, Virginia, which economically and culturally is much more similar to Eastern Kentucky.

and Southern West Virginia than it is to any other part of Virginia. I come out of a coal mining family. My grandfathers were both grade school educated. My father's father stopped attending school in the third grade. My mother's father stopped attending school in the sixth.

Both of them are underground at the age of 16, and that's where they spent 40 years of their lives. My family has been generationally devastated by profound effects of alcohol and substance abuse, as well as untreated mental illness. It has blighted us for as long as anyone can remember.

This is the environment in which my parents grew up. They married early. My first memories as a child were of screaming, cussing, and chaos.

I can remember my grandfathers who lived incredibly difficult lives. My mother's father was one of 16. I had a parish use gift between once a year. My father's father was one of 11. Neither one of them had a false set of fingers. You could hear my dad's dad breathe.

50 feet away from the combined effects of black lung and tuberculosis that he contracted in the cold camp in which my father was raised. When I was a young boy and I would go and visit them, each of them, separately and independently, would at some point pull me aside and they would say,

Papal knows that you're scared and that you're anxious, but you need to know a couple of things. Number one, Papal loves you.

Number two, and most importantly, God loves you. You have a special and unique purpose to achieve with your life that has been handed to you from on high. And no matter how scared you get, no matter how rough you think things are, if you will have faith that God will take care of you, you're going to come through just fine.

If my grandfathers had not provided me in those very early years with sanctuary from that early chaos, the stability of their love and an affirmation of my spiritual significance, the chances are if I were alive at all, I certainly would not be sitting here.

I would be looking to people like Governor Perry and people who held jobs like I once did wonder what they were going to do to pull me out of the ditch. I went through school at a time when Ronald Reagan was president.

And just like the duckling to the duck, he was my North Star as to what America was all about. I had a very idealized version of American history and civics education delivered to me by grade school teachers who had come of age during World War II or ladies who had been trained by those teachers.

coming out of a working class family. My dad was an installer for the telephone company and a lineman for 40 years. He had some struggles with alcohol when I was very young that he threw iron wheel over came and today he is one of my absolute best and dear friends in this life. I was raised along with my brother to recognize the benchmarks of success as becoming either a doctor or lawyer.

I couldn't much good by way of math or science, but I could write and talk a little bit.

And I was also told that law was the way in which you could defend truth, justice, and the American way. So with Dewey-eyed optimism, I went to undergrad and had a wonderful time. And then I went to law school. And by the end of that first semester with the acquisition of significant student loan debt, all of those Dewey-eyed notions had been crushed and destroyed before my very eyes.

At the end of the three-year legal education process, I came to know and to understand.

that law has nothing to do with any of those things that I was raised to believe. That law is often nothing other oftentimes than the tyrant's will and always so when it is used to produce predetermined manipulated outcomes in the hands of judges who drive results based on their own individual biases, predilections, and preferences.

Because I owed such debt, my first job was to just get a job. And I found myself with an accidental career practicing workers compensation law in Kentucky.

I had the privilege of being mentored by a lady named Mary Kay Williams for one year. She had managed to achieve partnership with the law firm at which we worked together. But in May of 2002, tragically at the age of 33, she died as a result of a fall from her attic at her home after a Memorial Day party. The next day I went into the office, the senior partner called me in and said,

There's no easy time to have this discussion, so we're going to have it now. There is a 300 case load, 300 case load that Mary Kay handled. The bulk of those cases belong to Walmart stores. They are a significant client to this law firm. I don't know you, but you are one of the few associates of which she had glowing things to say.

I need you to get in there and get your hands around that caseload and anchor this client to this firm. That touched off what was a 16 year legal career practicing workers compensation law across Kentucky in the years which coincided with the onset and explosion of the opioid epidemic out of central and southern Appalachia.

I traveled from one end of the state to the other representing Walmart, Tyson Foods, and Tennessee Valley Authority practicing thousands of cases over the course of those years. I can remember taking the deposition of a particular individual who I would describe as representative of the dynamics

of the opioid epidemic. This person was usually a middle-aged woman somewhere between the ages of 45 and 70. She would have worked tirelessly. Her entire life, usually in eastern Kentucky, working in low-skill, low-wage jobs, convenience stores, family dollars,

Wal-Mart's and she worked hard and she worked consistently and she would have been someone whose labor was a monument of devotion to her family.

At some point in time she would have had a work accident, a slip and fall, or a lift and injury. She would make her way to either a physician or in some cases a lawyer. She would undergo an evaluation and she would endorse the existence of pain complaints throughout her body.

This person would undergo a series of diagnostic studies that failed to reveal anything that was significant, certainly not enough to explain all of the pain symptoms that this person endorsed. As a young lawyer, I took this lady's deposition probably 30 or 40 times.

and I would get them to speak to their pain, I would get them to speak to their divility, and then I would pull out their medical records, which demonstrated that CT scans, MRIs, electro-diagnostic studies all had failed to reveal any objective physiological explanation for their complaints of pain. And being enthusiastic and wanting to defend the very best interests of my clients, I thought that I was being put on.

But the plaintiff's lawyer had sat with this lady and had come up with a sob story to tell me in order to pull money out of my client's pockets. I was always very patient, and I was kind with the individual, but I would say, ma'am, we have gone through a stack of medical records, and there does not appear to be anything wrong with you.

And this lady would start to cry and she would say, Mr. Hubbard, I'm not a doctor and I can't tell you what's wrong with me. The only thing that I can tell you is from the time I open my eyes until I go to bed, I hurt from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet and I can't hardly make myself get up out of bed. This person's medical treatment

By the time they got to me, they consisted of the application of high-powered narcotic medications in response to their complaints, along with habituate and psychotropic medications, Oxycontin, Xanax, Xanaflex, the whole nine yards. If they were not physiologically disabled by their accident, they had been physiologically disabled by the pharmacology that had been thrown at them.

I took this person's deposition hundreds of times, and one day driving down the road, it dawned on me that whether these ladies had physical symptoms which were identifiable or not, they were truly, genuinely experienced and profound pain, which had caused significant debility. That pain was not physical.

It was emotional and it was spiritual. These ladies had worked lifetimes, looking at a dead end. And at the time that they had their work accident, it was the straw that broke the camel's back for any hope they had of a future defined by dignity and autonomy. And their hope had been broken. And that broken hope came through as profound physical pain that was rooted within their spirit.

by virtue of my connection to an expert who I had utilized in my workers' compensation cases. In December of 2016, I received a call from the member of the then administration of Governor Matt Bevin, and they were looking for an individual who could come in and look at the state's Social Security Disability System. That's a federal program that exists to help

Individuals who are disabled as a result of either physical or mental maladies. And while it's a federal program, it is administered by the individual states. And I was asked, what do you know about Social Security disability? And I said, well, not much. I know Ed and the workers' compensation go hand in hand.

And I know that Kentucky, for as long as anyone can remember, has a significant portion of its adult population receiving that benefit. We've been second only to West Virginia for at least 30 years. And they said, well, we're looking for someone who can come in and evaluate the system, understand how it works, and understand why Kentucky has so many people receiving it.

Is this a job that you think that you could do? And I said, I don't know, but I'll sure give it my best try. And it's an honor to be considered. I'll take it. So in February of 17, I went in and began to lead Kentucky's Social Security Disability System. My first job was to understand why things were the way they were. I assembled a team of high caliber intellects who had years, decades of policy experience with the Social Security Disability Program.

And I wrote down 19 different statistical metrics that I wish for us to evaluate around the enrollment into the Social Security Disability Program as well as different socioeconomic factors which were unique to Kentucky. And in October of 2017, we issued what was the very first of its kind retrospective study of the evolution of the Social Security Disability Program in Kentucky covering the years 1980 to 2015.

And here were some of the statistics that were the highlights of that report. Between 1980 and 2015, Kentucky's population grew 20%. Enrollment and the Social Security Disability Program grew 249%. Childhood enrollment.

These are children who are under the age of 18. Most of them come from highly impoverished backgrounds where there's very little opportunity to have what we can consider to be a conventional, healthy childhood. Childhood enrollment grew 449% over those 35 years.

We paired the enrollment statistics with the state's Medicaid database, which tracked the issuance of every single peel that was capable of habituation to the state's SSI Medicaid population. Between 2001 and 2015, the issuance of prescription opioids to adults within the Social Security Disability System grew 210%,

from 47 doses per adult to 147 doses per adult. The issuance of habituate and psychotropic medications to children, whether it was amphetamine, whether it was antidepressant, anything that could create physiological dependence, grew 168 percent. From 275 doses per child,

to 457 doses per SSI Medicaid child. My first month on the job, we had the Social Security Administration's federal liaison to the state of Kentucky come in for what was called the home agency visit. This was a semi-annual review of the state's Social Security Disability Program and the way in which it was meeting federal performance standards.

I wish that I had had a recording of this meeting when it occurred because this person gave me a gift of truth right off the bat. I assembled the management team, I was sitting at the end of the table, and this person began by saying, folks, claims are down.

And that's bad because claims equal budget. I came to learn that the Social Security Disability Program was not necessarily run primary for the benefit of the Social Security Disability recipients. It was run for the perpetual expansion of the SSA's own bureaucracy.

And that while Social Security Disability Benefits represented 16% of benefit payments within the system, it consumed 45% of the agency's budget. In order to get more money, you must have more recipients, despite the nature of those outcomes.

I came to also run the state's child support enforcement system. Within that role, it was perceived that the state was not delivering child support payments to children. It is the largest single anti-poverty program, not just in Kentucky, but in the country. Direct payment transfers from an obligated parent to the custodial parent.

It was believed that there were a number of deadbeat dads who were just not paying the bill. And what I came to find out was that those officials who were responsible for running the program, and in Kentucky, that was 120 individually elected county attorneys. In fact, had some systemic issues. There were a cohort of county attorneys who were running that program perfectly. There was another cohort that were running it

with some degree of success, but not necessarily at top performance. And then there was another group that were running their operations horribly. I discovered that within the cohort of 117 elected officials, 40 of them

owned their own property, which they then turned around and charged the child support program rent. Essentially, federal and state tax dollars through rent payments were going to allow for the acquisition of private real estate equity interest by elected officials at the county level. Something that was immediately ended when I came into that job.

Governor Bevan lost his race for reelection in 2019 and because of some of the measures that were taken to bring accountability, transparency and performance expectations to that child support program, I was terminated from my job on hour one of day one of the administration of newly elected Kentucky Governor, Andy Beshear.

I was picked up by a gentleman who is my dear friend by the name of Daniel Cameron, who had been elected Attorney General in 2019. He asked that I run his office of Medicaid fraud and abuse control, a law enforcement office which investigates and prosecutes medical providers for being engaged in fraud against the state's Medicaid system.

This coincided with the onset of COVID. I brought in a deputy by the name of Matt Kleinert, who was a Medicaid policy expert. And over the course of two years, despite the shutdown of the state's court system, we doubled the number.

of criminal indictments and convictions of medical providers on that system. A significant portion of that caseload was comprised of providers of opioid maintenance treatments who were using their clinics which were intended to help those who were struggling with opioid addiction as glorified drug dealing operations which fomented the diversion of Suboxone in every little town and county in Kentucky.

And it was an eye-opening experience to recognize the predators within this universe of operation that is supposed to be restorative and helpful to people in recovery. Because of the way in which I believe I had developed a reputation as a no-nonsense, get-it-done public servant, the Deputy Attorney General at the time, his name was Mary Dunn.

Ask me if I would have any interest in running the state's opioid commission. The Kentucky legislature had set up a framework to administer what is now $1 billion in settlements from opioid distributors and manufacturers for their role in the creation and perpetuation of the opioid epidemic. While the people at home are wonderful and beautiful,

Many of the conditions that exist there exist because of how terribly Kentucky state government has functioned since the end of the Civil War. Kentucky in many categories is first where one would wish to be last and last where folks would wish to be first. It has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty in the country, one of the highest rates of child abuse in the country, one of the highest rates of parental incarceration in the country,

one of the highest rates of child sexual abuse in the country. All of the tender and material that is necessary to create the devastation associated with the opioid epidemic. Kentucky was like a drought-stricken forest and Oxycontin was the lightning bolt that set it on fire in 1996. Like Louisiana, there has been a history of systemic political corruption which has empowered the ability to produce progress for our people.

So when I was asked if I had an interest in doing that job, I said, well, this is a very treacherous opportunity because with this amount of money coming in, there's going to be a lot of buzzards gathered around the wagon who are ready to pick the bones clean.

If y'all will let me set up this commission and run it in a way that is accessible, accountable and transparent to the people of Kentucky, I would be privileged to have the opportunity to do it. Mr. Don looked at me and said, we wouldn't do have it any other way. I had to go through an interview process. And through that process, the question was asked, what do we need to do with that money?

And I said, well, let's recognize that while $842 million is a tremendous sum of money to the average year, it's going to be paid to this state over 15 years. At its height, Purdue farmer was making $100 million a month off the sales of OxyContin. This settlement represents roughly eight and a half months of OxyContin sales, but we're going to be getting it over 15 years.

These are crumbs off the tables of gluttons, and we have got to make sure that this one time non-recurring revenue stream is utilized for its maximum best impact to pull this state out of this travesty.

And I said one thing that we have got to look for is an opportunity to develop a breakthrough therapeutic that can deliver materially better outcomes than what we are getting with our existing system. Our existing system is unacceptably mediocre and it is necessary if we're going to change generational dynamics to improve upon what we have.

We've got to look for Kentucky's Manhattan Project opportunity to pioneer a therapeutic breakthrough for opioid addiction. And I said, I don't know what that is, but I'm going to get to looking. In 2018, I came into knowledge of the psilocybin mushroom.

and the way in which it has profound impacts on treatment resistant anxiety and depression and in the case of me in particular with my family's history, alcoholism, and I followed developments around its research applications over the next several years.

I came into contact with an author who goes by the pin name of Juliana Christina, who wrote beautifully about her own experiences with the psilocybin mushroom, which helped her overcome a lifetime of debility, anchored in anxiety, depression, and a near fatal eating disorder. On July the 29th, 2022, I reached out to her and I said, Hey,

This is who I am. I've been given this job. What can you tell me about the universe of psychedelics and whether there is anything that shows special application or impact for opioid dependency?" She said, have you ever heard of Ibogaine? I said, I had not. She said, I'm going to put you in touch with a woman by the name of Julianna Mulligan. You tell her that I sent you and ask her to tell you her story.

So I reached out to Juliana, told her who I was, and I said, tell me your story. Juliana proceeded to tell me about her life with addiction as a young American woman. She herself had been a heroin addict. She had been incarcerated. She had been homeless.

And at one point in time, she moved to Columbia to teach English as a second language. And while there she discovered that Columbia has open pharmacies that are unregulated, she said that she was able to go into a pharmacy in Columbia and get as much of what she wanted whenever she wanted.

And she did. And she said, one morning that she woke up and looked in the mirror and she said, I knew that I was going to die. This was it. And I was desperate to give myself a chance to live. And she said, I had done every form of treatment that was known. I did abstinence. I did suboxone. And she said, what they didn't tell me about suboxone was, if you try to take yourself off of it,

Suboxone withdrawal made my heroin withdrawal look like a cakewalk. It was one of the most horrific experiences I ever had in my life. She said, I found about this alkaloid called Ibogaine through online internet research. And she said, what I didn't know was that there are a number of operations that operate within the underground.

That don't necessarily adhere to the necessary safety practices to assure that this treatment can both be safe and effective. She said, I made my way to Guatemala. I was in the hands of a practitioner who didn't know what they were doing. And I was given double the dose that I should have received. She said, I went into cardiac arrest six times.

and nearly died. She said, I remember waking up in the intensive care unit of a Guatemalan hospital and she said, I felt the best I ever felt in my entire life. Julianna put me in touch with a lady by the name of Adriana Curcher in New York City who at the time ran a boutique law firm called the Plant Medicine Law Firm.

Adriana and I had a brief introductory conversation. I told her, I said, I want to learn as much as I possibly can about Ibogaine. I've spoken with Juliana, and this sounds too good to be true. I want to know if there's any legitimacy about this, and if so, perhaps what the State of Kentucky can do to move the needle on its development. She said, I have a roll of decks of people that I think could be helpful to you.

Who would you like to meet?" I said, well, I don't know the names of folks around this. I can just give you generally the category of folks that I would love to be able to speak with. I need to know who the foremost academic and medical researchers of this compound are. I need to understand the existence of any activist organizations that would have particular cultural relevance to Kentucky, profoundly, politically conservative and religiously fundamentalist state.

And I said, finally, I need to know whether there are any philanthropists who are willing to support or who have an interest in an opportunity that may exist around I'm again. She said, all right, let me get to work. She said, would you be willing to travel to New York City if I hosted a dinner party for you?

And I said, yes, but on one condition. I said, I work in a deeply, politically conservative office. And I'm pretty sure I've got some people around me who would be ready to cut my head off if they knew that I was even sniffing around the area of psychedelics for a potential treatment. I said, if I come, this has to be done completely confidentially, and everybody must take a viral silence until such time as I can decide whether or not this is something to present to the office.

My wife and I, along with one of my close friends by the name of Scott Hornbuckle, who was also an advisor to the commission who I brought in, traveled to New York City on December 5th of 2022. On December 9th, we had this dinner party. I met with these individuals who had gathered the researchers, the philanthropists, veteran activists who had gathered around I'm again.

as well as the application of other psychedelics for the treatment of war related trauma. When I got home to Kentucky on December 11th, they opened up their networks and put me in touch with Amber and Marcus Capone, Dr. Nolan Williams, Dr. Kenneth Alper, and all other folks who have gathered around Ibogaine to push for its accessibility within the U.S. medical system.

On January 31st of 23, I gave a presentation to Attorney General Cameron, and I said, I believe we have found Kentucky's Manhattan Project opportunity. And I laid out what the concrete realities are of Ibogaine, and they are three. Number one, it resolves physiological substance dependence on an accelerated timeframe in a matter that frees an individual from the physical consequences of their dependencies.

Number two, it has a profound psychological effect for the individual, whereby on the back end of treatment, having been physiologically restored, they have a sense of ownership over their self and their future, whereby they will live a life that is defined by choice rather than compulsion, and that is a fundamental quality that one must have if they are going to rebuild their life. Finally, and most significantly,

Many people, the overwhelming majority of folks who have an Ibogaine experience come away with an affirmation that they are a spiritual being who is made in the image of an eternal Creator whose essence is pure and unconditional love, and that that Creator has conferred a special and unique purpose on their life to be achieved. When those three qualities were properly understood,

Attorney General Cameron blessed me to lead the commission on the exploration of set-aside $42 million, 5% of the state's settlement funds to create a public-private partnership.

or by a drug developer would match the state's investment on the front end by assuming all legal, logistical, and financial risks associated with securing the FDA's approval to pursue clinical research trials for the development of Ibogaine as a breakthrough therapeutic treatment for opioid use disorder, co-occurring substance use disorder, and any other mental health conditions for which it demonstrated efficacy.

We had a high profile public announcement on May the 31st of 2023 to announce this exploration. We conducted three very high profile public hearings, each of which lasted about five hours, about all aspects of Ibogaine. These hearings are available online as a formal part of the public record for anyone to view.

The first hearing involved the signs of Ibogaine. It included the testimony of Dr. Nolan Williams, Dr. Kenneth Alper and Dr. Debra Mash, who has been a pioneer around the development of Ibogaine's application to opioid addiction for over 30 years now. We had a second public hearing, which involved the testimonials of individuals who had received, provided, or had sent loved ones for Ibogaine treatment.

All of this was done in a very high profile in public play because we wanted the people of Kentucky to understand all aspects of this opportunity. It's profundity and the way in which it can transform not just the lives of their families, but the future of this state. That second public hearing was one of the most moving public proceedings of which I have ever been apart. And I don't know how anyone could listen to those testimonials, which included one from Governor Perry and come away with any other conclusion.

but that Ibogaine must be developed as expeditiously and safely as possible for the sake of our brothers and sisters in this country. The third hearing, which occurred at the request of the University of Kentucky, which along with Andy Beshear, fought this proposal every step of the way, centered on the question of whether the FDA would even consider approving.

clinical trials given what was repeatedly asserted as the unacceptable level of cardiac risk associated with its application. Within that hearing, we were able to procure the testimony of the scientist general who was in charge of controlled substances research at the FDA, a gentleman by the name of Dr. Javier Muniz, along with his colleague Dr. Walter Dunn,

who set on the FDA's advisory board of psychopharmacology, I believe he still sits on there. And those gentlemen I haven't heard the testimony as well as questioning from the University of Kentucky's representative which suggested that the FDA would never approve it, began their testimony by saying.

It has been asserted that the cardiac risk associated with Ibogaine would disqualify it from consideration by the FDA for clinical trials. That is absolutely and completely incorrect. The question for Ibogaine is not one of the existence of risk.

The question is how and if that risk can be mitigated. And assuming that the drug developer can demonstrate that cardiac risk can be safely mitigated and controlled, there is no reason that we would not approve that clinical trial. And with that,

The chief objection was newt. We had one last piece of due diligence to perform before my commission, which had a membership of nine, was ready to cast a deciding vote to secure the allocation of this $42 million for what was going to be a fabulous leadership opportunity for the people of Kentucky to pioneer an entirely new field.

of biomedical research that will revolutionize how we treat not just addiction, but the problems that we have all sat here and talked about already. And that was the delivery of testimony from Dr. Nolan Williams following the publication of his research in the journal Nature Medicine about the neuroregenerative properties of abigating the brain as applied to the veteran population with TBI and PTSD.

Unfortunately, there was an election in Kentucky in 2023. My boss, Attorney General Cameron, ran for governor, and lost. Andy Beshear was reelected, and a new Kentucky Attorney General took office. And while this new guy had gone in public and had expressed his open-minded willingness to give up again consideration,

I had briefed him individually before we had our public announcement and anticipation that he would take office. After he won, I reached out and asked if I could have an opportunity to brief him on all of the developmental energy which had gathered around this project. That energy included the commitment of two significant philanthropic organizations, one of which was the Gerbertson Foundation led by Stephen and Genevieve Gerbertson.

The other was the Stephen and Alexander Cohen Foundation, led by Stephen and Alexander Cohen, and then the third was the Melissa Etheridge Foundation, all of which made commitments to partner with Kentucky to make this come to pass. We had secured the commitment of two drug developers who were willing to establish corporate presence in Kentucky and to anchor all of their research and development activity around its advanced therapeutic applications within that state.

On the cusp of success, I was brought into a meeting on December 15th with the newly elected Attorney General and members of his transition team, and what I thought was going to be an opportunity to explain and secure approval for the finalization of this project.

turned into an ambush meeting in which it was demanded that I resigned for having been an unapologetic advocate for Ibogaine research, something that the new Attorney General found highly objectionable. I walked out of that meeting and was in shock and despair.

not over the loss of my job. I was always going to be able to find another job. But for the loss of the opportunity for the long suffering people at home who deserved to have an opportunity to transform their future with what I've again has the potential to do for them individually and collectively. And what has been a tremendously providential blessing

Everything that happened in Kentucky was followed by a gentleman by the name of Rex Elsace. Mr. Elsace is an individual who in his prior life has been a high level Republican campaign ad producer. His firm is one of the top campaign producing ad companies for Republican candidates across the country in the country.

Rex has a foundation called the Reed Foundation, which is named in honor of his son, Reed, who struggled for a decade with opioid addiction beginning when he was a 16-year-old in high school. Reed encountered plant medicine

with an ayahuasca five years before he passed away. Rex became a believer in plant medicine because of the therapeutic response read experience after that exposure to ayahuasca. Rex was introduced to me ironically by Melissa Etheridge in February of 23. He showed up at every Kentucky here and he showed up at our public announcement and he said whatever you need to help make this successful I'm available to you anytime.

The Reed Foundation stands for Rescuing Everyone in Distress because Reed, unfortunately and tragically in 2019 died of a fentanyl overdose. Rex became involved with the Kentucky movement because he believed had Reed had an opportunity to receive Ibogaine treatment. He would be alive today.

When I walked out of that meeting thinking that it was all over, I called Rex and I said, I've killed it. This is over. All that work and all that effort is vanished. He said, if I can procure opportunities for you,

to speak to what I began can do, to other elected officials across the country with whom I have relationships, would you be willing to work with my foundation so that we can attempt to preserve what has been done here and transplant it to a state that has leadership with the vision and courage to complete the job that you have begun.

Joe, at this point, I had staked everything that I had become by way of reputation and by way of knowledge on this opportunity. I came just as Governor Perry has to believe that this was the opportunity of a lifetime to generate tremendous progress on behalf of everyone who needs all of the restorative power that I began can deliver.

And I said, this is the mission of my life. And I will go anywhere. I will talk to anyone and we'll do whatever is necessary to keep this alive. And thank the Lord with the leadership of Governor Perry and his online ship. Here we sit on the cusp of an opportunity for the state of Texas to finish the job that was begun in Kentucky. And I hope and pray with all my might that that is exactly what we see happen over the course of the next five months.

That's an incredible journey. What are the steps now? What are the steps that need to be taken to implement this in Texas?

So if you'll recall, I think four years ago, Marcus and Amber were involved with, Marcus and Amber Capone were involved with the passage of a piece of legislation in Texas dealing with psilocybin, clinical trials there. And there was some concern that it was not going to

It generally takes about three legislative sessions for a controversial piece of legislation to get passed in most cases. We actually passed that the first body of the apple, so to speak. I think Alex Dominguez, who was a Democrat member of the state house, carried it. I helped Marcus Latrell came and supported it as did Morgan.

and uh... i think it passed a hundred and forty two to eight in the state house and i think it passed the senate without any uh... opposing votes and and uh... it became law uh... and so we have a uh... already had a record that the state of texas a conservative red state

support the use of a, in this case, a psychedelic plant medicine for the treatment of veterans. So we have this record of already supporting this. I began and

The challenge for us is to be able to educate the public about what is Ibogaine. How does it work? What's the results? And I think we're going to be able to do that. This show obviously is a good step in that direction of being able to educate the public about

this extraordinary compound that has amazing results out there, giving people their lives back, resetting their brains, literally regenerating the brain, moving away from addictions with one treatment, just some stunning results. When you add Parkinson's and MS with this, then it's this broad base of being able to go out

And to share with the people of the state of Texas that Texas can lead, as a matter of fact, our legislative session only lasts for 140 days every other year, which is a great concept. I wish more places would take a look at that as a way to do business. But we know that we've got to get our work done.

At the same time, there's this parallel track going on in Washington, D.C. They'll take longer. That's a fact. But Texas can lead the nation here. What you started in Kentucky, and we can sit here and brow beat this, which we won't, about why that got killed in Kentucky.

I think the leadership of Kentucky will look over their shoulder one of these days and see that they absolutely lost a great opportunity to lead the nation.

in the recovery of people who have lost their lives to opioids or to dramatic brain injury or to PTSD in some form or fashion. And Texas is going to wear that mantle. And I'm proud that Texas is going to leave that mantle. We've got great leadership in both the House and the Senate that understand this issue that we're going to spend time with to get a piece of legislation. The Texas Iva Gain Initiative is going to be known.

uh... will look for those private sector partners will look for uh... most likely the v a to be a partner in this as well uh... and our university system so i i i i'm just i'm very confident that with the proper education uh... the openness of this legislature the love of our veterans that we have in the state uh... that the texas i began initiative uh... will uh... become the law of the land for the state of texas

by September of 2025. That's amazing. And what's the plan in terms of how do you scale this out? How do you start it?

Let's assume a successful outcome within the Texas legislature where a $50 million appropriation out of a projected $20 billion surplus comes to pass and is signed by Governor Abbott. Once that occurs, the very first step would be to issue a notice of funding opportunity to solicit proposals from drug developers who have the capacity to develop Ibogaine as a medication for opioid use disorder.

Within that notice of funding opportunity, a drug developer will be asked to provide information related to how they would design a clinical trial, how they would recruit clinical trial participants.

how they would go about administering Ibogaine in such a way as to safely eliminate the cardiac risk so as to assure successful treatment outcomes without complication. And as importantly, since we are talking about the use of the people's money,

how the drug developer would propose to recognize the state of Texas' perpetual interest in any patentable intellectual property that is generated as a result of this project.

people in your audience should know. That buprenorphine, which is the generic name for brand-named Suboxone, Sublicate, and other derivatives, was created with a direct $62.5 million giveaway by the federal government to create the baseline compound. It was handed over to the pharmaceutical industry. Each company put its own twist on it, and then it proceeded to reap 100% of the return on the people's investment. That cannot and will not happen around any project

associated with Ibogaine that involves public money. There has to be return on investment to the state for the purposes of building out the treatment infrastructure that is needed to assure successful long-term outcomes. Bearing in mind, Ibogaine gives a person the very best possible beginning that they can receive through physiological restoration to pursue what will still be a very long-term and difficult recovery process.

that requires the delivery of long-term integration and support services that are necessary to help someone become equipped to rebuild their lives. Once those proposals are solicited and reviewed, the drug developer that is best positioned to get this across the line who also demonstrates their financial capacity to match the state's development investment will be selected. Once selected, the drug developer will assume all of the legal

financial and logistical risks associated with getting it all the way up to the FDA's approval mark. Once the FDA signs off on the conduct of clinical trials,

The money of the people of Texas will go to pay for the occurrence of those clinical trials in the state of Texas at medical facilities which are equipped with the requisite level of expertise related to cardiac intervention and cardiac support as well as anything and everything related to recovery for an individual who is opioid dependent.

The beautiful aspect of Texas, as I have come to learn, is the immense amount of fabulous medical expertise that exists here. Whether we're talking about the Texas Medical Center, that is in Houston, which is just a marvelous human accomplishment. Can I add something? There it is. The second one should go. The Texas Medical Center, in Houston, Texas. There are more doctors.

nurses technicians researchers go to work there every day than any other place in the world it is that magnificent in it not only its size but its scope and its mission uh... you said some you said a mouthful there when you said talked about how good texas if you look at uh... byler scott white university of texas southwestern i mean that we are blessed in this country to have

some of the greatest medical facilities, you know, teaching schools, research institutions. And again, Joe, this kind of gets back to why this needs to be done in Texas. I mean, I'm totally biased here. I don't, you know, and I don't apologize for that. But our ability

to do this work, to do it on a scale that is global. When this happens in the state of Texas, people around the world, whether they're in Moscow or Beijing or wherever they may be, they'll look at this and go, you know what?

That is something that we would like to replicate in our country. And I will have one other thing, and this truly is fabulous, considering where things work. One year and one day ago, I sat down and wrote my resignation letter over this. While Texas stands the opportunity to be the leader, right now, there are high-level organizational efforts underway.

to join Texas in this endeavor within the states of Ohio, Washington State, Arizona, which includes the involvement of outgoing U.S. Senator Kirsten Sinema, who's ready to roll up her sleeves and help activists there and researchers on the ground, including Dr. Sue Sisley, who've been at this for decades. New Mexico, Missouri.

All of these are states in which there are individuals who are committed to helping Texas finish the job that was begun in Kentucky. And for my people at home, I'm going to use this opportunity to say that there is one incredibly brave state legislature who is the only

elected physician to serve in the Kentucky legislature by the name of Senator Donald Douglas. Senator Douglas recognizes, based on his medical training, what a profound opportunity this is. Dr. Douglas, along with some other concerned citizens within the state of Kentucky, aims to take up the gauntlet when the legislature reconvenes in January to see to it.

The Kentucky's opportunity to participate in this is salvaged and I look forward to doing whatever I can to help get my people at home right alongside Texas to make this a reality.

This is very, very encouraging. It's very fantastic. It really is. I mean, the way you've described this is so fantastic. It's just so eloquent. And Governor Perry, what you've done is just sticking your neck out and having this profound purpose and this desire to accomplish this.

It's so, it's so encouraging and it's something that I just didn't think that I was going to see. And I don't think it would have had the impact if it hadn't come from a Republican former governor like yourself. I mean, I just don't think that people would be considering it. When I first found out that you were getting interested in this involvedness, I was like, what?

What's going on? Governor Perry? Really? He's pushing for Ibogaine? I think it's going to open up a lot of people's eyes and it's going to allow people that have never even considered this to maybe take a second look.

Well, I certainly hope that, you know, regardless of anybody's politics, and this isn't a Republican or a Democrat issue. This is just a human being issue. This is about how do we take care of our, in our case, and somebody said, why are you so focused on the veterans? And I said, well, you know, it's partly the way I was raised and my father and his, you know, his World War II B-17 tail gunner,

time in the 8th Air Force and him teaching me to, you know, you need to give back to your country and you need to give back to your state. You need to give back to your community. You need to find that place to go volunteer. I mean, I was taught that by a wonderful, loving father and mother.

the going off to school, serving in the Air Force, you know, having this heart for veterans, being the commander-in-chief of the Texas forces as we send our young men and women off to this war against terror in 2003.

and being engaged with them, traveling over to Iraq and Afghanistan multiple times while I was the governor and then as the Secretary of Energy to be in their presence to know this extraordinary group of young men and women who are willing to sacrifice their lives literally for us.

And then when they've been wounded, both physically and mentally, and they come home, and we did such a poor job of taking care of them, of recognizing what we had done to them and the lack of our ability. I was overcome with seeing the private sector trying to help

Ross Perot Jr. Ross Perot Sr. One of the greatest patriots I ever met in my life.

What he did to help veterans who had been hurt during the war on terror, I mean, literally hundreds of young men and women who he gave wonderfully to, seeing people like that, and then our government failing. And for me, this is, I spent 40 years in public service.

You know, I think we do it pretty good in Texas by and large, but we don't do it perfect. I get that. But what drove me and what still drives me is that we owe these young men and women everything that we can put together. And if there is a treatment out there, whether it's been put on schedule one or not, we owe it to them to find a way to make it available to them.

And so the veteran community is really special to me. I love them. But they're also the easiest population to go sell to the general public. So if, you know, this whole thing about psychedelics and what we've been taught for 60 years that they're bad, they're, you know, stay away from them. Educating the public that

The dose is the poison in everything. This is a two-edged sword here. Everything can be used for good, or everything can be used for bad.

And what we found here in the compound of Ibogaine is that as you warn people about in your remarks about don't go out there and buy it off the internet, you know, go self-medicate yourself because there's a real opportunity that it wouldn't turn out good. But properly dosed, properly diagnosed, properly dosed, properly administered, properly followed up with.

This can be a compound that literally can change millions of lives. At the start, we're focused on veterans because of the PTSD, the traumatic brain injury, the challenges that they've got. But when you look at the further populations out there,

We worked pretty hard in the state of Texas to come up with ways to not send people to prison. We put criminal justice reform in place in the early 2000s here. And it was a model. As a matter of fact, it was the model that President Trump used to put national criminal justice reform in place to be able to intervene before people ever went to prison to where they would become professional criminals.

And it's that same concept here that we need to find ways to keep people out of prison, to keep people off the streets. And in a lot of those cases, Joe, it's substance abuse that got them there. It's some mental health challenge that started them down the road of using either alcohol or some of these other substances.

And if we have at our disposal, if we have here a plant that God gave us that we can use, and literally it appears in a lot of cases, one treatment, and it takes away your desire to have another drink of alcohol.

one treatment and save a person like, read else ass life because of fentanyl. I mean, if we've got that in our grasp, I mean, how bad you got to hate people to not make that available to us?

And the other thing that you were talking about, Brian, is the profound effect that it has on the people that have experienced it, where they recognize that they are truly connected to the divine. And that imagine all these downtrodden, forgotten people that are just cast out of society and prison, instead of having them continue this path.

If there's something that can put them on a completely different path, a path of positivity, a path of integration in society, a path of love, we can change the tone of the country. The whole world.

You have just hit for me what this is all about. We have sat here and talked about TBI and PTSD, the horrors and the cruelty of war that 20 years of conflict has put upon innocent young men and women of this country who have volunteered to go and lay their lives down for her who have had to come back and beg, beg.

for access to what can alleviate their suffering. We've sat here and talked about the opioid epidemic. It's monstrosities, the way in which it is the gravest engineered humanitarian catastrophe to play out in this country's history.

All of these are symptoms of profound spiritual affliction which is destroying the core of what the United States has always been. The greatest attribute that Ibogaine has is its ability to affirm the reality of our human divinity. We are not the result of a random accident of astrophysics and chemistry.

We are the images of an eternal Creator who put us here for a purpose to be able to see and perceive the Creator's majesty as reflected most especially within us as individual human beings who have received the gift of love, of perception, of discernment, and the ability to connect to the majestic eternal love of that Creator.

I began to deliver it. I can attest to the fact that it delivers it. My wife and I traveled to Tijuana a year ago. She had been on selection for 21 years to manage symptoms of a profound mood disorder which manifested through psychotic mood swings that have affected her since the birth of her son.

I have known her for 23 years and when we decided, I'll back up to this. If I were going to be an advocate for this, I thought that it was necessary to take my own medicine. If I'm going to get out here and advocate for it, I need to be brave enough to man up and to receive it. And so the week after Thanksgiving of last year,

By a deliberate choice and at the invitation of Jonathan Dickinson and Trevor Miller, I traveled down to Tijuana along with my wife to receive I began to understood what it would do. My wife decided that she wished to receive it as well. She is very much a left-brain rationalist and was not someone who came to the realm of psychedelics with any degree of enthusiasm, but she wanted to see if there was the potential that she could be freed of her necessity to take Alexa every day.

Before we went down, I was told that she wouldn't have to be completely select-free for five days because if the SSRI was in her system, it would defeat Abigail's therapeutic restoration. When they told me that, I was in despair because I said there is no way

that I will ever be able to get her to Mexico after five days without Alexa. In fact, if we go one day without her taking it, I can't be in the house with her. It is unbearable, it is dangerous, and it cannot happen. We will not be able to make it. They said, we're going to give you a regimen of supplementation to give her that will keep her stable. She's going to get edgy on you, but you'll get her down here. Joan, we went down there.

We received it on Tuesday evening, November the 28th. My wife took her last Alexa on November 23rd of 2023, and she has not had one since. Before we came here,

We went to beyond, and we received Ibogaine and 5MEO DMT there as well, in order to understand how each operation affectsuates the safe delivery of this medication. And what I can personally attest for me and for her, collectively and together,

I began, paired with 5MEODMT, has been the most profound spiritual experience either of us have ever encountered. I am 100% persuaded that these substances are divine medications that are engineered from on high so that we can heal what we do to ourselves, what we do to each other,

and be affirmed by the love of our Creator, which is eternal and almighty. Amen. If you believe in God, you have to believe that if God created these things and people are aware of these things, they're there for a purpose. There is no greater gift we can give to our brothers and sisters in this society than to affirm the love of their Creator from Him.

If that had not been affirmed for me as a child, I would not be sitting here. It is the single most important thing that we can do, and its therapeutic benefits upon the physiology of the human being is another affirmation of the realities that we're sitting here talking about. For the people listening, is there anything that they can do to get involved to help? Well, obviously, for me,

a public standpoint in the state of Texas, if you have relationships with your state rep, your state senators, the governor, let them know that you're spending some time learning about this and you're supportive of it. For the veterans, particularly, is to, we're gonna be doing major outreaches into the veteran community.

At the same time that this is going on in Texas, we're going to be seeing a movement across the country at the federal level, at the congressional level. There's a number of the members of the legislature are very supportive of this. You've got, as I mentioned, with the incoming, hopefully the incoming administration of President Trump, Bobby Kennedy,

uh... jay about a chara uh... dr oss uh... a number of folks hopefully uh... you know the the rumor factory is that uh... potentially knolland williams might be uh... being considered for uh... position of in the administration as well on the mental health side of things there there's never been a time to see the cards kind of being laid out on the table in a good way that we're gonna have a win-in-hand here uh... like we have right now so one of my

You know, goals is to educate the public. There's a young lady that's going to be helping us here in Texas, Ann Claire Stapleton. Ann Claire was a former CNN international reporter. She's going to be coming in to Texas to help with the Texas Ibogaine Initiative to educate the media. That's a very important goal and role that we're going to be playing.

making sure that the men and women out there in the news business understand this compound, understand what we're going to be doing, and so the education of the public. I'm convinced, Joe, that once the general public

understands what this is, how it works, how it can be used in such a wonderful, therapeutic way, and that the lives that can be saved, literally the lives that can be saved. At that particular point in time, then I think this becomes

a bit of a no brainer, so to speak, and the general public will get behind this in a powerful way and at that particular point in time. Then it's about a question that you ask that's really important. How do you structure getting the treatment centers, getting the people trained? That's going to be a

It's a good problem to have. And I look forward to working with both the Texas medical community and the Texas legislature and the Texas citizenry at large to deal with it. We can. I'm excited about it. But I think, again, it has the potential to be as profound a positive impact on the practice of medicine, particularly in psychiatry.

in the history of either of those. I agree. Anything else, gentlemen? One thing I'd like to add from a technical perspective and then if it's all right, I'll finish out with some observations that I have come to through those years of service that we've discussed.

When it comes to how

We will be able, hopefully, around this project to bring all those who have labored around Ibogaine for years now and to draw upon their expertise as to how best to deliver what I would describe as the Platinum Standard Model for an Ibogaine-based treatment and recovery system that maximizes all of its therapeutic benefits, whether they be for substance use disorder, polysubstance use disorder, TBI, PTSD,

or other degenerative conditions that have significant detrimental impact on the brain. And I'll finish my part of this discussion with this. We have sat here and talked about specific reality and the way in which public policy has impacted it and what its potentials are to generate human progress.

As you know, there are a variety of faith traditions around the world which have common themes within them. Those themes are often told within those faith traditions as parables. What your audience has listened to with us is a parable about contemporary American society and where we are.

I think most folks would agree that we find ourselves in the midst of an existential struggle for this country's survival.