#2477 - Rick Perry & W. Bryan Hubbard

What It Covers

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry and Americans for Ibogaine co-founder W. Bryan Hubbard reveal that Texas has committed $100 million to fund the first unified FDA drug development trial for ibogaine, a psychedelic compound derived from the African iboga shrub, with 181 of 188 Texas legislators voting yes and multiple additional states passing parallel legislation to accelerate federal approval.

Key Questions Answered

• •State-led drug development: When federal agencies are stymied by bureaucratic capture and pharmaceutical industry influence, individual states can fund and execute FDA drug development trials independently. Texas's $100 million commitment creates a legal pathway where states pool resources and political influence to force federal responsiveness. Advocates targeting state legislatures should build coalitions of 30 committed citizens with personal stakes, then pursue a five-month legislative campaign targeting each legislator individually with science, policy, and personal testimony.
• •Ibogaine addiction interruption rates: A single oral dose of ibogaine eliminates opioid physiological dependency in 48 to 72 hours, with Stanford functional MRI scans showing brain activity normalizing to match a healthy brain within that same window — a process that takes 18 months through abstinence programs with single-digit success rates. Two doses produce a 98% interruption rate across opioids, alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine, and tobacco, compared to a 75% failure rate for current pharmaceutical treatments costing $700,000 per patient.
• •Neuroplasticity window advantage: Different psychedelic compounds produce different windows of neuroplasticity — the period when the brain can be retrained and healed. Ketamine produces a 48 to 72 hour window, psilocybin 14 to 28 days, but ibogaine produces a 90 to 120 day critical period. This extended window makes ibogaine uniquely suited for treating complex, layered trauma and addiction where sustained neural reorganization is required, giving clinicians and patients a far longer therapeutic intervention period than any other compound.
• •Brain atrophy reversal in non-trauma patients: Rick Perry, who had no history of substance abuse or childhood trauma but sustained three severe concussions during his life, underwent ibogaine treatment and received brain scans at baseline, one week post-treatment, and six months post-treatment. His prefrontal cortex activity increased 27% at one week. At six months, his neurosurgeon confirmed the atrophy present at baseline had disappeared entirely, with his brain presenting imaging characteristics consistent with a 40-year-old. This suggests ibogaine's neuroregenerative capacity extends beyond addiction and PTSD populations.
• •Federal Right to Try leverage: Under the 2018 Federal Right to Try Act authored by former Senator Kyrsten Sinema, any patient with a life-threatening condition can request access to a medication that has cleared FDA phase one safety testing from a willing prescriber. Once Texas completes ibogaine's phase one trial, opioid-dependent patients could legally request treatment immediately — except the DEA has unilaterally asserted that schedule one substances are excluded from the law despite no such language existing in the statute. Advocates should pressure the DEA to honor the law as written.
• •Multi-state legislative momentum as federal forcing function: Americans for Ibogaine convened 200 state officials from 22 states in Aspen in November to coordinate parallel ibogaine legislation. West Virginia passed its bill unanimously in both chambers, Mississippi passed 111 to 1 in the house and 51 to 1 in the senate, Tennessee's senate finance committee voted 11 to 0 to advance its bill, Oklahoma's house passed its bill, and Kentucky's senate passed 35 to 2. The strategy treats state appropriations as an unstoppable external force designed to crash through federal inaction by creating an irreversible unified FDA trial.
• •Ibogaine's scope beyond addiction: Emerging evidence and field reports indicate ibogaine produces measurable improvements across traumatic brain injury, CTE in former NFL and NHL players, young-onset Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, Lyme disease, and post-surgical brain complications. A woman with young-onset Parkinson's who had lost the ability to write due to hand tremors reported full restoration of function four months after a single treatment. The Center for Brain Health at UT Dallas is launching a three-year study tracking cognition, sleep, substance use, and neuroimaging across 18 months post-treatment.