Rick Perry and W. Bryan Hubbard

High-Level Overview

Former Texas governor and US Energy Secretary Rick Perry joins Joe Rogan alongside W. Bryan Hubbard, the former chairman of Kentucky's opioid commission, to make an impassioned case for ibogaine, a psychoactive plant compound that is currently Schedule I in the United States. Perry explains how a chance meeting with Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell in 2006 set him on a 17-year path from drug-war conservative to one of ibogaine's most prominent advocates. Hubbard lays out the science as he understands it, including a Stanford study of 30 special-operations veterans, how ibogaine is believed to reset opioid dependence, and its serious cardiac risks. He also tells the story of how Kentucky nearly committed $42 million of opioid settlement money to ibogaine research before the effort was killed, and how he and Perry now hope Texas will finish the job.

The tone is earnest, moral and often deeply personal, with Rogan largely listening and prompting. Hubbard speaks in long, eloquent passages about Appalachian poverty, broken government systems and spiritual renewal, while Perry brings folksy storytelling and a politician's focus on the practical path through a legislature. The conversation moves from personal origin stories into science and policy and finishes on faith and a broad critique of how government treats the suffering.

The Discussion Explores:

• How Rick Perry's friendship with Marcus Luttrell led him to veterans' mental health and then to plant medicine
• Why ibogaine is Schedule I, and the Nixon-era politics and Hunter S. Thompson prank tied to its history
• The Stanford study of veterans treated with ibogaine and its reported brain changes
• How ibogaine is believed to reset opioid dependence, and the cardiac risk that demands medical supervision
• Bryan Hubbard's path from workers' compensation lawyer to Kentucky's opioid commission
• The rise and collapse of the Kentucky Ibogaine Initiative
• The plan for a Texas Ibogaine Initiative and how the research would be structured
• Faith, the divine and a critique of government systems that profit from human misery

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

From a Beach Vacation to Marcus Luttrell

Perry tells how, on a 2006 vacation in Coronado that he did not want to take, his security detail ran into a Navy pilot who offered him a tour of the Naval Special Warfare Center. The young sailor helping lead the tour turned out to have just received the Navy Cross at the White House: it was Marcus Luttrell, then almost unknown, whose Operation Red Wings story Perry only discovered by looking it up afterward. (The tour leader, Jake Ellzey, is now a member of Congress.) Perry gave Luttrell the line he had said to hundreds of people: if you're ever in Austin, come by. In May 2007 Luttrell actually showed up at the governor's mansion, and he ended up living with the Perrys for two and a half years.

That relationship opened Perry's eyes to "the brokenness of our government's ability" to help returning service members. Luttrell had been separated from the Navy without access to TRICARE, leaving the VA as his only option for complex back surgeries. Perry raised money to get him private care in Houston and personally called Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to have Luttrell re-evaluated and made eligible. Perry's point is that Luttrell was lucky to know a governor, while thousands of veterans with mental health issues have no one to intervene. He helped found the Military Heroes Support Foundation in 2007, which he says has given away a thousand homes, but he stresses that a beautiful home does not help if your mind is not where it needs to be.

A Conservative's Conversion to Plant Medicine

Perry calls himself a "conservative right wing" Republican who grew up on a dry-land cotton farm, went to Texas A&M and flew for the Air Force at a time of monthly no-notice drug tests, so fear of drugs was drilled into him. His first shift came in 2013, when a mother whose epileptic son was helped only by THC persuaded him to look at the data, and Texas passed medical THC for epilepsy. He is clear that he still opposes drug legalization, even while praising Rick Doblin and the work of MAPS; what he supports is medically diagnosed, medically dosed treatment with proper follow-up. He first heard of ibogaine around late 2017 from Morgan Luttrell, Marcus's twin, whom he had brought to the Department of Energy to help with brain-injury research using the national labs' supercomputers.

When a political consultant warned him he was about to throw away 40 years of conservative reputation, Perry says he answered that he had studied it, visited Mexico multiple times, and that "My reputation is not worth more than their lives." He adds that "Morgan will tell you it saved his marriage. Marcus will tell you it saved his life." Rogan agrees that the message lands differently coming from a straight-laced Republican governor, and mentions others such as Sean Ryan who have had similar experiences. Perry says he is encouraged that figures he expects in the incoming Trump administration, including Bobby Kennedy, Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Oz and possibly Nolan Williams, are open to plant medicine, and insists "This is just a human being issue," not a partisan one.

Why Ibogaine Is Schedule I

Rogan explains that ibogaine is not a party drug, has no potential for addiction and, if anything, seems to interrupt addiction. He recounts how the public first heard of it: in the 1972 primaries, Hunter S. Thompson spread a made-up rumor that candidate Ed Muskie was addicted to ibogaine and being visited by a Brazilian witch doctor, which Rogan says tanked Muskie's campaign. Perry notes that Schedule I is supposed to mean no medical use and high addiction potential, yet ibogaine fits neither, and argues that Nixon swept many compounds into Schedule I for political purposes, with people imprisoned under that framework for 50 years.

Perry contrasts the US with countries such as Mexico, Canada, Australia and France, which allow ibogaine for clinical trials or medical use, while "20 plus veterans a day" die by suicide here. He wants ibogaine moved to Schedule II or III so broad clinical trials can happen. Perry also describes visiting the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center from 2005 onward and seeing wounded soldiers handed opioid lollipops and "sack fulls of opioids," which he believes addicted a generation of warfighters. He argues no group of warriors in history has been in such prolonged conflict, with special operators living in a constant state of heightened alert for months at a time.

The Stanford Study and Reported Results

Hubbard explains that in 2018 Amber and Marcus Capone founded VETS (Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions) after Amber, desperate about her husband's post-deployment trauma, sent him to Mexico for ibogaine treatment; she says he came back as the man she married. Since then, Hubbard says, over 1,000 veterans have traveled to the Ambio clinic south of Tijuana. Philanthropists then funded a Stanford study led by Dr. Nolan Williams, in which 30 veterans were assessed with psychological tests and before-and-after MRI scans compared against a large database of healthy brains. Hubbard reports that white matter thickened across their brains, regions tied to emotional regulation and executive function grew, and average brain age reversed by about one and a half years, with the top five seeing nearly five years. He says the study was published in Nature Medicine on January 5, 2024.

Perry adds that all 30 veterans had moderate to severe PTSD and about eight had previously attempted suicide, and says that 88% had zero PTSD symptoms six months later, with Williams telling him the results appear to hold at a year. Hubbard also describes meeting a University of Zurich researcher treating Parkinson's disease with low, non-psychoactive doses of ibogaine, including a video of a man whose Parkinson's began at 41, who was bedbound by 51, had undergone deep brain stimulation and signed up for euthanasia, and who could stand and walk after a four-week course. Perry acknowledges this is anecdotal, which is exactly why he wants rigorous US trials. Hubbard relays Williams's view that ibogaine is "the most sophisticated medication on the planet," and says he now believes any system keeping it criminal "is in fact criminal and needs to be tore apart brick by brick."

How Ibogaine Is Believed to Work, and Its Dangers

Hubbard traces the modern story to Howard Lotsof, a heroin user who took ibogaine out of curiosity in 1962 and found his craving gone after a nine-year dependency, and to pioneers including Stanley Glick, Dana Beal and Dr. Kenneth Alper. The mechanism is still not understood, he says, but the opioid-dependent brain loses its capacity to produce dopamine and serotonin. He cites figures that the body's natural dopamine peak is about 125 units versus 925 for opioids and 1,100 for meth, and describes addiction not as moral failure but as a neurochemical brain injury. By his account, ibogaine restores dopamine and serotonin production within 36 to 48 hours, resolving physical opioid dependence in 80% of people with one dose and 97% with a second. He contrasts that with abstinence-only treatment, which he puts at about a 7% success rate because the brain needs 18 months to recover on its own, and says ibogaine is the only known substance to successfully treat meth dependence.

Hubbard is emphatic about the risk. Ibogaine can prolong the QT interval and cause torsades de pointes; given improperly, "it will slow and stop their heart." It must be administered by medical professionals with interventional cardiology experience and a nursing team able to deliver atropine, and he says the risk can be mitigated by co-administering magnesium, as the clinics he has visited (Ambio near Tijuana and Beyond in Cancún) do. He urges listeners never to buy ibogaine online or pick any clinic at random, points to an informational provider list maintained by Juliana Mulligan, and stresses that treatment needs a supportive therapeutic environment. Perry echoes that "the dose is the poison": properly diagnosed, dosed, administered and followed up, it could change millions of lives.

Bryan Hubbard's Road to Kentucky's Opioid Commission

Hubbard grew up in Russell County, Virginia, in a coal-mining family devastated for generations by alcohol, substance abuse and untreated mental illness. His grandfathers, who went underground at 16, gave him sanctuary and told him that God loved him and had a special purpose for him; without that, he says, he would not be alive. Law school crushed his idealism, and he fell into a 16-year career defending workers' compensation claims for clients such as Walmart, Tyson Foods and the Tennessee Valley Authority, just as the opioid epidemic exploded. He describes deposing, again and again, hard-working Appalachian women whose scans showed nothing but who hurt from head to toe and were loaded up with OxyContin, Xanax and other drugs. One day he realized: "That pain was not physical. It was emotional and it was spiritual." Their hope had been broken.

In 2017 he took over Kentucky's Social Security Disability system. His team's study found that from 1980 to 2015 Kentucky's population grew 20% while disability enrollment grew 249% and childhood enrollment 449%; opioid doses per adult recipient rose from 47 to 147, and habit-forming psychotropic doses per child from 275 to 457. A federal official told his team that "claims are down and that's bad because claims equal budget," which convinced him the program often serves its own bureaucracy. Running child support enforcement, he found 40 county attorneys charging the program rent on property they owned, and ended the practice. After being fired when the administration changed, he ran the attorney general's Medicaid fraud unit, where he says indictments and convictions doubled, many involving opioid-treatment clinics diverting Suboxone.

The Kentucky Ibogaine Initiative and Its Collapse

Asked to chair the opioid commission overseeing $842 million in settlement money paid over 15 years, Hubbard noted that Purdue Pharma had once made $100 million a month from OxyContin: "These are crumbs off the tables of gluttons." He set out to find "Kentucky's Manhattan Project opportunity," a therapeutic breakthrough. Through the writer Juliana Christina he met Juliana Mulligan, who had nearly died when an unsafe provider in Guatemala gave her a double dose and her heart stopped repeatedly, yet woke feeling the best she ever had. A confidential New York dinner in December 2022 connected him to the Capones, Nolan Williams, Kenneth Alper and others. He told Attorney General Daniel Cameron that ibogaine resolves physical dependence quickly, gives people a sense of ownership over their future so they can live "a life that is defined by choice rather than compulsion," and often brings a spiritual affirmation of purpose.

The commission explored setting aside $42 million, 5% of the settlement, for a public-private partnership in which a drug developer would match the state's money and take on all FDA-related risk. Three five-hour public hearings covered the science, personal testimonials (including one from Perry) and cardiac risk; at the third, FDA officials testified that ibogaine's cardiac risk would not disqualify it from clinical trials if it could be shown to be safely mitigated. Philanthropic foundations and two drug developers had committed. But after the 2023 election a new attorney general took office, and on December 15 Hubbard walked into what he calls an ambush meeting and was asked to resign for his advocacy. He was then taken in by Rex Elsass, a Republican ad producer whose REID Foundation is named for his son Reid, who died of a fentanyl overdose in 2019, and who offered to help carry the effort to another state.

The Texas Ibogaine Initiative

Perry notes that Texas already passed psilocybin research legislation for veterans on the first try, 142 to 8 in the House and without opposition in the Senate, showing a conservative state will support this. The Texas Ibogaine Initiative seeks a $50 million appropriation from a projected $20 billion surplus. Hubbard outlines the plan: a notice of funding opportunity to drug developers, who must explain how they would design trials, recruit participants, eliminate cardiac risk and, crucially, give Texas a perpetual stake in any resulting intellectual property. He contrasts this with buprenorphine (Suboxone), which he says was created with $62.5 million in federal money before industry kept all the returns. The chosen developer would match the state's investment and carry the regulatory risk, and state money would fund trials at Texas medical institutions such as the Texas Medical Center in Houston.

Perry predicts the initiative can become law by September 2025, with the VA and universities as likely partners and former CNN reporter Claire Stapleton helping educate the media. Hubbard says efforts are under way in Ohio, Washington state, Arizona (with outgoing Senator Kyrsten Sinema), New Mexico and Missouri, and that Kentucky state senator Donald Douglas, a physician, hopes to revive the idea there. Perry asks listeners in Texas to tell their state representatives and senators they support it, and ties it to Texas's criminal justice reforms, arguing that if a single treatment could keep people out of prison and off drugs, "how bad you got to hate people to not make that available."

Faith, Personal Experience and a Critique of Government

Hubbard describes taking ibogaine himself, reasoning that an advocate should "take my own medicine," and traveling to Mexico with his wife, who had been on Celexa for 21 years for a severe mood disorder. With supplements to keep her stable through a required five-day washout, she received treatment in November 2023 and, he says, has not taken Celexa since. The two also received ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT at Beyond, which he calls the most profound spiritual experience either of them has had; he believes these substances are divine medicines. Perry roots his own commitment in his father's service as a B-17 tail gunner and his years as commander in chief of Texas forces, and praises Ross Perot Sr. for his help to wounded veterans.

Hubbard closes with a sweeping critique: we live in a "brutally dehumanizing era" in which citizens are treated as revenue units and government systems "commodify problems that they are supposed to solve and they monetize sustained human misery." He believes the opioid epidemic and veteran suicides are symptoms of profound spiritual affliction, and that ibogaine's greatest gift is affirming human divinity. Rogan ends by saying he has more hope for the country than in a long time.

Conclusion

This episode is part personal testimony and part policy pitch. Rick Perry and Bryan Hubbard argue that ibogaine, a Schedule I compound, shows remarkable early promise for veterans' PTSD and brain injury, for opioid and meth dependence and possibly for conditions like Parkinson's, and that US government policy has kept it from being properly studied. They are equally clear that it carries real cardiac risk and must only be given under expert medical care, never self-administered. Beyond the science, their stories (Luttrell showing up at the governor's mansion, the Appalachian women whose pain was really broken hope, the Kentucky initiative killed on the cusp of success) make a moving case that the people who suffer most are often the least served, and that rigorous, publicly accountable research is the way forward.

This is a summary of "Rick Perry and W. Bryan Hubbard" from The Joe Rogan Experience, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST.