The Texas flag flies over the Texas Capitol in Austin, Texas. (Tom Fox, The Dallas Morning News/TNS)
AUSTIN, Texas (Tribune News Service) — U.S. Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer, who once rescued three dozen people during a battle in the war-torn mountains of Afghanistan, was still in his 20s when the trauma came for him.
Alcoholism, flashbacks, rages, and midnight panic attacks wrecked his life, his marriage, and his ability to parent his daughters.
Then the Medal of Honor recipient traveled to Mexico to be treated with ibogaine — a centuries-old psychoactive drug derived from a plant indigenous to Central Africa, increasingly viewed by the medical and science community as the next big hope in trauma, depression, addiction and brain injury treatment.
Meyer underwent one treatment session in 2019. And his life changed, almost overnight.
“It’s like going through years of therapy in one sitting. It’s a hard reset,” Meyer said in a recent committee hearing. “I‘ve never had an anxiety attack since. It saved my life. It gave my daughters their dad. And I’m now serving as a firefighter, as an author, and an entrepreneur, and a contributing citizen to my community. I’m present, I’m purposeful and I’m alive.”
Now, Meyer and other advocates of ibogaine are pushing to bring clinical trials to Texas not only to help traumatized veterans and addicts who would participate, but also to build on the state’s vast medical research network to eventually make the treatment available in the U.S.
On Monday, the Texas House overwhelmingly endorsed the idea with the 141-2 passage of a bill that would fund a grant program for research and medical trials of the treatment.
“Texas stands at a crossroads, facing a tidal wave of heartbreak. Families torn apart by opioid addiction, veterans haunted by invisible scars and countless lives dimmed by despair,” said Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, the bill’s House sponsor. “Ibogaine could be their miracle.”
Senate Bill 2308, by Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, would spend $50 million to fund the grant program through Texas Health and Human Services, although the program would also accept private donations, investments and grants.
The Senate has already passed the legislation. Now that the House has approved the bill, it will return to the Senate with minor changes. If the Senate adopts the changes, the bill will head to the governor’s desk.
One million Texans suffer from opioid abuse disorder, and studies have shown that more than 7% of Texas adults suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, Harris said. About 1.4 million veterans live in the state, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Recent studies suggest between 33 and 44 veterans commit suicide every day in the U.S.
“Ibogaine isn’t just another drug. It’s a whisper of redemption,” Harris said. “In a single dose, it can silence the screams of withdrawal, quiet the cravings that chain people to addiction and mend the broken pieces of a mind ravaged by trauma.”
Ibogaine comes from the iboga shrub and has been used for centuries by medical practitioners and spiritual healers in the plant’s native West Central African nations of Cameroon, Congo and Gabon.
By the early 1900s, the treatment had made it west, through Europe to the U.S., before it was classified for its psychoactive properties as an illegal substance in 1970. Legal ibogaine treatments are available in clinics in Canada and Mexico.
The treatment interacts with brain neurotransmitters and neuroreceptors involved in memory, learning and neuroplasticity. Research suggests the drug can reset brain chemistry, which could help with addiction.
The patient is prepared in advance with a therapist and then is given the drug in a clinical setting, eyes closed. The drug induces a dream-like state that most patients describe as “not adverse, but meaningful,” said Stanford neurosurgeon Achal Singh Achrol, who has researched ibogaine and testified before a Texas House committee in support of the bill.
The therapy “causes a rewiring in the brain,” Achrol testified.
“It’s unraveling memories,” he said. “In this sort of revealing of stored memories that have an association of trauma, there is a release of that energy and the role it plays in the brain’s network pathways.”
In 2024, Stanford University published a study of 30 special forces veterans who were planning to go to Mexico for the treatment. All of them had brain injuries. Nearly all of them had PTSD. Half had alcohol and substance abuse disorder. Nineteen had been suicidal, and seven had attempted at least once to kill themselves.
One month after receiving the treatment under supervision from doctors and therapists, the veterans reported an 88% decline in their PTSD symptoms, an 87% decrease in depression symptoms and an 81% decrease in anxiety symptoms.
According to the World Health Organization’s disability rating scale, the veterans in the study had an average rating of 30.2 – mild to moderate disability. A month after treatment, that average dropped to 5.1 – no disability.
The study also showed such stark improvement in cognitive functioning that tests suggested the drug can slow or reverse the effects of aging on the brain – which could also have implications for dementia research, scientists told Texas House members during a recent hearing.
“We are not aware of any prior treatment that has demonstrated this biological capacity or degree of efficacy before,” Achrol testified.
State Rep. David Lowe, R-North Richland Hills, voted against the funding.
He said he is skeptical of attempts to make money off veterans.
Lowe, a veteran who said he has been treated for PTSD, added that he believes the federal government, not Texas, should drive ibogaine testing if it has merit.
“I don’t like it when they use veterans with PTSD as a selling point,” he said.
On Monday during the floor discussion, several Republicans said they were initially skeptical about using government money to test psychedelics – until they met the veterans who had used the treatment.
Rep. Mike Olcott, R-Fort Worth, said not only was his mind changed by the incredible stories he’d heard, he was so moved by the drug’s possibilities that he sponsored a veteran to travel to Mexico for the treatment.
“It seems impossible,” Olcott said. “They start at 10 o’clock on a Friday night. It’s a miserable night. They usually sleep the next day on Saturday. But when they wake up and kind of come to their senses on Sunday, the whole weight of what’s been haunting them for years has been lifted off of them.”
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