The New Yorker examines the unlikely rise of ibogaine as a cause embraced by conservative political leaders, tracing much of that transformation through W. Bryan Hubbard and former Texas Governor Rick Perry. The article follows Hubbard from his work confronting Kentucky’s opioid crisis through the collapse of his original $42 million research proposal and his subsequent campaign to rebuild the effort in Texas. There, Hubbard, Perry, veterans, researchers, and advocates assembled an unusually broad political coalition that ultimately secured $50 million for FDA-regulated ibogaine clinical trials. The movement then reached the White House, where a request Hubbard made to Joe Rogan helped prompt President Donald Trump’s executive order directing federal agencies to accelerate psychedelic research and drug development.
At the same time, the article presents the scientific, cultural, and ethical questions accompanying ibogaine’s rapid political ascent. Early research and veterans’ experiences suggest potential benefits for addiction, PTSD, depression, anxiety, and traumatic brain injury, but existing studies remain small and largely observational, while ibogaine carries potentially serious cardiac risks. The piece also explores how advocates have successfully reframed psychedelics around veterans, Christian faith, medical treatment, and conservative values rather than recreational drug use, helping propel psychedelic policy into the political mainstream. Yet questions remain about whether political momentum is outpacing the science, how ibogaine can be responsibly integrated into the medical system, and whether its commercialization can appropriately recognize and involve the Bwiti communities of Central Africa, whose traditions have incorporated iboga for generations.