Psychedelic State(s) of America Puts A Spotlight On Texas
This is the first column for the new series “The Psychedelic State(s) of America” which examines grassroots psychedelic advocates and researchers from across all 50 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico and internationally including Indigenous nations. For this project, Lucid News is partnering with journalists Jack Gorsline, Noah Daly, Dr. Alaina Jaster, and Joe Moore of Psychedelics Today to bring you stories from the cutting edge of psychedelic activism. This story was written by Noah Daly and Jack Gorsline.
Against the expectations, it was the 60th District Rep. Mike Olcott (R), a former researcher with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and a staunch fiscal conservative, who spoke in favor of the ambitious ibogaine legislation in the Texas Legislature last week.
“If I hadn’t served on the public health committee, I’d probably be a ‘no’ on this bill,” says Olcott of HB 3717, the ibogaine research bill put forth by Rep. Cody Harris of the 8th District. “$50 million dollars to play around with some psychedelic drug? That would go against every principle I have.”
HB 3717, which has already passed the Texas House and is awaiting a vote on a companion bill in the State Senate, would establish a grant program to fund FDA research into ibogaine as a possible treatment for opioid addiction. The money for the research would come from the The Texas Ibogaine Initiative which seeks $50,000,000 in state funds to establish a public private partnership with a co-equal $50,000,000 matching contribution from a drug developer.
According to the Texas Ibogaine Initiative website, this money will fund “Texas-based FDA-approved clinical trials with ibogaine as a breakthrough therapeutic for opioid use disorder, co-occurring substance use disorder, and any co-occurring mental health conditions for which it demonstrates efficacy.” As part of the initiative, Texas’ commitment to this project will be joined by philanthropic support from three prominent family foundations which are committed to advancing ibogaine’s development as an FDA-approved medication.
For comparison, Olcott, a known budget hawk in Texas, voted ‘no’ two weeks ago on HB 4014 “relating to a study on the use of psychedelic therapies in the treatment of certain conditions” which would expand research into ketamine, MDMA, and psilocybin. That bill would cost Texans $1 million in taxpayer dollars over a two year period. Despite Olcott’s no vote, HB 4014 gained the necessary majority in a House vote to move onto the State Senate. The deadline for the governor to approve both HB 4014 and HB 3717 is the end of the legislative session on June 2nd.
This surge of proposed legislation on psychedelics means that the Lone Star State could become the first in the nation to bring multiple bills for funding research into psychedelic-assisted therapies to the governor’s desk in a single session. Politicians in Texas, including noted skeptics like Olcott, evidently believe that the benefits of opening the doors to psychedelic research are worth putting aside personal and political stigma.
After its passage in the Texas House, HB 4014 was recommended to the State Senate Committee for Health and Human Services which is considering HB 4813, a bill that proposes to automatically reschedule any drug the FDA deems safe for use or that the federal government removes from the controlled substances list.
Changing Minds in Texas
According to an impassioned speech to his colleagues on May 12th, what drove Olcott to change his mind on supporting research for psychedelic therapies was an interaction he had with Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS) co-founders Amber and Marcus Capone during a reception organized for the Texas Public Health Committee. If passed, HB 3717 would open the doors to a first of its kind ecosystem for domestic ibogaine research. It would make tens of millions in public funds available to researchers and seek an equally large buy-in from any organization that is approved to work with the drug.
In 2023, grassroots support for further research into ibogaine was stymied by political dogfights and concerns over the drug’s potential to impact electrical activity in the heart. Despite these challenges, a critical mass of military veterans have become charismatic champions for the powerful psychedelic in recent years as they have sought treatment at offshore clinics. Two years after Kentucky’s Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission (KOACC) Chairman W. Bryan Hubbard and a coalition of advocates made a ground-breaking attempt to fund ibogaine research into treating opioid use disorder in Kentucky, ibogaine is back on center stage in the heartland of the GOP.
“Ibogaine isn’t just another drug, it is a whisper of redemption,” Rep. Harris told the Texas House of Representatives on Tuesday. “In a single dose it can silence the screams of withdrawal, quiet the cravings that chain people to addiction, and mend the pieces of a mind ravaged by trauma… This isn’t a distant dream, it’s happening now just beyond our borders, and Texas can bring it home.”
While Ibogaine Stalls in the Bluegrass State, Texas Speeds Ahead
The Texas Ibogaine Initiative is in many ways the prodigal project of the same coalition that pushed for Kentucky to pass a nearly identical plan in its spring legislative session of 2023. Kentucky’s Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission (KOACC) was created to help distribute the over $842 million in federal settlements the state received in 2022 from pharmaceutical companies for their role in exacerbating the deadly opioid crisis. Of this total, $42 million, less than 5% of the settlement to Kentucky, was proposed to fund ibogaine research. It is little surprise then that the REID Foundation, a non-profit started by media mogul Rex Elsass to support treatments for opioid addiction, tapped none other than W. Bryan Hubbard to be the executive director of the Texas Ibogaine Initiative – which the foundation has funded.
The KOAAC sought a similarly large allocation for ibogaine research, and also planned to use a public-private partnership model. This entails public and private entities joining forces to share resources, expertise, and risk to advance a specific goal, like drug discovery or development. Public-Private Partnerships aim to leverage the strengths of both sectors to achieve outcomes that might be difficult for either to accomplish alone. When that effort was claimed by then Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R), however, the trouble began.
Cameron was then in the midst of the Kentucky governor’s race against Democratic incumbent Andy Beshear.. Despite his lack of direct involvement with the KOAAC’s efforts, the MAGA-backed Cameron’s support for the initiative further fueled concerns over the downstream effects of putting such a hefty swath of federal opioid settlement funds towards psychedelic research.
In addition to moving support towards a Republican gubernatorial candidate and hesitation towards psychedelic research, there were the bad optics of Cameron’s seemingly close relationship with a billionaire donor, Jeff Yass, who has a sizable investment in the pharmaceutical company Atai Life Sciences, which is developing its own ibogaine treatment with DemeRX Pharmaceuticals. Governor Beshear had an easy soundbite to squash the initiative.
“If you only provide $1 million to law enforcement and $42 million to pharma, it doesn’t seem like you’re backing the blue. It seems like you’re backing Big Pharma,” Beshear told reporters at a press conference in May 2023.
Texans Pick Up the Ibogaine Trail
Today, there is no political discord around ibogaine in Texas. The state enjoys a Republican Trifecta, meaning the GOP controls the offices of the governor, the secretary of state, the attorney general, and a majority in both chambers of the state legislature. Ibogaine was also given a major media boost through its prominent feature in a December episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, with Hubbard and former Texas governor Rick Perry as guests.
Many of the Texas politicians who back HB 3717 cite the advocacy of special operations forces vets for ibogaine therapy as a reason for their staunch support. In a state that is home to the third highest number of active-duty military personnel in the nation, this support has been more than enough to get people’s attention. Signs point to a swift signature for HB 3717 from Governor Greg Abbott, but this medical research model will not be the only path to ibogaine therapy in town.
“The Joe Rogan effect” is statistically undeniable both economically and politically. Even beyond Rogan’s conservative-friendly political ties and his oft-proclaimed psychonautical history, however, the capital city of Austin’s psychedelic scene runs deep. Progressive Austin cultural organizations like the Casa de Luz restaurant and community space and the Psychedelic Society of Texas claim roots in Austin’s underground psychedelic community.
Just last week, Austin’s sole members-only bath house, BATHE Austin, played host to the inaugural ACT Conference – a first-of-its-kind practitioner, facilitator, and psychedelic professional-focused conference. Featured speakers included Austin locals like Zach Leary, son of former Harvard professor and 20th century psychedelic trailblazer Timothy Leary, and emerging community leaders like Psychedelic Guide Network (PGN) founder Ashley Carmen. ACT conference co-founder Olivia MacDonnell, a survivor of the Children of God Cult, has since founded TAP INtegration – a mobile app designed to provide psychedelic therapists, guides, trip-sitters and psychonauts with post-psychedelic experience integration and harm reduction resources.
The Illuminating Collective
In addition to political, veteran and social support for ibogaine, the powerful community of veterans and first responders have been key players in Texas. Just outside of Austin stands an outpost for an alternative legal psychedelic future. Dubbed The Illuminating Collective, it is a Veteran and First Responder-founded and operated Psychedelic Church.
Founded in March 2022 by veteran and former Austin fire fighter Justin LaPree, The Illuminating Collective, was initially established exclusively for military veterans and first responders seeking psychedelic healing in a seemingly semi-legal context.
As LaPree’s operation and interest in The Illuminating Collective began to grow beyond the veteran and first responder communities, he says he recognized the need to expand the scope of the church’s focus.
“As I gained confidence in my work and what we were creating [we] opened it up to all seekers,” LaPree said during a panel appearance at The Lone Star Plant Medicine Showcase in Austin last week. “Trauma doesn’t discriminate and I have a lot of friends that didn’t wear a badge or the uniform that very much need” access to psychedelics for healing.
According to LaPree, The Illuminating Collective team has facilitated roughly 456 psychedelic ceremonies since opening shop, working primarily with psilocybin and 5-MEO-DMT. However, given the increased attention surrounding ibogaine at the State House, LaPree has his sights set on keeping pace with the political progress and then some.
“We’ll be starting to serve ibogaine in ceremony starting in July,” LaPree noted, adding that the church’s “long-term 10-year plan [is that we] really see ourselves being in about 30 or 40 different cities, [but] we’ve really built out our business model to be able to touch 100 cities in the US alone.”
Even Psychedelic Science Is Bigger In Texas
Before Logan Davidson began his current role as executive director for Texans for Greater Mental Health, he served the legislative director and then chief of staff to Representative Alex Dominguez of Texas’s 84th Precinct. Dominguez was the architect of HB 1802, which set up a study to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of MDMA, psilocybin, and ketamine to treat a host of medical conditions. Though considered a landmark success in the push to study psychedelic therapies, HB 1802 set up a clinical trial that is under a four-year deadline, which ends this year.
This turned out to be an educational experience for Texas advocates and politicians supporting psychedelics. “The biggest lesson that we learned was to not have an expiration date on the legislation,” Davidson says. “The FDA and DEA approval processes can take a long time, longer than you or I can predict.”
By not including a deadline in the legislation, Texas can let participating researchers carry on with their work as long as the funds remain, regardless of the political jostling in Washington. Davidson notes that this is a far better funding strategy for research into psychedelic therapies. “That way you don’t have to then come back and pass another piece of legislation to get an extension, or work with the agency to get an extension.”
Support for psychedelic therapy research in Texas illustrates that there is a broader acceptance for psychedelics in conservative states than many imagine. “If you’re not from here, it’s really easy to watch headlines or clips on Fox News or TikTok or CNN and get this idea of this very one-dimensional political environment,” says Davidson. “We’re home to the Texas Medical Center, the Johnson Space Center…medical and scientific innovation is at the very foundation of who Texas is. It’s in our groundwater.”
The first livestream in the Psychedelic State(s) of America series, PSA Advocacy Spotlight: What’s Next for Psychedelics in Texas? will air on Thursday, May 22 at 1 pm ET. Hosted by PSA Founder Jack Gorsline and featuring Texans for Greater Mental Health Executive Director Logan Davidson, the livestream will explore the roots of Texas’ fast-moving psychedelic policy reform efforts, dig into the nitty gritty of what the Texas Ibogaine Initiative is aiming to accomplish, and discuss the future of psychedelic access in Texas beyond the scope of the state legislature.