#2477 - Rick Perry & W. Bryan Hubbard

32:52And there are very few, I'm going to say, single-digit people that are successful in being able to do that. But think about that. We got a compound here that has the ability to heal people of opioid addiction in 48 to 72 hours.

33:12And we're not doing everything that we can in our power to make that available. I mean, what the hell's wrong with us? How bad you got to hate people to not make that available? This episode is brought to you by SimpliSafe. Have you ever looked into getting a security system? A lot of these companies can leave you feeling trapped, which is the last thing you want when it comes to your safety. They lock you into these absurdly long contracts, and you have to take time out of your day to wait for a technician. As a longtime supporter of this show, SimpliSafe is nothing like that. SimpliSafe gives you the flexibility to choose what type of system you want and when to set it up.

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34:41That's half off at simplisafe.com slash rogan. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. And with two doses, it's even more spectacular. 98 percent. That is amazing. 98 percent. That is truly amazing. There's nothing even remotely like it with standard practice addiction therapy. Nothing. Nothing. You know, he mentioned the Americans for Ibogaine. We have ambassadors. And, Joe, what you really helped us do on January 2nd of 25 was create a movement. Our organization is the custodian of that movement. We are a public policy and advocacy organization. And Governor Perry mentions keeping me on the road. Wherever there are state leaders, citizens of conviction and influence, whether that is California, whether it's Massachusetts, or whether it's Alabama.

35:37We exist to plant the seed of a scientific understanding of a public policy framework and of a spiritual understanding of the significance of what we have in our hands here, an opportunity to improve the human condition at scale. And while we have talked tightly about Ibogaine's impact on substance dependency and upon the wounds of war, our ambassadors reflect essentially the universal human condition and the way in which individuals who have tried every way to overcome various forms of trauma and debility find as the last step a redemptive restoration through Ibogaine treatment. It is not for everybody.

36:22It should not be a first resort. It is an exceptionally powerful medication that comes with a series of side effects that are highly unpleasant, as you previously mentioned. One of the selling points, ironically, in the Texas legislature was to say, you know, if your idea of a good time is being in a state of semi-paralysis for 12 to 16 hours and throwing up continuously through the process, you're going to have a real good time. And if there is the equivalent of being brought to the judgment throne of God on this side of life. It is an Ibogaine experience. That seemed to motivate a lot of support, especially for those who subscribe to puritanical notions of punishment for wrongdoing.

37:06That's not what I'm here to advocate, but certainly it is not fun. But what we know is that, for instance, we have two fashion model twins whose father sexually abused them for a decade. And the results of that horrific experience that they shared produced all kinds of psychological maladies that included an eating disorder for one, persistent neuroses in the other. They tried every form of talk therapy. They tried every psychotherapy modality known to try to overcome that. And it was Ibogaine that restored their lives and their capacity to enjoy the life that God has given them. We have first responders who are emerging in numbers.

37:56One who is a firefighter from Oklahoma who was demoted because of decades of alcoholism. His life has been restored by Ibogaine and he's back working full-time. We have a gentleman who was a Charlottesville police officer who was hit in the face with a brick during the riots that occurred in Charlottesville. His life was restored by a single Ibogaine treatment, and he has attained a level of functionality that he didn't think was possible, nor his doctors. We have a gentleman who was a pilot who unfortunately did a bomb and run on a village and killed a number of innocent people. He learned about this, and this sent him into a spiral, as many war fighters who are exposed to moral injury do.

38:40Ibogaine has restored this gentleman's life. We have a gentleman by the name of Robert Gallery, a former NFL player who exhibited all the signs of CTE in his post-retirement years. He was ready to kill himself so that he wouldn't harm his own family. It was Ibogaine that restored his life. There have been And other NFL players who are as yet unnamed, some incidentally that have been in the paper who have gone for Ibogaine treatment to address similar symptoms. Players in the NHL, players in other contact sports that include soccer and rugby and the United Kingdom where there is an emerging cohort of professional athletes who have reached out to us to say, we want the United Kingdom for Ibogaine.

39:26I would love to get you guys connected with the UFC. We would love to be connected to the UFC. Because that is obviously an issue with professional fighters. So Hughes, Matt Hughes, and Matt had – I met Matt through Marcus, gosh, in like 2008 or so. And we went out for a fight. And then subsequently Matt had, I think, a car accident of which he really had a – He's hit by a train. Yeah, just an incredible traumatic brain injury. And I just want to have that conversation with him. And I'm sure you have great relationships with those. We know for a fact that cumulative impacts on the brain are what lead to CTE.

40:20I mean, I don't think that's even a question of here's how it happens. These multiple concussions have cumulative effect on the brain. And at some point in time, that CTE has a long-time effect. And this medicine has the ability to remove that trauma, to reset that brain, to heal that brain. I don't know how it works, Joe, but that's the reason these clinical trials are going to be so important as we're going forward. And I can't tell you, I'm ecstatic that the lieutenant governor and the speaker today announced their full Texas support behind these clinical trials. We're fixing to become the epicenter for a movement that literally can change the world.

41:19And I know that sounds kind of a little bit over the top. But if we have within our grasp here a compound that can heal our loved ones who have an addiction, be it a substance addiction or be it a non-substance addiction, if we have the ability to heal people who have been traumatically impacted by concussions, if we have the ability to address PTSD in all the different forms that it comes. I mean, the hope that that can give to the society that we live in, and I'm not talking about just the United States. You think about what's going on in Israel, in Ukraine, in the Middle East today, and the trauma that people are facing.

42:09I mean, this truly can be an extraordinary gift to the world. And, you know, listen, I think it's really interesting. You ask a leading question about how did I come to this position of being able to be supportive as I am? And when I think about my growing up, and I grew up in a very conservative Christian family. And I think one of the challenges we still have in our society is that the conservative Christian faith is like, stay away from that stuff. I mean, that's bad. Do not, under any circumstances, don't be going there. It's demonic. And there's a book that's about to be published. I think the first week in April, so we're approaching it.

43:13There's an author by the name of Wendy Reese, R-E-E-S, Wendy with an I, W-E-N-D-I-R-E-E-S. And she, not unlike the two twins, was sexually assaulted by her own father. He was a pastor of a church. Joe, I'm telling you, brother, I can't dream up in my worst nightmare a more evil thing than a father that would sexually assault their daughter. and she dealt with it with ibogaine and has come to the conclusion that her great gift to give to the world out there is to write this book called a christian's guide to psychedelics now if you think that won't catch some people's attention when they're going through the bookstore and they A Christian's Guide to Psychedelic.

44:11Holy mackerel. But this is a book about her experience, but it's also a book that I would suggest that every believing Christian, go pick it up and read it, because it talks about chapter and verse and gives you Scripture about where God talks about these compounds, about these things that he's given the world. He means them for good, all of them for good. Are you aware of the scholars in Israel that are proposing that Moses seeing the burning bush was the acacia tree? Yeah. There's an acacia tree. The acacia tree, which is very common in the Middle East, is rich in dimethyltryptamine. And they believe that what they're trying to relay in this story was that Moses encountered God through the burning of this bush.

45:08So the burning of this bush, releasing the psychedelic compound dimethyltryptamine, allowed Moses to bring back the Ten Commandments. You know, thank you for mentioning that. I have been following scholarship around the use and the recognition that there's a lot of psychedelic allegory in Holy Scripture. That, I think, is the favorite, where that bird and bush reveals the great I am. And when Moses says, who are you? I am who I am. And the beauty about Ibogaine and the other plant medicines are their capacity to reveal the I am that is within each of us. and that I am as our eternal creator who absolutely has engineered and placed these plants on this earth so that we can be affirmed in what our true identity and ultimate destiny is, and praise God for it.

46:04And then there's also the Sacred Mushroom on the Cross, the John Marco Allegro book, where he was one of the ordained ministers that was—his task was to decode the Dead Sea Scrolls. And he wrote this book that details what he believes is the use of psychedelic drugs in ancient Christianity.

46:28Hard for me to argue with. I mean, I just think our modern perception of it, which is very tainted by what happened during the Nixon administration, where they were trying to squash the hippie movement, the anti-war movement, and the civil rights movement. And that's why they demonize these drugs and these compounds. And that's why they put them in this category of having no medicinal use, which is clearly not accurate. It doesn't mean that they should just be given to everyone and everyone should do them with no restrictions and no regulations. It just means we should understand that they have a long history of human use and have spectacular results on all sorts of things that our society is suffering from greatly.

47:13And to just pretend that that's not the case based on what happened in the 1970s is just insane. It doesn't make any sense. I would suggest that one of the greatest lessons learned by Americans who are age 50 and younger, those of us who I call the bicentennial children, is that the most morally depraved criminal in America today is power. and the power of the human hand when it is wielded in its most abusive context will always seek to deny any access to individual human divinity and the liberty and autonomy that is conferred upon each of us as children of God. And insofar as we find ourselves at the precipice of what I believe is the emergence of a broad-based spiritual movement where all of us modernists within the empiricism of modern American society are able to see through the fog of all of our wealth and gadgetry and recognize.

48:12We are in the midst of profound spiritual famine in the United States. You, I know, and forgive me for referencing age, remember back in the mid-80s where we saw all these horrific images of starvation and dissension, distention and fly-covered death from mass famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, where millions of people starved to death because the malevolence of power forbade the delivery of any relief sent by the outside world. When we look at what's right in front of us in the United States today, there is no denying that we are in the midst of a terrible spiritual famine, and the malevolence of American power is feasting on our starvation.

49:12This is an emancipation movement for the mind, body, and soul of every human being in this country and across the globe who is lethally estranged from their own spirituality. The Ibogaine mission is a mission to foment dramatic medical breakthroughs across a host of conditions that have no effective therapeutic answers. But above and beyond that, it is about the affirmation of the spiritual essence of life that can unify us as a species in a way that is necessary if we're going to navigate these changes over the next 20 years. Governor Perry mentioned this wonderful invitation that I received to go to what was called the Earth One Summit.

50:02Now, Joe, I come out of Hillbilly Holler, Virginia. And it's a— I do. I introduced him from time to time. I said, look, this guy, he looks like and he sounds like a hillbilly from eastern Kentucky in the Appalachian Mountains. And I said, he is. But I said, he's one of the most brilliant people I've ever met in my life and one of the most extraordinary orators I've ever had in my life. So anyway, I wanted to – I love you, brother, but you are a hillbilly. I'm much more comfortable with that than all that other stuff you said. But, you know, when you come out of scratch, nothing sometimes there are certain sophistications that you lack.

50:50And I'm no exception to that. So there was this Earth One Summit. It was 200 thought leaders from across the world who came to basically discuss the future. And I was very honored to have received an invitation to come and attend the gathering to speak about what Governor Perry and I are working on through Americans for Ibogaine. And they presented me with the honor of being the closing keynote speaker for The Gathering. And as I listened over the course of four days, I heard individuals who included Kimball and Christiana Musk. And I've read interviews by Elon Musk speaking about the advent of AI and the capacity of AI to solve the central dilemma that we as humans have had since we emerged from the caves.

51:40And that's the dilemma of scarcity. So as I was there listening to folks speak about being on the edge of a time when we can automate the means of production and essentially create an unlimited amount of abundance for every person on this planet, I couldn't help but think about where we are right now as compared to where these individuals see us being in 20 years. You cannot create and deploy this kind of godlike technology, which has the capacity to produce unlimited abundance, potentially usher in the age of Aquarius, and drop it in to these Frankenstein monstrosity government systems that we currently have that are enthroned upon the helplessness of powerless people.

52:41that perpetuate problems that they are supposed to solve and that monetize sustained human misery. So long as government makes its buck over keeping its foot on the necks of the American people, we are looking at a future that much more resembles Mad Max than we are Star Trek. And if we are going to create the degree of social cohesion that is necessary to hold these systems accountable and to create a system that can truly usher in that age of unlimited abundance to improve the human condition for all, it begins with a spiritual reawakening that I began first and foremost and the rest of the psychedelics concede and foment within American society.

53:27To that end, and then I'll be quiet for the next little bit. No, you're good, man. We love listening to you. There is a six-part docuseries that will come out next year called Psychedelics And. And it is a series of interviews with a cross-section of leaders across the United States where they speak about their own quest for meaning and how psychedelics has helped them understand that we are more than just these material beings that get up and go to work every day and are a productive economic unit, go home and repeat. that there is a much higher sense of purpose that we are here to serve, and that the plants themselves have the capacity to enlighten us at scale in a way that's absolutely necessary if we're going to make that age of abundance happen as those visionaries articulate and dream for.

54:21What I think is fascinating about the age that we're living in is that change comes very slowly, but it comes much faster when you have the kind of access to information that people have today. And I don't think this conversation was possible 20 years ago. No, no way. And that's kind of amazing. No way. It's kind of amazing. And I don't think that there was a format for this conversation 20 years ago. This format has occurred because of the age of information, because of the Internet, and because there's no gatekeepers anymore. And because people have the choice to decide what they want to consume, what they want to listen to.

54:58and to be able to be a part of that to me is an incredible privilege and to be able to have you guys on and to have this conversation and to recognize that the reason why this is possible is because with for a lack of a better term the world's waking up yes sir it's just taking more time than we would like yeah but the world is waking up and change happens it just happens And people have to change their opinions. And that's very difficult because a lot of people identify with their opinions. Their opinions become a part of their ideology. And it's just very difficult to get people to change their ideology.

55:44They identify with this. It is them. And I've always tried to tell people the way I try to approach things. You are not your ideas. You are not your opinions. These are just thoughts and if you identify with them, you are trapped in them and you will be held hostage by them. You will try to defend them even if they don't make sense. You will try to ignore evidence that points you in a direction that's contrary to what your current belief system is. Don't be your opinions. Don't be your ideas. Just sit in them. Be consistent. Be honest. Have ethics and morals that you adhere to. But the ideas are just ideas.

56:26And if you're wrong, you should be proud to say wrong. It's a sign of growth. It's a sign of intelligence. And it's a sign of you being an honest human being who cares about the truth, not about being right. Because there's too many people in this world that they don't really have conversations. They have ideological sparring matches where they're just involved in these little intellectual tugs of war where they're just trying to be right. And this is not the time for that. It's just— So my going from hard no on criminal justice reform to literally a leader on criminal justice reform in the mid-2000s, my going from hard no on any psychedelic drugs that could be used in any way to now being what I've humorously referred to as the Johnny Appleseed of Ibogaine is to your point.

57:34You know, be open. Be willing to say you were wrong. I know my wife would like to hear me do that more often. But hey, if you don't mind, I want to take a minute and talk about how far this movement has come. And Brian talked about Americans for Ibogaine and our ambassadors all across the country and the growth that we've seen in this. And I want to give you one example to your point that five years ago, if you had had an institution that had its own reputation dealing with brain health and brain science and those kind of things, they would have just kind of moved you off to the side and said, you know, no thanks.

58:23But the Center for Brain Health in Dallas, this is an extraordinary institution that's connected to the University of Texas, as Dallas. Matter of fact, it's just next door to UT Southwestern, which is one of the great medical facilities in the world, UT Southwestern. And Dr. Sandy Chapman heads up the Center for Brain Health. And they've done some great work. We went up and presented to her, I don't know, probably 60 to 90 days ago. And there was another organization called Forward Intent. Forward Intent, just a beautiful young man and his wife, Alex Duran, and his wife who have funded an effort.

59:18And what they're doing with their resources, They're sending, I think, 250 individuals down to Mexico to both, I think, a facility called Transcend and to Ambio. And Ambio is that facility that I've been to, Brian's been to, Marcus and Morgan Luttrell have been to. I think probably 2 ,000 more fighters have been down to Ambio now. VETS underwrites them. and just as an aside, this has blown up so big. And I'm talking about the Ibogaine effort, the education of Ibogaine. People, you know, there's some hope out there. And people are rushing to find where they can go to, you know, to treat the addiction that their loved one hands or deal with their PTSD and what have you.

1:00:11And Ambio is just covered up. And I'm sure the other facilities are as well down there. The organization VETS, which is really where I came into this, Amber and Marcus Capone, they don't have any openings anymore. I mean, they are completely covered up. But, I mean, that's a good challenge. I'm glad we had that challenge. But my point is, you've got an institution in Dallas, Texas, that just like the state is getting the signal, it's okay to be out there talking about this. It's okay to be a leader. It's okay to get out there and lead the charge. And I want to read to you what Dr. Chapman – because I asked her, I said, do you mind if I talk about what you all are doing?

1:01:05And she said, absolutely. And she said, Governor, great to talk with you yesterday. Here are some comments to guide you in how to discuss our existing collaboration. I'm excited to announce that we have begun a partnership with the Center for Brain Health, the University of Texas at Dallas, Americans for Ibogaine, and forward intent to create the largest research study of Ibogaine to date, focused on understanding its impact on the brain among the veteran community. Dr. Francesca Philby, an expert in cognitive and translational neuroscience, especially the use of neuroimaging to study brain behavior relationships, will lead the research.

1:01:50Our mission together is to move beyond the question of, does Ibogaine help? And instead, answer the more practical questions veterans and clinicians need. Number one, who benefits and why? How long do the benefits last? Which aspects of daily life functioning, i.e. cognition, sleep, substance use, and overall well-being, improve or worsen following treatment? And how are these changes associated with brain alterations? The three-year study will follow those treated with ibogaine over the course of 18 months, which will allow us to create the first understanding of the sustained impacts of ibogaine on the brain across various treatment regimes.

1:02:37We'll be diving more into this topic on November the 19th at the Center for Brain Health's Brain Health Presents speaker series to share more. By bringing world-class scientific rigor to this space, we aren't just studying a substance. We're creating a foundation of knowledge that will expand safe, informed access for those who need it most. That is what Americans for Ibogaine is really all about. making that type of penetration, having that type of success, seeing what Brian and the other folks have created here in the state of Texas. I'm going to tell you something, brother. There is nothing that I've been involved with in my life that gives me more pleasure than to see what we're doing and knowing that there's a Father out there.

1:03:46A mother out there whose child's going to be saved. You mentioned dogma. People are, in particular in American society, there is a quest for identity. There is a quest for belonging. So much of what we see on social media and in broadcast media that is rage and anger and disaffection is tremendous loneliness. and a tremendous lack of belonging to something and a tremendous amount of trauma related to never having had anything that resembles unconditional affection within the context of a safe and stable familial relationship. That's at scale within the United States. And the degree to which dogma can thwart evolution is 100 % right on.

1:04:41And I just use my own self as an example. I was a child of Reagan's America. I can remember I was about five years old when he and President Carter had their first presidential debate in 1980. President Reagan was like the mother goose to the gosling. He just imprinted on me. And whereas other young boys had pictures of Joe Montana and Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson all over their rooms, mine was wallpapered with Ronald Reagan. I was the president of the Teenage Republicans in high school. I wrote him fan letters all the time. He actually replied to one, and I put it in a frame in my room.

1:05:23It was written on my birthday. I was president of the College Republicans at George Mason University, and I mean I aim to be the king of conservative Republican conformity. That was my whole mission in life. And I used to joke that when people said, well, how did you get to this? And what do you think about the fact that you're talking about it and you're so zealous in your advocacy? I would kind of make a half statement and say, well, if 25-year-old me could come and see 50-year-old me, he would look and say, what in the world happened to you? And I would kind of yuck and yuck and laugh about it.

1:05:59Well, here's the answer. If 25-year-old me could come back and look at 50-year-old me and say, what happened to you? 50-year-old me would look right back and say, you happened to me. You happened to me. Your youthful sense of certainty, your belief that you had it all figured out, your belief that you had no further greater evolution to achieve, sir, you and your insolence of youth, you happened to me. One of the things that I have so enjoyed learning about Governor Perry as he and I have built relationship. The first time I really started following him was when he ran for president in 2012. And I believe that had he not had that back surgery, we would not have had a second Obama term.

1:06:48He would have won that race. And I think he would have won it handily. It's been remarkable to listen to this gentleman who has been so firmly identified with the conservative wing of the Republican Party be so willing to be curious and to have that human value of curiosity and a willingness to hear and a willingness to know and a willingness to entertain that perhaps everything that he had been taught about this particular subject was not correct. Curiosity is a prime human value. And if you allow dogma to shut off your curiosity, you have hobbled yourself. And I think it was Muhammad Ali who said, if a 50-year-old man thinks the exact same way as a 20-year-old man, as he did when he was 20, he's wasted 30 years of his life.

1:07:37And that is dead on right. Dead on right. Yeah, I could attest to that. Curiosity is my number one attribute. That's the thing that's led me in life and everything I've ever done is just being open-minded and curious. I'm very fortunate is that I didn't think I had things figured out when I was 20 at all. I was sure that I was a moron. I was good at one thing, kicking people. That's it. And then from then I realized that there's a lot to learn and that as much as I learned about martial arts, I could apply that sort of open-minded discipline. Because you have to be open-minded to be good at martial arts because you have to be able to listen.

1:08:23You can't think you already know. You cannot. You won't grow and you won't get better. You have to be listening to coaches. You have to be listening to instructors. You have to be listening to your teammates. You have to listen to everybody. If you don't listen, if you have, don't tell me, those people don't go anywhere. And I learned that very early on. It's very fortunate that I found that path because I've applied that to virtually everything that I've ever done in life. Instead of having this belief that I have things figured out. I mean, I've certainly, like, been more sure than I should have been at many times in my life.

1:08:58but always willing to stop and go, maybe I'm wrong. And if it wasn't for this podcast, it would have never gotten to where it is because I've fortunately been able to talk to brilliant people. And, you know, I grew up in, I lived in California for 26 years before that. I lived in Boston and New York. I thought of people, the southern accent in particular, right? And this is a standard thing that a lot of people on the coasts have. You hear people talk with a southern accent. You think they're dumb. And it's a terrible stereotype that actually came out because of hookworm parasites. I'm sure you're aware of that story.

1:09:48I'm not. You're not. Educate me. the stereotype of the lazy dumb minded southerner came out of the fact that a large percentage of people in the south had contracted hookworms from walking around barefoot and hookworm parasites will rob you of your intellectual capacity they greatly diminish your ability to think and exhaust you you get slower and you know in quotes lazier but you're really just infected with the parasite and it's an enormous percentage of the population in the 1900s where we're infected with hookworm and in the south in particular hot climates and this is where this the stereotype came from when someone like you speaks with such insane recall like your recalls bananas like your recall of dates and Names and times and I have a pretty good recall.

1:10:49It's nothing like yours. It's extraordinary And I love when I meet someone who's brilliant who still has a southern accent because it's it's like Stereotypes let them all go baby because they're not real. It's not real. No none of that is real individuals very wildly and you know, I've met brilliant people from from coastal cities, and I've met fucking morons that talk like a person that you would assume would be a highly educated, intelligent person, but they're closed-minded and foolish in their ways. And having had this ability to have all these different conversations with different people, it's just like every time I have another conversation just expands my understanding just a little more and a little more and a little more.

1:11:38And I love it. And it's all out of curiosity. And I'm very happy that I've been able to make that curiosity infectious. My favorite cities, and I know we're getting off the beaten path here a little bit. I love to get off the beaten path. That's my favorite thing to do. My favorite cities in America are those that you can go to and not feel like you're in the country. Miami is fabulous. It's a wild place. You should have a passport to go to Miami. It is fabulous. And I remember the first time I went to New York City one time when I was about five years old. The only thing I could remember was the Empire State Building and some dude with purple hair sticking his tongue out at me.

1:12:18The next time was in 2019. And I'd always had kind of that stereotypical southerner's attitude, a bunch of, you know, haughty, rude, mean-acting Yankee people living in an obnoxious locale that would just be hell on earth. they have to endure. So I had the opportunity to go and spend a day there and rolled into Grand Central Station on the railway from, I think it was New Haven, Connecticut. And just to watch the dimensions of the architecture as we rolled into the city. Crazy. The expansion of scale of this place. How old were you? Well, let's see. I was about to turn 44. I think I could hear the Beverly hillbillies music playing in my head when I was going down through there.

1:13:05So we get off our Grand Central Station. And I mean, I walked all through that. I walked from Grand Central Station all the way down to the tip of where the World Trade Center was. It was New York City is a monumental human accomplishment. When you can have the entire world within 300 square miles, and it is a living affirmation of everything the United States is supposed to be as the last best hope of humankind on earth, just to be in that place. Anytime I've gone back since, I mean the minute that I go to get the Uber at LaGuardia Airport and I see that skyline, I mean my heart It just starts racing, racing, racing.

1:13:54I would have never thought that I would just fall in love with New York City. But it is fabulous. San Francisco is the same way. There are so many wonderful places in the United States where you wouldn't think that somebody necessarily who sounded like me would endorse. But one of the best things that I have done is stop watching television news. The last time I watched television news was after the first Obama press conference in January of 2009, and I cut it off. Aside from presidential debates and election returns, I've never turned it back on. The number – I shouldn't tell this. The number of times I've left my front door wide open, the garage door open in my neighborhood, and nothing has happened is remarkable.

1:14:42this country in terms of her people is as much like it was back in 1950 as it has ever been the complexion is a little different we've got a lot more diversity now than we've ever had but once you take that blinder of mass media mayhem and all this fabricated division that is purposely put out there to keep us divided. To keep us tuning in. Tuning in and segregated. Yeah. Once you take yourself out of it and you just start having a conversation, next time someone gets into an Uber with someone who doesn't have English as a sacred language, strike up a conversation. Ask them, how did you come to the United States?

1:15:28What brought you here? And your heart is going to fill with just the unbelievable amount of pride and love to hear those accents from the Middle East and from Africa speak about this country in ways that take us right back to 1776. It's a fabulous place. And I'm able to say so much of this because of what the plans have helped clarify by way of that universal human divinity that we all share, that this country is the cradle to protect and to honor, which is what makes this mission so incredibly important. And I do want to. Oh, I'm sorry. No, go ahead. There's two people that I left off of our ambassador program that I think are really showstoppers.

1:16:16I want to mention. One is a gentleman by the name of Rear Admiral Jim Hancock. This gentleman received Ibogaine treatment for his wounds of war. He was the Navy Medical Corps chief and was the medical officer for the United States Marine Corps. One of our other ambassadors is a gentleman by the name of General Glenn Curtis. He served in both Gulf Wars. He served in Afghanistan. his most recent stint of service was as the commanding general for the Louisiana National Guard. And he is one of our prime spokespeople for legislation that's pending in Louisiana right now to join Texas as a partner in this Ibogaine trial.

1:16:55That's fantastic. Please say what you were going to because I'm curious. I don't even remember. Hey, well, I remember what I wanted to talk about. And I want to get us back on the track that we were talking about. But, you know, Brian's done a great job to discuss the spiritual aspect of the medicine and what I mean. That's incredibly important. Don't get me wrong on that at all.

1:17:25But what brought me personally to the medicine, obviously my relationship with Marcus and Morgan and what have you, And then as I studied it, I'm like, if you're really going to be a legitimate spokesperson for this, if you're going to put your reputation out there, you need to be treated. You need to go through the treatment. And I'm going to get to you at the end of this conversation, but I want to set this up if I may. and in 2023 if my memory serves me correct this is the same time that Nolan Williams was heading up the 30 veteran study that Stanford was going to oversee kind of the early days if you will of some clinical trial type effort to have the data to have the background some early day efforts to start educating the public about that is how I do this.

1:18:28They had 30 vets. I think they were between the ages of like 22 and 42. They all had moderate to severe PTSD. They were, some of them addicted to alcohol. They were pretty classic veteran population that had some real challenges. They were sent to Stanford, and they did baseline functional MRIs. And then they were sent down to Ambio, just south of Tijuana, where they were given the treatment. And then that last, I think about a four-day treatment protocol, you go down, work your way in. Tuesday, you get in preparation. Tuesday evening, you get the compound. Wednesday's a recovery day. Thursday, there's a 5-MeO DMT treatment.

1:19:36and then you go home. They went back to Stanford after five days after the treatment and had follow-up MRIs. I think they had an MRI at 30 days and then a functional MRI at six months. So there was a good piece of data there to look at. Just stunningly good results. And the results, I think there was 87 % of them who six months now, better than two years later, but that have zero PTSD. The addictions were at that level of reduction that we talked about in the high 80 percentiles. I mean, we've seen all of this data before. This is nothing new. But the reason I share that with you is that I basically went down and followed the same protocol.

1:20:40I wasn't part of the clinical trial, and I only wanted to be treated with Ibogaine. I did not want to take the 5-MeO-DMT. So what I was looking at, and I was interested in this from the brain regenerative side of it. I had about as bucolic a life as you've ever had. I never had anybody mistreat me of anything that you could even get close to calling traumatic effect. I had no trauma in my life. I grew up on a dry land cotton farm, you know, 60 miles from Abilene, Texas, 16 miles from closest place that had a post office in a part of Texas that was just a lovely, wonderful, loving place. My mom and dad loved me, and I knew it.

1:21:20And, you know, my scoutmaster and my principal and my superintendent and my Sunday school class, who, by the way, were all the same person, and he drove the bus and was a football coach. But I had a as non-traumatic growing up period as you can imagine. So I was concussed, severely concussed, three times. Twice in athletic events, and I'm talking about knocked out completely for over one minute. And those are severe concussions. Two times athletic events, one time unloading horses. Knocked completely out. So what I know now is that as I got to pilot training and I started noticing that I was having trouble sleeping and that this thing that I understood later in life was anxiety had crept into my life.

1:22:24So I had – I'm going to put it in the mild category, anxiety and insomnia. I went into a very odd line of work in politics to have those two kind of things. And I masked them rather well. Most people didn't know I had that. My wife did. But other than that, even my senior staff in my offices through the year, agriculture commissioner, lieutenant governor, governor, they did not know that I had this challenge of maybe sleeping three and a half, four hours a night.

1:23:06being anxious at times to the point of being never dysfunctional. But from my perspective, probably some people out there in the political world said, hell, Perry, you were dysfunctional the whole damn time. What are you talking about? Anyway, beside the point. I had the treatment. I had the brain scan going in. I had the brain scan a week later, and I had the brain scan at six months.

1:23:41The first brain scan, they said, look, your brain looks pretty good for a 73-year-old guy. He said, you know, you're actually in pretty good shape. You don't have a lot of atrophy. You got some mild atrophy, but your brain looks pretty good. But the week after scan showed a 27 % increase in the prefrontal cortex of my brain. That's where your focus, your concentration, your emotions reside. At a 27 % increase in that prefrontal cortex activity. my six month scan

1:24:29I have a dear friend who's a neurosurgeon from Tyler Dr. Charlie Gordon who is a 40 plus year neurosurgeon, spine expert looked at lots of brain scans a respectful skeptic of this When I told him I was going to be treated with this compound called ibogaine, this psychoactive compound, he was recoiled a little bit. He was like, you need to be really careful with that.

1:25:10he has now gone from being respectful skeptic to looking at the data from the clinical trial that was done at stanford talking to a fairly good number of the veterans that went through that trial talking to dr williams talking to other specialists at the at stanford and he has gone from respectful skeptic to a full-on believer in this medicine. I mean, an absolute supporter that this medicine does what it says it does. It heals people of addictions. It heals from PTSD. This medicine does what it does. And we're driving back from the airport that day after the six-month scan. He had looked at it as it came off of the machine.

1:26:04And he said, Governor, I'm not going to blow smoke up your dress. Your atrophy is gone. He said, I have no idea why this has happened. But he said the difference between your initial baseline scan and six months later, clearly the atrophy in your brain is gone. He said your brain looks like a 40-year-old. Now, the reason I share that story with you is because, number one, that's partly what drives me about this, is that there is a regenerative aspect of this medicine that we don't really understand yet. And if it does what we think it's going to do, and that's the reason these clinical trials are just so stunningly important.

1:27:00That's the reason what the Center for Brain Health and what they're going to be doing and the data they're going to be collecting. I'm convinced of what this data is going to show. But for all of those individuals out there who don't have substance abuse problems, who weren't traumatized as a child, but who have been concussed. And we know that that damage is out there and that the cumulative side, Robert Gallery, that great professional football player who had really bad CTE, and he will tell you today this medicine saved his life. My question for you, Joe Rogan, is how many times do you think you've been concussed in life?

1:27:52I don't know. I have no idea. Dozens. Yeah, I'd have to go back and think about times. Most of it was from sparring or a few from fights. But if we think about that, if there is this cumulative effect. Yeah. Are you – how old are you now? 58. would joe rogan be willing to say you know what i've seen enough i believe that this medicine does what you say it will do and for a person like me that it could be incredibly helpful to my

1:28:42long-term plan of living a long and healthy and engaged life that Joe Rogan would go and be treated with Ibogaine? Yeah, I would definitely do it. I'm very fascinated by it. I mean, I've never heard anybody say, I wish I didn't do it. He mentioned his brain scans post-treatment. A couple of weeks ago, while I was at that One Earth Gathering, I met a lady who I will call Lonnie, and she had just returned from an Ibogaine treatment in November of 25. She related an early life of just ungodly physical abuse by her father, who was addicted to OxyContin. You know, we began this conversation about the realities of the opioid epidemic in America.

1:29:31While death is the most terminal outcome, is measured down about 700 ,000 Americans, there is a much broader web of hardcore travesty that exists around each of those death outcomes. And Lonnie experienced that. She had multiple concussions from her own father. Like many individuals who experienced trauma of this nature, she developed her own drug addiction. She was in and out of jail. She was homeless at a different point in time. She managed to get recovered. She had a separate traumatic brain injury that was fairly severe in 2018. And then she was diagnosed with what I believe is called young onset Parkinson's, Parkinson's diagnosis that is pre-age 50.

1:30:19Her Parkinson's had progressed to the point to where she could not write because of the tremulousness in her hands. So when I saw her two weeks ago and she introduced herself, she had all of the appearance and affect of a perfectly healthy human being. It was only after we sat down and she explained what her experience had been and where she was at now that the Ibogaine disclosure was made. her hand was just as calm as mine. And she said that it had been essentially three months and that she had been able to resume a normal life and then her mind felt restored. Now, based on the responses we got after our first interview with you, I want to be very careful here.

1:31:04This is truly the edge of science. And there is much unknown about the variety of Parkinson's that this can treat. there's some suggestion that it is better for those who have a genetic predisposition for the disease than it is for those who contract Parkinson's as the result of environmental exposure. Ibogaine does not appear to have any impact on Parkinson's developed as a result of exposure to environmental toxin. The stage of the disease at which you catch it also appears to make a big difference. The earlier, the better. It has also been asserted that ibogaine does not cure Parkinson's. What it does is slows disease progression and creates for some a broad window of opportunity for the restoration of function that can dramatically improve the quality of life.

1:31:56Now, I'm just given a number of qualifiers about its impact and efficacy on one individual, but think about what we just said here. This is a woman who was diagnosed with young-onsets Parkinson's. She had lost the ability to write because of the tremulousness in her hands. She's four months out from a treatment, and she's been able to resume her full normal life with a complete restoration of function. If we could get a COVID vaccine out in nine months, there is no reason why, with the focused effort of Texas and the other states we'll discuss here momentarily, that we cannot achieve the moonshot of our time within three years or less.

1:32:38And that is the completion of an Ibogaine medication that can be fully integrated into the U.S. healthcare system and made just as universally available as every ineffective opioid-based treatment that we currently deploy through the medical system at a cost of$700 ,000 per patient. sponsored by Indivior, which is one of the chief pharmaceutical developers of everything that we have that fails 75 % of the time. Yeah, I mean, if we could do it, it would be pretty extraordinary. And if it is done, I really do believe that it would have a complete changing of society. When people have no hope and there's nothing, and then all of a sudden there's something that comes along that you do it once and it's an 85 % effective rate.

1:33:30And you do it twice and it's in the high 90s. I mean, how many people are out there struggling with something, whether it's alcoholism, whether it's obesity, whether it's, you know, that's another thing. Like there's people that are calming themselves with food, right? And it's masking. That's probably a sugar addiction, don't you think? I mean, from the standpoint of... It is, but for a lot of people, there's something else. For some people, it's sexual abuse when they're younger and they eat. Interesting. It's an addiction. And it's not just a physical addiction. It's a psychological addiction.

1:34:09I brought up gambling because I know a lot of people that are addicted to gambling. Pornography. Yeah, pornography. Sure. There's a lot of things. The non-session models we mentioned are ones who had developed those eating disorders, one of which was a compulsive eater. as a result of that childhood sexual abuse. And Ibogaine was the treatment of last resort, not the first option. And their own recovery story, which can be found on the Americans for Ibogaine website, is truly extraordinary. And speaking of extraordinary, when we came in here to push Texas, our belief was and still is and is now playing out at scale that if Texas did this, it would be joined by a number of other states who are no longer willing to sit and wait on an inefficient, often incompetent, and also incompetently corrupt federal bureaucracy that will not move in response to the genuine needs of the American people at the pace that it needs to.

1:35:10There are a variety of well-intentioned reformers within the current administration. Secretary Kennedy, Secretary Collins, and others, who have voiced their support for the advancement of plant medicine as breakthrough treatments primarily for U.S. warfighters, but also for other members of our society for whom these medications could help. We believe that these individuals are stymied by two realities. The first reality is the Byzantine complexity of the federal bureaucracy, the degree to which it has been compromised by the institutional capture of much of its functioning by companies that make money on keeping problems alive.

1:35:55We think they're probably also stymied by perhaps some other political cross-currents within the administration that view psychedelics with skepticism and that are therefore willing to be indiscriminate in their resistance to the advancement of any of them, when in fact, the advancement of this one is of existential critical importance as a breakthrough treatment for millions of Americans who need it now. And so to that end, Americans for Ibogaine following the Texas success convened a gathering of 200 people in Aspen, Colorado in November of last year. These individuals were invited, appointed and elected state officials from 22 individual states and aligned citizens of influence who would be willing, as the Texans were here, to get behind efforts in state legislatures to create a partnership with Texas that by end result will form the unstoppable external force through the states that can crash through the federal wall using not just their resources, but their political influence to execute one unified FDA drug development trial and to force the federal government to be responsive to everything that is required to ensure it is successful.

1:37:10So as we sit here today, we have been working with elected officials in Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Vermont, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, South Dakota, and California, each of whom have legislators who are willing to introduce and to pursue bills to join their states into Texas as this trial. Governor Perry and I spoke to the American Legislative Exchange Council as keynote speakers on December 5th of last year. This is an umbrella think tank organization for center-right, mostly Republican legislatures from across the country. In its entire existence, ALEC has taken two positions when it comes on the war on drugs.

1:37:57More prison, more penalties, more prison, more penalties. Ad if an atom. After we spoke about the necessity of Ibogaine's medical integration into the United States and the capacity of the states to force this reality into being, ALEC issued a formal position statement as well as model legislation endorsing what we call the American Ibogaine Initiative to bring the states all together to make this happen with one unified voice. And so now, as we sit here with you today, in the state of Tennessee, there are two bills, one each, in the state House and the state Senate that are making its way through that legislature to join Texas.

1:38:41Before we walked in here this morning, the Tennessee Senate Finance Committee voted 11 to nothing to move Tennessee's bill forward to the full state senate for consideration and what will I believe be passage and I would like to give a shout out to a special sister by the name of Ricky Harris who has led that Tennessee campaign. Right now there are two bills in the Missouri legislature House Bill 2817 and Senate Bill 1581 which are receiving good considerate deliberative thought by legislators there but frankly need a little motivation. So So if you're in Missouri and you want to see Ibogaine medicine for your family member, for your community, for your state, you call into the Missouri legislature and say, move the Ibogaine bill forward to join Missouri with Texas.

1:39:25Oklahoma, the Oklahoma House of Representatives has passed its Ibogaine bill. It is now pending in its Senate. In Louisiana, Senate Bill 43 has been introduced to join that state to Texas. and in what I can only describe as full circle justice. The Kentucky Senate passed Senate Bill 77 by a margin of 35 to 2 to join Kentucky where this all began with Texas as a state partner in this Ibogaine drug development trial. It is now sitting in the Kentucky House of Representatives. So you, if you are at home, please call the Kentucky House of Representatives and ask them to pass the Kentucky Ibogaine initiative so the state will not be left out.

1:40:09Now, here are some just unbelievable words that are going to come out of my mouth. The state of West Virginia, their House of Delegates by a vote of 96 to nothing, and their state senate unanimously passed their Ibogaine bill to join Texas, and it has now been sent to their governor for signature. and the one that is the most poignant and moving for all the obvious reasons, the state of Mississippi, the crucible for the triumph of uniquely American hope over horror. And of the leadership of Representative Sam Creekmore, its state House of Representatives passed by a margin of 111 to 1 and its state senate passed by a margin of 51 to 1, the Mississippi Ibogaine Initiative, which will tie the state of Mississippi with a$5 million appropriation from its opioid fund to Texas to develop the most powerful psychedelic on the planet as a breakthrough treatment for trauma and addiction for the people of Mississippi.

1:41:18That's incredible. It is going to be signed, actually has been legally signed by Governor Tate Reeves. And Governor Perry and I have asked for a special sign-in ceremony with Representative Creekmore, his legislative leaders there, to stand in Jackson, Mississippi and see that sign-in to law as a matter of ceremonial formality. What a wonderfully redemptive opportunity that we have here to shepherd. And we hope and pray that our organization can be sufficiently resourced and sufficiently engaged over the next three years so that we can see this process to conclusion. I'll mention a couple of others since we're talking about the capacity to make this a broad-based humanitarian mission that improves the human condition.

1:42:05Just Friday, before traveling down here on Sunday, I received a letter from the government of Gabon, naming Americans for Ibogaine as its official partner for the advancement of Iboga medicine globally. Gabon has 2.3 million people. It's got 100 ,000 square miles of territory that's the modern Garden of Eden. And I've had the opportunity to take a trip there from, and I mean trip is in the geographic sense, not the Euboga trip, though. I hope that that will be on the agenda in the ceremonial way sometime within the next year. We traveled there from January 6th to January 20th. And if someone would have said, when you go to Gabon, you're going to have one of the most down-home experiences you've ever had in my life, it would have blown my mind.

1:42:52But it was a fabulous journey. one in which they were jubilant about our ability to demonstrate that what they call the sacred wood, in fact, is one of the most scientifically advanced substances that has perhaps ever been discovered. And we're honored that the government would choose us as their partner to move this forward. On Monday, after a conference call with Chief Gary Batten, I can confirm that the Choctaw Nation will seek to join Texas in the expansion of this Ibogaine drug development trial onto their sovereign territory as the third largest Native American tribe in the country. On April the 7th, I will be traveling to Durant, Oklahoma for what is being called the Inter-Tribal Council meeting of what they describe as the five civilized tribes.

1:43:47That's their name, not mine. This is a gathering of the leadership of the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Cherokee, the Muskegee, and the Seminole. We expect a passage of a resolution that I will be there to lobby for, where the five civilized tribes will declare their solidarity with Americans for Ibogaine for the integration of this divine emancipator into the U.S. health care system as expeditiously as possible and make all of their resources available to explore the extent to which we can operationalize Ibogaine medicine as quickly as possible. And it's my hope and aspiration that we will see all of Native America join this effort before the end of this year.

1:44:32Can I stop you there? Would that make it so that they would be able to immediately establish retreats there? So similar to the way they have casinos? Because they don't have the same sort of regulations that some states do. So tribal sovereignty is an area of the law with which I am not familiar. I would not be able to speak to the degree to which they could autonomously open a clinic. The most immediate issue would be related to the creation of a supply chain because you have traveled through interstate commerce in the U.S. states, which is theoretically restricted. However, there is one spectacular opportunity not just to expedite the creation of Ibogaine treatment access for Native America, but for all of America.

1:45:17And this gets into federal right to try legislation, authored by former U.S. Senator Kirsten Sinema and signed by the president during his first administration in 2018. And what federal right to trial legislation or the law provides is that once any medication makes its way through phase one safety testing within the FDA's process, then anyone with a life-threatening condition for which that medication is being developed can request treatment with that medication and obtain it from a willing prescriber. What does that mean? That means that as soon as Texas or as soon as one of the native tribes effectively completes a phase one safety study under the language of the law, anyone who has a life-threatening condition for which this medication is being developed, first and foremost, opioid dependency, can go and request and get the treatment.

1:46:25We have one complication. Presently, the Drug Enforcement Administration, in keeping with the practice of many government agencies that use their arbitrary authority to interpret law, has asserted that federal right to try does not apply to Schedule I substances. This means that based on not the language of the law, but on DEA's interpretation preference of that law, once Ibogaine clears through phase one, it would be disqualified for access under federal right to trial because the DEA says that if Schedule I substances were intended to be included, they would have been specifically listed in the legislation.

1:47:13when Kirsten Sinema, the author of the bill, explained to them that the language is unambiguous and it says any medication, their response was insolence and a refusal to honor what the statute actually says, which is one of these numerous examples of the use of fictitious legal realities to do violence to legitimate reality. The DEA needs to be told to relent on its misinterpretation and extrajudicial interpretation of federal right to try to interpret it as written so that once any phase one study on ibogaine is completed, delivery can be effectuated through the medical system immediately. And I might add one of the challenges that I've seen over my 40 years of being involved in government is that bureaucrats, the easiest and the safest answer for a bureaucrat is no.

1:48:13And I think that's part of what we're running into in D.C. with the DEA. one of the issues that I certainly hope and pray and as we go through the summer and as we see what's happening in Texas and Mississippi and these other states that we'll have the opportunity to sit down with President Trump and to just share with him what we're doing what we're seeing across the country and that we could potentially have a conversation about the rescheduling of Ibogaine from one to three, two or three, you know, just you get it out of that schedule one, which there's no reason in the world. You've talked about this many times, Joe, that Ibogaine is on schedule one.

1:49:01It does have medical purposes. I mean, it's very clear it does. And secondly, it is not addictive. So the idea on its face that Ibogaine is shown as this Schedule I compound is just a fallacy. Well, the Schedule I, the sweeping Schedule I Act of 1970 is just nuts. They just threw a bunch of stuff in there, many of the things that aren't even psychoactive. A question, the abogatry, can it be grown in the United States?

1:49:34Theoretically, it could be. Is it climate dependent? It's climate dependent. It's soil dependent. It is considered an entourage plant whereby it absorbs essentially the essence, not just of the soil around it, but of the other botanicals. One of the things we learned in Gabon is that much like we have grape varietals in California for all the different kinds of wine that they produce, there are different varieties of the Iboga shrub. How it grows in the north of the country is very different than how it grows in the south. In terms of the amount of compound that's in it or the type of compound that's in it?

1:50:14The potency, the strength, the nature of its effect on the person, the way that it kind of facilitates the spiritual journey. There's some of it that will kind of have a dark angle. There's some of it that has more of a light angle. we are just really scratching the surface of knowledge as to all the ways in which it can vary based on how it grows naturally. One of the most fascinating things that we learned there, and this is going to give you chills, we visited a five-hectare, they use the metric system, we visited a five-hectare iboga plantation right in the center of Libreville that is run by one of their former prime ministers.

1:51:00It's an experimental farm to kind of understand how it grows, the optimal ways in which to grow it, and what different outcomes are. So as we were walking along, we came to these two small bushes. It takes for about 10 years to come to maturation. We come along this pathway, and they were two shrubs identical, growing just a couple of feet apart from each other. And they pointed those out and said, now what does that look like? And I said, well, those are eboga shrubs. And they smiled and they said, well, it would appear so because they are identical. They said, but in nature, when you find an eboga shrub, you're going to have to be very careful to determine which one's which because in nature it looks like they grow in pairs.

1:51:49One is the real deal. The other is its poison imposter. Oh. And they grow together. And they look identical? They look identical. How do you differentiate? It's not until they get fully grown into their 10th year. One bears fruit, which is the real deal, and the other does not. Wow. Now, how does that do you for the physical communication of a mystical spiritual reality? So it takes 10 years for it to come to fruition to the point where it could be useful? No. So you could use it before then, but you don't know whether you're getting the real deal or you're just killing yourself. When you see them grow in pairs, that's correct.

1:52:32So there's one group of people who know how to differentiate. One of the things that we learned is that there is a healthy underground international market for the bark. Just like we use vitamin B complex or we use valerian root to help us go to sleep, people in Gabon will use the Iboga bark for mental acuity and just like drinking a cup of coffee. I mean, to get the psychoactive effect, you have to eat like five big, huge heaping plates of this stuff over the course of time. It's so bitter it will burn your mouth. I mean, it's an Olympian ordeal. This is the bark. Yes, sir. It's an Olympian ordeal to consume the amount of bark that's necessary to get that mystical effect.

1:53:16and you're sicker than a dog the whole time you're doing it. But apparently piracy in the country for the shrub is fairly prominent. And they explained that what poachers will do is that they will take the poison imposter and basically like the street supply where you put pollutants in with cocaine or whatever here, they put that imposter bark in with the real because you cannot visually differentiate. The Umbongo Pygmy, who we had the privilege of meeting, who hosted us for an overnight ceremony of blessing and protection that was just phenomenal. They apparently can just taste the bark, even when it's mixed together, and they can tell if it's adulterated with the imposter.

1:53:58Wow. But to know that— Those are like sommeliers of Ibogaine. Yes. That's a great way to put it, an Ibogaine sommelier. I might have to go over and get tutored. Yeah, I wonder what that process is like. Boy. Well, it seems to me that with the incredible effectiveness of this compound and it being adopted by all these states, he said, it almost seems inevitable that change is coming. Well, here's what we need to make change happen. We need the DEA to get on board. Well, we need the DEA to get on board, but we need one man to get on board, and that man is the President of the United States. We're here to recognize America in her 250th year.

1:54:46Twenty-five of those 250, now 10 percent of time, has been spent at war. And there are conditions unique to war that only this medication can responsibly address in a way that nothing else can. If there is an opportunity to improve the human condition at scale, particularly for those who are even right now being marched in to go and fight yet another war, taking executive action that would direct Ibogaine to be moved to Schedule 2, that the provisions of the Halt Fentanyl Act be applied to the Texas Multistate Ibogaine Drug Development Trial, that the DEA be directed to interpret federal right to trial so as to not exclude Schedule I medications that are in drug development and that it be appropriately interpreted so that any medication that makes it through Phase I can be accessed by a person with a life-threatening condition and then directed that federal scientific research agencies, whether they be within Health and Human Services or the Pentagon, come alongside the states in direct partnership to fund and foster the accelerated pharmacological development of ibogaine so that this medication can make its way all the way through the FDA's process with their supportive guidance within three years or less.

1:56:15It is the moonshot of our time. And if there's a humanitarian legacy to be left for the ages by a president who very much wishes to have a legacy that is well reflected upon by posterity. This is one of the most monumental opportunities he has to help folks at scale in a way that no president perhaps has before. We're at an inflection point in history, not just for this country, but globally. Well, I certainly hope that this message reaches the president, and I will try to make sure that it does. Thank you, sir. I mean, I think in terms of the amount of people that it can help and the crisis that our country is enduring with opiate addiction, with PTSD, with all sorts of trauma, with CTE, from sports, from car accidents and what have you.

1:57:08I mean, this is – it's astonishing that this is even a struggle. when you consider the effectiveness of this it's astonishing that we have to plead and that you have to put in so much work and kudos to you for doing that and kudos to dan patrick for this recent adoption of it here in texas and i mean i just can only hope that momentum is on the side that's correct and that this this is implemented through the entire country and that people wake up and realize like we can help people and everyone at this point in time because the opioid crisis everyone's touched by this everyone has a family member everyone knows someone a friend a neighbor everyone everyone knows someone who's been hit by this my friends that have no problems with anything else and they had an injury and got hooked on opiates and had a terrible time kicking it opioids are I'll use the word demonic I don't know any other way to describe it and to have seen back in Kentucky where this all started in my opinion and your work there and to have the success that we're seeing now in Kentucky and having it blocked historically when you were there at the Opioid Abatement Commission and the current governor being a part of that blockade, if you will, former employee of the Sackler family.

1:58:45And today to have the opportunity, you know, for the Kentucky, people of Kentucky, to finally get the opportunity to make right what they got so tragically impacted by back in the late 90s and the 2000s. I just, I mean, it gives me great hope, not just for this country, but for the side of righteousness that this happens in a big and a powerful way. He mentions the Kentucky experience. Before we rolled out the Ibogaine initiative there and stood up the opioid commission, I thought our first job was to go and to hear from the people of the state. You know, we were getting a billion dollars in settlement funds.

1:59:35This money was coming to us because thousands of their family members had died. So recognizing that confidence in government is at an all-time low, I thought it was important to go out and say, hey, here's who we are. Here's the job we've been given. Here's the resource we have. Tell us what need you have in your community that we can look to fund. This is something that needs to be accessible to grassroots organizations. It needs to be accountable to you as people, and we need to make sure we're transparent with how we use this money. But our first job is to listen. Well, over the course of 20 town halls across the state, Tuesday evenings from 6 p.m.

2:00:12until we wrapped up, What began as a 15-minute technocratic presentation of what this state commission does turned into these... And these mass catharsis events were hundreds of people, thousands over the course of those 20 town halls, poured out the depths of their grief right at our feet. And after they did, the sum total of their response to us was, we don't think that you have the competence or the integrity to do anything that's going to make a meaningful difference in this life, in our lives. And we don't expect one cent of this money is going to make the least bit of difference for us. At one of these town halls, I heard about a young woman by the name of Tamara.

2:01:04And the woman who told Tamara's story was a volunteer at a clinic for the survivors of child sexual abuse. This particular clinic made sure that children received appropriate medical treatment, that they received proper therapeutic counseling, and that they were placed in family circumstances where they could perhaps have a chance to have a decent life. So this volunteer told about meeting a young woman by the name of Tamara when Tamara was 10 years old, had been horrifically sexually abused by a family member. Tamara had to have a series of reconstructive surgeries because of how awful it was.

2:01:40And she said that she worked with Tamara for about two or three years and that she went to her adopted family and she hadn't been heard from since and that she assumed that that was, despite how awful her circumstances were when she came through the door, that she managed to get well and go on and have a relatively functional and happy life, as happy as one can to be a survivor of those circumstances. This same woman said that about 10 years later, she was volunteering at the Perry County Kentucky Detention Center in the county seat of Hazard, and that she was offering mindfulness and yoga classes to inmates there, just as a volunteer.

2:02:25year. And she said she went in one evening to teach her class and that she saw this young woman sitting in the corner after herself, kind of withdrawn. She didn't want to come participate in any of the yoga exercises or anything and that she was looking at her. And she said, you know, even though she was an adult, she looked kind of like what this young woman appeared, Tamara, when she was 10 years old. She said, so I walked up to her and knelt down beside her and I said, is your name Tamara? And she said that young woman looked up at her and recognized and asked Brian and she said yes. How'd you know?

2:03:00She said I'm a volunteer who worked with you when you came to our clinic when you were 10. What are you doing in here? And Tamara explained that because of the surgeries that she had performed to be reconstructed they had given her opioids and that what began to treat her physical pain she continued to rely upon to treat her tremendous spiritual and emotional pain and she had gotten busted by an oxy on the street by a deputy with the Perry County Sheriff's Department and put in jail. Now you think about what I just said about how this young woman's life got started off and And the response of power to her was a prison.

2:03:48This is why what we're doing is so necessary. And Governor Perry mentions one other reality that's important. Some of your viewers may have seen a Politico article published on Sunday about a presidential aspirant by the name of Andy Beshear, who is the current Kentucky governor. Andy Beshear was the Attorney General of Kentucky before he was governor. He is the son of his father, Steve Beshear, who was governor for eight years between 2007 and 2015. Andy's greatest accomplishment is being his father's son, because he has never accomplished anything outside of his father's lap. The legislature in Kentucky has been controlled by Republican supermajorities over the entirety of his term, and everything for which he claims credit actually belongs to them by way of accomplishment.

2:04:55There are a few things for which he can claim credit. One is shutting down the state of Kentucky harder than Gavin Newsom shut down the state of California, which resulted in the educational hobbling of an entire generation of Kentucky children who were already well behind national average standards on both reading and math. You could go to a liquor store or a strip club for months in Kentucky before you could send your child to a public school. Andy Beshear is responsible for that. He shut down the state's entire economy. He had an antiquated unemployment benefits system that he instructed the director of to make sure that his contributors and his family members were placed into the front of the line while regular everyday people at home got a busy signal for months on end and had no financial lifeline while his family and friends got valet treatment.

2:05:56When this was discovered, he scapegoated the director of the unemployment system for following his own instructions, a guy by the name of Muncie McNamara. And Mr. McNamara took his own life. But the most egregious reality about Andy Beshear and his father pertains to the fact that they were both law partners at the law firm that represented Purdue Pharma against the people of Kentucky and the litigation over OxyContin while they were law partners there. Andy Beshear and his daddy drew law partner paychecks off Purdue Pharma client bills while they were there. And the people of Kentucky should have received a billion dollars, but instead received a measly$24 million payout from Purdue Pharma because Andy and his daddy's law firm malpracticed that case.

2:06:57The public record will establish that as part of the Purdue Pharma settlement, 17 million documents were destroyed. The case was put under seal, and as a condition of the settlement, their law firm was allowed to cure their malpractice of the case, which resulted in a$24 million settlement within days of Andy Beshear becoming the attorney general. That's right, the attorney general. I said I've been a Republican all my life. and I have. My family's been Republican going back to the Civil War. I don't care if it's Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, that Illinois governor, Governor Pritzker, any national Democrat who needs my time, my effort, whatever I can offer by way of volunteer resources to make sure that Andy Beshear never sniffs the sewer grate of the White House, they've got it.

2:07:59In this Politico article, Andy talks about, in much the same way as other performative public piety purveyors, that his life is guided by the golden rule and the good Samaritan. He likes to wear his Sunday school and deacon affiliations on his sleeve as so many other performative public piety figures do. If he were actually going to preach the part of the Bible that he has lived, he would talk more about Judas and the 40 pieces of silver than he would any golden rule and the Good Samaritan. And I just want to make sure that the people of home and the people of America know who this man is as the national media takes up Kentucky media's grotesque narrative about his decency and tries to lie him into the White House.

2:08:51Thank you for letting me say that. It's been a long time coming. I understand. Anything else before we wrap this up? I think we covered it all. I think we had it good. Thank you, Joe. Thank you. You have been a really big supporter of this effort. Well, I think it's just incredible. I mean, I can't believe it's happening. You know, I'd always kind of given up hope that people would wake up to the powerful potential that a lot of these compounds have to change people's lives. Yeah. Well, I'm sure there were some teachers of mine back in the 1950s that the idea that that little burr-headed kid that is, you know, obviously not paying a lot of attention could somehow or another end up being the governor of the great state of Texas.

2:09:46and there's probably a long list of those as a matter of fact. And I'm sure there's some people over the course of the last 15 years as I matriculated up through the political process that said the idea that this guy is going to be standing up putting his reputation on the line for something like psychedelics, that ain't going to happen. But it goes back to your point about be curious, be courageous and make a difference. And you're doing it, Joe Rogan. Thank you, man. Thank you. Thank you too, Brian. Thank you. And do you mind if I share one last thing? Sure. And because it is the 250th anniversary of the country, this comes from the heart.

2:10:32You know, the bicentennial children have had the blessing of being the grandchildren of that greatest generation that overcame the Great Depression, defeated Nazism, killed Jim Crow, and crushed totalitarian communism. That greatest generation lived, suffered, bled, and died to leave us the shining city on the hill. Over the past 50 years, the bicentennial children, or those who are known as Generation X, have experienced the mass extinction of family and community. We are the first generational cohort of mass refugees from obliterated biological families who had to seek and build new families of choice based on the salvation bond of unconditional affection, rejecting only the superficial, socialized separatisms of the skin suits into which we have been born.

2:11:27Over the past 30 years, we have watched truth, justice, and the American way be overrun by institutional deceit, white-collar criminality, and the thieving tyrant's will, and odious alignment of official depravity which has produced the opioid epidemic, the gravest engineered humanitarian catastrophe to play out within our borders since the end of the 19th century in an epidemic which has disfigured this country. The 2008 financial crisis, which forcibly dispossessed millions of us from the American dream, including 52 percent of African-American homeowners, and sent us the bill for the cost of our dispossession, A bill that everyone under the age of 40 continues to pay through their lack of economic mobility.

2:12:21And finally, and most deplorably, 25 years of unremittant warfare, which has taken exponentially more service member lives here at home by suicide than have been lost at battlefields abroad. Over the last 10 years, 1.5 million Americans have died from drug overdose, alcohol-related disease, and suicide. a figure that exceeds the total number of war casualties going all the way back to 1776. We've got 102 counties with life expectancies less than that of North Korea. 18 % of respondents to a recent Pew Research Center poll said that they believe the federal government has the capacity to do the right thing, a figure that hasn't been above 30 % since 2007.

2:13:0880 % of respondents to an October 2025 Wall Street Journal poll have said that the American dream is dead. Power has answered these unconscionable realities with a maelstrom of bureaucratic absurdity, impudent incompetence, and predatory corruption, all with the blessing of the law which has used its power to bind, torture, and kill the truth. In the decades prior to July 14, 1789, the French government had ruthlessly imposed its burdens, abusively imposed its costs, and ravenously consumed the future of its people. the arrogance of the aristocracy ultimately answered to the desperate determination of the peasantry and its guillotine blade.

2:14:10We are here to pursue one of the greatest humanitarian missions ever undertaken to serve and exalt the primacy of the human soul. As we sit here right now, there are millions of Americans who have no sense of greater purpose or of even why they are alive, who mourn to see the sunrise when it comes up and through their windows. And what they need to know is that they are indeed divine. There's only one thing that is known to produce iron, and that's the supernova of a star. The iron in our blood originated in a supernova eons ago. No, every human being has stardust running through their blood. And the movement that Governor Perry and I are leading is one that aims to recognize the reality of that human divinity.

2:15:06We are desperate, and we are determined, and we will crawl the last mile to deliver good tidings unto the meek, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. Glory, glory, hallelujah. The truth is marching on. And thank you, sir, for letting us proclaim it right here on your platform, the Walter Cronkite of our age. That was a beautiful way to end it. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Bye, everybody.