Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) extolled the therapeutic promise of ibogaine on a recent episode of his podcast, drawing attention to a Stanford University study that found the psychedelic showed potential to treat PTSD, anxiety and depression in military veterans with traumatic brain injury.
“This could be one of the great breakthroughs of the next 10 or 15 years,” he said on the episode of Newt World that aired last month.
Gingrich, who previously had the executive director of Americans for Ibogaine as a guest on his show, highlighted top-level findings of the 2024 paper, such as an observed 88 percent reduction in PTSD, an 87 percent reduction in depression and an 81 percent reduction in anxiety in participants one month after treatment.
“The future of healing,” the former speaker wrote on social media, “may lie in an ancient plant.”
The episode’s guest was Nolan Williams, a study co-author and professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford, who explained some of the paper’s main findings and fielded questions from Gingrich.
The former House speaker said he felt one issue with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved research is that it typically focuses on the risks and dangers of controlled substances rather than their potential for therapeutic benefit.
“Historically one of the FDA problems has been that they measure the cost of saying yes, but they don’t measure the cost of saying no,” he said. “You know, there are people out here committing suicide, and this has a reasonable chance of minimizing that. You have to figure out what are the total lives saved annually versus what’s the risk. And I don’t think the FDA has any kind of measurement. It’s all based on risk only on the usage side, not based on the cost of not doing it.”
Williams replied that his study showed that “80-plus percent of people lost their…suicidal thinking, and they held that out through the end of the year.”
“We had no one in our follow-up,” he added, “that actually had a suicide attempt or died of suicide.”
“And to your point, whether it be veterans suicide or opioid overdoses,” the researcher continued, “this is a drug that can actually decrease the symptoms of detox for opiates…and reduce people’s discomfort in going through opiate detox, in addition of reducing craving. The opioid crisis, the veterans suicide crisis—we think this has great potential for doing that.”
The study looked at 30 U.S. Special Forces veterans who underwent supervised ibogaine therapy in combination with taking magnesium—an addition meant to mitigate the drug’s cardiac risks. Williams explained the supplement is believed to significantly lower the risk of arrhythmia, for example.
Gingrich said research like the study by Williams will be key in convincing federal policymakers such as Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to speed access to ibogaine therapy.
“I think your study is going to be a major step towards people like Secretary Kennedy putting real pressure to make it available in this country,” he told Williams. “If ibogaine again turns out to have the variety of capabilities that we have some at least glimmerings of its effect,” he added, its impact “is going to be staggering.”
The former House speaker also said agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs need “a much higher sense of urgency.”
“It really should be a national project to make sure how to use it, to make sure that it’s safe, but then to get it very widely available throughout the entire Veterans Administration program,” he said.
One noteworthy state-level development Gingrich pointed to on the podcast is recent legislation signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to create a state-backed research consortium to conduct clinical trials on ibogaine as a possible treatment for substance use disorders and other mental health conditions.
The ultimate goal of the Texas project is to develop the psychedelic into a prescription drug with FDA approval, with the state retaining a portion of the profit.
In Gingrich’s earlier podcast episode with W. Brian Hubbard, executive director of Americans for Ibogaine, the former House speaker said that ibogaine represents an “astonishing breakthrough” in the nation’s current “sick care system” that’s left people with serious mental health conditions without access to promising alternative treatment options—and that he intended to use his influence to advance the issue.
“This could be an astonishing breakthrough in what has been a long losing struggle with addiction across this country,” he said at the time. “It strikes me that the whole ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement—that this could be a very significant building block in getting us back to being a country that’s not addicted. I can’t imagine a more timely podcast than to be talking with you about this.”
While acknowledging that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) needs to “balance risk against certainty” and emphasizing the need for studies to support the use of ibogaine in a “controlled environment,” Gingrich said he was “so inspired” by the conversation he had with Hubbard that he’s “personally going to be strongly engaged in moving the idea around and getting people to look at it.”
The message around the therapeutic potential of psychedelics has been getting out in a number of ways, including in prominent conservative media circles and within the Trump administration.
For example, a Navy SEAL veteran credited with killing Osama Bin Laden said during a recent Fox News interview that psychedelic therapy has helped him process the trauma he experienced during his time in the military, stressing that “it works” and should be an available treatment option.
That interview came days after the U.S. House of Representatives included an amendment to a spending bill from Reps. Lou Correa (D-CA) and Jack Bergman (R-MI) that would encourage VA to support research into the benefits of psychedelics in treating medical conditions commonly affecting military veterans.
Meanwhile, HHS Secretary Kennedy recently said his agency is “absolutely committed” to expanding research on the benefits of psychedelic therapy and, alongside of the head of FDA, is aiming to provide legal access to such substances for military veterans “within 12 months.”
VA Secretary Doug Collins also disclosed in April that he had an “eye-opening” talk with Kennedy about the therapeutic potential of psychedelic medicine. And he said he’s open to the idea of having the government provide vouchers to cover the costs of psychedelic therapy for veterans who receive services outside of VA as Congress considers pathways for access.
Collins also recently visited a facility conducting research on psychedelics, and he reiterated that it’s his “promise” to advance research into the therapeutic potential of the substances—even if that might take certain policy changes within the department and with congressional support.
The secretary’s visit to the psychedelics research center came about a month after the VA secretary met with a military veteran who’s become an advocate for psilocybin access to discuss the therapeutic potential of psychedelic medicine for the veteran community.
Collins also briefly raised the issue in a Cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump in April.
Reps. Lou Correa (D-CA) and Jack Bergman (R-MI)—co-chairs of the Congressional Psychedelic Advancing Therapies (PATH) Caucus—introduced a bill in April to provide $30 million in funding annually to establish psychedelics-focused “centers for excellence” at VA facilities, where veterans could receive novel treatment involving substances like psilocybin, MDMA and ibogaine.
Bergman has also expressed optimism about the prospects of advancing psychedelics reform under Trump, arguing that the administration’s efforts to cut spending and the federal workforce will give agencies “spines” to tackle such complex issues.
Kennedy, for his part, also said in April that he had a “wonderful experience” with LSD at 15 years old, which he took because he thought he’d be able to see dinosaurs, as portrayed in a comic book he was a fan of.
Last October, Kennedy specifically criticized FDA under the prior administration over the agency’s “suppression of psychedelics” and a laundry list of other issues that he said amounted to a “war on public health” that would end under the Trump administration.
In December, VA separately announced that it’s providing $1.5 million in funding to study the efficacy of MDMA-assisted therapy for veterans with PTSD and alcohol use disorder (AUD).
Last year, VA’s Yehuda also touted an initial study the agency funded that produced “stunning and robust results” from its first-ever clinical trial into MDMA therapy.
In January, former VA Under Secretary for Health Shereef Elnahal said that it was “very encouraging” that Trump’s pick to have Kennedy lead HHS has supported psychedelics reform. And he hoped to work with him on the issue if he stayed on for the next administration, but that didn’t pan out.
Photo courtesy of Flickr/Scamperdale.
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