AILSA CHANG, HOST:
A group of U.S. vets and lawmakers is leading an effort to get clinical trials up and running for a potent psychoactive drug. Ibogaine is illegal in the U.S., but it's proving to be a powerful treatment for post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury and addiction. Jonathan Levinson has this report. And a warning to listeners, this story includes references to suicidal ideation.
JONATHAN LEVINSON, BYLINE: In June 2024, Clayton Smith made one stop on his way to killing himself. He went to Mexico for 10 days to do ibogaine.
CLAYTON SMITH: I knew that it wasn't going to work because I was so broken, and that when it inevitably didn't work, I could then kill myself knowing that I did everything possible.
LEVINSON: He went because he thought his wife deserved answers about why his life had deteriorated so dramatically since he got back from a deployment to Afghanistan in 2012. A rocket-propelled grenade had detonated a few feet away from Smith, and the resulting traumatic brain injury led to hearing and short-term memory loss. He couldn't regulate his emotions, and his vocabulary was reduced to an eighth-grade level. Smith started drinking. He felt broken.
SMITH: The depression and the anxiety and the self-loathing and, you know, the suicidal ideations - and it all just built and built and built.
LEVINSON: When he finally came clean to his wife about his decade of lying and substance abuse, she kicked him out. The next day, he made plans to do ibogaine. He was terrified. He thought he might get stuck in a dark, alternate world forever.
SMITH: And I was going to be being chased by my demons and all of the flashbacks of the most awful things that have ever happened to me.
LEVINSON: Instead, Smith spent 12 hours learning about himself for the first time. His mind was flooded with high-resolution images of formative moments in his childhood, like when he was 9 and a girl made fun of him for being chubby.
SMITH: And I got to watch the hurt in that boy's eyes. And at the same time, I was able to tell him, hey, man, like, it's all going to work out.
LEVINSON: For Smith, the moment was pivotal.
SMITH: Ibogaine allowed me to love myself for the first time in my life.
LEVINSON: Ibogaine is a derivative of the West African iboga plant, and starting in the '60s, it came to be known as a powerful tool in treating opiate addiction. But in recent years, when veterans started going to Mexico for ibogaine to treat their PTSD and TBI, the drug got the attention of an unlikely set - Republican lawmakers. Proposed legislation in Texas would allocate $25 million to fund the first FDA-approved clinical trials in the country, potentially paving the way for ibogaine to be authorized to treat opiate addiction and other mental health conditions.
RICK PERRY: Obviously, I'm not ever going to be for the legalization of drugs. That's off the table for me.
LEVINSON: That's former Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry. After Perry's close friend and a former Navy SEAL recovered from an opiate addiction and PTSD through ibogaine, Perry said he started to see psychedelics as more than recreational drugs. The treatment is often unpleasant. It can have serious side effects and requires medical supervision to take safely. But, he says, it is clearly miscategorized in the U.S., alongside drugs which are addictive and have no medical use.
PERRY: I mean, how bad you got to hate somebody to not make this compound available to them in the United States?
LEVINSON: One leading theory for how ibogaine works comes from a 2023 UC Berkeley study showing the drug opens a lengthy window of time when the brain is particularly open to learning new skills and behaviors.
GUL DOLEN: Of all the psychedelics, ibogaine seems to be unique in that it keeps this critical period open the longest.
LEVINSON: Neuroscientist Gul Dolen led the study. She says MDMA or psilocybin open that window for about two weeks. Ibogaine gives you a month or more. So ibogaine helped Smith love himself for the first time, but that critical period is when his new belief system is solidified and old habits are discarded. For Smith, that was self-hate and alcohol. For others, it's opiates.
DOLEN: All of the circumstances where you might reach for heroin to alleviate that suffering have to be rewritten to say, OK, now I can be in this situation and not reach for that habit.
LEVINSON: And the results seem to stick. It's not without work, but 10 months after his treatment, Clayton Smith says he feels better every day. He and his wife feel like they're in a good place.
SMITH: That's given me the tool to be the person I've always wanted to be, and I hope this journey never stops.
LEVINSON: Smith no longer looks back on the first 37 years of his life with resentment. For the first time, he says, he is excited for the next 37 years. For NPR News in San Francisco, I'm Jonathan Levinson.
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CHANG: And if you or someone you know might be considering suicide or is in crisis, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988 or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. Press 1 if you're a veteran.
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