June 29, 2025 • 40 mins
Newt talks with W. Brian Hubbard, Executive Director of Americans for Ibogaine, about the groundbreaking initiative in Texas to research Ibogaine, a powerful psychedelic, for its potential in treating opioid addiction, traumatic brain injury, and depression. Governor Greg Abbott approved a $50 million dollar investment, marking one of the largest government investments in psychedelic medicine. Hubbard was instrumental in getting the Texas initiative passed and is advocating for similar programs in other states. Hubbard shares his journey from a legal career in Kentucky, witnessing the opioid epidemic's impact, to leading efforts for Ibogaine research. He highlights the drug's potential to revolutionize addiction treatment, citing its success in interrupting addiction and restoring brain function. Their conversation also touches on the political challenges faced in Kentucky and the promising developments in Texas, where a public-private partnership aims to conduct FDA trials. Their discussion underscores the potential of Ibogaine to transform healthcare by offering a restorative treatment for addiction and neurological conditions, with hopes of broader acceptance and integration into the U.S. healthcare system.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of Newsworld. On June fourteenth, Governor Greg
Abbott of Texas approved legislation to spend fifty million dollars
in state money researching Ibogain, a powerful psychedelic In signing
the legislation, he put a spotlight on a drug that
is still illegal but that has shown promise in treating
(00:25):
opioid addiction, traumatic brain injury, and depression. The initiat is
one of the largest government investments in psychedelic medicine to date.
Interest in ibergain therapy has gained momentum in recent years,
driven in large part by veterans who had to travel
to other countries for treatment and studies showing the success
of the treatment. I'm really pleased to welcome my guest,
(00:49):
w Bryan Hubbard, executive director of Americans for Ibogain. He
was a driving force behind the Texas initiative and his
talking to officials in more than twenty four states about
creating similar programs. Brian, Welcome and thank you for joining
(01:15):
me on news World.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
It's an honor to be with you, mister speaker. Thank
you for hosting the conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well, you know you've been involved with looking for treatments
for opioid addiction for some time. Could you sort of
give us your background and how you got involved with
us well.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I was born and raised in the coal fields of Virginia,
about fifty miles each way from where Kentucky, North Carolina,
West Virginia, and Tennessee all come together. I'm the grandson
of coal miners, and I had a very idealized version
of American civics and history education. I went to undergrad
at George Mason and went to law school, where I
(01:51):
thought I was going to be equipped with all of
the tools necessary to defend truth justice in the American way.
By the end of that first semester in law school,
all of those dewey ad dreams and ambitions had been
crushed and destroyed before my very eyes. With an introduction
to the reality of law. I had a legal career
that spanned sixteen years, representing three of Kentucky's largest employers
(02:13):
in their workers' compensation litigation across the state. This litigation
occurred within a political patronage system that masqueraded as a
legal system that was the worker's compensation system at home.
These practice years coincided with the onset and explosion of
the opioid epidemic out of central and southern Apalachia, out
across the rest of the country, and within the context
(02:35):
of my law practice, I saw this insidious convergence of
personal injury trial lawyers and unscrupulous physicians who were family practitioners,
pain management physicians, and aggressive surgeons who looked for any
reason that they could to essentially cut on an individual
or to prescribe an individual high power and narcotics combined
(02:59):
with chotropic medications that in combination created immense physical dependency.
As I watched people move through this system in the
litigation process, they didn't come to the workers' comp system
in Kentucky disabled by virtue of their physical problems. They
certainly became disabled after they had gone through the round
of treatment, usually directed by their lawyer, that resulted in
(03:21):
what I would call pharmacological disability through the administration of
high parered opioids and other psychotropic medications which should never
have been applied to the individual circumstances. These practice years
ended in twenty sixteen, at which point in time I
was brought in to lead social security disability system for Kentucky.
I held that job for just about three years in
(03:44):
addition to the Chance support enforcement system, and then moved
into the Attorney General's office after my boss, then Governor
Matt Bethan, lost his bid for reelection in nineteen I
went to work for then Attorney General Daniel Cameron, running
the state's Office of Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Control and
within that law enforcement agency, which had as its job
(04:04):
the investigation and prosecution of all medical providers who defrauded
the Medicaid system, as well as the abuse, neglect, and
exploitation in Medicaid beneficiaries. I inherited a caseload that had
a substantial number of physicians who provide medically assistant treatment
for substanst dependency and in particular methadone and sebox oone,
(04:26):
essentially scamming the Medicaid system while simultaneously creating broad based
diversion of these medications, which are themselves opioids, in such
a fashion as to create as much opioid dependency as
responsible practitioners were trying to address with good faith and efficaciously. Qui,
(04:47):
Kentucky negotiated almost one billion dollars in settlement agreements from
opioid manufacturers and distributors. I was recruited to be the
first chairman and executive director of the State Commission that
would both disperse and oversee the administration of those dollars,
and mister Speaker, being the history extraordinary that you are,
Kentucky and Louisiana usually jockey for the distinct position of
(05:11):
having one of the most corrupt polities in the country.
Kentucky's state and local governance structures have, for as long
as anyone can remember, being infiltrated by what I would
describe as a very close circle of aristocratic interest that
seem much more vested in the perpetuation of the state's
problems than in solving them. So when I was asked
(05:34):
to do the job, I said, you know, this is
a very treacherous opportunity because the usual suspects are going
to gather around this money and want to pick it clean.
If I'm going to do the job, I want to
do it in a way that is accountable, that is
accessible to the average Kentucky and it assures transparency as
to how every dollar is spent. We also have to
make sure we maximize the impact of these dollars. Recognizing
(05:55):
the immensity of the problem and the finite nature of
this resource, So the first most pressing need, in my opinion,
was to explore the possibility of setting aside a small
percentage of the state's settlement funds to foster a therapeutic
breakthrough for opioid dependency. The very best of our treatments
have about a twenty five percent efficacy rate, and that's
(06:15):
not nearly good enough to create the sort of generational
change that we need in what is now the thirtieth
year of a monstrous opioid epidemic. By virtue of having
followed scientific research around the potential breakthrough therapeutic response of
alcoholics to the psilocybin mushroom, I became independently curious about
(06:36):
those things that had been traditionally associated with the pejoratively
described psychedelic scene that originated in the late sixties counterculture,
and whether there could be actual, legitimate medical applications of
any of those therapeutics to opioid dependency. On July twenty nine,
twenty twenty two, I heard the word I have begain
for the very first time, and that touched off an intensive,
(06:58):
second full time job off the books, conducting all the
critical examination and due diligence research that I could to
determine whether the development of IB again through the creation
of a public private partnership under the Commission's auspices, could
be Kentucky's Manhattan Project opportunity to lead itself and the
rest of the country in a way that could revolutionize
(07:20):
substance use and mental health treatment. I became convinced that
I again represented that opportunity. Mai the thirty first, or
twenty twenty three, we announced that we were going to
explore the possibility of committing forty two million dollars, or
five percent of the state's total settlement dollars, to the
creation of a public private partnership that would get ib
again through the FDA as a breakthrough therapeutic for opioid dependency.
(07:43):
When that happened, what was a reaction, Well, there were
disparate reactions. One was the predictable response from the powers
that be that stood the most to lose from the
creation of a therapeutic that can deliver curative results in
place of those that are admitted ministered on the basis
of chronosity. We had immediate and vocal opposition from the
(08:06):
University of Kentucky, an institution which claims to be an
asprint Tier one public university research status, but nonetheless asserted
that the therapeutic options we have are the ones that
we should have. They're the best that there can ever be,
and there was no need to even go down this
audacious road. A shock and attitude from an institution that
(08:26):
is supposed to help drive open minded progress. The other
vocal upon it turned out to be current Kentucky Governor
Andy Basher. And as I'm sure you have followed this
guy as being talked about as a top tier candidate
for president for the Democrat Party in twenty twenty eight,
what your audience should know is that current Kentucky Governor
(08:47):
Andy Basheer and his father, former Kentucky Governor Steve Basheer,
worked at a law firm in Lexington, Kentucky, and were
partners there called Stints and Harveson. Stints and Harveison Act.
We represented Purdue Pharma in its litigation against the people
of Kentucky while Steve and Andy Bisher were partners at
(09:08):
that law firm. So, in addition to the University of Kentucky,
Andy Basher came out moments after we completed our public
announcement and gave his full throated opposition to our intention
to go down this road. The heartening portion of this
related to the grassroots response of the people of Kentucky
to the possibility of the state leading the creation of
(09:32):
a therapeutic breakthrough for a problem that families and communities
in Kentucky had borne the ground zero brunt of for
thirty years. Leading up to this announcement, I had taken
the Commission across the state. We held twenty individual town
halls from one end of the state to the other
on Tuesday nights at six pm, and these things would
(09:54):
go anywhere between eight forty five oh whip to ten
o'clock at night immediately following the opening of society from
the COVID lockdowns that were harshly imposed by Andy Bisheer.
Each of these community meetings began with a fifteen minute
technocratic presentation around what the Commission's role was and help
it do its job, followed by solicitation of the community's
(10:15):
feedback as to how we needed to prioritize their needs
before we disperse this money and mister Speaker, what would
follow our fifteen minute technocratic presentation was a collective outpourt
of community catharsis and grief that illuminated a degree of
devastation that had been wronged by this problem that was
(10:36):
foreign even to me, someone who had come to the
table educated about the monstrosities produced by the opioid epidemic.
The sun total of our community responses were, we have
no confidence in the ability of officialdom to address our
despair in a way that is either competent or honest.
(11:00):
And if you managed to do anything for our community
that produces any constructive progress whatsoever, it will be a
shock to us. So, recognizing that there was profound public
cynicism and distrust of officialdom, there was great disappointment in
terms of how the existing therapies had failed to yield
(11:20):
progress that had been promised as they were deployed. We
found a receptive audience within this deeply politically conservative and
religiously fundamentalist state, among everyday Kentuckians, about the creation of
a new therapy that could not just sustain someone in
(11:42):
their suffering though prevent them from Diane, which is what
I would describe as our current options, but could literally
create a genuine emancipation medication that has the potential to
fully physiologically restore the brains of opioid dependent individuals impaired
by that long term use, and to do so in
(12:04):
a way that comprehensibly addresses the whole human mind, body,
and soul. And I am convinced that had we been
allowed to have this as a public referendum California style
rather than through a very mechanized process of government matriculation,
that proposal would have won in Kentucky sixty to forty
and by any measure that was landslide grassroots support. And
(12:28):
that is something that I would stand on like a
rock of Gibraltar in terms of the reality on the ground.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Since you could not go to a referendum, how did
the political system react to your idea of finding a permanent,
long term cure.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I would describe the interest as one of open minded reserve.
The legislature, which is controlled by Republicans and has been
for some time, did not make any move to interfere
with the prerogative of the Commission to explore the deployment
of recurses for this purpose. And again, the only vocal
opposition that we drew was from the University of Kentucky,
(13:07):
who had a representative on the Commission who protested throughout
the process as well as Adie Basher, whose Health and
Human Services secretary. A guy by the name of Eric
Friedlander was on the commission and was also consistently opposed
to every forward step that we made in this direction.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
To go back to the basics from it. You know
so much more than I do. What exactly is eyebo game?
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I'm a game is a naturally occurring alkaloid that is
found in three West African plants, The one that grows
in most plentiful amounts the Congo africana. The mother plant
is called the Ebogar route. It has been used by
the Bowedi culture in West Africa for centuries as part
of its cultural and spiritual traditions. In the mid sixties,
(14:15):
a gentleman by the name of Howard Lotzov, who had
been a long term heroin addict, came into contact without again,
and he took it because he was just a substance
use omnivore. After he went through the experience, he came
out on the other side with zero desire to consume
(14:35):
heroin and as consequentially, zero withdraw experience. This touched off
fifty years of open labeled field study that's generated data
that's decades wide in a mountain high that establishes that
ibegate has profound addiction interruption properties that are unparalleled within
(14:58):
our existent pharmacology.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
A year ago, in twenty twenty four, Nature Medicine published
a study that showed remarkable results with military veterans with
traumatic brain injuries, and I began, can you walk us
through that? From her?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yes, sir? As American war fighters, in particular special operators
were coming home with the traumas of war, psychological and physical.
They matriculated through a veterans administration that had at its
disposal all of the big pharma synthetic pharmacology that's known
(15:36):
to everyone opioids, for paying SSRIs for mood disorders. As
veterans matriculated through these processes and received these medications, none
of them were nearly adequate enough to address their trauma,
in particular the physiological trauma of traumatic brain injury. Many
of these veterans, as they contemplated taking their own lives,
(16:00):
heard about this qu exotic substance called ibagain that was
being administered in Mexico, and a lot of veterans began,
just through word of mouth to compare notes through scenarios
whereby veterans who were ready to detect their lives had
been sent for ibogain treatment and that on the other
side of that treatment they came away with genuinely miraculous
(16:22):
results in terms of the restoration of their sense of self,
a restoration of their sense of the will to live,
and a restoration of their mind that allowed them to
function at a level that they had not been able
to function with After they returned home. Not only were
they restored, but they were freed from their need to
utilize any of the pharmacology that had been given to
(16:44):
them by the VHA as.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
I understand that Rick Perry, who's a very close friend
of mine and a very dedicated patriot, actually ran into
ib again through a Navy seal that he had met
at Cornetto Island while on vacation with his wife, and
somehow the ibegan story began to arrive in Texas, and
now Texas, which is our second biggest seat, is actually
(17:07):
in the process of passing bills that focus on the
use of Iyebergang in helping veterans and others. That's really
quite remarkable, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Oh, it is an unbelievable story that, with all due respect,
I happened to believe illustrates the presence of the divine
hand in the construction of the reality you've just described.
Governor Perry came into independent and separate contact with ibagain
through his friendship with Marcus Lttrell, and many of your
(17:38):
audience members may recognize as the loan survivor whose story
was told in a movie in which he was depicted
by Mark Wahlberg. Governor Perry and I converged on the
Kentucky project. I met him for the first time in
June of twenty three. He supported the Kentucky effort as
it was developed, recorded a message in support of it,
(17:58):
and was a coose deign on a newsweek of ed Only.
She was joined by Congressional Medal of Honor winner Dakota Meyer,
Marcus and Morgan Littreel supporting the Kentucky Initiative. The Kentucky
Initiative came to an end due to a change in
the office of Attorney General. The new Attorney General, who
was elected in November of twenty three, summoned me to
(18:19):
a meeting in December and said, I want no part
of this and I don't agree with anything you've done
around it, and I want your resignation before I take office.
So I was very much in despire over the lost
opportunity for the state and was desperate to find fertile
soul in which that project could be transplanted. And I
have to thank God for the connection made to Governor Perry,
(18:40):
because it was that connection that allowed the creation of
circumstances by which Texas has now finished a job that
was begun in Kentucky over two years ago.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Joas, what exactly is the Texas program?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
So the Texas I began initiative is now the successful
completion of a left legislative campaign by which the state
legislature has put up fifty million dollars to fund a
public private partnership whereby a consortium of one or more
universities paired with one or more private hospital systems paired
(19:16):
with a single drug developer will submit their proposals in
response to a competitive application and review process to come
into Texas to conduct FDA drug development trials with ib
again as a breakthrough therapeutic for substance use disorder. Texas
money will pay for the cost of FDA trials conducted
(19:40):
in Texas by the drug developer, paired with drug Developer's
own independent contribution of fifty million dollars through that consortium,
it is the largest single public investment in psychedelic research
and medical development in history, and in particular as it
relates to eyeba gain, it represents a significant shift of
(20:04):
public policy when it comes to the recognition of the
need to develop restorative therapeutics that can have the potential,
in this case, to revolutionize substance use mental health, as
well as treatment of neurological conditions that impact the brain
for which we have no good answers.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
As I understand it. The Veterans Administration Secretary Doug Collins
has also indicated that they are open to exploring the
impact of psychedelics on helping veterans.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Secretary Collins has expressed his support for the delivery of
medicines that can improve upon what we have. Those happen
to be in some cases psychedelic, and it's wonderful to
see leadership that's open minded and willing to pursue progress
wherever it exists.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Do you have any notion if ibergame began to be
used broadly, what its cost structure would be like iming
how hard is it news?
Speaker 2 (21:01):
The actual synthesis process necessary to produce IYE again is
not particularly expensive. Being able to establish a domestic supply
chain for the medication that's not going to be necessarily expensive.
I BEGIN is a very serious medication that comes with
a particular cardiac risk that can result in arrhythmia, which
(21:25):
can result in the stoppage of the heart. It must
be delivered within a clinically controlled medical set and complete
with cardiac screening, cardiac monitor and the administration of medication
that can correct in arrhythmia if it occurs. The number
we have to beat, mister speaker is there's two numbers,
(21:46):
and those numbers are one hundred and eight thousand dollars
and one hundred and twenty days. When we have an
individual who goes in for substance abuse treatment now and
they happen to be on Medicaid, the first thirty days
of impatient treatment is designed just to stabilize them enough
to then go into a ninety day intensive outpatient protocol
(22:07):
to ensure that they are compliant with their treatment plan,
which involves either methadone or suboxone. At first thirty days
of impatient treatment in twenty twenty two Kentucky Medicaid dollars
is thirty six thousand dollars. The next ninety days of
intensive outpatient treatment is seventy two thousand dollars. The average
(22:27):
number of attempts a person will make to go through
this system is five. So if we are able to
deliver a ten day inpatient treatment of ibagain that essentially
restores an individual's brain to the condition that it was
in before they ever consumed the first opioid, and do
so at a price point that is below a half
(22:51):
a million dollars, then the opportunity to achieve immense actuarial
savings over time is tremendous, and i begain is just
a beginning, not an end. Many states cannot supply long
term recovery services because of how much resource burden there
is on that first one hundred and twenty days of
(23:13):
treatment just to produce individual stabilization. With IYEB again, we
have a chance to substantially improve acute treatment outcomes in
a ways that save substantial amounts of money and can
redeploy resources to create long term recovery infrastructure. It's vital
to maintain long term independent recovery.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
So if somebody goes through the ibogain process, to what
degree are they likely to be cleaned for the rest
of their life? And to what degree is there a
real danger of buck sliding?
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Ibergain produces the very best beginning for an individual's recovery
journey that can be delivered by the medical universe. And
by that I mean an opioid dependent individual their brain
can't produce dopamine in serotonin. These are the chemicals that
drive all of our most baseline human instincts. The drivet to eat,
(24:08):
to drink, to fight, to fight, and procreate. Those are
all driven by serotonin and dopamine. So when a person
is deprived of their drug supply and they engage in
what appears to be behavior that is criminally depraved, who
are actually observing of the consequences of a profound neurochemical
brain injury, that is, to brain starvation for dopamine and serotonin.
(24:31):
A person has to be completely abstinate from all opioid
consumption for at least eighteen months in order for the
brain to begin to produce its own dopamine and serotonin.
With IEB again, you take that eighteen months, and you
reduce it to thirty six to forty eight hours. And
by that I mean eighty percent of individuals who get
(24:51):
a single treatment have their brains dopamine and serotonin levels
restored to their pre opioid levels within thirty six to
forty eight hours, thereby eliminating the entire withdraw experience and
creating a genuine physiological restoration of the impaired brain. Now
(25:12):
that is the beginning. Just like any other treatment, an
individual whose life has been shattered by the consequences of addiction,
who faces a host of legal, financial, logistical, and social problems,
must receive long term recovery support to help solve each
of those problems. Because if we take an individual and
(25:35):
just throw them back into the mailstream of a catastrophe,
the chances of relapse with any treatment are substantially high.
I would add one other component, and that is the
spiritual aspect of I Be Again experience. Many people who
receive this medication, even people who are not believers in
a higher power, come away with an absolute, concrete affirmation
(26:00):
that they are a spiritual being and that there is
a higher power in this universe who possesses almighty and
unconditional love for them. That is, for me, I begain's
most potent attribute. And when you offer that foundation of
spiritual significance within the context of medical treatment, you significantly
(26:22):
enhance the chances for long term success, especially if paired
with the treatment system that will be supportive of that
individual as they make that reconstruction journey.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
I'm very curious what the interactions are in your brain
that enable you to shrink what could be an eighteen
month process into a forty eight or seventy two hour process.
What is actually chemically so different from this experience.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
You are asking, mister speaker a question that pertains to
what I have been educated to know as the mechanism
of action. What is it that it does with the
in the brain to generate these results? And the answer
to that is no one knows. One of the reasons
the Stanford study was undertaken was to determine whether there
(27:12):
were objectively identifiable changes within the brain to explain these
dramatic subjective reports of total remission of what had been
years long suicidality, treatment resistant depression, and anxiety, as well
as functional impairments related to dramatic brain injury. And this
is really where the revolutionary nature of this becomes concrete.
(27:36):
MRI's were taken of thirty veterans before and after a
single eyebigain treatment. Each veteran had dramatic brain injury, which
was radiographically expressed as dead spots within functional MRI images
black dots throughout the brain. Post i begain treatment, MRIs
demonstrated for realities. One, there was to come complete elimination
(28:01):
of those black dots through the brains of these veterans.
Number two, the white matter that covers the surface of
our brains, the highway across which all of our thoughts
and impulses travel, grew in thickened in size across the
entire surface of their brains. The centers of the brains
responsible for emotional regulation and executive function grew in size.
(28:22):
The average reversal of brain age among the cohort of
thirty veterans is one and a half years, with the
top five seeing their brains reverse in age by almost
five years. There are individuals who are receiving eye begain
treatment to keep their symptoms of Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, and
lame disease in remission. I cannot overstate the dramatic nature
(28:46):
of these results because there is nothing known to modern
medicine that actually regenerates the brain. Ibagain does and we
are just on the very front end of recognizing that
this has the potential to revolutionize Western medicine when it
comes to anything and everything related to the brain.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
The study you're describing was done at Stanford, Yes, sir,
so people can find it. Has anybody tried applying I
begain to Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
That has not been done, But given that neuro regenerative
property that has been described, there's good reason to believe,
particularly with early detection, that I begin can yield a
significant improvement in the treatment of it, even if it
does not necessarily cure it. And is anyone with a
family member with dimension knows every additional day of good
(29:40):
life that you can give someone who suffers from it
is a wonderful treasure. And I certainly believe that we
can see that.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
This could be an astonishing breakthrough in what has been
a long losing struggle with addiction across this country. Now,
does it have the same effect, for example, and people
have cocaine or fentanyl or other kinds of addictions, or
only on people who've been taking pharmacological addiction.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Ibigain is an all purpose addiction interrupt The focus of
scientific research has been upon opioid dependency, because that's for
its point of discovery was initially made. However, right now,
I was just on a call with a gentleman by
the name of doctor Bruno S. Muschin, who in the
(30:44):
state of South Paulo is a singular provider who uses
ibigain to interrupt addiction to crack cocaine, which is on
scale of use comparable to what we have here in
the United States by way of opioid epidemic. Affective with opioids,
it's affective with cocaine and crack cocaine. It is effective
with alcohol, it is effective with myth. And what's so
(31:08):
immensely important about that is there is not a single
medication of any kind that has any effective impact on
meth whatsoever. So you are correct. The opportunity to revolutionize
addiction treatment with this therapeutic it is immense Well.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
It strikes me that the whole Make America Healthy Again movement,
that this could be a very significant building block and
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.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Once serendipity becomes a pattern, it is no longer serendipitous.
And as I have become individually educated about the genesis
of MAHA, its foundational roots, and how all these individuals
with different experiences but with common themes have converged, it
is surreal insofar as Governor Perry and I have participated
(32:10):
around this issue and can bring it to a MAHA
movement that is absolutely bent in the direction a free
an American society from the exploitation and monetization of human
suffering than we are all in.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
As I understand of both Mexico and New Zealand are
using I began already, what's their experience like.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
So you have clinics in Mexico, most of which have
been set up by Canadian or American expats who have
recognized and know what this can do. The overseas treatment
infrastructure is very much a checkerboard of quality. You have
some who know exactly what they're doing and they do
it right, and then you have others who are playing
(32:58):
with fire. New Zealand as infrastructure buyer, but it is
not at scale, so The opportunity that is presented with
Texas is to create that beachhead for eyebagame within the
United States and to demonstrate how you do it safely, efficaciously,
and at scale so as to make sure that there
(33:18):
is the provision of access to anyone who needs it.
And given how much money that we are spending on
a seventy five percent failure rate, I can't imagine that
there's any reason why, if we are honest and transparent
about how we do this, that we can't assure universal
access in a way that takes a significant burden off
of our systems and families that suffer without effective atures.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
We currently have a sick care system when we need
a healthcare system and the goal ask to me to
get you back to health, not to maintain you in sickness.
And this strikes me as a perfect example of that.
This is very, very exciting to me. What do you
think is the possibility that I began, we'll actually get
approval from the FDA.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
One of the things that we did in Kentucky was
conducted a hearing on this very question and within that
here and we had two FDA officials at the time,
one was the scientist General for Controlled Substances Research, and
the other was a member of the FDA's Advisory Board
of Neuropharmacology. Through their testimony, they expressed the fact that
for the FDA, question around ibogain is whether those risks
(34:26):
that are attendant with its administration, the cardiac risk can
be safely mitigated. And as long as I answer that
question was yes, there's no reason why the FDA would
not approve hybergain treatment. Now I'll go one step further
within the psychedelic universe. The reality is, with many of
these medications, there is a notorious history of recreational use
(34:48):
within left wing dregculture that has created a significant amount
of stigma around our application to legitimate medical conditions. Ib
again is blessed with no h hiss of recreational use
in the arcana of American memory, because it's not a
recreational substance. It's a very serious medication. For everything that
(35:10):
has a recreational application, there's a significant street economy, whether
that's cocaine, whether it's heroin, you name it. If there
could be fun with it, there's a street economy for it.
There is no street economy without again, the out again
experience is very physically challenging, and it's not one that
people seek out, and that's why people have never heard
(35:30):
of an ibogain rave that don't exist. That lack of
recreational abuse potential, I think is a significant strategic advantage
ibogain has, in addition to its very unique neuro regenerative
properties that we're just now beginning to understand.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
I would think, and I'd make this argument very strongly,
to the degree that you're describing these successes and to
the degree that we've seen, for example, with traumatic brain injury,
these successes, the FDA has to balance risk against certainty.
If you have a traumatic brain injury and we don't
give you something at guiba gain, you will permanently have
(36:11):
that injury. Therefore, there's a downside to not taking the
risk of in a controlled environment, being aware of the
heart concerns, trying to see if we can't give you your
life back. What can listeners do to support the mission
of Americans forible gain or to get involved in advancing
(36:31):
access to new treatments.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Sir, As you know, any successful shift in American politics,
it's downstream from a shift that occurs in culture. And
what I would ask your listeners to do is go
to americansfibagain dot org. It has an Instagram presence. Governor
(36:55):
Perry and I recognize that there's one of two ways
that you win culture and thereby impact politics. You can
either do it through the broad based dispersal of money,
which we don't have, or you do it through the
broad based dispersal of eliminating information that can activate, galvanize,
and motivate a broad based cultural movement to advance progress.
(37:20):
We aim to shepherd a broad based unity opportunity that
involves the creation of a diverse coalition with the common
value of seeing this emancipation medication be fully integrated into
the US healthcare system as expeditiously as possible. This is
the Manhattan Project of our time, and anyone who is
hearing about this, I would encourage them to engage the organization,
(37:43):
follow on social media, get the word out as to
what this is and what it can do to lift
up those who are living at the end of hope,
and as we move into other states starting in January
of twenty six, leverage those networks of voices to make
clear that we are going to demand responsive leadership that
(38:05):
supports the integration of appagain into the US healthcare system
as expeditiously as possible.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
I can assure you, Brian, I'm so inspired by this
conversation that I'm personally going to be strongly engaged in
moving the idea around and getting people to look at it.
You're really doing something which will, over the next generation,
save several million lives. It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Thank you, sir, and just to know that you are
willing to engage as you describe. As I said before
we got online, I've been an admirer of few years
for a very long time, and Governor Praier and I
welcome your enthusiastic participation in whatever way you want to
give it.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Good Well, listen, I want to thank you for joining
me in giving all of us a insight on ibogain
and its potential for treatments. And I want to let
our listeners know they can find out more about Americans
for Ibogain by visiting your website at americansfibogain dot org,
which will also be on our show page. So thank
you so much for drawing.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Us, Missus Baker. It's been an honor and a privileged
thank you, sir.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Thank you to my guest w Bryan Hubbard. You can
learn more about Americans for Ibogain on our show page
at newtworld dot com. Newtworld is produced by Gainglish three
sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan. Our
researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was
created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team with
(39:39):
Ginglish three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newsworld, I hope
you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with
five stars and give us a review so others can
learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of news
World can sign up for my three free weekly columns
at ginglistree sixty dot com slash newsletter I'm new Gingrich.
(40:00):
This is news Walk
On this episode of Newsworld. On June fourteenth, Governor Greg
Abbott of Texas approved legislation to spend fifty million dollars
in state money researching Ibogain, a powerful psychedelic In signing
the legislation, he put a spotlight on a drug that
is still illegal but that has shown promise in treating
(00:25):
opioid addiction, traumatic brain injury, and depression. The initiat is
one of the largest government investments in psychedelic medicine to date.
Interest in ibergain therapy has gained momentum in recent years,
driven in large part by veterans who had to travel
to other countries for treatment and studies showing the success
of the treatment. I'm really pleased to welcome my guest,
(00:49):
w Bryan Hubbard, executive director of Americans for Ibogain. He
was a driving force behind the Texas initiative and his
talking to officials in more than twenty four states about
creating similar programs. Brian, Welcome and thank you for joining
(01:15):
me on news World.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
It's an honor to be with you, mister speaker. Thank
you for hosting the conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well, you know you've been involved with looking for treatments
for opioid addiction for some time. Could you sort of
give us your background and how you got involved with
us well.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I was born and raised in the coal fields of Virginia,
about fifty miles each way from where Kentucky, North Carolina,
West Virginia, and Tennessee all come together. I'm the grandson
of coal miners, and I had a very idealized version
of American civics and history education. I went to undergrad
at George Mason and went to law school, where I
(01:51):
thought I was going to be equipped with all of
the tools necessary to defend truth justice in the American way.
By the end of that first semester in law school,
all of those dewey ad dreams and ambitions had been
crushed and destroyed before my very eyes. With an introduction
to the reality of law. I had a legal career
that spanned sixteen years, representing three of Kentucky's largest employers
(02:13):
in their workers' compensation litigation across the state. This litigation
occurred within a political patronage system that masqueraded as a
legal system that was the worker's compensation system at home.
These practice years coincided with the onset and explosion of
the opioid epidemic out of central and southern Apalachia, out
across the rest of the country, and within the context
(02:35):
of my law practice, I saw this insidious convergence of
personal injury trial lawyers and unscrupulous physicians who were family practitioners,
pain management physicians, and aggressive surgeons who looked for any
reason that they could to essentially cut on an individual
or to prescribe an individual high power and narcotics combined
(02:59):
with chotropic medications that in combination created immense physical dependency.
As I watched people move through this system in the
litigation process, they didn't come to the workers' comp system
in Kentucky disabled by virtue of their physical problems. They
certainly became disabled after they had gone through the round
of treatment, usually directed by their lawyer, that resulted in
(03:21):
what I would call pharmacological disability through the administration of
high parered opioids and other psychotropic medications which should never
have been applied to the individual circumstances. These practice years
ended in twenty sixteen, at which point in time I
was brought in to lead social security disability system for Kentucky.
I held that job for just about three years in
(03:44):
addition to the Chance support enforcement system, and then moved
into the Attorney General's office after my boss, then Governor
Matt Bethan, lost his bid for reelection in nineteen I
went to work for then Attorney General Daniel Cameron, running
the state's Office of Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Control and
within that law enforcement agency, which had as its job
(04:04):
the investigation and prosecution of all medical providers who defrauded
the Medicaid system, as well as the abuse, neglect, and
exploitation in Medicaid beneficiaries. I inherited a caseload that had
a substantial number of physicians who provide medically assistant treatment
for substanst dependency and in particular methadone and sebox oone,
(04:26):
essentially scamming the Medicaid system while simultaneously creating broad based
diversion of these medications, which are themselves opioids, in such
a fashion as to create as much opioid dependency as
responsible practitioners were trying to address with good faith and efficaciously. Qui,
(04:47):
Kentucky negotiated almost one billion dollars in settlement agreements from
opioid manufacturers and distributors. I was recruited to be the
first chairman and executive director of the State Commission that
would both disperse and oversee the administration of those dollars,
and mister Speaker, being the history extraordinary that you are,
Kentucky and Louisiana usually jockey for the distinct position of
(05:11):
having one of the most corrupt polities in the country.
Kentucky's state and local governance structures have, for as long
as anyone can remember, being infiltrated by what I would
describe as a very close circle of aristocratic interest that
seem much more vested in the perpetuation of the state's
problems than in solving them. So when I was asked
(05:34):
to do the job, I said, you know, this is
a very treacherous opportunity because the usual suspects are going
to gather around this money and want to pick it clean.
If I'm going to do the job, I want to
do it in a way that is accountable, that is
accessible to the average Kentucky and it assures transparency as
to how every dollar is spent. We also have to
make sure we maximize the impact of these dollars. Recognizing
(05:55):
the immensity of the problem and the finite nature of
this resource, So the first most pressing need, in my opinion,
was to explore the possibility of setting aside a small
percentage of the state's settlement funds to foster a therapeutic
breakthrough for opioid dependency. The very best of our treatments
have about a twenty five percent efficacy rate, and that's
(06:15):
not nearly good enough to create the sort of generational
change that we need in what is now the thirtieth
year of a monstrous opioid epidemic. By virtue of having
followed scientific research around the potential breakthrough therapeutic response of
alcoholics to the psilocybin mushroom, I became independently curious about
(06:36):
those things that had been traditionally associated with the pejoratively
described psychedelic scene that originated in the late sixties counterculture,
and whether there could be actual, legitimate medical applications of
any of those therapeutics to opioid dependency. On July twenty nine,
twenty twenty two, I heard the word I have begain
for the very first time, and that touched off an intensive,
(06:58):
second full time job off the books, conducting all the
critical examination and due diligence research that I could to
determine whether the development of IB again through the creation
of a public private partnership under the Commission's auspices, could
be Kentucky's Manhattan Project opportunity to lead itself and the
rest of the country in a way that could revolutionize
(07:20):
substance use and mental health treatment. I became convinced that
I again represented that opportunity. Mai the thirty first, or
twenty twenty three, we announced that we were going to
explore the possibility of committing forty two million dollars, or
five percent of the state's total settlement dollars, to the
creation of a public private partnership that would get ib
again through the FDA as a breakthrough therapeutic for opioid dependency.
(07:43):
When that happened, what was a reaction, Well, there were
disparate reactions. One was the predictable response from the powers
that be that stood the most to lose from the
creation of a therapeutic that can deliver curative results in
place of those that are admitted ministered on the basis
of chronosity. We had immediate and vocal opposition from the
(08:06):
University of Kentucky, an institution which claims to be an
asprint Tier one public university research status, but nonetheless asserted
that the therapeutic options we have are the ones that
we should have. They're the best that there can ever be,
and there was no need to even go down this
audacious road. A shock and attitude from an institution that
(08:26):
is supposed to help drive open minded progress. The other
vocal upon it turned out to be current Kentucky Governor
Andy Basher. And as I'm sure you have followed this
guy as being talked about as a top tier candidate
for president for the Democrat Party in twenty twenty eight,
what your audience should know is that current Kentucky Governor
(08:47):
Andy Basheer and his father, former Kentucky Governor Steve Basheer,
worked at a law firm in Lexington, Kentucky, and were
partners there called Stints and Harveson. Stints and Harveison Act.
We represented Purdue Pharma in its litigation against the people
of Kentucky while Steve and Andy Bisher were partners at
(09:08):
that law firm. So, in addition to the University of Kentucky,
Andy Basher came out moments after we completed our public
announcement and gave his full throated opposition to our intention
to go down this road. The heartening portion of this
related to the grassroots response of the people of Kentucky
to the possibility of the state leading the creation of
(09:32):
a therapeutic breakthrough for a problem that families and communities
in Kentucky had borne the ground zero brunt of for
thirty years. Leading up to this announcement, I had taken
the Commission across the state. We held twenty individual town
halls from one end of the state to the other
on Tuesday nights at six pm, and these things would
(09:54):
go anywhere between eight forty five oh whip to ten
o'clock at night immediately following the opening of society from
the COVID lockdowns that were harshly imposed by Andy Bisheer.
Each of these community meetings began with a fifteen minute
technocratic presentation around what the Commission's role was and help
it do its job, followed by solicitation of the community's
(10:15):
feedback as to how we needed to prioritize their needs
before we disperse this money and mister Speaker, what would
follow our fifteen minute technocratic presentation was a collective outpourt
of community catharsis and grief that illuminated a degree of
devastation that had been wronged by this problem that was
(10:36):
foreign even to me, someone who had come to the
table educated about the monstrosities produced by the opioid epidemic.
The sun total of our community responses were, we have
no confidence in the ability of officialdom to address our
despair in a way that is either competent or honest.
(11:00):
And if you managed to do anything for our community
that produces any constructive progress whatsoever, it will be a
shock to us. So, recognizing that there was profound public
cynicism and distrust of officialdom, there was great disappointment in
terms of how the existing therapies had failed to yield
(11:20):
progress that had been promised as they were deployed. We
found a receptive audience within this deeply politically conservative and
religiously fundamentalist state, among everyday Kentuckians, about the creation of
a new therapy that could not just sustain someone in
(11:42):
their suffering though prevent them from Diane, which is what
I would describe as our current options, but could literally
create a genuine emancipation medication that has the potential to
fully physiologically restore the brains of opioid dependent individuals impaired
by that long term use, and to do so in
(12:04):
a way that comprehensibly addresses the whole human mind, body,
and soul. And I am convinced that had we been
allowed to have this as a public referendum California style
rather than through a very mechanized process of government matriculation,
that proposal would have won in Kentucky sixty to forty
and by any measure that was landslide grassroots support. And
(12:28):
that is something that I would stand on like a
rock of Gibraltar in terms of the reality on the ground.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Since you could not go to a referendum, how did
the political system react to your idea of finding a permanent,
long term cure.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I would describe the interest as one of open minded reserve.
The legislature, which is controlled by Republicans and has been
for some time, did not make any move to interfere
with the prerogative of the Commission to explore the deployment
of recurses for this purpose. And again, the only vocal
opposition that we drew was from the University of Kentucky,
(13:07):
who had a representative on the Commission who protested throughout
the process as well as Adie Basher, whose Health and
Human Services secretary. A guy by the name of Eric
Friedlander was on the commission and was also consistently opposed
to every forward step that we made in this direction.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
To go back to the basics from it. You know
so much more than I do. What exactly is eyebo game?
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I'm a game is a naturally occurring alkaloid that is
found in three West African plants, The one that grows
in most plentiful amounts the Congo africana. The mother plant
is called the Ebogar route. It has been used by
the Bowedi culture in West Africa for centuries as part
of its cultural and spiritual traditions. In the mid sixties,
(14:15):
a gentleman by the name of Howard Lotzov, who had
been a long term heroin addict, came into contact without again,
and he took it because he was just a substance
use omnivore. After he went through the experience, he came
out on the other side with zero desire to consume
(14:35):
heroin and as consequentially, zero withdraw experience. This touched off
fifty years of open labeled field study that's generated data
that's decades wide in a mountain high that establishes that
ibegate has profound addiction interruption properties that are unparalleled within
(14:58):
our existent pharmacology.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
A year ago, in twenty twenty four, Nature Medicine published
a study that showed remarkable results with military veterans with
traumatic brain injuries, and I began, can you walk us
through that? From her?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yes, sir? As American war fighters, in particular special operators
were coming home with the traumas of war, psychological and physical.
They matriculated through a veterans administration that had at its
disposal all of the big pharma synthetic pharmacology that's known
(15:36):
to everyone opioids, for paying SSRIs for mood disorders. As
veterans matriculated through these processes and received these medications, none
of them were nearly adequate enough to address their trauma,
in particular the physiological trauma of traumatic brain injury. Many
of these veterans, as they contemplated taking their own lives,
(16:00):
heard about this qu exotic substance called ibagain that was
being administered in Mexico, and a lot of veterans began,
just through word of mouth to compare notes through scenarios
whereby veterans who were ready to detect their lives had
been sent for ibogain treatment and that on the other
side of that treatment they came away with genuinely miraculous
(16:22):
results in terms of the restoration of their sense of self,
a restoration of their sense of the will to live,
and a restoration of their mind that allowed them to
function at a level that they had not been able
to function with After they returned home. Not only were
they restored, but they were freed from their need to
utilize any of the pharmacology that had been given to
(16:44):
them by the VHA as.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
I understand that Rick Perry, who's a very close friend
of mine and a very dedicated patriot, actually ran into
ib again through a Navy seal that he had met
at Cornetto Island while on vacation with his wife, and
somehow the ibegan story began to arrive in Texas, and
now Texas, which is our second biggest seat, is actually
(17:07):
in the process of passing bills that focus on the
use of Iyebergang in helping veterans and others. That's really
quite remarkable, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Oh, it is an unbelievable story that, with all due respect,
I happened to believe illustrates the presence of the divine
hand in the construction of the reality you've just described.
Governor Perry came into independent and separate contact with ibagain
through his friendship with Marcus Lttrell, and many of your
(17:38):
audience members may recognize as the loan survivor whose story
was told in a movie in which he was depicted
by Mark Wahlberg. Governor Perry and I converged on the
Kentucky project. I met him for the first time in
June of twenty three. He supported the Kentucky effort as
it was developed, recorded a message in support of it,
(17:58):
and was a coose deign on a newsweek of ed Only.
She was joined by Congressional Medal of Honor winner Dakota Meyer,
Marcus and Morgan Littreel supporting the Kentucky Initiative. The Kentucky
Initiative came to an end due to a change in
the office of Attorney General. The new Attorney General, who
was elected in November of twenty three, summoned me to
(18:19):
a meeting in December and said, I want no part
of this and I don't agree with anything you've done
around it, and I want your resignation before I take office.
So I was very much in despire over the lost
opportunity for the state and was desperate to find fertile
soul in which that project could be transplanted. And I
have to thank God for the connection made to Governor Perry,
(18:40):
because it was that connection that allowed the creation of
circumstances by which Texas has now finished a job that
was begun in Kentucky over two years ago.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Joas, what exactly is the Texas program?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
So the Texas I began initiative is now the successful
completion of a left legislative campaign by which the state
legislature has put up fifty million dollars to fund a
public private partnership whereby a consortium of one or more
universities paired with one or more private hospital systems paired
(19:16):
with a single drug developer will submit their proposals in
response to a competitive application and review process to come
into Texas to conduct FDA drug development trials with ib
again as a breakthrough therapeutic for substance use disorder. Texas
money will pay for the cost of FDA trials conducted
(19:40):
in Texas by the drug developer, paired with drug Developer's
own independent contribution of fifty million dollars through that consortium,
it is the largest single public investment in psychedelic research
and medical development in history, and in particular as it
relates to eyeba gain, it represents a significant shift of
(20:04):
public policy when it comes to the recognition of the
need to develop restorative therapeutics that can have the potential,
in this case, to revolutionize substance use mental health, as
well as treatment of neurological conditions that impact the brain
for which we have no good answers.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
As I understand it. The Veterans Administration Secretary Doug Collins
has also indicated that they are open to exploring the
impact of psychedelics on helping veterans.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Secretary Collins has expressed his support for the delivery of
medicines that can improve upon what we have. Those happen
to be in some cases psychedelic, and it's wonderful to
see leadership that's open minded and willing to pursue progress
wherever it exists.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Do you have any notion if ibergame began to be
used broadly, what its cost structure would be like iming
how hard is it news?
Speaker 2 (21:01):
The actual synthesis process necessary to produce IYE again is
not particularly expensive. Being able to establish a domestic supply
chain for the medication that's not going to be necessarily expensive.
I BEGIN is a very serious medication that comes with
a particular cardiac risk that can result in arrhythmia, which
(21:25):
can result in the stoppage of the heart. It must
be delivered within a clinically controlled medical set and complete
with cardiac screening, cardiac monitor and the administration of medication
that can correct in arrhythmia if it occurs. The number
we have to beat, mister speaker is there's two numbers,
(21:46):
and those numbers are one hundred and eight thousand dollars
and one hundred and twenty days. When we have an
individual who goes in for substance abuse treatment now and
they happen to be on Medicaid, the first thirty days
of impatient treatment is designed just to stabilize them enough
to then go into a ninety day intensive outpatient protocol
(22:07):
to ensure that they are compliant with their treatment plan,
which involves either methadone or suboxone. At first thirty days
of impatient treatment in twenty twenty two Kentucky Medicaid dollars
is thirty six thousand dollars. The next ninety days of
intensive outpatient treatment is seventy two thousand dollars. The average
(22:27):
number of attempts a person will make to go through
this system is five. So if we are able to
deliver a ten day inpatient treatment of ibagain that essentially
restores an individual's brain to the condition that it was
in before they ever consumed the first opioid, and do
so at a price point that is below a half
(22:51):
a million dollars, then the opportunity to achieve immense actuarial
savings over time is tremendous, and i begain is just
a beginning, not an end. Many states cannot supply long
term recovery services because of how much resource burden there
is on that first one hundred and twenty days of
(23:13):
treatment just to produce individual stabilization. With IYEB again, we
have a chance to substantially improve acute treatment outcomes in
a ways that save substantial amounts of money and can
redeploy resources to create long term recovery infrastructure. It's vital
to maintain long term independent recovery.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
So if somebody goes through the ibogain process, to what
degree are they likely to be cleaned for the rest
of their life? And to what degree is there a
real danger of buck sliding?
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Ibergain produces the very best beginning for an individual's recovery
journey that can be delivered by the medical universe. And
by that I mean an opioid dependent individual their brain
can't produce dopamine in serotonin. These are the chemicals that
drive all of our most baseline human instincts. The drivet to eat,
(24:08):
to drink, to fight, to fight, and procreate. Those are
all driven by serotonin and dopamine. So when a person
is deprived of their drug supply and they engage in
what appears to be behavior that is criminally depraved, who
are actually observing of the consequences of a profound neurochemical
brain injury, that is, to brain starvation for dopamine and serotonin.
(24:31):
A person has to be completely abstinate from all opioid
consumption for at least eighteen months in order for the
brain to begin to produce its own dopamine and serotonin.
With IEB again, you take that eighteen months, and you
reduce it to thirty six to forty eight hours. And
by that I mean eighty percent of individuals who get
(24:51):
a single treatment have their brains dopamine and serotonin levels
restored to their pre opioid levels within thirty six to
forty eight hours, thereby eliminating the entire withdraw experience and
creating a genuine physiological restoration of the impaired brain. Now
(25:12):
that is the beginning. Just like any other treatment, an
individual whose life has been shattered by the consequences of addiction,
who faces a host of legal, financial, logistical, and social problems,
must receive long term recovery support to help solve each
of those problems. Because if we take an individual and
(25:35):
just throw them back into the mailstream of a catastrophe,
the chances of relapse with any treatment are substantially high.
I would add one other component, and that is the
spiritual aspect of I Be Again experience. Many people who
receive this medication, even people who are not believers in
a higher power, come away with an absolute, concrete affirmation
(26:00):
that they are a spiritual being and that there is
a higher power in this universe who possesses almighty and
unconditional love for them. That is, for me, I begain's
most potent attribute. And when you offer that foundation of
spiritual significance within the context of medical treatment, you significantly
(26:22):
enhance the chances for long term success, especially if paired
with the treatment system that will be supportive of that
individual as they make that reconstruction journey.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
I'm very curious what the interactions are in your brain
that enable you to shrink what could be an eighteen
month process into a forty eight or seventy two hour process.
What is actually chemically so different from this experience.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
You are asking, mister speaker a question that pertains to
what I have been educated to know as the mechanism
of action. What is it that it does with the
in the brain to generate these results? And the answer
to that is no one knows. One of the reasons
the Stanford study was undertaken was to determine whether there
(27:12):
were objectively identifiable changes within the brain to explain these
dramatic subjective reports of total remission of what had been
years long suicidality, treatment resistant depression, and anxiety, as well
as functional impairments related to dramatic brain injury. And this
is really where the revolutionary nature of this becomes concrete.
(27:36):
MRI's were taken of thirty veterans before and after a
single eyebigain treatment. Each veteran had dramatic brain injury, which
was radiographically expressed as dead spots within functional MRI images
black dots throughout the brain. Post i begain treatment, MRIs
demonstrated for realities. One, there was to come complete elimination
(28:01):
of those black dots through the brains of these veterans.
Number two, the white matter that covers the surface of
our brains, the highway across which all of our thoughts
and impulses travel, grew in thickened in size across the
entire surface of their brains. The centers of the brains
responsible for emotional regulation and executive function grew in size.
(28:22):
The average reversal of brain age among the cohort of
thirty veterans is one and a half years, with the
top five seeing their brains reverse in age by almost
five years. There are individuals who are receiving eye begain
treatment to keep their symptoms of Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, and
lame disease in remission. I cannot overstate the dramatic nature
(28:46):
of these results because there is nothing known to modern
medicine that actually regenerates the brain. Ibagain does and we
are just on the very front end of recognizing that
this has the potential to revolutionize Western medicine when it
comes to anything and everything related to the brain.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
The study you're describing was done at Stanford, Yes, sir,
so people can find it. Has anybody tried applying I
begain to Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
That has not been done, But given that neuro regenerative
property that has been described, there's good reason to believe,
particularly with early detection, that I begin can yield a
significant improvement in the treatment of it, even if it
does not necessarily cure it. And is anyone with a
family member with dimension knows every additional day of good
(29:40):
life that you can give someone who suffers from it
is a wonderful treasure. And I certainly believe that we
can see that.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
This could be an astonishing breakthrough in what has been
a long losing struggle with addiction across this country. Now,
does it have the same effect, for example, and people
have cocaine or fentanyl or other kinds of addictions, or
only on people who've been taking pharmacological addiction.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Ibigain is an all purpose addiction interrupt The focus of
scientific research has been upon opioid dependency, because that's for
its point of discovery was initially made. However, right now,
I was just on a call with a gentleman by
the name of doctor Bruno S. Muschin, who in the
(30:44):
state of South Paulo is a singular provider who uses
ibigain to interrupt addiction to crack cocaine, which is on
scale of use comparable to what we have here in
the United States by way of opioid epidemic. Affective with opioids,
it's affective with cocaine and crack cocaine. It is effective
with alcohol, it is effective with myth. And what's so
(31:08):
immensely important about that is there is not a single
medication of any kind that has any effective impact on
meth whatsoever. So you are correct. The opportunity to revolutionize
addiction treatment with this therapeutic it is immense Well.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
It strikes me that the whole Make America Healthy Again movement,
that this could be a very significant building block and
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.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Once serendipity becomes a pattern, it is no longer serendipitous.
And as I have become individually educated about the genesis
of MAHA, its foundational roots, and how all these individuals
with different experiences but with common themes have converged, it
is surreal insofar as Governor Perry and I have participated
(32:10):
around this issue and can bring it to a MAHA
movement that is absolutely bent in the direction a free
an American society from the exploitation and monetization of human
suffering than we are all in.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
As I understand of both Mexico and New Zealand are
using I began already, what's their experience like.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
So you have clinics in Mexico, most of which have
been set up by Canadian or American expats who have
recognized and know what this can do. The overseas treatment
infrastructure is very much a checkerboard of quality. You have
some who know exactly what they're doing and they do
it right, and then you have others who are playing
(32:58):
with fire. New Zealand as infrastructure buyer, but it is
not at scale, so The opportunity that is presented with
Texas is to create that beachhead for eyebagame within the
United States and to demonstrate how you do it safely, efficaciously,
and at scale so as to make sure that there
(33:18):
is the provision of access to anyone who needs it.
And given how much money that we are spending on
a seventy five percent failure rate, I can't imagine that
there's any reason why, if we are honest and transparent
about how we do this, that we can't assure universal
access in a way that takes a significant burden off
of our systems and families that suffer without effective atures.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
We currently have a sick care system when we need
a healthcare system and the goal ask to me to
get you back to health, not to maintain you in sickness.
And this strikes me as a perfect example of that.
This is very, very exciting to me. What do you
think is the possibility that I began, we'll actually get
approval from the FDA.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
One of the things that we did in Kentucky was
conducted a hearing on this very question and within that
here and we had two FDA officials at the time,
one was the scientist General for Controlled Substances Research, and
the other was a member of the FDA's Advisory Board
of Neuropharmacology. Through their testimony, they expressed the fact that
for the FDA, question around ibogain is whether those risks
(34:26):
that are attendant with its administration, the cardiac risk can
be safely mitigated. And as long as I answer that
question was yes, there's no reason why the FDA would
not approve hybergain treatment. Now I'll go one step further
within the psychedelic universe. The reality is, with many of
these medications, there is a notorious history of recreational use
(34:48):
within left wing dregculture that has created a significant amount
of stigma around our application to legitimate medical conditions. Ib
again is blessed with no h hiss of recreational use
in the arcana of American memory, because it's not a
recreational substance. It's a very serious medication. For everything that
(35:10):
has a recreational application, there's a significant street economy, whether
that's cocaine, whether it's heroin, you name it. If there
could be fun with it, there's a street economy for it.
There is no street economy without again, the out again
experience is very physically challenging, and it's not one that
people seek out, and that's why people have never heard
(35:30):
of an ibogain rave that don't exist. That lack of
recreational abuse potential, I think is a significant strategic advantage
ibogain has, in addition to its very unique neuro regenerative
properties that we're just now beginning to understand.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
I would think, and I'd make this argument very strongly,
to the degree that you're describing these successes and to
the degree that we've seen, for example, with traumatic brain injury,
these successes, the FDA has to balance risk against certainty.
If you have a traumatic brain injury and we don't
give you something at guiba gain, you will permanently have
(36:11):
that injury. Therefore, there's a downside to not taking the
risk of in a controlled environment, being aware of the
heart concerns, trying to see if we can't give you your
life back. What can listeners do to support the mission
of Americans forible gain or to get involved in advancing
(36:31):
access to new treatments.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Sir, As you know, any successful shift in American politics,
it's downstream from a shift that occurs in culture. And
what I would ask your listeners to do is go
to americansfibagain dot org. It has an Instagram presence. Governor
(36:55):
Perry and I recognize that there's one of two ways
that you win culture and thereby impact politics. You can
either do it through the broad based dispersal of money,
which we don't have, or you do it through the
broad based dispersal of eliminating information that can activate, galvanize,
and motivate a broad based cultural movement to advance progress.
(37:20):
We aim to shepherd a broad based unity opportunity that
involves the creation of a diverse coalition with the common
value of seeing this emancipation medication be fully integrated into
the US healthcare system as expeditiously as possible. This is
the Manhattan Project of our time, and anyone who is
hearing about this, I would encourage them to engage the organization,
(37:43):
follow on social media, get the word out as to
what this is and what it can do to lift
up those who are living at the end of hope,
and as we move into other states starting in January
of twenty six, leverage those networks of voices to make
clear that we are going to demand responsive leadership that
(38:05):
supports the integration of appagain into the US healthcare system
as expeditiously as possible.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
I can assure you, Brian, I'm so inspired by this
conversation that I'm personally going to be strongly engaged in
moving the idea around and getting people to look at it.
You're really doing something which will, over the next generation,
save several million lives. It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Thank you, sir, and just to know that you are
willing to engage as you describe. As I said before
we got online, I've been an admirer of few years
for a very long time, and Governor Praier and I
welcome your enthusiastic participation in whatever way you want to
give it.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Good Well, listen, I want to thank you for joining
me in giving all of us a insight on ibogain
and its potential for treatments. And I want to let
our listeners know they can find out more about Americans
for Ibogain by visiting your website at americansfibogain dot org,
which will also be on our show page. So thank
you so much for drawing.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Us, Missus Baker. It's been an honor and a privileged
thank you, sir.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Thank you to my guest w Bryan Hubbard. You can
learn more about Americans for Ibogain on our show page
at newtworld dot com. Newtworld is produced by Gainglish three
sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan. Our
researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was
created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team with
(39:39):
Ginglish three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newsworld, I hope
you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with
five stars and give us a review so others can
learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of news
World can sign up for my three free weekly columns
at ginglistree sixty dot com slash newsletter I'm new Gingrich.
(40:00):
This is news Walk
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