Rick Perry & Hubbard on Joe Rogan: Why $100M on ibogaine

1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

   [upbeat music] Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

2. JRJoe Rogan0:04

   The Joe Rogan Experience.

3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

   Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. [upbeat music] Gentlemen, great to s-- Yeah, put 'em on. Slap 'em on. What's happening? Good to see you, gentlemen, again.

4. RPRick Perry0:19

   Taking off.

5. WHW. Bryan Hubbard0:19

   Good to see youse, Will.

6. RPRick Perry0:21

   One more time.

7. JRJoe Rogan0:22

   Yeah, one more time.

8. RPRick Perry0:23

   Yeah.

9. JRJoe Rogan0:24

   So, uh, what is the latest? Give me the latest. Where are we at?

10. RPRick Perry0:29

    Why don't you take it, Bryan? You just kinda-

11. JRJoe Rogan0:32

    Yeah.

12. RPRick Perry0:32

    You, you are the, uh, you're the most current on where we are, what's going on. Man, there has been a lot of stuff happen in the 15 months since we were here.

13. JRJoe Rogan0:42

    Yeah.

14. RPRick Perry0:42

    I mean, like, stunning amount of stuff. So let's not waste any time. Tell him where we're at.

15. WHW. Bryan Hubbard0:46

    All right. Well, the last time we came to visit with you, I believe, was on December the 27th of 2024. We were just on the front end of having organized 30 committed Texans whose own families had had experiences related to trauma, addiction, alcoholism, and the wounds of war, who, after hearing a plan that was developed for the state of Kentucky to bring Ibogaine to the American people as an FDA-approved medication and breakthrough treatment for addiction and trauma, committed themselves to using their time, their talent, and their network to achieve what had never been done before, and that was to convince an individual state to undertake drug development to create a therapeutic medical breakthrough for public health crises within its borders that are representative of the national reality. After you released the interview with us on January 2nd, 2025, we pursued a five-and-a-half-month blistering campaign to convince 188 blank-slate Texas legislators to fund the single largest psychedelic research and medical development project in history, that being the $50 million Texas Ibogaine Initiative. We had the assistance of some in-state allies, one of which was Texans for Greater Mental Health, led by a dear friend and brother of mine, Logan Davidson, who was my right hand, going to meet with legislators continuously while I set up shop at a hotel here in Houston and lived here just about part-time, wearing the shoe leather off, sweating, and making sure that everybody who needed to be introduced, educated, and motivated to get behind this would do so. At the end of this five and a half months, we secured the votes of, yes, of 181 out of 188 legislators between the Texas House of Representatives and State Senate. There was one individual who we had to persuade at the 11th hour to get behind this project. On May the 14th, 2025, just 36 hours before the Texas budget was finalized, this bill that would create the first unified FDA drug development trial with Ibogaine in U.S. history was not funded. I woke up that morning, and I'm not some... I believe very much in keeping your prayers in the closet, as Jesus taught, and not getting out there parading about it. But on that morning, uh, I got a call, and it was, "Hey, we're getting to the 11th hour. We don't have money to secure this. It may not make it. We've done everything that we can." And I just, I literally got down on my hands and knees and said, "God, please let this happen. And if it cannot happen, help me understand why." Three hours later, I got a telephone call asking if I could go and meet with the Texas House Speaker and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. I went at 4:30 in the afternoon on May the 14th and spent an hour with these two gentlemen going back and forth about what this project was, why it was so existentially necessary for Texas and the country. And on Friday morning, May the 16th at 10:00 a.m., we got a text message from Lieutenant Governor Patrick confirming that he would approve and fully fund the Texas Ibogaine Initiative. As we walk in here today, literally just 10 minutes before we walked into your studio, I can confirm that the great state of Texas is going to fully fund the Texas Ibogaine Initiative, originally intended to be a public-private partnership, but now has decided on its own to commit a full $100 million to launch the development of Ibogaine all the way through the FDA's drug development process for the benefit of the American people, to do so on its own without any drug development partner, and to do it for the good of humanity.

16. JRJoe Rogan4:57

    That's phenomenal. So what did you have to say to Dan Patrick to convince him of this? And kudos to him for doing this.

17. WHW. Bryan Hubbard5:03

    Well, uh, I had some very wonderful advocates who preceded my meeting.

18. JRJoe Rogan5:09

    Was he skeptical?

19. WHW. Bryan Hubbard5:10

    Oh, he was, uh, completely disengaged from the process, highly skeptical, as we learned through intermediaries. But we had two wonderful brothers on mission who happened to be twins, Marcus and Morgan Luttrell.

20. JRJoe Rogan5:25

    I know Marcus very well.

21. WHW. Bryan Hubbard5:26

    Marcus and Morgan Luttrell reached out to the lieutenant governor. They spoke to him very movingly and personally about their own experiences with Ibogaine, what it had done not just to save their lives, but what it was doing to save the lives of war fighters who had come to the end of being able to live. And as they explained to him what it did for them and what it has done for their brothers and sisters at arms who've returned to war, to broken government systems that can do nothing to cure what ails them at their core, he was persuaded to have an open-minded conversation. And through that conversation on May the 14th, we essentially went through whatScience suggests are the powers of the most sophisticated molecule on the planet to resolve physiological substance dependence and thereby create psychology within the human being whereby they believe they have ownership of themselves and their future and that that future will be one defined by choice rather than compulsion. And the most powerful aspect of the ibogaine argument, not just for the lieutenant governor and house speaker, but for most of these legislators who voted yes, is the experience endorsed by many that ibogaine confirms without question the reality of our individual human divinity. And that is the greatest truth conveyed by this fabulous plant.

22. JRJoe Rogan6:52

    Well put. And I don't think it's just ibogaine that confirms that. I think you could say the same about many other psychedelic drugs that are unjustly maligned and treated as if they're an escape from reality. But in the interest of this being a standalone podcast for people who don't know what ibogaine is and don't understand the efficacy of it and how unbelievably effective it is at especially treating addiction, could you please just go over that?

23. WHW. Bryan Hubbard7:21

    Yes, sir. So ibogaine is an alkaloid that is derived from the iboga shrub. The iboga shrub originates in the central Congo Basin. Its native country is modern-day Gabon. It is the mother country of the iboga shrub, which has been used for centuries in the spiritual and cultural traditions of the Bwiti, a group of spiritualists who include the Pygmies as well as the Bantu tribes that live there in Gabon. In the early 60s, it was discovered that ibogaine and iboga had a significant interruption effect on opioid addiction. There was an individual who had been addicted to heroin for a number of years. They took ibogaine, and not only did they not experience any withdrawal when they stopped taking heroin, they stopped having any desire to use any drug whatsoever. This touched off 60 years of open-label field studies that are mountains high and decades wide that firmly established that ibogaine has a unique and singular interruption capacity on physiological substance dependency, whether that's opioids, alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine, or tobacco. Recent evidence also suggests that it has a significant interruption effect on compulsive behaviors, anything that kind of impacts that brain's dopamine system and produces a rush.

24. JRJoe Rogan8:54

    Particularly gambling.

25. WHW. Bryan Hubbard8:55

    Yes, sir. Now, in 2018, U.S. Special Forces special operators started going to Mexico for treatment of symptoms of traumatic brain injury expressed through treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, and suicidality. Many of these veterans had gone through the VA system. They had been given an unbelievable amount of synthetic pharmacology that, in their end effect, essentially anesthetizes the soul and slowly euthanizes the body. And they were at the end. So as they were going to Mexico and would get ibogaine treatment, they came back with these just unbelievably just powerful recovery results that seemed too good to be true. So there were some scientists at Stanford University that were funded by a philanthropist who wanted to understand what was going on. And so what we have come to learn through a Stanford research study on traumatic brain injury for vets is that ibogaine has remarkable neuroregenerative capacities on the brain that are unheard of in the annals of Western science. And while information is still very small in amount and preliminary, there are individuals who have had ibogaine treatment for not just traumatic brain injury, but for multiple sclerosis, Lyme disease, Parkinson's disease, post-surgical complications related to the removal of brain tumor who endorse a restoration of functionality and an ability to live that are otherworldly. And as we recognize that the opportunities to improve the human condition at scale are multi-lifetime in appearing, we believe that we have found one of those. And if we're going to do justice to the human species, it is incumbent upon us to take what appears to be a promising therapeutic improvement and deliver it with speed through the U.S. medical systems. And that's what Governor Perry and I have founded Americans for Ibogaine to do, just that. Achieve the moonshot of our time. And that is to bring ibogaine medicine to the American people as quickly as possible.

26. JRJoe Rogan11:12

    Well said. And thank you again, Governor Perry, because if it wasn't for your involvement in this, I think a lot of people would be far more skeptical. You know, you being a former distinguished governor of the state who was a Republican, generally speaking, most people think of Republicans as being anti-psychedelics and that this whole thing is just a bunch of people trying to escape reality and poison their mind and, you know, tune out of society and become losers. That's the general consensus of people that are just, for lack of a better term, ignorant of the effects of these substances. They don't understand it. But if it wasn't for you, your open-mindedness, your willingness to engage in this and try to understand it and to speak to these veterans, I don't think people would be taken into seriously.

27. WHW. Bryan Hubbard12:06

    Yeah.

28. JRJoe Rogan12:07

    So thank you.

29. WHW. Bryan Hubbard12:08

    Well, and thank you. As I've watched you over the last 15 months, seemed like every six weeks or so you would have a guest on here and you'd be talking about ibogaine in particular and what is the progress that we're making.

30. JRJoe Rogan12:25

    Well, it comes up so often.

Episode duration: 2:14:29