🌿 America’s Ibogaine Revolution

👋 Welcome

Hey friends,

This week’s roundup bridges the scientific, the personal, and the political.

In Texas, a determined advocate named W. Bryan Hubbard has helped transform testimony into policy — unlocking $50 million in funding for ibogaine clinical trials.

Meanwhile, in California, Bryan Johnson — best known for his Blueprint longevity protocol — has begun a bold psilocybin experiment, measuring 249 biomarkers to see how transformation shows up at the cellular level.

One movement fights for access.
The other chases understanding.
Both point toward a future where data and healing move together.

Let’s get into it.

🔝 Weekly Highlights

• 🌿 A psychedelic tour of Earth’s ecosystems – from the desert to Siberia
  A stunning look at how psychoactive plants and fungi evolved across extreme environments — and the cultures that wove them into meaning. Read more.
  

• ⚖️ The attorney leading the fight to bring psychedelics to the dying
  Policy, precedent, and the deeply human cases reshaping end-of-life care. Full story.

• 💊 First-ever at-home LSD microdosing trial shows 60% improvement in depression
  Remote monitoring, measurable change, and a glimpse of what decentralized psychedelic research could become. Learn more.

🧬 Quick Hits

RESEARCH 🔬

• 🧠 Intranasal 5-MeO-DMT shows rapid-onset potential
  New data maps fast-acting therapeutic effects in healthy volunteers. Read the study.
  

• ✨ Serotonergic psychedelics and MDMA — the living meta-analysis
  An ever-updating review tracking efficacy, safety, and dropout rates across hundreds of trials. Explore the data.
  

• 📄 How well do psilocybin trials report side effects?
  Researchers say transparency needs to catch up to the science. Read more.
  

• 🧪 Psychedelics for alcohol use disorder show promise
  Animal studies reveal reductions in craving and relapse-like behavior. See results.

• 🧬 Yale scientists spot psychological benefits of magic mushrooms
  Participants report emotional balance and cognitive flexibility months later. Read more.

POLICY 🏛️

• 🌱 Maryland task force proposes multi-phase path to legalization
  A cautious “ensemble model” blending medical, supervised, and community use. Full story.
  

• 📊 AMA study finds psilocybin use surging despite federal barriers
  Public interest grows faster than lawmakers can keep up. Read more.
  

• 🎖️ Australia VA to fund psychedelic-assisted therapy for veterans
  A national program supporting MDMA and psilocybin for PTSD. Learn more.
  

• 🌿 Colorado governor backs ibogaine research — sourcing raises debate
  Progress meets complex questions about ethics and supply. Full story.

CULTURE 🎭

• 🎬 Netflix documentary follows veterans healing through psychedelics
  A raw look at trauma, recovery, and resilience in combat veterans. Watch here.

⚱️ Main Feature

Americans for Ibogaine: The Man Behind the Momentum

If the psychedelic movement has a quiet architect of progress, his name is W. Bryan Hubbard.

An advocate, policy strategist, and the founder of Americans for Ibogaine, Hubbard has emerged as one of the leading figures bridging science, government, and lived experience. His mission: make ibogaine — a powerful neuro-restorative compound derived from the African shrub Tabernanthe iboga — safely accessible to the people who need it most.

That story began not in a lab, but in a veterans’ support circle. Hubbard saw the limitations of existing mental health treatments. He met others haunted by trauma, opioids, or both — many who had already traveled overseas for ibogaine therapy and returned describing transformations they couldn’t explain, but couldn’t deny.

For years, he collected those stories, documented outcomes, and began asking a radical question:

What if the United States took these experiences seriously?

He founded Americans for Ibogaine to build a bridge between anecdote and evidence — recruiting researchers, clinicians, and policy advisors to design a path that regulators couldn’t ignore. The group’s focus has always been threefold: research, education, and safety standards.

That foundation paid off this year when Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed SB 2308 into law — allocating $50 million in state funds to ibogaine clinical trials for veterans with PTSD, depression, and substance use disorders. The bill gained support from both sides of the aisle, with former Governor Rick Perry personally lobbying legislators.

Hubbard helped write the framework, guiding how state funds would integrate cardiac screening, post-care planning, and research oversight — turning good intentions into executable policy.

For veterans, this isn’t abstract. It’s hope.

In Stanford Medicine’s 2025 study on ibogaine therapy for special operations veterans, participants showed an 88% reduction in PTSD symptoms, significant decreases in anxiety and depression, and marked cognitive improvement. Similar results have been echoed in Brazil, New Zealand, and Mexico, where controlled clinical programs and observational studies reveal parallel outcomes.

Thousands of veterans now credit ibogaine with saving their lives — a movement vividly captured in Netflix’s In Waves and War.

Americans for Ibogaine is now expanding nationally — developing education programs for policymakers, consulting with researchers on safety protocols, and supporting veterans navigating treatment abroad while the U.S. trials ramp up.

Their mission: bring neuro-restorative healing home, legally, safely, and with compassion.

Learn more about their work or donate to support their initiatives.

🎁 Honorable Mention

Bryan Johnson’s 5G Experiment: Turning Consciousness Into Data

Bryan Johnson — the tech entrepreneur known for spending millions to slow his biological clock — has turned his latest project inward.

In partnership with Don’t Die, Johnson launched a 90-day experiment involving three high-dose psilocybin sessions, each preceded and followed by 249 biometric tests measuring everything from mitochondrial output to neural connectivity.

The design is clinical:
• DNA methylation and epigenetic age tracking
• Inflammatory markers, cortisol, and HRV
• Microbiome diversity
• Brain activity mapping via Kernel neuroimaging
• Cognitive and emotional response tests

During his first session, co-founder Kate Tolo live-tweeted updates while Johnson’s vitals, brain scans, and samples were collected at specific intervals. At peak, Kernel recorded neural oscillations while his body’s stress hormones were monitored in real time.

What makes this different isn’t the dose — it’s the data. Johnson is trying to find quantifiable proof of what countless people have reported for decades: that deep psychedelic states can produce measurable, physiological change.

Emerging research supports the premise. Studies from Emory University and Baylor College of Medicine have found that psilocybin exposure extends the lifespan of human cells in vitro and reverses aging markers in rodents. The mechanism appears to involve reductions in oxidative stress, mitochondrial stabilization, and an increase in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) — all of which Johnson is testing for.

But beyond the metrics, there’s a philosophical undercurrent. For a man who has treated longevity like an engineering problem, this experiment marks a shift toward surrender. After the session, Johnson wrote simply:

His journey is being documented in full, with plans to publish open-access data and possibly expand into a peer-reviewed collaboration.

It’s part biohacking, part spiritual science — and all evidence that the frontier of consciousness is no longer confined to philosophy or faith.

If you want to read his full trip report, we’ve got a post on Instagram chronologically showing off his journey.

👋 Signoff

Today is Veterans Day — a time to honor those who’ve served, and to recognize that the mission for many doesn’t end when the uniform comes off.

The work happening around ibogaine exists because veterans refused to stay silent about their pain. They spoke up, shared their stories, and turned them into a roadmap for healing — one now written into state law.

This isn’t just a policy win. It’s a promise. A promise that service members who gave everything will no longer be left behind when they come home.

To every veteran reading this — and to those still fighting for others to heal — thank you for your courage, your honesty, and your leadership. The psychedelic movement is stronger because of you.

We see you. We honor you. And we walk beside you.

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