Texas patients are traveling across the border to get their hands on a strong, unregulated psychedelic drug that they say is bringing renewed hope for mental health treatment.<\/p>\n
Ibogaine is not legal in the United States, but Texas is part of the push to possibly change that.<\/p>\n
The drug comes from the iboga plant in central Africa and changes your perception of reality through strong hallucinations.<\/p>\n
Researchers say it works by changing the pathways in your brain, which multiple people have described as a “brain reset.”<\/p>\n
Some research has found health risks with Ibogaine therapy, particularly to the heart, while others have found promising results.<\/p>\n
ABC13’s Pooja Lodhia has worked for weeks, talking with the experts and real people who have tried it for themselves.<\/p>\n
Central Texas resident Charles Graham Jr. said he started using the drug as a last resort after being deployed to Afghanistan at 20 years old.<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t right when I came back from there. I wasn’t right. A lot of people wasn’t. It was horrible,” Graham said.<\/p>\n
After serving overseas for six years, Graham was diagnosed with PTSD.<\/p>\n
“My reaction to her saying I have (PTSD), I lost it. I got so mad. I started yelling. I was like, ‘Don’t you put that on there, I ain’t got PTSD,’ and, yeah, I did. I did,” Graham said.<\/p>\n
After taking the drug, Graham said he felt a drastic change afterward.<\/p>\n
“I feel at peace. Real peace. Not that pretend thing,” he said.<\/p>\n
Houston Hutto from New Waverly said he took Ibogaine a month ago as a way of recovering from an accident so traumatic, it’s hard to even hear.<\/p>\n
“They were playing on a trailer that was full of water, and I shouldn’t have had (my son) doing that in the first place. Your job as a parent, I feel like, is to provide and protect your children, and I didn’t do that. He accidentally fell off the trailer, and I ran over the top of him,” Hutto said.<\/p>\n
It was August 12, 2021. His son Holden has been through eight surgeries since then.<\/p>\n
Graham and Hutto took the drug in Mexico, where it is unregulated.<\/p>\n
When you talk to people who have done this drug, you realize they all have something in common– desperation.<\/p>\n
Why else would a person spend up to $15,000 dollars and travel to another country to take a drug that, by all accounts, is miserable?<\/p>\n
Hallucinations can last up from 12 to 36 hours. The drug lengthens the time between your heartbeats, so you also have to be monitored the entire time.<\/p>\n
You’ll be dizzy, you’ll probably throw up, and everybody we talked to saw and felt demons.<\/p>\n
After extensive lobbying by veterans’ groups and former governor Rick Perry, the state of Texas has allocated $50 million to research the drug. And, last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to fast-track the drug’s approval.<\/p>\n
Katharine Harris, a drug policy fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, studies Ibogaine.<\/p>\n
“It is not for the faint of heart, and I think in some ways, there might be so much emphasis on it in a state like Texas because it’s not fun. It’s not really used in recreational settings, which I think gives an air of ‘This isn’t a play thing, this is for real,'” Harris said.<\/p>\n
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