Why an ex-presidential candidate with a passion for illegal psychedelics thinks all Americans should experience hallucinations too
The New York Times on Tuesday went on a trip with Perry, who twice ran for the White House and served as President Donald Trump 's Secretary of Energy during the Republican's first term.
Perry recalled traveling to Tijuana, Mexico in September 2023 and spending 12 hours hallucinating that he was flying through space, seeing hieroglyphics and escaping the devil.
'I woke up very clearheaded, with this very warm feeling in my body,' Perry told the paper. 'I was as calm and as happy as I'd been in memory.'
During his time serving as Texas governor, Perry knew that many veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were in trouble, but he first heard about ibogaine through a Navy SEAL he had hired in 2017 during his time running the Energy Department.
The SEAL, Morgan Luttrell, told Perry he was taking time off to travel to Mexico to be treated with ibogaine after continuing to suffer from psychiatric issues post-deployment.
Perry, a staunch conservative, told Luttrell - now a Republican U.S. congressman from Texas - to be careful.
Cut to 2025 and Perry is convinced of its efficacy.
'It has literally given people their lives back,' he told The Times.
In Perry's own case, after suffering from three severe concussions during his youth - and struggling with anxiety during his political career - the former Texas governor took an MRI before and after his ibogaine experience.
Beforehand, his 73-year-old brain showed evidence of atrophy, not uncommon for someone of his age.
Six months after his trip, in March 2024, the MRI showed the atrophy had vanished.
'You have the brain of a 40-year-old,' Dr. Charles Gordon, a Texas neurosurgeon and psychedelic skeptic, told Perry, The Times said.
Since then, Perry has co-founded the nonprofit American for Ibogaine, as the drug remains a Schedule 1 drug in the United States under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act.
He has called widening its use 'my life's mission,' he told the paper.
He's found a sort-of across-the-aisle bedfellow in former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat turned independent, who left Congress earlier this year.
Sinema told The Times that Perry was 'one of the few very conservative individuals in this space, with high credibility among what I'd call a nontraditional audience for psychedelic medicine.'
Earlier this year, Perry successfully got Texas to put dollars into research on how ibogaine could help veterans.
Sinema's Arizona became the second state to make that move.
But at the national level, Perry still faces several hurdles.
The Republican-led Congress already voted down Luttrell's amendment that would have allocated $10 million to the Pentagon to conduct clinical trials on ibogaine.
Traditional conservatives also aren't on board.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told The Times that while he hadn't done enough research to speak on ibogaine specifically, his conservative Christian organization has 'expressed opposition to the use of psychedelics because of longstanding spiritual, theological and ethical concerns about mind-altering drugs that open individuals up to mystical or transcendent experiences that are not in line with orthodox teaching of scripture.'
And Perry still finds himself in the doghouse with Trump - as the president made clear recently when he brought up his former energy secretary's role in his first impeachment.
Perry had set up the call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky - a call that House Democrats and a handful of Republicans said amounted to a solicitation of foreign interference in the 2020 election - with Trump asking Zelensky for dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
'I get indicted for making a phone call,' Trump complained at a meeting with faith leaders last month. 'I told the secretary, who wasn't the smartest bulb, he wasn't ... Rick Perry, you don't want him on your debate team, let me put it that way ... but he's the one that asked me to do it, Rick Perry.'
'And I said, "thanks Rick, that was a wonderful suggestion,"' Trump said.
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