JACKSON, Miss.—Ben Bush pulled a sleeping mask over his eyes as he lay in a bed in a house by the beach in Tijuana, Mexico. The sound of a dirt bike racing across his face hummed in his ears as different visions flooded his subconscious. The U.S. Army veteran saw himself and his brother as children playing together; then, he saw visions of a dead human body and an alligator’s hide.
In early 2021, Bush participated in an ibogaine treatment—a psychoactive organic compound that comes from the Tabernanthe iboga plant native to Africa. One of his veteran friends told Bush about ibogaine—an illegal drug in the U.S.—and how he could receive treatment in Mexico. He traveled to Tijuana to try the psychedelic treatment administered by trained medical staff to help alleviate his mental and physical health conditions.
“I felt like I weighed 100 pounds and (was) cleansed of any toxins,” Bush told reporters at an Aug. 28, 2025, press conference. “I dipped Copenhagen for eight years—stopped that day. No desire for alcohol. I got rid of bad habits and developed new habits. A lot of physical pain went away, all my mental pain went away, and life’s great now. It literally changed my life.”
The treatment “humbled me” and “beat me down,” he said, because he was fully awake and aware during his treatment.
Bush is a U.S. Army veteran who served his country for six years with three tours to Afghanistan. After he left the Army in 2017, he had a wife and new baby to take care of while working through his own mental-health issues and trying to find a job.
The veteran eventually secured a contracting job requiring travel to Iraq several times a year while his wife worked as a nurse in Mississippi with their two young children. But Bush said his physical pain, depression, anxiety, insomnia and suicidal thoughts continued to plague his mood and outlook on life.
He tried two different prescribed antidepressants, which he said “made things severely worse.” Then, his friend and fellow veteran, Miles Grantham, mentioned that ibogaine treatment was available in Mexico and connected Bush with the medical staff in Tijuana.
The week before his treatment, doctors prepped and educated him on the procedure. Bush then flew to San Diego, California, and drove down to the Ambio Life Sciences center in Tijuana with the medical staff in late winter 2021.
He received the ibogaine treatment on a Friday, slept all day Saturday and received a 5-MeO-DMT, a psychedelic drug found in some plants, fungi and the Sonoran Desert toad, treatment for anxiety and depression on Sunday. Four years later, the veteran said he still feels positive effects from the two treatments.
“That experience was wild. It lasted about 30 minutes, and I cried and cried and cried—emotionally cried,” Bush told reporters of his experience with ibogaine. “(With) that journey, I was told that I was the most uptight, wound-up patient that they’ve had. (They told me I’ve) got to learn to let go. Everybody loves me. Everything is going to be OK. And it’s remarkable what it did for me.”
He said he had not faced any stigma or backlash from others because he did the ibogaine treatment—besides criticisms from his wife, who initially questioned why her husband was telling everyone about his ibogaine experience.
“I’m telling everybody about this if I can, if the situation comes up,” he recalls telling his wife at the time.
Ibogaine Is Legally Unavailable in U.S.
Ibogaine is classified as a Schedule I drug in the U.S., meaning it is not legally available for people to consume, even with a prescription. Schedule I drugs typically fall into one of three categories: high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use and treatment in the U.S. or lack of safe medical use of the substance.
The Mississippi House and Senate Public Health and Human Services committees held a joint hearing on Aug. 28, 2025, in which several ibogaine patients and advocates spoke about the benefits of ibogaine treatment for physical pain, traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, insomnia, anxiety, OCD and depression. Among those who underwent ibogaine treatment and spoke at the hearing, three of the speakers were veterans and two others were twin sisters who were victims of child abuse and sexual assault.
“We cannot keep using the same conventional methods for these ailments and expect different results. That’s why I’m here to say that it’s time for Mississippi to take a serious look at ibogaine. Ibogaine is a plant-derived medicine showing remarkable promise abroad, especially to those who’ve exhausted every other option,” House Public Health and Human Services Chairman Rep. Sam Creekmore, R-New Albany, said at the hearing.
On June 9, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott “signed the single-largest psychedelic research and medical development appropriation in all history,” which included funding for ibogaine research, CEO of Americans for Ibogaine Bryan Hubbard said at the Aug. 28, 2025, hearing. Texas has contributed $50 million to ibogaine research and Arizona has put in $5 million; a private pharmaceutical company is matching both states’ contributions.
Some ibogaine experts, including Hubbard, suggested that the Legislature should consider putting Mississippi’s hat in the ibogaine research pool like Texas and Arizona have done. He recommended Mississippi put up $5 million to join the ibogaine research initiative, noting that private donors may offer to match the money.
“The State of Mississippi is a vital and integral partner, potential partner, for the State of Texas,” Hubbard told lawmakers at the Aug. 28, 2025, hearing. “The objective here is to develop ibogaine as expeditiously and efficiently as possible through the creation of a single unified FDA trial that will involve multiple states across the country. These trials must be geographically and demographically diverse, and because of Mississippi’s unique composition geographically and culturally and racially, it fits the bill.”
At the hearing, Mississippi Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Josh Harkins, R-Flowood, asked Hubbard if he had considered that the ibogaine clinical trials could fail, which would mean that Mississippi would lose its contributing funds for the research if the State puts up money for the trials.
“If at any point in time we discover that the thousands of known cases of restorative outcomes are not matchable within the FDA’s drug development framework, the opportunity exists to cut off participation and spend no more,” Hubbard replied on Aug. 28, 2025.
Mississippi Legislature, Governor Approve Ibogaine Research Legislation
Under House Bill 314, a consortium of Mississippi researchers will develop a clinical trial to study ibogaine to be used as a treatment for opioid use disorder, substance use disorder as well as neurological and mental health conditions.
It authorizes the Mississippi State Department of Health to pick and fund a consortium composed of a drug developer, a state institution of higher learning and a hospital that will create an ibogaine clinical trial. H.B. 314 does not legalize ibogaine but rather unveils a pathway for gaining the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the treatment.
The consortium must collaborate with another state that has taken the same actions to research ibogaine.
The Mississippi Legislature would appropriate $5 million from opioid settlement funds to partially pay for the trial and a pharmaceutical company or other third party must match the state’s funding for the research, Sen. Josh Harkins said on the Senate floor on March 10. The State would not disperse any funds until it verifies the third-party funding source, Mississippi House Public Health and Welfare Committee Chairman Rep. Sam Creekmore, R-New Albany, said when introducing the bill on the House floor on Jan. 21, 2026.
At least 20% of the revenue from the trial and subsequent commercialization of ibogaine must go to the State’s general fund, Creekmore said. H.B. 314 will go into effect on July 1, 2026.
Mississippi House Rep. Jeffrey Hulum, D-Gulfport, asked Creekmore what the Mississippi Department of Veterans’ Affairs thought about the bill and the chairman said the VA was “very supportive.”
“So, the VA, have they used this trial drug as well?” the Democrat implored on Jan. 21, 2026.
“They have not. They asked if they could host the trials, but they knew of no one—current veterans in the hospital that had been through it, no,” the chairman responded.
“So, they’re willing to, you said host, so do the trial treatment in a VA facility or are we going to administer drugs—” Hulum asked before Creekmore interjected.
“Well, I wouldn’t (say) that they went to that commitment,” Creekmore replied. “They asked if they could be part or eligible for the process and, of course, I said yes.”
The Mississippi House passed the legislation on Jan. 21, and the Senate approved it on March 5. Gov. Tate Reeves signed H.B. 314 into law on March 19.
‘Drug Companies Don’t Have The Incentive’ to Research Ibogaine
Geoffrey Lawrence, research director for nonpartisan policy advocacy organization the Reason Foundation, also encouraged Mississippi to partner with Texas and Arizona to collaborate on clinical trials for ibogaine under supervision of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“States don’t need to independently do trials,” he told lawmakers at the Aug. 28, 2025, hearing. “It needs to be coordinated with other states.”
The research director suggested using some of Mississippi’s $105 million opioid settlement money to invest in ibogaine research because of the psychedelic’s ability to reverse opioid addiction in patients. The State previously doled out 70% of the funds to the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s Center for Addiction Medicine, 15% to counties and municipalities and 15% to the State’s General Fund. But a 2025 law created the Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council, which will provide recommendations to the Legislature to distribute funds to “qualified applicants.”
If Mississippi participates in clinical trials that the FDA approves, the State could get a “royalty stream” from ibogaine, Lawrence said.
Mississippi Senate Public Health and Human Services Chairman Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, asked Geoffrey Lawrence why states should fund ibogaine research instead of drug companies.
“The world is full of drug companies and the world is full of venture capital,” he said at the Aug. 28, 2025, hearing. “Why wouldn’t some drug company or some venture capitalist be funding this without the states doing anything?”
Lawrence said the issue is that no one can obtain a patent for ibogaine because the alkaloid is naturally occurring and thousands of years old.
“Without a patent, the drug companies just don’t have the incentive to pursue a pure version of ibogaine, at least on their own basis,” he told Bryan at the Aug. 28, 2025, hearing. “So, it would need to be on a public-interest basis. Now, it could be that a modified or synthetic version of ibogaine, if it meets the novelty threshold, it could be patentable.”
Dr. Tom Recore, the Mississippi Department of Mental Health’s medical director, gave an overview of the historic uses of psychedelics like ibogaine. He explained a 2024 Stanford pilot study about ibogaine in which 30 special operations veterans who had traumatic brain injuries and severe PTSD traveled to Mexico for oral ibogaine treatment.
One month post treatment, the study showed veterans’ PTSD symptoms decreased by 88%, depression decreased by 87%, anxiety decreased by 81% and their “functional disability improved dramatically,” Recore noted at the Aug. 28, 2025, hearing. He said participants reported headaches and nausea but did not report any “serious side effects or heart issues.”
“I think there’s a clear signal that these medicines can be helpful to people and the conditions we’re talking about treating are extremely high risk conditions. And so, the question for me is, is it worth continuing to pursue more data before we make a decision? And the answer for me is a clear yes,” Recore said at the hearing.
Bryan questioned why ibogaine has not been studied intensively.
“The FDA and Schedule I are only effective in the United States,” he told Recore at the Aug. 28, 2025, hearing. “This drug’s been around for a while. Why hasn’t somebody somewhere in the world done the sort of double-blind studies that would be fairly persuasive?”
“I don’t know,” Recore replied.
‘Ibogaine Is Anti-Addictive’
Trevor Millar has been providing ibogaine treatments for over a decade. He started his first treatment center in Canada, which legally provided the medicine to patients from 2012 to 2017.
But in 2017, Canada changed its regulatory guidelines because Health Canada leadership realized ibogaine had been wrongfully classified in the same category as over-the-counter vitamins and supplements. Health Canada reclassified ibogaine in the Prescription Drug List, meaning the plant medicine can only be obtained through the organization’s Special Access Program. But because ibogaine has not undergone clinical trials in Canada, no one is allowed to prescribe ibogaine to patients.
“Ibogaine is anti-addictive and has tremendous medical benefits. If there’s any drug on Schedule I that’s misclassified, it is ibogaine. It needs to go down a few notches, for sure,” Millar said at the Aug. 28, 2025, hearing.
After Canada changed ibogaine’s status, Millar set up the Ambio Life Sciences treatment center in Tijuana, Mexico, in 2021. Ambio has a medical staff of 50 people, six of whom are doctors, across five clinics in Baja California, Mexico, he said.
“Ibogaine does require medical oversight,” Millar said at the Aug. 28 hearing. “It is potentially dangerous if not used properly, but that shouldn’t scare people away. We do know how to safely give this medicine. You get EKGs ahead of time, bloodwork ahead of time. You get coached on how to come off what medicines and what medications you might need to come off of.”
Millar said his company has treated more than 2,500 people in its four years of operation; at least 1,500 of those patients were veterans or first responders. Ambio has a house that it dedicates to patients who need to detox from other medications before their ibogaine treatments. It has three houses that work with a five-day group-treatment program that Millar said has shown especially positive results from veterans, first responders and traumatic brain injury patients. Patients get coaching and support before and after their treatments, he said.
“The ibogaine experience itself is called oneiric. Oneiric means ‘as related to dreams,’ so it’s kind of like a waking dream-type situation. It is visionary, potentially. It is not enjoyable. There is a very low chance—I would say a zero chance—of abuse with this compound,” Millar said.
“It is a long experience, anywhere from 24 to 48 hours. It comes with nausea, ataxia, which is a great shaking reaction to the medicine. But yeah, it’s not fun. But it does seem to come with a deep reset. The word ‘reset’ comes up often with this substance. It’s emotionally cathartic, mentally clarifying and results are typically achieved after just one dose,” he continued.
Ibogaine treatments last a different amount of time for each person. Ben Bush said that ibogaine patients will “know” if they need or want to go back. Some people go back after a few years and some people do not return for additional treatments, he said. He noted that had not felt the need to get another ibogaine treatment after four years.
“If there is a way, an effective way, to help individuals break free from the grips of addiction, then it is worth studying here in the Mississippi Legislature. If successful, ibogaine could reduce the dependence on long-term therapies,” Mississippi Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Josh Harkins, R-Flowood, said at an Aug. 28 press conference.
This story has been edited to add that Gov. Tate Reeves signed House Bill 314 into law on March 19.