Former Kentucky Governor Rick Perry joins Joe Rogan to discuss his experience with ibogaine and how he became a supporter of the Kentucky Ibogaine Initiative, and how it led to a trip to the White House with Joe and his wife.
00:00:12.000Well, Governor Perry, thank you very much for being here.
00:00:14.000It's a pleasure and honor to meet you.
00:00:16.000And Brian, would you explain your relationship and how you guys know each other?
00:00:22.000I had a public service career in the state of Kentucky, and the last stint of it involved my role as the chairman and executive director of the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission.
00:00:34.000Within that role, I designed for what, by lack of a better term, was the Kentucky Ibogaine Initiative.
00:00:40.000The state had received $842 million in settlements that will be paid out over the next 15 years by opioid distributors and manufacturers for their role in the creation and perpetuation of the opioid epidemic.
00:00:54.000And as the Kentucky Ibogaine Project was developed and executed, I was introduced to Governor Perry as someone who was a belaborer and advocate in the medicine.
00:01:05.000He and I developed a professional relationship.
00:01:09.000He was a vocal supporter and participant in the initiative itself.
00:01:15.000He appeared by video to give a testimonial about the Immense potential around the development of Ibogaine, and he also was so wonderfully helpful as to procure an op-ed in Newsweek magazine in October of last year endorsing the initiative.
00:01:33.000He has been a tremendous supporter, mentor, and I am privileged to call him my friend.
00:01:40.000And Governor, how did you get involved in this?
00:01:43.000It's kind of a long story, so we got the time.
00:01:45.000If you don't mind, I'll just take you back.
00:01:48.0002006, my wife made me go on vacation, which I don't necessarily do very good because I have a little bit of ADHD and vacations are sitting on the beach someplace that's not high on my list of good things to do.
00:02:01.000But anyway, I went with her and she took me to Coronado Island.
00:02:06.000And the Hotel Del, which is a fascinatingly interesting place.
00:02:10.000But my security detail went out early.
00:02:13.000And they were stopped there, I think, on Orange, and Orange Drive, the little breakfast nook.
00:02:21.000And they walked in where they were supposed to meet the California Highway Patrol to do our advance.
00:02:26.000And there was this big Guy looked about like you, all buff and slicked off head and pretty healthy looking boy.
00:02:33.000And they thought that was the patrolman they were supposed to meet.
00:02:35.000They went over, introduced themselves and said, are you here to meet Governor Perry?
00:02:43.000No, but I vote for him every chance I get.
00:02:46.000And this kid happened to be a JTAC with SEAL Team 5, who was a former, or was an F-18 driver, who was assigned to SEAL Team 5 to go out on their next assignment.
00:02:58.000And they just met him by the grace of God.
00:03:02.000And the kid gave him his card and said, hey, if the governor would like to go on a tour of the Special Warfare Center, I'd love to give him a tour.
00:03:09.000Well, the detail shows up next day, says, hey, we met this kid, and that's right down my alley, right?
00:03:16.000Rather than sitting on the beach, take me over and show me what the Special Warfare Center does.
00:03:21.000And on Saturday morning, We went over, got that tour, and this young man led the tour, and he had a big old tall drink of water with him in his camis that assisted with the tour.
00:03:33.000It took about three hours to finish this tour.
00:03:36.000We finish it, and this young man says, did Marcus tell you where he was last weekend?
00:03:54.000And I went back to the hotel room, looked it up on my computer.
00:04:00.000There's no mention of this Marcus Luttrell anywhere on my computer.
00:04:05.000And we had asked them to go have dinner with us that night, just to say thank you for their time and what have you.
00:04:12.000And that evening, as we get back to the restaurant, Friend is asking him all questions about what was it that he did.
00:04:25.000And during the conversation, Operation Red Wing came up and we finished dinner I tell them, I said, look, give me your mom's phone number.
00:04:38.000I'll call her when we get back to Texas.
00:04:41.000If you're ever through Austin, come by and see me, right?
00:04:43.000Which I would tell to, I probably told hundreds of people, Joe, if we hadn't known each other in those days, I said, hey, Joe, if you're ever through Austin, come by and see me.
00:04:52.000Fat chance you're going to come and knock on the door of the governor's mansion, right?
00:06:01.000That was in August of 06. The following May of 07, The phone rang in the governor's mansion.
00:06:12.000The security detail said, there's a young man down here who said, you told him the next time he's through Austin, Texas, come by and see you.
00:06:41.000And that's what started me and my wife on this long journey, this adventure that has taken me to sitting at Joe Rogan's table talking about veterans' mental health.
00:06:54.000We've been down literally dozens of rabbit trails.
00:06:59.000Frankly, the bulk of them, they were interesting, but they really didn't bring any relief, didn't bring any help.
00:07:05.000We learned about the brokenness of our government's ability to help these young men and women.
00:07:12.000I mean, Marcus literally was separated from the Navy without the ability to have TRICARE even.
00:07:22.000The only place he could get his health care, Joe, was at the VA. And he had to have some very specific surgeries on his back, highly technical surgeries.
00:07:35.000And I told him, I said, I'm not going to let you go to the VA and have that done.
00:08:22.000Ray was the former governor of Mississippi, so I knew him through that role.
00:08:26.000And I told him, I said, here's what I've got.
00:08:28.000And I said, this kid is a legit American hero.
00:08:33.000And I said, our government's just completely dropped the ball on being able to take care of him.
00:08:38.000And I said, I don't want to embarrass your boss, but I said, you need to get this kid back in, reevaluate him, get him not fit for duty so he can get eligible for TRICARE, of which they did.
00:08:50.000And my hat's off to him for doing that and doing it.
00:08:54.000The sadness of all of this, Joe, from my perspective, is Marcus Luttrell was just fortunate in a lot of different ways that by the grace of God he met a governor, a guy that could actually intervene and make a difference.
00:09:08.000There's literally thousands, thousands of young men and women out there today who have mental health issues that don't know a governor, don't have anybody to help.
00:09:17.000And that's why I've spent however many years, that's been 17 years, helping, being open to all the different ways that we could help these young men and women.
00:09:32.000Back in 07, I helped create a foundation that buys homes.
00:09:39.000It's called Military Heroes Support Foundation.
00:09:44.000And they've given away a thousand homes now.
00:09:49.000George Strait gives away one of their homes at every one of his concerts.
00:09:54.000But even if you are living in a great home, if you're in a mansion and your mind's not where it needs to be, You're just a lonely person, a sad person, a broken person, in a beautiful home.
00:10:11.000But I've become a complete believer in plant medicine over the course of the last five or six years in particular.
00:10:21.000And the compound Ibogaine, I-B-O-G-A-I-N-E, That most people never heard of before.
00:10:29.000That's good and bad because it doesn't have a bad rap because nobody's heard of it before.
00:10:36.000My job and our job is to be able to educate the public about this plant medicine, this psychoactive Plant medicine that absolutely is showing stunning ability to bring people back to normalcy, to reset their brains, to literally give them their lives back.
00:11:00.000I've made the decision that that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my however many years I got left.
00:11:06.000This is where I want to spend the bulk of my time Telling people about it explaining to people how this you know conservative right-wing knuckle-dragging Republican governor became a spokesperson willing to go publicly talk about this plant medicine that literally the data is I mean I I think the data is you can't argue with the data We'll talk about a clinical trial that they did out of Stanford this last year,
00:11:36.000but That's how I went from Basically being a guy that wasn't even open to having a conversation about.
00:11:45.000In 2013, I got talked into Talking to a mother who had a son who's an epileptic and she said the only thing that we can give our son that's relieved him of this is THC. And I was against any of the use of marijuana, medical or otherwise, in 2013. That mother came and sat down to me.
00:13:10.000I'm very open about this, that Donald Trump won this election.
00:13:15.000He's putting people into place that are open to plant medicine being used for our veterans' mental health.
00:13:23.000And so, I know I've covered a pretty broad piece of landscape in all of that that I've just talked about, but That's how I got here.
00:13:35.000Over a 17-year period of time, I went from an absolute, don't even talk to me about these drugs, to be in the Johnny Appleseed of Ibogaine today, where my wife probably gets tired of going places with me, and the next thing she knows, I'm talking to somebody about plant-based medicine.
00:13:54.000and what I've seen and why we as society need to be really pushing this talking to our congressmen talking to our senators talking to the people that are decision-makers and the private sector educating the public about this so that they know that there is help out there and when you add to this the clear evidence that this works on addictions and we're talking across the board then The
00:14:25.000populations that could be affected in a powerful and a positive way is substantial.
00:14:33.000That's what God put us on this earth for, is to be good servants.
00:14:37.000And this, I believe, has the most powerful way to affect the most people in a positive way of anything that I've ever seen in my public service, my 40 years of public service.
00:14:52.000I'm completely and absolutely convinced that the data will back up what we're talking about.
00:14:58.000And we'll visit about this clinical trial, I'm sure, in the next couple hours.
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00:17:57.000Introduction to people that don't understand the concept of plant medicine because Ibogaine is one of those drugs that is not a party drug.
00:18:24.000No, Hunter S. Thompson in the 1970s when it was Ed Muskie and George McGovern.
00:18:32.000When McGovern was running for president during the primaries, He spread this rumor that Muskie was addicted to Ibogaine, and then he had a Brazilian witch doctor come to visit him, and it tanked Muskie's political career.
00:19:35.000He just decided that the guy was a big phony, and so he made up this story about the guy being addicted to Ibogaine, of all drugs, which is kind of crazy.
00:19:43.000And so that's how the public got introduced to Ibogaine.
00:19:46.000Now, Schedule I says that there is no medical purpose for this compound, whatever it might be, and that it's addictive.
00:20:13.000And I think for the purpose of educating the public, we go back and understand the early 70s, what Nixon was using these compounds for, for a political purpose, and he gathered them all up, swept them all up, and put everything under Schedule I so he could go after his political enemies, using these compounds as the vehicle to do that.
00:20:37.000Yeah, and for the last 50 plus years, people have been imprisoned by that.
00:20:42.000That's a giant problem for Particularly for veterans, which is, I think, the most important use of these things because it's going to open eyes to people that would never consider the concept of plant medicine or psychedelics.
00:21:02.000But most people are so compassionate about the needs of veterans, the demands that they face and the trials that they face when they return, the mental struggles.
00:21:14.000The amount of suicides, the amount of addictions, it's overwhelming and they don't get any support.
00:21:19.000And people are kind of desperate and that's what opens up the door to people considering things like yourself, considering things that would not have normally entered into your landscape.
00:21:31.000You look at the history of how I got there.
00:21:40.000I grew up on a dry land cotton farm, about as conservative a part of the world as you could be.
00:21:46.000I went to school at Texas A&M. I wanted to be a pilot in the United States Air Force.
00:21:51.000I mean, drugs were absolutely not anything that I wanted to have anything to do with because At that particular point in time, in the early 70s and in the mid-70s, we got drug tested on a monthly basis.
00:22:08.000You go pee in a bottle and they test you.
00:22:11.000And if there was one time that you didn't pass that drug test, you were done.
00:22:17.000And so the fear factor of drugs was driven into us.
00:22:23.000You go forward with the The political messaging through those years, your brain on drugs, just say no to drugs.
00:22:33.000On the one hand, that's a good message.
00:22:37.000On the other hand, when they're used just for political purposes and you Put compounds on Schedule 1, like Ibogaine, and it can't even be used for clinical trials.
00:22:51.000It can't be medically used to see, is there some good that can come out of this?
00:22:59.000And the fascinating thing for me, Joe, is that Mexico, this is a compound that can be used.
00:23:09.000I mean, there's a host of countries around the world that allow for Ibogaine to be used for clinical trials and for medical purposes.
00:23:17.000Yet, we're sitting here with 20 plus veterans a day killing themselves.
00:23:27.000Yet we have a compound that clearly the data, clearly the data shows that this compound appropriately used and appropriately overseen can absolutely change lives.
00:23:52.000And for me, to be able to know that and then still see government say, no, we're not interested, is really frustrating.
00:24:03.000And it's why I'm so excited about, you know, Bobby Kennedy, you know, Jay Bakachara, Dr. Oz, I mean, Nolan Williams.
00:24:16.000Individuals who may come into this administration at some very high levels that are supportive of plant medicine.
00:24:24.000So I think we've got this great opportunity.
00:24:27.000We've been given this gift, and I hope you've got members of Congress that are supportive of this on both sides of the aisle.
00:24:36.000Partisan issue of any sense of the imagination.
00:24:39.000So I'm really excited about the potential of being able to get clinical trials done, move this off of Schedule 1 into, worst case scenario, Schedule 2, even Schedule 3, so that we get the broad amount of trials done so that People who have questions about it, those can be answered, and they can see the data.
00:25:02.000I mean, we'll talk about this clinical trial out of Stanford that is just stunning results.
00:25:25.000In 2018, individuals by the name of Amber and Marcus Capone founded an organization called Vets, Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions.
00:25:37.000Marcus Capone had been a special operator and he had done multiple tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
00:25:45.000When he came home, finally from war, Amber described an individual who bore no resemblance to the man that she married.
00:25:55.000He came home as a severely traumatized individual and was met by a system which could not in any way effectively address the nature of his trauma.
00:26:05.000Recognizing that his life was at stake as well as the future of her family, she became desperate and went online and discovered the existence of a compound called Ibogaine.
00:26:18.000She made arrangements for Marcus to receive treatment from an individual by the name of Martine Polanco, who operated a clinical operation called Mission Within.
00:26:31.000Amber, as a last shot at saving her family, sent him to Mexico to receive Ibogaine treatment.
00:26:39.000She said when he returned, he came back as the man she remembered marrying before he ever went to war.
00:26:48.000As they learned about other friends of theirs who were coming back home with similar circumstances on the verge of familial dissolution, With Marcus and his friends at the verge of suicide, they began just as a friend group to put money together to send their close circle of individuals down to receive this treatment.
00:27:11.000They came together to form vets, and since 2018, over 1,000 veterans have trampled to the AMBO clinic south of Tijuana to receive Ibogaine treatment for symptoms of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
00:27:27.000Because of the miraculous outcomes which were endorsed by the veterans who were receiving this treatment, a group of philanthropists funded a study out of Stanford University, which was led by Dr. Nolan Williams.
00:27:42.000And over the course of several years, a cohort of 30 veterans were evaluated.
00:27:50.000They were evaluated comprehensively through the administration of a battery of psychological tests to quantify the nature and duration of their symptoms.
00:27:59.000They underwent pre- and post-treatment MRI scans.
00:28:03.000These scans were compared against a database which had been compiled of hundreds of thousands of healthy adult brains covering the human lifespan.
00:28:15.000And through an algorithmic assessment, the question was, what was the physiological effect upon the human brain, if any?
00:28:24.000To explain these miraculous outcomes were veterans who had been on the verge of suicide, who had been paralyzed by symptomatology associated with profound anxiety, profound depression.
00:28:37.000In many cases, veterans who were Prescribed an array of habituating pharmacology which ineffectively addressed their symptomatology were not just back to what they could remember being before they experienced their trauma, but had been liberated from that pharmacology.
00:28:58.000The results of that study are nothing short of miraculous when it comes to the way in which Ibogaine has been revealed to have significant neuro-regenerative properties that impact the human brain with profound implications for conditions for which there are no current effective treatments.
00:29:20.000Specifically, The white matter that covers the surface of our brains, which is the highway across which all of our thoughts and impulses travel, grew and thickened in size across the entire surface of each of these veterans' brains.
00:29:37.000The centers of the brain responsible for emotional regulation and executive functioning grew in size.
00:29:45.000The average reversal of brain age among this cohort of 30 veterans was one and a half years, with the top five among that cohort seeing a reversal of brain age of almost five years.
00:30:01.000Right now there are individuals who live offshore from the United States.
00:30:06.000Who are using Ibogaine to effectively treat symptoms associated with multiple sclerosis, Lyme disease, and Parkinson's disease.
00:30:17.000Just about two weeks ago, Governor Perry and I had the privilege of spending some time with a researcher who is based out of the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
00:30:29.000This researcher has developed a protocol for the treatment of Parkinson's symptoms with Ibogaine.
00:30:36.000We had the privilege of visiting with one of his patients who wishes to remain anonymous, as well as a family member of this patient.
00:30:44.000We were shown a video whereby this individual had developed Parkinson's disease at the age of 41. It had advanced so aggressively that by age 51, this gentleman was completely bedfast.
00:30:59.000As a last resort, he underwent an invasive intracranial surgical procedure called deep brain stimulation where they drilled holes through his skull and implanted electrodes which were designed to stimulate the production of what is called Glioneurotropic growth factor, which essentially stimulates the dopamine receptors to produce dopamine, the absence of which is implicated in the development of Parkinson's disease.
00:31:28.000And while this gentleman was no longer bedfast, He was not able to volitionally control his bodily movements.
00:31:37.000The video that we saw demonstrated his attempts to stand and walk, and the ability to walk was non-existent.
00:31:46.000After he had undergone the deep brain stimulation, He signed up for euthanasia services in the country in which he lives because it is legal and he was at the end of his rope.
00:32:00.000He underwent a four-week course of upward titration with low-dose Ibogaine that did not produce a psychoactive experience and at the end of those four weeks that gentleman was able to stand, walk, and function as a normal human being.
00:32:20.000The outcome is nothing short of miraculous.
00:32:25.000His mother said that he rode his bike every day now.
00:32:29.000I mean, I'm telling you, Joe, this is the most stunning...
00:32:32.000I mean, it's a short video, I get it, it's anecdotal, but for my purposes, it was just backing up what we have seen and what we've learned about how Ibogaine...
00:32:45.000The treatments down in Mexico are flood doses.
00:32:47.000This was a microdosing that they did over there.
00:32:50.000But again, it gets to my point of this is exactly why we, as the United States, and with our medical capacity in this country, need to be doing this type of clinical trial so that we...
00:33:04.000We find out, is this really what we think it is?
00:33:08.000And if it is, this needs to be widespread treatment for MS, for Parkinson's, for addictions, for PTSD, for traumatic brain injury.
00:33:19.000I mean, I think we're on the cusp of some extraordinary medical breakthroughs because of this compound ibogaine.
00:33:27.000Dr. Williams has said, and I agree, that Ibogaine is the most sophisticated medication on the planet.
00:33:35.000The results of that Stanford study were published in a top five medical research journal called Nature Medicine on January 5th, 2024. An organization called the Brain and Behavioral Research Foundation named that study as its number two study in terms of neuropharmacology in the world for the year 2024. I have become convinced that any system which
00:34:06.000maintains Ibogaine's criminality is in fact criminal and needs to be tore apart brick by brick.
00:34:15.000It does seem like a miraculous compound.
00:34:18.000And what's fascinating to me is how little was known about it until just basically a decade or so ago.
00:34:25.000It started making its way into the zeitgeist.
00:34:28.000Primarily, I heard about it from people.
00:34:30.000My friend Ed Clay was the first person I heard about it.
00:34:42.000And then he wound up opening up a center in Mexico.
00:34:45.000And since then I've known quite a few veterans, mostly veterans, that they've been led there by other veterans, guys who've gotten help or new friends that had gotten help that way and sent them down there.
00:34:57.000And every single one of them that I've known that have come back from there has had a miraculous result.
00:35:05.000It's like when you're talking about it, people are like, you know, there's so many people probably listening to this that are at the end of their rope.
00:35:14.000And they're hearing this like, oh, come on, don't get my hopes up for this.
00:35:33.000You ask a little bit more about in 2017, I went to Washington to be the Secretary of Energy.
00:35:41.000I asked Morgan Luttrell, Marcus' twin brother, former Navy SEAL, was working on his PhD in brain science, if he would put that on hold and come with me up to D.C. to work at the Department of Energy.
00:35:57.000And he was over in a part of the agency where we have oversight of all the supercomputers, or the bulk of the supercomputers in the United States, our national labs have.
00:36:10.000And we have some partnerships with different universities, the University of San Francisco.
00:36:18.000University of California, San Francisco, and a researcher out there named Jeffrey Manley, MD, PhD.
00:36:26.000And he was doing some studies on the brain for traumatic brain injury.
00:36:32.000And they were scanning the brain using our supercomputers at the Department of Energy.
00:36:35.000And Morgan was helping him oversee that as they were going through it because of his obvious background and his study on brain science and what have you.
00:36:45.000And that's the first time I ever heard about anyone going to Mexico to be treated with this plant medicine was through Morgan.
00:36:53.000And I kind of picked it up, you know, in a conversation that he was having and, you know, it kind of put me back on my heels a little bit.
00:37:41.000They all had moderate to severe PTSD. They were all given a clinical psychological exam that put them into the moderate to severe PTSD range.
00:37:55.000Some of them had traumatic brain injury.
00:38:14.000And the results, 88%, Joe, 88% of those individuals, six months later, had zero, not a little bit better, they had zero symptoms of PTSD. And I talked to Nolan a few days ago and it appears that even after a year that these Symptoms
00:38:45.000I mean, this is stunningly powerful work.
00:38:48.000And again, I sound like a broken record, but this is the reason that this country needs to put this into place so that we can clinically trial it at various and sundry places across this country, at the VA, at some of our great medical institutions, the private sector.
00:39:07.000If this is what we think it is, This could be the greatest medicine brought to mankind in history.
00:39:19.000You know, and it takes someone like you.
00:39:22.000It takes a Republican, straight-laced guy who was a governor.
00:39:26.000When you're coming out and talking about something like this, that's going to open up a lot of people's eyes.
00:39:31.000I had a political consultant when I first started being public about this.
00:39:38.000A young man, in this case, called me up and he said, hey, Governor, I heard you talking about this plant-based medicine and the use of psychedelics.
00:40:11.000Number one, I have spent a lot of time studying this.
00:40:15.000I said, I've read, I've talked to people, I've been to Mexico multiple times to observe this and to see it, and I said, I'm convinced of what I've seen is true, and that what I've studied and what I've gone down and really Put my arms around.
00:40:38.000I said, I'm convinced that this data is what it is, and we need to move forward with this.
00:40:45.000But I said, I'll tell you what's even more important for me.
00:40:49.000My reputation is not worth more than their lives.
00:40:53.000And that's what drives me, is that what I've seen, I believe.
00:40:59.000And I'm willing to put my reputation on the line.
00:41:03.000And I think, you know, when we see people like Marcus Luttrell and Morgan Luttrell and other members of Congress who have been treated and have publicly talked about that they have been to Mexico and they've been treated, Morgan will tell you it saved his marriage.
00:41:17.000Marcus will tell you it saved his life.
00:42:12.000And Brian saw it firsthand over in Kentucky.
00:42:15.000I mean, you think about I started going down to Brooks Army Medical Center and the burn center down there in 05 when kids started coming back from IED last and they were burned.
00:42:45.000And there'd be a kid with a lollipop that was an opioid.
00:42:50.000And our government started literally handing out sackfuls of opioids and patting these kids on the butt and saying, you know, we'll see you.
00:43:01.000And we literally addicted a generation of our warfighters who got wounded both physically and mentally.
00:43:14.000And the government was giving them all of these opioids.
00:43:18.000Then they're masking that with alcohol.
00:43:20.000And we're sitting around going, gosh, I wonder why Billy and Bobby killed themselves.
00:43:26.000And we were the reason because the government did such a poor job of dealing with this issue in the mid-2000s as we were.
00:43:36.000You know, we've been at war for 20 years now.
00:43:39.000I mean, when I think about the history of civilization, Has there ever been a time when a group of warfighters were ever in this much conflict for this long a period of time?
00:44:42.000What we call it, shell-shocked in World War II. Then Vietnam came along, and these young men were in conflict for a little period.
00:44:49.000We have literally had, particularly our special operators, the Force Recon guys, the Delta Force guys, the Navy SEALs, the Army Rangers, where they literally are in combat for weeks at a time,
00:45:05.000months at a time, and even when they're Out of direct conflict, because of that environment that they're in, they're always, you know, their hormone levels, you know, are through the roof because they're always on, head on a swivel, looking around.
00:45:26.000Is that person walking in here with the, you know, with the shawl on?
00:46:26.000Brian's probably got a better handle on it than me from that standpoint.
00:46:31.000I look at this as we've been given this great gift of a parallel track with the federal government, with these individuals that hopefully are going to be coming in at HHS, at all of the under agencies that are involved there,
00:46:47.000and at the same time, Texas going with a parallel legislation to both educate the public about Ibogaine and to do clinical trials so that we've got the data to back up The education process that's going on.
00:47:02.000Brian, could you explain what is the unique pathway that allows Ibogaine to help people with addictions?
00:47:11.000Because it's a very unusual thing that it does to people.
00:47:18.000If I might provide some historical context on the reality that you have just articulated.
00:47:25.000In 1962, A heroin addict by the name of Howard Lotzoff, whose widow, Norma, is still living in New York City.
00:47:37.000He was part of an underground subculture in the early 60s known as the Yippies.
00:47:45.000And Howard came into contact with Ibogaine in 1962, and he took it out of curiosity just to see what would occur.
00:47:54.000After he took it, he discovered that his desire for heroin had vanished, despite a nine-year hard-core dependency.
00:48:06.000Howard, along with a guy by the name of Stanley Glick, a gentleman by the name of Dana Beale, joined also by a guy by the name of Dr. Kenneth Alper, were the original pioneers who essentially engaged in a decades-long process of developing observational field data which demonstrated Ibogaine had the unique ability to resolve physiological dependence on opioids.
00:48:33.000The mechanism of action was not understood and is still not understood.
00:48:38.000What is known is that the opioid-dependent brain does not have the capacity to produce its own dopamine and serotonin.
00:48:48.000Dopamine and serotonin are our baseline survival chemicals.
00:48:53.000They drive all of our most fundamental human instincts.
00:48:56.000The drive to eat, the drive to drink, the drive to procreate.
00:49:02.000The human body's natural physical capacity to produce dopamine at its maximum, as measured in what's called nanograms per deciliter, is 125 nanograms per deciliter.
00:49:15.000Opioids produce a dopamine response of 925 nanograms per deciliter, exceeded only by meth, which produces a dopamine response of 1100 nanograms per deciliter.
00:49:29.000For years, individuals, as the opioid epidemic has played out in this country, with the detonation of OxyContin, In the Appalachian Mountains in 1996, for years we looked at this problem as one of profound moral failure by those who found themselves trapped in addiction.
00:49:48.000What I learned in my roles in government was that that was completely wrong.
00:49:53.000What we are seeing are the results of a profound neurochemical brain injury expressed by the shutdown of dopamine and serotonin in the brain due to opioid exposure.
00:50:03.000Ibogaine has the unique ability to restore the brain's dopamine and serotonin production to its pre-opioid exposure levels within 36 to 48 hours, thereby fully resolving physiological opioid dependence with a single administration for 80% of individuals the first time.
00:50:24.000That number goes to 97% with a second supportive dose.
00:51:22.000It is something that is not understood, but is concrete and real.
00:51:28.000One other thing is important to mention about its physiological properties.
00:51:33.000Ibogaine can produce miraculous outcomes for individuals who find themselves substance dependent.
00:51:39.000Its applications haven't just been successful when it comes to opioid dependency.
00:51:44.000It is the only known substance to successfully treat meth dependency.
00:51:49.000And when we consider that the current street economy, the prevailing combination is fentanyl and meth, There is no more compelling circumstance to demand the accelerated development of this therapeutic than the current reality of drug dependency and death in America.
00:52:08.000The risk comes with misadministration.
00:52:13.000There is a significant cardiac risk which accompanies ibogaine.
00:52:19.000It has the propensity To prolong the beats between the heart, or what is called prolonged QT interval.
00:52:29.000The fancy word for it is Toursad syndrome.
00:52:33.000If an individual is given Ibogaine improperly, it will slow and stop their heart and they will die.
00:52:41.000This is a very serious medication and it must at all times be administered by a medical professional with a background in interventional cardiology, supported by a nursing team that can deliver the administration of atropine to stabilize the heart's rhythm if it goes out of whack.
00:53:04.000The other important thing to know is though that risk exists, it can be fully and completely mitigated by the co-administration of magnesium.
00:53:16.000A methodology that the best practice clinics in Mexico, I've had the privilege of going to two.
00:53:24.000The first was previously mentioned, which is Ambio, south of Tijuana, and the other is called Beyond, and it is in Cancun.
00:54:01.000One is maintained by the name of Juliana Mulligan called InterVision Ibogaine, which has a list of providers.
00:54:07.000As I said, I have been to both Ambio and beyond.
00:54:12.000They are clinical operations that adhere to the absolute best, highest standards of safety.
00:54:18.000And you want to make sure, if you have a family member, that you're sending them to a place that recognizes That Ibogaine is the very best possible beginning that you can give an individual to restore their lives in the aftermath of the devastation associated with addiction.
00:54:37.000You want to make sure that the clinical staff is comprised of highly credentialed physicians, nurses with intensive care background and certification who are also believers in the advancement of this particular medication and who also have experience with it.
00:54:55.000It needs to be delivered within a supportive therapeutic environment whereby you are within a community that is connected to your humanity, where you have the ability to receive services that heal your mind, your body, and most importantly, your soul.
00:55:20.000It sounds so crazy that this is illegal and it sounds so crazy that this is so beneficial and that it's taken so long that here we are in 2024, you know, all the 54 years after all this stuff was made illegal and we're still dealing with the repercussions of this political decision essentially, you know, by the Nixon administration.
00:55:46.000Is it all right if I talk about how I came to learn about this?
00:55:51.000I'm going to have to start at the beginning, and I will try to be as economical with the use of words as possible.
00:56:00.000I was raised in one of Virginia's five coal mining counties, Russell County, Virginia, which economically and culturally is much more similar to eastern Kentucky, and southern West Virginia than it is to any other part of Virginia.
00:57:27.000Fifty feet away from the combined effects of black lung and tuberculosis that he contracted in the cold camp in which my father was raised.
00:57:37.000When I was a young boy and I would go and visit them, each of them, separately and independently, would at some point pull me aside and they would say, Papaw knows that you're scared and that you're anxious, but you need to know a couple of things.
00:57:59.000Number two, and most importantly, God loves you.
00:58:04.000You have a special and unique purpose to achieve with your life that has been handed to you from on high.
00:58:11.000And no matter how scared you get, no matter how rough you think things are, if you will have faith that God will take care of you, you're gonna come through just fine.
00:58:23.000If my grandfathers had not provided me in those very early years with sanctuary from that early chaos, The stability of their love and an affirmation of my spiritual significance.
00:58:42.000The chances are, if I were alive at all, I certainly would not be sitting here.
00:58:47.000I would be looking to people like Governor Perry and people who held jobs like I once did, wondering what they were going to do to pull me out of the ditch.
00:58:57.000I went through school at a time when Ronald Reagan was president.
00:59:03.000And just like the duckling to the duck, he was my North Star as to what America was all about.
00:59:10.000I had a very idealized version of American history and civics education delivered to me by grade school teachers who had come of age during World War II or ladies who had been trained by those teachers.
00:59:24.000Coming out of a working-class family, my dad was an installer for the telephone company and a lineman for 40 years.
00:59:30.000He had some struggles with alcohol when I was very young that he, through iron will, overcame, and today he is one of my absolute best and dear friends in this life.
00:59:43.000I was raised, along with my brother, to recognize the benchmarks of success as becoming either a doctor or lawyer.
00:59:50.000I wasn't much good by way of math or science, but I could write and talk a little bit.
00:59:55.000And I was also taught that law was the way in which you could defend truth, justice, and the American way.
01:00:02.000So with dewy-eyed optimism, I went to undergrad and had a wonderful time.
01:00:09.000And by the end of that first semester, with the acquisition of significant student loan debt, all of those dewy-eyed notions had been crushed and destroyed before my very eyes.
01:00:20.000At the end of the three-year legal education process, I came to know and to understand.
01:00:27.000That law has nothing to do with any of those things that I was raised to believe.
01:00:32.000That law is often nothing other oftentimes than the tyrant's will, and always so when it is used to produce predetermined, manipulated outcomes in the hands of judges who drive results based on their own individual biases, predilections, and preferences.
01:00:52.000Because I owed such debt, my first job was to just get a job, and I found myself with an accidental career practicing workers' compensation law in Kentucky.
01:01:04.000I had the privilege of being mentored by a lady named Mary Kay Williams for one year.
01:01:10.000She had managed to achieve partnership with the law firm at which we worked together.
01:01:14.000But in May of 2002, tragically at the age of 33, she died as a result of a fall from her attic at her home after a Memorial Day party.
01:01:29.000A senior partner called me in and said, there's no easy time to have this discussion, so we're going to have it now.
01:01:36.000There is a 300 case caseload that Mary Kay handled.
01:01:41.000The bulk of those cases belonged to Walmart stores.
01:01:45.000They are a significant client to this law firm.
01:01:48.000I don't know you, but you are one of the few associates of which she had glowing things to say.
01:01:55.000I need you to get in there and get your hands around that caseload and anchor this client to this firm.
01:02:01.000That touched off what was a 16-year legal career practicing workers' compensation law across Kentucky in the years which coincided with the onset and explosion of the opioid epidemic out of central and southern Appalachia.
01:02:15.000I traveled from one end of the state to the other representing Walmart, Tyson Foods, and Tennessee Valley Authority practicing thousands of cases over the course of those years.
01:02:28.000I can remember taking the deposition of a particular individual who I would describe as representative of the dynamics of the opioid epidemic.
01:02:39.000This person was usually a middle-aged woman somewhere between the ages of 45 and 70. She would have worked tirelessly her entire life, usually in eastern Kentucky, working in low-skill, low-wage jobs, convenience stores, family dollars, Walmarts.
01:03:00.000And she worked hard, and she worked consistently, and she would have been someone whose labor was a monument of devotion to her family.
01:03:10.000At some point in time she would have had a work accident, a slip and fall, or a lifting injury.
01:03:16.000She would make her way to either a physician or in some cases a lawyer.
01:03:21.000She would undergo an evaluation and she would endorse the existence of pain complaints throughout her body.
01:03:31.000This person would undergo a series of diagnostic studies that failed to reveal anything that was significant, certainly not enough to explain all of the pain symptoms that this person endorsed.
01:03:43.000As a young lawyer, I took this lady's deposition probably 30 or 40 times, and I would get them to speak to their pain, I would get them to speak to their debility, and then I would pull out their medical records, which demonstrated that CT scans, MRIs, electrodiagnostic studies, all had failed to reveal any objective physiological explanation for their complaints of pain.
01:04:10.000And being enthusiastic and wanting to defend the very best interests of my clients, I thought that I was being put on.
01:04:18.000That the plaintiff's lawyer had sat with this lady and had come up with a sob story to tell me in order to pull money out of my clients' pockets.
01:04:27.000And I was kind with the individual, but I would say, Ma'am, we have gone through a stack of medical records, and there does not appear to be anything wrong with you.
01:04:37.000And this lady would start to cry, and she would say, Mr. Hubbard, I'm not a doctor, and I can't tell you what's wrong with me.
01:04:46.000The only thing that I can tell you is from the time I open my eyes until I go to bed, I hurt from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, and I can't hardly make myself get up out of bed.
01:04:59.000This person's medical treatment, by the time they got to me, had consisted of the application of high-powered narcotic medications in response to their complaints, along with habituating psychotropic medications, OxyContin, Xanax, Xanaflex, the whole nine yards.
01:05:18.000If they were not physiologically disabled by their accident, They had been physiologically disabled by the pharmacology that had been thrown at them.
01:05:28.000I took this person's deposition hundreds of times.
01:05:32.000And one day driving down the road, it dawned on me that whether these ladies had physical symptoms which were identifiable or not, they were truly, genuinely experiencing profound pain which had caused significant debility.
01:05:53.000It was emotional and it was spiritual.
01:05:56.000These ladies had worked lifetimes looking at a dead end.
01:06:00.000And at the time that they had their work accident, it was the straw that broke the camel's back for any hope they had of a future defined by dignity and autonomy.
01:06:13.000And that broken hope came through as profound physical pain that was rooted within their spirit.
01:06:21.000By virtue of my connection to an expert who I had utilized in my workers' compensation cases, in December of 2016, I received a call from the member of the then administration of Governor Matt Bevin.
01:06:36.000And they were looking for an individual who could come in and look at the state's social security disability system.
01:06:43.000That's a federal program that exists to help individuals who are disabled as a result of either physical or mental maladies.
01:06:51.000And while it's a federal program, it is administered by the individual states.
01:06:55.000And I was asked, what do you know about Social Security disability?
01:07:01.000I know it and workers' compensation go hand in hand.
01:07:04.000And I know that Kentucky, for as long as anyone can remember, It has a significant portion of its adult population receiving that benefit.
01:07:12.000We've been second only to West Virginia for at least 30 years.
01:07:16.000And they said, well, we're looking for someone who can come in and evaluate the system, understand how it works, and understand why Kentucky has so many people receiving it.
01:07:26.000Is this a job that you think that you could do?
01:07:28.000And I said, I don't know, but I'll sure give it my best try, and it's an honor to be considered.
01:07:35.000So in February of 17, I went in and began to lead Kentucky's Social Security Disability System.
01:07:42.000My first job was to understand why things were the way they were.
01:07:45.000I assembled a team of high-caliber intellects who had years, decades, of policy experience with the Social Security Disability Program.
01:07:56.000And I wrote down 19 different statistical metrics that I wish for us to evaluate around the enrollment into the Social Security Disability Program as well as different socioeconomic factors which were unique to Kentucky.
01:08:08.000And in October of 2017, we issued what was the very first of its kind retrospective study of the evolution of the Social Security Disability Program in Kentucky covering the years 1980 through 2015. And here were some of the statistics that were the highlights of that report.
01:08:27.000Between 1980 and 2015, Kentucky's population grew 20%.
01:08:33.000Enrollment in the Social Security Disability Program grew 249%.
01:08:44.000Now, these are children who are under the age of 18. Most of them come from highly impoverished backgrounds where there's very little opportunity to have what we consider to be a conventional healthy childhood.
01:09:00.000Childhood enrollment grew 449% over those 35 years.
01:09:07.000We paired the enrollment statistics with the state's Medicaid database, which tracked the issuance of every single pill that was capable of habituation to the state's SSI Medicaid population.
01:09:22.000Between 2001 and 2015, the issuance of prescription opioids to adults within the Social Security Disability System grew 210% from 47 doses per adult to 147 doses per adult.
01:09:40.000The issuance of habituating psychotropic medications to children Whether it was amphetamine, whether it was antidepressant, anything that could create physiological dependence grew 168% from 275 doses per child to 457 doses per SSI Medicaid child.
01:10:06.000My first month on the job We had the Social Security Administration's federal liaison to the state of Kentucky come in for what was called the Home Agency Visit.
01:10:18.000This was a semi-annual review of the state's Social Security Disability Program and the way in which it was meeting federal performance standards.
01:10:27.000I wish that I had had a recording of this meeting when it occurred because this person gave me a gift of truth right off the bat.
01:10:36.000I assembled the management team, I was sitting at the end of the table, and this person began by saying, folks, claims are down.
01:10:49.000And that's bad because claims equal budget.
01:10:53.000I came to learn that the Social Security Disability Program was not necessarily run primary for the benefit of the Social Security Disability recipients.
01:11:04.000It was run for the perpetual expansion of the SSA's own bureaucracy And that while Social Security disability benefits represented 16% of benefit payments within the system, it consumed 45% of the agency's budget.
01:11:21.000In order to get more money, you must have more recipients, despite the nature of those outcomes.
01:11:29.000I came to also run the state's child support enforcement system.
01:11:33.000Within that role, it was perceived that the state was not delivering child support payments to children.
01:11:40.000It is the largest single anti-poverty program, not just in Kentucky, but in the country.
01:11:45.000Direct payment transfers from an obligated parent to the custodial parent.
01:11:50.000It was believed that there were a number of deadbeat dads who were just not paying the bill.
01:11:55.000And what I came to find out was that those officials who were responsible for running the program, and in Kentucky that was 120 individually elected county attorneys.
01:12:08.000There were a cohort of county attorneys who were running that program perfectly.
01:12:12.000There was another cohort that were running it with some degree of success, but not necessarily at top performance.
01:12:19.000And then there was another group that were running their operations horribly.
01:12:23.000I discovered that within the cohort of 117 elected officials, 40 of them Owned their own property, which they then turned around and charged the child support program rent.
01:12:38.000Essentially, federal and state tax dollars through rent payments were going to allow for the acquisition of private real estate equity interest by elected officials at the county level, something that was immediately ended when I came into that job.
01:12:54.000Governor Bevin lost his race for re-election in 2019, and because of some of the measures that were taken to bring accountability, transparency, and performance expectations to that child support program, I was terminated from my job on hour one of day one of the administration of newly elected Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.
01:13:14.000I was picked up by a gentleman who is my dear friend by the name of Daniel Cameron, who had been elected Attorney General in 2019. He asked that I run his Office of Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Control, a law enforcement office which investigates and prosecutes medical providers for being engaged in fraud against the state's Medicaid system.
01:13:37.000This coincided with the onset of COVID. I brought in a deputy by the name of Matt Kleinert, who was a Medicaid policy expert, and over the course of two years, despite the shutdown of the state's court system, we doubled the number.
01:13:50.000of criminal indictments and convictions of medical providers on that system.
01:13:55.000A significant portion of that caseload was comprised of providers of opioid maintenance treatments who were using their clinics which were intended to help those who were struggling with opioid addiction as glorified drug dealing operations which fomented the diversion of Suboxone in every little town and county in Kentucky.
01:14:18.000And it was an eye-opening experience to recognize the predators within this universe of operation that is supposed to be restorative and helpful to people in recovery.
01:14:29.000Because of the way in which I believe I had developed a reputation as a no-nonsense, get-it-done public servant, the Deputy Attorney General at the time, his name was Barry Dunn, asked me if I would have any interest.
01:14:42.000And run in the state's opioid commission.
01:14:45.000The Kentucky legislature had set up a framework to administer what is now $1 billion in settlements from opioid distributors and manufacturers for their role in the creation and perpetuation of the opioid epidemic.
01:14:59.000While the people at home are wonderful and beautiful, Many of the conditions that exist there exist because of how terribly Kentucky state government has functioned since the end of the Civil War.
01:15:15.000Kentucky in many categories is first where one would wish to be last and last where folks would wish to be first.
01:15:22.000It has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty in the country, one of the highest rates of child abuse in the country, one of the highest rates of parental incarceration in the country, One of the highest rates of child sexual abuse in the country.
01:15:35.000All of the tender and material that is necessary to create the devastation associated with the opioid epidemic.
01:15:42.000Kentucky was like a drought-stricken forest and Oxycontin was the lightning bolt that set it on fire in 1996. Like Louisiana, there has been a history of systemic political corruption which has impaired the ability to produce progress for our people.
01:15:58.000So when I was asked if I had an interest in doing that job, I said, well, this is a very treacherous opportunity because with this amount of money coming in, there's going to be a lot of buzzards gathering around the wagon who are ready to pick the bones clean.
01:16:13.000If y'all will let me set up this commission and run it in a way that is accessible, accountable, and transparent to the people of Kentucky, I would be privileged to have the opportunity to do it.
01:16:29.000Mr. Dunn looked at me and said, we wouldn't have it any other way.
01:16:34.000I had to go through an interview process.
01:16:37.000And through that process, the question was asked, what do we need to do with that money?
01:16:42.000And I said, well, let's recognize that while $842 million is a tremendous sum of money to the average year, it's going to be paid to this state over 15 years.
01:16:56.000At its height, Purdue Pharma was making $100 million a month off the sales of OxyContin.
01:17:04.000This settlement represents roughly eight and a half months of OxyContin sales, but we're going to be getting it over 15 years.
01:17:12.000These are crumbs off the tables of gluttons, and we have got to make sure that this one-time, non-recurring revenue stream is utilized for its maximum best impact to pull this state out of this travesty.
01:17:28.000And I said one thing that we have got to look for is an opportunity to develop a breakthrough therapeutic that can deliver materially better outcomes than what we are getting with our existing system.
01:17:41.000Our existing system is unacceptably mediocre.
01:17:45.000And it is necessary if we're going to change generational dynamics to improve upon what we have.
01:17:50.000We've got to look for Kentucky's Manhattan Project opportunity to pioneer a therapeutic breakthrough for opioid addiction.
01:17:57.000And I said, I don't know what that is, but I'm going to get to looking.
01:18:02.000In 2018, I came into knowledge of the psilocybin mushroom.
01:18:08.000And the way in which it has profound impacts on treatment-resistant anxiety and depression, and in the case of me in particular with my family's history, alcoholism.
01:18:18.000And I followed developments around its research applications over the next several years.
01:18:23.000I came into contact with an author who goes by the pen name of Juliana Cristina, who wrote beautifully about her own experiences with the psilocybin mushroom, which helped her overcome a lifetime of debility.
01:18:34.000Anchored in anxiety, depression, and a near-fatal eating disorder.
01:18:40.000On July the 29th, 2022, I reached out to her and I said, Hey, this is who I am.
01:18:48.000What can you tell me about the universe of psychedelics and whether there is anything that shows special application or impact for opioid dependency?
01:18:58.000She said, Have you ever heard of Ibogaine?
01:20:09.000And she said, what they didn't tell me about Suboxone was if you try to take yourself off of it, Suboxone withdrawal made my heroin withdrawal look like a cakewalk.
01:20:19.000It was one of the most horrific experiences I ever had in my life.
01:20:23.000She said, I found about this alkaloid called Ibogaine through online internet research.
01:20:30.000And she said, what I didn't know was that there are a number of operations that operate within the underground That don't necessarily adhere to the necessary safety practices to assure that this treatment can both be safe and effective.
01:20:45.000I was in the hands of a practitioner who didn't know what they were doing.
01:20:48.000And I was given double the dose that I should have received.
01:20:52.000She said, I went into cardiac arrest six times and nearly died.
01:20:57.000She said, I remember waking up in the intensive care unit of a Guatemalan hospital and she said, I felt the best I ever felt in my entire life.
01:21:11.000Juliana put me in touch with a lady by the name of Adriana Kertzer in New York City, who at the time ran a boutique law firm called the Plant Medicine Law Firm.
01:21:20.000Adriana and I had a brief introductory conversation.
01:21:23.000I told her, I said, I want to learn as much as I possibly can about Ibogaine.
01:21:26.000I've spoken with Juliana, and this sounds too good to be true.
01:21:30.000I want to know if there's any legitimacy about this, and if so, perhaps what the state of Kentucky can do to move the needle on its development.
01:21:39.000She said, I have a Rolodex of people that I think could be helpful to you.
01:21:45.000I said, well, I don't know the names of folks around this.
01:21:47.000I can just give you generally the category of folks that I would love to be able to speak with.
01:21:51.000I need to know who the foremost academic and medical researchers of this compound are.
01:21:57.000I need to understand the existence of any activist organizations that would have particular cultural relevance to Kentucky, a profoundly politically conservative and religiously fundamentalist state.
01:22:11.000And I said, finally, I need to know whether there are any philanthropists who are willing to support or who have an interest in an opportunity that may exist around Ibogaine.
01:22:20.000She said, all right, let me get to work.
01:22:22.000She said, would you be willing to travel to New York City if I hosted a dinner party for you?
01:22:27.000And I said, yes, but on one condition.
01:22:30.000I said, I work in a deeply, politically conservative office, and I'm pretty sure I've got some people around me who would be ready to cut my head off if they knew that I was even sniffing around the area of psychedelics for a potential treatment.
01:22:44.000I said, if I come, this has to be done completely confidentially, and everybody must take a vial of silence until such time as I can decide whether or not this is something to present to the office.
01:22:54.000My wife and I, along with one of my close friends by the name of Scott Hornbuckle, who was also an advisor to the commission who I brought in, traveled to New York City on December 5th of 2022.
01:23:06.000On December 9th, we had this dinner party.
01:23:08.000I met with these individuals who had gathered, the researchers, the philanthropists, veteran activists who had gathered around Ibogaine, as well as the application of other psychedelics for the treatment of war-related trauma.
01:23:20.000When I got home to Kentucky on December 11th, they opened up their networks and put me in touch with Amber and Marcus Capone, Dr. Nolan Williams, Dr. Kenneth Alper, and all other folks who have gathered around Ibogaine to push for its accessibility within the U.S. medical system.
01:23:39.000On January 31st of 23, I gave a presentation to Attorney General Cameron, and I said, I believe we have found Kentucky's Manhattan Project opportunity.
01:23:50.000And I laid out what the concrete realities are of Ibogaine, and they are three.
01:23:56.000It resolves physiological substance dependence on an accelerated time frame in a manner that frees an individual from the physical consequences of their dependencies.
01:24:08.000Number two, it has a profound psychological effect for the individual, whereby on the back end of treatment, having been physiologically restored, they have a sense of ownership over their self and their future, whereby they will live a life that is defined by choice rather than compulsion, and that is a fundamental quality that one must have if they are going to rebuild their life.
01:24:33.000Finally, and most significantly, Many people, the overwhelming majority of folks who have a navigating experience, come away with an affirmation that they are a spiritual being who is made in the image of an eternal creator whose essence is pure and unconditional love, and that that creator has conferred a special and unique purpose on their life to be achieved.
01:24:58.000When those three qualities were properly understood, Attorney General Cameron blessed me to lead the commission on the exploration of setting aside $42 million, five percent, of the state's settlement funds to create a public-private partnership whereby a drug developer would match the state's investment on the front end by assuming all legal,
01:25:20.000logistical, and financial risks associated with securing the FDA's approval to pursue Clinical research trials for the development of Ibogaine as a breakthrough therapeutic treatment for opioid use disorder, co-occurring substance use disorder, and any other mental health conditions for which it demonstrated efficacy.
01:25:37.000We had a high-profile public announcement on May the 31st of 2023 to announce this exploration.
01:25:43.000We conducted three very high-profile public hearings, each of which lasted about five hours, about all aspects of Ibogaine.
01:25:51.000These hearings are available online as a formal part of the public record for anyone to view.
01:25:57.000The first hearing involved the science of Ibogaine.
01:26:00.000It included the testimony of Dr. Nolan Williams, Dr. Kenneth Alper, and Dr. Deborah Mash, who has been a pioneer around the development of Ibogaine's application to opioid addiction for over 30 years now.
01:26:14.000We had a second public hearing, which involved the testimonials of individuals who had received, provided, or had sent loved ones for Ibogaine treatment.
01:26:23.000All of this was done in a very high profile in public lay because we wanted the people of Kentucky to understand all aspects of this opportunity, its profundity, and the way in which it could transform not just the lives of their families, but the future of this state.
01:26:37.000That second public hearing was one of the most moving public proceedings of which I have ever been a part, and I don't know how anyone could listen to those testimonials which included one from Governor Perry and come away with any other conclusion, but that Ibogaine must be developed as expeditiously and safely as possible for the sake of our brothers and sisters in this country.
01:27:00.000The third hearing, which occurred at the request of the University of Kentucky, which along with Andy Beshear, fought this proposal every step of the way, centered on the question of whether the FDA would even consider a proven Clinical trials given what was repeatedly asserted as the unacceptable level of cardiac risk associated with its application.
01:27:28.000Within that hearing, we were able to procure the testimony of the scientist general who was in charge of controlled substances research at the FDA, a gentleman by the name of Dr. Javier Munez, along with his colleague, Dr. Walter Dunn, Who sat on the FDA's advisory board of psychopharmacology, I believe he still sits on there.
01:27:49.000And those gentlemen, after having heard the testimony, as well as questioning from the University of Kentucky's representative, which suggested that the FDA would never approve it, began their testimony by saying, It has been asserted that the cardiac risk associated with ibogaine would disqualify it from consideration by the FDA for clinical trials.
01:28:09.000That is absolutely and completely incorrect.
01:28:13.000The question for ibogaine is not one of the existence of risk.
01:28:17.000The question is how and if that risk can be mitigated.
01:28:21.000And assuming that the drug developer can demonstrate that cardiac risk can be safely mitigated and controlled, there is no reason that we would not approve that clinical trial.
01:28:31.000And with that, the chief objection was newt.
01:28:36.000We had one last piece of due diligence to perform before my commission, which had a membership of nine, was ready to cast a deciding vote to secure the allocation of this $42 million for what was going to be a fabulous leadership opportunity for the people of Kentucky to pioneer an entirely new field of biomedical research that will revolutionize how we treat not just addiction, but the problems that we have all sat here and talked about already.
01:29:04.000And that was the delivery of testimony from Dr. Nolan Williams following the publication of his research in the journal Nature Medicine about the neuro-regenerative properties of ibogaine in the brain as applied to the veteran population with TBI and PTSD. Unfortunately, there was an election in Kentucky in 2023. My boss, Attorney General Cameron, ran for governor and lost.
01:29:32.000And a new Kentucky Attorney General took office.
01:29:34.000And while this new guy had gone in public and had expressed his open-minded willingness to give Ibogaine consideration, I had briefed him individually before we had our public announcement in anticipation that he would take office.
01:29:48.000After he won, I reached out and asked if I could have an opportunity to brief him.
01:29:53.000on all of the developmental energy which had gathered around this project.
01:29:57.000That energy included the commitment of two significant philanthropic organizations, one of which was the Jurvetson Foundation, led by Stephen and Genevieve Jurvetson, The other was the Stephen and Alexander Cohen Foundation, led by Stephen and Alexander Cohen, and then the third was the Melissa Etheridge Foundation, all of which made commitments to partner with Kentucky to make this come to pass.
01:30:20.000We had secured the commitment of two drug developers who were willing to establish corporate presence in Kentucky and to anchor all of their research and development activity around its advanced therapeutic applications within that state.
01:30:33.000On the cusp of success, I was brought into a meeting on December 15th with the newly elected Attorney General and members of his transition team.
01:30:43.000And what I thought was going to be an opportunity to explain and secure approval for the finalization of this project turned into an ambush meeting.
01:30:52.000In which it was demanded that I resign for having been an unapologetic advocate for advocating research, something that the new Attorney General found highly objectionable.
01:31:03.000I walked out of that meeting and was in shock and despair.
01:31:13.000I was always going to be able to find another job.
01:31:16.000But for the loss of the opportunity for the long-suffering people at home who deserved to have an opportunity to transform their future with what Ibogaine has the potential to do for them individually and collectively.
01:31:31.000And what has been a tremendously providential blessing Everything that happened in Kentucky was followed by a gentleman by the name of Rex Elsass.
01:31:44.000Mr. Elsass is an individual who in his prior life has been a high-level Republican campaign ad producer.
01:31:54.000His firm is one of the top campaign producing ad companies for Republican candidates across the country in the country.
01:32:04.000Rex has a foundation called the Reed Foundation, which is named in honor of his son, Reed, who struggled for a decade with opioid addiction beginning when he was a 16 year old in high school.
01:32:19.000Reed encountered plant medicine with an ayahuasca five years before he passed away.
01:32:27.000Rex became a believer in plant medicine because of the therapeutic response Reed experienced after that exposure to ayahuasca.
01:32:37.000Rex was introduced to me, ironically, by Melissa Etheridge in February of 23. He showed up at every Kentucky hearing, he showed up at our public announcement, and he said, whatever you need to help make this successful, I'm available to you anytime.
01:32:51.000The Reed Foundation stands for Rescuing Everyone in Distress.
01:32:55.000Because Reed, unfortunately and tragically in 2019, died of a fentanyl overdose.
01:33:02.000Rex became involved with the Kentucky movement because he believed had Reed had an opportunity to receive Ibogaine treatment, he would be alive today.
01:33:10.000When I walked out of that meeting thinking that it was all over, I called Rex and I said, They've killed it.
01:33:17.000All that work and all that effort is vanished.
01:33:21.000He said, If I can procure opportunities for you to speak to what Ibogaine can do to other elected officials across the country with whom I have relationships, would you be willing to work with my foundation so that we can attempt to preserve what has been done here and transplant it to a state that has leadership with the vision and courage to complete the job that you have begun?
01:33:48.000Joe, at this point, I had staked everything that I had become by way of reputation and by way of knowledge on this opportunity.
01:33:59.000Perry has, to believe that this was the opportunity of a lifetime to generate tremendous progress on behalf of everyone who needs all of the restorative power that Ibogaine can deliver.
01:34:12.000And I said, this is the mission of my life.
01:34:14.000And I will go anywhere, I will talk to anyone, and will do whatever is necessary to keep this alive.
01:34:21.000And thank the Lord, with the leadership of Governor Perry and his allyship, here we sit on the cusp of an opportunity for the state of Texas to finish the job that was begun in Kentucky.
01:34:33.000And I hope and pray with all my might that that is exactly what we see happen over the course of the next five months.
01:34:45.000What are the steps that need to be taken to implement this in Texas?
01:34:49.000So, if you'll recall, I think four years ago, Marcus and Amber were involved with, Marcus and Amber Capone were involved with the passage of a piece of legislation in Texas dealing with psilocybin.
01:35:04.000Clinical trials there, and there was some concern that it was not going to It generally takes about three legislative sessions for a controversial piece of legislation to get passed in most cases.
01:35:19.000We actually passed that first bite of the apple, so to speak.
01:35:23.000I think Alex Dominguez, who was a Democrat member of the State House, carried it.
01:35:48.000And so we had a – already had a record that the state of Texas, a conservative red state, would – We support the use of, in this case, a psychedelic plant medicine for the treatment of veterans.
01:36:05.000So we have this record of already supporting this.
01:36:13.000The challenge for us is to be able to educate the public about what is Ibogaine?
01:36:22.000And I think we're going to be able to do that.
01:36:24.000This show, obviously, is a good step in that direction of being able to educate the public about This extraordinary compound that has amazing results out there, giving people their lives back, resetting their brains, literally regenerating the brains, moving away from addictions with one treatment.
01:36:48.000When you add Parkinson's and MS with this, then it's this broad base of being able to go out and to share with the people of the state of Texas that Texas can lead.
01:37:01.000As a matter of fact, our legislative session only lasts for 140 days every other year, which is a great concept.
01:37:07.000I wish more places would take a look at that as a way to do business.
01:37:12.000But we know that we've got to get our work done.
01:37:16.000At the same time, there's this parallel track going on in Washington, D.C.
01:37:26.000What you started in Kentucky, and, you know, we can sit here and browbeat this, which we won't, about why that got killed in Kentucky.
01:37:38.000I think the leadership of Kentucky will look over their shoulder one of these days and see that they absolutely lost a great opportunity to lead the nation in the recovery of people who have lost their lives to opioids or to traumatic brain injury or to PTSD in some form or fashion.
01:37:58.000And Texas is going to wear that mantle.
01:37:59.000And I'm proud that Texas is going to lead that mantle.
01:38:02.000We've got great leadership in both the House and the Senate that understand this issue.
01:38:08.000That we're going to spend time with to get a piece of legislation, the Texas Ibogaine Initiative, as it's going to be known.
01:38:17.000We'll look for those private sector partners.
01:38:19.000We'll look for, most likely, the VA to be a partner in this as well, and our university system.
01:38:30.000That with the proper education, the openness of this legislature, the love of our veterans that we have in this state, that the Texas Ibogaine Initiative will become the law of the land for the state of Texas by September of 2025. That's amazing.
01:38:49.000And what's the plan in terms of how do you scale this out?
01:38:58.000Let's assume a successful outcome within the Texas legislature where a $50 million appropriation out of a projected $20 billion surplus comes to pass and is signed by Governor Abbott.
01:39:11.000Once that occurs, the very first step would be to issue a notice of funding opportunity to solicit proposals from drug developers who have the capacity to develop Ibogaine as a medication for opioid use disorder.
01:39:27.000Within that notice of funding opportunity, a drug developer will be asked to provide information related to how they would design a clinical trial, how they would recruit clinical trial participants.
01:39:40.000How they would go about administering Ibogaine in such a way as to safely eliminate the cardiac risk so as to assure successful treatment outcomes without complication.
01:39:53.000And as importantly, since we are talking about the use of the people's money, How the drug developer would propose to recognize the state of Texas' perpetual interest in any patentable intellectual property that is generated as a result of this project,
01:40:11.000people in your audience should know that buprenorphine, which is the generic name for brand-named Suboxone, Sublocate, and other derivatives, It was created with a direct $62.5 million giveaway by the federal government to create the baseline compound.
01:40:28.000It was handed over to the pharmaceutical industry, each company put its own twist on it, and then it proceeded to reap 100% of the return on the people's investment.
01:40:37.000That cannot and will not happen around any project associated with Ibogaine that involves public money.
01:40:44.000There has to be return on investment to the state for the purposes of building out the treatment infrastructure that is needed to assure successful long-term outcomes.
01:40:55.000Bearing in mind, Ibogaine gives a person the very best possible beginning that they can receive through physiological restoration to pursue what will still be a very long-term and difficult recovery process.
01:41:07.000That requires the delivery of long-term integration and support services that are necessary to help someone become equipped to rebuild their lives.
01:41:17.000Once those proposals are solicited and reviewed, the drug developer that is best positioned to get this across the line, who also demonstrates their financial capacity to match the state's investment, will be selected.
01:41:32.000Once selected, the drug developer will assume all of the legal Financial and logistical risks associated with getting it all the way up to the FDA's approval mark.
01:41:43.000Once the FDA signs off on the conduct of clinical trials The money of the people of Texas will go to pay for the occurrence of those clinical trials in the state of Texas at medical facilities which are equipped with the requisite level of expertise related to cardiac intervention and cardiac support as well as anything and everything related to recovery for an individual who is opioid dependent.
01:42:11.000The beautiful aspect of Texas, as I have come to learn, is the immense amount of fabulous medical expertise that exists here.
01:42:19.000Whether we're talking about the Texas Medical Center that is in Houston, which is just a marvelous human accomplishment.
01:42:25.000Can I add something there just a second?
01:43:17.000I don't, you know, and I don't apologize for that.
01:43:20.000But our ability To do this work, to do it on a scale that is global.
01:43:28.000When this happens in the state of Texas, people around the world, whether they're in Moscow or Beijing or wherever they may be, they'll look at this and go, you know what?
01:43:39.000That is something that we would like to replicate in our country.
01:43:44.000And I will add one other thing, and this truly is fabulous, considering where things were.
01:43:48.000One year and one day ago, I sat down and wrote my resignation letter over this.
01:43:53.000While Texas stands the opportunity to be the leader, right now there are high-level organizational efforts underway.
01:44:03.000To join Texas in this endeavor within the states of Ohio, Washington State, Arizona, which includes the involvement of outgoing U.S. Senator Kirsten Sinema, who's ready to roll up her sleeves and help activists there and researchers on the ground, including Dr. Sue Sisley, who've been at this for decades.
01:44:26.000All of these are states in which there are individuals who are committed to helping Texas finish the job that was begun in Kentucky.
01:44:36.000And for my people at home, I'm going to use this opportunity to say that there is one incredibly brave state legislature who is the only Elected physician to serve in the Kentucky legislature by the name of Senator Donald Douglas.
01:44:54.000Senator Douglas recognizes, based on his medical training, what a profound opportunity this is.
01:45:00.000Dr. Douglas, along with some other concerned citizens within the state of Kentucky, aims to take up the gauntlet when the legislature reconvenes in January to see to it.
01:45:11.000The Kentucky's opportunity to participate in this is salvaged.
01:45:15.000And I look forward to doing whatever I can to help get my people at home right alongside Texas to make this a reality.
01:46:09.000I think it's going to open up a lot of people's eyes and it's going to allow people that have never even considered this to maybe take a second look.
01:46:18.000Well, I certainly hope that, you know, regardless of anybody's politics, and this isn't a Republican or a Democrat issue.
01:46:39.000You know, it's partly the way I was raised and my father and his, you know, his World War II B-17 tail gunner at the time and the 8th Air Force and him teaching me to You know, you need to give back to your country and you need to give back to your state.
01:47:00.000You need to give back to your community.
01:47:02.000You need to find that place to go volunteer.
01:47:04.000You know, I was taught that by a wonderful, loving father and mother.
01:47:12.000Going off to school, serving in the Air Force, having this heart for veterans, being the commander-in-chief of the Texas forces as we sent our young men and women off to this war against terror in 2003. And being engaged with them,
01:47:30.000traveling over to Iraq and Afghanistan multiple times while I was the governor and then as the Secretary of Energy, to be in their presence, to know this extraordinary group of young men and women who are willing to sacrifice their lives literally for us.
01:47:54.000And then when they've been wounded, both physically and mentally, and they come home and we did such a poor job of taking care of them, of recognizing what we had done to them and the lack of our ability.
01:48:13.000I was overcome with seeing the private sector trying to help Ross Perot Jr., excuse me, Ross Perot Sr., one of the greatest Patriots I ever met in my life.
01:48:27.000What he did to help veterans who had been hurt during the war on terror.
01:48:32.000I mean, literally hundreds of young men and women who he gave wonderfully to.
01:48:41.000Seeing people like that and then our government failing.
01:48:46.000And for me, this is I spent 40 years in public service.
01:48:51.000You know, I think we do it pretty good in Texas, by and large, but we don't do it perfect.
01:49:22.000But they're also the easiest population to go sell to the general public.
01:49:28.000So if, you know, this whole thing about psychedelics and what we've been taught for 60 years that they're bad, they're, you know, stay away from them.
01:49:41.000Educating the public that the dose is the poison in everything.
01:49:48.000You know, this is a two-edged sword here.
01:49:51.000Everything can be used for good or everything can be used for bad.
01:49:56.000And what we've found here in the compound of Ibogaine is that, as you warn people about in your remarks about, don't go out there and buy it off the internet.
01:50:08.000You know, go self-medicate yourself because there's a real opportunity that it wouldn't turn out good.
01:50:14.000But properly dosed, properly diagnosed, properly dosed, properly administered, properly followed up with.
01:50:21.000This can be a compound that literally can change millions of lives.
01:50:30.000At the start, we're focused on veterans because of the PTSD, the traumatic brain injury, the challenges that they've got.
01:50:38.000But when you look at the further populations out there, We worked pretty hard in the state of Texas to come up with ways to not send people to prison.
01:50:50.000We put criminal justice reform in place in the early 2000s here.
01:50:57.000As a matter of fact, it was the model that President Trump used to put national criminal justice reform in place.
01:51:03.000To be able to intervene before people ever went to prison, before they would become professional criminals.
01:51:11.000And it's that same concept here that we need to find ways to keep people out of prison, to keep people off the streets.
01:51:22.000And in a lot of those cases, Joe, it's substance abuse that got them there.
01:51:27.000It's some mental health challenge that started them down the road of using either alcohol or some of these other substances.
01:51:36.000And if we have at our disposal, if we have here a plant that God gave us that we can use, and literally it appears in a lot of cases, one treatment, and it takes away your desire to have another drink of alcohol.
01:51:56.000One treatment and save a person like Reed Elsass's life because of fentanyl.
01:52:05.000I mean, if we've got that in our grasp, I mean, how bad you got to hate people to not make that available to us?
01:52:16.000And the other thing that you were talking about, Brian, is the profound effect that it has on the people that have experienced it, where they recognize that they are truly connected to the divine, and that imagine all these downtrodden,
01:52:35.000forgotten People that are just cast out of society, imprisoned, instead of having them continue this path, if there's something that can put them on a completely different path, a path of positivity, a path of integration in society, a path of love, that we can change the tone of the country.
01:53:03.000You have just hit for me what this is all about.
01:53:07.000We have sat here and talked about TBI and PTSD, the horrors and the cruelty of war that 20 years of conflict has put upon innocent young men and women of this country who have volunteered to go and lay their lives down for her who have had to come back and beg, beg.
01:53:25.000For access to what can alleviate their suffering.
01:53:28.000We've sat here and talked about the opioid epidemic, its monstrosities, the way in which it is the gravest engineered humanitarian catastrophe to play out in this country's history.
01:53:40.000All of these are symptoms of profound spiritual affliction which is destroying the core of what the United States has always been.
01:53:52.000The greatest attribute that Ibogaine has is its ability to affirm the reality of our human divinity.
01:54:01.000We are not the result of a random accident of astrophysics and chemistry.
01:54:07.000We are the images of an eternal Creator who put us here for a purpose to be able to see and perceive the Creator's majesty as reflected most especially within us as individual human beings who have received the gift of love, of perception, of discernment, and the ability to connect to the majestic eternal love of that Creator.
01:54:37.000I can attest to the fact that it delivers it.
01:54:40.000My wife and I traveled to Tijuana a year ago.
01:54:43.000She had been on Celexa for 21 years to manage symptoms of a profound mood disorder which manifested through psychotic mood swings that have affected her since the birth of her son.
01:55:08.000If I were going to be an advocate for this, I thought that it was necessary to take my own medicine.
01:55:16.000If I'm going to get out here and advocate for it, I need to be brave enough to man up and to receive it.
01:55:22.000And so the week after Thanksgiving of last year...
01:55:26.000By deliberate choice and at the invitation of Jonathan Dickinson and Trevor Miller, I traveled down to Tijuana along with my wife to receive Ibogaine to understood what it would do.
01:55:37.000My wife decided that she wished to receive it as well.
01:55:40.000She is very much a left-brain rationalist and was not someone who came to the realm of psychedelics with any degree of enthusiasm, but she wanted to see if there was the potential that she could be freed of her necessity to take Celexa every day.
01:55:56.000Before we went down, I was told that she would have to be completely select-free for five days because if the SSRI was in her system, it would defeat Ibogaine's therapeutic restoration.
01:56:08.000When they told me that, I was in despair because I said there is no way That I will ever be able to get her to Mexico after five days without Celexa.
01:56:19.000In fact, if we go one day without her taking it, I can't be in the house with her.
01:56:43.000We received it on Tuesday evening, November 28th.
01:56:50.000My wife took her last Celexa on November 23rd of 2023 and she has not had one since.
01:56:59.000Before we came here, we went to Beyond and we received Ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT there as well in order to understand how each operation effectuates the safe delivery of this medication.
01:57:16.000And what I can personally attest for me and for her, collectively and together, Ibogaine paired with 5-MeO-DMT has been the most profound spiritual experience either of us have ever encountered.
01:57:34.000I am 100% persuaded that these substances are divine medications that are engineered from on high So that we can heal what we do to ourselves, what we do to each other, and be affirmed by the love of our Creator, which is eternal and almighty.
01:58:05.000There is no greater gift we can give to our brothers and sisters in this society than to affirm the love of their Creator from Him.
01:58:14.000If that had not been affirmed for me as a child, I would not be sitting here.
01:58:18.000It is the single most important thing that we can do, and its therapeutic benefits upon the physiology of the human being is another affirmation of the realities that we're sitting here talking about.
01:58:30.000For the people listening, is there anything that they can do to get involved to help?
01:58:35.000Well, obviously, from a public standpoint in the state of Texas, if you have relationships with your state rep, your state senators, the governor, let them know that you're spending some time learning about this and you're supportive of it.
01:58:52.000For the veterans, particularly, we're going to be doing major outreaches into the veteran community.
01:59:04.000At the same time that this is going on in Texas, you're going to be seeing a movement across the country at the federal level, at the congressional level.
01:59:15.000There's a number of the members of the legislature are very supportive of this.
01:59:21.000You've got, as I mentioned, with the incoming, hopefully the incoming administration of President Trump, Bobby Kennedy, Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Oz, a number of folks.
01:59:38.000Hopefully, the rumor factory is that potentially Nolan Williams might be being considered for a position in the administration as well on the mental health side of things.
01:59:51.000There's never been a time to see the cards kind of being laid out on the table in a good way that we're going to have a winning hand here like we have right now.
02:00:01.000So one of my, you know, goals is to educate the public.
02:00:05.000There's a young lady that's going to be helping us here in Texas, Ann Claire Stapleton.
02:00:10.000Ann Claire was a former CNN international reporter.
02:00:13.000She's going to be coming in to Texas to help with the Texas Ibogaine Initiative to educate the media.
02:00:22.000That's a very important goal and role that we're going to be playing, making sure that the men and women out there in the news business understand this compound, understand what we're going to be doing.
02:00:38.000And so the education of the public, I'm convinced, Joe, that once the general public understands what this is, how it works, how it can be used in such a wonderful, therapeutic how it can be used in such a wonderful, therapeutic way, and that the lives that can be saved, literally the lives that can be saved, at that particular point in time,
02:01:05.000then I think this becomes a bit of a no-brainer, so to speak, and the general public will get behind this in a powerful way at that particular point in time.
02:01:16.000Then it's about a question that you asked that's really important.
02:01:20.000How do you structure getting the treatment centers, getting the people trained?
02:01:28.000That's going to be a good problem to have.
02:01:32.000And I look forward to working with both the Texas medical community and the Texas legislature and the Texas citizenry at large to deal with it.
02:01:45.000I think, again, it has the potential to be as profound a positive impact on the practice of medicine, particularly in psychiatry, in the history of either of those.
02:02:08.000One thing I'd like to add from a technical perspective, and then if it's alright, I'll finish out with some observations that I have come to through those years of service that we've discussed.
02:02:20.000When it comes to how to do this, Governor Perry and I are able to recognize the blessing of a legion of people who've been working at this for decades in obscurity and at great risk.
02:02:33.000We will be able, hopefully, around this project to bring all those who have labored around Ibogaine for years now and to draw upon their expertise as to how best to deliver What I would describe as the platinum standard model for an Ibogaine-based treatment and recovery system that maximizes all of its therapeutic benefits,
02:02:55.000whether they be for substance use disorder, polysubstance use disorder, TBI, PTSD, or other degenerative conditions that have significant detrimental impact on the brain.
02:03:09.000And I'll finish my part of this discussion with this.
02:03:12.000We have sat here and talked about Specific reality and the way in which public policy has impacted it and what its potentials are to generate human progress.
02:03:26.000As you know, there are a variety of faith traditions around the world which have common themes within them.
02:03:35.000Those themes are often told within those faith traditions as parables.
02:03:40.000What your audience has listened to with us is a parable about contemporary American society and where we are.
02:03:51.000I think most folks would agree that we find ourselves in the midst of an existential struggle for this country's survival.
02:04:03.000We are living within the most beautifully dynamic multicultural society which has ever existed in human history.
02:04:13.000For all of our material wealth and technological prowess, we are also living in a brutally dehumanizing era that is hostile to individual identity.
02:04:28.000Citizens are viewed as fungible revenue units who are plugged into a set of actuarial variables designed to reduce their lives to reasonably predictable revenue streams.
02:04:45.000We find ourselves with massive government systems which enthrone themselves on the subjugation of powerless people.
02:04:58.000Those systems commodify problems that they are supposed to solve and they monetize sustained human misery.
02:05:09.000Government must be made to function honestly, accountably, and responsibly to the genuine needs of the American people.
02:05:21.000Because if it does not, our society will inevitably collapse beneath the enormity of its corrupt decrepitudes.
02:05:34.000This is going to require a shift in social consciousness that is rooted in our universal kinship as images of an eternal creator whose essence is almighty unconditional love for all of us.
02:05:52.000As your listeners hear this episode, I hope that they will hope and pray for everyone who has gathered around this cause that we will be successful.
02:06:05.000Because if we are, we will hasten the day when we can deliver good tidings unto the meek, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.
02:06:35.000I have great hope for this country, and more so since this election than in a long time.
02:06:40.000And I think with your work and your work and this new administration's openness to these ideas, I think we have an amazing opportunity in front of us.
02:06:50.000Thank you very much for everything you've done.