KY opioid commission one step closer to potentially funding clinical psychedelic research

In an effort to convince a state panel to invest millions in researching a psychedelic drug to treat opioid addiction, more than a dozen people on Friday shared intimate details of how ibogaine saved and transformed their lives.

Dakota Meyer, a native Kentuckian, U.S. Marine Corps veteran and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, told Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission members in Frankfort that he struggled with PTSD for more than a decade after returning home from war. He tried an extensive regimen of medication to treat his PTSD, to no avail.

“This path led me nowhere I wanted to be. The medication, itself, brought its own challenges and side effects,” he said. In 2019, he tried ibogaine for the first time. An alkaloid derived from the root bark of an iboga shrub native to West Central Africa, ibogaine is currently a Schedule 1 drug in the U.S. Accessing it legally requires international travel.

In Kentucky, more than 9,000 people have died of an overdose since 2018, according to state data. Though 5% fewer Kentuckians died last year of overdose than in 2021, opioids caused 90% of those 2,135 deaths. The rise of fentanyl, a highly-addictive, fully-synthetic opioid lethal in small quantities has worsened the crisis.

While ibogaine has a growing following as a treatment for addiction and severe PTSD, the drug has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for distribution. In late May, Bryan Hubbard, the chair of Kentucky’s commission, proposed using $42 million of the state’s roughly $900 million in opioid lawsuit settlement money to become the first state to research the experimental drug as a potential therapeutic for opioid addiction. Addiction researchers and some commission members were quick to cite its health risks, chiefly the heightened stress it puts on one’s heart, which has caused fatal side effects.

Friday’s hearing was the second public meeting on the subject; the first was in July. Commission members will formally vote on whether to fund this research later this fall.

“Ibogaine saved me and gave me back my life,” Meyer said. “It offered me a true path to recovery I never even imagined was possible. It provided me with a renewed sense or purpose and strength to rebuild my life.”

Jerry Catlett, of Mercer County, said his son struggled with addiction for years before trying ibogaine. Catlett said he and his wife thought this was “another gimmick. There’s no way in hell this is going to help someone with addiction,” he said Friday. But they were desperate.

“My wife and I had already come to the conclusion that our son was a dead man walking. We were prepared at any time for a policeman to show up at our door and say he was no longer with us,” Catlett said through sobs. He and his wife pulled together the money and put their son on a plane.

“Honestly, I did not think I’d see the boy (again) alive,” he said. “That was about 10 years ago.”

The ibogaine treatment had worked, and Catlett’s son has been sober since, he said. Catlett, like many of the speakers, begged commission members to approve the funding of this research.

“What’s the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result,” Catlett said. “Is that not what we’re doing with our opioid (epidemic)? We have to do something different. I hope you can do it.”

While FDA-approved medications to treat opioid addiction, chiefly buprenorphine, naltrexone and methadone, do help many people maintain long-term recovery, many of the people who addressed the commission said those medications didn’t help them as much as ibogaine did.

Paria Zandi, who spoke during Hubbard’s initial announcement to fund ibogaine research in May, said her mom “exhausted her life savings” to send her to drug treatment centers more than 10 times before she tried ibogaine. A licensed therapist in California, Zandi has been sober nearly a decade.

Ben Chandler, president of Foundation for Healthy Kentucky, called the opioid epidemic an “intractable” problem.

Chandler, whose brother died of a fentanyl overdose earlier this year, said, “bottom line to me is, despite the best efforts of so many people . . . we have been unable to solve this problem.” A proponent of the research, Chandler said, “We need as many tools as we get. I’m hoping that ibogaine is part of the answer.”

Many of the people who spoke on Friday were invited to speak by commission members. Notably absent from the public hearing were critics of ibogaine, or people highlighting its health risks. These risks are in part why the FDA has not given a green light to clinical trials studying its efficacy, the Herald-Leader previously reported.

Ibogaine shows promise for its ability to blunt withdrawals and cravings. But it also blocks channels in the heart that can cause an irregular heartbeat and prolong the time it takes for one’s heart to relax between beats, which has led to some fatal heart attacks among some patients, according to the National Institute of Health.

“While ibogaine has some cardiac risks you may be aware,” Dr. Veronica Slootsky, a board-certified psychiatrist in Tennessee, told the commission Friday. But “many of these risks can be mitigated with monitoring and screening.”

“In the case of addiction that leads to death, the benefit appears to greatly outweigh the risk,” she said. “We need further research to determine how to adminster this medication in a safe and effective way.”

Dr. Steve Katsikas, clinical psychologist and professor at Spalding University, who co-authored a 2017 paper on ibogaine published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, said it was “remarkable” that Kentucky of all places was hosting this conversation.

“Given the robust and preliminary evidence supporting ibogaine,” Katsikas said, “Kentucky stands at a very interesting (place), in terms of being able to pioneer ibogaine trials in the U.S.”

“My opinion,” Katsikas said: “the people of Kentucky deserve this opportunity.”