A bipartisan pair of members of Congress are continuing their push to expedite the availability of psychedelic therapies that they believe can aid military veterans and other people who are struggling with mental health conditions.
Reps. Jack Bergman (R-MI) and Lou Correa (D-CA), co-chairs of the Congressional Psychedelics Advancing Therapies Caucus, appeared together on CNN last week.
Correa said therapy with substances like psilocybin, ibogaine and MDMA “works,” citing high suicide rates among veterans and arguing that psychedelics can be part of the solution.
“You have people in my community that have actually been alcoholics [that] have been cured, drug addicts that have been cured, people with mental illnesses that are cured,” he said. “This promises to be that magic pill, that magic cure that we’ve been waiting for.”
Bergman cited his own experience as a Vietnam combat veteran, saying he’s “seen so many of my brothers and sisters who came back in Vietnam who never assimilated back into society, a lot of times due to post-traumatic stress.”
“We’ve been doing things the same way forever in mental health and expecting different results,” he said. “Now it’s the right thing for Congress to do, to get the money, direct the research—whether it’s the [Department of Veterans Affairs] or anybody else—to do the research and get these therapies on the ground and working for the veterans and others as well.”
The GOP congressman said it’s important to not just free up legal access to psychedelic compounds themselves but also to provide resources for “the therapies that are going to be needed to work those veterans and everybody else through the process.”
“So we not only need the medicine, we need the therapist trained and ready to go,” Bergman said. “So we have to move forward, and we will do it diligently and minimize, if not eliminate, the risk to anybody going through the therapy.”
Correa, for his part, spoke about U.S. military veterans who are traveling outside the country to access psychedelic therapies.
“You got a lot of veterans that are going to Tijuana, Mexico right now to get their therapy—two or three days in the ibogaine treatment center, where they go through a high where they essentially confront their fears that have led them to suicidal thoughts,” he said. “They come out on the other side essentially cured. This is not just hypothetical. These are truths evidenced by Navy veterans and other individuals that have essentially kicked the habit of doing drugs or alcohol. It does work.”
“People in our districts in this country are doing psychedelics, so Congress needs to catch up, needs to get the research there,” Correa said. “We need to put those guardrails there to make sure people don’t get hurt. But people are desperate for a solution, and this one promises to be the solution.”
The two lawmakers are sponsoring an amendment to a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) funding bill on the House floor this week that seeks to raise awareness about the benefits of psychedelic and other therapies for military veterans.
Its description says it “increases and decreases funding for the Medical and Prosthetic Research account at the Department of Veterans Affairs to emphasize the importance of the Department’s research on areas benefiting veterans such as oncology, traumatic brain injury care, psychedelic therapies, and assistive devices.”
Bergman and Correa also recently led a bipartisan coalition of 32 members of Congress in sending a letter urging federal health officials to expedite ongoing reviews of psychedelic therapies.
FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) last month announced steps that they say will help with “accelerating” therapeutic access to psychedelics for patients dealing with serious mental health conditions.
That move followed a psychedelics executive order that President Donald Trump signed.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said recently that the Trump administration is “very anxious” to create a pathway for access to psychedelics therapy and that top officials across federal agencies want to “get it out to the public as quickly as possible.”
In an interview on the Joe Rogan Experience in February, Kennedy said he’s confident “we’re going to get it done,” with plans to develop and finalize rules that would enable patients with conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression to access psychedelic substances like psilocybin and MDMA in a “very controlled setting.”
“Everybody in my agency…is very anxious to get a rule out there that will allow these kind of studies and will allow access under therapeutic settings, particularly [for] the military soldiers who have suffered these injuries to get access to these products,” the HHS secretary said. “We’re working through that process now. We’re all working on it and trying to make it happen.”
“I think that we’re going to get it done,” he said.
Last June, Kennedy said his agency is “absolutely committed” to expanding research on the benefits of psychedelic therapy and, alongside of the head of FDA, is aiming to provide legal access to such substances for military veterans “within 12 months.”
Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins also disclosed in April that he had an “eye-opening” talk with Kennedy about the therapeutic potential of psychedelic medicine. And he said he’s open to the idea of having the government provide vouchers to cover the costs of psychedelic therapy for veterans who receive services outside of VA as Congress considers pathways for access.
Bipartisan congressional lawmakers introduced legislation this session to provide $30 million in funding annually to establish psychedelic-focused “centers for excellence” at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities, where veterans could receive novel treatment involving substances like psilocybin, MDMA and ibogaine.
A U.S. Senate committee held a hearing last month on a bipartisan bill to promote research into the therapeutic potential psychedelics by creating a new office at VA that would advance the development innovative treatments for serious mental health conditions and assist in reviewing the scheduling status of drugs like psilocybin, ibogaine and MDMA.
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) has said ibogaine represents an “astonishing breakthrough” in the nation’s current “sick care system” that’s left people with serious mental health conditions without access to promising alternative treatment options.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia/Mushroom Observer.
