Lawmaker ‘Reborn’ Through Psychedelic Therapy Wants the GOP to Embrace It

Morgan Luttrell says he had never smoked anything, let alone tried drugs in his life. So the retired Navy SEAL had to ask a nearby nurse for guidance on how to inhale a psychedelic drug that was part of the final step of an intense three-day experimental therapy.

Luttrell had traveled to Mexico in 2018 to take ibogaine, a drug that is illegal in the U.S. but is gaining a reputation within the veteran community as a potential treatment to address complicated conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder. Inhaling a separate drug, called DMT, was the final step in the process. 

The Texas conservative, now in his second term in Congress, describes his journey as a last resort for people feeling trapped within their own minds, likening his physical experience of the psychedelic trip to an exorcism. After repeated vomiting, he lay on a small mattress at an indoor facility along with other participants. With his eyes closed, a flurry of colors, numbers and then math equations appeared, and he said it was like “looking at a movie screen, but it’s a movie screen of my life.”

The flashes of his past, he said, helped him gain a new perspective on painful life experiences, helping him be “reborn” and saving his marriage. 

Now Luttrell, 49 years old, is finding himself in another position he didn’t expect to be: pushing his party—which popularized the “just say no” slogan in the 1980s and has taken a hard line for decades on drug enforcement—to be more open toward what he says are lifesaving treatments that are currently illegal in the U.S.

Luttrell is among a growing group of Republican lawmakers—many of them veterans—who are making the case for drugs that they say help address issues like PTSD, depression and substance abuse.

“I had the inability to let the previous part of my life go and understand that my current life is what’s most important,” Luttrell said in an interview. He argues the path forward “needs to be medically based.”

Proponents want more research and funding. And if the science supports their claims, some of these members say they hope the Trump administration will back their push to potentially allow usage of these drugs in medically controlled environments. They hope the drugs—including Schedule I drugs like ibogaine, psilocybin and MDMA—can become part of structured treatments and will help curb suicide rates in the veteran community.

Currently there are several trials for psychedelics happening in various corners of the private sector and government, including Veterans Affairs as well as the Pentagon. The FDA last year rejected an MDMA drug submitted by Lykos Therapeutics, citing uncertainty about the data, in a major setback for veterans groups.

Dr. Joseph Ross, a professor of medicine at Yale who studies the impact of Food and Drug Administration policies, said he has heard many stories of psychedelics having a dramatic and positive impact on people’s lives. But he urged caution. 

Trials so far “have left a tremendous amount of uncertainty before we’re going to push the regulator to approve it, or have the VA pay for it and expose a large number of people to potential harms as well as just using medications that don’t work,” said Ross, who served on the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, an independent, nonprofit research institute that recently reviewed MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD last year. It found “publicly available evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms.”

Typical double-blind studies can be difficult, since participants and the researchers can tell if they are receiving the drug rather than a placebo, given the immediate physical and mental effects of the drugs. 

Lawmakers who back further studies are emphasizing controlled, supervised use and acknowledge potential pitfalls. They fear the drugs could become available broadly, potentially leading to improper, unsafe or recreational use and setting back their efforts.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas), like Luttrell a retired Navy SEAL, spearheaded a bill signed into law in late 2023 that required more research on the use of psychedelics to treat PTSD and traumatic brain injury in veterans and active-duty servicemembers. Luttrell helped him in the effort. The Pentagon has been leading these studies, with the help of the National Institutes of Health. 

Rep. Jack Bergman (R., Mich.), the highest-ranking combat veteran in Congress, and Rep. Lou Correa (D., Calif.) lead the Congressional Psychedelics Advancing Therapies, or PATH, Caucus, pushing for “rigorous and urgent clinical research” on psychedelics.

Other Republicans are taking notice. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R., Iowa), a physician, said she began to look differently at psychedelics after meeting with a female veteran in 2022 who detailed how MDMA-assisted treatment had helped her process her sexual trauma and bring her back as a functioning person. Miller-Meeks also said that suicide rates in the veteran community as well new research prompted her and others to think outside the box. 

There were 6,407 veteran suicide deaths in 2022, according to a report last year from the VA. The suicide rate for veterans is about double that of nonveterans, according to the report.

Proponents believe the new administration is poised to help, as the Trump team is filled with veterans in high-level positions, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

“You have a very out-of-the-box president…you now have a Defense secretary that is a younger generation, that is kind of on the troop level,” said Rep. Ryan Zinke (R., Mont.), another former Navy SEAL.

VA spokesman Peter Kasperowicz said that Collins is looking forward to working with Congress on the issue. The secretary’s tenure is “about challenging the status quo in order to find new and better ways of helping veterans,” Kasperowicz said. 

Rep. Mike Bost (R., Ill.), chair of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee who has spoken with Collins, said the secretary is all in on helping veterans, whether through “new policy, or if it’s new procedures.”

Trump ally Elon Musk has previously spoken highly of psychedelics in helping with PTSD and depression. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accused the FDA last year of aggressively “suppressing” psychedelics, among other alternative treatments.

HHS and the FDA didn’t respond to requests for comment. Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Military Health System said in a statement that in line with legislation passed for fiscal year 2024, “three awards are currently in negotiation to fund research on this topic.”

Critics say psychedelics have been painted in an overly sunny light.

The public discourse “often presents these studies in an overly positive light and gives them little scrutiny,” said Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, director of the Center for Family Studies at the conservative Family Research Council. She said “interventions that claim panacea-like status” could risk PTSD symptoms becoming worse, in addition to a rise in the street use of psychedelic drugs.

Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who hails from one of the few states that has decriminalized psilocybin, known as “magic mushrooms,” warned of a slippery slope. 

“We see what marijuana has done to Colorado and I hate that,” she said, referring to the state’s legalization of the drug. “That was supposed to be medical marijuana, and now we have recreational drugs everywhere.”