Photo: Kyrsten Sinema, 2020 — Office of Senator Kyrsten Sinema, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain, U.S. Senate work).
This is Week 2 of the Altitude People Series, where we're spending four Wednesdays on named public figures who've gone on record about psychedelic use — Week 1 covered sports; this week, politicians; then business and celebrities. Same standard as last week: we're not covering recreational use for its own sake, and we're not including anyone whose use is reported but not personally confirmed. That bar cuts the list short this week — it leaves out at least one much-discussed case.
Who's Gone on Record
| Name | Substance(s) | Status | Context | Practitioner / Retreat | Bio | Source (Journalist) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kyrsten Sinema | Ibogaine | On Record | Former U.S. Senator (I-AZ); traveled to a Mexico clinic in spring 2025 not for depression or PTSD, but — watching her grandmother's decline — to try to protect her own brain against dementia; said it left her feeling "sharper, clearer" | Clinic in Mexico (not named) | Wikipedia | POLITICO — Erin Schumaker |
| Morgan Luttrell | Ibogaine, 5-MeO-DMT | On Record | U.S. Representative (R-TX), retired Navy SEAL; underwent a three-day treatment program at a Mexico clinic in 2018 after a traumatic brain injury left him, in his words, unable to let go of his own past | Mexico clinic (not named) | Wikipedia | Wall Street Journal (via Luttrell's official site) |
Status key: On Record means the person's own words, in an interview, on their own record, or reported by a named journalist who interviewed them directly. We found one high-profile case that doesn't clear that bar this week: a forthcoming book reportedly describes an anonymous "politician's" psychedelic use, and The New York Times* has reported details pointing to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — but since neither the book nor Kennedy has confirmed it in his own words, it stays out of this table. We also found former Texas Governor Rick Perry advocating loudly for ibogaine research and legalization, but no account of him personally trying it — advocacy alone doesn't meet the bar either.*
Kyrsten Sinema: "The Experience Was Worth It"
Sinema's account, reported by POLITICO's Erin Schumaker — the same journalist who later moderated the federal Psychedelic Healthcare Forum we covered here — is notable for what it wasn't about. She didn't describe depression, PTSD, or any of the indications driving most clinical ibogaine research. Her own grandmother had dementia, and she went to a Mexico clinic this past spring, in her words, to "shore up her brain against" the same fate. She told Schumaker it made her feel "sharper, clearer," that her brain felt "snappy" afterward, and that "the experience was worth it" — while staying genuinely ambivalent about whether she'd do it again.
She's since become enough of a believer to push her home state to fund it formally: advocates, Sinema among them, want ibogaine studied in Arizona-funded clinical trials, with FDA approval as the eventual goal. The New York Times' "The Daily" ran a related episode in April 2026 built around a different angle entirely — Times reporter Robert Draper's own trip to Mexico to try ibogaine, after Sinema was the one who first told him about it. Draper reported that she isn't the only member of Congress who's done this.
Morgan Luttrell: "Like a 500-Pound Rucksack"
Luttrell's story predates Sinema's by years and is more severe in its stakes. The retired Navy SEAL and Texas Republican, now in his second term in Congress, went to a Mexico clinic in 2018 — ibogaine illegal in the US was and is the reason he went abroad — for an intense three-day program combining ibogaine with inhaled 5-MeO-DMT. He's described the traumatic brain injury underlying the trip as leaving him with "the inability to let the previous part of my life go," and the ibogaine component specifically as offloading what felt like a "500-pound rucksack." He credits the experience with saving his marriage and calls it being "reborn."
Luttrell turned that into policy fast. He and Rep. Dan Crenshaw added a provision to the fiscal year 2024 NDAA backing military research into ibogaine for service members with PTSD, and he's since co-sponsored legislation to codify the 2026 executive order accelerating federal ibogaine research. Our own coverage of ibogaine's patent landscape and stalled drug-development history is the fuller technical picture behind the compound both lawmakers are now legislating around — including the cardiac safety signal that both the FDA and the clinics administering it have to account for.
What Connects Them
Neither Sinema nor Luttrell is describing recreational use, and neither is shy about where they went to get it: a federally illegal compound, administered abroad, because the alternative — waiting for it to clear FDA review in the US — wasn't fast enough for what each was trying to solve. That's the same pattern we found in football last week with ibogaine specifically, and it's part of why the compound has become one of the more federally contested corners of drug policy this year, as federal officials themselves described at a recent forum on the VA's own rollout plans.
This is journalism about public figures' own statements, not medical advice. Ibogaine carries documented cardiac risks and is administered outside FDA-approved clinical settings at the facilities described above; nothing here is an endorsement of unsupervised use.
Sources
- POLITICO: Kyrsten Sinema Is Ready for Her MAHA Turn — Erin Schumaker
- Luttrell.house.gov: Lawmaker 'Reborn' Through Psychedelic Therapy Wants GOP to Embrace It (originally reported by The Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2025)
- The New York Times, "The Daily": "One Reporter's Life-Altering Psychedelic Trip" (Apr 12, 2026)
- Photo: Kyrsten Sinema in 2020 (cropped).jpg), Office of Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Wikimedia Commons, public domain (U.S. Senate work)