To the surprise of many, Rick Perry has come out for legalization of psychedelic drugs to treat PTSD.
Republican Rick Perry served as governor of Texas from 2000 to 2015 and then did a stint as secretary of energy from 2017 to 2019. He describes himself as a small-government conservative. He’s not in favor of legalizing all drugs, but in the last five years he has warmed up to the idea that psychedelics could be a valuable and legitimate treatment for trauma.
Reason’s Nick Gillespie sat down with Rick Perry in June at the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference to discuss how poorly the U.S. deals with those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and how he believes that psychedelic-assisted therapy can help.
Q: How have you changed your mind about psychedelics?
A: When I got introduced to this approximately five years ago, it was through a young man [Morgan Luttrell] who worked with me at the Department of Energy.
I was the secretary of energy and he was seeing some of his colleagues in the special operations world—this is a former Navy SEAL, who, interestingly enough, today is a United States congressman. He’s the one that started getting me comfortable with “Rick Perry” and “psychedelics” in the same sentence. His twin brother, Marcus Luttrell, lived with us at the governor’s mansion as my wife and I were learning about post-traumatic stress disorder and how poorly our government was dealing with this. And we were trying to find solutions to help heal this young man.
Q: Can psychedelics help individuals struggling with PTSD?
A: I’ve educated myself about the history of this and why psychedelics got taken away from the research world, from the citizens at large. These are medicines that were taken away for political purposes back in the early ’70s that we need to reintegrate. The potential here is stunningly positive.
I’ll give you one example: Rachel Yehuda, Ph.D., who’s working at [Veterans Affairs] in New York. She has two studies in phase three that are showing just amazing results. They have classic symptoms—anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, suicidal thoughts, one or all of those. Seventy-five percent of those individuals who are treated have zero symptoms after six months. Those are stunning numbers.
Q: Do you think people in your political tribe will be able to grasp this message about psychedelics treating trauma?
A: This is an education process and the short answer is yes, I do. Because I’m not for legalization of all drugs. We need to go a little more pedestrian here. Government has fouled this up substantially in the past. Let’s not give them a reason to mess this up, again. Let’s go thoughtfully at an appropriate pace as fast as we can.
Government needs to be limited. It needs to be restrained at almost every opportunity that you can. We haven’t been very successful with that in our country.
This isn’t the first time “Rick Perry” and “drugs” have appeared in a post here, as there was a significant possibility that Perry was hopped up on goofballs following back surgery in his 2012 presidential run flameout. But Perry is very far indeed from a liberal squish. Maybe the time has arrived for Republicans to give serious thought to rethinking current drug policy.
The United States Constitution is silent on the issue of drug regulation, which, under the 10th Amendment, should make drug policy the provenance of the states for anything not involving interstate commerce. Federal marijuana prohibition rests on the deeply un-conservative New Deal expansion of federal powers enshrined in Wickard vs. Filburn, which allowed the federal government to regulate what people grow on their own land for their own consumption. And our current drug prohibition policies aren’t keeping illegal drugs flowing into the country from Mexico and China.
On the flip side of that coin, deep blue locales like San Francisco and Seattle have amply demonstrated how not to legalize drugs, refusing to enforce basic law and order and letting mentally ill transients shoplift at will and shit in the streets, destroying the quality of life for law-abiding citizens. Clearly de facto legalization doesn’t work if government refuses their fundamental duty of ensuring ordered liberty.
There’s a vast range of policy options between “throwing teenagers into prison for years for smoking a joint” and “let drug addicted transients shit in the streets.” San Francisco and Seattle show how Democrats run things if left to act on their instincts of hating the police and farming homeless populations for graft. That means Republicans will have to come up with policy options for slow, careful, phased drug legalization policies on their own.
State legalization of marijuana has been a very mixed bag, with vast illegal grow operations popping up in states with even partial/medical legalization, and it hasn’t been nearly the economic boon that the legal pot lobby had forecast. More careful experimentation and data gathering is required.
For psychedelics, the literature seems to indicate that addiction rates are very low, but there are obviously people who have seriously damaged their mind by tripping too much.
But ultimately, the purpose of government is not to protect citizens from themselves. Drug prohibition cuts against fundamental American principles. A lot of modern drug addiction has it roots in the culture of despair, lawlessness, family breakup, social decline and general failure Democrat-run cities have cultivated in their poorest citizens. Starting to fix those problems would do far more to fix the problems of addiction than current drug prohibition policies.
Obviously Joe Rogan needs to interview Rick Perry so they can talk about psychedelic drugs..
Tags: drug war, drugs, LSD, Marcus Luttrell, marijuana, Morgan Luttrell, Nick Gillespie, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, psychedelics, Rachel Yehuda, Reason, Republicans, Rick Perry, Tenth Amendment, Texas, Veterans Administration, Wickard vs. Filburn
At this point, just go for it. Accelerate. Run this 100-car overloaded freight train into a mountain tunnel filled in with concrete. The kids are not alright and people’s only solution to what is already a humongous legal pharmaceutical drug problem is make more drugs legal, as if half of America’s young women under 30 being on Zoloft isn’t a giant flashing air raid siren. At this rate Special K will be legal in one or more states by 2030, with cocaine and meth not far behind it.
Just do it.
I think you mean “province”, not “provenance”.
I think there’s something there, but it’s one of those deals where it should only be administered in a clinical environment, under constant medical supervision.
If they do like they do with every other f*cking psychoactive in the pharmacopeia? Just randomly administer it, in free-form open-air experiment? Nope, nope, nope… I do not believe that anything psychoactive should be allowed to be administered under an outpatient basis, especially when they’re trying to find a drug and a dose that works for the individual under treatment. With HIPAA, there’s no warning to anyone that someone’s under treatment, even family members. I have seen the casual way they administer this stuff, and it’s wrecked lives like you would not believe. There’s nothing like having a previously stable person go from relatively normal and stable to near-catatonic narcoleptic falling asleep leaning on things, and transitioning to manic aggressive asshole with zero warning. Had more than one guy do that, without knowing they were under treatment at all, and having to deal with the consequences. Saw several divorces, a couple of separations, and a bunch of crap that should never
have happened under any circumstances whatsoever.
By all means… Use whatever works. But, don’t do it with outpatient treatment, and don’t inflict the problems on the rest of the community while you’re trying to treat the patient.
interesting idea to have Rick Perry interviewed by Joe Rogan. The government likes to regulate. Recently, the government pretty much made ivermectin unavailable. Even if you call it a horse de-wormer, the FDA has fifty years of studies showing ivermectin is harmless in humans. It would be nice if there were some coherence to policy. If psychedelics can help, that should be pursued.
“But ultimately, the purpose of government is not to protect citizens from themselves.”
While being sympathetic to this argument, government cannot become agnostic in its policies concerning drugs but ought to protect society from those who prey upon it. It is significant that many, perhaps most of our prisons are filled with drug users.
Decriminalizing drugs has not kept criminals from using them and drug use is causally linked to recidivism. Programs that wean prisoners from their addiction lead to a marked reduction in reincarceration.
Targeted interdiction would keep government from encroaching upon the liberty of free citizens while simultaneously assuring that recently released inmates can better integrate with a free society if they remain drug free.
Excellent and thought-provoking column. Thank you and Rick Perry.
“[D]on’t inflict the problems on the rest of the community while you’re trying to treat the patient.”
This conflict is inevitable. Either society at-large is to be protected from aberrant conduct or the transgressor is to be protected from retaliation for his misdeeds is what determines the justness of our laws. Sadistic punishment is equally to be condemned with merciless predation.
Since the outcome of this equation favors mercy, some latitude must be given to ameliorating the suffering of the afflicted. If this means relaxing the laws to permit unorthodox medical treatment, it would seem that mercy should allow space for it.
Since the course of psychedelic treatment is untested, there has to be strict oversight and accountability until such time as the results can be fully evaluated. So yeah, tightly regulate the procedure until we can be reasonably assured of its merit. Relax the constraints if the new method shows success.
@Malthus,
Ever looked into just how many “mass shootings” are performed by people under “psychiatric care”, and who’ve been dosed to the gills with psychoactives?
That’s one of the untold stories about “gun control”, and a large reason why we have the problems we have today. Yeah, when I was a kid, we had guns out in the parking lot every year during hunting season, but ya know what? We also didn’t have the assholes dosing every other kid for ADHD, depression, or God alone knows what else.
The psychiatric-pharmaceutical industrial complex has done a number on society, and we don’t even notice how badly it screws things up. Try and find a story in the news media that goes over all the issues with the stuff they’re pumping into people, these days.
Good Christ… Accutane, the wonder-drug for acne? Huge swathe of the population develops suicidal ideation and other things on that drug. Nobody gives anyone any warnings about it, either–Privacy. I had a friend of mine in an adjacent unit go through the grief of having one of his guys commit suicide; kid jumped off the 3rd floor balcony, did a header onto the railing around the ramp into the basement storage area. They did the full psychological autopsy workup on the kid, and it was like “Oh, yeah… Accutane. That’ll do it, for some percentage of the population…”
Same with that crap they use as an antimalarial, Lariam. That shit is flat scary, because it sneaks up on you and you don’t even realize you’ve lost the bubble. Look up what happened to the Canadian Airborne Regiment in Somalia; there’s strong belief in some circles that a lot of that “war crimes” shit came straight out of the use of Lariam as their new hot-shit antimalarial that they got from the US. I know SF medics that flatly refuse to issue the stuff, because of the side effects they’ve seen on their teams.
Modern medicine thinks it’s God-like. What they are would actually be a bunch of half-trained monkeys pawing through the molecular toolchest and randomly tossing shit out, without real attention being paid to what else all these wonder drugs do. My take on it is that if there’s been any incidence of psychoactive effects, then you don’t hand the drug out unless you’ve got the patient under clinical supervision and observation. You sure as hell don’t let them loose to wreak havoc on the rest of the population.
I’m not even getting into the illegal drug question; I’m just talking about the medically-prescribed stuff, which is unfortunately a huge blind spot. You really don’t want to know what the incidence rate is for things like spousal abuse and all the rest, when they check people’s med records for drug interactions. The sad thing is, a lot of the time? The damn doctors ought to be up right next to the murderer when he’s on trial. They really do not take responsibility for what they do, and they should be held to account for a lot of this crap.
Christ, friend of mine watched his wife go flat-out nuts on the damn anti-seizure medication that his insurance would pay for. The cheap stuff was psychoactive as hell, well-known for triggering deep personality changes and serious behavioral problems. They still use it, because “cheap”, which is criminal considering all the side effects.
“Yeah, when I was a kid, we had guns out in the parking lot every year during hunting season,..”
I’m so old, I can remember being stopped by the police with my two friends as we rambled down a gravel road carrying a shotgun, .22 rifle and .22 revolver using ammo one of our sixteen year-old brothers bought at a hardware store.
“Whatcha up to, boys”?
“We’re going to the city dump to shoot cans.”
“Do your parents know”?
“Yep.”
“Okay then, be careful.”
“Yessir!”
The Kennedy assassination changed all this. A troupe of kids carrying guns through that now gentrified neighborhood would lead to a swift arrest.
It is small wonder that vast numbers of youth are doping. They are living through a dystopia.
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I don’t disagree with you, but I think there’s at least as much or more of a problem with the “legal” crap they’re handing out willy-nilly to all and sundry.
It’s like pain meds… OK, great: My Mom has cancer of the tongue. They just hand over the Oxycodone with zipola for guidance on how not to get yourself addicted to the crap while you’re using it. I was stunned; even with the recent “opiod epidemic”, the doctors are just casually handing the prescriptions over without really telling the patient anything about pain management. Which is fine with my family, because we tend to do due diligence on anything coming out of the medical system, and do not take anyone’s word for anything. Doctors hate dealing with us because we ask questions and demand answers until we understand what’s going on. Average patient? Oh, hell no… They just trustingly take the drugs, and worry about consequences later. Couple of other cancer patients I’ve run into during the course of all this have now got full-blown dependencies on opioids, stemming from this casual handing out of the drugs.
There’s a huge drug problem in this country, but a lot of it stems from the medical community as much as it does anything else. I’ve got friends and acquaintances who’re nurses and work within the structure, and they’re horrified at some of the things they see. And, what’s worse? The assholes at DEA have made it so hard to prescribe for some pain management issues that there are patients with legit need for the heavy opioids that are now forced onto the illegal drug market…
The whole thing is fubar, and I’ve no idea how to fix it. But, one thing I’ll fight over is that the medical community ought to be a hell of a lot more careful in how they’re administering this stuff, across the board.
The one I love the most is the way they do the psychoactives for depression/PTSD: “Here, Johnny… Try 5mg of this, twice a day… Come back in two weeks, lemme know how it works for you…”
This is insane, because the doctor is relying on the patient to self-report efficacy of the drug, and the patient is already off the rails. They try the drug, it seems (to them…) to be working, but what it is actually doing is masking the symptoms to the patient… Meanwhile, their co-workers and family are seeing inexplicable personality and behavioral changes that the patient himself isn’t even aware of, yet it’s obvious to anyone observing that something is going on. And, thanks to the privacy laws, you aren’t even informed that you have this ticking time bomb working next to you.
Civilian life? Often, not a big deal; military? Sweet Jesus… I’ve been on demo ranges working with guys around high explosives who were, at the time, considering suicide and how to do it without actually having it look like suicide. One of my guys connected with me years later, and was like “Yeah, hey, you remember when we were running that training range…? Whole time, I was thinking about having an “accident”, and killing myself. I want to really thank you for never leaving me alone, because if I could have done it without hurting anyone, I would have…”
The chilling thing is this: I had NO idea he was having problems, or under treatment. I didn’t have him under observation, and I wasn’t deliberately keeping other people around him the way he thought I was… All that was accident, and had nothing to do with me having noticed anything “off” about him or his behavior, the way he thought I had. All of that, suicidal ideation and me preventing it? All of it was in his head; I’d recognized NOTHING.
Thanks, doctors.
Especially in a military environment, psych issues need to be out in the open, and without stigma for being treated. Flip side to that? Everyone needs to know, so precautions can be taken. You can’t have guys whose headspace and timing are off working in an environment with high explosives, weapons, and all the rest.
I’d wager you that some component of “military training accidents” are actually guys who were committing suicide or whose judgment was seriously off due to medications. There was one guy I knew who I’ve always wondered about… His death did not strike me as accidental, at all; he had to have done what he did deliberately.
This fits in my understanding of “right to try”. There is no doubt that we are losing veterans to suicide and PTSD is a major reason for this. While I understand the chance of misuse and abuse (“l’m suicidal, give me the shrooms”). There are ways to find legitimate sufferers and give them a chance to try a potential solution.
By all means, yes. However, comma… You want to start dosing people up who’re outpatients? Not under 24/7 supervision while under the influence? Oh, hell no…
Been there, done that, wouldn’t do it again unless someone put a gun to my head. Having someone tell me, years later, that he’d been thinking about killing himself on a demolitions range I was running, and only didn’t do it because I was supposedly never letting him be alone…? Try that on for size, sometime. This crap where they’re doing this stuff “out in the community” needs to f*cking stop, period.
Ever wonder how many car accidents stem from this sort of thing? Person under treatment, deciding to “end it all” by running into someone else? Or, just having a “one-car accident”, and taking their passengers with them?