“I’m All About the Data”: Dr. Charles Nemeroff on Psychedelics, Ibogaine, and Scientific Rigour

Dr. Charles Nemeroff, a well-known figure in psychiatry, has spent decades studying depression, the brain, and the impacts of early life adversity. Today, he is the co-director of the Charmaine & Gordon McGill Center for Psychedelic Research and Therapy at the Dell Medical School in Austin, Texas. There, his group is part of a consortium that is looking to tap up to $50 million in funding for research into ibogaine, a drug he admits wouldn’t have been his first choice.

In this conversation, Nemeroff talks about how that ibogaine programme came together and what his group hopes to learn, as well as a broader look at the centre's psychedelic research portfolio, unanswered questions he thinks the field needs to address, and why he is concerned about non-medical access models like Oregon's.

Josh Hardman, Psychedelic Alpha: When did you first come across psychedelics? Did it take some time for you to be convinced that there was therapeutic potential?

Dr. Charles Nemeroff: I'm all about the data. The reason I established the Charmaine & Gordon McGill Center here in Austin was because I believed there was sufficient anecdotal and case series data. The idea was to begin running very small randomised trials that could show if a signal was there. 

We need scientific rigour to play a major role here if we’re ever going to figure out the many unanswered questions that we have about...