‘Everything’s On the Table’: VA Secretary Signals Openness to Psychedelics, But Concrete Plans Lacking

As you may have heard, the new Department of Veterans Affairs VA Secretary, Doug Collins, appeared on The Shawn Ryan Show, a podcast featuring—as you may have already guessed—Shawn Ryan, “former US Navy Seal and CIA Contractor”.

Some in the field are buzzing about Collins’ comments regarding psychedelic therapies, which have generally been deemed to be positive.

It was the show’s host, Ryan, who repeatedly brought up the topic. Right off the bat, at the ten-minute mark, he raised psychedelics as a potential treatment for veterans, mentioning Ambio Life Sciences, a clinic in Mexico that offers ibogaine treatments, and an observational study of ibogaine therapy that took place at Ambio (Cherian et al., 2024).

“There’s all these black holes in the brain”, Ryan said of veterans who had their brains scanned as part of the Stanford study. “They do iboga treatment, they fly ‘em back up to Stanford and oh, magically the entire brain is lit up”, he continued.

“Why aren’t they looking at stuff that actually works? Instead of doing the same old sh*t”, he asked Collins.

The VA secretary at first appears to avoid the topic, but then talked around a ‘cultural’ issue within the VA that makes it challenging to explore new ideas or ways of treating veterans. In terms of his knowledge of what the agency is doing with regards to psychedelics, he only appeared to be aware of a clinical study at the Bronx that it has been a part of. On that front, he said: “It’s working, we’re seeing tremendous change.”

Collins also revealed that he met with the new HHS Secretary, RFK Jr., some weeks ago “and talked about this very issue and how we get it incorporated”...