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Gov. Rick Perry’s wild new job: Drug dealer!?

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by Frank Holmes, reporter

A former top Republican presidential contender and Texas governor has admitted he crossed the border into Mexico, took a psychedelic trip, and claimed he flew through space surrounded by swirling Egyptian hieroglyphics—and he wants taxpayers to foot the bill so more people might be able to have the same trippy experience.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry has claimed he took a mind-altering dose of a drug called ibogaine. It all started in September 2023, when Perry went to a clinic in Tijuana and asked them to give him the full dose.

Soon, he said he began to see things he had never envisioned before.

“Objects flew past him. Some of them appeared to resemble Maya hieroglyphics. He saw an arm reaching out for him, and attached to it was a figure with horns. ‘Satan, get behind me,’ he heard himself say. The figure instantly disappeared,” reported The New York Times in a story published Monday.

Perry’s drug-induced hallucinations lasted 12 hours before giving way to bouts of heavy-duty vomiting. They took another full day to recover.

The drug use doesn’t come completely out of the blue:

“This treatment, this medicine, works,” claimed Perry in a 2023. “The potential here is stunningly positive.”

But the Times story brings a stunning new twist.

It appears that, until this week, Perry still hadn’t confessed he took the drug himself just yet.

As late as this June, in a Washington Post op-ed, Perry only admitting only that he “traveled to see ibogaine clinics in Mexico” and noticed that the drug sends its users on “an hours-long, intensely introspective journey.”

But now, he’s a confirmed believer.

“I’m dedicating the rest of my life to Ibogaine awareness,” the former three-term Texas governor posted on social media in June.

“Former Texas Governor Rick Perry has a very illegal new obsession,” says the Houston Chronicle.

“Former Trump Cabinet Secretary Is Unlikely Advocate for Drug That Made Him See The Devil,” observes The Daily Beast.

Texas Monthly ran a profile titled “Rick Perry, Drug Pusher.”

Reportedly, it wasn’t Perry’s first brush with drugs.

Wracked by major back pain during his 2012 primary campaign, “It became an open secret that he was using painkillers in sufficient dosages to keep him standing through the two-hour debates,” wrote Mike Allen and Evan Thomas in the book Inside the Circus.

There is no doubt Perry gave rambling answers to questions and once, famously, forgot his own talking points mid-sentence.

In a 2011 Republican primary debate, Perry promised to abolish three federal agencies—but could only name two.

“Whoops,” said Perry, who later denied alcohol or painkillers had anything to do with his debate performance.

But why the huge public policy change on drug legalization from Perry? We think we’ve found the answer.

“Perry…has co-founded the nonprofit Americans for Ibogaine,” the NYT  report, although it added that Perry “said he has no financial stake in the effort” to legalize this drug.

The group’s website doesn’t provide any financial information…except how to donate. But then, Perry is not the only Republican to leave politics and start earning fat stacks with drugs.

A few years ago, former Speaker of the House John Boehner, an Ohio Republican who offered little resistance to then-President Barack Obama, has come out in favor of legalizing marijuana.

“This is the time to go all-in on cannabis,” said Boehner in 2018—seven years after saying he was  “unalterably opposed” to cannabis decriminalization and earning a zero percent voting record on drug legalization.

What changed? Money changed hands. Earlier that year, Boehner joined the advisory board of Acreage Holdings, a company that sells marijuana in multiple states and encourages people to toke up for their health.

In 2021, Boehner got sued by a pot legalization group, the 10 Campaign, for allegedly stealing their data to form his own lobbying group, the National Cannabis Roundtable—which he formed with Kathleen Sebelius, the secreatary of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration.

Perry also reaches across the aisle in his drug legalization efforts. Perry regularly works with his new ally Kyrsten Sinema, the former Democratic senator from Arizona, who took ibogaine, because she believes it helps fight dementia.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows—and when you do drugs, you often wake up with unusual partners.

But Perry, a former Secretary of Energy in the first Trump administration, has strong supporters in the second administration.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, and Food and Drug Administration administrator Dr. Marty Makary have all said they want to explore the use of psychedelics as an “alternative treatment.”

That could be an uphill battle—and it should be. Perry revealed in his WaPo op-ed that his new favorite trip-inducer is “not without risk” and “can affect the heart.” But he loves it so much, he thinks promoting a psychedelic is the new, great cause of his life—and even the attention of top Trump administration officials isn’t enough for Perry.

“My goal is to sit down with the president,” he told The New York Times.

Do you think Rick Perry, John Boehner, and Kyrsten Sinema are working to help suffering veterans and people with stress—or are they getting a kickback from some private manufacturer who hopes to touch off America’s next drug crisis?

About the Author

Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”