HHS funds ibogaine research for veterans with PTSD

Ibogaine is a psychedelic drug that's been pushed underground for decades, partly because it can cause dangerous heart problems. On Nov. 12, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced new government funding for it anyway. The money comes from ARPA-H, an agency that funds risky, early-stage health research. It totals up to $4.9 million over five years. The goal is treating PTSD, especially in military veterans.

This isn't HHS's only move into psychedelics. The same announcement included a separate $20 million funding pool for other fast-acting mental health treatments, like ketamine. It also covers psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. The push follows an executive order Trump signed in April 2026 directing federal agencies to speed up psychedelics research. Mark Cuban's companies, including Cost Plus Drugs, are expected to help run the studies, according to Endpoints News. HHS's own announcement didn't name Cuban directly, so that detail is a bit less certain than the funding numbers. Ibogaine's real danger is heart arrhythmia, which has killed people who took it outside a medical setting. Any study will have to manage that risk carefully.

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Will $4.9 million actually be enough to get ibogaine through the slow, expensive FDA approval process? Probably not alone; that's a small fraction of what full drug trials typically cost. What this really does is signal a shift. A government long skeptical of psychedelics is now willing to spend real money on this. The goal is PTSD treatments that work faster than today's options. Whether that produces an approved drug, or just more data, is the open question for the next five years.