The Chiropractic Hub will advance federal policy, expand patient access, and build broad public support for chiropractic care across America.

The initiative focuses on supporting children, military personnel, veterans, seniors, and all families seeking non-drug, non-surgical healthcare options. Chiropractic is an essential, evidence-informed, prevention-based component of a sustainable American healthcare system, not an “alternative service.”

“The Chiropractic profession is exactly the kind of drug-free, whole-person, prevention-first care that the Make America Healthy Again movement was built to champion,” said Tony Lyons, President of MAHA Center. “The Chiropractic Hub brings both practitioners and patients into the fight against chronic disease and gives Americans a real alternative to a system that too often treats symptoms rather than root causes.”

Appearing Wednesday on the MAHA Media Hub, Leigh Merinoff, director of the Chiropractic Hub, said, “Chiropractic represents a fundamentally different approach to healthcare. One that focuses on prevention, structure, function, nervous system health, and supporting the body rather than immediately medicating symptoms.”

Merinoff added, “I truly believe that through chiropractic’s sincere desire to help people, and through the perseverance shown despite professional struggles and challenges, we have an opportunity to help create something much larger than we once imagined.”

For Brandon Hoffman, the new Executive Director for the Chiropractic Hub (who also spoke at Wednesday’s Media Hub), the creation of a centralized entity focused on chiropractic care is deeply personal.

“As a kid, when I said my dad was a chiropractor, I’d sometimes hear, ‘Oh, but he’s not a real doctor,’ Hoffman recalled. “It confused me, because I’d seen what he did to help thousands of patients. I learned early on that when someone has lived with chronic pain and finally finds relief, they don’t care about the title on the wall. They care that they got their life back.”

Hoffman continued, “That conviction has driven my career across insurance, media, education, and policy — the belief that every American deserves comprehensive care where drugs and surgery are options, not the automatic first line standard of care.”

The Chiropractic Hub’s priorities were established after chiropractic care leaders met in Washington, D.C. in March. That discussion focused on the need for a coordinated national strategy to expand access to chiropractic care; strengthen federal recognition of the profession; and agree on the need to modernize Medicare while better integrating chiropractic care into military, veteran affairs, and broader public health systems.

The Chiropractic Hub will operate across four pillars: education and media; research and access expansion; coalition building; and through MAHA Action’s 501(c)(4) arm – federal advocacy.

In 2026, the Chiropractic Hub will pursue the four coordinated workstreams below:

1. National PR and education campaign: An emphasis on building public, policy, and professional support for chiropractic care as a credible, accessible and prevention-focused modality that aligns with MAHA priorities.

2. Medicare and federal recognition: A goal to advance the Chiropractic Medicare Coverage Modernization Act in the 119th Congress and advocate for the full implementation of Section 2706 of the Affordable Care Act, ensuring that Medicare and privately insured patients have greater access to chiropractic care.

3. Military integration: Engage with the Defense Health Agency and Army Medical Research to embed chiropractic care across military health systems and within active-duty personnel, reducing early exits from service and offering a non-surgical alternative to musculoskeletal injuries.

4. Department of Veterans Affairs: The Hub will engage the VA Secretary to issue a nationwide directive expanding chiropractic access for veterans and their dependents. The goal is to eliminate excessive wait times, minimize restrictions and open the Community Care Program network to more providers.

There is ample evidence that chiropractic care plays a key role in the American healthcare system. Such care takes a whole-body approach to health: the nervous system controls every aspect of the body; spinal adjustments address subluxations to support the body’s natural ability to heal; and care focuses on root causes rather than treating symptoms alone.

In spine and pain outcomes, where the evidence base is deepest, for example, patients who see a chiropractor for back pain are significantly less likely to fill an opioid prescription; chiropractic care means dramatically lower treatment costs.

In workers’ compensation cases, surgery rates stand at just 1.5 percent when care begins with a chiropractor, compared to 42.7 percent when it begins with a surgeon. Despite this, federal investment in chiropractic care remains a fraction of comparable disciplines, and barriers to access persist across Medicare, the VA, military health systems, and private insurance.

The MAHA Chiropractic Hub is a national initiative of MAHA Center and MAHA Action that convenes national and state chiropractic organizations, practitioners, educators, researchers, and patient advocates to advance federal policy, expand patient access, and build broad public support for chiropractic care across America.

MAHA Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the health and well-being of Americans through education, critical examination, and innovation. MAHA Action is its affiliated 501(c)(4) advocacy organization.

Yes, you lose an hour of sleep in March. It’s more difficult to wake up. Your commute is darker. Your body feels off. And then, in October or November, you gain back that hour and a little more sunlight, and sometimes forget and are early or late to a meeting? Who needs the hassle?

But Jay Pea, founder and president of Save Standard Time, says the country has been asking the wrong questions.

The real issue is not just whether America should stop changing the clocks. It is: Which clock should we choose to live by?

There are two current options: Standard Time or Daylight Saving Time. Standard Time is built around the sun, with noon close to when the sun is at its highest point in the sky. Currently, we set our clocks to Standard Time from November 1 to March 14.

In the United States, Standard Time was designed to organize modern life around the solar day. Daylight Saving Time came later as a political and economic experiment, shifting the clock one hour forward to create more evening light.

Standard Time keeps us more closely aligned with the natural light-dark cycle. It gives the body more of what it needs most in the morning: natural light to wake up, regulate cortisol, anchor circadian rhythm, support alertness, and help set the stage for better sleep at night.

“People hear ‘stop changing the clocks,’ and they think that sounds good,” Pea said. But ending the clock change by choosing permanent Daylight Saving Time is very different from ending it by choosing permanent Standard Time.

Standard Time preserves the morning light people need to wake up and feel alert. Daylight Saving Time, by contrast, pushes light later into the evening, delaying melatonin, making it harder to fall asleep, and leaving many Americans short on sleep before the day even begins.

Under Daylight Saving Time, Pea said, people can lose sleep “at both ends of the day.” Evening light keeps people awake later, while alarms still force them up before they are biologically ready.

This message is especially important as Congress again considers the Sunshine Protection Act, a bill often sold to the public as a way to end the hassle of changing clocks, and who does not like sunshine, right?

But the fine print matters.

The bill would not make Standard Time permanent. It would make Daylight Saving Time permanent nationwide. After the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced the Sunshine Protection Act as part of a broader transportation bill, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine warned that the proposal was moving forward with little time for review or debate, though it still requires approval from the full House and Senate.

Support for Saving Standard Time

The National Sleep Foundation has stated that seasonal time changes are disruptive to sleep health and that evidence supports permanent Standard Time “because of its alignment with our circadian biology and relevance to sleep health and safety.” The foundation calls permanent Standard Time “the appropriate option for public health.”

The American Medical Association has also backed Standard Time. “For far too long, we’ve changed our clocks in pursuit of daylight, while incurring public health and safety risks in the process,” AMA Trustee Dr. Alexander Ding said. “Committing to standard time has health benefits and allows us to end the biannual tug of war between our biological and alarm clocks.”

Federal health leaders already recognize sleep as a public health priority. Healthy People 2030, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, states that its sleep goal is to “improve health, productivity, well-being, quality of life, and safety by helping people get enough sleep.” The same federal initiative notes that about one in three adults and even more adolescents do not get enough sleep, and that about 100,000 motor vehicle crashes every year are related to drowsy driving.

Recent Health and Human Services messaging under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also emphasized the importance of protecting children’s sleep. In the Surgeon General’s advisory on screen use, HHS warned that children’s screen exposure can disrupt healthy sleep, calling sleep “fundamental to learning, mood, behavior, physical health, and overall development.”

For Standard Time advocates, that same principle applies to the national clock: The Sunshine Protection Act would delay sleep, darken school mornings, and push families further from natural light rhythms, thereby misaligning it with the preventive health policy HHS is working hard to advance.

The CDC also warns that about one-third of U.S. adults and children under 14, and three-quarters of high school students, do not get enough sleep. Insufficient sleep, the agency says, is linked to anxiety, depression, obesity, heart disease, injury, and other serious conditions.

For anyone who has struggled to get a child out the door on a dark winter morning, dragged through a workday after poor sleep, or felt their mood suffer after the clocks changed, Pea’s argument is simple: the clock is not separate from health. It helps shape it.

“We know health rests on a three-legged stool: physical activity, nutrition, and sleep,” Pea said. “If you’re not getting good sleep every night, it’s wear and tear on your body.”

A Policy Created for Commerce, Not Health

For years, Daylight Saving Time has been promoted as an energy and commerce policy, with supporters arguing that later evening light would save electricity, keep people shopping longer, increase recreation, and benefit industries such as retail, tourism, restaurants, convenience stores, sports, and golf.

But the energy case is far less convincing than many Americans have been led to believe.

Congress extended Daylight Saving Time in 1986, moving the start date from the last Sunday in April to the first Sunday in April. It was extended again by the 2005 Energy Policy Act, beginning in 2007, so Daylight Saving Time now runs from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November, roughly eight months of the year.

When the Department of Energy studied that 2007 extension, it found average electricity savings of only about 0.4 percent per day during the added weeks of Daylight Saving Time. The report also found “insufficient statistical evidence” that the change reduced gasoline consumption or traffic volume.

In other words, the strongest federal energy evidence supporting the extension of Daylight Saving Time does not demonstrate a sweeping national gain. It was a small reduction in electricity use during a limited part of the year, with no clear, measurable benefit for gasoline use or traffic.

That matters because the health costs are not small.

For lawmakers, the choice is becoming clearer: Should the nation prioritize a modest and contested energy argument, or a clock that better supports sleep, morning alertness, child safety, metabolic health, and circadian biology?

The clock is often debated in committees focused on commerce, energy, and transportation. But Pea believes it should be addressed instead as a public health priority.

The American Medical Association has made a similar point. “Eliminating the time changes in March and November would be a welcome change,” Ding said. “But research shows permanent daylight saving time overlooks potential health risks that can be avoided by establishing permanent standard time instead.”

“Sleep experts are alarmed,” Ding added. “Issues other than patient health are driving this debate. It’s time that we wake up to the health implications of clock setting.”

Children’s Health as a National Priority

One of the strongest arguments against permanent Daylight Saving Time is what it would mean for children.

If the U.S. stayed on Daylight Saving Time through winter, many parts of the country would see sunrise after 8:30 a.m., 9 a.m., or even later. Children would wait for buses, walk to school, and arrive at classrooms in the dark for long stretches of the year.

The U.S. has already tried year-round Daylight Saving Time once, during the 1970s energy crisis. The emergency measure quickly became unpopular, as dark winter mornings quickly became a national flashpoint. In February 1974, TIME reported in an article titled “Daylight Disaster Time” that eight children in Florida had died in early morning traffic accidents after the January time change, compared with two during the same period the year before. A federal review also found that school-age child fatalities increased during the 6 to 9 a.m. morning window in February 1974 compared with February 1973. The historical record does not prove that permanent Daylight Saving Time alone caused every crash. But it does show that dark winter mornings became a national safety concern almost immediately, forcing school districts in 18 states to adjust schedules before Congress reversed the policy.

In addition to the safety concerns, Sue E. Peters, PhD, a developmental cognitive sleep neuroscientist, connected the clock debate directly to children’s brain development and chronic disease prevention.

“Stabilizing our clocks to a standard schedule that supports sunlight during natural waking hours will have a national health impact,” Peters said.

Peters argues that permanent Standard Time supports children’s sleep and circadian rhythms, while permanent Daylight Saving Time can undermine broader MAHA goals by worsening sleep debt and fragmentation during critical windows of development.

A Low-Cost Preventive Health Reform

For Jay Pea, permanent Standard Time is not only the healthier choice. It is also the simpler one.

Permanent Daylight Saving Time does not actually give children more morning rest. It just arbitrarily changes the clock while pushing it further away from sunrise. Permanent Standard Time, by contrast, ends the disruptive clock changes while preserving the morning light that children, workers, drivers, and families depend on to safely and biologically begin the day.

In a country with many people already dealing with sleep deprivation, metabolic disease, and mental health concerns, the clock is not a small issue. It is a national rhythm. And Pea argues that if America is serious about health, safety, and prevention, the country should choose the time that works with the sun, not against it.

Under current federal law, states already have a pathway to stop observing Daylight Saving Time and remain on Standard Time year-round. Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands already do it. Permanent Daylight Saving Time is different. States cannot adopt it on their own. That would require Congress to change federal law.

The practical difference is significant. A state choosing permanent Standard Time is working within the existing framework of the Uniform Time Act. A national shift to permanent Daylight Saving Time would require federal legislation, regulatory coordination, and technical updates across transportation, schools, health care, banking, broadcasting, electronic calendars, payroll systems, phones, computers, airlines, hospitals, pharmacies, and the time-zone databases that modern life depends on.

In technical terms, permanent Standard Time removes a seasonal clock change. Permanent Daylight Saving Time requires the country to redefine civil time in a way that federal law does not currently allow states to do on their own.

That is why Pea sees permanent Standard Time as a rare kind of reform: low-cost, legally available, technologically easier, and rooted in prevention.

Lawmakers do not need to repeat past mistakes to end the clock change. The path already exists.

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On May 20, Health & Human Services and the Office of the Surgeon General released the Surgeon General’s Warning on the Harms of Screen Use, pointing out that children who look at screens excessively are at increased risk for mental, physical, emotional, and developmental health problems.

(Photo courtesy Iowa governor’s office)

“Children today spend more time on screens than sleeping, exercising, or engaging face-to-face with family and friends — and we are seeing the consequences in rising rates of anxiety, depression, obesity, and developmental challenges,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in announcing the government’s new advisory and toolkit.

Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos, chief of staff and senior advisor in the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General, put the message even more simply, saying, “There is nothing more important than the health of our children. We want them to get off the screens and live real life.”

Under Kennedy’s HHS, screen time is now considered part of the country’s childhood health crisis. The advisory warns that excessive screen use, especially through social media, is not only linked to developmental, mental, and physical challenges, but also to poor educational outcomes, sleep disruption, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, body-image concerns, physical inactivity, and poor language development in young children.

Haridopulous agrees, “As a mother, physician, and chief of staff & senior advisor in the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General, I’ve seen firsthand how excessive screen time and heavy social media use in teens can impact brain development, vision, academic performance, mental health, and more.”

Signs of excessive screen time show up in kids as: emotional withdrawal when screens are not accessible, not engaging in in-person interactions or activities and hiding or lying about overall screen use.

Teens are spending an average of 7.5 to 9 hours daily on screens for entertainment alone. Over 50% of teenagers log 4 or more hours per day, and social media accounts for the biggest portion of this, with teens averaging almost 5 hours a day across platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. The teens spending four or more hours a day on screens were twice as likely to report anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and social comparison. Cyberbullying has also been associated with depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal among children and adolescents. The advisory notes that some screen use has been associated with increased risk of self-harm and suicidal behaviors, especially among adolescents.

For very young children, the concern is more about what screen time actually replaces. Infants and toddlers build language, attention, social development, and emotional regulation through human face-to-face interaction, touch, and hands-on play. Recent research published in JAMA Pediatrics has linked higher screen exposure in infancy with later developmental delays, including communication and problem-solving delays.

Brain development may be affected as well. Some research has found that children with very heavy screen use showed thinning in the brain’s cortex, the region involved in reasoning and higher-order thinking. These findings do not prove causation, but they add to the concern that screens may be replacing the real-life experiences young brains need most.

Children’s language development is part of the same concern. The JAMA study also found more time on screens has been linked to fewer adult words, fewer child vocalizations, and fewer back-and-forth conversations between parents and children. And the pattern extends beyond learning and language. Higher screen use has also been linked to more snacking, more junk food intake, less physical activity, obesity, and a greater risk of overeating during meals.

Today’s screen use is no longer limited to television or video games. Children and adolescents now move between TVs, tablets, computers, gaming devices, and smartphones, often carrying screens with them for most of the day. Through those devices, they can watch shows, movies, and short-form videos, play games, text, shop, scroll social media, and interact with AI chatbots.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) adds yet another danger because it not only occupies attention, but it can also replace thought processes altogether. When students use AI to write, summarize, solve, and make decisions for them, they lose precious time to practice the very skills childhood is supposed to build: creativity, attention, memory, writing ability, reasoning, and problem-solving.

This is where MAHA’s message matters. Screen time is no longer just a parenting issue. It is shaping how children sleep, move, eat, learn, think, and connect. Children are spending more time with algorithms and less time moving their bodies, playing outside, sleeping deeply, talking face-to-face, and interacting with parents, teachers, siblings, and friends.

The solution is not to shame families or pretend technology is going away. HHS acknowledges that screens can have benefits and that the evidence is still evolving.

But the advisory also says there is now enough evidence of potential harm to justify action from families, schools, communities, technology companies, and policymakers.

The advisory also lays out practical steps that can be taken. Families can create media plans, keep devices out of bedrooms overnight, enforce screen-free meals, and replace screen time with real-life activities such as walking outside, cooking healthy meals together, reading, and connecting without distraction. Schools can reduce classroom screen exposure, consider bell-to-bell phone restrictions, use books and paper when possible, and build in more movement, recess, games, and build in more opportunities for social connection.

The message is also growing outside the government. Parent advocacy groups such as Mothers Against Media Addiction (MAMA) and Wait Until 8th are pushing back against media addiction and the pressure to give children smartphones before they’re ready. MAMA says “real-life experiences and interactions belong at the heart of a healthy childhood.”

Under Kennedy’s HHS, screen time is no longer being treated as an isolated family problem. It is now recognized as part of the childhood chronic disease and mental health crisis. Iowa’s new MAHA legislation, which Kennedy celebrated on May 21, includes efforts to reduce excessive classroom screen exposure, increase physical activity, strengthen student engagement, and promote healthier habits for children.

“We want children to spend less time scrolling and more time living . . . less time isolated online and more time connected to a family member, to their community, to nature or to real life,” said Kennedy during his Iowa visit.

Over the last two weeks, The MAHA Report has reached out to some of these veterans, and to two organizations – Americans for Ibogaine (AFI) and Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS) – both of which advocate for use of psychedelics to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and other serious ailments, to learn about how it works, and find out whether it’s really helping people.

Trump’s executive order, signed at the April 18 event in the Oval Office, allocates $50 million in federal funds for the Department of Health and Human Services to partner with states to develop programs to advance psychedelic drugs for serious mental illness.

Ibogaine and other psychedelics are now in clinical trials, and the Attorney General is directed, in Trump’s executive order, to review and quickly reschedule any of the drugs that are approved by the FDA – essentially legalizing them, for specific uses.

“Researchers at Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and Harvard and other leading institutions have reported meaningful and in some cases extraordinary clinical improvements,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at the White House on April 18. “If these results continue, these therapies could offer longer lasting relief, not just symptom management, and reduce [the] economic burden of mental illness, which costs this country hundreds of billions of dollars every year.”

For veterans still suffering from PTSD and other conditions, the help could not come too soon.

Glenn Curtis, a retired major general in the Louisiana National Guard, said that upon returning from a deployment to Iraq in 2005, his life was not the same.

“I could go to sleep, but during the night I would wake up and relive some of the things that happened when I was in Iraq,” he said in a phone interview. “If I went into a restaurant or [was] in a public setting, I was always scanning, watching, you know, so someone didn’t come up behind me.”

Curtis also said he experienced “trust issues” and “harsh headaches,” noting he tried to treat the headaches with over-the-counter pain relievers and found himself eating “Advils like they were candy.”

He declined to describe in any detail what he experienced in Iraq, saying only: “It was a mad place over there. You didn’t have to go very far to find trouble you didn’t want to be in.”

Curtis was diagnosed with two traumatic brain injuries and developed PTSD. He said he believes these problems were exacerbated by being in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, both when the storm made landfall and for months afterwards, as part of his duties with the Louisiana National Guard.

“What came out of that was, you know, probably more PTSD,” he said.

In 2025 Curtis traveled to an ibogaine clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, with his son, who had suffered a non-combat-related Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).

The course of treatment was not easy.

“Physically, it’s demanding,” said Curtis of the ibogaine. “Your body is just under stress...I was terribly sick...In my head it literally sounded like a construction dome.”

The treatment with ibogaine was followed by treatment with something called 5-MeO-DMT, which was shorter in duration and reported to be far more pleasant.

“I don’t know what heaven looks like, but if it’s anything like what I experienced, you’re really going to want to go there,” said Curtis.

“It’s such a drastic change,” he said of life after the treatment in Mexico. “It’s like flipping a light switch on and going from dark to light. I don’t have headaches or any concerns anymore from the TBIs [or] PTSD. All the memories are still there; they just don’t affect me like they used to.”

Curtis is now an ambassador with AFI, helping to educate others about the benefits of ibogaine treatment for veterans suffering from serious mental health issues.

John Clifton, MD, the director of research and education for the group Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions, said in an interview that many veterans are let down by standard clinical treatments and prescription psychopharmaceuticals.

SSRIs and SNRIs, he said, tend not to work for many people and may leave them still feeling miserable or suffering from serious side effects. The proof of this is in the number of veterans who take their lives – more than 6,000 every year, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“The suicide statistics do not lie,” said Clifton.

Desperate to find something that really works, an increasing number of veterans are turning to psychedelic treatment options such as ayahuasca, psilocybin, 5-MeO-DMT, and ibogaine, which are derived from plants, mushrooms, and, in the case of 5-MeO-DMT, a substance produced by certain toads.

Scientific investigations suggest psychedelics act, by varying degrees, through the same neurotransmitter systems as common antidepressants while also yielding anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective results. .

Ibogaine, for example, works through multiple mechanisms, said Stanford University School of Medicine professor Maheen Mausoof Adamson, adding it does “a lot of work with serotonin and it does change the way serotonin uptake happens.”

One observational study on which she worked, Adamson said, also showed “reduced brain age in traumatic brain injury patients [treated with ibogaine].” Usually, she said, the brains of TBI patients appear older than they are, but the brain age of patients who underwent ibogaine treatment appeared younger.

Adamson said research also shows ibogaine is non-addictive and a single treatment can yield results lasting roughly one year.

Although she warned against taking such findings out of context, Adamson said “at the same time, it is hope.”

Research on these drugs has long been impeded in the United States by government regulation and lack of funding while their use, even for medicinal purposes, is prohibited by law. The drugs, however, are available at clinics in several foreign countries, including Mexico.

William “Trey” Warren, PhD, a former Navy pilot who now works as a professor of political science at Lindenwood University and serves as an AFI ambassador, went to Mexico in 2025 for ibogaine treatment after years of living with PTSD stemming from the stress of doing four combat deployments and the cumulative effects of numerous minor TBIs (mTBIs) he believes he suffered as a routine part of flying military aircraft.

Warren said he experienced problems with alcohol abuse as well.

“I was drinking anywhere from 10-12 alcoholic drinks per day just to cope,” he said. “I was a functioning alcoholic, basically for years.”

Over time, Warren said, his neurocognitive problems grew worse. “I’d get confused at an intersection...” he recalled. “I got lost driving to the grocery store once.”

Following his PTSD diagnosis, Warren said he spent more than two years taking SSRIs and other prescription drugs, which he noted came with side effects, including thoughts of suicide. Warren said he experienced one period of suicidality while on the drugs and a second while being taken off of them too quickly.

Later, Warren said he saw a therapist trained in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and tried ayahuasca and psilocybin treatments, noting he felt they worked better than SSRIs, but that he started experiencing issues with depression and anxiety again after stopping therapy for a period. Upon returning to therapy, Warren said his therapist recommended he go to Mexico for ibogaine treatment.

“After the treatment, it’s really like starting over again like a five-year-old child,” he said. “You’re really looking at the world with this blank slate.”

Warren said he stopped drinking and is trying to live a healthier life. He said psychedelics, including ibogaine, are not a “magic bullet” and that he believes he may need occasional “tune-ups.”

“But,” Warren said, “I’m able to live again.”

Protocols at ibogaine clinics are relatively similar. Patients speak with a counselor, take ibogaine in pill form on their second day there, smoke 5-MeO-DMT on the fourth, and then receive additional counseling afterwards.

Patient experiences while on ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT vary, although ibogaine is generally considered more challenging.

“Ibogaine, as far as psychedelics go, it’s the most strenuous of them because the psychedelic period is the longest,” said Warren.

Elias Kfoury, a former Navy medic who retired in 2016, also made the decision to seek ibogaine treatment in Mexico as part of a group from VETS after preparing to end his life in 2021 on December 27, his birthday.

Kfoury told The MAHA Report that over the course of his service, he had multiple deployments and numerous injuries. After retiring, Kfoury said he focused on getting through surgeries and rehab for orthopedic injuries, but also experienced headaches, hypervigilance, anxiety, and a sense of hopelessness.

“I was so lost...” said Kfoury. “A connection that I felt really early on as a child with nature and God and everyone else and everything else was completely gone and just replaced with so much anger.”

The ibogaine treatment was difficult.

“It was like a menagerie of the most gruesome war injuries you would ever see,” said Kfoury, although when recounting his experience he tended to focus on more positive aspects like relief from his injuries and headaches and how ibogaine helped him process his emotions.

“I started to see how I was affecting my wife and kids,” Kfoury said. “I was sitting across from an angel that showed me. It was my life review.”

Describing his 5-MeO-DMT treatment that followed, Kfoury said: “I felt like I had a face-to-face conversation with God.”

Despite having the occasional headache and having had to undergo a second ibogaine treatment for a recurrence of physical pain from his injuries, Kfoury said he is currently feeling pretty good and finds fulfillment in his work coaching people seeking psychedelic treatment.

As with Curtis and Warren, such a result suggests that President Trump’s recent Executive Order has tremendous potential. Access to Ibogaine and other psychedelics, for the first time in the U.S., could become a game changer for tens of thousands of vets still quietly suffering – following tours overseas, defending their country.

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