Sociologist and Harm Reduction Pioneer Challenge GOP's Psychedelic Embrace in STAT News Op-Ed
You Can't Champion Ibogaine and Cut Medicaid at the Same Time
CA, UNITED STATES, April 30, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Days after President Trump signed an executive order intended to expand access to psychedelics for mental health treatment, with podcaster Joe Rogan at his side, two of the country's most experienced voices in addiction, harm reduction, and psychiatric care are raising a pointed challenge: psychedelics without social investment aren't medicine. They're abandonment dressed up as innovation.
In a new op-ed published today in STAT News, Ross Ellenhorn, Ph.D., a sociologist, psychotherapist, and founder and CEO of Ellenhorn, one of the country's leading community-based psychiatric programs, and Dimitri Mugianis, a harm reduction advocate, psychedelic practitioner, and ibogaine pioneer with over 500 ceremonies to his name, argue that the Republican embrace of psychedelics contains a fundamental and consequential contradiction.
The piece, titled "The Contradiction at the Heart of Republicans' Embrace of Psychedelics," traces how figures from Rick Perry to Greg Abbott to Congress members Dan Crenshaw and Morgan Luttrell have championed ibogaine and other psychedelics as breakthrough treatments for veterans and people struggling with addiction, while simultaneously supporting sweeping budget cuts that eliminate the very housing, healthcare, and community infrastructure that research consistently shows is necessary for recovery to take hold.
"You cannot detox a veteran with ibogaine and then send him back into housing insecurity, understaffed mental health systems, and shrinking social support. That is not innovation. It is abandonment wrapped in the language of breakthrough medicine."
Drawing on decades of research in psychiatric rehabilitation, addiction recovery, and sociology, Ellenhorn and Mugianis explain that the strongest predictors of sustained recovery are not pharmacological. They are social support, stable housing, employment, access to healthcare, and community belonging, what researchers call "recovery capital." When those foundations are stripped away, even the most promising treatments cannot take root.
The op-ed also challenges a narrative that has taken hold within the psychedelic field itself, one that emphasizes molecules, protocols, and neurological mechanisms at the expense of the relational and social conditions that make healing possible. The authors argue that this framing has made the movement vulnerable to political co-optation: if the compound is the hero of the story, policymakers don't need to rebuild communities or fund long-term care.
Ellenhorn and Mugianis are not opponents of psychedelic medicine. They are among the most experienced practitioners in the field. Their argument is precisely that psychedelics deserve better than being enrolled in a political project that dismantles the conditions they depend on.
"If psychedelics are to enter American medicine responsibly," they write, "they must arrive alongside something far less glamorous but far more important: reinvestment in the social foundations of recovery. Housing. Healthcare. Community mental health systems. Long-term therapeutic relationships. Economic stability."
Together, Ellenhorn and Mugianis are the co-founders of Cardea, a new initiative aimed at integrating psychedelic-assisted approaches with the social and relational infrastructure that recovery science consistently identifies as essential.
Ross Ellenhorn, Ph.D., is the founder and CEO of Ellenhorn, one of the country's leading community integration programs for people with psychiatric and substance-use issues, with offices in Boston, New York City, and Raleigh-Durham. A sociologist, psychotherapist, and in-demand speaker and consultant to mental health and addiction programs across the U.S. and Europe, he is also the co-founder of the Association for Community Integration Programs. His most recent book is Purple Crayons: The Art of Drawing a Life.
Dimitri Mugianis is a harm reduction advocate, psychedelic practitioner, musician, and community organizer who became a pioneering figure in underground ibogaine treatment in the United States. He has led over 500 ibogaine ceremonies and thousands more using sound, art, psilocybin, and MDMA, and is the subject of the documentary I'm Dangerous with Love. He co-created a holistic harm reduction program at New York Harm Reduction Educators (NYHRE) in Harlem, serving people experiencing homelessness, active drug use, and incarceration.
Michelle Glogovac
The MLG Collective
michelle@themlgcollective.com
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