Science

NFL and UFC athletes try 'game-changing' psychedelic to treat brain injury

Published

9 months ago

September 12, 2025

NFL and UFC athletes try 'game-changing' psychedelic to treat brain injury

As awareness grows around the dangers of head trauma in sports, a small number of professional fighters and football players are turning to a psychedelic called ibogaine for treatment.

Ibogaine, which is derived from a West African shrub, is a Schedule 1 drug in America with no legal medical uses, and experts urge caution because of the need for further studies. But the results, several athletes say, are “game-changing.”

“It saved my life,” said former NFL offensive guard Robert Gallery, who traveled to Mexico in 2023 to try ibogaine.

“I’m not anxious all the time, I’m not depressed,” he continued, “I can go for a run and be thankful that I’m alive, rather than having a thought that I should step in front of a semi-truck coming down the road.”

The psychedelic substance is derived from the iboga plant, and proponents tout its ability to treat addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, or TBI.

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An observational study of 30 special forces veterans by researchers at Stanford University suggests that ibogaine can be highly effective at reducing anxiety, depression and cognitive challenges associated with TBI.

“This is a miraculous thing,” said retired MMA fighter Tait Fletcher, who credits the treatment with freeing him from suicidal ideation.

NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre even tried ibogaine to see if it could help his Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative disease linked to TBI.

Although athletes are just discovering ibogaine, the drug is well known within the veteran community, which experiences high rates of brain injury and PTSD.

In Stanford’s study on the effects of ibogaine on special forces veterans, participants saw average reductions of 88% in PTSD symptoms, 87% in depression symptoms and 81% in anxiety symptoms. They also exhibited improvements in concentration, information processing and memory.

“No other drug has ever been able to alleviate the functional and neuropsychiatric symptoms of traumatic brain injury,” Dr. Nolan Williams, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, said in a statement on the results. “The results are dramatic, and we intend to study this compound further.”

A capsule containing a therapeutic dose of ibogaine, a psychedelic used to help treat traumatic brain injury, PTSD and addiction. (Magda Stuglik)

A team member at Ambio Life Sciences in Tijuana prepares a dosage of ibogaine.

A team member at Ambio Life Sciences in Tijuana prepares a dose of the drug. (Magda Stuglik)

To receive federal approval, ibogaine would need to pass through multiple phases of clinical trials at the Food and Drug Administration and be moved by the Drug Enforcement Administration to a less restrictive drug category.

Schedule 1 drugs are considered to have no federally accepted medical use, a high potential for abuse and a lack of accepted safety. They also include psilocybin, MDMA, LSD and marijuana.

States can work faster than the federal government by carving out exemptions for supervised ibogaine therapy programs, similar to what Oregon has done with psilocybin therapy. Many states have also opted to legalize marijuana for medicinal or recreational use.

Study co-author Dr. Ian Kratter said researchers have reported that ibogaine may stimulate brain healing by causing an increase in certain neurotrophic factors.

“These factors signal for enhanced brain cell survival and synaptic plasticity, which is the ability for brain cells to modify the strength of their connections or even form new connections,” said Kratter, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. “This might facilitate a healing and recovery process after an injury.”

A darkened room with a bed and soft lighting and some medical monitors.

Dr. Kevin Bickart, a UCLA neurology professor who specializes in brain injury in athletes, said that the Stanford study is “remarkably promising” and that it is reasonable to believe professional athletes could experience similar results.

“This group [veterans] is a strong analogue for retired professional athletes from high-contact sports like football or hockey who are now dealing with persistent cognitive and emotional difficulties,” he said.

Dr. Ramon Diaz-Arrastia, director of Penn Medicine’s TBI research center, said that ibogaine is “one of the more promising compounds” for treatment of TBI.

However, Bickart, Diaz-Arrastia and the Stanford researchers all emphasized the need for larger, randomized controlled trials demonstrating a strong therapeutic benefit and safety profile prior to the treatment being used in America.

They also highlighted the fact that ibogaine can cause heart problems such as cardiac arrhythmia and needs to be administered under strict medical supervision. In the Stanford study, cardiac monitoring and magnesium were used to mitigate this danger, and researchers reported that no participants experienced adverse cardiac effects.

Gallery heard about ibogaine when listening to a podcast about veterans whose struggles resonated with his own. He was at the end of his rope and willing to try anything to free himself from dark thoughts and the ringing noise inside his head.

“It was kind of a last-ditch hope for me,” he said. “I was just at that place of needing the noise and the thoughts to stop.”

Gallery’s doctor believes he likely developed CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) as a result of repeated brain injuries during his eight seasons in the NFL. CTE, which can only be diagnosed after death, is a severe neurodegenerative disease that can cause dementia, violent mood swings, loss of motor control and depression.

Many famous athletes who committed suicide were later determined to have CTE, including New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau and Chicago Bears safety Dave Duerson.

A football player lifts another football player into the air.

Fletcher, the former MMA fighter who is also an actor and stunt artist, heard about ibogaine through his Navy SEAL friends.

He had experienced many concussions during his fighting career, but it was head trauma during a stunt gone wrong in 2019 that pushed him over the edge and into an extremely dark place.

The following morning he woke up in a state of terror. He didn’t know how to pack his bags or get out of the hotel room he had been staying in for the shoot.

Fletcher spent the next year in near-total seclusion, largely unable to leave his house due to light and sound sensitivity. Like Gallery, he tried many conventional and experimental therapies, but nothing compared with the relief that ibogaine brought him in 2023.

“We’re putting Band-Aids on problems through pharmacology,” he said. “This [ibogaine] is a thing that I watched just set people free. Nothing short of that.”

Keith Jardine, a former UFC fighter, was inspired by Fletcher’s story and traveled to Mexico to receive treatment himself. Retired hockey player Ales Hemsky credits ibogaine with helping free him of the substance use and alcohol dependency that he struggled with after his 16-year career in the NHL.

“It’s been seven months now I haven’t had a sip of alcohol,” he said. “It’s life-changing. It really restarts your brain. It gives you a new path.”

Fletcher has seen the darkness brain injury brings to athletes and the light ibogaine provides. He wants both to be part of a bigger conversation in the professional sports world.

Tait Fletcher, stuntman and former MMA fighter, suffered traumatic brain injury.

“I wish that these big organizations were looking into these things differently, because you could elongate careers and elongate lives,” he said. “And ibogaine is certainly a part of that conversation.”

Favre also wants to see more attention brought to speeding up medical trials of new treatments for brain injury and related conditions. After taking ibogaine, his Parkinson’s symptoms disappeared for three days before gradually returning, he said.

“I’m not disappointed by anything. I’m more excited about the opportunity knowing that I could do it again,” he said. “I’m hoping that this [conversation] helps open the door for not just ibogaine or psychedelic drugs, but just medication or treatments in general that can help people.”

Bickart said there is a major gap in effective, approved treatments for the persistent symptoms of brain injury.

“This leaves many, including veterans and potentially former athletes, without reliable solutions for ongoing disability, cognitive difficulties, and psychiatric conditions like PTSD, depression, and anxiety that can stem from head injuries,” he said.

Inspired by his own experience with ibogaine, Gallery co-founded a nonprofit called Athletes for Care to educate athletes with TBI on treatment options and advocate for research into psychedelic-assisted therapies.

“The sports community is not very good about talking about mental health,” he said. “Seeing the veterans take charge and take care of their community, I want to do that for the sports community and for my friends that I know that are out there suffering.”

Brett Favre visited Ambio Life Sciences clinic.

Gallery, Favre, Hemsky, Fletcher and Jardine are among around a dozen retired contact-sports athletes who have received treatment at the Ambio Life Sciences clinic in Tijuana, which is a popular destination for ibogaine therapy.

Since opening in 2021, Ambio reports administering ibogaine to more than 3,000 patients, including 1,000 military veterans.

Diaz-Arrastia, the Penn Medicine professor, said he would not advise that Americans order ibogaine online or travel outside the country for treatment, as it remains unregulated, with limited research. Bickart, the UCLA professor, echoed these concerns, noting that the most critical caution is safety.

“People should be wary of any unregulated treatments, as the purity dosage and presence of contaminants are often unknown,” Bickart said. “The placebo effect can also be very powerful, especially for treatments that require significant effort and cost.”

Ambio, the clinic that Stanford researchers worked with for their observational study on ibogaine, stressed its safety protocols during treatment, including close monitoring of dosage and patients’ cardiac health.

There is growing political and scientific momentum in America for more clinical research of ibogaine.

In June, Texas approved a historic $50-million investment in state funding to support drug development trials for ibogaine, inspired by the results seen by veterans.

Arizona legislators approved $5 million in state funding for a clinical study on ibogaine in March, and California legislators are pushing to fast-track the study of ibogaine and other psychedelics.

“Honestly, I’m amazed to see how much interest there is in ibogaine now,” said Ambio co-founder Jonathan Dickinson. “We’re starting to see things that we would have thought were unimaginable several years ago.”

Science

Video: NASA Announces Artemis III Crew

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16 hours ago

June 9, 2026

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new video loaded: NASA Announces Artemis III Crew

transcript

NASA Announces Artemis III Crew

NASA announced the crew of Artemis III mission, which will fly to low-Earth orbit to test rendezvous and docking maneuvers with one or two lunar landers.

: “I am excited to welcome you as the next crew in the Artemis journey to successfully return to the moon — this time to stay.” “I’m honored by the role that I’ve been given. I’m also very humbled by the task in front of us. But first and foremost, I’m grateful.” “So with that, the Artemis II crew, comrade, hands you the baton. You got the controls.” “As you know, we had a significant anomaly at our Launch Complex 36A on May 28. We’ve redoubled our efforts and are moving forward.”
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NASA announced the crew of Artemis III mission, which will fly to low-Earth orbit to test rendezvous and docking maneuvers with one or two lunar landers.

By Alisa Shodiyev Kaff

June 9, 2026

Science

Santa Monica Mountains’ last steelhead trout survived the Palisades fire — and even had babies

Published

1 day ago

June 9, 2026

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Santa Monica Mountains’ last steelhead trout survived the Palisades fire — and even had babies

Scientists feared the Santa Monica Mountains’ last remaining steelhead trout were dead, smothered by debris flows unleashed by the Palisades fire.

But the endangered fish surprised them: A team of biologists recently spotted 30 of the rare trout — and 21 babies — in Topanga Creek.

“There was a lot of happy dancing in the creek,” said Rosi Dagit, principal conservation biologist for the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, which works with public and private landowners to conserve natural resources.

That’s because the steelhead here are endangered, at both the state and federal levels. Once, they swam in most streams of the Santa Monicas, but their numbers plummeted amid overfishing and coastal development. Increasingly frequent wildfire has further stressed their habitat. Topanga Creek, a biodiversity hot spot, is home to their last known population in the mountains that stretch from the Hollywood Hills to Point Mugu in Ventura County.

The trout that were spotted, including this one, are part of a distinct Southern California population that’s listed as endangered at the state and federal levels.

(RCDSMM Stream Team)

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife spearheaded a complex mission to rescue trout threatened by the Palisades fire that sparked in January 2025.

Time was of the essence. The fire hadn’t yet been fully contained. But rain was on the way, which would sweep massive amounts of sediment from the denuded hillsides into the water. Fish are often killed this way.

Crews stunned the fish with electricity, scooped them up in buckets, trucked them to a hatchery and ultimately moved them to Arroyo Hondo Creek in Santa Barbara County.

Within days, Topanga Creek was choked with mud. Some assumed the fish left behind were goners.

But in March, the conservation district’s team found four. The following month, when water conditions were clearer, they saw more.

“These fish continue to amaze me,” said Kyle Evans, environmental program manager for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, who had seen the damage to the creek. “I had seen populations get wiped out in similar situations. So when I heard, I was thrilled.”

Evans surmises the fish that survived were in an area of the creek where less charred material and sediment were swept in.

“These fish likely hunkered down, were hiding under some rocks or places to try to get away from the main concentration of flow,” he said. “And luckily they weren’t buried.”

The ones that were spotted were fairly small, around 6 to 14 inches. Rainbow trout and steelhead trout are the same species, but with different lifestyles. If the fish remain in freshwater, they’ll be considered rainbows. However, they can migrate to the ocean and become steelhead, where they typically grow larger before returning to their natal waters to spawn.

Topanga Creek hasn’t fully recovered from the damage it sustained, but scientists say it’s looking better. Surveys last year were “so depressing,” Dagit said, with very few animals, and stretches that were essentially transformed into flat roads from all the sediment buildup. Some of the riparian canopy burned right down to the creek.

Then came 32 inches of rain over the last nine months, scouring out and moving sediment, creating deeper pools. Dagit said they recently found newt egg masses for the first time in years, as well as a few adult newts and many frogs. Plants that provide cover are starting to recover.

She provided photos comparing certain pools last year and this year, some dramatically transformed. In September 2025, the Shrine Pool could have been an overgrown hiking trail. This April, it was filled with shallow water.

Shrine Pool, Sept. 2025, left, and the same location, April 2026, right.

Topanga Creek is home to another endangered fish, the small but hardy northern tidewater goby, often described as cute. Not long before the trout operation, Dagit led a rescue of hundreds of these fish too. Many were repatriated to the lagoon at the mouth of the creek in a moving ceremony last June.

There’s still the matter of what to do with the trout that were moved to Santa Barbara County last year. Evans would like to bring them home to the Santa Monicas at some point, but isn’t sure if it will happen. On one hand, they could bolster the small, genetically isolated surviving population. On the other, they might inadvertently bring in a disease or bacteria. There is some time to decide. Evans estimates the creek still needs to recover for two to three more years.

For now, the fish are functioning fine in their adopted creek. Experts worried the trauma wrought by the move would disrupt their spawning process, but they had babies that spring. This year, they spawned again.

Science

Pacifica pier cracks, another coastal casualty as seas continue to rise

Published

3 days ago

June 7, 2026

Press Room

Pacifica pier cracks, another coastal casualty as seas continue to rise

The Pacifica Municipal Pier was shut down and taped off Thursday after city workers noticed cracks running through the landmark structure and concrete chunks falling into the ocean.

It’s just one of many coastal California structures that have recently crumbled under pressure from a rising and relentless ocean.

Officials from the small, beach city south of San Francisco said the pier was closed due to “cracking, separation, and displacement of the concrete walkway and structural elements.”

It will stay closed while structural engineers asses its safety.

Photos taken by city employees show a wide crack that runs from top to bottom and across the structure as well. Other photos show a large horizontal crack under the foundation of a small restaurant on the pier, the Chit Chat Cafe.

The cafe was also shut down.

This is not the first time the 53-year-old pier has shown signs of stress. In 2021, part of it was shut down after handrails along the edge collapsed. And in 2023, after a series of storms pummeled the Central California coast, damaging parts of the pier, the structure was partially closed for more than year.

Those same storms caused extensive damage in Aptos and Capitola, 70 miles south, where piers and waterfront infrastructure were swept away or damaged.

In 2024, a 150- to 180- foot section of the Santa Cruz wharf was ripped off by powerful waves.

At least 10 of the state’s dozens of coastal public piers were closed for part or all of 2024 due to structural damage sustained in winter storms since 2022. At least five others have longer-term upgrades planned to address structural issues.

“These things are costly to maintain,” said Zach Plopper, senior environmental director at Surfrider. “They are a part of our California coastal culture in many ways, but we’re going to need to reckon with, one, the state that they’re in, and two, the continuous and worsening threats they’re going to experience,”

He said most of the piers were constructed in the early 1900s, and they weren’t built to withstand decades of rough seas, storms and rising sea level.

“With this incoming El Niño, which is forecasted to be significant, and this marine heat wave we’re in the midst of, we’re kind of in uncharted waters as far as what this winter could bring in terms of storms and swells to the California coast, and we’re likely going to see a lot more damage,” he said. “Not just piers, but roads and other coastal infrastructure up and down the state.”

There was no storm in Pacifica earlier this week, so no single event could be blamed for the destruction.

However, a 2025 report from an outside engineering firm, GHD, found that several sections of the pier were in “poor” or “serious” condition, and they recommended closure before anticipated storms or events that could “subject the piles to high winds, swells and large waves.”

The firm found several areas of the pier where concrete was missing and rebar was exposed and corroding.

“The pier has continued to experience high winds and large waves in a harsh marine environment,” the engineers wrote in the report, noting that continuous exposure to seawater or marine spray was “detrimental” to the structure.

A 2023 city report estimated it would cost $19 million to repair.

That same year, a state law was enacted to require local governments along the California coast to plan for sea level rise in the coming decades.

Sea level has risen some 8 inches, on average, along the coast in the past 150 years, Plopper said, and researchers anticipate another foot in the next 25 years.

“We’re going to see profound shifts on our coastline, none that we have ever experienced before, and building static structures on the coast just doesn’t work all that well,” he said. “We’re going to have to make some really hard decisions.”