Texans share their experience on the psychedelic that the state is spending millions to study

Texas patients are traveling across the border to get their hands on a strong, unregulated psychedelic drug that they say is bringing renewed hope for mental health treatment.

Ibogaine is not legal in the United States, but Texas is part of the push to possibly change that.

The drug comes from the iboga plant in central Africa and changes your perception of reality through strong hallucinations.

Researchers say it works by changing the pathways in your brain, which multiple people have described as a "brain reset."

Some research has found health risks with Ibogaine therapy, particularly to the heart, while others have found promising results.

ABC13's Pooja Lodhia has worked for weeks, talking with the experts and real people who have tried it for themselves.

Central Texas resident Charles Graham Jr. said he started using the drug as a last resort after being deployed to Afghanistan at 20 years old.

"I wasn't right when I came back from there. I wasn't right. A lot of people wasn't. It was horrible," Graham said.

After serving overseas for six years, Graham was diagnosed with PTSD.

"My reaction to her saying I have (PTSD), I lost it. I got so mad. I started yelling. I was like, 'Don't you put that on there, I ain't got PTSD,' and, yeah, I did. I did," Graham said.

After taking the drug, Graham said he felt a drastic change afterward.

"I feel at peace. Real peace. Not that pretend thing," he said.

Houston Hutto from New Waverly said he took Ibogaine a month ago as a way of recovering from an accident so traumatic, it's hard to even hear.

"They were playing on a trailer that was full of water, and I shouldn't have had (my son) doing that in the first place. Your job as a parent, I feel like, is to provide and protect your children, and I didn't do that. He accidentally fell off the trailer, and I ran over the top of him," Hutto said.

It was August 12, 2021. His son Holden has been through eight surgeries since then.

Graham and Hutto took the drug in Mexico, where it is unregulated.

When you talk to people who have done this drug, you realize they all have something in common-- desperation.

Why else would a person spend up to $15,000 dollars and travel to another country to take a drug that, by all accounts, is miserable?

Hallucinations can last up from 12 to 36 hours. The drug lengthens the time between your heartbeats, so you also have to be monitored the entire time.

You'll be dizzy, you'll probably throw up, and everybody we talked to saw and felt demons.

After extensive lobbying by veterans' groups and former governor Rick Perry, the state of Texas has allocated $50 million to research the drug. And, last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to fast-track the drug's approval.

Katharine Harris, a drug policy fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute, studies Ibogaine.

"It is not for the faint of heart, and I think in some ways, there might be so much emphasis on it in a state like Texas because it's not fun. It's not really used in recreational settings, which I think gives an air of 'This isn't a play thing, this is for real,'" Harris said.