Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2251 - Rick Perry & W. Bryan Hubbard
Uploaded: 2025-01-02T18:00:37.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2251 - Rick Perry & W. Bryan Hubbard' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-01-02. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2251 - Rick Perry & W. Bryan Hubbard' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-01-02. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2251 - Rick Perry & W. Bryan Hubbard

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Governor Perry, thank you very much for being here.
It's a pleasure and honor to meet you.
And Brian, would you explain your relationship and how you guys know each other?
I had a public service career in the state of Kentucky,
and the last stint of it involved my role as the chairman and executive
director
of the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission.
Within that role, I designed for what, by lack of a better term,
was the Kentucky Ibogaine Initiative.
The state had received $842 million in settlements that will be paid out
over the next 15 years by opioid distributors and manufacturers
for their role in the creation and perpetuation of the opioid epidemic.
And as the Kentucky Ibogaine Project was developed and executed,
I was introduced to Governor Perry as someone who was a believer
and advocate in the medicine.
He and I developed a professional relationship.
He was a vocal supporter and participant in the initiative itself.
He appeared by video to give a testimonial about the immense potential
around the development of Ibogaine.
And he also was so wonderfully helpful as to procure an op-ed in Newsweek
Magazine
in October of last year endorsing the initiative.
He has been a tremendous supporter, mentor, and I am privileged to call him my
friend.
And, Governor, how did you get involved in this?
It's kind of a long story, so we got the time.
If you don't mind, I'll just take you back.
Sure, plenty of time.
2006, my wife made me go on vacation, which I don't necessarily do very good
because I have a little bit of ADHD and vacations are sitting on the beach
someplace.
It's not high on my list of good things to do.
But anyway, I went with her.
And she took me to Coronado Island and the Hotel Del, which is a fascinatingly
interesting place.
But my security detail went out early.
And they were stopped there, I think, on Orange Drive, the little breakfast nook.
And they walked in where they were supposed to meet the California Highway
Patrol to do our advance.
And there was this big guy, looked about like you, all buff and slicked-off
head and pretty healthy-looking boy.
And they thought that was the patrolman they were supposed to meet.
They went over, introduced themselves, and said, are you here to meet Governor
Perry?
And the guy went, no, but I vote for him every chance I get.
And this kid happened to be a JTAC with SEAL Team 5, who was a farmer or was an
F-18 driver,
who was assigned to SEAL Team 5 to go out on their next assignment.
And they just met him by the grace of God.
And the kid gave him his card and said, hey, if the governor would like to go
on a tour of the Special Warfare Center,
I'd love to give him a tour.
Well, the detail shows up next day, says, hey, we met this kid.
And that's right down my alley, right?
Rather than sitting on the beach, take me over and show me what the Special Warfare
Center does.
And on a Saturday morning, we went over, got that tour, and this young man led
the tour.
And he had a big old tall drink of water with him in his camis that assisted
with the tour.
It took about three hours to finish this tour.
We finished it, and this young man says, did Marcus tell you where he was last
weekend?
I said, no.
He said, yes, sir, once, and no, sir, once.
He said, well, he was at the White House receiving the Navy Cross.
Well, I know what the Navy Cross is.
And I went back to the hotel room, looked it up on my computer.
There's no mention of this Marcus Luttrell anywhere on my computer.
And we had asked them to go have dinner with us that night, just to say thank
you for their time and what have you.
And that evening, as we get back to the restaurant, friend is asking him all
questions about what was it that he did.
And during the conversation, Operation Red Wing came up, and we finished dinner.
I tell him, I said, look, give me your mom's phone number.
I'll call her when we get back to Texas.
And if you're ever through Austin, come by and see me, right?
Which I would tell to, I probably told hundreds of people, Joe, if we had known
each other in those days, I said, hey, Joe, if you're ever through Austin, come
by and see me.
Fat chance you're going to come and knock on the door of the governor's mansion,
right?
Can't do it.
So it's a nice thing to say, but realizing that they're not going to show up.
Well, I went back, looked up Operation Red Wing, and that's when my computer
kind of blew up, and I figured out who this young man was.
And you remember in 2006, nobody had heard of this, didn't know who Marcus Luttrell
was, what have you.
So going about our business, they leave, they deploy, go back to Iraq with his
twin brother, Morgan, I might add.
Morgan and Marcus, they deployed together on that.
And the young man who led that tour that day was a lieutenant commander in the
Navy, F-18 pilot, by the name of Jake Elzey.
Jake Elzey is now a member of Congress.
So incredible small world for me that started totally by the grace of God of
meeting these boys in Coronado Island.
And I called his mom when I got back to Austin, said, hey, saw your son, he's
doing all right, and if I can never help you, let me know.
Went on about my business.
That was in August of 06.
The following May of 07, the phone rang in the governor's mansion.
The security detail said, there's a young man down here who said, you told him
the next time he's through Austin, Texas, come by and see you.
And he's here.
I said, that's hilarious.
I said, what's his name?
And Marcus Luttrell.
I said, yeah, I told him that.
Well, send him in.
That was in May of 07, and he lived with us for the next two and a half years.
In August of 09, he left.
And that's what started me and my wife on this long journey, this adventure
that has taken me to sitting at Joe Rogan's table talking about veterans'
mental health.
We've been down literally dozens of rabbit trails.
Frankly, the bulk of them, they were interesting, but they really didn't bring
any relief, didn't bring any help.
We learned about the brokenness of our government's ability to help these young
men and women.
I mean, Marcus literally was separated from the Navy without the ability to
have TRICARE even.
The only place he could get his health care, Joe, was at the VA, and he had to
have some very specific surgeries on his back, highly technical surgeries.
And I told him, I said, I'm not going to let you go to the VA and have that
done, no offense, but I said, I'll go raise the money and find somebody that we
can get you the type of help that you need.
And I went to Houston.
I talked to a doctor there, Stan Jones, who's the chief medical officer for a
stem cell company now called Celltex.
But he had heard of Marcus by then.
Marcus's book had come out, I think, in OH when it came out and went to number
one on the New York Times bestseller list.
So people started to know who Marcus Luttrell was, knew his story, and we were
able to get him the medical help that he needed.
I also intervened at that time with the Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, and I
called Ray.
Ray was the former governor of Mississippi, so I knew him through that role.
And I told him, I said, here's what I've got.
And I said, this kid is a legit American hero.
And I said, our government's just completely dropped the ball on being able to
take care of him.
And I said, I don't want to embarrass your boss, but I said, you need to get
this kid back in, re-evaluate him, get him not fit for duty so he can get
eligible for TRICARE, of which they did.
And my hat's off to him for doing that and doing it.
It just took the sadness of all of this, Joe, from my perspective, is Marcus Luttrell
was just fortunate in a lot of different ways.
That by the grace of God, he met a governor, a guy that could actually
intervene and make a difference.
There's literally thousands, thousands of young men and women out there today
who have mental health issues that don't know a governor, don't have anybody to
help.
And that's why I've spent however many years, that's been 17 years, helping,
being open to all the different ways that we could help these young men and
women.
Back in 07, I helped create a foundation that buys homes.
It's called Military Heroes Support Foundation.
And they've given away a thousand homes now.
George Strait gives away one of their homes at every one of his concerts.
Even if you are living in a great home, if you're in a mansion and your mind's
not where it needs to be, you're just a lonely person, a sad person, a broken
person in a beautiful home.
But I've become a complete believer in plant medicine over the course of the
last five or six years in particular.
And the compound ibogaine, I-B-O-G-A-I-N-E, that most people never heard of
before.
That's good and bad because it doesn't have a bad rap because nobody's heard of
it before.
My job and our job is to be able to educate the public about this plant
medicine, this psychoactive plant medicine that absolutely is showing stunning
ability to bring people back to normalcy, to reset their brains, to literally
give them their lives back.
I've made the decision that that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my,
however many years I got left.
This is where I want to spend the bulk of my time telling people about it,
explaining to people how this, you know, conservative right-wing knuckle-dragging
Republican governor became a spokesperson willing to go publicly talk about
this plant medicine.
That literally the data is, I mean, I think the data is, you can't argue with
the data.
We'll talk about a clinical trial that they did out of Stanford this last year,
but that's how I went from basically being a guy that wasn't even open to
having a conversation about.
In 2013, I got talked into talking to a mother who had a son who was an epileptic,
and she said the only thing that we can give our son that's relieved him of
this is THC.
And I was against any of the use of marijuana, medical or otherwise, in 2013.
That mother came and sat down to me.
I looked at the data.
I listened to her powerful story.
And we passed in Texas medical use of THC for the cases of epilepsy.
And that's my point with all of this, is that I'll never be for, I know, you
know, I may not agree on this.
I'm not for the legalization of drugs.
I love Rick Doblin.
Rick and I have been on multiple stages together.
A lot of the works that he did at MAPS is, I'm a big supporter of.
And I tell him, I said, but I'm not going to get there on the legalization of
drugs.
I'm just not.
And I don't want to get that confused with what we're doing here.
This is medically diagnosed, medically dosed, having the proper medical people
there, the treatment, the follow-up, all of that.
And that's one of the reasons that I think that our government, and thank God,
Donald Trump won.
I'm very open about this, that Donald Trump won this election.
He's putting people into place that are open to plant medicine being used for
our veterans' mental health.
And so I know I've covered a pretty broad piece of landscape in all of that
that I've just talked about.
But that's how I got here.
Over a 17-year period of time, I went from an absolute, don't even talk to me
about these drugs, to be in the Johnny Appleseed of Ibogaine today, where, you
know, my wife probably gets tired of going places with me.
And the next thing she knows, I'm talking to somebody about plant-based
medicine and what I've seen and why we as society need to be really pushing
this, talking to our congressmen, talking to our senators, talking to the
people that are decision makers, and the private sector, educating the public
about this so that they know that there is help out there.
And when you add to this the clear evidence that this works on addictions, and
we're talking across the board, then the populations that could be affected in
a powerful and a positive way is substantial.
And, you know, that's what