Robin Berghaus

The initiative signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott will provide up to $50 million for clinical trials of the psychoactive substance ibogaine.

The Texas governor signed a $50 million bill into law on Wednesday to help bring ibogaine through FDA-approved clinical trials for opioid use disorders and other neurological and mental health conditions. Advocates said the legislation is the largest state-funded psychedelic research initiative in history.

Ibogaine, a naturally occurring psychoactive drug that is illegal in the U.S., is being used abroad to treat addiction, PTSD, depression, and traumatic brain injuries.

For decades, Zulema 'Julie' Morales has harvested peyote in Rio Grande City, along the southern border in Texas, the only region in the U.S. where it grows in the wild.

In the final installment of this three-part series, Bonnie Petrie and reporter Robin Berghaus go from an isolated stretch of desert along the Rio Grande, where wild peyote grows, to the exuberant rooms at SXSW, where they consider the future of psychedelics-as-medicine, and back to the hallowed halls of the Texas Legislature, where the future of the so-called Ibogaine Bill is uncertain.