Conor McGregor and the Christian Right's love-in with ibogaine

(well, some parts of the Christian Right anyway)

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Conor McGregor, fresh from 36 hours under the influence of ibogaine, took to X on Sunday to declare he had been crowned by Jesus. He wrote:

Hey guys, I am back.

I was blessed to meet the most forward thinking doctors from Stanford University and undergo a series of treatments to address trauma.

I travelled to Tijuana Mexico and underwent Ibogaine treatment at AMBIO.

It was incredible, intense, and absolutely eye opening.

I was shown what would have been my death. How soon it was to be, and how it would have impacted my children.

I was looking down on myself as it happened, and then I was looking out from the coffin.

God then came to me in the Holy Trinity.

He is MIGHTY!

Jesus, his child. Mary, his Mother. The Archangels. All present in heaven

I was shown the light.

Jesus descended from the white marble steps of heaven and anointed me with a crown.

I was saved!

My brain. My heart. My soul. Healed!

I was 36 hours under before I finally rested.

When I awoke I was me again.

The most enlightening and enchanting experience I have ever undertaken.

This treatment is worth its weight in GOLD!

It is very, very tough, but it absolutely saved my life, and in turn saved my family.

To my family, my friends, my fans.

My support! My team!

Baby, we did it!

The World is in for a treat!

To God, I am yours!!

Thank you for bestowing upon me this incredible blessing that I take with great care and absolute seriousness!

I live my life per your word and nothing more.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

Ambio Life Sciences is a clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, which offers ibogaine treatments, sometimes including 5-meo-DMT sessions afterwards. Ambio’s treatment costs range from approximately $7,350 to $30,000 , depending on the program and its duration. It treats many US military and Special Forces veterans through a charity called VETS and is increasingly treating sports stars as well for traumatic brain injury and other conditions.

McGregor, 37, is at a difficult stage of his career and life.

A few years ago, he was UFC champion in two weight classes (featherweight and lightweight) and, in 2020, the highest-earning sports star in the world, earning $180 million that year.

But he’s faced legal problems this year.

In January, a woman accused McGregor in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting her after a Miami Heat NBA Finals game in 2023. McGregor denies the claims.

In September, he appealed to the Irish Supreme Court over a civil case in which a jury found him guilty of assaulting Nikita Ni Laimhin in a Dublin hotel in December 2018.

In October, he was handed an 18-month ban from UFC competitions for missing a doping test.

McGregor, like Russell Brand, seems to have found Jesus shortly after being publicly accused of rape. In October, before he took ibogaine in Mexico, he announced he had been saved by the Lord.

Like Brand, he’s also become involved in right-wing politics. He attended President Trump’s inauguration in January, then visited Trump again in March.

In April, he hosted Tucker Carlson in Dublin. He apparently hopes to be part of a UFC event on the White House lawn in June 2026 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the country.

In September, McGregor briefly ran to be president of Ireland on a MAGA-style anti-immigrant campaign, although he quickly pulled out of contention. He seems to have lost faith in liberal democracy and recently tweeted that Ireland needed a ‘king’. Him?

His post-ibogaine tweet today sounded somewhat manic to ibogaine facilitators I spoke to. It’s a good reminder of the wisdom of staying off social media for a week or so after psychedelic experiences. But it’s also an interesting example of a growing and surprising mash-up between ibogaine, MAGA and the Christian Right.

The psychedelic renaissance is going Christian conservative

Jamie Wheal first spotted this trend in June after visiting MAPS’ Psychedelic Science. In the days after the conference he published an article called Make America Hallucinate Again. He declared:

The psychedelic renaissance going forwards is three things:

Capitalized

Conservative

Christian

Wheal is very well-connected in Austin, Texas, which is the hub of this Christian right / MAGA anti-immigrant / MAHA-biohacking psychedelic movement. He describes one event he attended which I guess was the seed for what became Americans for Ibogaine:

The MC (who I really like and is a gracious host), said something to the effect of, “and to Governor Abbott who’s recently been sending troops to protect our southern border, we say, FAFO, fuck around and find out!”

Which seemed like an odd preamble to a psychedelic legislation party.

But it sent a ripple of enthusiasm through the crowd. A tribal recognition of who they were (and where I was).

Then they invited Bryan “the voice of God” Hubbard to the stage to bring a little church.

The host then closed with a testimonial of his own. He’d just come back from an iboga retreat and wanted to share that the facilitator had opened his life-changing week with a quote from the Book of Revelations.

Revelations 22: ‘On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.’

What we see emerging is a new ‘MAGA-Christian Right-Special Forces-tech venture capital-ibogaine’ coalition, which is not a sentence I ever thought I’d write. Some of the figures in the coalition are: