More than you want to know about Kyrsten Sinema’s alleged psychedelic affair
Don't f••• with North Carolina
Kyrsten Sinema, former senator for Arizona and a vocal advocate of psychedelics since leaving office in 2025, is being sued by the ex-wife of her bodyguard for breaking up their marriage and family, under a North Carolina ‘home-wrecking’ law. The law-suit (read it here) claims Sinema, 49, seduced bodyguard Matthew Ammel, 39, and encouraged him to leave his wife. Among other alleged inappropriate employer behaviour, the suit says Sinema encouraged her bodyguard to bring MDMA on a work-trip and paid for him to receive psychedelic treatment in Nashville.
Ammel, a former Green Beret who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, worked as Sinema’s body-guard from 2022 to 2024. He suffered from PTSD, traumatic brain injury and substance abuse issues. According to Sinema, Ammel was radically healed through a legal ibogaine retreat offered by VETS Solutions and Ambio in 2023. Sinema says she was so impressed with his recovery that she became a public advocate of psychedelic medicine in 2025. In February, Ammel and Sinema helped persuade the Arizona Senate to spend $5 million on ibogaine research. This year, Sinema donated $50,000 in campaign funds to VETS Solutions.
However, according to the law-suit (which you can read here), Sinema was actively encouraging Ammel’s illegal psychedelic use as part of a concerted effort to seduce him. The law-suit alleges that Sinema encouraged Ammel to bring MDMA on a work trip in 2024 so she could guide him in a psychedelic session. It also says she paid for him to do ‘psychedelic medicine’ in Nashville, Tennessee (where all psychedelics except ketamine are illegal). She bought him gifts, took him on trips to festivals and ‘got handsy’ (in the words of the law-suit), gave him a job on her staff as defence advisor, sent him photos of herself in a towel, and (it is alleged) repeatedly had sex with him and encouraged him to leave his wife.
Ammel’s wife, Heather, filed for divorce in March 2025, and this week she sued Sinema under a North Carolina ‘alienation of affection’ law, which allows a spouse to sue a third party for damages if that person is alleged to have destroyed the love and affection within a marriage. Heather is suing Sinema for $75,000 in damages.
The story raises several ethical questions for psychedelic culture. First, it raises the issue of psychedelic policy campaigns using veterans as spokespeople to achieve political goals, even if those veterans are vulnerable and unstable. Ammel was put forward as a shining example of psychedelic healing, but he was hospitalized for a mental breakdown in November 2025 after threatening to shoot his landlord, and then arrested for ‘assault by strangulation’ on a physician in the hospital.
Second, is this a case of psychedelic-assisted sexual harassment by a wealthy and powerful politician of a vulnerable employee? Has Sinema done this before? According to the lawsuit, Sinema’s head of security (Tulsi Gabbard’s sister) resigned in 2023 in protest at Sinema having sex with other security personnel.
Third, who gets to speak for the psychedelic movement? Sinema elbowed herself into a public advocacy position last year, and has already caused embarrassing headlines for the psychedelic movement in this critical year. She may not be the best ‘Republican whisperer’ for the psychedelic movement in DC.
After the paywall, how Sinema parachuted into a psychedelic leadership position last year, what happened in Nashville, and whether the alleged affair could be considered psychedelic-assisted grooming or not. If you want to read the rest of the story without subscribing, complete this 5 min survey to help an important research study, then email me and I’ll send you the article.
