Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tapped nearly $19,000 from her campaign coffers last year to pay for a psychiatrist who specializes in ketamine therapy – a powerful drug that puts patients in a hallucinogenic state to treat disorders like trauma and depression.
The revelation, the result of an exclusive look at federal campaign records by the New York Post, shows the Bronx lawmaker hired Boston-based Dr. Bryan Boyle, chief psychiatric officer at a chain of clinics called Stella that focus on “innovative” or alternate treatment protocols that have emerged in recent years.
AOC’s campaign “paid Boyle $11,550 in March 2025, another $2,800 in May, and $4,375 in October for a total of $18,725, Federal Election Commission records show” according to the Post.
While Ketamine therapy has increasingly gained acceptance as an effective treatment when properly administered, critics are baffled as why it would be considered a legitimate campaign expense.
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The Post reported the expenses were marked as “leadership training and consulting.”
“It’s unclear what the sessions consisted of or who participated,” the Post reported. “Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.”
Boyle, a Harvard trained MD, describes his practice’s protocols as “innovative, effective and transformative, allowing people to feel better faster and maintain long lasting gains.” Stella features “board certified providers” and “field-leading experts” who have treated more than 30,000 people at more than 20 locations, his Psychology Today profile states.
The drug Ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic typically used in human and veterinary medicine for sedation, generated headlines when it was linked to the death of actor Matthew Perry, who by all accounts was abusing the drug at home rather than getting supervised use in a clinical setting.
Proper clinical application of the drug has shown to be effective in treating anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and particularly depression that is resistant to conventional treatment.
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For example, Ketamine Clinics of Los Angeles, one of the pioneer practices in the U.S., boasts an 83 percent success rate treating disorders through using “infusion therapy,” which involves a series of six one-hour-long treatments in its medically staffed clinic where the patients experience mild hallucinations.
Stella not only offers Ketamine infusion therapy in its clinics, but also other alternate therapies such as Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and FDA-approved esketamine, which is a prescription nasal spray also used for depression.
AOC historically has demonstrated interest in unconventional treatments. Three times she has proposed legislation to make it easier to study psychedelics such as “magic mushrooms” to treat mental illness.
“There are certain schedule-1 drugs that are shown to offer a normal amount of promise to veterans and people with PTSD and also people struggling with depression and opioid addiction,” she told a town hall in 2019.
In 2023 she was a cosponsor of legislation led by Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) to research the use of psychedelics to treat PTSD and traumatic brain injury in active-duty service members. It was signed into law.
Critics, however, question how campaign cash is appropriate for psychiatric treatment.
“While I can understand why AOC would spend $18,000 for a shrink whose specialties include narcissistic personality disorders, using her campaign contributions for what appears to be an expense for personal use violates federal campaign finance laws,” Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center, told the Post.
“While she describes these expenses as ‘leadership training,’ Dr. Boyle has no expertise in that area, unlike several Democratic campaign consultants,” Kamenar added. “This looks like yet another example of misuse of campaign contributions.”
Dr. Boyle did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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