Farewell Dr. Nolan Williams, Pioneer of Psychedelic Medicine

On October 8th, Dr. Nolan Williams, a pioneer in treating depression, trauma, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), died at age 42. In a career dedicated to finding new and better ways to care for people facing some of the most difficult conditions, he helped ignite a growing interest in ibogaine therapy,  which has since become one of the brightest bonfires in psychedelic medicine. Williams, a psychiatrist and neurologist, became a towering figure in the scientific pursuit of treating mental health and neurological diseases in a short period of time. Many people have had their lives changed by his work, but the tremors of his legacy have only begun to reverberate.

Williams was a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, where he headed the Brain Stimulation Lab. Over the past two years, he became well-known in the psychedelic science world for his work with the powerful alkaloid ibogaine, extracted from iboga plants found mainly in Central Africa. He wasn’t the first to work with ibogaine, but by taking the risk of betting his career on a psychedelic drug, he became a taproot for the growth of ibogaine research in the West.

In a heartfelt eulogy written days after his death, Dr. Owen Muir spoke of how Williams was, among many things, a futurist. The many facets of his career evidenced a life devoted to helping patients, combining clinical care, research, and advocacy for greater investment in science. His work with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) distilled several major treatments for mental health and neurological disorders into an entirely new protocol that is fast-acting, has a low side-effect burden, and requires no inpatient care. Dubbed the Stanford Accelerated Intelligent Neuromodulation Treatment (SAINT) protocol, it is saving lives right now. Williams went on to found his first company to expand patient access to SAINT nationwide.

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When I first met Nolan Williams in June 2023, we were outside a movie theater in New York City, where he had just been featured in Lucy Walker’s film Of Night and Light: The Story of Iboga and Ibogaine. The movie prominently featured him describing the essentials of what became a groundbreaking study of ibogaine’s effects on veterans suffering from mild traumatic brain injuries: After receiving a single treatment with ibogaine, the 30 Special Operations Forces veterans who participated in the study reported that 86% were in remission from post-traumatic stress disorder, 83% from depression, and 83% from anxiety one month later.

While reporting on the Kentucky Ibogaine Initiative weeks earlier, I’d met people whose lives were changed by ibogaine, as well as healers and physicians who’d dedicated their careers to realizing its therapeutic potential. I asked him when I could read his paper, and why he — a young Stanford professor — would go out on a limb for a psychedelic drug in a documentary. Williams confessed he and his team were still working on the paper, with an important qualifier: “I wouldn’t have gotten on camera if I didn’t think this was a home run.”

Williams first discovered ibogaine a decade earlier on a kite surfing trip in South America. While waiting for a delayed flight at the San Salvador Airport, he picked up a copy of Daniel Pinchbeck’s Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism. That discovery, he said, led him to read the works of ibogaine researchers like Ken Alper. In 2018, he began collaborating with Amber and Marcus Capone, a husband-and-wife team who co-founded Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions after Marcus, a former Navy SEAL, found lasting relief from PTSD through ibogaine therapy. While the Capones had approached several researchers to conduct a clinical trial of ibogaine on veterans, Williams was the only one who agreed.

Presented with the living proof of its impact, Dr. Williams bet on a treatment beyond the comprehension of the clinical culture he had risen through. Iboga plant medicine has been stewarded by the Bwiti-practicing peoples of Gabon for millennia. Its concentrated derivative didn’t arrive in the West until the early 20th century, and did so amidst a wave of snake oil. It took another 60 years before a young man named Howard Lotsof, who was dependent on heroin, was given ibogaine in 1962 and swapped his crippling addiction for a lifelong mission to bring the healing he experienced to others.

Williams appreciated the plant’s complex history and used his platform to acknowledge that he was part of a broader struggle within Western medicine to overcome prejudice and ignorance. In a talk he first gave at TED 2025 in Vancouver and later adapted for the MAPS Psychedelic Science convention in Denver, Williams compared ibogaine research to the long-neglected work of the physicians who discovered that citrus fruits could treat scurvy. It took more than 150 years for that discovery to be made standard care, and millions of lives were lost. “We knew in 1639 John Woodall wrote that you could take citrus fruit for scurvy and solve it,” Williams told the audience, “but the problem is that institutions do not like these sorts of ideas, and they then reject those ideas. Then it’s only through science that you can have this rediscovery and eventual acceptance.”

In Texas, Williams’s work was central to many of the arguments that led to a $50 million commitment to research medical ibogaine therapy, which is possibly the largest publicly funded psychedelic research effort in history. His company, Soneira Bio, continues to study ibogaine and other iboga alkaloids to develop future treatments. His work inspired thousands, myself included. In a time when we need it most, he devoted his life to the belief that the pursuits of healing and vigorous scientific research are boards of the same bridge. I am forever grateful for the knowledge gaps he spanned for me. 

Williams is survived by his wife, Dr. Kristin Raj, their two children, his mother, a brother, and thousands of patients who’ve overcome relentless battles of the body and mind.

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