Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spent nearly $19,000 in campaign contributions last year on a Boston psychiatrist who specializes in ketamine therapy, federal records show.
The New York Democrat’s campaign paid Dr. Brian Boyle, chief psychiatric officer at Stella, a chain of clinics focused on experimental treatments, in three installments: $11,550 in March 2025, $2,800 in May, and $4,375 in October, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The expenses were logged as leadership training and consulting.
Boyle is a Harvard-trained interventional psychiatrist and self-described leading authority on ketamine, the anesthetic widely known as a horse tranquilizer. The drug was found in the system of Friends actor Matthew Perry in the month before his death.
Boyle’s clinic also offers stellate ganglion block, an experimental injection targeting a nerve cluster in the neck that tech billionaires and celebrities have sought out for PTSD treatment. Boyle told an interviewer last year that celebrities are drawn to cutting-edge solutions across health and mental health.
Nobody from Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign responded to requests for comment. What the sessions involved, or who attended, remains unclear.
Campaign finance watchdogs took notice. Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center, said that while the lawmaker’s interest in a doctor specializing in narcissistic personality disorders is understandable, using campaign funds for what amounts to a personal expense violates federal law. Kamenar noted Boyle has no documented expertise in leadership training and called the spending another example of misusing campaign contributions.
Ocasio-Cortez, 36, has repeatedly pushed for psychedelic drug research. She introduced legislation three times to fund studies on psilocybin and MDMA, and co-sponsored a 2023 bill that eased federal restrictions on psychedelic research, arguing that drug use belongs in medical consideration rather than criminal. Two earlier attempts failed even among her Democratic colleagues.
She has also talked openly about her mental health, saying she sought therapy after the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol protest.
Federal campaign finance law bars using campaign funds for personal expenses. The Federal Election Commission rules on violations case by case.
