Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's campaign paid a Boston-based psychiatrist known for ketamine therapy nearly $19,000 last year, listing the expenses in Federal Election Commission filings as "leadership training and consulting."
The New York Post reported that the psychiatrist, Dr. Brian Boyle, is a Harvard-trained interventional psychiatrist who specializes in unorthodox methods for treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, and anxiety.
He is considered a "leading authority" on ketamine and serves as chief psychiatric officer at Stella, a clinic offering treatments popular with the wealthy. He has no known background in political consulting, campaign strategy, or leadership development.
The payments came in three installments: $11,550 in March 2025, $2,800 in May 2025, and $4,375 in October 2025, totaling $18,725. It's unclear what the sessions consisted of or who participated. Ocasio-Cortez's campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Boyle did not return requests for comment either.
Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center, did not mince words about the arrangement:
"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."
Kamenar went further, noting the disconnect between the label and the provider:
"While she describes these expenses as 'leadership training,' Dr. Boyle has no expertise in that area, unlike several Democratic campaign consultants."
Federal campaign finance law prohibits the use of campaign funds for personal expenses. The distinction matters. If Ocasio-Cortez received psychiatric treatment and billed it to her donors under a euphemistic line item, that's not a bookkeeping quirk. It's a potential violation.
Kamenar called it "yet another example of misuse of campaign contributions."
Boyle has spoken openly about his enthusiasm for unconventional psychiatric treatments. In a podcast appearance last year, he described the appeal in vivid terms:
"I just saw the incredible power of what these treatments could do. It's a ton of fun helping patients get better."
He also noted that his clientele skews toward the elite, telling an interviewer that celebrities "tend to be more inclined to be on the hunt for highly effective solutions across beauty, health, mental health, nutrition and so on."
Ketamine has attracted growing scrutiny as its use has expanded beyond clinical research settings. "Friends" star Matthew Perry was given the drug in the month leading up to his death. Psychiatrist Dr. Simon Dosovitz recently warned about the risks of its casual application:
"There's a risk of people receiving infusions for ketamine without an appropriate diagnostic workup and considering other factors which may be responsible for their symptoms. It is a strongly dissociative drug."
None of this means Ocasio-Cortez received ketamine treatments. The filings don't specify what services Boyle provided. But when your campaign writes five-figure checks to a psychiatrist famous for ketamine therapy and labels it "leadership training," the questions write themselves.
Ocasio-Cortez has spent years positioning herself as a champion of psychedelic medicine and drug decriminalization. She campaigned to end the federal prohibition of marijuana in 2018.
As a freshman congresswoman in 2019, she introduced an amendment to allow the federal government to spend taxpayer money studying the medical potential of psilocybin, ecstasy, and other drugs to treat mental illness. The amendment was overwhelmingly rejected.
She tried again in 2021. It failed again. She later co-sponsored a similar bill that was signed into law in 2023. Three times she proposed legislation to make it easier to study psychedelics.
In a 2021 interview on Latino USA, the Bronx and Queens lawmaker said she sought therapy after the January 6 Capitol riots, comparing the experience to having "served in war" and calling it "an extraordinarily traumatizing event."
"Oh yeah, I'm doing therapy."
She had also previously written about the toll of her first campaign in 2018, describing a "self-care" break after unseating longtime incumbent Joe Crowley. In an Instagram story, she described the physical cost of the race:
"I went from doing yoga and making wild rice and salmon dinners to eating fast food for dinner and falling asleep in my jeans and makeup. I neglected myself."
There is nothing wrong with a member of Congress seeking mental health treatment. That's a private matter. But private matters become public when they're funded with campaign dollars and disguised on federal disclosure forms.
The core issue is simple. FEC filings exist so voters and donors can see where their money goes. When a campaign pays a psychiatrist known for ketamine-assisted therapy and describes it as "leadership training and consulting," something doesn't add up.
Either Boyle was providing legitimate campaign-related consulting, a field in which he has no apparent expertise, or the description was chosen to obscure the true nature of the expense.
Ocasio-Cortez has built a brand on transparency and holding the powerful accountable. She has lectured corporations, grilled executives in committee hearings, and positioned herself as the conscience of a party she considers too timid. She once declared it was "well past time we take drug use out of criminal consideration and into medical consideration."
Fair enough. But if drug treatments belong in the realm of medicine rather than crime, they also belong in the realm of personal expenses rather than campaign expenditures.
You can't have it both ways: demanding radical transparency from everyone else while burying psychiatric payments under vague consulting labels in your own FEC filings.
The 36-year-old congresswoman's silence on the matter speaks volumes. So does her psychiatrist's.
