Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's campaign paid nearly $19,000 to a Boston-based psychiatrist known for controversial ketamine therapy, labeling the expenses as "leadership training and consulting" in federal filings.

Federal Election Commission records show the campaign paid Dr. Brian Boyle $11,550 in March 2025, another $2,800 in May, and $4,375 in October, totaling $18,725. It's unclear what the sessions consisted of or who participated. Neither Ocasio-Cortez's campaign nor Boyle returned requests for comment.

The payments raise pointed questions about how campaign dollars are being spent and whether "leadership training" is doing a lot of heavy lifting as a line item description.

The doctor in question

Boyle is a Harvard-trained doctor who calls himself an "interventional psychiatrist" and is considered a "leading authority" on ketamine. He serves as the chief psychiatric officer at Stella, a company specializing in unorthodox methods for treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, and anxiety. The New York Post reported.

During a podcast appearance last year, Boyle described his enthusiasm for the work:

"I just saw the incredible power of what these treatments could do."

He also noted in an interview that his clientele skews toward the well-connected:

"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 itself carries serious risks. Psychiatrist Dr. Simon Dosovitz warned about the dangers of the drug being administered without proper safeguards:

"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."

Dosovitz also noted that ketamine "is a strongly dissociative drug." The substance gained wider public scrutiny after it was given to "Friends" star Matthew Perry in the month leading up to his death.

Campaign cash or personal expense?

This is where the story shifts from curious to potentially consequential. Federal campaign finance law draws a hard line between campaign expenditures and personal expenses. Labeling psychiatric sessions as "leadership training" doesn't automatically make them a legitimate campaign cost.

Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center, did not mince words:

"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 also challenged the framing directly:

"While she describes these expenses as 'leadership training,' Dr. Boyle has no expertise in that area, unlike several Democratic campaign consultants."

His conclusion was blunt: "This looks like yet another example of misuse of campaign contributions."

The description matters because the law matters. Donors gave that money to elect a candidate, not to fund sessions with a celebrity psychiatrist who specializes in ketamine treatments. If this is personal therapy repackaged as professional development, that's not a gray area. It's a violation.

AOC's long history with therapy and psychedelics

Ocasio-Cortez has been open about her mental health journey. She revealed on Latino USA in 2021 that she was in therapy following the January 6 Capitol riots, saying simply, "Oh yeah, I'm doing therapy." She described the events of that day as "an extraordinarily traumatizing event" and compared the experience to having "served in war."

She has also spoken about the toll of her first campaign in 2018, when she unseated longtime incumbent Joe Crowley to become the youngest woman elected to Congress:

"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."

Nobody begrudges a public figure seeking mental health support. That's a personal decision, and it's hers to make. The issue isn't therapy. The issue is who pays for it.

What makes this story more layered is Ocasio-Cortez's aggressive legislative advocacy for psychedelic substances. She has:

• Campaigned to end the federal prohibition of marijuana in 2018
• Introduced an amendment in 2019 to allow federal spending on studying the medical potential of psilocybin, ecstasy, and other drugs
• Tried the amendment again in 2021 after it was overwhelmingly rejected, even by her own Democratic colleagues
• Co-sponsored a similar bill that was signed into law in 2023

She once declared that "it's well past time we take drug use out of criminal consideration and into medical consideration." Fair enough as a policy position. But when the congresswoman who has spent years pushing psychedelic-adjacent legislation is simultaneously funneling campaign funds to a psychiatrist famous for ketamine therapy, the overlap deserves scrutiny, not a shrug.

The pattern that keeps repeating

This isn't an isolated quirk. It fits a broader pattern among progressive politicians who treat campaign treasuries like personal slush funds, then cloak the spending in vague professional language. "Leadership training" is the kind of phrase that sounds just official enough to avoid a second glance on an FEC filing. It only falls apart when someone actually looks at who's being paid and what they do.

Ocasio-Cortez's campaign had every opportunity to explain the payments. They chose silence instead. Boyle did the same. When both the buyer and the seller decline to describe what was purchased, the filing's own description becomes the only account available. And "leadership training" from a ketamine specialist is a description that collapses under its own weight.

Donors to political campaigns expect their money to fund elections. They expect it to pay for ads, staff, voter outreach, and the grinding logistics of democratic participation. They do not expect it to land in the office of a psychiatrist who describes his work as "a ton of fun helping patients get better."

If this were legitimate consulting, say so. If it were therapy, own it and pay for it yourself. The silence tells you which one it probably was.