TRAUMA | +60 articles

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At the Intersection of Autism and Trauma

Autism and post-traumatic stress disorder share many traits, but the connection between them was largely overlooked until now.

by Lauren Gravitz | SPECRUM NEWS

Having autism can sometimes mean enduring a litany of traumatic events, starting from a young age. And for many, those events may add up to severe and persistent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Before Gabriel could even talk, his father’s girlfriend at the time told him his mother had abandoned him. At age 3, he was sexually abused by a cousin. He was mercilessly bullied once he started school, showed signs of depression by age 7 and by 11 began telling his mother he did not want to live. About three years ago, while at summer camp, he almost drowned. Shortly after that, he experienced life-threatening heatstroke when he went to get his Legos from the car trunk and accidentally locked himself in. Six months ago, just after his grandmother died, he attempted suicide.

“He’s been hurt and had so much disruption in his life that he’s having problems realizing that he has stability now,” says his mother, Kristina. (Kristina and Gabriel’s last names have been withheld to protect the family’s privacy.) “The world is chaotic and crazy for typically developed people. For him, it’s overwhelming and confusing.” Gabriel, now 13, started seeing a therapist about five years ago and last year was diagnosed with PTSD.

Gabriel’s autism was a contributing factor in most of the harrowing incidents he went through. Clinicians suspect that the condition increases the risk for certain kinds of trauma, such as bullying and other forms of abuse. Yet few studies have investigated that possibility or the psychological aftermath of such trauma, including PTSD.

“We know that about 70 percent of kids with autism will have a comorbid psychiatric disorder,” says Connor Kerns, assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder are all known to be more common among autistic people than in the general population, but PTSD had largely been overlooked. Until a few years ago, only a few studies had delved into the problem, and most suggested that less than 3 percent of autistic people have PTSD, about the same rate as in typical children. If that were true, Kerns points out, PTSD would be one of the only psychiatric conditions that’s no more common in people with autism than in their typical peers.

One potential explanation, Kerns says, is that, like other psychiatric conditions, PTSD simply looks different in people with autism than it does in the general population.

“It seems possible to me that it’s not that PTSD is less common but potentially that we’re not measuring it well, or that the way traumatic stress expresses itself in people on the spectrum is different,” Kerns says. “It seemed we were ignoring a huge part of the picture.”

Kerns and a few other researchers are trying to get a better understanding of the interplay between autism and PTSD, which they hope will inform and shape treatment for young people like Gabriel. The more they dig in, the more these researchers are finding that many autistic people might have some form of PTSD. “We’re all just trying to put together the pieces and recognize that it’s an important area that requires further study,” she says. “It’s been a call to arms for the field to start looking at this.”

These researchers have their work cut out for them. In the typical population, PTSD is fairly well defined. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5, psychiatry’s guide to diagnoses, PTSD usually develops after someone sees or experiences a terrifying or life-threatening event. After that initial episode, any reminder of it can trigger panic, extreme startle reflexes and flashbacks. Beyond that, however, there’s a wide variety in the way PTSD manifests: It can lead to hypervigilance and anger; it can cause recurring nightmares and other sleep issues; or it can lead to depression, persistent fear, aggression, irritability or difficulty concentrating and remembering things.

“If you do the math, according to the PTSD criteria in the DSM-5, you can have 636,000 different combinations of symptoms that that describe PTSD,” says Danny Horesh, head of the Trauma and Stress Research Lab at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. Given all the traits in people with autism that may overlay these permutations, “you have a lot of reason to think that their version of PTSD might be very different,” he says.

Preliminary studies are just beginning to confirm that idea and to show that what constitutes trauma may be different in people on the spectrum. Together with Ofer Golan, an autism expert at Bar-Ilan, and others, Horesh has begun investigating where PTSD and autism converge. The group has recruited upwards of 130 participants, including students and some people diagnosed with autism, and tried to determine where they fall on the spectrum and whether they have any traditional signs of PTSD.

Abuse, sexual assault, violence, natural disasters and wartime combat are all common causes of PTSD in the general population. Among autistic people, though, less extreme experiences — fire alarms, paperwork, the loss of a family pet, even a stranger’s offhand comment — can also be destabilizing. They can also be traumatized by others’ behavior toward them.

“We know from the literature that individuals with autism are much more exposed to bullying, ostracizing, teasing, etc.,” Golan says. “And when you look in the clinic, you can see that they’re very sensitive to these kinds of events.” Among autistic students, Golan and Horesh have found, social incidents, such as ostracizing, predict PTSD more strongly than violent ones, such as war, terror or abuse, which are not uncommon in Israel. Among typical students, though, the researchers see the opposite tendency.

Given these differences, and the communication challenges autistic people often have, their PTSD can be particularly difficult to recognize and resolve.

“It’s so absurd that there are such excellent treatments for autism today, and such excellent treatments for PTSD today, and so much research on these interventions. But no one to date has connected both,” Horesh says. “How do you treat PTSD in people with autism? No one really knows.”

Characterizing the convergence

It can be difficult to treat autism and PTSD separately in people who have both conditions, because the boundaries between the two are often so blurry. And that may, ironically, be the key treating them. In other conditions that overlap with PTSD, as well as those that overlap with autism, researchers have found that it is most effective to develop therapies when they look at both conditions simultaneously.

PTSD and substance misuse, for instance, often co-occur, but for decades no one understood the dynamics between them. Once clinicians began to develop and study treatments for both at the same time, however, they were able to create a tailored and effective program that eases both conditions. “This is our model,” Horesh says. “Prove that something is co-morbid, determine why, and then develop interventions for this specific group — good interventions, accurate interventions.”

The researchers are uncovering some important overlaps between autism and PTSD in their studies. In a group of 103 college students, for instance, they found that students who have more autistic traits also have more signs of PTSD, such as avoiding sources of trauma and negative changes in mood. “The highest-risk group of one was also the highest risk group in the other,” Horesh says.

The researchers also found some unexpected trends: The association between PTSD symptoms and autism traits is, for as yet unknown reasons, stronger in men than in women, even though typical women are two to three times more likely to develop PTSD than are typical men; that gender bias might eventually inform treatments. And people with more autistic traits display a specific form of PTSD, one characterized by hyperarousal: They may be more easily startled, more likely to have insomnia, predisposed to anger and anxiety, or have greater difficulty concentrating than is seen in other forms of PTSD. "Recognizing this subtype could be particularly helpful for spotting and preventing it, and for developing treatments," Horesh says, especially because the same traits might otherwise be mistakenly attributed to autism and overlooked. "We know that each PTSD has a different color, a different presence in the clinic,” he says.

Given the low reported rates of PTSD in people with autism, Kerns questions whether the DSM-5’s criteria for PTSD are sensitive enough to detect its signs in this population and wonders whether clinicians need to be on the lookout for a different subset of both causes and features.

Kerns and her colleagues are interviewing autistic adults and children — as well as guardians of some less verbal autistic people — to find out more about what, for them, constitutes trauma. So far, they’ve interviewed 15 adults and 15 caregivers. What she’s learned, she says, is that it’s necessary to check any assumptions at the door. “You want to be cautious about applying neurotypical definitions — you could miss a lot,” she says.

In speaking with participants about causes of trauma, she has heard “everything from sexual abuse, emotional abuse and horrendous bullying, to much broader concepts, like what it’s like to go around your whole life in a world where you have 50 percent less input than everyone else because you have social deficits. Or feeling constantly overwhelmed by sensory experience — feeling marginalized in our society because you’re somebody with differences.” In other words, she says, “the experience of having autism and the trauma associated with that.”

One parent Kerns spoke with had moved to a shelter with her autistic son to escape intense domestic violence. Her son had witnessed the abuse but seemed more affected by the move, the change in his routine and sudden loss of the family pet, which had to be left behind, than by the violence. He began to hurt himself more than he had before, and to ask repetitively for the pet, Kerns says. “Three years later he was still asking for the pet,” she says, “because the pet was one of the few relationships and connections with another being that he had.”

In another instance, a 12-year-old boy she interviewed refused to go to school and was hospitalized for threatening self-harm; the root of his trauma turned out to be ear-piercing fire drills. For a 53-year-old woman she talked to, crippling, traumatic stress resulted from the paperwork she needs to fill out every year to qualify for housing and other types of assistance.

How PTSD manifests in autistic people can also be unexpected, and can exacerbate autistic traits, such as regression of skills or communication, as well as stereotyped behaviors and speech. Based on these observations, Kerns and her collaborators plan to create autism-specific trauma assessments to test on a larger scale.​

“The way traumatic stress expresses itself in people on the spectrum may be different.” - Connor Kerns​

Treating the individual

This line of research is still in its earliest days: It is still difficult to tease apart correlation from causation. In other words, does autism predispose someone to post-traumatic stress, or are people with autism more vulnerable to experiencing traumatic events? Or both? Scientists simply don’t know the answers yet — although some studies do indicate that autistic children are more reactive to stressful events and, because they lack the coping skills that help them calm down, perhaps predisposed to PTSD.

Even when trauma is known and documented, however, treating someone on the spectrum is easier said than done. When children are nonverbal or simply view the world differently, practitioners can struggle to find the most effective way to help them work through their experiences.

“There’s some evidence that children on the spectrum tend to interpret questions differently, and in a more literal way, or that they tend to be more avoidant of questions about their trauma than typically developing children,” says Daniel Hoover, a clinical child and adolescent psychologist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute’s Center for Child and Family Traumatic Stress in Baltimore. “So they need measures that are more suited or adapted for children on the spectrum, which don’t really exist or are in development.”

One of the most effective treatments for PTSD, at least in children and adolescents, is trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy. This treatment takes a multi-pronged approach that involves both children and their parents or guardians in talk therapy and education: All of them learn what trauma is, how to navigate potentially tricky situations, and about communication tools and calming techniques for moments of distress. Clinicians prompt the affected children to talk through the traumatic experience in order to help them take control of the narrative, reframe it and make it less threatening. But in children with autism, who may be less verbal than typical children or simply less inclined to delve into the memories over and over again, such an approach can prove especially challenging.

“There are a number of core features of autism that make usual psychotherapies somewhat more complicated,” Hoover says. Typical children tend to be reluctant to talk about their traumatic experiences, but they generally give in because they know it’s good for them, he says. “Children on the spectrum are often less willing — because they’re exceedingly anxious, and because they’re not able to see the forest for the trees.” He notes that autistic children can be so keyed into the present, and so tied to routine, that they have a difficult time participating in treatment that intensifies their anxiety in the moment, even when they know it might help in the long run.

In working with these children, clinicians have also found it particularly tricky to separate the child’s understanding of a potentially traumatic event from that of their parents, who can walk away from an event with a completely different interpretation. To peel back these layers, Hoover and his colleagues at Krieger have developed a graphic, interactive phone app to help children — even minimally verbal children — use images to report experiences and the emotions associated with them. (The group is now in negotiations with a publisher and hopes to make the app publicly available within a couple of years.)

Children on the spectrum also usually take far longer to show improvement than their typical peers do. “It takes them longer to buy into it and feel comfortable, and takes them longer to integrate the concepts,” Hoover says.

That has certainly proven true for Gabriel. He is slowly making progress under Hoover’s care, Kristina says, but it has taken a long time for him to open up. “There were days when he’d sit in that chair at stare at Dr. Hoover and didn’t answer him,” she says.

After the death of his grandmother earlier this year, Gabriel became intensely afraid that Kristina might die too. When Hoover tried to talk with the boy about it, Gabriel shut down and wouldn’t engage. But just the other week, his mother says, Gabriel finally opened up. “He and Dr. Hoover bounced ideas off each other: How can we deal with these thoughts? How do we redirect them?” The dialogue showed Gabriel was gaining mastery over his story, transforming it from an overwhelming memory to something more manageable.

Just a few weeks ago, Gabriel told his mother that he worried he might try to kill himself again, and asked for her help. “Before, I had to dissect what was going on, but now Gabriel is using his words,” Kristina says, “It is a huge improvement from where he used to be.”​

At the intersection of autism and trauma

Autism and post-traumatic stress disorder share many traits, but the connection between them was largely overlooked until now.

www.spectrumnews.org

 

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Psychedelic-assisted therapy for grief and the loss of loved ones

by Amber Kraus | PSYCHABLE

Grief is a process that can take years to heal, and it’s not uncommon for people to feel like things will never get better. Psychologists have found that psychedelic-assisted therapy can help reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety related to grief and increase the feelings of connection with others. If you are struggling with grief or feeling alone after the loss of a loved one, psychedelic-assisted therapy may be able to help you through this challenging time in your life.​

What is psychedelic-assisted therapy?​

Psychedelic-assisted therapy is an experience that therapists may use to help people through personal trauma or mental suffering, such as grief or loss. In this type of therapy, psychedelic drugs are typically administered alongside talk therapy techniques such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for treating anxiety and depression caused by things like grief after the loss of loved ones.

The treatment available in the U.S. for psychedelic therapy is experimental, and currently, only a few substances, like psilocybin and MDMA, have been given breakthrough designation. This FDA designation allows the research process to be fast-tracked with the hope of developing enough evidence to support the approval of the substance for medicinal use. Ketamine therapy is also currently legal for treatment of various mental health disorders.​

The study of psychedelics for therapeutic purposes​

The efficacy of psychedelic substances as a treatment for mental health conditions was studied as early as the 1940s when Swiss scientist Albert Hoffman (who first synthesized the drug in 1939 dosed himself with LSD and took his infamous bicycle ride while under the influence of the psychedelic. He studied the effects of LSD in therapeutic settings and also studied other psychedelic drugs, including psilocybin and mescaline.

When the Controlled Substances Act was passed in 1970, psychedelic drugs were classified as Schedule 1 drugs and were made illegal in the United States. During this time, most of the research around the use of psychedelics came to a halt. However, in the last several years, research has picked up again. More studies are being conducted on psychedelic substances to treat a number of mental health conditions.​

How grief manifests psychologically and physiologically​

Grief manifests in different ways and varying levels of severity depending on the person, the situation, and the intensity of the trauma. There are, however, some psychological and physiological effects that are common in most people who are grieving the loss of a loved one.

The psychological effects of grief and loss are fairly well-known. They include emotional ups and downs ranging from sadness to anger to numbness, feelings of detachment from others, and a loss of personal meaning or faith. Some people experiencing grief may feel survivor’s guilt, or they may feel abandoned by the person they lost. Grief can also cause a person to undergo repeated stress, worry, and anxiety.

Although we often think about those psychological effects of grief and are probably all familiar with them to some extent, we may be less familiar with the role grief also plays a physiological in our bodies. Our minds and bodies are closely connected, and as we process our feelings, we often also experience unpleasant physical sensations. For instance, people may experience chronic pain or physical illness as they process the death of a loved one. They may experience symptoms such as chronic headaches, fatigue, digestive upset, insomnia and lack of appetite, just to name a few.

Psychologists have found that grieving patients often suffer from higher levels of stress and may develop mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, or PTSD.​

How might psychedelic-assisted therapy help us cope with grief​

Often when we lose a loved one or experience other traumatic life events, psychotherapy is recommended to help us get through the hard times. Recently, scientists have been studying the effects of psychedelics as an adjunct to psychotherapy, and there is reason to believe that this method may be more effective than psychotherapy alone.

While not yet a mainstream treatment, psychedelic-assisted therapy is showing promise for helping people cope with traumatic events. Research suggests that psychedelics like psilocybin and MDMA can help to reduce anxiety and depression—which often come after the loss of a loved one—and more effectively resolve PTSD when compared to talk therapy alone.

The most common approach to modern psychedelic therapy makes use of a technique that has its origins in work conducted by the collaboration between Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer in the 1950s. This particular technique uses relatively high doses of a psychedelic substance to induce an altered state of consciousness that may be positively transformative. This process emphasizes emotional release, which may be difficult for some people under normal circumstances, as part of the healing process.

When used as an adjunct to psychotherapy, people typically take one or two full doses of a psychedelic drug alongside the guidance of a trained therapist or facilitator. In some cases, the patient only takes one dose of psychedelics while in other scenarios they take two doses: one at an introductory session and then another full-dose during subsequent sessions when working through particularly difficult memories or experiences. The important part of this process is to pair it with psychotherapy. A trained therapist or guide can assist you through the experience by helping you to identify the root of your emotional struggles.

Another form of psychedelic self-experimentation includes consuming small amounts of psychedelics every few days. This is called microdosing, and early research has shown that microdosing certain psychedelics can ease anxiety and break negative thought patterns. Many people who have experienced an unexpected loss respond to the trauma with feelings of anxiety or fear. They may experience repeated negative thoughts surrounding their own mortality or have constant anxiety and worry that something else bad will happen in their lives. Theoretically, microdosing may ease these feelings of anxiety and worry, allowing them to continue with their daily activities effectively.​

The psychedelic experience​

While experiencing a psychedelic trip, one can expect to feel a variety of emotions, not all pleasant. Some people may feel a sense of sadness or despair. Rather than running away from these unpleasant feelings, psychedelic-assisted therapy encourages people to approach their feelings with a sense of curiosity. This can be very beneficial for those who have experienced trauma or loss as it gives them a chance to come face-to-face with these difficult emotions to process the event.​

Psychedelics and spiritual connection​

Some people report having spiritual experiences while taking psychedelic drugs. This can include having an out-of a body experience or feeling intensely connected to the universe. Many people who have had these experiences find it easier to cope after their psychedelic session because of this increased sense that life is meaningful and benevolent. Sometimes part of the struggle to cope with loss is the lack of understanding and a loss of faith when the event occurs. Psychedelics may help people regain that spiritual connection by providing a sense of meaning.​

Finding peace through psychedelic-assisted therapy​

There is no quick and easy way to get through the grieving process. In fact, the process of grieving is important for us to heal, and if we try to ignore the process or push down our feelings, we may never fully get to a place where we feel healed from the loss. Some people have found that psychedelic-assisted therapy can be a helpful tool in the process of grieving and coping with loss when used appropriately under the direction of a trained facilitator.

Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy for Grief and the Loss of Loved Ones

Grief is a process that can take years to heal, and it's not uncommon for people to feel like things will never get better. Psychologists have found that

psychable.com

 

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Can ibogaine treat emotional trauma?*

by Faye Sakellaridis | LUCID | 17 May 2022

Maggie had been in and out of therapy since she was 12, when her sister committed suicide at 19. Plagued with constant anxiety, she saw ten different therapists over the course of nearly three decades. It helped, but the trauma wasn’t fully resolved. She settled for thinking she was as healed as she’d ever be.

After her father died of COVID-related complications earlier this year, Maggie suffered her first nervous breakdown. “I couldn’t control my physiological response to pain. I had to take pills to sleep and stay calm.”

She felt responsible, like she did when her sister died, as though she’d failed to save them. “It was a protective mechanism,” Maggie explains. “A savior complex where I was always doing everything to take care of others, but not me. It’s a strong position for the ego to take, thinking you can save or fix everyone else’s lives.” Despite knowing this intellectually at the time, it didn’t stop her from feeling chronic anxiety and guilt.

A childhood friend, now a grief counselor, suggested she look into ibogaine, a psychedelic treatment option that has become increasingly used to address depression and trauma. Maggie had limited experience with psychedelics – she’d experimented with ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms – but talk therapy alone was not working for her, and her intuition told her this plant medicine might help. This past April, she headed down to Cancun to try this treatment at Beond, a premium ibogaine therapy facility offering a multi-phase delivery model, in the hopes that she would finally find inner peace.

Can ibogaine help treat trauma?

Ibogaine has made headlines for its high success rate in treating opioid addiction. While this is largely due to its ability to “reset” the brain to its pre-addicted state, the profound inner voyage it induces is also integral to the healing process, and there is increasing evidence that it can be an effective therapeutic treatment for mental health issues like PTSD and depression.

Mental health conditions like depression or PTSD may leave one mired in belief systems and thoughts that “aren’t entirely accurate,” explains Lynnette Averill, an Associate Professor at Baylor College of Medicine and clinical research psychologist at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. “Particularly with PTSD, people often experience a lot of guilt, shame, and take blame for things that aren’t theirs to take blame for.”

Neurobiologically, ibogaine offers a “hard reset” from these beliefs by targeting “multiple neurochemical systems at once in a very rapid and robust fashion,” says Averill. It also allows the patient to emotionally and cognitively process root causes behind their trauma, which is where we see a lot of this treatment’s benefit, she says. Individuals who undergo ibogaine treatment commonly report experiencing a “30,000 foot view of their life and sometimes that of their ancestors.”

“Thinking about ourselves as a tiny part of something so much bigger can serve the purpose of grounding us in what the important things are for our lives, as members of our families, our communities, and even of the species,” says Averill.

Dr. Joseph Barsuglia, a clinical and research psychologist with expertise in ibogaine, likens the ibogaine experience to a “dreamlike state.”

”Dreams are where we process our subconscious mind and work out conflict,” says Barsuglia. “It connects you to your own intelligence so you can heal yourself.”

During the ibogaine treatment, Maggie came in contact with different versions of herself: her ideal self, her worst self, and even her eternal self, a vision of who she’d be beyond death. She was surprised at the lack of shame or self-criticism she felt when facing what she considered to be her “worst” self. “I did not feel in any way defensive, ashamed or embarrassed by it. I realized that is who I am when love is not present.”

From there, she watched a montage of childhood memories, revealing root causes of her trauma that predated her sister’s suicide, going back to childhood.

“Ibogaine works in the brain in a more unique way than most psychedelics,” explains Barsuglia, who serves as an advisor to Beond. “It appears to go through your memory database, like a Rolodex of difficult experiences you’ve had that you haven’t metabolized psychologically.” This “life review,” as it’s commonly called, helps the patient confront what they’re running from, so they can evolve past it.

As Maggie observed these core memories unfold, she witnessed more versions of herself throughout her childhood. “I comforted all those parts of me that felt misunderstood, unloved, not taken care of – and I became their parent.”

The role of talk therapy in ibogaine treatment

Maggie was well equipped for helping her child self process pain. In the week before her treatment, Maggie had daily talk therapy sessions with a Beond therapist, who helped her prepare by setting intentions and establishing a framework for the experience. “This was work I had done in therapy the week before,” she says. “I knew what to do with the experience.”

Beond offers a 5-phase treatment delivery model called “Insight Oriented Ibogaine” that includes a preparation stage, pre-treatment protocols, the treatment itself, and an aftercare plan for post-treatment and long-term to support the patient in their journey. After completing initial comprehensive medical screening procedures, patients engage in daily hour-long sessions with a therapist to set intentions and work through any fears and concerns they may have about their treatment.After treatment, the patient completes a minimum of two integration sessions with Beond’s psychology team, and maintains contact with the clinic in the months following their stay to evaluate and advance their progress.

“Therapy is a critical piece for ibogaine treatment,” says Averill. It’s a time to set intentions and address significant fears before going into treatment. “It helps them feel grounded and safe.” Therapy after is just as crucial. Ibogaine treatment can be challenging, and a third party perspective can help the patient process and understand what they experienced, she says.

Averill stresses that ibogaine treatment isn’t a magic bullet. “It’s not as though you have this experience and you never need to worry about your problems again,” she says. “Ibogaine provides a foundation from which there’s a sudden shift, an opportunity that people can then build on. But they have to do the work of continuing to build, continuing the integration work and building healthy habits.”

How does ibogaine affect the brain?

Ibogaine afforded Maggie stunning clarity about the underlying source of her trauma, illuminating the origin of the behaviors and coping mechanisms she’d developed throughout the years in response to her pain. “All the decisions I’d made to protect myself from further suffering became so obvious, it was easy to let them go.”

Recent research is helping to explain the physiological mechanisms behind the treatment’s success. “Ibogaine seems to increase blood flow to deep brain structures that are emotional centers,” explains Barsuglia. “Some literature suggests that those parts of the brain are where we hold some of our deepest pain and the roots of trauma. Ibogaine increases communication with these more primitive and preverbal parts of the brain so deeper issues can be brought into consciousness and processed.”

Averill feels that further research into ibogaine may tell us more about its effects on the default mode network, the part of our brain that’s most active when someone isn’t focusing on any one thing in particular. For someone with PTSD, their default mode network tends to be restless and hypervigilant, “running at 300 miles an hour” with intrusive thoughts, she says. “Research has shown that psilocybin quiets that. I think something similar would be found with ibogaine.”

After her treatment, Maggie felt a profound sense of peace. “I never thought it was possible,” she says. Her mind’s nervous, incessant chatter has quieted. Instead of being easily triggered by external stimuli, she now has “complete autonomy” over how she responds to things. Coping mechanisms she used to rely on to numb anxiety, like finding the perfect meal, no longer have the same hold on her. And she’s lost the compulsion to solve other people’s problems for them.

Maggie marvels at the “brilliance” of the plant, which went right to the root causes of her trauma, and overrode firmly entrenched pathways in her brain, clearing space for new behaviors and perspectives. The experience left her feeling securely anchored in her newfound peace, with a comprehensive understanding of her life’s story.

“For many people, it is a very powerful and meaningful thing to step back and explore what led us to this moment. How did we get to where we are now? What are the aspects that we want to move forward with, and what is not serving us?” says Averill. “We don’t exist in a vacuum. We are shaped by the things we were taught about how to interact with the world, and how to cope with stress and trauma.”

“Ibogaine showed me the landscape of my entire life in a very specific way. It’s like being in a haunted house, and someone turns the lights on, so you can see the mechanisms behind how everything works,” says Maggie. “I know, and can feel, where my peace is grounded.”

*PAID POST SPONSORED BY BEOND

Can Ibogaine Treat Emotional Trauma? - Lucid News

Ibogaine has made headlines for its ability to treat opioid addiction, but evidence shows it may also be an effective therapeutic treatment for mental health issues like PTSD and depression.

www.lucid.news

 

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How Ibogaine emerged as an addiction treatment in the west

by Faye Sakellaridis | LUCID | 26 May 2022

In 1962, Howard Lotsof, a 19 year-old New Yorker with a daily heroin dependency, tried a mysterious substance extracted from a West African shrub given to him by a chemist friend. Within 30 hours, after a long and intense trip, his desire for heroin was gone.

Lotsof was astounded. A day and a half went by without using, yet he had zero withdrawal symptoms. The experience itself was illuminating too. “Ibogaine showed him that heroin was something that emulated death,” says anthropologist and ibogaine researcher Thomas Kingsley Brown, PhD. “Before taking ibogaine, he regarded heroin as something that gave him comfort.”

Curious to see if the effects could be duplicated, Lotsof gave it to seven friends who were also addicted to heroin. After the experience, five immediately quit. “The other two said they could have stopped but they just didn’t want to. They liked using,” says Brown.

Ibogaine is the potent psychedelic compound with anti-addictive properties found in the shrub Tabernanthe iboga. It was first isolated in 1901 by J. Dybowski and Ed. Landrin, and introduced to the Western public in France in the 1930s, where a diluted preparation of it was marketed as a mental and physical stimulant. Lotsof sparked its association with treating opioid-dependency, going on to advocate for further research into it, and inspiring many medical practitioners to administer this treatment.

But the history of its usage goes far beyond the west, to the jungles of West and Central Africa, where its steward communities use it as a ceremonial sacrament to this day.

Ibogaine’s ritual history in West Africa

Tabernanthe iboga grows primarily in Gabon, along with surrounding areas like the Congo and Cameroon, where the Pygmy people originally resided. The ritual use of iboga can be traced back to the Pygmies, who introduced it to the Bantu people in the late 1800s, when French colonizers pushed the Bantus out of their coastal villages towards Gabon. The Pygmies initial use of iboga is unknown, likely dating back hundreds, possibly thousands, of years, says Brown.

From this cultural mixing emerged Bwiti, a spiritual tradition which incorporates animism and ancestor worship. Iboga plays a central role in Bwiti as a sacrament for spiritual growth and community bonding, used in healing rituals and initiation rites.

Gabon has at least forty different ethnic groups, resulting in a myriad of Bwiti branches. Most ceremonies involve music (participants play a number of traditional instruments, including percussion, harp and mouth bow) and dance to induce a prolonged trance state, lasting up to five days.

Although the majority of the Gabon population is Christian, most Bwiti practitioners have not adopted Christianity into their practice, with the exception of the Fang people, whose syncretic practice incorporates Christian elements. Bwiti has been persecuted by Christians since its inception, and faces condemnation by missionaries to this day. Aside from the church, Bwiti is well-accepted in Gabon, and a number of government officials and members of the police and army can be found among its initiates.

Ibogaine’s emergence as a treatment for opioid addiction

After his experience, Lotsof was single-mindedly dedicated to lobbying for ibogaine to be taken seriously as a treatment for addiction. His widow, Nora Lotsof, remembers him as “a real gentleman who believed whole-heartedly that anyone with a substance abuse problem should have the right to choose when, and by what means, to stop self-medicating.”

In the 1980s, by which point ibogaine had already been added to the list of forbidden Schedule 1 substances during the War on Drugs, Lotsof founded the NDA International, an organization that promoted research into ibogaine.

In 1986, Lotsof developed a patent for ibogaine as an addiction treatment, and through NDA, co-sponsored human studies on ibogaine in the Netherlands and Panama with other addiction treatment groups in the early 90s.

With the results of these studies, Lotsof was able to persuade the National Institute on Drug Abuse to conduct further research into ibogaine, eventually leading to F.D.A. approval of a Phase 1 clinical trial. Unfortunately, the trial was never completed, in part due to lack of funding and criticism from pharmaceutical companies.

Despite this setback, Lotsof continued to advocate for ibogaine with other researchers and doctors, and work with independent ibogaine clinics in Mexico, Europe, and the Caribbean.

Ibogaine in the modern day

The psychedelic renaissance, which is ushering in a new wave of acceptance for these substances, has raised awareness about ibogaine in psychedelic communities, among newcomers and veterans alike. However, ibogaine remains a Schedule 1 drug which, unlike other psychedelic substances, like psilocybin, has no significant research that could bring it towards FDA approval on the horizon.

Still, ibogaine clinics have been administering this treatment in places where it’s legal or unregulated since the 1990s by physicians and advocates who, like Lotsof, fervently stand by ibogaine’s potential. The Mexico-based ibogaine clinic Beond is staffed with physicians like Dr. Jeffrey Kamlet and Dr. Felipe Malacara, who’ve been successfully using ibogaine to treat addiction for decades in various clinics outside the U.S.

Recent developments have been made around the cultivation and exportation of ibogaine, which has been illegally harvested in Gabon for use in the West. Since the Nagoya Protocol, an international treaty established in 2014 that calls for the fair and equitable sharing of genetic resources, a number of ibogaine organizations are teaming up with Gabonese officials to develop a legal distribution channel for ibogaine that will allow Gabonese communities to benefit.

Among the groups participating is Beond, who will buy Nagoya-compliant iboga when it becomes available, and contribute a portion of their clinic’s proceeds towards projects that support Gabonese communities and indigenous leaders.

How Ibogaine Emerged as an Addiction Treatment in the West - Lucid News

Ibogaine began to be used for treating addiction in the 60s, but its origins stretch back to West African indigenous communities, where it is a ritual sacrament.

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