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A Shaman, an Exile, and a Rapper Are Bringing a Hallucinogenic Heroin Cure to Afghanistan
By Keegan Hamilton
July 20, 2014
When Murtaza Majeed learned that the international health organization Doctors of the World planned to open Afghanistan’s first needle-exchange operation, the idea seemed preposterous. The Islamic nation suffers a heroin epidemic of horrific proportions in large part because addicts are treated as utter pariahs.
“There was nothing that existed to help drug addicts,” Majeed, a Kabul resident and former staff member in Doctors of the World’s harm-reduction program, told VICE News. “The concept of our government was, unfortunately, either you use drugs or you don’t use drugs.”
Despite the cultural disdain for addiction, Doctors of the World began handing out free, clean needles in 2005 and started offering methadone to Kabul’s junkies a few years later. It helped that Majeed and others administering the program had the support of the World Health Organization, the Global Fund, and other influential non-governmental organizations. But Majeed also developed a strong argument to sway skeptics.
“We had to convince them it was something that could help drug users and help the society,” he said. “Everyone, at the end of the day, wants to cure drug addiction. For me, harm reduction was a step in between. By having harm reduction, we can talk with drug users and try to make them addiction-free.”
Yet the introduction of those services has ultimately done little to curb the insatiable demand for drugs in Afghanistan. The United Nations estimates that 1.6 million Afghans — more than 5 percent of the population — are addicted.
Majeed, who is 27, has now plotted an audacious response to the growing crisis. It involves a hallucinogenic drug from Africa, a self-proclaimed shaman, and the rapper Immortal Technique.
The idea is to open Afghanistan’s first rehab clinic specializing in ibogaine treatment. Ibogaine is an alkaloid extracted from the root bark of a rainforest shrub native to western Central Africa. It has been used for centuries as a vision-inducing sacrament in religious ceremonies, and has become increasingly popular as an alternative method of kicking heroin addiction. Proponents claim that the intense, dreamlike state prompts junkies to re-evaluate their lives, and scientific research has found evidence suggesting that ibogaine blocks withdrawal symptoms and suppresses drug cravings.
According to Tom Kingsley Brown, a researcher at the University of California at San Diego, who works closely with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, there is no scientific consensus on how ibogaine works in the body, but its effects on recovering addicts are often dramatic.
“You get this interruption of the addiction where you don’t get the withdrawal symptoms,” Brown said. “It also has been shown to reduce the kind of cravings you get for heroin and other kinds of opiates. That cessation of the cravings can last for months for many people.”
The problem with ibogaine is that it can produce a variety of harsh side effects, including severe nausea and vertigo. It occasionally even kills people. Since 1990, at least 19 people have died after taking it, mostly due to preexisting medical conditions or because it was combined with other drugs. Ibogaine is a Schedule I substance in the United States, a designation reserved for heroin, MDMA, marijuana, and other drugs the government believes have a high potential of abuse and no accepted medical application. Ibogaine is largely unregulated elsewhere, however, and clinics — many of which charge thousands of dollars per visit — treat patients in dozens of countries around the globe, including in Canada and Mexico.
The drug’s most prominent evangelist is Dimitri “Mobengo” Mugianis, a 51-year-old recovered heroin addict turned New York ibogaine shaman. Mugianis underwent ibogaine treatment in the Netherlands and eventually studied Bwiti, an African religion that uses the drug ritualistically. He performed illicit ibogaine ceremonies on recovering opiate addicts in the US until he was targeted by a DEA sting operation in 2011 that ended with a misdemeanor drug possession charge, a small fine, and a brief period of house arrest. Mugianis now performs the ceremonies in Costa Rica and works at the non-profit New York Harm Reduction Educators in East Harlem and the Bronx. An episode of VICE on HBO featured him conducting an ibogaine ceremony with a heroin addict in Tijuana.
Continued here https://news.vice.com/article/a-hallucinogenic-treatment-for-heroin-addiction-heads-for-afghanistan
By Keegan Hamilton
July 20, 2014
When Murtaza Majeed learned that the international health organization Doctors of the World planned to open Afghanistan’s first needle-exchange operation, the idea seemed preposterous. The Islamic nation suffers a heroin epidemic of horrific proportions in large part because addicts are treated as utter pariahs.
“There was nothing that existed to help drug addicts,” Majeed, a Kabul resident and former staff member in Doctors of the World’s harm-reduction program, told VICE News. “The concept of our government was, unfortunately, either you use drugs or you don’t use drugs.”
Despite the cultural disdain for addiction, Doctors of the World began handing out free, clean needles in 2005 and started offering methadone to Kabul’s junkies a few years later. It helped that Majeed and others administering the program had the support of the World Health Organization, the Global Fund, and other influential non-governmental organizations. But Majeed also developed a strong argument to sway skeptics.
“We had to convince them it was something that could help drug users and help the society,” he said. “Everyone, at the end of the day, wants to cure drug addiction. For me, harm reduction was a step in between. By having harm reduction, we can talk with drug users and try to make them addiction-free.”
Yet the introduction of those services has ultimately done little to curb the insatiable demand for drugs in Afghanistan. The United Nations estimates that 1.6 million Afghans — more than 5 percent of the population — are addicted.
Majeed, who is 27, has now plotted an audacious response to the growing crisis. It involves a hallucinogenic drug from Africa, a self-proclaimed shaman, and the rapper Immortal Technique.
The idea is to open Afghanistan’s first rehab clinic specializing in ibogaine treatment. Ibogaine is an alkaloid extracted from the root bark of a rainforest shrub native to western Central Africa. It has been used for centuries as a vision-inducing sacrament in religious ceremonies, and has become increasingly popular as an alternative method of kicking heroin addiction. Proponents claim that the intense, dreamlike state prompts junkies to re-evaluate their lives, and scientific research has found evidence suggesting that ibogaine blocks withdrawal symptoms and suppresses drug cravings.
According to Tom Kingsley Brown, a researcher at the University of California at San Diego, who works closely with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, there is no scientific consensus on how ibogaine works in the body, but its effects on recovering addicts are often dramatic.
“You get this interruption of the addiction where you don’t get the withdrawal symptoms,” Brown said. “It also has been shown to reduce the kind of cravings you get for heroin and other kinds of opiates. That cessation of the cravings can last for months for many people.”
The problem with ibogaine is that it can produce a variety of harsh side effects, including severe nausea and vertigo. It occasionally even kills people. Since 1990, at least 19 people have died after taking it, mostly due to preexisting medical conditions or because it was combined with other drugs. Ibogaine is a Schedule I substance in the United States, a designation reserved for heroin, MDMA, marijuana, and other drugs the government believes have a high potential of abuse and no accepted medical application. Ibogaine is largely unregulated elsewhere, however, and clinics — many of which charge thousands of dollars per visit — treat patients in dozens of countries around the globe, including in Canada and Mexico.
The drug’s most prominent evangelist is Dimitri “Mobengo” Mugianis, a 51-year-old recovered heroin addict turned New York ibogaine shaman. Mugianis underwent ibogaine treatment in the Netherlands and eventually studied Bwiti, an African religion that uses the drug ritualistically. He performed illicit ibogaine ceremonies on recovering opiate addicts in the US until he was targeted by a DEA sting operation in 2011 that ended with a misdemeanor drug possession charge, a small fine, and a brief period of house arrest. Mugianis now performs the ceremonies in Costa Rica and works at the non-profit New York Harm Reduction Educators in East Harlem and the Bronx. An episode of VICE on HBO featured him conducting an ibogaine ceremony with a heroin addict in Tijuana.
Continued here https://news.vice.com/article/a-hallucinogenic-treatment-for-heroin-addiction-heads-for-afghanistan
