METH DETOX

[mr peabody]

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Psychedelic therapy for meth addiction​

by Siddhant Varshney - Apr 19, 2023

Methamphetamine (meth) addiction is a serious and persistent problem in many parts of the world. The standard treatment methods have not been very successful in addressing this problem. However, recent research has shown that psychedelics could be a promising alternative for treating meth addiction. This paper aims to review the current research on the use of psychedelics for treating meth addiction, including their effectiveness, safety, and potential mechanisms of action.

Psychedelics and their mechanisms of action

Psychedelics are a class of drugs that alter perception, mood, and thought processes. They include substances such as psilocybin (found in certain mushrooms), lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and ayahuasca (a brew made from plants found in the Amazon). Psychedelics work by affecting serotonin receptors in the brain, leading to changes in mood, perception, and consciousness.

Research on the use of psychedelics for addiction treatment has shown that they may work by disrupting maladaptive patterns of thought and behavior, leading to increased openness, empathy, and self-awareness. This can help individuals with addiction develop new coping mechanisms and improve their overall mental health.

Psychedelics and meth addiction

Meth addiction is a chronic and relapsing disorder that affects millions of people worldwide. Meth use can cause a range of physical and mental health problems, including psychosis, depression, and anxiety. Traditional treatment methods, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy and medication-assisted treatment, have had limited success in treating meth addiction.

Recent studies have shown that psychedelics may be effective in treating meth addiction. A study conducted by Johnson et al. (2017) found that a single dose of psilocybin, combined with cognitive-behavioral therapy, resulted in significant improvements in abstinence rates and reduced cravings for methamphetamine in a group of individuals with meth addiction. Similarly, a study by Thomas et al. (2020) found that ayahuasca-assisted therapy was associated with significant reductions in meth use and improved mental health outcomes in a group of individuals with meth addiction.

The mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of psychedelics for treating meth addiction are not yet fully understood. However, it is believed that psychedelics may work by disrupting maladaptive thought patterns and increasing emotional openness and self-awareness, leading to improved coping mechanisms and decreased drug use.

Safety and side effects

Although the use of psychedelics for addiction treatment shows promise, safety is a major concern. Psychedelics can cause a range of psychological and physical side effects, including anxiety, paranoia, and hallucinations. Additionally, individuals with certain medical conditions, such as heart disease or schizophrenia, may be at higher risk for adverse effects from psychedelics.

However, recent studies have shown that psychedelics can be administered safely in a clinical setting with proper screening, preparation, and monitoring. A study by Johnson et al. (2018) found that psilocybin-assisted therapy was well-tolerated and had no serious adverse events in a group of individuals with opioid addiction. Similarly, a study by Loizaga-Velder et al. (2016) found that ayahuasca-assisted therapy was safe and well-tolerated in a group of individuals with substance use disorders.

Conclusion

Meth addiction is a serious problem that has proven difficult to treat using traditional methods. However, recent research has shown that psychedelics, such as psilocybin and ayahuasca, may be promising alternatives for treating meth addiction. These substances work by disrupting maladaptive patterns of thought and behavior, leading to increased openness, empathy, and self-awareness.

Despite the limitations of existing studies, the available evidence suggests that psychedelics such as psilocybin and ayahuasca may have therapeutic benefits in reducing meth use and promoting abstinence.

Psychedelics against meth de-addiction

Mini review (latest) on use of psychedelics against meth addiction Author - Siddhant Varshney (Chemical engineer, BTech 2015, MTech 2018) Introduction Methamphetamine (meth) addiction is a serious and persistent problem in many parts of the world. The standard treatment methods have not been very su

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[mr peabody]

What is ibogaine?​

by Barb Bauer, MS | Psychedelic Science Review

Ibogaine is a compound found in the leaves of an African shrub called Iboga. Studies indicate it may have anti-addictive properties.

Ibogaine is one of several chemical compounds found in the plant (shrub) Tabernanthe iboga. The plant is also known by just its species name, iboga. Traditionally, iboga is used in cultural and religious rituals by the indigenous peoples of Central Africa. They also use it in various dilutions for alleviating hunger, fatigue, and thirst. Some of the other compounds found in iboga are noribogaine, tabernanthine, ibogamine, ibogaline, and catharanthine.

The chemistry of ibogaine

Ibogaine was first isolated by Dybowski and Landrin in 1901. The crystalline structure of ibogaine was determined in 1960. It was first synthesized in the lab by Bûchi, and a simplified total synthesis was published in 2012. A detailed summary of ibogaine synthesis is found in Wasko et al., 2018.

Ibogaine crystallizes into prismatic needles from ethanol. In addition to ethanol, it is soluble in ether, chloroform, acetone, and benzene. It is practically insoluble in water. The hydrochloride salt of ibogaine is soluble in water, as well as methanol and ethanol. It is slightly soluble in acetone and chloroform, but practically insoluble in ether.​

What are the some of the effects of ibogaine?​

Ibogaine is cardiotoxic at micromolar levels. Specifically, studies have noted a prolongation of the heart’s QTc interval. Ibogaine has also been shown to be neurotoxic in rodents. At higher doses, the effects include tremors, convulsions, nervous behavior, and paralysis of the limbs. However, the doses used in these studies are below what would be used in a clinical setting.

In the early 1960s, subjective reports of the anti-addictive properties of ibogaine began surfacing, most notably from a young heroin addict named Howard Lotsof. Lotsof was born in the Bronx, New York in 1943 and was severely addicted to heroin by the time he was 19 years old. By his own account, the desire of he and six of his friends to take heroin disappeared almost immediately after self-administration of an extract of the T. iboga root. Lotsof became one of the most vocal advocates of ibogaine use for the treatment of addiction. In 1985, he was granted a patent for the treatment of cocaine and heroin addiction using ibogaine.

Research indicates that ibogaine may be effective in treating opiate addiction. The data show that it doesn’t just reduce opioid use, but can result in complete abstinence, along with having “long-term positive psychological outcomes.”

A 2018 study found that the positive effects of ibogaine for treating opioid dependence lasted twelve months. In a 2018 review paper, Mash et al. recommended using a single oral dose of ibogaine during detoxification “to transition drug dependent individuals to abstinence.”​

What receptors does ibogaine use?​

In terms of pharmacodynamics, ibogaine shows no clear preferences, having a moderate to a weak affinity for a variety of receptors and transport proteins. As a result, the hallucinogenic effects of ibogaine cannot be attributed to the activation of the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor.

However, ibogaine’s principal metabolite noribogaine has a sub-micromolar affinity as a partial agonist of the kappa opioid receptor. The mechanism of the dissociative effects caused by ibogaine may be similar to that of ketamine and other NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) channel blockers.

Ibogaine also binds in the low micromolar range to the mu opioid receptor, as does noribogaine in the sub-micromolar range. This may explain the ability of ibogaine to decrease self-administration of morphine in rats.

Studies indicate that ibogaine’s anti-opiate effects may be due to its non-competitive antagonist action at nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subtypes including α1ß1 and α3ß4.​

More research needed on the constituents of the iboga plant​

Scientists have only begun to scratch the surface to reveal the chemistry, pharmacology, and therapeutic applications of ibogaine and other compounds from Tabernanthe iboga. The early indications for use in treating opioid addiction and alcoholism are encouraging.

Despite what has been learned from studies, much ibogaine’s pharmacodynamics remains a mystery, as research appears to be focusing on its main metabolite noribogaine. Still, there is much to be learned about all the compounds from this naturally occurring source.

Among the many questions that need answering is whether there is an entourage effect with iboga compounds like what is seen with cannabis and the compounds in psilocybin mushrooms (aka magic mushrooms). Clearly, the research and development of iboga compounds is a wide-open area for study.

What is Ibogaine?

Ibogaine is a compound found in the leaves of an African shrub called Iboga, and studies indicate it may have anti-addictive properties.

psychedelicreview.com

 

[Leprechaun]

Anecdotally, psychedelics can help redirect your mental efforts to a different set of habits, but they don’t “cure” any addiction, you have to go into it with the intent of wanting to stop or change certain habits in the first place.

Afterwards you still need to find sources of nourishment for your physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

You build a life out of habits, not peak experiences.

 

[mr peabody]

Ibogaine and meth addiction

Many law enforcement officials say the only way off methamphetamine is death or prison. The drug is reputed to be more addictive than crack cocaine. Yet this week we talked to a Traverse City native who was severely addicted to methamphetamine for 2 years, but has been clean for 90 days. Before recovery, his addiction cost him 2 marriages, his home, two businesses, most of his family relationships and his health. He credits his success to ibogaine, a psychedelic from the root of a shrub found in West Africa.

NE: Tell me a little about yourself.

A: I just turned 40. I turned 40 in the treatment center in Miami, Florida. To be honest, I'm so glad I was there. I grew up in Northern Michigan. I have fond memories of school and I spent a quarter at MSU and flunked out. And then I got an opportunity to move to the West Coast. I was a chef and went to one of the best culinary schools in Europe, and I've run a restaurant and two very successful catering companies. But my drug addiction brought them both down. I was forced out of my catering company because I wasn't performing. It's been one tragedy after another, but I'm in a great place today. And I know I will continue on this path. There is nothing left to lose. I have such a firm grip on what life's about, I can't say I'm fearless, but I know I've seen the worst.

NE: How did you ever get addicted to meth?

A: The crazy story is I went to a treatment facility for alcohol in 2002 and my wife at the time sold my business to my business partner for a dollar because she had power of attorney and packed up her stuff and split. So the day I got out of the treatment center, there was a big moving van in front of my house. I did have a nice house. I was up and coming, I had been up and coming, I've been written up in the newspaper several times for good things.

She couldn't deal with the intensity of my business. Owning your own catering business is very stressful. I'm a go-getter and not afraid to take risks. We took a few hits, with 9-11 and opening a restaurant. There were times I thought I'd never be poor again, and then I was. She wasn't hip to the business climate. She got scared when I was in treatment. My business partner, who didn't have our best interests in mind, convinced her to sell my interest so that there wouldn't be a debt load.

NE: Tell me what happened at the treatment center?

A: In the treatment center you learn all sorts of stuff, you learn all about other drugs, and I found out about crystal meth. When my wife sold my first business and then with her leaving, I was just devastated. I was so attached to my business. I thought it was everything I was. Instead of coming out of the treatment center clean, I immediately started drinking. Then it turned itself into finding drugs, and then the crystal meth became available. I was looking for cocaine, but the dealer guy sold me crystal meth. He told me it's cheaper and lasts longer.

NE: But didn't you know how addictive it was?

A: I didn't know how addictive it was, no. I was kind of depressed, seriously depressed, and didn't care too much about wanting to live. I thought, who cares? This is making me feel better. I didn't want to feel the pain and I didn't know how to get out of the pain, other than to use drugs. I became disinterested in alcohol and cocaine and I was solely going with the crystal meth. I started a second catering company that was competing with my old one. I still had my old reputation. So I had more investors and business partners willing and able to get going. It was very successful, but the crystal meth took over and it became really clear to my business partners that I wasn't performing.

NE: But doesn't meth make you more productive?

A: It does for awhile. I catered for the TV show Extreme Home Makeover. It was 10-day event; 24 hours a day, and I pretty much did it all. We were serving 500 meals a day for 10 days straight. I pretty much went the whole 10 days and slept two hours a day. I was highly productive, highly productive.

NE: Were you grouchy?

A: Only when I was out of the drug. The thing about crystal meth is, I was on it for two years straight with only six days of not using. There are drugs similar to meth, that help people with ADD and ADHD, and I've been diagnosed with ADHD. So finding crystal meth kind of made me feel like I was normal. I had all this creative energy going on in my head so that a lot of times it was hard to focus. In a strange way, it allowed me to bring things together and focus. It makes you feel like you're large and in charge. It's crazy. It increases libido by 500%, but it can get out of control.

NE: Tell me about the six days you didn't use meth.

A: One was where my drug dealer got deported to Mexico, and the other time, I didn't have enough money to get it together. It was a very tough three days. I was still working, and I had to keep it together. It's challenging. Every cell of your body is craving what you don't have - it's a pain you can't even describe. And all I wanted to do was sleep. You can't keep your eyes open no matter what. It was scary when I caught myself falling asleep while I was driving.

NE: Was it expensive?

A: Not as expensive as cocaine, I guess. My habit was $50 to $100 a day. When I started, it was much less, $25 a day. I started to sell cocaine to keep up with the meth. I tried to sell meth, but I couldn't keep it around to sell. I was getting meth for $330 for a quarter ounce, which is a pretty good price. I tried to buy enough for other people, but I just got in the way.

NE: Who were your fellow smokers?

A: I was leading this weird double life. I would hang out with a bunch of hardcore lowlife drug users -- I put myself in that category as well -- and I also had this peer group that I had from my culinary career who had no idea what I was doing. Those worlds never crossed in the 2 years I was using meth. It's a not very glamorous drug. I was somewhat ashamed. Had I been a big-time coke junkie, who knows?

NE: Did your skin break out? Did you lose a lot of weight?

A: My teeth didn't fall out, never got meth mouth or acne and my blood pressure was good. But I went from 220 to 140 pounds when I checked into the treatment center in Miami. I was very near death, completely malnourished skin and bones. I had stopped exercising; I stopped everything except smoking crystal meth. And I had a new baby on the way. I used right up until after she was born, and then things rapidly fell apart after she was born. It was the universe's way of getting me straight.

NE: So how did it all come down?

A: My partners kicked me out of the business right before the baby was born. They were forcing me out, and I made a fatal error and got mad, F--- you, I'm out of here. You guys suck! They were very intelligent -- they used the old business school ploy to force me out by taking a lot of my creative control away, which is my thing, and I became an employee and I said, Forget this! I'm a highly creative individual, and that's why my companies have done so well. I often find that drug addicts are highly creative and highly intelligent. When I wasn't using, my life was great. The moment I started using, it disintegrated in just two years. It just devastates people faster than anything else.

My girlfriend knew something was up. She was pregnant at the time with my daughter and she also has three other children - it's not as out of the trailer park as it sounds. God bless her, she loved me so much, she didn't want the truth to be what it was. Denial was a good word in that situation. My brother intervened, he is savvy. He told her and said we have to get him some help. As soon as she got hip to it, she pretty much said, you gotta go and get help. At first, I was convinced I had it under control, except I fell from grace.

I sensed an intervention coming on and I told them not to, I didn't want to go through another intervention. That first treatment center was a horrible, horrible experience. I didn't get a lot out of it. They beat you down, make you feel unworthy, an addict, and you'll always be that way unless you do it their way. I thought, forget it. I'll kill myself because I don't want to do this. I didn't want to live without the drug. I just didn't want to feel the pain of being human. I had not learned how to cope as a child. Instead I would just escape. I had finally found the perfect escape. Most addicts don't have the coping skills that other people who don't use drugs regularly have. So we are these crippled adolescents in 40-year-old bodies who stick their heads in the sand.

My brother was very concerned for my life, and he's a spiritual guy, a practicing Buddhist and an alternative thinker. Certain kinds of experiences with drugs can take you back to yourself, before you poisoned your body, to a time of innocence. The whole experience can serve as a reset button. I don't think that drugs and alcohol are necessarily bad, although some people are naturally inclined to be addicts. They can be great teachers, but once we start abusing something, no matter what it is, physically and spiritually it abuses us back. You have to treat these plant masters as if they're spiritual entities.

My brother discovered a psychedelic called ibogaine, an anti-addiction drug which comes from the eboga plant in Africa. He did a lot of research, and thought it was something worth trying. I said, F--- you, I'm not interested, and continued using. I finally submitted -- I wanted to raise my daughter, and I felt I still had something to live for.

NE: But isn't ibogaine banned in the United States? Where did you go for treatment?

A: I went through recovery in Miami through the Holistic Addiction Treatment Center and they have a loose relationship with Dr. Mash (a professor of neurology at the University of Miami and a leading proponent of the drug). The drug was administered in Cancun Mexico and I was there for five or six days.

NE: Tell me what your treatment was like.

A: I was prepped for two days in Cancun and then at 10 a.m. on the morning of Friday, I was given the ibogaine. And then I was under the influence for close to 36 hours, which was an extraordinarily long time, but my body absorbed it. It was too long for me. There were times I thought, Oh god, please let me come down?

There aren't a lot of words for some of the stuff that I saw or experienced, other than I was close to God in so many different ways. It was administered under a very clinical setting -- it was given to me in the form of capsules. I was hooked up to an IV and a blood pressure cuff, and a body temperature sort of deal. I thought, I'm in a safe place. I was with a doctor and two nurses who watched me around the clock. They hooked me up to this machine; I was in a really comfortable bed, the room is completely dark, and I had these eye goggle things, headphones, and an mp3 player with six to eight hours of tribal drumming with some underlying tracks of rhythms that your neuro-pathway responds to.

Dr. Mash is one of the world's leading brain scientists. She's hip to how your brain responds to sound and music. I wouldn't say it was hypnosis. In traditional ceremonies there are similar approaches on a more fundamental level. With peyote, an Indian sits at the door of the teepee and plays a rhythmic drum -- it's slow and it's fast, heavy and then it's light. It helps the person with their journey.

Incredible visions

I started to feel it after 45 minutes; it's a huge body rush. You feel warm, your fingers and toes are tingly, and then it comes on really fast. You can see what your mind is suddenly creating. I created these incredible visions -- so fast that I couldn't process what the experiences were. After awhile, it slowed down. I tell people, with the slot machines, the three columns are spinning at different rates of speed. Within these columns were experiences I remembered, some I didn't know what they were, strange random things. There were these incredible patterns of geometric patterns that I would become, I would look at them and they would change. If I focused on one, I'd get pulled into it, or become part of it. Some of it was childhood trauma that I would re-experience in a peaceful, gentle way. It allowed me to process some of this stuff that I hadn't processed before.

It allowed me to see me, the 8-year-old child, and have compassion for him and kind of tell him he was okay and he was safe in all those things that were not terminal and he could get on with his life. Some of it was random crazy stuff. Like these childhood toys.

We had this thing called a Big Wheel. I was able to ride this Big Wheel and play. When you get on it and peddle really fast and the wheel spun, it was like being a child. I was never scared. Some get scared. I think it's not letting yourself go with the experience.

There are so many people who have profound experiences where someone came to them and said stop using drugs. But that didn't happen to me. I had an overwhelming experience of peace and harmonic connection with myself, the planet and the universe. There were some dark scary moments of things I couldn't describe. Some people see snakes or spiders. I didn't see any of that, but I felt the presence of darkness. I didn't push it away. I hung with it for a period of time and that passed on. Most of my ibogaine experience was in a beautiful bright light with lots of colors. I could smell colors.

Afterwards, I first tried to sleep and I couldn't sleep. I was not tired at all and I was up for another three to four days. You get a huge hit of serotonin. I went back to Miami. I did have some counseling. They let me process it; not everybody at this treatment center opts for the extra credit of ibogaine; I was one of the few people and we kind of stuck together. Some didn't understand taking drugs to get off drugs. But the people that did were of the same mind, and we processed our stuff tighter with a therapist as well. There were six people who opted for ibogaine and they are still not using.

NE: I know that part of the counseling involved being told not to return to your old group of friends who used meth. Was this difficult for you?

A: No it wasn't because of my dual life element. But a lot of people who were with me at the center were doing really good until they went home. Their friends are still using and they fell right back into it.

NE: How much did your treatment cost?

A: The treatment center alone was $21,000 and the ibogaine experience was $5,500. I didn't have any insurance at the time. I was there for in-patient treatment, which included six days in Cancun. We went to a gym, did aikido, yoga, went to a spa every Saturday. Then we lived in this outpatient house, it was reality based. Some centers lock you up and keep you out of the general population. These are called lock-down facilities. With this treatment center, you had to want recovery because you could easily use drugs. There were people who left halfway through and you don't get your money back.

NE: How do you feel now?

A: Dr. Mash has done studies that show our receptor sites are put to pre-drug abuse status after the ibogaine experience. Some of that can be argued because it's just one study, but I know in my heart of hearts that I'm physically and mentally as good or better than I was in my 20s. My body is coming back faster than I expected it to. I'm 175 pounds. I exercise daily, do yoga. I have a couple of dogs, and I'm always busy with them.

I'm not working right now by choice because I can float a little bit longer. I'm going to go back to school and get a degree in herbal medicine, if not go for a natural pathics degree. I'm going to take my culinary background and wrap it with nutritional science and get into the healing field. It's one way to stay on track, and I can help people. Which I'm good at.

Im also going to do some marketing for ibogaine, work as a liaison between Dr. Mash and the treatment facilities on the West Coast. I have to wait another three months. No one is going to take 90 days of recovery seriously. It'll help me stay clean.

NE: Do you have cravings now?

A: I don't ever want to go back to where I was. I don't want to lose my family, my life, the things I created. Every once in awhile when stress hits, or pressure hits, it crosses my mind, but it goes through my head so fast. To think of crystal meth today - what was I doing? What was I thinking? It definitely wasn't me.

Some people don't have as many resources as others. And you pray for them. You see people in the treatment facility and think, oh gosh, they're not getting it. Or there's so much pain. One 19 year-old kid, a world class surfer, he didn't do ibogaine -- his dad was in prison. He grew up with that whole concept, and he admired his dad, but he did things that put him in a place where he went to prison. He started to get it, but he was one of the kids who didn't make it.

NE: Any last words on your recovery?

A: Ibogaine is so important. It's not too good to be true and I'm a living example of it. I/m so lucky to have found it, and I wouldn't be clean without it.

https://www.northernexpress.com/news/feature/article-2192-addiction-to-meth/​

 

[mr peabody]

My ibogaine experience

by David Graham Scott

This is an account of my experiences of the drug ibogaine. At the time I was a long-term user of methadone linctus. I found it impossible to deal with the hellish withdrawal symptoms experienced in trying to come off methadone. I hoped that ibogaine might break my habit once and for all.

On a Thursday night I took a test dose of ibogaine hydrochloride. Edward (my guide) said it was roughly 200mg. After 35-40 mins I could feel the drug start to take effect. I looked at my hand and it seemed so primitive, perhaps Neanderthal. It felt like some form of anesthesia and a distortion of sound and vision were noticed. What I do remember though was an intense connection to the old photographs and toys I'd brought (I thought a connection with my childhood would be healing). It was really a very emotional experience but I was apprehensive as regards taking the full dose the next day. I felt taking 7 or 8 times this dose could kill me but, according to my body weight, that's what it was going to take to end my methadone addiction.

I took the ibogaine at 10:20am on the Friday. I took four capsules to begin with. The fifth Id take later. After about 40 mins I felt a heavy emotional trauma come over me. I grew very apprehensive re the dose and feared that I may die. Edward reassured me. I lay down to let the ibogaine work. Light and sound were being affected. The yellow painted wall opposite me glowed with a burning intensity. I knew that this was going to be a strong experience. The noise of the underground trains became amplified into the sound of a thousand Nazi bombers. I felt the approach of something huge, something menacing perhaps. I called out Bwiti 3 times. The words appeared in my head in large green slimy letters.

The first visions that I experienced when closing my eyes were yellow grids stretching into the empty darkness of space. These stellar grids then took me into another dark and ominous landscape with a particularly eerie resonance. A strange sound permeated the atmosphere, it was like a thousand million aircraft drifting overhead. The hum or resonance permeated the whole experience and I understood this to be an essential component of existence, a binding force that was always there but the ibogaine helped me recognize it. I then felt I was on board a strange spacecraft viewing the landscape before me. Small portraits drifted by of myself as a child. They stopped when I contracted a hellish skin condition at age 17.

This was where my development was seriously affected and I journeyed into heavy depression and low self-esteem. Next a figure that had haunted me for years appeared. It was the Chinese torture victim from Georges Batailles Tears of Eros. This photograph of a young man being systematically sliced to pieces was the most disturbing image I'd ever seen. The text mentioned that a large dose of opium had been administered to the victim prior to the torture. A curiously beatified expression was on the guys face. In my trance state the figure flew towards me in an inset box. He was glowing silver, completely transcended from the torture he was undergoing. The beauty outweighed the horror. I realized then that I too had been a torture victim. I had been torturing myself with opiate addiction.

These are the key moments of the experience. There's a lot of it that I can't recall. The intensity was often overwhelming and it was impossible to take on board all of the information. Ataxia hit me heavily and I found it impossible to walk without help. Jagged lines appeared around lights and the strange resonance permeated my head for a long time after the visions ended.

I was a little sick and went to bed. I didn't feel great but it wasn't withdrawal at least. I felt I was being cured of my addiction.

It took me about 3 days to start walking properly again. I did have residual withdrawal symptoms but it was nothing I couldn't handle. I'd say it cleared 85% of the rattling. There was no way I'd feel this good if I'd tried to come straight off methadone. I didn't have much strength over the following 2 weeks but its gradually coming back. It's now the 15th day since I used to take methadone and I feel really good. Ibogaine has ended my addiction. The anguish of depression has been vanquished, I am whole again!

*From the article here :

Strange Lenses: An Interview with documentarian David Graham Scott | GonzoToday

An interview with BBC documentary filmmaker and former opiate addict David Graham Scott by GonzoToday contributor C.A. Seller.

gonzotoday.com

 

[mr peabody]

Addicts turning to ibogaine as a last resort

by Stefanie Cohen

After suffering from anxiety and depression, freelance writer Stefanie Cohen sought help at an ibogaine clinic similar to the one where banking heir Matthew Mellon had received treatment and was about to check into again before his death last week. Cohen found the results so effective, she worked for a time for the Ibogaine Institute, writing web copy for the center. Here, she tells what it’s like taking the drug and why so many people are turning to it for help…

I’ve been running through a gauntlet of people for the past four hours, answering questions, laughing at jokes, getting spit on, hit on, and molested. At every turn there’s another person who wants something from me. Some shout. Some whisper so quietly I can barely hear them. And their faces and bodies keep morphing, too — they get fat and thin and tall and short all within a matter of seconds. My parents are there, somewhere, and my sisters, too, but I can’t find them right now because a giant man with six faces is coming right for me.

None of these visions are real. I’m actually lying on my back with a heart monitor taped to my chest in an ibogaine clinic in Rosarito, Mexico. Earlier in the night I swallowed three pills of ibogaine — an alkaloid derived from the African Tabernanthe iboga plant — and I’m in the middle of what feels like the most demented fever dream my mind could possibly imagine. Which is exactly what it is.

Last week, the banking heir Matthew Mellon died on his way to an ibogaine clinic in Cancun, where he was to receive treatment for his $100,000-a-month OxyContin addiction. He reportedly died before he checked into the center, which he had been treated at in the past. Although he was not receiving ibogaine therapy when he died, his passing has brought attention to the plant medicine, which has been used as a remedy for opioid addiction since the 1960s. Every year, more and more desperate Americans hooked on heroin and pharmaceuticals like OxyContin flood to clinics in Mexico and other countries to receive the cutting-edge addiction treatment. Ibogaine is illegal in the US, but it’s unregulated in many other countries, including Mexico.

I found myself at the Ibogaine Institute in Rosarito not because I was addicted to heroin, but because I was anxious and depressed and couldn’t figure out why.

I’d been working as a journalist in New York for years, having climbed every ladder I thought I was supposed to climb, but found myself leaning against the wrong wall. I was drinking way too much and waking up each day wishing I hadn’t. I felt like I had lost touch with my soul, so I quit my job and went in search of it. But what followed was even worse — a year of not working with no idea what I was going to do with my life.

I’d taken Xanax to calm me in the past, but it was only masking the problem. I wanted to dig out.

I decided to seek out alternative cures, so I went to a conference on psychedelic science in Oakland last April, where doctors and researchers shared the most cutting-edge science on the subject of psychedelics and mental health. I was fascinated, but I wasn’t feeling any better. So when a man came up to me in the hotel lounge and asked what was wrong, I surprised myself by being honest. “I am filled with anxiety and I don’t know why,” I said.

“You know,” he responded, “ibogaine can treat that.”

I had heard about ibogaine and its positive effects on people suffering from heroin addiction, but the man explained it can be used to treat other issues, too. He explained that one “flood dose” of ibogaine can reset the neural pathways in the brain, breaking the destructive thought patterns that keep a person locked into bad habits. The man, Scott Ankeny, explained that he ran an ibogaine clinic near Tijuana and I should come do a treatment and write about it.

I couldn’t imagine anything more anxiety-fueling than the thought of flying to a rehab in Tijuana to take a psychedelic plant. But Ankeny kept in touch with me, and a month later, when I was in a particularly bad state, I figured I had nothing to lose.

So in May of last year, I checked myself into the Clinic. Consisting of a few connected houses on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, it didn’t feel like a clinic. The other patients were from all over the country and they seemed really happy, considering where we were. I, meanwhile, was nervous and wondering if I’d made a huge mistake.

A month’s stay at the institute includes not only ibogaine, which adherents claim detoxes the body and mind, but also a rigid schedule of classes meant to teach new coping skills to handle stress without turning to drugs. Yoga was offered daily, along with qigong, an ancient Chinese system of breathing and movement. An acupuncturist visited a few times a week. Everyone was expected to attend therapy and AA sessions. The clinic made full use of other alternative medicines, too. A week after the ibogaine session, patients would be given 5-MeO-DMT, a psychedelic made from the venom of a desert toad that, when smoked, brings on an emotional and often deeply spiritual experience. And a week after that, they would also take part in three ceremonies administering ayahuasca, a hallucinogen used for therapeutic and spiritual insights. The whole program was designed by Ankeny (who has since left to work with another clinic) not only to detox but to heal the body, mind and spirit.

In between classes, patients talked about movies, life, their families, their sadnesses. Laughter rang through the houses all day. But some were also angry. Getting clean, seeing what damage they’d caused to themselves and others was painful.

When I first arrived, I was given an EKG to make sure my heart could handle ibogaine because one of its side effects is that it can slow the heart to a point where heart failure, especially among those with an abnormal heartbeat, is a possibility. I wasn’t at risk, but nonetheless every patient is hooked up to a heart monitor throughout the treatment.

Five days into my stay, I was led to a room with a bed where a nurse hooked me up to an IV so I’d receive fluids and nutrients before treatment while she explained the procedure.

I was told I’d take three pills and a little bit later I’d begin to see swirling patterns on the ceiling, which meant the medicine was in my system. The actual trip would begin when I heard a buzzing noise, she said. An ambulance was parked outside the clinic and a paramedic would be on hand throughout my treatment, just in case.

I lay down, put on my blindfold, and said a prayer. While I waited, I heard a motorcycle pull up behind the house. Then another. I called the nurse over. “Why is there a motorcycle gang outside?” I asked. She smiled. “There’s no gang,” she said. “That’s the medicine kicking in. That noise is inside your own head.”

It was so loud, I couldn’t believe it. Moments later I saw two giant wooden doors descend from the ceiling. Slowly they opened. I left the bed and floated through them. The trip had begun. Then I was in the gauntlet of people, a looping maze that went down at first, and then up, endlessly. I must have talked to 1,000 people that night.

After what I’m guessing was about six hours, the medicine finally wore off. I had hardly moved, although I asked the nurses later and they told me that I was talking out loud at some points and laughing even. I sat up, took off my blindfold and felt .?.?. clear. My head, normally filled with so many racing thoughts, was completely quiet.

"Researchers are not entirely sure how ibogaine works. One theory is that it may suppress an enzyme that causes the flu-like symptoms associated with opioid withdrawal," said Dana Beal, a science writer and ibogaine expert. "It may also regenerate cells damaged by drug use."

In addition, ibogaine-induced hallucinations reportedly help users see their lives in a new way, allowing them to understand what caused them to use in the first place.

But there are risks involved. There are no hard numbers, but University of California, San Diego, researcher Thomas Kingsley Brown, who studies ibogaine, estimates that about 30 people have died from taking the medication for opioid addiction since the 1960s, when it was found to treat heroin addiction.

“The majority of ibogaine-related deaths are cardiac-related, generally involving preexisting cardiovascular disease or problems with electrolyte levels often caused by poor nutrition, which drug users often have,” said Kenneth Alper, a psychopharmacologist at NYU who studies ibogaine. “Meaning, many of these risk factors are to a great extent preventable,” he said. “Appropriate screening, preparation, monitoring during treatment and personnel trained to deal with cardiac issues are needed when administering the plant medicine, but even in that perfect world you may still have fatalities.”

At the same time, addicts have to weigh the risks of ibogaine treatment against the dangers of heroin and other opioids. According to data released this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug overdoses in the US have increased by 13.3 percent from August 2016 to August 2017, and now total 67,344 deaths per year. Drug overdoses now kill more people than gun homicides and car crashes combined. The vast majority of those overdoses are caused by opiates, said Alper.

Kingsley Brown estimates that, conservatively, about 12,000 to 15,000 people have undergone ibogaine treatment in the West since 1962. There are roughly 80 clinics worldwide, he said. Others believe the number of patients is much higher. But everyone agrees the use of ibogaine as a treatment is growing exponentially as the opioid epidemic explodes. Meanwhile, 15 percent of the Ibogaine Institute’s clientele are people suffering from depression and anxiety, said Thom Leonard, who now runs the clinic.

“Ibogaine does bring with it a serious risk and should never be taken lightly,” Leonard said. “But with the proper screening and testing carried out, that risk drops to an acceptable level. And if you look at the fact that the average life expectancy of an IV drug user is somewhere around 6 years and overdose has taken over as the No. 1 cause of accidental death in the United States, it starts to become clear that the minimal risk involved in undergoing an ibogaine treatment done in a safe setting by a reputable provider is the least dangerous choice an addict can make.”

A study by Alper and Kingsley Brown published last year in Mexico found that among the 30 addict participants, 50 percent reported no opiate use one month after ibogaine treatment and 33 percent reported no use after three months. According to the results of that study, ibogaine’s rate of success is higher than traditional anti-addiction medications, like methadone and suboxone, which only 15 to 25 percent of addicts said led to no opioid use four to six weeks after stopping treatment, according to Alper.

People do relapse after ibogaine treatment. Many return to their lives only to be tempted to use again by the same triggers that got to them before. But it’s different, said one former patient who asked not to be named. “Ibogaine isn’t a cure,” she said. “I can say that for me, I could never put more than a few days sober together for 28 years. After ibogaine, I’ve used heroin one time this year. I also didn’t enjoy it, and I immediately asked for help and am sober again now.”

Kevin Franciotti’s oxycodone habit turned into heroin addiction in 2010 while he was a student at Northeastern. He claims the ibogaine he took at a clinic in Mexico in 2011 stopped his addiction, at least for a time.

When the inevitable craving for a fix came, he wanted to call his dealer. “Previously it would be off to the races, no fighting it,” he said. But this time he thought, “I’m going to wait five minutes to make this phone call.”

Five years later, he did have a relapse. But after about six months, he pulled out of it. He credits ibogaine with a fundamental life change that allowed him to be open-minded enough to go through 12-step recovery. Now 31, he is at The New School, getting a master’s in clinical psychology.

Almost one year after ibogaine treatment, I can also attest to the plant’s positive effects. I’m calmer now and more naturally drawn to nicer, more loving people. I guess maybe I’m nicer and more loving myself. I still have moments where my brain kicks into high gear, filled with thoughts it has no business thinking. But I can control them better now.

But my experience is nothing compared with my fellow patients at the clinic. While there, I saw addicts walk in ashen and grey, their cheeks hollow, their eyes dull. After treatment, they smiled. They gained weight. Their eyes sparkled. And many have since turned their lives around.

Jeremy Shank, 43, of Seattle, is one of them. After battling a heroin addiction for 12 years while living on the streets and “welcoming death,” he has been clean since visiting the Ibogaine Institute in April last year and is now a college student.

“I’d like to say that these plant medicines gave me back my life,” Shank told me. “But really I can’t say that, because this is so much better than the life I had before.”

https://nypost.com/2018/04/21/is-a-m...-to-addiction/​

 

[mr peabody]

Ibogaine Can Erase Addiction ‘Virtually Overnight’



The addiction crisis continues to claim lives and devastate communities. A little-known powerful psychedelic called ibogaine has been touted for its remarkable ability to erase years of addiction and withdrawal in just one session. But ibogaine remains illegal in the U.S., causing thousands of Americans to cross borders into places like Mexico and Brazil to receive treatment.

WSJ visits a clinic called Ambio Life Sciences in Tijuana, Mexico, to follow one patient's journey through this intense and unorthodox treatment.​

 

[mr peabody]

Can This End Addiction for Good?



In West Virginia, one of the states hardest hit by the addiction crisis, neurosurgeon Ali Rezai is pioneering a new, non-invasive approach to treating addiction. Using highly focused beams of ultrasound, his team at the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute targets the specific regions of the brain hijacked by compulsive behavior. This modulates neural circuits without surgery, without drugs, and without a single incision. Patients who have struggled with addiction for decades — including opiods, methamphetamine, and binge eating — describe striking results.

 

[mr peabody]

Ibogaine blocks the cravings and withdrawal symptoms of many types of drugs

"Its effects are pretty dramatic," says Dr. Kenneth Alper, an associate professor of psychiatry at New York University who specializes in addiction research. "I've observed this firsthand, and it's difficult to account for."

Dr Alper was among the attendees who gave a presentation on the benefits of ibogaine to the Catalan Ministry of Health. Dr Alper believes ibogaine's most likely path to prominence in the United States will be as a medication for meth addiction, for the simple reason that doctors and treatment providers have found that small daily—and thus drug-company-friendly—doses seem to work better for meth addiction than the mind-blowing "flood doses" used on opiate addicts. Alper says no one thought to try non-hallucinogenic quantities of ibogaine until recently. Ibogaine treatment providers tend to have been former ibogaine users, and most assumed that the introspection brought on by tripping was key to overcoming their addictions. "That's just how it evolved," he says, noting that the large doses do seem to work best for opiate detox.

"You're talking about a drug that has been used in less than 10,000 people in the world in terms of treatment. It's not surprising that's how it evolved. The visions have some psychological content that is salient and meaningful," Alper adds. "On the other hand, there is no successful treatment for addiction that's not interpreted as a spiritual transformation by the people who use it. It's the G-word. It's God. We as physicians don't venture into that territory, but most people do."

Recently Wilkins has been experimenting with small daily doses of ibogaine for people with heart conditions or other health problems that make the "flood dose" unadvisable. The non-hallucinogenic regimen seems successful, she says, citing the case of Ron Price, the former bodybuilder, in particular. Price first came to Tijuana for ibogaine in 1996 and has been back six times, including his October stay. "Every time I feel like I'm getting out of control, I come here," he says, his voice a gruff mumble. "The very first time, I had a bit of visuals. It's supposed to take six months to get off methadone. With this it was one day. It was incredible. I haven't had a craving for methadone since then."

That first time, Price took a "flood dose," enough to keep him tripping for hours on end. During this stay, Wilkins started him off with a tiny dose and gradually increased the amount he ingested each day. At the same time, she was weaning him off Oxycontin.

"We reduced your Oxy dose from 240 milligrams to 120 milligrams, in what, two weeks? That's great!" she says encouragingly. "He was fantastic," she adds proudly. "He developed a routine in his day. He was getting up and watering the garden, and not staying in bed and watching TV. He was walking the dog and wanting to go out—he was eager to go home, not scared."

Now, seated at the kitchen table, Price reflects on what has been most helpful during his time in Mexico. The ibogaine lessened his cravings for drugs and alcohol, he says, but eventually the effect will wear off. "It's no magic thing," he says pensively.

"It's creating good habits and creating a support system. Ibogaine strips you of the cells and walls you build up for yourself. It allows you to go AA meetings — which I'll do when I get home. At least it gives you a fighting chance to make your own decision."

http://archive.seattleweekly.com/hom...129/story.html​

 

[mr peabody]

“A vast, uncontrolled experiment” — Ibogaine, 10 years on

by Loren DeVito, PhD

Nearly 10 years ago, I stepped out on a Saturday night to meet a friend for a movie in Davis Square. The movie, I’m Dangerous with Love, was playing as part of a special event. As I settled into the Somerville theater, I wasn’t quite sure what I was in for, or how this documentary would end up informing me of a revolution in medicine to come nearly a decade later.

Living dangerously: clandestine healing

The film followed Dimitri Mugianis, a former musician and recovering addict, as he bounced back and forth between his NYC base to treat people across the nation and in Canada. While the opioid epidemic is all around us in 2019, back then, the vernacular of addiction was still relegated to those taking illicit drugs like heroin. With no medical training, Dimitri set out to heal those addicted to drugs with an alkaloid from a traditional plant native to West Africa: ibogaine.

His clandestine healing sessions intrigued me immediately. This former rocker who treated his addiction using this very method was traveling to people’s homes to administer a plant that, in the majority of cases, almost immediately “cured” people. As a neuroscientist-in-training, every cell in my brain lit up.

How could this plant be so effective? How could no one in the West have heard of this “miracle”?

I watched captivated as Dimitri administered the plant, cared for people as they went through agonizing, albeit, brief detox. Then, as they awoke, he talked them through their new life. Of course, not everyone was able to maintain their abstinence long-term, but most people in the film did get a chance to live without drug dependency for a significant amount of time.

Nevertheless, this treatment was not without harm. In fact, ibogaine can cause severe cardiac side effects, which is extremely dangerous when treating people without a medical license at their homes with a drug that is not exactly mentioned in medical textbooks. After one such case, Dimitri realized he was treating patients without proper knowledge of the plant in its entirety. Therefore, he set out to Gabon to learn more about how the plant is traditionally used to better inform his practice.

After a brief discussion following the movie, I left the theater buzzed. As a good little scientist, I immediately pulled up PubMed (the science version of Google) when I got home to search for studies on ibogaine. While there were many studies using preclinical models, I could find very little information for its use in humans.

I filed ibogaine away as one of the cool things I would study when I had my own lab and could start pursuing (funding permitting) my own research passions, and that’s where ibogaine sat for many years—a paper in the accordion file of my brain—that is, until a few years ago.

Pharmacology of an ancient root

One night, I happened upon a study while numbly scrolling through social media. Researchers found that ibogaine enhances neuroplasticity in the brain. “I knew it!” I exclaimed to no one.

My heart started to race, and images appeared of the movie I had seen years before. Could this be how ibogaine helps people rapidly recover from addiction?

The part of the film that really struck a chord involved a scene with a woman who had taken ibogaine. The day after her treatment, she reported feeling as though her senses were “renewed”: Food tasted different, colors were brighter, and everything had changed overnight.

Neurogenesis occurs in the hippocampus, a part of the brain essential to memory and the region I happened to be studying in graduate school, as well as the olfactory regions in adults. The woman’s report following ibogaine made me think of neurogenesis and neuroplasticity immediately because a supply of new neurons and connections flooding the brain would likely cause these perceptions. Of course, I still didn’t know the first thing about the chemical properties of ibogaine, so I got to work.

Getting to know ibogaine

Ibogaine comes from the roots of Tabernanthe Iboga, a shrub native to West Africa. Lower doses are used to help alleviate fatigue, while higher doses are used in religious ceremonies. Noribogaine is the drug's active metabolite.

Ibogaine works by inhibiting the reuptake of neurotransmitters (brain chemicals), including serotonin, which may induce hallucinogenic experiences similar to other psychedelic substances. As I accidentally discovered one night, ibogaine also contributes to neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself when presented with new information.

A preclinical study showed that ibogaine increases glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor, a substance that promotes the survival and differentiation of cells in the brain. Additionally, noribogaine changes the structure of brain cells, affecting how they interact with other cells.

Clinical studies have found that a single oral dose of ibogaine can significantly reduce cravings for cocaine and heroin, as well as symptoms of depression, for up to 30 days following treatment. While long-term effectiveness of the treatment varies, a survey of patients who received ibogaine treatment in Mexico showed that 30 percent abstained from opioid use for up to two years, with 41 percent reporting abstinence for more than six months, across a three-year follow-up period. There is also some evidence that ibogaine may help those with alcohol addiction.

A blocked path to progress

While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) entertained the idea of approving a clinical trial for ibogaine in 1993, they decided against it due to safety concerns, despite the fact that people were getting treated in droves at clinics outside the U.S.

In 2005, a few years before the movie came out, the director of anti-addiction drug development at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) referred to ibogaine as a "vast, uncontrolled experiment"—a pretty accurate description then—but times have changed.

Traditional medicines like cannabis and psilocybin finally started to hit the mainstream (i.e., in the West) a few years ago and are making significant strides toward legalization through rigorous clinical trial studies. Essentially, we are finally realizing their potential after thousands of years of anecdotally documented benefits.

Flash-forward to today, and we now have quite a surplus of data on ibogaine. In fact, a current search on ibogaine produces more than 450 hits, a far higher number than when I originally started on my expedition. Yet, it still begs the question of the true effectiveness of ibogaine and, most importantly, its safety.

Unsafe unknowns

While ibogaine remains illegal in the U.S., people continue to travel to clinics throughout the world in an attempt to break the cycle of addiction. Despite a decade of additional research, safety concerns remain significant.

Ibogaine treatment can be deadly. Administration of the drug can cause serious cardiac effects since ibogaine decreases the heart rate. Unfortunately, these effects can come on quite quickly. While a small clinical trial identified the time it takes to clear a small dose of ibogaine from the body, additional study is needed to better understand how to safely dose ibogaine.

While there is evidence that low-dose administration of ibogaine can effectively reduce withdrawal symptoms and cravings, it’s not possible to guarantee the safety of ibogaine treatment. People who take ibogaine do so at their own risk. Ibogaine remains an illegal substance in the U.S., so, is there any hope for ibogaine? Yes, with more research, of course.

A Phase 2 clinical trial is currently underway evaluating ibogaine for alcohol addiction. MAPS has conducted two observational studies in Mexico and New Zealand. U.S. state legislators are also proposing new bills to fund research for ibogaine, and one Republican lawmaker in Iowa just filed a state bill to legalize its medical use.

Ten years later and there is still a lot of work to be done, but I’m Dangerous with Love opened my eyes to the immense potential of using an ancient plant to solve a modern health crisis, and for that, I thank you, Dimitri.

https://prohbtd.com/a-vast-uncontrol...10-years-later​

 

[mr peabody]

Ten years of therapy in one night

In 1962, Howard Lotsof, a 19-year-old heroin addict in New York, was given iboga by a chemist, which he tried for kicks. After consuming the bitter rootbark powder, he experienced a visionary tour of his early memories. Thirty hours later, when the effects had subsided, he found that he had lost all craving for heroin, and he had no withdrawal symptoms of any kind.

He then gave iboga to seven other addicts, and five stopped taking drugs immediately afterwards.

In 1985, Lotsof patented the ibogaine molecule for the purposes of addiction treatment, but could not get his treatment approved. In the interim years, ibogaine had been declared, along with LSD and several other psychedelic molecules, an illegal "schedule one" substance, with potential for abuse and no medical value. Although it found dedicated support among a ragtag group of countercultural activists and left-over Yippies, in 1995 the National Institutes of Health discontinued research into the substance, and pharmaceutical companies have since ignored it, perhaps due to low profit potential.

But now, interest in ibogaine is growing rapidly, passing a "tipping point" through a combination of anecdotal evidence, underground activism, journalism and scientific research. Articles have appeared in US publications ranging from the authoritative Journal Of The American Medical Association (Jama) to the populist Star. The Jama piece, Addiction Treatment Strives For Legitimacy, described the drug's stalled and tortured path through the regulatory agencies, noting that the treatment's frustrated supporters in the US have set up an "underground railroad" to give addicts access to the drug: "While unknowable scores of addicts continue ingesting ibogaine hydrochloride purified powder - or iboga whole-plant extract containing a dozen or more active alkaloids - few trained researchers witness the events."

The Star took a more colourful approach: "Rare Root Has Celebs Buzzing" it said, trumpeting the treatment as the hot ticket for "the numerous celebs who look for relief from their tough lives, a needle or prescription drugs." The article insinuates that "some of our favorite A-listers" not only get cured but enjoy the hallucinations as an illicit "fringe benefit." Outside the US, new clinics have opened in Mexico, Canada and Europe, offering reasonably priced, medically supervised opportunities to try ibogaine as a method of overcoming addiction.

Iboga is the sacred essence of the religion of the Bwiti tribe of Gabon and Cameroon. Most members of the tribe ingest it just once in their lives, during an initiation ceremony in which massive amounts of the powdered bark are consumed. Through this ritual, they become a baanzi, one who has seen the other world. "Iboga brings about the visual, tactile and auditory certainty of the irrefutable existence of the beyond," wrote the French chemist Robert Goutarel, who studied the Bwiti. The iboga bark's visionary power is produced by a complicated cocktail of alkaloids that seems to affect many of the known neurotransmitters, including serotonin and dopamine. Its complex molecular key may lock into the addiction receptors in a way that resets patterns and blocks the feedback loops that reinforce

In an essay on ibogaine's anti-addictive properties, Dr Carl Anderson of McLean Hospital, Virginia, speculated that "addiction is related to a disrupted relationship between the brain's two hemispheres, and that ibogaine may cause 'bi-hemispheric reintegration.' " Ibogaine also accesses REM sleep in a powerful way - many people need considerably less sleep for several months after an ibogaine trip.

Six years ago, I became a member of the Bwiti. I had heard about ibogaine in an anarchist bookstore in New York. On a magazine assignment, I went to Gabon and took iboga in an initiation ceremony. It was one of the most difficult, yet rewarding, experiences of my life. I had heard the substance described as "10 years of psychoanalysis in a single night" but, of course, I did not believe it. As the tribesmen played drums and sang around me until dawn, I lay on a concrete floor and journeyed back through the course of my life up to that point, witnessing forgotten scenes from childhood. At one point, I had a vision of a wooden statue walking across the room and sitting in front of me - later, I was told this was "the spirit of iboga" coming out to communicate with me.

My Bwiti initiation was complicated by a belligerent, greedy shaman who called himself The King and demanded more money from us before, during and after the ceremony. The King was also dissatisfied with the visions I described, and threatened to keep feeding me more iboga until I reported more impressive sights. The initiation, which lasted more than 20 hours, was ultimately liberating. At one point, I was shown my habitual overuse of alcohol and the effect it was having on my relationships, my writing and my psyche. When I returned to the US, I steadily reduced my drinking to a fraction of its previous level - an adjustment that seems to be permanent.

Recently, I tried ibogaine for a second time. I took it at the Ibogaine Association, a clinic in Rosarito, Mexico. I had been contacted by a heroin addict who had been inspired to take ibogaine after reading the book I wrote about my experiences: three months after his first treatment in Mexico, he was still clean - after a 12-year dependency. He told me, "Your book saved my life." He had given Dr Martin Polanco, the clinic's founder, a copy of my book, and he had offered me a free treatment. I was curious to see how the experience would differ away from its tribal context. My new friend wanted to take it again to reinforce the effect. We went down together.

Polanco estimates that his clinic has treated nearly 200 addicts in its first 18 months. About one third of those patients have managed to stay clean - either permanently or for a considerable period; many have returned for a second treatment. "Ibogaine needs to be much more widely available," Polanco says. "We still have a lot to learn about how to administer it, how to work with it." He does not think iboga is a cure for addiction, but is convinced it is a powerful tool for treatment - and, in some cases, it is a cure. He plans to set up several non-profit clinics. "This is something that should be non-profit," he says. "After all, it is a plant. It came up from the earth. It does give you some guidance. It shows you how you really are." He chuckles. "That can be scary."

The Ibogaine Therapy House in Vancouver, British Columbia, opened last November. "So far, we have treated 14 people quite well," says Marc Emery, the clinic's founder and head of the BC Marijuana Party. "They all say that their life has improved." Emery, nicknamed the "Prince of Pot", is funding the free clinic with proceeds from his successful hemp seed business. "Ibogaine stops the physical addiction without causing withdrawal," he says, "and it deals with the underlying psychological issues that lead to drug use."

Emery estimates that treatment for each patient at the clinic costs around $1,500, which includes two administrations of the drug. "When I found out about ibogaine, I felt that someone should be researching this, but the drug companies aren't interested because there is no commercial potential in this type of cure." Neither he nor Polanco is too concerned about ambiguous studies on ibogaine's toxicity. As the Jama article noted, "One reviewer wrote that the drug's toxicology profile was 'less than ideal', with bradycardia [an abnormally slow heartbeat] leading the list of worrisome adverse effects."

"From the masses of reports I have studied, a total of six people have died around the time they took ibogaine," says Emery. "Some were in poor health, some took other drugs at the time of their treatment. That doesn't scare me off. I have a lot of confidence in ibogaine."

At this stage, with little scientific study, the true toxicology of ibogaine is impossible to determine - the treatment is unlicensed in other countries and illegal in the US. The decision whether or not to take such a risk is entirely personal. Emery notes that his clinic screens for heart problems and other medical conditions that might contraindicate the treatment. It also gives patients small daily doses of iboga for two weeks after their initial treatment. "Iboga tends to make anything bad for you taste really crappy. If possible, we want our patients to quit cigarettes at the same time. We think that cigarettes can lead people back to other addictions."

Emery notes that nobody has so far criticised the project, and he is seeking support from local government. "Iboga tells you to change your ways or else - it goes over all of your health and personal issues. It is like the ghost of Christmas past."

Randy Hencken drove us from San Diego to the Ibogaine Association. A 25-year-old former heroin addict who had kicked the habit after two ibogaine treatments at the clinic, he was now working for the association, going to local methadone centres with flyers and keeping in contact with former patients. The first treatment costs $2,800, including an initial medical examination and several days' convalescence afterwards, but subsequent visits are only $600 - and it seems most addicts need at least two doses of ibogaine to avoid relapsing.

"The Ibogaine Association is in a quiet, dignified house overlooking the Pacific, decorated with Buddhist statues and yarn paintings from Mexico's Huichol people. I was given a medical examination by Polanco and a test dose of the drug. Twenty minutes after ingesting the test dose, I started to feel nervous and light-headed. As I took the other pills - a gel-capped extract of the rootbark powder - I realised I was in for a serious trip."

"The nurse led me back to my room. My head already spinning, I lay back on the bed as she hooked me up to an electrocardiograph and headphones playing ambient music. Why was I doing this again? Ibogaine is no pleasure trip. It not only causes violent nausea and vomiting, but many of the "visions" it induces amount to a painful parading of one's deepest faults and moral failings. I had a loud, unpleasant buzzing in my ears - the Bwiti probably pound on drums throughout the ceremony to overwhelm this noise. With my eyes closed, I watched as images began to emerge like patterns out of TV static. I saw a black man in a 1940s-looking suit. He was holding the hand of a five-year-old girl and leading her up some stairs. I understood that the girl in the vision was me and that the man represented the spirit of iboga. He was going to show me around his castle."

While startling at the time, such an encounter with a seeming "spirit of iboga" is a typical vision produced by the Bwiti sacrament. In many accounts, people describe meeting a primordial African couple in the jungle. Sometimes, the iboga spirit manifests itself as a "ball of light" that speaks to the baanzi, saying, "Do you know who I am? I am the chief of the world, I am the essential point!" Part of my trip took the form of an interview that was almost journalistic. I could ask direct questions of "Mr Iboga" and receive answers that were like emphatic, telegraphed shouts inside my head - even in my deeply stoned state, I managed to scrawl down in my notebook many of the responses.

I asked Mr Iboga what iboga was. I was told simply: "Primordial wisdom teacher of humanity!"

Later, my personal faults and lazy, decadent habits were replayed for me in detail. When I asked what I should do, the answer was stern and paternal: "Get it straight now!"

This ideal of straightness, uprightness, kept returning during the trip - a meaningful image for me, as I suffer from scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. When I was shown other faults that seemed rather petty and insignificant, I tried to protest that some of these things really didn't matter. Iboga would have none of it, insisting: "Everything matters!"

Iboga told me that I had no idea of the potential significance of even the smallest actions. I reviewed some events in my life and my friends' lives that seemed bitterly unfair. Yet, in this altered state, I felt I could sense a karmic pattern behind all of them, perhaps extending back to previous incarnations. Iboga affirmed this, dictating: "God is just!"

To many readers, these insights may sound trivial. They did not feel that way at the time. They were delivered with great force and minimalist precision. While they might have been manifestations of my own mind, they seemed like the voice of an "other." I never think in such direct terms about "God", and "primordial wisdom teacher" is not my syntax.

During the night, I had numerous visions and ponderous metaphysical insights. At one point, I seemed to fly through the solar system and into the sun, where winged beings were spinning around the core at a tremendous rate. Up close, they looked like the gold-tinged angels in early Renaissance paintings. Perhaps due to my recent reading of the Austrian visionary Rudolf Steiner, this whole trip had a kind of eco-Christian flavour to it. At one point, I thought of humans as an expression of the Gaian Mind, the earth's sensory organs and self-reflective capacities, at the planet's present state of development. If we are changing quickly right now, I considered, it is only because the earth has entered an accelerated phase of transformation, forcing a fast evolution in human consciousness.

The loud buzzing sound that ibogaine produced seemed to be something like a dial tone, as if the alkaloid were in itself a device for communicating on a different frequency than the usual one. Thinking of my girlfriend and our child, I realised that I was lucky - "You are lucky!" Mr Iboga echoed. I felt tremendous, tearful gratitude that I had been given a chance to live and love, to explore and try to understand so many things.

As so often these days, I pondered on the terrible state of the world - wars and terrors and environmental ruin. I saw sheets of radioactive flame devouring cities, huge crowds reduced to cinders. I asked Mr Iboga if this was going to be the tragic fate of humanity. The answer I received was startling - and reassuring: "Everything is safe in God's hands!"

As ludicrous as it may sound, this message has stayed with me and alleviated much paranoia and anxiety. While tripping, I decided that Mr Iboga was a form of enlightened mind, like a buddha who had chosen a different form, as a plant spirit rather than human teacher, to work with humanity, imparting a cosmic message of "tough love". At one point I asked if he would consider incarnating as a person, and the answer I got was, basically, "Already did that!" - implying that, in some previous cycle, he had passed through the perilous stages of evolution we are now navigating. I also came away from this trip with the suspicion that iboga was the original inspiration for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Biblical tale. The plant's placement in equatorial Africa, cradle of humanity, would support this idea, as well as its sobering moral rectitude. The "good and evil" that iboga reveals is not abstract but deeply personal, and rooted in the character of the individual.

Late in the night, I retched and vomited out bitter rootbark residue. I put on a CD of African drumming. Closing my eyes, I watched a group of smiling Bwiti women dance around a jungle bonfire. After that, the visions died down, although it was impossible to sleep until late the next night.

My friend in recovery had a less visionary experience. His faults were also paraded in front of him in repetitive loops that seemed endless. At one point, I heard him scream out, "No! No! No!" He saw a possible future for himself if he didn't kick heroin - becoming a dishwasher, sinking into dissolute old age with a bad back and a paunch. He asked what he could do to help save the world. He was told: "Clean up your room!" Meditating on his experience later, my friend quipped, "Ibogaine is God's way of saying, 'You're mine!' "

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/sep/20/booksonhealth.lifeandhealth​

 

[mr peabody]

Ibogaine treatment is a game changer

by Kevin Garcia | Psychedelic Times

Ibogaine is a plant psychedelic extracted from the root bark of Tabernanthe iboga, a shrub found in central Africa. In the U.S., ibogaine is listed as a Schedule I drug, meaning it is considered to have high abuse potential and no medical value. In New Zealand, Mexico, the Bahamas, Canada, Australia, Spain, Brazil, Costa Rica, and South Africa, ibogaine treatment is currently used in clinical and medical contexts for treating substance use disorders (SUD).

The largest observational study to date evaluating the efficacy of ibogaine treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) was recently published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Psychedelic Studies. The study, published in September 2017, enrolled 88 former patients with chronic opioid use (75 percent had used 4 years or more) who had previously received ibogaine treatment at the Treatment Center in Mexico between 2012 and 2015. The collaborative study, conducted by members from the John Hopkins Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit, and the Yale School of Medicine, shows promising evidence for ibogaine as a treatment for people struggling with opioid addiction.

The study found that the majority of individuals experienced a drastic reduction or elimination of withdrawal symptoms, and 41 percent reported sustained abstinence from opioids at the time of survey, being opioid free for at least 6 months or more. The authors found that about one third of participants reported never using any opioids again after ibogaine treatment. In this one third that reported never using opioids again, at the time of follow up, 54 percent had maintained abstinence for at least 1 year and 31 percent had been abstinent for 2 or more years. Although 48 percent of the full sample reported a lapse or relapse after treatment, they reported decreased consumption from pretreatment levels.

The results of the study are very encouraging when compared to traditional opioid maintenance therapies (OMT) and considering the magnitude of the current national opioid crisis. 66% of the sample of ibogaine patients had previously attempted treatment with Suboxone, and 42 percent had tried methadone, the most common forms of OMT. In contrasting ibogaine to mainstream approaches to addressing addiction, 85 percent said that looking back they would have made the same decision to take ibogaine again and 71 percent indicated that ibogaine was “much better” compared to other treatments they had tried.

There are no published controlled clinical trials to investigate ibogaine as a therapeutic medicine, and clinical data is limited to two open label case series, both of which show that a single dose of ibogaine significantly reduces opioid withdrawal symptoms in most patients. Ibogaine is not expected to be legalized in the U.S. any time soon, but considering the urgency of a suitable treatment for opioid misuse, the tides may change in the coming years. After learning of the benefits of ibogaine treatment, more and more individuals are seeking to raise awareness regarding the future of ibogaine research and treatment in the U.S.

https://psychedelictimes.com/harm-re...-game-changer/​

 

[mr peabody]

Iboga, Ibogaine and Harm Reduction*

by Ryan Rich | psychedelic.support | 15 Jun 2021

Iboga and ibogaine can be healing but at times dangerous. Iboga and Ibogaine harm reduction helps to make this therapy safe and effective.

Ibogaine is an alkaloid naturally found in the Tabernanthe Iboga shrub. The inner root bark of this shrub, called Iboga, has been used for thousands of years in the West-African Bwiti tradition. The Bwiti use Iboga in rituals for physical healing, spiritual healing, and spiritual discovery. However, in modern times, both forms are used outside of the Bwiti context for their many healing benefits. The most popular being the treatment of addiction, as Iboga is particularly effective for opioid addiction. Therefore, the scientific world is just now catching up with Iboga’s promising healing potential in the treatment of Parkinson’s, PTSD, and trauma.

As a result of all this exciting new information and the often high cost of treatment, some may feel compelled to try to take Iboga, Ibogaine, or Iboga TA (total alkaloid extract) on their own. We DO NOT recommend this. Thus, it is our recommendation to always work with an experienced team for everything from microdosing Iboga to a full-on Ibogaine Detox.

Iboga, ibogaine and harm reduction

So in the context of Iboga and Ibogaine harm reduction, we worked with our own medical team at Root Healing to write this article. So, the purpose of this article is to go over the physical contraindications, drug interactions, and proper preparation for a safe, therapeutic experience with Ibogaine. Keep in mind that following the strategies for harm reduction does not dismiss the need for medical supervision during the treatment. Therefore, make sure to always work with an experienced team including physicians and Bwiti-trained experts.

Iboga, when taken with an experienced team and proper screening, is very safe. Many retreat centers, like ours, work with Iboga in the traditional Bwiti way, but also work with a medical team ensuring proper screening and safe ceremonies. The screening process is one of the most important aspects of our work.

Ibogaine, the chemical extract of Iboga, is more dangerous and requires stricter medical protocols. Consequently, most of the reported incidents and fatalities were with Ibogaine (not Iboga) and could have been prevented with a qualified team.

Above all, using Iboga or Ibogaine without proper preparation and supervision is dangerous and must be avoided. So at the very least, please consider these things:

Physical risks and contraindications

Heart conditions

The main organ that can be negatively affected by ibogaine therapy is the heart. That’s because ibogaine’s metabolite, called noribogaine, blocks some of the ion channels in the cardiac muscle, which regulate the normal rhythm.

More specifically, those are the potassium ion channels called Kv11.1. They are commonly inhibited as a side-effect by many prescription medications, including antiarrhythmics, anti-psychotics, and certain antibiotics.

So this results in slower repolarization of the heart and increased risk for a life-threatening arrhythmia called Torsades de pointes. The blockage of the potassium channel is never permanent. The duration of the effect depends on the half-life of the medication, which in the case of Ibogaine is 28-49 h.

Slower repolarization can be detected as a prolonged QT-interval via a regular electrocardiogram (ECG). Thus, an ECG performed by a medical doctor is one of the mandatory tests before an Iboga treatment.

Reasons for a long QT interval may include medications, inherited genetic conditions, malnourishment, loss of electrolytes, and chronic cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure.

If you have any heart disease or another contraindication that may prolong the QT interval, then this therapy may be contraindicated. Factors which prolong the QT interval are concerning, as Ibogaine will further slow down the repolarization leading to potentially fatal consequences.

To sum up, there are few fatalities related to Iboga use. According to the medical records, all of the patients have been chronically ill or took contraindicated medications.

We strongly recommend getting an ECG/EKG and sharing the results with your doctor or an experienced team prior to taking Ibogaine.

Liver conditions

The negative effects on the heart can be increased if Ibogaine is not effectively neutralized by the liver. This can occur due to hepatitis, cirrhosis, or another condition that impedes liver function.

Normal hepatic function is imperative for safe ibogaine therapy because the liver enzymes, called CYP450 2D6, have the main role in neutralizing the alkaloid.

Diseases or medications which hinder the function of the enzymes can lead to increased bioavailability of Ibogaine. This results in prolonged exposure and elevated serum concentrations of the alkaloid. This increases the risk for severe side effects and arrhythmia.

People with chronic liver diseases are at a particularly increased risk. Likewise, there are reports of fatalities after ibogaine use in patients with liver cirrhosis.

Thus, liver function tests are another mandatory element of the preparation for ibogaine treatment. Your hepatic panel includes information for liver enzyme levels, serum proteins, coagulation, and other useful biomarkers of liver injury.

Taking care of your liver health is crucial before a treatment. You must abstain from drinking alcohol for at least a week before your Iboga therapy. If you are a chronic drinker or addicted to alcohol, please consult with your doctor prior to any retreat on how best to detox.

Drug interactions

The QT interval and CYP450 2D6 enzyme are commonly affected by many prescription medications. If you are taking a drug that affects either or both of them, it must be tapered off before Ibogaine treatment. Otherwise, it will significantly increase the risk for adverse reactions.

For example, antidepressants such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) block the 2D6 enzyme and prolong the QT-interval, which makes combinations with ibogaine extremely dangerous.

Similarly, other medications which block CYP450 2D6 and prolong the QT-interval include:​

• Antidepressants (not only SSRIs)​
• Antiarrhythmics​
• Antifungal​
• Antihistamines​
• Quinine (Antimalarial)​
• Antipsychotics​
• Some antibiotics​

So patients with an addiction to opioids or stimulants require a specific tailored treatment that takes into consideration these drugs and their effect on the liver. Narcotics and medications which mainly affect the liver metabolism by blocking the 2D6 enzymes are:​

• Anti-HIV​
• Cannabidiol (CBD)​
• Antacids​
• Opioids and methadone​
• Cocaine and stimulants​
• Beta-blockers​
• Antiemetics​

In addition, benzodiazepines and other medications that depress the nervous system must be safely tapered off prior to any treatment. Talk to your doctor before discontinuing any medications. Some drugs have a rebound effect, which means your symptoms might get exacerbated and dangerous if you stop taking them abruptly. Your physician will provide you with information on how to taper off them properly.

To sum up, keep in mind that these lists are not exhaustive and any medication you are taking might have unknown contraindications. Thus, make sure to consult with a medical professional or experienced team beforehand and report all medications you have taken recently.

Dietary recommendations

Fasting is strictly prohibited before ibogaine treatment. Patients who are fasting, or suffer from eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia, are at an increased risk of prolonged QT due to electrolyte imbalances.

People who have recently had digestive symptoms such as vomiting or diarrhea are also at an increased risk.

Several foods and drinks can block the CYP450 2D6 enzyme and slow down the liver metabolism of ibogaine breakdown, leading to elevated concentrations and side effects. Those are grapefruit, pomelo, and their juices.

Quinine-containing drinks such as tonic water and bitter lemon are also contraindicated. They must be avoided in the days before ibogaine treatment to minimize the risks for side effects.

Summary of physical contraindications

In short, the main physical contraindications against ibogaine treatment include factors that might slow down the repolarization of the heart and block the detoxification systems of the liver. These factors are:​

• cardiovascular conditions​
• liver conditions​
• drugs and medications​
• certain foods and beverages (incl. alcohol)​

In conclusion, while Iboga and Ibogaine can be a safe and effective treatment, for the reasons outlined above, we do not recommend doing it without an experienced team.

*From the article here :

Iboga and Ibogaine Harm Reduction Psychedelic Support

Iboga and ibogaine can be healing but at times dangerous. Iboga and Ibogaine harm reduction helps to make this therapy safe and effective.

psychedelic.support

 

[mr peabody]

Ibogaine - A Brief History

Ibogaine is derived from an African plant that has psychedelic properties called Tabernanthe iboga.

The native peoples of West Africa have used this iboga root, in the form of a tea, to induce spiritual awareness. It has been the core of their spiritual ceremonies for centuries.

However, in the 1960s, Ibogaine, extracted from the iboga root, was found to interrupt addiction.

While experimenting with different substances Howard Lotsof, who at the time was a heroin addict, discovered that ingesting Ibogaine eliminated his withdrawal symptoms and his body’s dependency on heroin.

After this realization, he began treating many of his friends who were also heroin addicts with the same results—they were able to overcome the horrible symptoms of withdrawal and almost immediately break free of opioid dependence.

To Lotsof, this was a massive discovery, and he spent the rest of his life studying Ibogaine and its effects on the addicted brain.

In order to understand exactly how Ibogaine works we need to take a look at the brain and exactly how addiction affects it.

How ibogaine works

As an alternative to enduring this extended period of painful detox, many addicts turn to Ibogaine. Ibogaine targets the area of the brain associated with addiction. By “resetting” the brain, Ibogaine is able to renew the neurons and pathways back to their pre-addicted state.

For the addict, this means that Ibogaine eliminates 80% or more of all withdrawal symptoms almost immediately after the dose is taken.

This means that Ibogaine can often offer addicts not only a fresh take on addiction treatment, but also a holistic method of detoxing quickly without the pain of withdrawals.

According to Mental Health Daily, “The most notable potential benefit is that a single dose of Ibogaine could lead to long-term suppression of opiate/opioid cravings such that former opioid/opiate users are able to maintain abstinence for an indefinite duration.”

But if ibogaine is so effective at treating addiction, why isn’t it available in the USA?

Freedom from addiction

Ibogaine can help the brain return to its naturally balanced state much faster than waiting for the body to recover on its own. But it is not a cure and it will not force an addict to stay clean.

Freedom from addiction to drugs and alcohol is a lifelong process that requires a different approach for each person. Ibogaine, combined with a rehab or aftercare program, can often be one of the most promising treatment options, especially for those who have tried other treatment programs with little or no success.

Ibogaine can help the brain return to its naturally balanced state much faster than waiting for the body to recover on its own. But it is not a cure and it will not force an addict to stay clean.

Freedom from addiction to drugs and alcohol is a lifelong process that requires a different approach for each person. Ibogaine, combined with a rehab or aftercare program, can often be one of the most promising treatment options, especially for those who have tried other treatment programs with little or no success.

With new discoveries being made in alternatives like Ibogaine, there’s more hope for long-term sobriety than ever before. Every addict deserves a chance to live a sober and successful life. There are many treatment options available and Ibogaine is just one of them. Each addict must educate themselves and find the right treatment for them.

https://www.psychedelicadventure.net/2017/12/ibogaine-therapy-and-opioid-epidemic.html
​

 

[mr peabody]

The evidence for ibogaine: What new studies tell us about ibogaine for addiction treatment

Over twenty years ago, former heroin addict and scientist Howard Lotsof filed a series of patents for something he called Endabuse, which he saw as a universal, accessible addiction treatment. This alternative addiction treatment was none other than ibogaine, the active chemical in the traditional West African psychedelic iboga.

Lotsof's own experiences revealed ibogaine's potential to treat addiction to opiates, cocaine, amphetamine, alcohol, nicotine and tobacco. Following his efforts, in 1991, the National Institute on Drug Abuse decided to include ibogaine on the list of drugs to be evaluated in the treatment of drug dependency, and we are finally seeing the rewards of this decision in today's robust research results. Here's a look at some of the recent and upcoming research in the field of ibogaine for addiction treatment.

A recent study from Brazil gives us excellent evidence that Lotsof was right. For this study, a team of scientists looked to a private substance abuse clinic in Brazil, a country where ibogaine is unregulated. This clinic treats addiction to many substances, including cocaine/crack cocaine, alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, or a combination of these. The clinic refers its patients to a private hospital where a trained physician oversees an ibogaine treatment. In this treatment, the physician provides emotional support to the patient but otherwise avoids influencing his or her experience.

After treatment, patients returned to the clinic for psychological therapy. In the follow-up, most patients received a second ibogaine dose. Some got even more in following sessions, up to nine doses. Though the clinic knew its treatment was effective, the goal of this study was to crunch the numbers for the clinic, who kept meticulous data, to find out just how big those effects were.

So far, most ibogaine research has focused on opiate addiction to substances like heroin. This study is the first of its kind to look at how well ibogaine works for patients addicted to a variety of substances rather than just opioids. The data shows just what we would expect, if we consider what Lotsof and many contemporary experts say: the ibogaine treatment was very effective. An impressive 61% of the clients were completely abstinent after eight months, and they had longer average periods of abstinence with multiple treatments.

This is very significant compared to the typical rate of 26% after psychotherapy alone. Abstinence was easier for most people after they underwent the ibogaine treatment, the average length of abstinence patients could achieve before the treatment was only two months, even as full-time residents of an addiction clinic. The vast majority of patients had tried other, non-psychedelic treatments without success. Most reported that the ibogaine sessions were essential to their recovery.

The study also attested to ibogaine's safety. There were no ill effects in any of the 75 patients other than what we'd expect during ibogaine treatment, like nausea and confusion. Despite the sometimes unpleasant sensations, not a single patient complained about the treatment (though four patients were critical of the psychotherapy they received).

The future of ibogaine research for addiction

The study from Brazil gives us great data, but only for the outcome of abstinence. Effective addiction treatment requires deep changes in outlook, and it will be important to study the measurement of that directly. In the future, we may see research that shows that ibogaine is effective not just at reducing drug use but also to improve self-efficacy, psychosocial functioning, emotional effect, and quality of life.

Fortunately, two studies sponsored by MAPS are in the works now in Mexico and New Zealand. In addition to measuring how long former addicts stay clean after ibogaine treatments, these studies will also assess general quality of life conditions like employment, social relationships, feelings of depression, and changes in emotional intelligence. Though they are still gathering data, preliminary results show a remarkable 20 to 50% rate of abstinence on follow-up a year later. This is another stark contrast to the clinical results of many conventional treatment options, the success rate of Suboxone-assisted opiate addiction treatment, for instance, drops to 8.6% once the Suboxone is discontinued. Unlike replacement treatments, a single dose of ibogaine, if fully integrated into a patient's mindset, is effective for a very long time.

The growing evidence for the efficacy and safety of ibogaine treatment, not just for opiate addiction but alcohol, cocaine, crack cocaine, and even marijuana, comes as a boon to those suffering from many forms of addiction. There are strong implications that it has the potential to treat behavioral addictions as well such as gambling addictions. If you or a loved one is struggling with addiction, these new studies add to the growing list of reasons to consider ibogaine treatment at a professional clinic. It is important to note that these had access to extended inpatient treatment or another form of continuing care after ibogaine treatment. Ibogaine is not a magic bullet by itself. For truly effective healing, a recovery coach or professional is useful to help integrate the singular, visionary experience it provides.

https://psychedelictimes.com/iboga/...ll-us-about-ibogaine-for-addiction-treatment/​

 

[mr peabody]

Can a psychedelic from Africa cure addiction?
​

by Stephanie Hegarty | BBC World Service

Since the 1960s a disparate group of scientists and former drug addicts have been advocating a radical treatment for addiction - a psychedelic called ibogaine, derived from an African plant, that in some cases seems to obliterate withdrawal symptoms from heroin, cocaine and alcohol. So why isn't it widely used?

For nearly 15 years, Thillen Naidoo's life was ruled by crack cocaine. Growing up in Chatsworth, a township on the outskirts of Durban in South Africa, he was surrounded by drugs.

After a troubled childhood and the death of his father, he turned to cocaine.

Though he held down a job as a carpenter and could go for days or even weeks without a hit, his wild drug binges often ended in arguments with his wife Saloshna and sometimes even physical abuse.

By the time he met Dr Anwar Jeewa at the Minds Alive Rehab Centre in Chatsworth, Naidoo had tried to quit several times and failed. "Those were dark, dark days," he says.

Jeewa offered a radical solution, a psychedelic drug used in tribal ceremonies in central Africa that would obliterate his cravings.

But Naidoo was anxious. "I didn't know what this ibogaine thing was," he says. "I never expected it to work."

After several medical tests he was given the pill.

A few hours later he lay in bed, watching flying fish swarm above his head. He felt the room move around him and a constant buzz rang in his ears. Scenes from his childhood flashed up briefly before his eyes and each time someone approached to check he was OK he felt a rush of fear.

The psychedelic effect wore off overnight but for the next few days Thillen was in a haze. When he returned home a week later, he realised he no longer craved cocaine. Six months later, he is still clean.

He attends a therapy group two days a week, where he learns the skills necessary to maintain a lifestyle without drugs.

"My mind has shifted now from what I used to be," he says. "I can look back at my childhood and deal with those issues without sobbing and feeling sorry for myself."

Jeewa estimates he has treated around 1,000 people with ibogaine but it remains largely unacknowledged by the medical mainstream.

The drug, derived from the root of a central African plant called iboga, had been used for centuries by the Bwiti people of Gabon and Cameroon, as part of a tribal initiation ceremony.

But it wasn't until 1962, when a young heroin addict called Howard Lotsof stumbled upon ibogaine, that its value as an addiction treatment was uncovered.

Lotsof took it to get high but when the psychedelic effects wore off, he realised he no longer had the compulsion to take heroin. He became convinced that he had found the solution to addiction and dedicated much of his life to promoting ibogaine as a treatment.

As far as scientists understand, ibogaine affects the brain in two distinct ways. The first is metabolic. It creates a protein that blocks receptors in the brain that trigger cravings, stopping the symptoms of withdrawal.

"Ibogaine tends to remove the withdrawals immediately and brings people back to their pre-addiction stage," says Jeewa. With normal detox this process can take months.

Its second effect is much less understood. It seems to inspire a dream-like state that is intensely introspective, allowing addicts to address issues in their life that they use alcohol or drugs to suppress.

Howard Lotsof's early campaign had little success and ibogaine was banned in the US, along with LSD and psilocybin mushrooms, in 1967.

In most other countries it remains unregulated and unlicensed. Lotsof set up a private clinic in the Netherlands in the 1980s and since then similar clinics have emerged in Canada, Mexico and South Africa.

These clinics operate in a legal grey area. But a small group of scientists is still working to bring ibogaine into the mainstream.

In the early 1990s, Deborah Mash, a neuroscientist and addiction specialist at the University of Miami, came upon the work of Dr Stanley Glick, a scientist who had researched the effect of ibogaine on rats.

Glick hooked rats on morphine, an opiate painkiller, by allowing them to self-administer it through a tube. He then gave them ibogaine and found they voluntarily stopped taking morphine.

Around the same time, Mash was contacted by Howard Lotsof. They began working together and in 1995 secured full approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate its potential in humans.

But these tests cost millions of dollars, and Mash applied for five separate public grants but each one was declined.

Usually, this money would come from big pharmaceutical companies but drugs like ibogaine offer little potential for profit.

It only has to be taken once, unlike conventional treatments for heroin addiction such as methadone which is a substitute and addictive itself.

"One very cynical reason they are not being developed is that there is no patent on these drugs anymore so there is no pharmaceutical company involvement," says Ben Sessa.

Pharmaceutical companies make money by patenting new chemicals but ibogaine is a naturally occurring substance and is difficult to secure a patent on.

It also comes with some risks. Ibogaine slows the heart rate and when administered to rats in very high doses, it has been proved to damage the cerebellum, a part of the brain associated with motor function.

There are 10 deaths known to be associated with the drug and its unregulated use has prompted some horror stories. Online forums are littered with stories of unscrupulous practitioners administering ibogaine in hotel rooms or in the patient's home with no medical support.

One alcoholic says he paid $10,000, and it didn't work at all. His respiration was not monitored and he didn't have any physical or psychological check-ups beforehand.

"The 'visions/trip' were so excruciating I never wanted to be altered again. I felt I was near death during the trip because I was having trouble breathing."

Ibogaine also has something of an image problem, says Glick.

"It has too much political baggage associated with it. By the time everybody became aware of it there was already scepticism because this was not something that came from a drug development programme."

After failing to get funding, Mash opened a private clinical research centre on the island of St Kitts in the Caribbean in 1996. There she collected data on 300 addicts detoxed through ibogaine.

She says all patients showed an effect on their addiction, 70% went into remission for several months and many for years. The clinic's first two patients are still drug-free 16 years later.

"Cocaine addiction is a terrible addiction," she says. "Getting people off crack? Good luck. We did it, we were able to break out intractable addicts."

Determined to bring the treatment to more people, Mash is now working with the private sector to create a version of the drug that will be more attractive to pharmaceutical companies.

She is working to isolate noribogaine, a substance created by ibogaine in the liver, which she believes is responsible for inhibiting cravings, taking away the psychedelic effect. But she continues to push for research into the whole drug.

Glick doesn't believe noribogaine will ever be approved in the US. "If for no other reason than that it is too closely related to ibogaine," he says.

He is developing an alternative but he regrets that significant testing into ibogaine has never been done.

According to a psychiatrist and addiction specialist, Dr Ben Sessa, the timing for this research could finally be right.

The past two years have seen the first scientific study published into the use of MDMA on trauma victims and psilocybin for psychotherapy, and a similar study into LSD is expected this year.

"Radical options are needed," says David Nutt, head of the UK's Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, but he maintains some scepticism about so-called wonder cures.

"The history of medicine is littered with people doing interesting, challenging things, but when you do proper control tests they reveal a massive placebo effect," he says.

What is needed, he says, is a single blind study in which one group of addicts takes a standardised dose of the drug and another group takes a placebo, both followed by a full 12-step detox treatment plan. He estimates that would cost about $2.37 million.

Clinicians like Jeewa would like to see the drug licensed but says people need to understand its limits.

"Once you have a patient that is drug free and whose brain is back to its full potential then you can help them change their lifestyle," says Jeewa.

"Ibogaine helps to interrupt addiction but it's not a cure or a magic bullet," he says. "It has to be taken in the right setting and treatment has to be followed up with psychosocial care."

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17666589​

 

[mr peabody]

Psychedelics in Addiction Recovery

by Michelle Janikian | Psychedelics Today

The recovery community is huge and diverse, but the thing most members of AA and NA subscribe to is the complete abstinence from all mood-altering substances. Yet, there’s a small and controversial movement within the community that looks to loosen the strict boundaries of sobriety by allowing for the intentional use of psychedelics.

In clinical trials with classic psychedelics like psilocybin, a high dose, monitored entheogenic experience with clinical support is being shown to help people break addictive relationships with substances like alcohol, tobacco, and cocaine. For example, at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, clinical psychologist and researcher, Peter Hendricks, and his team are finishing up a study on psilocybin-assisted therapy for cocaine addiction, and their preliminary results are quite striking. Although they haven’t completed their data collection yet, Hendricks says they have looked at the first 10 participants, six of whom received psilocybin and four a placebo. And those who received the magic mushroom compound used cocaine much less frequently than those who received the placebo following their dosing session.

Hendricks believes the psilocybin group received greater benefit because of the vast insight the psychedelic experience gave them, specifically regarding their own cocaine use. “There seems to be this change in mindset, this very specific realization that ‘my cocaine use has had a very negative impact on the people I love. And the people I love are what’s most important to me. That’s what life is all about. And I can’t let my behavior continue to impact the people I love. So I am committed to stop this,’” describes Hendricks. “In the back of their mind, there’s this sense that I’m going to get back into it [sobriety]. I’m going to be abstinent. I’m going to make a change, no matter what I have to do.”

On the other hand, many in the placebo group reduced their cocaine use, but still “continued a certain pattern of use,” says Hendricks, rather than the extended periods of abstinence and drive to stay sober they saw from the psilocybin group. “I don’t know that it’s ever really a reasonable goal that someone would stop using any given substance and never ever use again, but we want to reduce as much as we can,” says Hendricks. “And if there are lapses or bumps in the road that those lapses would not turn into a full-blown relapse where folks return to their previous use patterns.”

Although taking psilocybin in a clinical trial context is a bit different than taking mushrooms at home or out in nature, the insight psychedelic experiences provide, including the lasting motivation to prevent relapse, is a major reason folks in recovery are turning to psychedelics. Danielle Negrin, Executive Director of the San Francisco Psychedelic Society and Founder of the “Psychedelic Recovery” support group in the Bay Area explains most of the participants in her group are looking to sustain their sobriety from certain substances that cause them the most harm – like meth, opioids, or alcohol – in a practice called “targeted abstinence.” And they’re curious if psychedelics could be a part of that.

“I think that psychedelics can highlight really how harmful other substances and those behaviors can be and help us look introspectively at our lives and at our past to really reflect on the actions that we were taking and help us wake up to the fact that we are addicts and alcoholics and that recovery from that is possible,” explains Negrin.

Kevin Franciotti, who’s involved in a similar group on the East Coast, Psychedelics in Recovery, that’s now mostly an online community, tells me many members of his group are seeking out psychedelics for similar reasons. Although he couldn’t get into too much detail to protect folks’ anonymity, he says psychedelics have been helpful for people in recovery for a number of reasons, including “cultivating a conscious contact with a higher power of their understanding, which is a key component of 12 step recovery. And admitting powerlessness and then seeking the guidance from a trusting and loving power greater than oneself.” Franciotti also says he’s heard of a member using mushrooms for deeper insights into AA “step work.” For example, when it’s time to make amends with the people in their lives who they hurt with their addiction and related behaviors, they go to a mushroom trip to help them realize who else they might have hurt that they’re forgetting.

Yet even though intentional psychedelic use can seem like a good compliment to recovery, bringing this stuff up at an AA or NA meeting is risky. Most members of the program won’t want to hear it, it’s not an accepted part of the program, regardless if AA Founder Bill Wilson had life changing LSD experiences, and so could get you ostracized from recovery communities. But that’s why groups like Psychedelics in Recovery are so important, to give a support network to folks who are trying to navigate this delicate and controversial landscape.

A new non-profit in the psychedelic community, Project New Day, is looking to support these recovery groups. Founded by Mike Sinyard and Allison Feduccia, PhD, Director and Co-Founder of Psychedelic.Support (a psychedelic integration resource), they’re inspired by psychedelic experiences helping folks overcome their addictions, and want to give back to that community. For their first order of business, they created an advisory board of four clinicians and five people who are already involved in psychedelic recovery support groups, including Negrin and Franciotti.

Feduccia says their next step is to create tangible materials, like pamphlets, for folks that go to these support groups and their family members who might be concerned about using one substance to get over another. They’re also planning on helping these support groups develop exercises they can engage participants in, as well provide referrals to clinicians for group members with more severe issues. Overall, Feduccia says they want to establish and promote best practices for such groups, and then help to promote them to a wider audience. She explains part of the plan is to expand Psychedelic.Support to include more support groups and to allow reviews. They’re also planning on providing grants to people who want to start these types of groups in their area, and to eventually expand beyond talking circles to more nature-based integration groups, like hiking or biking together.

“We’re just really in that phase of [exploring], what does the community need? How can we provide resources, information, connection to other people in a way to advance these groups?” says Feduccia. “We’re thinking of it as a way of modernizing an AA type program, which is really abstinence-based. We want to make this a little bit more inclusive for people as these [psychedelic-assisted] treatments become more readily available.”

And a modernized, more harm-reduction focused approach to AA is desired by many in the community. Either because they find AA to be too restrictive, or like in the case of Ethan Covey, photographer and co-Founder of the Psychedelic Sangha group in NYC, they get the help they need from AA, but eventually outgrow it and are ready to move on. In Covey’s case, after four and a half years of following the program, he felt confident that his mind-set and lifestyle had changed enough – away from his destructive addictive behaviors that opioids caused him – to cautiously dip his toes in psychedelic waters for personal and spiritual growth. Perhaps, psychedelic experiences could augment his new sober lifestyle. “I really felt like I learned the lessons that I needed to learn [regarding my own addictive behaviors]. And I started questioning whether the appropriate response to that was just to continue to check off time,” he says.

Covey explains, to get to that point, he really needed those four and half substance-free years to work on himself and change his lifestyle. “But as years went by doing that, I got to a point where I became very confident in my ability to not do the things that I know I shouldn’t do.” For Covey, that means maintaining an opioid-free, and for now, alcohol-free lifestyle. While telling me this story, he’s super cautious and stops himself more than once to tell me, “This is very difficult to talk about because I most definitely don’t want to say that my experience is what anyone else would experience, you know?”

And he’s right, everyone who struggles with addiction and substance misuse/abuse is on their own very individual journey. While consciously augmenting sobriety with psychedelics might work for some, it certainly doesn’t for others. For example, even though Franciotti is passionate about psychedelics in recovery, and has helped to write safety guidelines for such use, he tells me he’s not currently using psychedelics (or any substances) since his last relapse in 2018.

Ibogaine in a clinical setting helped to get him clean, but a few years later, he helped to organize an ibogaine conference in Mexico where he would have the opportunity to take a low dose. He debated with himself for months leading up, and at the same time, was going through a period of distance from his recovery community. So when the iboga opportunity fell through at the last minute, he instead spontaneously took an unknown amount of LSD in what he sees now as impulsive drug-seeking behavior and a “fear of missing out.” Even though he considered that LSD experience to be reckless and he tried to adhere more closely to an abstinence approach afterward, it was a catalyst to beginning a full-blown relapse. Not long after, he purchased a kilo of Kratom because he heard the DEA planned to ban the substance and that eventually led him back into the arms of his problem substance: opioids.

This type of narrative is a main concern for folks who attend Psychedelics in Recovery groups, that psychedelic use is considered a relapse or can push them over the edge back to the substance that causes them the most problems. Or, another related fear that Negrin points out, that they’ll replace one substance with another, like get off prescription anti-anxiety or depression meds, only to become reliant on microdosing psychedelics.

There’s also some concern around the addictive potential of psychedelics. Unlike other substances, classic psychedelics like magic mushrooms aren’t really considered addictive because they don’t promote compulsive use like opioids, meth, or alcohol. Plus, with most psychedelics, you can’t really use them to numb yourself and escape your problems like other substances. Instead, many psychedelics offer a deeper dive into those feelings, or a new perspective on your deeply held beliefs, and that can be too uncomfortable to dive back into day in and day out.

Yet that’s not to say people can’t develop problematic relationships with psychedelics. Not to stigmatize any substance further, but there’s definitely cases of people developing problematic relationships with LSD, MDMA/ecstasy, and Ketamine, particularly. But people can become “addicted” to all sorts of things, including food, sex, sugar, exercise, shopping, stealing, gambling, the list is endless. It really depends on the person and how they’re actively engaging these dopamine-releasing activities. And that’s another reason why support groups specifically for psychedelics in addiction recovery are so important, to help people navigate this tricky landscape and hold themselves and each other accountable.

If you’re in active recovery or addiction and this resonated with you, everyone I spoke to for this story recommended really checking in with yourself before engaging in any psychedelic use and taking a harm reduction approach. So be honest with yourself on your motives or intentions for use, and seek ample community support. Whether that’s your sponsor, close friends, family, partner(s), or support groups like Psychedelics in Recovery (or a combination of all of the above), because honesty, openness, and community are crucial to avoiding old, problematic, addictive behavior patterns. But psychedelics aren’t for everyone, so really do your homework before embarking on any kind of chemically-induced journey, and always practice safe use.

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