I speak from nothing but personal experience but every single case of ibo treatment has ended in almost immediate relapse. IMO you don't work for it so its doesn't really lead to the personal growth it requires to quit using.
Never used it my self but know a hand full who have done the whole rigmarole.
And I speak from experience as a massive heroin habitted junkie: if you don't want to quit, no amount of 12-stepping, therapy, methadone or suboxone maintenance, magic bullets, or ibogaine will 'cure' you if you don't want to quit.
I think that you explained a lot that you may not even be aware of yourself with the term 'rigmerole'. The connotation of that term is that of a lengthy and/or complex procedure for what one believes is not worth the effort. It implies going through the motions. So I would guess that your fiends may not have been well-suited to ibogaine because they were probably unenthusiastic about it, because it means making an effort to quit. And viewing ibogaine specifically as a 'cure' as many do (not necessarily speaking of you or your friends from here on) rather than an incredibly valuable tool in the toolkit we must take up if we wish to stop using will almost certainly result in failure as well. 'Cure' implies passive participation: you eat ibogaine and suddenly your problems are all gone. That's not how it works.
If however you have already made the independent decision to quit, and you truly in your heart of hearts *want* to quit, then I have no doubt that ibogaine can be a truly stupefyingly effective *treatment* (not cure). If you're just going through the motions though and you still want to use, then it's no surprise you'd relapse. In fact I'd hesitate to even call it relapse if you've had your heart set on using the whole time; instead of relapsing I'd say instead that you merely experienced a period of involuntary sobriety, relapse implying that you are upset about having broken your willpower and made a mistake by using again. If you never wanted anything other than to use, then your mindset never changed, and you're not upset about having used again. You'd be thrilled in fact.
Some people balk at the idea of taking a drug to stop using drugs, like fighting fire with fire. But humorously enough when fighting the wildfires out west in the US the teams *do* use fire to combat fire, by pre-burning with controlled burns so as to deprive the main conflagration of fuel. And likewise we use methadone or suboxone to quit using heroin, so ibogaine is actually an improvement over methadone or subs should one's mind be unable to otherwise wrap itself around the idea of drugs to stop using drugs, because ibogaine is a one-time thing, perhaps with booster doses some weeks later, instead of a daily regimen of opiate receptor agonists/antagonists.
Ultimately nobody can sober you up other than *you*. If you choose to use ibogaine in the course of seeking sobriety, then you will probably be successful to some extent or another. If you don't really have dedication to the cause, then I don't doubt that you'll return shortly to using the warm fuzzy pleasure.
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Slightly more on the original topic, I expect that it isn't heard about much simply because it is hard to find. It's also a heavy duty trip, and should be performed with a sitter. Since it takes several days it'd be difficult for those with jobs or families or both to find the time even if it were freely available. And while we all surely espouse the 'always use a sitter' thing for any trip (actually I don't recall ever having suggested that, but I could be wrong), I expect the vast majority of us are only accompanied by other people when they are in fact tripping too. I doubt many of us practice what we preach in regards to a sitter in other words.
But with ibogaine, it really *is* imperative to have a sitter should your trip be one of the very rare occasions where medical problems arise. So not only would you have to find the time, you'd have to somehow coordinate schedules with another seriously experienced psychonaut (any less than seriously experienced and I don't think you ought to be fucking with ibogaine) so that you have a capable sitter. Then there are the material and special requirements: a calm, likely dark room, windows blacked if necessary, with food and water close at hand should the need arise, near as possible to a bathroom, where you can be comfortable and won't be disturbed, and this all has to last for several days just in case your disorientation does last that full period of time.
I mentioned that the sitter should be there in case you're one of the very rare cases where medical issues come up, but I think that psychological issues coming up may be the much more likely danger. Additionally, those potential medical issues are very real, even if they are very, very uncommon. So not that many people will knowingly use such a potentially dangerous substance for recreational purposes, emphasis on 'knowingly', NBOMes being considered dangerous at improper doses (and indeed most ibogaine medical issues are from improperly calibrated doses) in my mind, but with most people either remaining ignorant of the potential or dismissing it as unrealistic with the NBOMes. That may be possible with such a shallow, worthless class of drugs (for me personally, since I get no mindfuck at all) but ibogaine will not let you disregard its seriousness so easily.
In short, I just don't think that it is a practical thing to trip on for most people, and for those that are suitable for ibogaine (not necessarily addicts such as myself) it is inordinately expensive and is not to be engaged in lightly, limiting its 'recreational' potential. And I don't care how much somebody wants to go on about the healing qualities of deep personal introspection on ordinary psychedelics: that is a perfectly valid thing to do, and something that I myself engage in, but introspection should not be held up as 'the reason' to trip because there's *always* a recreational aspect to psychedelic use, so lets be honest with ourselves about that. Ibogaine doesn't fit so well with that recreational concept.
Even if I were not a heroin addict trying to get up the courage to quit I would still want to experience ibogaine at least once in my lifetime. An experience this unique should not be missed or passed up willingly – provided that you have the mental fortitude to withstand it and are eminently confident in your ability to navigate psychedelic headspaces – but by the same token should not be engaged in lightly either.
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