Drug Addiction | +70 articles

[mr peabody]

Talking ibogaine research for opioid addiction with Thomas Kingsley Brown*

By Jordan May | Psymposia | 12 Dec 2017

Thomas Kingsley Brown, PhD, studied the long-term outcomes of people who received ibogaine for the treatment of opioid addiction. We talked about the results. Read the full series.

Thomas Kingsley Brown began conducting research on ibogaine treatment for drug dependence in 2009, when he carried out interviews with patients at a clinic in Tijuana, Mexico. In 2010, he began an observational study with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) on the long-term outcomes for individuals who received ibogaine for the treatment of opioid addiction. The study was published in 2017.

Psymposia had the opportunity to speak with Kingsley about his work. Specifically, we explore the methodology and outcomes of the study with MAPS, ibogaine’s mechanism of action, and we pick his brain about the future of ibogaine research and ibogaine’s non-psychoactive analog, 18-MC.​

Thanks for talking with us. So, when did you first hear about ibogaine?

I didn’t know about ibogaine before 2008. A friend of mine was working as a counselor at one of the clinics in Baja, California, and she started talking to me about it. She actually was the one who got me into the research, because she knew I was interested in psychedelics. She introduced me to Rick Doblin at Burning Man one year, I think in 2008, and about a year later MAPS was looking for somebody to do their ibogaine study in Mexico. I was well situated here and I had already started doing interviews with people at the clinic in Tijuana. That was Pangea Biomedics, where Clare Wilkins is director. Anyways, I said, “Well, I’m here in San Diego.” It was a good match, not only for them, but for me.​

Could you talk about that study a bit?

We were looking at a treatment for substance abuse, more specifically we were looking at treatment for opioid use disorder. We were looking at opioids in particular for a couple reasons. Opioid addiction seems to be more intractable than pretty much any other kind of addiction, and more people go to treatment for opioids than for any other [substance]. The number one thing that people are going to ibogaine treatment sites for is to treat their opioid addiction.

So we enrolled 30 people in the study, whose primary problem was with an opioid. Roughly half of them were using heroin and the other half were coming in with problematic use of some kind of prescription opioid painkiller, like Oxycontin. We did pre-treatment measures and then did after-treatment by following up in the days after the treatment. I followed up monthly, for 12 months, to see how the treatment was working for them in the long term. That was the basic set up.​

And was it effective? What were the outcomes?

We were looking to answer 2 main questions. One is to see if ibogaine is effective for detox, that is the short term efficacy in regards to whether or not it’s reducing withdrawal symtpoms. We used the SOWS measure, which is a scale of subjective opioid withdrawal symptoms, before treatment and after treatment to see if there was an effect after ibogaine was administered. We looked at 1 month following treatment, and then we followed up at later time points. The second question is, is it effective for reduction in drug use and other associated problem narratives for 12 months after treatment? We found that yes, it’s effective for both detox and reduction in drug use for 12 months.

We found at 1 month that there was a strong effect in terms of drug use severity. We were using what we call the addiction severity index. There’s about 7 different problem areas, including drug use severity. Areas where we found that it had increased were treatment effects in family and social status, and also in legal status. Legal status is asking if you’re in trouble with the law, family/social status is asking how well you get along with people in your life that matter to you. We saw a good treatment effect at 1 month in all 3 of those areas – drug use severity, family/social status, and legal status.

We looked at the time after 1 month and found that the treatment effect was still significant. The scores in those areas were all significantly increased throughout the follow up period, although the strength of the treatment effect did drop off after 1 month, particularly drug use severity. Even though they continued to do well throughout the 12-month period, relative to the pretreatment baseline, the effect wasn’t as strong at later time points as it was at 1 month.​

Thomas Kingsley Brown presenting at TedX Venice Beach.

That’s interesting. Could follow-up treatments be useful here for maintaining the initial effect of ibogaine treatment?

I think getting another treatment within 3 to 6 months of the initial treatment is useful for a lot of people. It seems to be effective for people when they relapse or just need to have a booster. The animal studies that were done also show that if you have more than 1 treatment, its more likely to be effective. So on the whole I would say, yeah, if you can get multiple treatments – that’s a good idea.​

Another thing that’s also effective is following up with smaller dosages, but there isn’t any research that’s been done with people to see how often that’s necessary.

Was there anybody in the study who it didn’t work for at all?

That’s a good question. Out of the 30 people in the study, there were 3 whose SOWS scores actually increased from pre-treatment to post-treatment. You might say, “Oh, this didn’t work for them.” But those 3 people, their baseline SOWS scores were among the lowest, and they had the least severe withdrawal symptoms going into treatment. It also could be that they were coming off of longer acting opioids like methadone, so it’s not clear what’s going on there.

Everyone in the study stopped using for at least 3 days to a week. There were 15 people in the study who at 1 month had not used any opioids at all. And everybody reduced the amount and the frequency of their opioid use in the months following treatment. So from that perspective I’d say it worked for everybody but it really depends on what you define as efficacy in this case. Some people might say if you relapse at all then it didn’t work. But they did actually stop using for a while, and when they go back to using, the dosage they’re using is a lot less than it was before they were treated. So all in all, I’d say it works for everybody – it’s just a matter of how well it works for them.​

What are the potential implications of this study for the future of ibogaine research?

Well, I think the implications are that the Mexico and New Zealand studies are both showing that ibogaine is effective for detox, and for allowing people to significantly reduce their use of opiods. So that’s a big deal all by itself.

In the Mexico study, at least in some ways, it was sort of a worst-case scenario for giving ibogaine. You’re giving somebody this treatment, and then typically 5 to 7 days after, they’re going back home. This is not what you usually want to do if you’re trying to get somebody off of opioids, is put them right back in the context they were using in on a regular basis without any follow up at all. So even though we got good results there wasn’t any follow up. I think one thing that we should be looking at is the potential impact of any follow up care, whether it’s a second or third ibogaine treatment following up with microdosing, psychotherapy, any kind of follow up care. What would be the impact of that?​

There’s 2 parts to this next question. Firstly, what do we know about ibogaine’s mechanism of action? Secondly, do you think ibogaine’s psychedelic effects play a role in its ability to interrupt addiction, or is it strictly pharmacological?

So to answer the first question, we know a lot about the pharmacology of ibogaine. We know enough to be sure that it doesn’t act in the same way as conventional treatments. It’s not an opioid agonist like methadone or buprenorphine. We also know that it’s acting at many different receptor sites and doesn’t have a strong affinity for any one receptor type. So it’s kind of a dirty molecule in that respect, that it doesn’t really have a clean profile in its activity in different receptors.

That said, we don’t know what its mechanism of action is at the pharmacological level. We don’t know why it’s reducing withdrawal symptoms or why it potentiates the activity of opioids. We don’t know why it reduces cravings either. There aren’t any real clear answers there. So that’s the big question, how is it working? I think there must be some kind of pharmacological mechanism, at least with the reduction in withdrawal symptoms. I just don’t imagine the psychedelic effect having any direct impact on withdrawal symptoms. We know it’s not a placebo effect because placebos aren’t effective for opioid withdrawal. So there’s some kind of underlying biochemical effect that hasn’t been elucidated yet.

As far as reducing people’s use of opioids in the long term, I think there must be some kind of impact from the psychedelic effect. The experiences people have with ibogaine, and the insights they get, must have some kind of effect – but that’s something that hasn’t really been studied very much. There’s a bit of data in our study that seems to indicate some kind of correlation between positive treatment outcomes and the intensity of the effect, in terms of psycho-spiritual impact. But the main reason I think there’s some kind of impact from the psychedelic effect is that people tell me. They have regrets about the way they’re living their life, they have regrets about their relationships with other people in their lives, they see the impact of their behavior and they see where they’re heading if they continue on their current path. It seems like there must be some effect when people have these powerful transformative experiences. That’s my sense of it, anyway.

That’s actually a good segway into the next question. Could you explain what 18-MC is?

18-MC is a synthetic congener to ibogaine, so it’s structurally related. It’s basically using the same chemical backbone that ibogaine has, the same basic ring structure -but its got some different functional groups on it. It’s also been tested in animal studies in the same ways that ibogaine has, and has been shown to be effective in the same sort of ways, reducing withdrawal-like symptoms in animals and also reducing the self administration of drugs.

So it seems to be effective in animal models, but it’s thought that it’s probably not psychoactive. That’s a question that still hasn’t been answered, to my knowledge. I don’t know of anybody who’s ingested 18-MC to be able to say whether or not there’s some kind of psychoactivity. It’s quite possible that there could be, but we don’t know for sure. The company that got a grant to do human studies with 18-MC haven’t released anything about it. I don’t know if they’ve actually carried out the study.

Are there any major barriers to further research with ibogaine?

It’s kind of a complicated answer, but essentially ibogaine is made illegal because it’s psychoactive. So that’s obviously a big barrier to doing research in the US. We’re not allowed to do research on it without getting permission, which hasn’t been granted. There’s also the fact that there are risks associated with ibogaine usage. The estimates are that around 1 in 300 or 400 people will die. That’s actually cited by the FDA as the main reason why they won’t consider taking it off schedule 1.

It’s a legitimate concern, but I think it’s overblown. The risks of not treating people in the midst of this opioid crisis are much greater than the risks of administering ibogaine, especially when you can have medical personnel present during the treatment. There’s no reason not to make ibogaine treatments accessible and available to people in this country. They probably aren’t taking it off schedule 1 anytime soon, maybe ever – but there are states, such as New York and Vermont, looking into possibly allowing its use. They’ve both introduced some legislative efforts attempting to allow ibogaine treatment and research. So maybe at a state level those kinds of changes can be made, and we can work around the federal regulations.

That’d be interesting to see, if different states started to challenge the federal laws on that. It’s one thing to go after medical marijuana; you know the federal government can go into Oakland and shut down a dispensary, but it’d be another thing entirely to try to stop people from getting ibogaine treatments when you have hundreds of people dying from overdoses everyday.

Is there anything you’d recommend for people interested in getting involved with psychedelic research?

For someone who’s interested in psychedelic research, I would say choose a program that will allow you to follow that interest. My advice is to find a graduate program where you can work with somebody who is, if not doing something directly related to what you want to do, at least somebody who you can talk with freely about these substances.​

The main thing is don’t give up. If you say, “I’m gonna study psychedelics,” don’t let anybody else tell you that shouldn’t do it.

*From the article here :

Talking Ibogaine Research for Opioid Addiction with Thomas Kingsley Brown | Part 5

The Ibogaine Conversation Part 5 | Thomas Kingsley Brown, PhD, studied the long-term outcomes of people who received ibogaine for the treatment of opioid addiction. We talked about the results.

www.psymposia.com

 

[mr peabody]

Ibogaine presents unique challenges to the ways we approach addiction treatment*

by Jordan May | Psymposia | 4 Dec 2017

This series explores the unique challenges ibogaine presents in how we approach plant medicine, harm reduction, and treatment for addiction, through the lens of ibogaine researchers, providers, patients, and advocates from around the world.

My addiction started when I was 13, with prescription medications. I knew it was over the very first time I took an opiate. It was set, that this was going to be my addiction for a long time.”

There’s a brief silence as the woman sitting across from me takes a moment to swallow the lump in her throat. Her name is Amy. She’s a nurse from Canada, and she’s spent the majority of her life addicted to opioids.

“It developed into a more serious addiction over time, to the point where I was using them intravenously, when I became a nurse and had access to injectable medications. So my use got really, really out of control.”

We’re sitting amidst a hustle and bustle of people as they come and go through the hotel lobby. The sound of excited chatter dominates the space, and despite the heavy undertones of our conversation, you can feel the electricity in the room.

This is the setting for the European Ibogaine Forum, a small conference that took place in Vienna, Austria this past September. The event attracted an unlikely crowd of people from all walks of life. Doctors, researchers, drug users, and hippies from around the world came together for their shared interest in an obscure hallucinogenic alkaloid – ibogaine.

Tabernanthe iboga

Sourced from the African shrub Tabernanthe iboga, or simply iboga, ibogaine is reputed to have the profound ability to eliminate opioid cravings and withdrawals. And unlike other psychedelics, ibogaine can be fatal. As such, it presents unique challenges in how we approach drug policy and addiction.

Iboga has a long history of use in west-central Africa. Consumption of the root bark, specifically, is intimately tied to the ancient spiritual discipline known as Bwiti, which is believed to have originated with the Babongo people in the Southern forests of Gabon. It’s said that the Babongo shared their knowledge of iboga with a migrant Bantu tribe that settled nearby, the Mitsogho.​

Bwiti continued to evolve as the Mitsogho people came into contact with other tribes, such as the Fang, and now exists in the form of many diverse and interconnected syncretic belief systems that use iboga as part of their practice. In these contexts, iboga is typically ingested during initiatory rites of passage, for healing, and to make contact with ancestors.

Iboga and its constituents remained relatively unknown in the West until recent years. Ibogaine was first isolated in 1901, and in 1939 it was marketed in France under the brand name Lambarène for the treatment of depression and fatigue. It wasn’t until 1962, on the streets of the Lower East Side in New York City, that the drug would attract any serious international attention.

Howard Lotsof was only 19 years old when he first tried ibogaine. He was addicted to heroin and willfully experimenting with any substance he could get his hands on. The story goes that he was given ibogaine by a friend of his, who happened to be a chemist. Howard had never heard anything about the strange compound, and he chose to ingest it for no reason other than curiosity. Yet curiously enough, by the time the experience was over, he realized he no longer had any cravings for heroin whatsoever.

He went on to share the drug with his friends, who were also addicted to heroin, and it seemed to have the same miraculous effect on them. From that point on, Howard became a kind of evangelist for the addiction-interrupting potential of ibogaine. Between 1985 and 1992 he was awarded numerous patents for utilizing ibogaine as a rapid method for the interruption of various addictions, and he provided pilot data for a research program that eventually resulted in an FDA-approved Phase I clinical trial for ibogaine in the treatment of addiction.

At the same time, Lotsof also offered underground treatments and provided ibogaine for the Junkie Bond, an advocacy group for drug users. This work served as the foundation for the users-helping-users movement, a treatment modality rooted in harm reduction and self-care.

Howard died in 2010. Ultimately, his crusade involved a small army of devoted individuals, some of whom are featured in this series. Howard’s journey laid the groundwork for a movement that’s been steadily growing since his fateful experiment in 1962. Since his death there has been a tremendous resurgence of interest in psychedelics, and drug-related overdoses have continued to rise at exponential rates around the world. In fact, overdose is now the number 1 leading cause of death in Americans under 50. Given these circumstances, perhaps it’s inevitable that the ibogaine movement has grown so significantly since Lotsof’s passing.

Howard Lotsof

Though still relatively obscure, the premise that ibogaine can be used for the treatment of addiction is becoming more accepted. Since 2010 there have been over 200 scientific papers about ibogaine published in academic journals, and legislation to legalize it for medical use has been introduced in states like Vermont. With all of this attention, one might wonder why it’s still so unheard of.

Ibogaine is unlike other psychedelics in that it is potentially cardiotoxic and physically dangerous. The National Institute on Drug Abuse abandoned clinical trials with the drug due to safety concerns spurred by neurotoxicity observed in rat trials (however, the doses were substantially larger than equivalent doses that would be given to humans). Ibogaine is also classified as a Schedule 1 narcotic in the United States, and thus individuals seeking to use it must either find it through the black market or travel to foreign clinics in countries where it is not strictly prohibited.

“Because of the unregulated nature of ibogaine treatments, people are playing a lottery as to what kinds of results they will get,” says Hattie Wells of the Beckley Foundation. “Ibogaine clinics range from very good to pretty dangerous, and I wouldn’t recommend people take it without experienced medical supervision and a proper post-treatment program of support in place.”

That it elicits powerful visionary experiences lasting for up to 3 days is yet another factor contributing to the lack of acceptance for ibogaine as a legitimate treatment in the medical world.

“There are examples of licensed medications that carry cardiac risks, but none which also exert long lasting ataxia and a psychedelic trip. It’s not what conventional medicine would call very useable,” Hattie explains.

Ibogaine sits at the intersections of numerous social issues, tossed between movements for drug users advocacy, drug policy reform, and psychedelic research like a political hot-potato. Nobody seems to want to touch it, and yet there seems to be no better option in sight.

Amy was one of several people I spoke with at the Ibogaine Forum who had tried conventional treatments, such as methadone maintenance and 12-step programs, with limited or no success. Desperate, she ultimately turned to ibogaine as a last resort.

This conversational series is an exploration of these stories, a comprehensive look at the use of ibogaine as a medical intervention, a religious sacrament, and a source of misinformation and controversy. Opinions about ibogaine seem to vary from one extreme to the other in virtually every context– its efficacy as a treatment for addiction, its safety, and even whether or not it should be regulated at all are contested by advocates and opposition alike.

I found Amy’s story particularly important to include because of how effectively it highlights the nuances of the ibogaine world. For example, it didn’t really work all that well for her, initially.

“I did a lot of research before going to the clinic in Mexico, but it actually was not a very positive experience,” she told me. “I left the clinic in a wheelchair. I couldn’t even walk. I was still having serious withdrawal that lasted for weeks after the ibogaine experience.”

When I first heard about ibogaine, I was given the impression that it’s a straightforward cure for drug addiction, a kind of magic pill that you take once to solve all your problems forever. Most of the information I could find online seemed to follow this same narrative. Yet quite frankly, there’s nothing straightforward about ibogaine at all.
Many advocates are cautious of how ibogaine may be integrated into a medicalized pharmaceutical framework, with access to it overseen by regulatory agencies with little accountability. Some voices have expressed concerns about the long-term sustainability of international demand for ibogaine, claiming that iboga is becoming scarce due to unsustainable overharvesting. Others believe these claims are politically and economically motivated.

Over the next month, Psymposia will be releasing a series of interviews and conversations featuring key figures in the ibogaine movement. Our goal is to explore diverse, and often conflicting, perspectives on the relevant issues. We spoke with clinical researchers and facilitators, underground providers, activists, policy workers, and of course, individuals who have taken ibogaine for medical, spiritual, and recreational purposes.

Amy did eventually get through withdrawal and her cravings disappeared, temporarily. Her exposure to ibogaine provided a valuable window of opportunity for her to begin making the changes necessary for her recovery.

“I had some serious trauma in my life prior to taking that ibogaine dose, and the experience helped me resolve that trauma in a way I hadn’t been able to with years of counseling. I walked out thinking, once my withdrawal was completely over with and I realized my cravings were gone, ‘This is pretty amazing.’”

The political stigma attached to ibogaine is so strong that I had to agree not to use Amy’s real name in anything published by Psymposia. Amy could lose her job and see the end of her career as a nurse if her employers were to learn that she had ever used ibogaine, despite the fact that it’s a legally prescribed medication in her country.
Like ibogaine itself, there’s much more to Amy’s story than what’s presented here. As we dive into the complexities of the ibogaine world, we’ll revisit Amy on her path to recovery. For now, we’ll start by taking a look at the cultures that have used iboga the longest. Our exploration begins in the heart of the equatorial rainforests of west-central Africa, specifically, in Gabon.

*From the article here :

Ibogaine presents unique challenges in how we approach harm reduction and treat addiction | Part 1

The Ibogaine Conversation Part 1 | This series explores the unique challenges ibogaine presents in how we approach plant medicine, harm reduction, and treatment for addiction, through the lens of ibog

www.psymposia.com

 

[mr peabody]

Former underground provider, Dimitri Mugianis, on the regulation of Ibogaine

by Jordan May | Psymposia | 18 Dec 2017

“Prescription is not about accessibility, by definition it’s about restriction. Unless we start to use psychedelics as a way to tear apart these structures and build new ones in their place, then I think it’s all a revolving door.”

Dimitri Mugianis is well known in the ibogaine world for his work as an underground provider in the early 2000’s, and for his fiery no-nonsense approach to psychedelics, drug policy, and social justice. Dimitri currently works at the New York Harm Reduction Educators and is the founder of We Are The Medicine, a group working to center conversations surrounding spirituality and drug use.

What follows are the highlights of our conversation. Knowing that Dimitri infuses a political praxis into his work, we were particularly interested in his perspective on the regulation of ibogaine in the United States.

So, what’s your relationship with ibogaine?

I first heard about ibogaine probably in 1991 or 1992. I was injecting heroin, getting high with some people, Greta and Adam Nodelman. They were involved with Howard Lotsof in Holland. Adam was American and Greta was Dutch. They were involved in the anarchist movement, the squatters movement, and so forth. They told me about this thing called ibogaine that they had both taken. They said it was a life changing experience. That was the first time I ever heard anything about it.

It took me probably about 10 years before I actually took ibogaine. I was around it in New York, so I ended up contacting Dana Beal and he told me where to go. I went to Holland to do it. At that point I had been using for 20 years, injecting heroin and cocaine. I was also on methadone, so my habit was very big. My pregnant common-law wife had died, many of my friends had died, so I just made the move.

I did the treatment right outside of Amsterdam, and afterwards I never had a desire to use again. It was an incredibly grueling process. I went right off of methadone into the treatment. I took iboga actually, not ibogaine, for the first time. It was a powerful experience. I didn’t go through the process of physical withdrawal that I knew would be associated not only with heroin withdrawal, but methadone withdrawal – which is crushing. I spent the next 3 months in Greece, where my people are from.

I came back to the States and continued in my recovery. I enrolled in 12 steps, but I had a burning desire to help others who didn’t have access to this treatment. So I began to administer ibogaine to people in the underground. For some of that I worked with Eric Taub, one of the pioneers in the ibogaine world, and we handed out fliers in front of methadone clinics. I treated over 500 people and was eventually initiated into Bwiti, in Gabon. I went back 6 times, studying and being involved in ceremony, and eventually I incorporated the ceremonies into my work.

And then in 2011, I was preparing for the last treatment I was going to do in the States before burning out, and I was arrested by the DEA – and that’s a whole other story.

Have you remained in touch with any of the people who you provided treatments for?

I’m still in touch with a lot of them. Many people that I’ve worked with have framed it in a positive light. Not everyone, some of them just say they threw up a lot and saw weird shit, or didn’t see anything.

But I can tell you one story about a guy named Marcus. When I met Marcus he was kicking methadone and in really rough shape. We were doing the treatment and on the 2nd day he ended up running off. This was very early in my practice and we didn’t know how to keep people in, and it was just a bad scene.

Weeks later, I was really worried about him and happened to see him in the park. He was carrying CD’s under his arm, to sell for money, and he was wearing the same t-shirt he was wearing when he ran out. He was greasy and looked tired. And when he saw me he dropped the CD’s, burst into tears, put his arms around me, and told me it had changed his life. But he was still using, and Marcus eventually OD’d and died. He’s been dead maybe 6 years now.

I’ve stayed in touch with a lot of people and some haven’t used. Some have. I think the idea of a linear healing, with sobriety as the final result, produces shame. When people come back from these experiences, there’s all kinds of things that can be learned. Whether it’s around abuse and trauma, identity, sorrow, grief, all those things.
I’ll tell you something. Tomorrow I’m going to the funeral of someone who’s done ibogaine more than anyone I’ve ever met. I mean he probably did ibogaine over 20 times, flood doses. He died from an overdose last weekend, and he was like my little brother.

So I think that yes we need more maintenance. Methadone, Subutex, etc… should be more available. Yes, we need more treatment facilities. Yes, we need 12 step models and alternative models for those folks whom 12 steps doesn’t work for. Yes, we need harm reduction facilities. Yes, we need holistic healthcare. Yes, we need psychedelics.

But this brother did it all. And he still couldn’t stop.

You’ve been on both sides of the coin, so to speak – as someone who’s personally faced addiction and lost friends to it, and as a provider for people who didn’t have access to traditional treatment models. Given your experiences, and your politics, what are your thoughts on the movement to regulate ibogaine in the United States?

I think it’s a really complex question. My first thought is that it could be a helpful drug, but I think the existing medical paradigm is extremely damaging. Not only the medical paradigm, but our economic structure, which I think the psychedelic movement is desperately trying to be a part of. To me, it really shows the limitations of these drugs and these practices. The problem is that we come out of these powerful experiences and we immediately try to find a way to reintroduce them to these destructive paradigms that are destroying life on the planet.

So I think we need to have a structural analysis and approach to any sort of treatment modality. You have to look at what that system is looking for, and that system is not looking for detox – it’s looking for maintenance. There’s a lot of good reasons for maintenance approaches, but we also have to look at the prospect of turning someone into a perpetual consumer.

Many of the proponents of ibogaine are calling it a cure, but they’re looking at it in a linear way – with a beginning, a middle, and an end. In my experience with iboga it simply doesn’t work that way. How many people have actually taken it and changed their lives, or have stopped using drugs permanently? It’s in the thousands. Not the hundreds of thousands, and I don’t even think in the tens of thousands. So the numbers aren’t even there.

And if it were to get through the entire legislative process it would be put into a clinical setting. So what I would ask your readers is, “Why is the best place to take psychedelics with a shrink?”

I think that if you look at it, we’re handing these tools over to folks who have not stood the test of moral authority. I think they failed it drastically. I don’t think that the medical establishment has the moral authority to be the gatekeepers of this or any drug.

Again, when we talk about sobriety as the final result, it produces shame. It produces the same toxic relationship to oneself that brings people into addiction in the first place. I call it “psychedelic gaslighting”, the idea that there’s no such thing as a bad trip. That if you had a bad experience it was because you didn’t “work” hard enough, you didn’t let go. Fuck letting go. It’s just more shaming. We shouldn’t always try to reframe the experience when somebody has a bad time. We should stop the gaslighting.

So do I think it’s a good thing? I think that almost everything that comes out of the system at this point is just poisoned fruit. Say we bring ibogaine into the for-profit medical model we have now, that gives insurance companies the power to decide who gets treated – so who’s got good insurance, who’s got bad insurance, right?
We have to remember that prescription is not about accessibility, by definition it’s all about restriction. Unless we start to use psychedelics as a way to tear apart these structures and build new ones in their place, then I think this is all a revolving door.

You mentioned that someone may only take ibogaine a few times throughout their life, but microdosing is a hot topic right now. How do you feel about microdosing ibogaine, and how does it fit into a regulatory model?

I don’t think we can look at it in a vacuum. Let me just say that microdosing has been happening for thousands of years in Gabon. People take small amounts of it – and it’s great.

I just want to say it out loud. These drugs – psilocybin, MDMA, LSD, iboga, ayahuasca – are drugs that get you high. And they can be fun. I know it’s not politically correct to say that. No matter how many fucking naked Burning Man parties you’ve been to, you’re Protestant and you want to call this shit work. Ibogaine is a great aphrodisiac, it’s great to dance on, and it’s great to just walk around on.

We’re always looking for work. You know, all this shit about LSD helping people in Silicon Valley be more productive; I would hope that the opposite is true. I’d hope that we take psychedelics to be less productive in this system. Again, we’re in a Protestant, capitalist society and we can’t think outside of that.

So what I’d say about microdosing is let’s take the professionalism out of it. Why do we have to professionalize it? You don’t need a professional to microdose. I’ll break it down for you: take a little bit. If it’s not enough, take a little bit more. If it’s too much, take a little bit less next time. End of story. You don’t need a fucking shaman. You don’t need a fucking shrink. You don’t need a doctor, or a social worker, or a corporation to tell you how to do that. Real simple. And if it doesn’t seem to be doing you any good, stop taking it.​

Microdosing done.

L-R: Dimitri Mugianis, Patrick Kroupa, Margo, Jeffrey Kamlet, Norma Alexander-Lotsof, Howard Lotsof

Do you have any closing thoughts for us?

Although ibogaine can be dangerous, I think the greatest impact from it will come from access without the even more dangerous contact with professionals. I think one reaction to the over-medicalization and high price of boutique ibogaine clinics is that a lot of people are just getting it off the internet to dose themselves. I think this is the most important trend in the movement today, and something that’s not really being talked about – or is only being talked about negatively.

Obviously there are great dangers involved, but there are also benefits. It’s a great failure of the ibogaine community, that we often fall into prohibitionist attitudes such as “Just Say No.”

Collectively, we need to come up with a harm reduction strategy for self-administration. People are taking ibogaine themselves and will continue to do so, so we need to address it.

I’m heartened to see folks being able to buy the drug online and self administer; however, I don’t believe iboga has the potential to significantly impact the so-called heroin epidemic. The plant itself is in great danger – some people are even saying it’s on the verge of extinction – so we need to be mindful that with accessibility comes exploitation.

Yet, despite my misgivings about the medicalization and commodification of ibogaine, the truth is that my life has been transformed, my body transmuted, and my spirit forever changed by this molecule. It set me on a journey of healing that has taken me around the world, even to jail. And it continues to inform me, challenge me, and propel me. I am blessed.​

Former Underground Provider, Dimitri Mugianis, on the Regulation of Ibogaine | Part 7

The Ibogaine Conversation Part 7 | "Prescription is not about accessibility, by definition it’s about restriction. Unless we start to use psychedelics as a way to tear apart these structures and bui

www.psymposia.com

 

[mr peabody]

How not to do ibogaine, with Juliana Mulligan*

by Jordan May| Psymposia | 19 Dec 2017

This is not a do-it-at-home type thing.

Juliana Mulligan is a former heroin/opiate dependent person, formerly incarcerated, and an overdose survivor. She has also worked as an ibogaine provider and is currently an ibogaine educator who has presented at multiple conferences. Juliana is studying to be a therapist at the New School in New York and is developing a new project called the Peer Counseling Network, which will provide free peer counseling to individuals who have had ibogaine treatment and cannot afford therapy.

You had a pretty remarkable encounter with ibogaine. What was your experience like, and what led you to try it?

I was an opioid-dependent person for 7 years, from when I was 20 to when I was 27.

I had been through all of the typical mainstream treatments. I went to jail and was sent to rehab there, and of course I went to a million 12-step groups. I kept trying, but none of it ever really clicked for me.

I would have periods of time where I wouldn’t be doing opiates. When I was 25, I went to India for a while and wasn’t doing any drugs there, and then after that I moved to Bogotá, the capital of Colombia. I wasn’t doing any drugs when I first got there, but I figured out pretty quickly that I could buy whatever prescription opioids I wanted over the counter with no prescription, which was quite a discovery for an opiate enthusiast.

I kind of just went to town. I had all the fentanyl I could want, all the morphine, Dilaudid, all of it.

Somehow, I had always been close to psychedelics from a young age. My first acid trip was at 15. I don’t know why, it was just like a random thing, but I always had these people around me who were very interested in psychedelics. So I had actually heard about iboga maybe like 3 or 4 years before I used it.

When I was in Colombia, I was on really high amounts of fentanyl. I finally got to the point where I had as many drugs as I could want and I was like, “You know, this actually sucks. I’m in a really dark place and it’s time to get out of this.” I knew I needed to figure out how to take ibogaine.

I didn’t really want to tell my family what was going on because I had already put them through so much and I thought they were probably exhausted with me. A good friend talked me into telling my mom that I wanted to try ibogaine, and my mom said, “Yes, let’s do it.” No question about it. She just knew that it was the right thing.

So I called around and found this clinic in Guatemala City, and I clicked with the guy on the phone more than I did with people at other clinics. He has a bad reputation in the ibogaine community because he has a lot of adverse events and fatalities, but I didn’t know that at the time. So I pretty much left my life in Colombia and flew to Guatemala.

I arrived in Guatemala City and…knowing what I know now about ibogaine, the clinic staff basically did everything wrong. My drug of choice was fentanyl. Someone should be off fentanyl at least 2 weeks before taking ibogaine. They gave me some OxyContin when I got there so I wasn’t sick, and the next day they gave me ibogaine – which is not what you should do. You really need to stabilize people and watch them for at least 5 days to see where they’re at health-wise, see what their tolerance is, see if maybe they were doing some other drugs that they didn’t tell you about.

So they began giving me ibogaine. [They said] the withdrawal would subside – but it wasn’t subsiding, so I started freaking out. The doctor gave me a bunch of Valium and I don’t really remember anything else after that, until I was throwing up and being taken to the bathroom by the nurses.

I had a kind of whiteout. When I came out of it, they had called paramedics because they couldn’t get an IV in my arm. I guess my EKG wasn’t good, so they took me to the hospital.

It was a state-run Guatemalan hospital and it was like a warzone inside. I remember trying to ask for water and they told me they didn’t have any. They X-rayed me, which seems like an odd choice of test given that it was a problem with my EKG, and then they said, “We can’t deal with this right now,” and they sent us on our way.

We went to a second hospital that turned us away, and the third hospital was like a smaller private hospital. They kept me for maybe like 6 hours and did a series of EKG’s. They seemed to get better, so they released me. We went back to the clinic and I vaguely remember trying to Skype someone, and then they were saying my EKG was really bad and I don’t remember anything after that.

I was told later that we got to a fourth hospital that wasn’t really taking us seriously. We were in the emergency waiting room and apparently I went to the back and just collapsed.

What happened was that I went into cardiac arrest. This is something that’s completely avoidable if you follow safety protocols with ibogaine, but they didn’t follow any of them. Come to find out later, I had about twice the dose of ibogaine that you should ever give anybody. So my treatment is basically ‘How Not to Do Ibogaine 101’.
I had 6 cardiac arrests over a 24-hour period of time and I was put on an external pacemaker for about 10 days in the ICU.

When I woke up, all I could think was, “I’m not in withdrawal right now. How is this possible?”

I didn’t care that I’d had a medical emergency. I just knew that I wanted to work with ibogaine in some capacity. I felt like something really huge had been lifted off me, like I had broken free from something. I didn’t feel guilty, I didn’t feel bad, I just felt as if I had found the final piece of the puzzle.

So even though I didn’t have that huge visionary experience that a lot of people have with iboga, it was like a lightbulb finally got turned on, and I was just on fire about life.

They took me off the pacemaker after about 10 days in the ICU. I was fine. There was no damage to my heart.

I guess it would have been a year later, I went to my first ibogaine conference. I remember figuring out, “Oh, my treatment went wrong because they totally screwed it up, they didn’t do what you’re supposed to!”

You didn’t have any visions at all?

I did eventually remember a vision maybe like 3 months later, as I was falling asleep one night.

When I was getting all that Valium, the room looked like it had turned into this decaying hospital room, and I was on a table with a bunch of wires going into me – which is interesting because that’s how I woke up at the end of the ibogaine experience. In this vision, I got up on the table and pulled out all of the wires. I went over to the window and looked out onto this grey-brown, post-apocalyptic, decaying city. I went to climb out of the window, and I knew that I was escaping from the psychic trap I had been in with opiates.

So even after all that, you’re still an advocate for ibogaine treatment?

100%. Especially for opiates, I think it’s the future. It’s the only thing in the world that takes away withdrawal, other than more opiates.

Not only does it do that, but, for me, I felt reborn after. I was so excited about life. I got out of the hospital, and I was cooking food for the whole clinic. I was just excited and motivated and filled with a new life force. I had quit opiates maybe 30 other times before, and usually you do not feel excited about life. Even 6 months later you don’t feel excited about life because of the way that opiates fuck up your brain chemistry. Ibogaine resets everything somehow, and we don’t really understand how it works, what the reset mechanism is, but something big happens. It takes years to happen coming off of hard drugs usually, but this happened overnight for me.
This drug is miraculous.

Do you know if that provider is still offering treatments?

Yeah. I’ve heard through the grapevine of 2 other fatalities he’s had over the past 3 years. What’s hard for me about this is I don’t actually want to villainize him because even though they didn’t do my treatment right, he stayed with me the whole time I was in the hospital. This guy has a really big heart and my experience really affected him deeply.

But he is not practicing safely and people are dying, and that’s obviously not acceptable. It’s tough because ibogaine is in this legal grey zone, so anyone can open a clinic, but if you’re not following safety protocol, anyone could die – even if you have no pre-existing conditions. I didn’t have any pre-existing conditions. This is not a do-it-at-home type thing. I don’t even suggest doing it underground, in the US, with experienced people. Just go to a medically staffed clinic.​

Juliana with Andrew Tatarsky at The Global Ibogaine Conference, Tepoztlán, Mexico, 2016.

Given that you had to fly to another country for ibogaine treatment and had this adverse event, what are your thoughts on its regulation in the United States? What would the ideal regulatory framework for ibogaine treatment look like?

It’s complicated. First of all, the FDA doesn’t approve one-time treatments like ibogaine. If ibogaine gets approved, they’re gonna figure out a way to make it something that you have to come back and do a bunch of times, and they’re gonna charge 20 grand each time. That’s what concerns me about bringing ibogaine into our medical framework.

There’s already doctors trying to make a maintenance patch out of 18-MC [a non-psychoactive analog to ibogaine], and anything that helps with opioid detox is great, but the total experience of ibogaine is so important. So already they’re picking it apart to make it profitable.

I think, for ibogaine treatment to be adapted in this country successfully, our whole system has to shift. I’m conflicted about it. I want as many people as possible to have access to it, but I don’t want to see ibogaine exploited for profit the same way every other medical treatment is.

Though your experience with it was different from most, how would you compare the visionary aspects of ibogaine to other psychedelics?

Well I did do it again 2 and a half years later. I went to go work at an ibogaine clinic in South Africa and did another flood dose there.

Comparing it to other psychedelics, it’s just totally different. Ibogaine is an oneirogen [causing waking dream states], so it’s a whole other thing. That second experience was harder for me psychologically than my detox treatment. It unraveled a lot of anxiety and depression that I was dealing with, and I was kind of spun out for a few weeks. So I actually think that ibogaine is potentially a lot harder than other psychedelics.

I didn’t have a lot of support or people to talk to after that experience in South Africa. I think it’s really important to be in therapy or have some kind of group to be there with you afterwards. You really have to be prepared. If you take ibogaine thinking, “I want to fix this,” the way ibogaine helps is that it’s going to bring up the worst of that issue, put it all in your face at one time like, “Okay, here you go.” Sometimes people do have that miraculous ibogaine experience, but pretty much everyone has at least 3 days of having a really hard time afterward. It’s not a weekend thing, you really have to be prepared for this.

What are you working on these days?

I’m in school right now to become a therapist, to do ibogaine related work. I’m also starting this thing right now called the Peer Counseling Network. People go and take ibogaine, and a lot of people barely scrape together enough money just to go and do it. They come home, and they don’t have the resources to go to therapy, and the only free support available is with 12 step meetings, which has like a 5% to 8% success rate and doesn’t recognize ibogaine as being legitimate because it’s a drug. So what I’m trying to do is to build a network of people that are basically going to be amateur therapists to help people integrate their ibogaine experiences over the phone.
So far it’s me, Kevin Franciotti, and a couple other friends who are all in school to do therapeutic work. The main focus is for people that have done ibogaine, but I would be open to bringing in other psychedelics as well in the future. I really want to focus on ibogaine for now because a big question facing the community is, what do we do with people afterward?

A lot of people do it, they go home to the same life they were living, and they relapse because they thought ibogaine was just going to be magical and fix everything, and it’s not. You really need to have a plan for afterwards. I hate hearing about people going home and not having any support, so I really want to offer this as a free form of support.​

*From the article here :

How Not to Do Ibogaine 101 with Juliana Mulligan | Part 8

The Ibogaine Conversation Part 8 | This is not a do-it-at-home type thing.

www.psymposia.com

 

[mr peabody]

Ibogaine treatment comes with risks. We had a discussion about safety with medical providers*

by Mike Margolies | Psymposia | 3 Jan 2018

Unlike other psychedelic drugs, ibogaine is known to be potentially cardiotoxic. There are a number of fatalities associated with its use, and anyone considering working with it should be aware of the risks. Read the full series.

Update January 4, 2018: Today, unfortunate news broke that one of the panelists in this article, Anwar Jeewa, was arrested in connection with a fatality at his ibogaine clinic in South Africa. A post-mortem established that the man had overdosed on Xanax, with ibogaine in his system. This underscores the real risks of ibogaine, even with an experienced provider. More information about ibogaine potentiation of benzodiazepines is available in our previous interview with Clare Wilkins.

Unlike other psychedelic drugs, ibogaine is known to be potentially cardiotoxic. There are a number of fatalities associated with its use, and anyone considering working with it should be aware of the risks.

The following are highlights from the safety panel at the European Ibogaine Forum in September. The panel was made up of experts in cardiology, nursing, and ibogaine facilitation.

This conversation is in no way intended to serve as an authoritative guide to safety protocol. What’s presented here is limited in scope and only scratches the surface of factors that should be considered. We strongly encourage anyone thinking about working with ibogaine in any capacity to take the time to do further research. As one resource for more information, you can check out the clinical guidelines established by the Global Ibogaine Therapy Alliance.

Dr. Jeffrey Kamlet is an expert on cardiac safety in ibogaine treatment who has witnessed over 1800 sessions over the past 20 years.

Jamie McAlpin is a nurse and Co-Founder of IbogaSafe, an on-site training service aimed at reducing the amount of adverse events during ibogaine treatment.

Dr. Uwe Maas is a clinical pediatrician who was initiated into the Mitsogho men’s cult in Gabon.

Anwar Jeewa is Director and Founder of Minds Alive Treatment Centre in Durban, South Africa.

Panel moderated by Mike Margolies.

Mike: So let’s kick this off with a straightforward question. I’m afraid to take iboga or ibogaine. Should I be? Can it be done safely?

Jeffrey: In general, ibogaine is a pretty damn safe drug.

In the healthy population, the mortality [rate] for ibogaine is considered to be about 0.3%, but remember we’re treating a very sick patient population. Patients with HIV, hepatitis, alcoholics — not the healthiest population in the world. Looking at numbers, the mortality rate can be as high, in untrained hands, as 3%.

I have a folder of over 60 ibogaine deaths. Every single one of those could have been avoided. Every single one. These people had severe addictions. Some of them had anorexia, bulimia. Some of them had pre-existing heart conditions.

So how safe is it? I mean if you’re young and healthy and you’ve got a normal EKG, you don’t have congenital prolonged QT syndrome, and you don’t have other drugs on board that are QT prolongers, yeah pretty safe.

Mike: Jamie, you have something to add?

Jamie: Yeah, I just want to add that the human body can only take a certain amount of metabolic stress, and ibogaine does stress the body on a metabolic level. Detox is very metabolically stressful as well, so those two things in combination tend to potentiate each other a little bit. Several of the cases that I reviewed [showed] signs of metabolic acidosis and other severe metabolic stressors, and that’s something the body can’t really handle.

Jeffrey: Many of our clients come to us addicted to opiates and benzos. [Many] who say, “Well, I was taking Xanax and I took ibogaine, and I never took another Xanax again.”

Well good for you. I’m here to tell you that ibogaine does nothing for benzodiazepine withdrawal. It does not help at all. It’s a different part of the brain, and it just doesn’t work. I’ve seen people on low doses still [experience] horrible anxiety because they missed their benzos. If you don’t realize that your patients are taking benzos and you stop them, or they’re alcoholic, the risk of having a seizure is very high.

Mike: I have a question about microdosing safety. Regarding the classical psychedelics, LSD, psilocybin, etc., which are not known to be cardiotoxic, I’ve read some papers saying there are potential cardiac risks with long-term microdosing. Is that something that could be a concern for ibogaine?

Anwar: To be very honest with you, it’s about time that we research microdosing. It’s crucial. None of us have the facts yet. If you listen to stories about people microdosing, it’s always different quantities, different sources. [We’re] not getting any consistency in any of the reports, so it’d be wrong for me to give you an answer for something we don’t know yet.

Jeffrey: I very often give boosters after a flood dose. Especially if you’ve been on like, Suboxone for 10 years, you might need some small doses. I’m talking about 100-200mg of ibogaine. You don’t have to be monitored, you can go play on your computer, watch TV. Then maybe 3 days later they get the 100mg and 3 days later 50mg, and now they’re good to go home.

On a related noted, in my opinion using another psychedelic drug 90 days within ibogaine is pure insanity. There [are] clinics now advertising that they give you ibogaine and 7 days later give you ayahuasca. It doesn’t make sense to me. I think it’s disrespectful of the plant; it’s disrespectful to both these substances. It’s scary to me. [Ibogaine metabolite] noribogaine is supposed to last [in the system] for 90 days. Keep that a pure experience.

Jamie: It’s a very disturbing new trend – clinics offering ayahuasca, kambo, DMT, all these things while people still have a lot of noribogaine in their system. It’s not only unsafe, it’s very reckless in this vast uncontrolled experiment that we’re doing. And it’s not ethical. You’re literally turning your patients into human experiments without their consent. So from a legal standpoint, it’s not ethical at all, and it’s a very dangerous and reckless trend.

Anwar: I spend at least 2 hours on orientation and preparation. I think it’s important, especially for medical professionals, that you need to have informed consent. It’s our responsibility to tell the patient everything about ibogaine, the good and the bad. You explain everything and basically give them the worst-case scenario, not to scare them but to prepare them for what can happen.

Safety panel at the European Ibogaine Forum, Vienna; Dr. Jeffrey Kamlet, Jamie McAlpin, Dr. Uwe Maas, Anwar Jeewa, and moderated by Mike Margolies

Jeffrey: I also wanted to mention something I didn’t before. Don’t stack dosages, ok? As ibogaine is being converted by the liver into noribogaine, you start to see these bizarre T waves, the QT prolonging, the blood pressure going down, and the pulse going low. I’m concerned when I do that baseline EKG and the patient has a QTC baseline of 430 or 460. Whoa, ok not a good candidate for ibogaine.

There’s a blood test you can do, a genetic test, for congenital long QT syndrome. I think it’s 1 per 1000 of the population or something like that [who are born with it]. If you give them ibogaine, you will kill them. If you’re getting a baseline EKG on the patient and their QTC is in the 400’s or above, you better be really careful with that patient or defer to somebody who has a full cardiac setup.

Mike: I’ve got one more question for Uwe, then maybe we’ll open it up for other questions. So it sounds like from everything that’s been said so far, there’s obviously safety concerns around ibogaine and we need more research, but then of course iboga has been used for much longer in Gabon. So my question is, what kind of safety protocol is there in Gabon?

Uwe: During my initiation, I was told to report constantly about what I was seeing. I was led by about 8 experienced healers, who were sitting around me. They knew everything that was happening to me, and they told me to avoid these people, or open that door, or ask this person something, and things like this.

We were discussing with the Gabonese about the ibogaine treatment that is done in the West, and the only thing that they were really shocked about is that we’re not playing Bwiti music. They said, “Oh that’s very dangerous. They will all die.”

There’s so many things they’re doing for safety. I think the most important of all is that an initiate is never alone. There are always several experienced healers, several initiated people around.

Mike: So, questions from the audience?

Audience member: Jeffrey said that it’s dangerous to flood and then give another dose, so I wanted to ask the people who’ve been to Gabon if it’s common in Bwiti to keep on feeding iboga? Because I know there are ceremonies happening where [they] keep on feeding [iboga to the initiates] for 3 days.

Süster: Our experience with the Mitsogho tribe is that they were giving test doses and then 14 hours later, the flood dose. That was with the women. [The Mitsogho] never take a flood dose twice, but we know the Fang tribe does it one day after the other. We don’t know how safe this is, and as far as we know, the Mitsogho initiation is the original one.

Jean-Nicolas: In my experience, there are many different ways to do it. You’ve got the Disumba, for example, where the aim is that the Banzi (novice), they have him eat as much iboga as possible until he lies down, and when you pinch him, he won’t feel anything. That’s what they look for.

Anwar: I notice when giving [patients] that small dose initially, they’ve got an hour to play with. We get an idea of their tolerance level because if they feel absolutely nothing, and most of them feel absolutely nothing, then we can give them a bigger flood dose. But if they do feel something, we can drop the flood dose.

I’ve been practicing only one method and my protocol is very standard, but I use it because I find it to be very safe. We do a rough calculation, according to body weight, to get a minimum dose and a maximum dose [for the patient]. We give [the initial dose] depending on the patient’s tolerance level, and then we wait every 2 hours before we give more.

Uwe: I think if you look at the traditional ritual, everything, literally everything, is designed to make the [initiate] feel safe. The fire, the blessings, the drinks for the ones who are helping, everything is designed to make the [initiate] feel safe, and that’s the strong point of the ritual, in my view.

Mike: Any closing thoughts?

Jamie: I just want to add that providers really need to grasp that this is an extreme responsibility they’re taking on. When you give someone ibogaine, it’s potentially cardiotoxic, and heart patients don’t get sick slow. They get sick very fast, and seconds count. Not minutes, but seconds. So there’s a lot of preparation not only for the patient, but for the provider — to know what to do when the shit hits the fan.

*From the article here :

Ibogaine Treatment Comes with Risks. We Had a Discussion About Safety with Medical Providers. | Part 10

The Ibogaine Conversation Part 10 | Unlike other psychedelic drugs, ibogaine is known to be potentially cardiotoxic. There are a number of fatalities associated with its use, and anyone considering working with it should be aware of the risks.

www.psymposia.com

 

[mr peabody]

Is ibogaine the cure for opioid addiction? It’s not that simple.

by Jordan May | Psymposia | 9 Jan 2018

We opened this series with the testimony of Amy, a Canadian nurse who used ibogaine to detox from heavy opioid addiction. We chose to lead with her story because of how well it speaks not only to ibogaine’s transformative power, but also its shortcomings. Here we want revisit Amy on her path to recovery.

“I felt the benefits of the ibogaine almost a year after the treatment. I didn’t have any cravings,” she tells us, retrospectively. “Then, you know, things started to change in my life, and I wasn’t coping well. I still didn’t know how to deal with my issues in a healthy way.”

Eventually, about a year after her ibogaine treatment, Amy was reintroduced to painkillers through her doctor – and her use escalated to a point that it had never reached in the past.

“The last relapse was really quite serious. I ended up having issues at work. I wasn’t fired, but I was put on leave while they did an investigation into my drug use.” She continues, “I didn’t know what to do, so I made a feeble attempt at suicide, and that was my way of saying I needed help. I’m a nurse; if I really wanted to do it, I wouldn’t still be here. I just wanted help.”

One of the recurring themes brought up by those we spoke to was the necessity of aftercare. Despite the narrative that ibogaine is a “quick-fix” for addiction, long-term success seems to hinge on access to strong support networks, therapy, and integration of the experience.

“I think the first time I went into ibogaine treatment, I didn’t really have a healthy outlook on what I was hoping to achieve. I just wanted an easy detox from the drugs because at the time, I still believed that quitting the drugs was the solution to my problem,” Amy says of her experience. “I couldn’t see any further than that. I didn’t think there was any more work to be done afterwards."

“The second time I went to do ibogaine, it was more to help me with what I needed to do after, rather than just detox. I wanted the mental shift that I had the first time, but this time I was prepared to take advantage of that in order to get better. I realized that ibogaine is just a tool to get me where I needed to go. It wasn’t the answer. It wasn’t going to fix everything for me, but it was going to allow me the ability to think clearly in a shorter amount of time.”

Amy was once again able to detox from opioids after her second ibogaine treatment, and she’s remained drug-free since then. She says her success is, in part, owed to continuous exposure to ibogaine. Amy has been taking ‘booster doses’ – that is, low doses of ibogaine – for over 2 years now, and she swears by this method.

“I really feel like the ibogaine does for you what it needs to do at the time, and in my opinion, having taken booster doses after a flood dose, I’d go as far as to say that it’s not worth using ibogaine if you don’t take booster doses afterwards.”

Sustainability

Now of course, we weren’t able to highlight everything that’s happening in the ibogaine community, and we weren’t able to include every perspective that’s out there. As the editor, I wanted to end the series by addressing some of these shortcomings.

The long-term sustainability of rising demand for iboga is a hot topic in the ibogaine community. From the beginning, I felt it was important to include this ongoing and
controversial discussion for the Ibogaine Conversation.

I hadn’t quite realized how controversial it was.

The vast majority of those I spoke to about the status of iboga in Gabon were hesistant, and often unwilling, to offer their commentary on the subject. The few people who engaged with the question all had different responses.

Some of those I spoke to early on in the series, who have spent time in Gabon, said they never got the impression that iboga is becoming more scarce. Others maintain that urgent action is necessary to prevent what they see as a rapid decline in the plant’s population.

“You used to be able to find iboga very easily in the wild,” says Yann Guignon. “Now, in these areas where it used to exist, you can’t find it anymore.”

Yann is the director and founder of Blessings of the Forest, an organization working towards a sustainable model for iboga cultivation in Gabon. He says that while growing demand for ibogaine poses the largest threat, larger social and environmental issues such as climate change and deforestation have a significant impact on iboga’s ability to thrive in its natural environment.

“Iboga needs 5 to 10 years to grow. It will take years and years to be ready for the market,” Yann cautions. “But the demand is now, so meanwhile we have to find a solution.”

Others cautioned me about the potential pitfalls of a kind of cultural paternalism when dealing with issues surrounding sustainability. Citing the historical example of French colonialism in Gabon, which largely depended on forced systems of agriculture, some ibogaine advocates aren’t comfortable with the assumption that Gabonese communities should just start growing surplus iboga to export.

After talking to numerous people, my own opinion is that it seems to make the most sense to look towards alternative sources of ibogaine. Voacanga africana is a plant similar to iboga that’s already cultivated in an existing agricultural framework, and from which ibogaine can be sourced relatively simply. Chris Jenks, a notable chemist in the ibogaine community, has published an accessible and user-friendly guide for obtaining ibogaine from Voacanga.

The truth is, I don’t think we have all the facts. There seems to be no real consensus about the status of iboga in the wild, and the impression I got from working on this series is that there needs to be some kind of coordinated effort to determine the scale of the environmental threat facing iboga.

Yann’s organization, Blessings of the Forest, is currently working on a project to do exactly this.

“Right now, we’re organizing a mission to count the iboga trees, to make a complete national inventory of iboga,” Yann told me. “One year after that, [we’ll] come back and count the trees again.”

Until then, we should acknowledge that iboga is a limited resource embedded in a rich and dynamic cultural context. Therefore, we should proceed responsibly and with accountability to the land and peoples from which this plant comes.

Regulation, the medical model, and safety

I’d also like to address that a number of the opinions expressed throughout the series were controversial, specifically surrounding regulation, the medical model, and safety.

The goal of Psymposia’s conversation format is to provide a platform for a diverse range of perspectives on a single topic. Not everyone agrees, and that’s the point. Without endorsing any one opinion over another, we want to create space for the exploration of contemporary issues that are often nuanced and challenging. With the Ibogaine Conversation, we hope we did that effectively.

Of course, the dominant theme of this particular series has been that ibogaine isn’t really like anything else. Ibogaine can kill you if you’re not well-informed about complications that can arise from its use.

Recently, unfortunate news has come out that underscores the serious nature of safety risks associated with ibogaine, even with experienced providers. The same day we published the previous article of this series, one of the featured panelists was arrested after a death at his clinic related to complications from Xanax and ibogaine. As discussed in our interview with Clare Wilkins, the subject of ibogaine and benzodiazepines is a controversial ongoing debate.

While we hope that we were able to provide a glimpse into some of the dangers to consider before taking ibogaine, we want to emphasize that what we’ve presented here is simply that, a glimpse.

“It’s a tricky subject and a tricky drug,” says Doug Greene, who’s been involved with drug policy activism for 30 years. He served as the former Patient Advocacy Coordinator for the Global Ibogaine Therapy Alliance (GITA) and co-authored their safety guidelines.

A recurring topic in this conversation has been regulation. Given that ibogaine can be dangerous, and has the potential to radically transform the lives of those it touches, it occupies a unique position in the debate between skeptics of the Western medical model and those who insist it only be used in a supervised setting with medical professionals.

But it’s not quite that simple, according to Doug.

“I think some people conceptualize this as a dichotomy – basically between the professionals and the system that they’re a part of, and grassroots self-help and neo-shamanism. I don’t think anyone is fully satisfied with the Western healthcare system, but I don’t think that dichotomy is real.”

There’s clearly dispute even among experts in the ibogaine community, and the responsibility is on any individual who wants to work with the drug to look beyond these articles when doing their research. We’ve done our best to provide further resources, but there’s a wealth of information out there that we simply don’t have the capacity to cover here.

One such resource is the guidelines established by GITA, which we referenced elsewhere in the series.

We spoke with Jonathan Dickinson, the former executive director of GITA and another co-author of the guidelines, about safety protocol with ibogaine. He brought up some interesting points that are relevant to the spirit of individual choice and autonomy that’s expressed by many in the ibogaine community, as well as the need for some kind of cohesive approach to harm reduction.

“I became involved with ibogaine because it was psychedelic therapy without a lot of pretense, and it was just happening already,” Jonathan told us. “Because treatments are being offered in unregulated spaces, they almost offer an example of what could happen with decriminalization."

“What we were working on with GITA was to provide a basic form of patient advocacy, which is what a community needs to provide for itself without a regulatory authority. Our goal with the guidelines was, rather than arbitrarily saying, ‘This is how you have to do ibogaine treatments,’ we wanted to create a resource to identify the risks and how they could be mitigated, in stages. From there, it was training in the most important areas, building up the genuine efforts people were making."

“I think it’s important that people are able to understand what the risks are that they’re taking, to have the freedom and ability to make choices about their bodies, and the proper support to make those choices well. I think if the ibogaine movement has been focused on anything, well that’s at least a big part of it.”

We cannot be responsible for how you choose to engage with ibogaine, but we strongly encourage anyone with a serious interest to act responsibly.

So what’s next?

When I asked Dana Beal, an iconic figurehead of both the ibogaine and medical marijuana movements, he suggested ibogaine research should be the next big thing for the psychedelic community to focus on after MDMA.

“Ibogaine is the most cost-effective change you could make to address both the opioid crisis and the drug war,” he told me. “Nothing else abolishes heroin withdrawal, and it’s non-habit forming.”

Murtaza Majeed does work surrounding drug treatment, advocacy, and policy reform in Afghanistan, where he’s attempting to open the country’s first ibogaine clinic. In his view, ibogaine is simply one small fix to a much larger social problem.

“We need to change our culture’s perspective towards drug use, so that it’s recognized as a part of the society we’re living in,” Murtaza says. “We need to talk more about the benefit maximization of drugs. We need to start remodeling our philosophy of harm reduction to be more focused on bringing integrated services to anyone who is using drugs, regardless of why they’re using, the route of administration, or whether or not they’re linked to the production or distribution of drugs.”

For Amy, it’s also all about how we treat people who use drugs in our society.

“We take one of the most suffering subgroups of our population, who’ve been traumatized, and we marginalize them and we browbeat them, shove them down, tell them they’re shit, they’re useless, and they serve no purpose.”

She goes on, “Then you go to a traditional treatment center, and they nail it into you that you have no control over your life. They don’t focus on trauma; they don’t focus on the root of your addiction and where it comes from.”

Amy is currently attending weekly meetings with other healthcare professionals who deal with addiction. She’s never shared the fact that she used ibogaine for her recovery because of the potential repercussions (she could be kicked out of the group for using drugs and lose her job as a nurse), but once her contract with her current employer expires she doesn’t have to worry as much.

“I can’t tell you how eager I am to come to the end of my contract and sit in the room with all those doctors and nurses and finally share my story,” she tells me. “It’s gonna happen.”

I’ve never taken ibogaine, and quite honestly I don’t know if I ever will. But even without having tried it myself, I’ve developed a deep respect for the molecule solely through my interactions with individuals whose lives have been profoundly touched by it. You can hear it in their voices when they share their stories. It’s not just earnestness; it’s much bigger than that.

So what is it? After our expedition into the world of this strange substance, what have we learned? What’s the deal with ibogaine?

As Amy finishes her story, I ask her to summarize the role that ibogaine has played in her life. Is it all it’s chalked up to be? Is it really the solution to addiction?

“Ibogaine is helping me stay clean. It’s given me purpose. It’s giving me passion and motivation."

“It wasn’t an instant fix, and we know it doesn’t work for everyone. There’s a lot of people who take ibogaine and go right back to using within days. There’s no easy or quick fix to addiction, and I think people tout this as a magic cure, but it’s just a tool."

“It shifts your perspective on things, and not in an abstract or unhealthy way. It feels like this is how we’re supposed to think. You can feel it. There’s something, a connection that happens with people who have taken ibogaine."

“I’ve seen it time and time again. There is this odd subconscious, subliminal kind of thing that goes on – something there that helps you connect with people."

“And I truly believe the solution to addiction is connection.”

Is Ibogaine the Cure for Opioid Addiction? It's Not That Simple. | Part 11

The Ibogaine Conversation Conclusion | The goal of this conversation was to provide a platform for a diverse range of perspectives on a single topic. Not everyone agrees, and that’s the point.

www.psymposia.com

 

[mr peabody]

Dr. Deborah Mash

Can a shrub from Gabon cure addiction?

by Meng Chen, MD | GOOP

The United States is struggling with a staggering opioid addiction epidemic—often starting with legitimate pain pill prescriptions, and ending with full-blown abuse. It is estimated that there are four million people in America who are addicted to pain medicines or heroin, with a growing number overdosing from a surge in fentanyl-spiked pills from drug traffickers in Mexico. It is devastating and debilitating families, compounded by the fact that recovery rates via standard, rehab-based treatment options are not that promising—though replacement drugs like methadone and suboxone can help.

But there is a tree in Gabon that might change this. Ibogaine, brought forward in the Western world by a drug addict, Howard Lotsof, in the ‘60s, is a hallucinogenic (or oneiric, i.e. dream-inducing) agent that acts not only as an addiction interrupter, but also, purportedly, like a mystical therapist—offering a “journey” through triggering traumas during one, very intense, 24-hour trip. Not only does it plug dopamine receptors—meaning patients emerge craving-free—but it is said to provide a massive cathartic release and life-review. Post-treatment, it is believed that addicts have a good three months to impose healthy routines (regular exercise and good diet are imperative for recovery), change triggering behaviors (move neighborhoods or cities, leave toxic relationships), and establish ongoing therapy without also struggling with withdrawal symptoms and insatiable cravings.

Here’s the rub: Ibogaine is a Schedule I drug in the United States, which means that it has no official medicinal value. It is legal in Mexico and Canada, and other countries around the world, but without big pharma stepping in to fund clinical trials, it has no chance of becoming a viable protocol in the US. Dr. Deborah Mash, a professor of neurology and pharmacology at the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami has been working with ibogaine since 1992 and, convinced of its value, has explored every avenue for getting it approved. Below, she explains more.

A Q&A with Deborah Mash, Ph.D.

Can you explain what ibogaine is? How does it work as an addiction disruptor? And as a hallucinogen, how does it work on both a physical and emotional/spiritual level?

Ibogaine’s ability to alter drug-taking behavior may be caused by the combined actions of either the parent drug and/or its active metabolite at key pharmacological targets that modulate the addiction circuit in brain. Ibogaine is an indole alkaloid from mother nature that gets converted to an active metabolite, noribogaine. The metabolite targets specific neurotransmitters in the brain—opioid, serotonin, and acetylcholine—blocking withdrawal and cravings and alleviating depression.

In other words: Ibogaine effectively blocks the acute signs of opiate withdrawal—the extreme anxiety, fever, chills, muscle cramps, nausea, and vomiting—but it also diminishes post-acute withdrawal syndrome. Addicts in early recovery report intense cravings, lack of energy, depression, “I feel rotten” for weeks to months after they stop using their drugs. When I was administering ibogaine to patients in St. Kitts [more on this below], we noted depression scores plummeted (in a good way), anxiety went down, energy levels were higher, and patients could start to think clearly. They were able to formulate a plan to maintain a clean life and to make that transition to sobriety.

Ibogaine’s effects on glutamate and NMDA receptors in the brain accounts for the psychotropic effects and the “dream-like” experience.

What is a typical experience?

Shortly after ibogaine administration, most people have an active period of visualizations that are described as a “waking dream state,” followed by an intense cognitive phase of “deep introspection.”

Who is the treatment most effective for—does it work on all types of addicts?

The treatment is most effective for people addicted to heroin and prescription opioids, but cocaine and alcohol abusers also report benefits. (Much less is known about the benefit of ibogaine for methamphetamine abusers.)

What’s the success rate? And how does that relate to more traditional rehab success rates?

Ibogaine is highly effective (about 90 percent) for blocking the signs and symptoms of opioid withdrawal. Most people report that their cravings and desire to use is diminished. Ibogaine is an addiction interruptor, not a “cure.” The estimated success rates for traditional rehabilitation (30- to 90-day programs) is about twenty percent at one year. We observed about a fifty percent success rate for patients after one year, but more studies are needed.

(Note: Since the ibogaine program is only seven days given as a detoxification, it can not be compared to any other programs. Studies would need to be done for people in treatment compared to patients treated with ibogaine and then matched to the same program.)

How did you get involved with ibogaine research?

I’ve been funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) for almost twenty-seven years to study the effect of drugs on the brain and behavior. When I first heard about ibogaine as an addiction interrupter, I recognized that it might be something that could provide a tremendous benefit for people suffering from addiction. Since seeing is believing, I got on a plane with a medical doctor colleague and flew to Amsterdam, where I saw an underground railroad of addicts helping other addicts by administering ibogaine.

I presented ibogaine to the FDA back in 1992—we were given the first permission here in the United States to test ibogaine in a phase I protocol with human volunteers at the University of Miami School of Medicine.

How does one get something like that through the FDA?

Howard Lotsof—an addict who actually discovered ibogaine when he took a dose himself and it curbed his withdrawal and cravings—had five use patents issued for ibogaine in the treatment of drug and alcohol dependencies. Ibogaine is a Schedule I drug, which officially means that it has no medical value. It’s very difficult to do the required phases of clinical trials, as getting a drug through the FDA costs hundreds of millions of dollars.

We signed an agreement with Lotsof to obtain the drug, so that we could begin testing it “above ground,” in an established academic medical school. My goal was to get credentialed doctors, psychologists, and addiction specialists to look at the risks and benefits of ibogaine, to determine whether or not it worked as he had suggested.

The short and the long story behind what stalled ibogaine is that Lotsof had no money to fund the clinical trials. Without FDA clinical trials, there could be no approval or advancement. Because he held the intellectual property and we didn’t, he needed to fund the research, but this never happened. It was left to me to go out and get federal dollars to bankroll the clinical research studies. Although I tried very hard, I was not successful in doing this. So after extensive grant writing and working with the National Institute of Drug Abuse, I decided my best chance to learn about this drug was to go offshore. I got permission from the government of St. Kitts and Nevis in the West Indies, and we set up a research facility to test ibogaine in patients.

People came from all over the world, and we also opened the doors to visiting doctors, scientists, and clinicians. After running years of studies there, I presented the information to my colleagues and peers—and also to the FDA. After ten years of work, we closed down the R&D facility and returned home to work toward an approval path for the active metabolite of ibogaine.

In 2010, I began to raise money for a company called DemeRx, Inc., to fund clinical research studies of noribogaine—the metabolite of ibogaine. Because ibogaine is converted to noribogaine through the liver, we reasoned that it might be possible to dissociate the anti-craving, anti-addiction effects of ibogaine from the hallucinogen or “journey” of the drug experience. We believed that the pharmaceutical industry would be more interested in joining us and funding a drug development venture if we could create new intellectual property. Since there was never any philanthropic interest that could make this project advance, a partnership with pharma was the only road forward. Unfortunately, you simply cannot get a medicine approved for use in the United States without real dollars needed to support drug development.

Considering the epidemic in this country, is there any chance that the FDA can help expedite?

The FDA has been great when it comes to the evaluation of ibogaine and its metabolite, noribogaine—and they have all my original clinical data. I’ve been in front of them four times. They know that the data has value since they originally approved the studies, and the review doctors and scientists who work at the FDA are well-meaning people who want to help us out of the prescription drug epidemic. But the bottom line is that they have to “check the box”: You have to go through the various phases of the clinical trials, and that costs an enormous amount of money. If there isn’t a financial exit, then nobody is going to fund the clinical trial research that the FDA requires for approval. The pharmaceutical industry develops all the drugs that become medicines, and if they’re not interested, it’s not going to happen. That said, we do have the medical marijuana movement—nobody took medical marijuana through the FDA.

The FDA needs to be assured that ibogaine can be given safely, under proper medical supervision. They know that there are candidates who may benefit, while other patients may not. We might need to do this on a patient-by-patient basis under a compassionate-use protocol. You can imagine that doctors may petition the FDA in the first year for twenty people; the next year doctors put up 2,000 requests; the next year it’s up to 20,000 requests. With that amount of interest and success, the community of treatment professionals will join the rank and file.

Why isn’t big pharma taking a closer look?

Pharmaceutical companies have really shied away from developing drugs for the treatment of addiction. Addiction is a very complex disorder, as many drug addicts are effectively self-medicating, whether it’s for generalized anxiety or major depression, PTSD, etc. There are many other psychiatric disorders and early childhood experiences and traumas that contribute to the underlying problem. From a clinical trial standpoint, it’s really difficult to design a study that controls for these factors.

Addiction is also a chronic relapsing disorder—anyone who says otherwise is making a false statement. While it always makes my heart dance when I hear of someone who took a single dose of ibogaine and never used heroin or cocaine again, most people will require a booster dose or re-treatment somewhere down the road. Stress, boredom, and disappointment are all a normal part of life, but often the triggers for relapse. I mean, when you think about it, ten years of hardcore abuse is not likely to be reversed with a single dose of any medicine. You need to have a program to stay sober and out of harm’s way.

But don’t forget that ibogaine gets converted to an active metabolite, which stays in the body for weeks to a month, which really helps people get through the early phase of drug or alcohol detoxification. If you’ve ever seen anyone in early detox, they feel terrible. Their mind is racing and they can’t stop thinking about getting high. I will continue to state on the record: If you can couple ibogaine with substance abuse treatment, I believe wholeheartedly that recovery rates will really increase. It is a slam-dunk for opiates, as it is a very gentle opiate detox from the withdrawal, and also helps stave off the return of drug cravings and rapidly improves mood.

Where are you at with ibogaine now?

I’ve spent a lot of my life advancing this cause: from getting the first FDA approval, starting companies to test the molecule, and then of course, conducting actual treatments under medical supervision. I have the largest clinical database of anyone in the world on the use of ibogaine for the treatment of addiction.

But unfortunately, today, ibogaine has pretty much gone to the underground of self-styled ibogaine practitioners. There are many people all over the world—some well meaning, some not well-meaning—who operate ibogaine treatment centers and put addicts in harm’s way.

There have been deaths. If you don’t have medical supervision, addicts can get into serious trouble, as people who abuse drugs and alcohol are often very sick and might have damaged livers or hearts. Because it’s processed through the liver, there are a lot of drug interactions. This isn’t a mushroom or ayahuasca trip. If you don’t know what a person providing the treatment actually knows about ibogaine or exactly what drug he or she is giving you, you are going to put yourself at risk for an adverse event. It’s terrible, because addicts are desperate to get help, and they are going to these underground clinics run by unskilled people without medical training or experience.

What would you say to people looking into ibogaine clinics? Are there other options?

Currently, the standard of care is detoxification with methadone or buprenorphine, or entry to a three-day hospital detox program.

People seeking ibogaine need to request the credentials and experience of their treatment provider. Addicts are going to do ibogaine wherever they can get it, but I would say that it is “buyer beware.” Do your homework. Make sure that you’re working with a doctor who is a genuine doctor, ideally someone who has trained with me or worked with us in St. Kitts. You want to be sure that you’re really getting ibogaine (some people combine ibogaine with other drugs), and that you’re entrusting yourself to someone who has a lot of experience and is trained in emergency medicine or cardiology and certified in addiction medicine, who can safely administer ibogaine.

How important is the psychedelic “journey,” or do you think that the metabolite of ibogaine is enough?

After twenty-five years of studying ibogaine, I’m still convinced that not only does the “journey” help people gain insight into destructive behaviors, but that it’s also very effective for curbing the compulsive desire and cravings for drugs, especially opiates.

I called the initial ibogaine dose a chemical Bar Mitzvah in an article in Omni Magazine over a decade ago. I stand by that: I think it is important to give a patient the ibogaine “journey” because it does help them develop insights into their self-destructive behaviors.

However, addiction is a brain disease, so the molecule needs to target this aspect. There are organic triggers for continuing to abuse drugs, psychological triggers, and social triggers—and for many people, it’s about finding the brain’s locus of control. In the twelve-step program, you give the control up to a higher power. My clients who did ibogaine under medical supervision said that it’s like doing the fourth step, where you complete a moral inventory. Instead of white-knuckling a detox, the “journey” helps you get over the hump. The body then makes noribogaine, which is the booster to get through the withdrawals. It’s an antidepressant and helps block cravings. The noribogaine stays in the brain for several weeks. If you give noribogaine to a rat, they will stop taking cocaine, stop taking alcohol, stop taking opioids, and stop taking nicotine. These studies help us understand why ibogaine is effective as an addiction interrupter.

My ideal would be to follow the ibogaine treatment with a noribogaine depot injection that lasts 30 days, or a patch, or a pill that you take once or twice a week to help addicts extend that window of addiction interruption to allow the brain chemistry to restore itself back to normal. If an addict feels like they’re going to relapse, they can go to their doctor and get the patch or pill to prevent the drug craving from returning, to help block the desire to get high.

Drugs lead you to bad places, and every addict is going to need some post-ibogaine therapy. But this treatment speeds up the therapeutic process and helps patients make that transition to long-term sobriety.

It seems like a slam dunk: What can we all do to help advance the cause?

I have thought about this question for a very long time. I believe that we really need to create a citizen’s petition to move ibogaine from Schedule I to Schedule II. First, ibogaine is not a recreational drug of abuse. No one wants to take ibogaine to get high. Second, it would be incredible if physicians could use ibogaine in this country under a compassionate use protocol. That’s what I want to work toward. Drug addiction is a life-threatening disorder, and pharmaceutical companies are not stepping up to help by developing effective treatments.

Post-9/11, we’ve been overrun with cheap heroin entering our country. Prescription drug abuse is off the charts. Drug traffickers from Mexico are spiking heroin with fentanyl, causing many more opioid-related deaths. In China, people are synthesizing fentanyl analogs and these designer molecules are coming into the US through Mexico.

We can’t afford the opioid drug epidemic that we have today in America. Everyone is affected, from our health care system to employers, families, and children. Addicts need safe access to help them get off of the drugs—they have a right to have an ibogaine treatment, administered in a safe setting. People want the opportunity to get off drugs and to go back to being functioning, tax-paying citizens. They shouldn’t have to go to back-door, abortion-style clinics, desperate for a chance at recovery.

A lot can be done with some seed money—a small group of well-meaning individuals could help us bring this before the right audience. This is something that I’m working toward right now.

How Does Ibogaine Work As An Addiction Disruptor? | Goop

Ibogaine’s ability to alter drug-taking behavior may be caused by the combined actions of either the parent drug and/or its active metabolite.

goop.com

 

[mr peabody]

My ibogaine experience

by David Graham Scott | Gonzo Today | 24 Mar 2016

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]

Johann Hattingh, with dog Kodak and parents Dirk and Anne, in Brits.

Ibogaine a 'near miracle' therapy for addicts*

by Ufrieda Ho | South Africa Times Live | 8 Sep 2020

The heavens didn't come crashing down on Johann Hattingh's head, more like the blue emptied out of the former photojournalist's sky little by little and left in its place a grey haze. And the grey grew steely with rage and melancholy, guilt and despair.

Hattingh worked on SA newspapers and for the UN, finding angles and bending light with a camera even as he stepped over bodies at crime scenes and cheated death by near misses while embedded with the US military in Iraq.

In 2007 he was diagnosed with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), but "I felt like I was born to this job," he says of how easily he ignored the root of his mental illness.

In 2012 he says "the industry spat me out." His couldn't pick up a camera again, his relationship ended and he was forced to move in with his parents in Brits in the North West. He didn't emerge from his cottage for days at a time as the dark hells of remembering and regret turned in pursuit, chasing him to the edge of suicide.

Today Hattingh says it was ibogaine treatment that saved him.

Ibogaine is a psychoactive alkaloid derived from the bark of a plant called iboga, native to Gabon. Hattingh had tried several types of treatments and therapists over the years with little success and had heard about ibogaine four years earlier but couldn't afford the treatment.

There's also scant clinical data on ibogaine and lingering concerns and controversies over its safety. Even though the plant is non-addictive it is toxic in high levels and can cause heart failure. There's also a blurred legal and regulatory framework in which treatment facilities operate. In countries like the US ibogaine is banned outright.

By chance Hattingh found the Magalies Ibogaine Wellness Centre in January. "My dad worked on a labour law issue for them, so we met with the clinical psychologist and I remember just crying my eyes out," says Hattingh.

"It was a like a nuclear bomb was dropped on my head," he says of taking the first dose of ibogaine in a five-day-long supervised treatment. It started a 24-hour trance of visions, looping through emotions and brutal confrontation of Hattingh's truths and lies.

This was followed by a "grey day" of physical weakness and purging.

Next came reflection, but with clarity and compassion, not judgment and guilt, and his treatment ended with re-integration therapy, focusing on coping mechanisms for everyday life.

"It was profound; I feel connected now to myself and everyone around me; I can see beauty in the world again and I have a sense of purpose," says Hattingh, seven months after his treatment.

He continues to microdose intermittently - using a sub-perceptual amount of the iboga root for particularly down days.

He's also become an unapologetic ibogaine treatment evangelist and plans to give talks to help others process trauma and he volunteers at the wellness centre.

Programme director Anso Taljaard started the
Magalies Ibogaine Wellness Centre in 2013.

Clinical psychologist Anso Taljaard started the centre in 2013. Taljaard says the iboga plant has long been used in Gabon as a healing plant and in traditional initiation ceremonies.

It hasn't had significant uptake in the West because it's never been a club drug and big pharma hasn't seen commoditising potential in a maintenance drug that is used once or maybe twice by a patient and is microdosed intermittently.

"Since 2013 we've had about 1,400 patients, with a relapse rate of about 25%," she says.

Those seeking a psycho-spiritual experience with ibogaine also check in to the centre.

Taljaard says meticulous screening and assessment of patients are essential, so is having an on-site doctor, nursing staff, counselling and integration therapy.

Her centre is in the process of being registered, which Taljaard says will introduce minimum-standard guidelines for all facilities and reduce costs through medical aid coverage.

"Ibogaine is not a magic bullet, it's not for everyone, but patients call it 'a lifetime of therapy in a night' and a 'near miracle'," says Taljaard.

She plays back voice messages on her phone from former patients who arrived with trauma, depression, anxiety and substance abuse.

They speak about a deeper understanding and acceptance of things just as they are, worrying less and loving themselves more. Others speak about being able to "defrag" or "reset" their lives.

Kerryn Matthews (Elske), a therapist at the centre, says this "resetting" is the beauty of ibogaine.

"Psychoactive drugs like ibogaine allow us to alter our default neural mode that can be full of negative programming, trauma and anxiety."

"Ibogaine can actually fix parts of our brain through processes called neural regenesis and neural plasticity; it gives us new chemical pathways and new perspectives to create new realities."

She adds that ibogaine's dissociative power makes visions lucid while being experienced with objective distance.

Izelle Pitman underwent treatment at the Magalies Wellness Centre in April.

Pitman had buried trauma from abuse she endured till she was 12 years old. Then in 2016, when she was expecting her first child, the emotions came flooding back.

Seeing a psychologist weekly and being prescribed drugs didn't work and when her baby was born, severe post-partum depression set in. Ten years earlier she had been in rehab for alcohol, cat (methcathinone) and cocaine abuse.

"The basics like taking a shower were impossible. I would clench my jaw all day and I was just sad. I had a beautiful baby, a wonderful husband and a gorgeous home but I felt like I wasn't good enough," she says.

Ibogaine treatment turned out to be the alternative she needed, even though she experienced apocalyptic, warlike visions and the purging wiped her out.

"It was hard, but by the third day my head felt lighter, like the files full of negative thoughts were cleaned out and I could start again," she says.

Pitman is expecting a second child and says: "Things haven't been 100% since my treatment; some days are really tough. The point, though, is I'm not depressed about it anymore. I can own my story, I feel connected and I know what I need to do to cope better."

*Brian (identity withheld) had his ibogaine treatment in 2014 with a practitioner in Cape Town. Brian's tik (crystal methamphetamine) addiction took over his life in a matter of months, destroying his relationships and bringing out his most destructive nature.

When he was eventually "ready to not die" he started on microdoses of ibogaine for six weeks before his supervised treatment.

"I would call it an experience, not a trip. It was insane. I remember a presence I call an iboga god sitting on me and I couldn't move".

"Everything slowed down and he showed all the parts of me that needed fixing and told me I had to fix it. I was also shown stuff not worth fixing or stuff I would never be able to fix and told to just throw these away," says Brian.

Five years on Brian has successfully changed his career to be involved in lifesaving, as he had wanted to do before his drugging.

"Your craving for the drugs just goes, I eventually even quit smoking. But ibogaine treatment is hard work - it can kill you. I also had to break from the old relationships that took me to drugs in the first place," he says.

For Hattingh, meanwhile, his next chapter is just beginning. On the step at his parents' home he sits down to coffee with them and his dog, Kodak. It's something that hasn't happened for years.

Hattingh's mother, Anne, talks about her own ibogaine treatment that she underwent this autumn after watching her son's transformation. At 70, her victory has been coming off years of anti-depressant medication and setting down anxieties and tiptoeing around others.

She says she's found her voice - she also found her son again.

THE RESURGENCE OF PSYCHEDELIC DRUGS

Clinical psychologist Jennie Ashwal puts the resurgence of psychedelic drugs and the trend of microdosing on natural healing plants down to humans' eternal questing.

"People are always searching for a richer meaning to life and for psychological wellbeing and good health."

"The likes of ibogaine and psilocybin (magic mushrooms, which are illegal in SA) are showing huge potential and there's an allure to using ancient healing plants combined with modern methods like microdosing."

Ashwal says research is showing that psychoactive plants have positive effects on serotonin and dopamine - the feel-good chemicals in the brain.

"More than a pseudo-spiritual effect, ibogaine and psilocybin can build and change the brain chemically," she says.

"They appear to have long-term effects and unlike club drugs there isn't the after-effect of depleting feel-good chemicals. Ibogaine also appears to be able to tap into early traumas quicker."

Her caution is to do the homework in researching distributors, medical professionals and treatment facilities. As she says, "Ibogaine is not play-play; it's not for fun."

"Conventional therapy has its place, as does supervised ibogaine treatment and microdosing in a world where people need to make sense of incessant rushing, isolation and empty goals," she says.

"We need more connection, rapport and love. We need to know that anger, sadness and pain are also healthy feelings and that getting through bad days is how we learn to build resilience and coping skills."

Psychoactive drug a 'near miracle' therapy for SA addicts & trauma victims

Ibogaine, derived from a plant native to Gabon, is helping the desperate and depressed beat their demons and reset their lives

www.timeslive.co.za

 

[mr peabody]

Treating addiction with magic mushrooms*

Psilocybin has been shown to help addicts, but will the stigma of drug addiction halt research?

by Jacqueline Ronson | INVERSE

Psilocybin, the substance that gives magic mushrooms their magic, is a drug with enormous potential. In recent years a new wave of research of therapeutic uses of psychedelics has risen, and early results are nothing short of astonishing.

A single dose of psilocybin, administered in a controlled environment with the support of talk therapy beforehand and afterwards, has reduced anxiety and depression in cancer patients, and cured smokers of their addiction. In a recent Johns Hopkins University study, 80 percent of heavy smokers treated with the drug were still cigarette-free six months after treatment. The best nicotine treatments available on the market today, on the other hand, have success rates of just 20 percent. A variety of conditions related to psychological distress — including addiction, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, depression, and PTSD — have been alleviated, if not cured, by magic mushrooms.

Despite this, psilocybin remains a Schedule 1 controlled substance — by official definition, it has a high potential for abuse, is not useful as a medical treatment, and is not safe even when administered under doctor supervision.

There’s a groundswell, though, of doctors, researchers, therapists, enthusiasts, and activists who are pushing for legalization of psychedelics and acknowledgement of their potential for good. The good news is that these individuals and groups are dedicated to the cause, and committed to following through until they reach their goals. The bad news is that getting any new medical therapy through the regulatory hoops is a massive, expensive, time-consuming endeavor, and the hurdles are magnified many times over for psychedelic drugs.

The Heffter Research Institute is currently planning Phase 3 clinical trials for using psilocybin to ease anxiety and depression in patients with cancer. It’s a big undertaking, expected to cost millions of dollars and take several years. The money will be raised from multiple sources, including philanthropists and possibly crowdfunding, Dr. George Greer, co-founder of the institute, told Inverse in an email.

Pharmaceutical companies have no interest in psilocybin because it can’t be patented. Also, patients appear to have their symptoms go away for months or years after a single treatment, and it’s difficult to make money off a drug that does not require regular use.

The Phase 3 trials will involve hundreds of patients across the country. If they are successful, the Food and Drug Administration will be under a great deal of pressure to approve psilocybin for treatment of anxiety and depression in cancer patients. And the DEA will have to change the drug’s categorization under the Controlled Substances Act. But if you decide to go harvest some wild magic mushrooms, you could still go to jail.

“It will still be illegal to use outside of medical treatment, and FDA will have considerable authority to limit its use,” says Greer. “But there is no way to predict what those restrictions might be at this point.”

And if you want to use magic mushrooms to ease your addictions to nicotine, alcohol, and other substances? The day that you can get a prescription for that will likely one day come, and hopefully before you need psilocybin to treat your lung cancer-related depression. “Based on the surprisingly positive results from the pilot studies for alcohol and nicotine, I do believe it will,” says Greer.

In the clinical trials to date, doctors haven’t seen the adverse effects, like psychosis or “bad trips,” associated with psychedelic drugs like mushrooms and LSD. Part of the of the reason for that is likely how closely controlled the dosage and the environment are controlled. Patients receive counseling before the trip about what to expect and how to deal with scary things that may come up in their minds (the trick is to shine light on the scary thing, to see how it’s not really so scary, rather than turning to run away.) Before they receive the drug they are put in a comfortable environment where they can safely explore the darkest parts of their mind. The patient typically has access to a blindfold and some trippy, wordless music. And a trained medical professional is always on hand to help if they are needed. Afterwards, the patient receives counseling to help process their experience during the trip.

Many patients describe the experience on mushrooms as a highly spiritual experience — feeling at one with the universe or close to God. This maybe isn’t too surprising, given how our brains light up on hallucinogens.

Party drug MDMA is also inching closer to accepted medical use, though it works in a different way. Rather than getting lost in your own head, MDMA has been shown to work as an aid to psychotherapy, allowing the patient to connect to their own feelings, and their therapist, more easily.

*From the article here :

The Latest Prescription Psychedelics Idea? Treat Addiction With Magic Mushrooms

Psilocybin has been shown to help addicts, but will the stigma of drug addiction halt research?

www.inverse.com

 

[mr peabody]

How ibogaine fights stubborn prescription painkiller addictions

by Katie Bain | reset.me

When he was 13 years old, Jeremy Suttons mother passed away, and he began drinking alcohol to help cope with the trauma. Liquor became cocaine and cocaine became prescription drugs including oxycontin, hydrocodone and methadone. By the time he turned 18, Sutton was fully addicted to prescription painkillers. His days were designed around getting a fix.

"Opiates were the ones that really stuck with me," he says, "because they gave me a sort of superpower to deal with the void of being alive."

While Sutton and a friend who also abused prescription opiates continually made plans to get clean, these plans never stuck. The friend mentioned an alternative addiction therapy he had heard of called ibogaine, but they had no access to the underground treatment. When he was 25, Sutton checked into rehab. It was here that he met a fellow patient who told him about her experience with ibogaine.

"Obviously this person was in rehab, meaning that they had relapsed," Sutton says, "but their testimonial was incredible."

The Tabernanthe iboga shrub from West Central Africa

Ibogaine is a naturally occurring substance that causes users to experience an intense psychedelic experience that lasts for 24-36 hours, sometimes longer. This treatment clears the brain of addictive cravings while offering deep psycho-spiritual insights. "They made it clear that theres still a lot of work afterwards," Sutton says, "but the experience can be profound and can give you the chance to make changes for yourself."

Derived from the root bark of Tabernanthe iboga shrub, ibogaine is an alkaloid, a group of naturally occurring chemical compounds, that has been used as a ceremonial sacrament by the Bwiti tribe of Western Central Africa for thousands of years. It has also been used as a treatment for addiction since 1962, when the late medical researcher and former heroin addict Howard Lotsof, often referred to as the father of ibogaine, discovered its usefulness as what he called an addiction interrupter.

Ibogaine has proven particularly effective in treating opiate addiction, with the majority patients requiring only one session. It not only useful in removing the symptoms of drug withdrawal and reducing drug-cravings, but it has also been shown to help users understand and reverse their drug-using behaviors.

Suttons fellow rehab patient gave him the phone number of Beverly Weaver, an ibogaine facilitator at a treatment center in Baja, Mexico. Weaver has guided roughly 200 people through treatments during the past six years. Mexico is home to many such centers, as ibogaine is illegal in the United States, as well as various European countries, Brazil and Australia.

While its U.S. classification as a Schedule I drug categorizes ibogaine as a highly addictive substance with no medical properties, there is no scientific evidence that it is habit forming. The Internet offers thousands of anecdotal accounts regarding people successfully overcoming drug addictions via ibogaine. Controlled studies of its medicinal properties have taken place in New Zealand and Canada. The YouTube documentary Ibogaine: Rite of Passage chronicles its use. Author Daniel Pinchbeck has also written about traveling to Africa for ceremonial work with Iboga in his 2002 book Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism.

In 2012, the then 26-year-old Sutton flew from his native Houston to San Diego, where a representative from the treatment center picked him up and drove him across the border to Mexico. It was his first time leaving the country, and he was to stay for six days at a total cost of $3,000.

Before arriving in Mexico, Sutton had gotten an EKG and a liver panel to determine the health of his heart and liver. Such tests are critical, as ibogaine can cause death in patients with compromised cardiac and/or liver function. Its also vital that patients are displaying visible signs of withdrawal such as pulse increase and sweating.

After settling in at the center, Sutton took a walk on the beach and began his treatment at 4pm. He was first given a small dose to test his tolerance. Within an hour, this dose had alleviated his withdrawals.

"That's a really lovely experience," Weaver says, "because in about 45 minutes the withdrawal symptoms go away and the person relaxes. It instills confidence in the person that what's going to happen is actually going to work."

Weaver emphasizes that it is essential to have a group of facilitators for each patient, as treatments are long and demanding, often multi-day ordeals. "Not just for sleep relief," she says, "but energetically, if everyone is together rooting for this person, it has a big impact." Surrounded by facilitators, Sutton ingested gradually higher doses of ibogaine, administered via capsules, until a predetermined dose based on his weight was reached.

"The first thing I experienced was anxiety and a feeling of electricity going through my whole body. It felt like my heart was beating out of my chest, but they took my blood pressure and everything was in order."

Sutton then descended into the journey. After taking his third and final capsule, he began losing his motor skills. "I couldn't lift up my head and was very light sensitive. I noticed a buzzing sound, and it felt like someone had plugged me into an electrical socket. My vision became static, like a static television, when my eyes were shut. I became very nauseous and even more scared. I was starting to lose sensation in my body. At this point, however, this period of electricity and frantic thinking slowed to a visionary state."

The vision aspect seemed like I was traveling through the corridors of my own brain. The whole time there was a voice saying, "It's okay; we don't care what you did. We love you. We've always loved you. It was very frightening because of the circumstances, but there was always something in the back of my head telling me it was okay, and to relax."

Sutton continues: "The vision tapered down into this experience where I could ask myself any question and get an immediate answer that was crystal clear. Seven hours after I took the ibogaine, I entered the reflective state and felt like I was getting all of the questions I had answered very clearly." He laid in contemplative silence for another 12 hours.

21 hours after the ordeal began, Sutton emerged from the journey and found "there was nothing in my head that was bothering me anymore. I cried a lot too. I remember very specifically that the reason I started crying was because I was not being nice to myself. I realized that I needed to start loving myself, and how much I had not been loving myself up until that point."

Sutton then drifted to sleep. "I felt like I was floating above my body watching myself lay in bed. I woke up the next day feeling sort of beat up and tired, but in the best place I ever had been in up until that point."

While there is limited scientific research about how ibogaine works, evidence suggests that the substance resets neurotransmitters that have been programmed for addiction via consistent drug use.

"The simple way I like to explain it," Weaver says, "is that when you do opiates, they touch receptors in your brain. You do them enough to grow an addiction and you form more of those receptors. When there's no opiates on those receptors, you've got a lot of hungry little mouths yelling I want opiates! Iboga goes in and heals all of those hungry little mouths and takes them back to their original state so they're not hungry anymore."

Weaver emphasizes that ibogaine does not just treat the addiction, but addresses underlying reasons for the addiction such as abuse and trauma. While profound personal insights are gained, it is vital for users to set themselves up for success after the treatment. "Ibogaine will take care of 49 percent of what you have going on," Weaver says, "and you're responsible for the other 51 percent." Twelve step programs, creative endeavors and overall lifestyle changes are all encouraged.

"It's not going to make you not an addict anymore," Sutton says. "It's going to scramble your brain and reset your head in a way that gives you insight into who you are."

Sutton had struggled with depression and anxiety his entire life, and found that his ibogaine session had alleviated these issues along with his cravings for opiates. After another few days in Mexico, Sutton returned home and began the work of incorporating the lessons ibogaine had taught him. He moved into a new house, cut out unhealthy relationships and focused on his passion for making music.

Four months later, though, his anxiety and depression returned. He found, however, that ibogaine had provided him with new tools to deal with these challenges. I was able to look back on my experience and saw that my brain operated differently when I was done. I was able to think things through clearer.

The success rates for ibogaine treatment is still largely unknown, as most of the work is done underground. Weaver says that 70 percent of her patients kick their addictions, and that the overall success rate is 40-50 percent. Comparatively, the success rates for opiate addiction treatment at standard rehab facilities remain low.

Despite its usefulness, Ibogaine is still rare. Weaver believes that on any given night, there are, outside of Africa, 3-5 people in the world doing ibogaine. Still, the small areas of forests in Africa which ibogaine producing trees grow are being harvested at an unsustainable rate. Ibogaine can also be extracted from an African tree called Voacanga, which grows abundantly and is easier to plant.

Sutton's craving for opiates returned five months after his treatment, and which point he did a second session on his own at home, under the supervision of a family member. Such self-treatment is highly dangerous and not recommended.

Sutton has been clean for two years and is now in Mexico training to be an ibogaine facilitator. "The problem that was eating my life up is pretty much gone, he says. Ibogaine was a teacher that told me what needed to be done and to do with the knowledge it gave me what I would."

http://reset.me/story/addiction-inte...ate-addiction/​

 

[mr peabody]

The future of medical ibogaine*

Psychedelics Today | Apr 22 2019

Ibogaine is a psychedelic chemical found in the West African shrub Iboga. Bizarre in chemical structure and psychoactive properties, the drug remains mysterious to scientists and psychonauts alike. At high doses, ibogaine causes intense, unforgivingly introspective and dream-like hallucinatory experiences that can last upwards of 24 hours. The African psychedelic might have remained nothing more than a curiosity in the West if not for the discovery of its ability to disrupt physical and psychological drug addiction. Thousands of anecdotal reports and preliminary scientific research provide evidence that a single dose of ibogaine can eliminate both withdrawal symptoms and craving in drug addicts. In the United States, ibogaine remains a schedule 1 drug, and those seeking treatment must pilgrimage to countries that do not regulate it or take a chance with illegal underground treatment centers. What will it take for ibogaine to become medically available in the United States?

New drugs must undergo a rigorous vetting process to move from discovery to the legal market. To become a prescriptible medication, drugs must pass through clinical trials regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These trials consist of a pre-testing phase, four clinical phases, and regulatory checkpoints throughout. Advancing to the next phase is predicated on successful completion of the prior phase.

Before moving to clinical trials, researchers must collect extensive pre-clinical data and submit an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the FDA. Pre-clinical studies use rodent models to determine how effective the drug is for its intended purpose and its safety.

Phase 1 is the first set of studies to determine the safety and efficacy of the drug in humans. If these studies are successful, researchers can proceed to Phase 2, which are well-controlled studies with larger populations. Phase 3 studies test safety and efficacy with different dosages of the drug in even larger populations comprised of various demographics. While the time it takes to move through all phases varies, this process can take many years. After successful Phase 3 trials, the FDA reviews the data and the researchers submit a New Drug Application (NDA). The FDA reviews the NDA and the drug’s labeling to ensure accurate and sufficient information is provided to the consumer and drug-provider. The drug production facility is also inspected by the FDA for health and quality assurance. If the drug is approved, it will be released on the market and available for prescription. Phase 4 trials occur only after the drug has been approved and is publicly available. In Phase 4, the drug manufacturer must continuously monitor the effects of the drug in patients and submit safety reports to the FDA.

For ibogaine to come to market, it must pass through each of these clinical phases of study. Remarkably, ibogaine began the process of becoming an FDA approved therapeutic medication in the early 1990’s. Pre-clinical and Phase 1 trials conducted by Dr. Deborah Mash at the University of Miami supported the anecdotal evidence that patients had significantly reduced drug withdrawal and craving following ibogaine administration. These trials ended prematurely as a result of several factors, including criticism from the pharmaceutical industry, the apparent costliness to continue, and an intellectual property lawsuit between Mash and Howard Lotsof. No clinical trials have been conducted with ibogaine since this preliminary work over 20 years ago.

Another issue facing the medical legalization of ibogaine is that it cannot simply be prescribed in pill form by a doctor. The drug must be administered in a therapeutic setting, potentially as an aid to psychotherapy, as is the case with MDMA. Pre- and post-counseling are vital to ensure proper translation and integration of the psychedelic experience, as well as addressing the underlying problems that contribute to drug abuse. Furthermore, patients must implement changes outside of the clinic to ensure successful treatment outcomes. This means getting away from the external factors that contribute to drug abuse, which can include leaving relationships with friends, family or partners, and/or moving to a new area. While legalization for medical application is important, there must also be infrastructure developed to support proper administration of the drug.

There have been cases of death associated with taking ibogaine. However, none of these cases have been a result of overdose or toxicity. Individuals with certain heart conditions are at a higher risk of cardiovascular-related death after consuming ibogaine, and taking drugs of abuse with ibogaine may cause adverse reactions that can result in death. Rather than supporting the case against legalization, the risk of death for certain patients further evidences the necessity of legalization: unlike some clandestine ibogaine sources, regulated treatment centers would have the resources to screen patients for comorbidities (reasons not to ingest the drug) prior to ibogaine administration.

While the legal status of ibogaine in the US makes research a significant challenge, countries in which ibogaine is unregulated provide the opportunity to study its use in legal clinics. In 2017, the Multi-Disciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) sponsored two studies investigating the efficacy of ibogaine in Mexico and New Zealand. With abundant data available for legal collection across multiple fields of study, scientists are just beginning to scratch the surface of ibogaine research. Those interested in studying ibogaine should not be discouraged by the barriers in the United States and should look abroad for more opportunities.​

*From the article here :

The Future of Medical Ibogaine

Ibogaine is a psychedelic chemical found in the West African shrub Iboga. Bizarre in chemical structure and psychoactive properties, the drug remains mysterious to scientists and psychonauts alike. At high doses, ibogaine causes intense, unforgivingly introspective and dream-like hallucinatory...

psychedelicstoday.com

 

[mr peabody]

​

Ibogaine treatment and the global overdose epidemic​

As overdose incidents rise to alarming rates in both North America and the European Union, there is an urgent need to find better treatments for addiction. Ibogaine, a substance derived from the root bark of an African plant (Tabernanthe iboga) and historically used in ethnomedicine in traditional communities, is showing promise for lasting reductions in drug use, withdrawal, and cravings. Ibogaine is a natural alkaloid that has been used in the last decades as an adjuvant for the treatment of opiate withdrawal.​

Opioid overdose deaths at crisis levels​

The number of opioid overdose deaths have increased alarmingly in the United States, Canada and the European Union. According to the US government Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since 1999 the number of deaths due to opioid overdose (including prescription opioids and heroin) has quadrupled, and between 2000 to 2015 more than half a million US residents died from an overdose. In 2016, ninety-one US residents died from an opioid overdose every day. The situation has become so severe that it has been declared an epidemic, leading the US government to draft a special law about the abuse and treatment of opioid addiction.

The situation in Canada is also dire, where in 2016 seven people were dying each day from an overdose. Responses are being organized at national and regional levels and public health emergencies have been declared in the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta.

While the situation in the European Union is less dramatic, it is no less troubling. The EMCDDA (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction) states: “Europe’s opioid problem remains a central issue in the 2016 analysis, reflecting the significant impact of these drugs on mortality and morbidity. We are now seeing an increasingly complex relationship between the use of heroin and synthetic opioids, accompanied by a worrying increase in overall estimates of opioid-related deaths.”

In the case of Spain, the situation has stabilized since the 1990’s: 0.3% of the population has consumed heroin in the last 30 days. However, there are currently 58,291 people in Spain receiving methadone maintenance treatment (MMT).​

Harms related to methadone use​

Although methadone has helped millions of people discontinue heroin use, and thus reduce the harm associated with its use (infectious diseases, crime, marginalization, etc.) it can also produce iatrogenic addiction, which is difficult for many users to overcome. Many of these methadone patients previously had problems with heroin addiction but are now perfectly integrated into their environments, with no significant problems other than their physiological dependence to methadone.

Apart from the long-term negative physiological effects of continued use of methadone, primarily cardiac issues, one recent study also found that people stabilized with high doses of methadone in maintenance treatment have more medical, cognitive, and emotional problems and a reduction in quality of life compared to people who have managed to complete treatment.​

New ibogaine research shows promise for treating methadone dependency​

As noted, since the 1960’s the properties of ibogaine have been known to reduce and/or eliminate opioid abstinence syndrome in both research animals as well as humans. The popularization of ibogaine as a possible anti-addictive drug has resulted in many people on methadone wanting to cease their methadone dependency by using ibogaine. However, ibogaine is a substance that brings with it a high risk of cardiac toxicity, which, combined with the cardiac toxicity that methadone causes, means that its use for treating methadone dependence should only be done in very controlled settings and under strict medical supervision.

Recently, a clinical case study undertaken by ICEERS* was published in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies, which documents how a person was successfully detoxified from methadone using low but increasing doses of ibogaine. The ICEERS support service, in collaboration with Pangea Biomedics, supervised the detoxification of a 47-year-old woman who decided to use ibogaine to eliminate her dependency to methadone, which she had been taking for 17 years (37 mg daily before beginning the treatment.) While under constant medical and psychological supervision (including EKG monitoring), the woman alternated low, increasing doses of ibogaine with a progressive reduction of her methadone consumption over a period of 6 weeks.

Ibogaine treatment

After taking her dose of methadone, she waited for the onset of withdrawal symptoms. When they appeared, she took a 300 mg dose of ibogaine. When the abstinence symptoms appeared again, she took half of her maintenance dose of methadone. This process was repeated, with the patient alternating increasing doses of 100mg of ibogaine with a reduction to half of the previous dose of methadone such that after a final dose of 600 mg of ibogaine her withdrawal symptoms disappeared completely. One year after the treatment the patient remained abstinent from using methadone or other prescription opioids. She continued to occasionally use heroin (via nasal insufflation), however much less frequently than when she was on methadone.

Ibogaine, like many other medical treatments, is a safe substance if administered in a controlled medical setting. It is difficult for total detoxification to be achieved by administering a single high dose of ibogaine because of the long half-life of methadone in the body, as well as because of the added cardiac risks associated with high doses. For this reason it is essential that clinicians intending to use this approach be well trained in this methodology, which took several years to develop, and that treatments are performed in a vigilant manner, in closely monitored medically supervised settings.​

The future of ibogaine treatment​

Despite the promising results from this case study and several others, ibogaine’s legal status remains a barrier for conducting more research and for integrating ibogaine into existing treatment systems. The substance has been illegal in the USA since 1967 (classified as a hallucinogen in Schedule 1) and is also scheduled in 9 countries in the European Union. In other countries, ibogaine is unregulated (i.e. neither approved nor illegal), except for in Brazil, New Zealand, and South Africa where it is regulated as a pharmaceutical for use by licensed medical practitioners.

Additional clinical studies are needed to verify that low dose ibogaine treatment is effective and safe for methadone detoxification. If such a treatment program, which is both cost efficient and easy to control in a medical setting, proved effective, the number of lives that could be saved of people struggling with opioid use would be incalculable.

Ibogaine Treatment and the Global Overdose Epidemic | ICEERS

Ibogaine treatment, historically used in ethnomedicine, is showing promise for lasting reductions in drug use, withdrawal, and cravings.

www.iceers.org

 

[mr peabody]

Howard Lotsof

Ibogaine addiction therapy: Then and now

by Sean Lea | Truffle Report | 24 Feb 2021

In response to the opioid crisis, therapy with ibogaine has become an increasingly attractive prospect for many. At the right dose, ibogaine has the effect of being an “addiction interruptor” —it does not eliminate addiction, but can curb withdrawal and cravings for varying lengths of time. This provides a recovering addict with a much-needed period of respite to pursue other forms of therapy and reclaim parts of their lives. Used in combination with psychotherapy, this has proven to be an effective addiction treatment. It has been widely used in the treatment of heroin addiction, but is also an increasingly common intervention for cocaine and alcohol use, smoking, and more.

On the other hand, ibogaine is not an entirely safe psychedelic, even in the best of circumstances. With proper medical screening and other processes, around 1 in 400 estimated users are in danger of a lethal reaction. Even if a patient decided to take this risk, it remains vitally important to find treatment centres that are safe and above-board, since the medication is far more dangerous when taken improperly.

Although ibogaine has been consumed in West Africa for centuries via the T. Iboga plant’s root bark, ibogaine did not gain attention for its anti-addictive qualities until the early sixties. The story is a pretty unique one.

Howard Lotsof: The original ibogaine advocate

Born in the Bronx, Howard Lotsof and several friends had become addicted to heroin. In 1962, they tried ibogaine recreationally and observed among themselves a marked reduction in their withdrawal and cravings for heroin. Although he was not a medically-accredited researcher, psychedelic substances were still uncontrolled at this point in time and Lotsof was able to access a steady supply of the drug. He would open S&L Laboratories for the purpose of administering psychedelics to anyone interested. He offered ibogaine to more heroin users and gathered further data on its efficacy in curbing the effects of addiction. When the FDA noticed large amounts of substances being delivered to S&L, they cut off their supply and the lab was closed in 1963. This did not stop Lotsof, however.

In 1982, he formed the Dora Weiner Foundation, with the intention of advocating for development in ibogaine treatment. His petition was unsuccessful, mostly due to the pharmaceutical industry’s lack of financial interest in treating addiction. We’ll consider that in itself an indicator of how much times have changed.

In 1986, Lotsof founded NDA International, gaining the patent for treatment of opioid addiction with ibogaine and filing for others. Through NDA, he provided ibogaine and worked with researchers in the Netherlands at the University of Erasmus. This time, he was successfully able to establish treatments for many addicts until 1993 when a patient died following treatment. The tragic death of a patient hampered interest and funding for these therapies in the Netherlands, and NDA ceased its treatment activities.

Lotsof continued his activism for ibogaine treatment until his death in 2010. Much, if not all, of the advances in ibogaine research can be attributed to Lotsof’s activities, and he did it all without a doctorate.

Christiania and Carl Waltenburg

This story is mysterious in many ways. It begins with an unnamed European manufacturer producing 44kg of ibogaine extract from around 500kg of T. iboga root in 1981. Carl Waltenburg, who had taken a lifelong interest in hallucinogens, purchased this supply and began using it to treat addicted heroin users. Waltenburg had been a resident of a commune in Copenhagen called Christiania, set up in a former military base, since it was first established in 1972. By this time, Christiania had developed a strong prevalence of heroin addiction and Waltenburg, naming his ibogaine “Indra Extract”, is said to have treated over 1000 addicts here.

The commune of Christiania remains in place today, although with restrictions placed on hard drugs. Waltenburg’s story is difficult to verify, and there are some conflicting reports from residents who argue that a “blockade” policy was put in place —barring addicts from Christiania until they quit heroin “cold turkey.”

Supposedly, Indra Extract remained available for purchase online until at least the early 2000s. It’s unknown if this was part of the original Waltenburg supply —and, if so, whether or not it could even have still been effective or safe after two decades of storage.

Ibogaine addiction treatment today

Ibogaine is still classified as a Schedule I controlled substance in the U.S., although many former users suggest that the experience is not pleasant enough to create any recreational dependence. U.S. citizens seeking treatment with ibogaine will have to find facilities in other countries where treatment is legal, like Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Europe. In such an instance, rigorous standards should be followed and personal research conducted to ensure that the facility is safe.

The Global Ibogaine Therapy Alliance has been formed for the purpose of creating safe, standardized medical practices and oversight for ibogaine therapy, as well as developing training programs for physicians. Any ibogaine therapy centres that you investigate should follow their guidelines. Medical screening must include a cardiac examination for heart conditions or a family history of heart conditions; drug contraindications, and psychological preparation for the experience.

Again, treatment with ibogaine should not be considered one hundred percent safe even after all of this. Hopefully, research into its mechanisms will continue and therapists will be able to provide a better guarantee for safety —but until then, there will always be a small risk.

https://www.truffle.report/ibogaine-addiction-therapy-then-and-now/​

 

[mr peabody]

Microdosing Iboga

From Bancopuma @ DMT Nexus :

Here is a guide for microdosing iboga that I helped compile with the guy who runs Reset.nu, I thought it may be of interest to some. It was made with TA tincture in mind, but also applies to the root bark as is. Microdosing is an accessible and low cost way of working with iboga safely and in a controlled manner for those that are curious and wish to work with the plant, and done this way it can be easily integrated into day to day life. It may also be wise for anyone contemplating a flood session with iboga to consider microdosing with the plant prior to this.

An iboga treatment provider told me that 500mg of root bark taken every four days works well as an anti-addiction treatment and antidepressant, and this can be taken in a '00' capsule for convenient dosing. Doses much lower than this will be effective, as the effects are cumulative. It is important to taste a tiny pinch of the root bark, so all your senses are able to experience the plant. It is important to set intent and state a positive affirmation on ingesting the root bark, and this is discussed below. This affirmation, in whatever form iboga comes in, is a vital part of the treatment not to be neglected.

Iboga (Tabernanthe iboga)

Iboga is an evergreen, flowering shrub, native to the rain forests of western Central Africa. The plant prefers well composted, well drained soils in a protected, partly shady position. Under the right conditions it can grow up to a height of 10 meters. The stem is erect and branching, its leaves are dark green, its flowers white to pink or yellowish, its fruits are orange and oval shaped. The magic of the iboga is to be found in the root bark, home to the powerful teacher that lingers in this extraordinary plant.

Historical origin of Iboga rites

For many generations, the iboga plant has played an important role for practitioners of the indigenous Bwiti religion in Central Africa. The Bwiti initiation rite to obtain spiritual maturity consists of the ingestion of a very strong dose of iboga, followed by an intense, mind-altering experience. Lower doses are taken during weekly ceremonies, as collective religious fervour, a moment for intense love and mutual understanding, while fuelling dancing and drumming late into the night. Through the iboga plant, the Bwitists feel that they strengthen their connection with the divine realm and experience a deep understanding for the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

Bwiti is considered by its members as a universal religion, accessible to anyone who approaches it with respect and humility. Among the Bwitists, there is a widespread hope that one day the Bwiti and its iboga rituals will become known at the very core of western culture. A noble thought...

Iboga therapy in drug rehabilitation

Over the past decades, iboga treatment indeed found its way into western practices. Professionally guided, intense therapy with iboga has proven to be extremely successful in curing drug addictions. Recent studies have shown that iboga reduces dopamine concentrations in the body, hereby reducing the affects of certain abusive and highly addictive drugs. The plant will have to undergo more clinical research in order to become an officially registered medicament, but so far the results have been promising.

Iboga as a way to personal liberation / freedom of the soul

Iboga can play a powerful curative role but not only for drug addicts. Rooted in unpleasant past experiences and subsequent negative emotions, many of us are in one way or another caught up in patterns of thought and behaviour which limit us in our freedom. Those patterns are quite similar to addictions: despite their harmful character, we deceive ourselves into believing that they provide us a shortcut to comfort.

Iboga digs down into the depths of our mind. It will surface what is hidden and treasured, that what shapes us and keeps us in shape. Iboga can help any one of us to eliminate self-induced oppression, accelerate personal growth, and bring more joy to life.

Master your mind

Our environment nowadays demands us to operate on mind-based logic, it feels like there is very little space left to follow our hearts. Through the uncontrollable production of all kinds of thoughts, your mind is constantly influencing your behaviour. Don’t believe everything you think! The mind can be a useful practical tool, but should not be your guide.

The problem is that your mind feeds on old emotions and outdated information, thereby distracting your soul from its presence in the happenings of the now. The very Now is always New and should be experienced in total openness, allowing any new impulse to freely flow into your perception. You can be freed from your mind if you become aware of this dichotomy. Ask yourself: Who is this making me behave or react like this? Am I not free to have a new challenge and emotion in every new situation? Why should I be a slave to my thoughts, my preferences, my likes and dislikes, my... You, you are free!

Letting in the spirit of Iboga

One possibility to let the spirit of iboga in is to take what is considered a full dose. The journey that follows is not a journey for the faint at heart. Though there are a number of guidelines which can be followed to minimize any risks, the experience will not be of an easy nature.

A more gentle way of communicating with the spirit of the iboga plant is to take in much lower doses. If used in the right way, tiny amounts of this powerful plant are sufficient to regain control over one’s thoughts and actions. I discovered a new technique for self-treatment with Iboga tincture, which will be explained further in this guideline. The experience of myself and others have taught me that treatment with no more than a few drops a day can be surprisingly effective.

The Iboga TA 1:50 tincture

This tincture holds the essence of the iboga plant. Firstly, the root bark of the iboga is extracted into its purest form, being the combined Iboga alkaloids, while keeping the full spectrum of the plant uncompromised. Afterwards, the extract is dissolved in pure alcohol. The tincture that results from this technique is so strong that one drop suffices as one therapeutic dose.

A drop of iboga tincture contains 0.58 milligram of iboga TPA extract. This is the highest possible concentration pure alcohol can contain. The alcohol instantly carries the iboga extract into the bloodstream and the nervous system. One drop, entirely saturated with the iboga alkaloids, contains all of the plant’s properties, its spirit, its voice, and its vibration. This one single drop is your gateway to communication with the iboga spirit. However, to treat yourself successfully it takes a bit more.

The properties of the Ibogaine

The special characteristic of ibogaine (after being converted to noribogaine, by the liver) is that it occupies the receptors which are urging you into the repetition of a behavioural pattern or addiction. That is what makes it effective even in the most serious cases of drug addiction. Most addicts are cured within a day or four, without any withdrawal symptoms and with little chance for relapse.

With the micro dosage therapy it is possible to send the tiny bit of ibogaine that is captured in one drop of the tincture to exactly that receptor which is responsible for the thoughts and behavioural patterns that are keeping you in their grip. This method works most efficiently if you use the strength of your spirit to guide the healing to the right place. By expressing a powerful affirmation or intent at the very moment the iboga enters your senses and nervous system, your voice carries the iboga and you give directions to the plant teacher via your intent. This technique is a combination of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and iboga therapy, between a very accessible, holistic approach to psychotherapy and the most powerful healing plant in the world.

Implications for usage

With this self-treatment, you will pinpoint and reset one behavioural pattern or addiction at a time. Before you start with the drops, it is very important first to unravel your problem. Look into to the root of the addictive patterns in your thoughts and behaviour. Search for old emotions that have become embedded in your system along the way. It will take some time and practice to get deep enough and find the naked truth under the surface of your behaviour. Once you found the root, or the soil in which your habits are rooted, you are ready to formulate your intention in the form of a positive affirmation.

This affirmation must be exactly the opposite of what you discovered to be the root of your addictions. For example, if you discovered your base problem to be "I feel lonely", a possible affirmation could be "I am complete". An affirmation should not contain "I wish" or "I will" and it should not contain a "not". It should not affirm your current state.

Once you are sure you have located a troublesome emotion and its opposite positive affirmation, stand in front of a mirror and take a single drop under the tongue. Let the bitter, woody taste fully enter your senses and welcome the spirit into your being to do its healing. Do not wash down the drop with water, experiencing the bitterness is an integral part of the healing. Your senses will be immersed with bitterness while you say ‘yes’ to the spirit. Then, look yourself in the eyes, hold one hand on your throat, and express your intention. Firmly, use your voice and feel the vibration come back into your body while you see, hear, and feel yourself speak. The iboga travels into your nervous system, healing exactly the place you point it to.

Imagine the plant teacher simply closing the door to the old, hindering emotion. Remember, the mind has the tendency to make you believe in twisted versions of reality. Those mind-made lies are based on experiences from the past. While speaking your intention out loud, your voice overwrites the lie your mind has been misleading you with. While the thoughts your mind produces are constructed out of the past, the sound of your voice comes from and into the very Now. Sound is so much louder than thoughts. Feel the liberation from your past and the beauty of the Now.

Potentiating and manifesting

Other than this described technique to reset negative behavioural patterns, the tincture can also be used to connect and reconnect to the positive and bring good things in your life. Nothing is more powerful than ones intent he vibration you set before you start your day will definitely impact it.

Start your day in front of the mirror and set the positive vibe. You will experience the result all day. Where your mind would be constantly judging any situation and loop you into its trap of doubt or insecurity, your affirmation has already overwritten all negativity. My favourite affirmation for the day is: “Everything is good”. With this I have already decided that whatever comes that day has my full acceptance and approval, be it good or bad, I am in peace with the day. EVERYTHING is good. No mind-based misconception can go around that.

Examples of positive affirmations

I am complete
Everything is good
I am love
I am my self
Everything is light
I am happy
This day is perfect
I choose
My body is healing itself
Life is generous
I can do it
I am free
I am

Reset the robot

Through your voice, your intention vibrates outwards into the entire universe. It becomes imprinted in the totality of the whole and resonates back to you. The iboga travels with your intention to exactly those receptors that were urging you to fall in repetition of the pattern you want to be freed from. Your intention or positive affirmation will keep those receptors occupied. You are healing yourself, you are no longer caught up in a loop of oppressive or destructive thoughts. You reset the robot inside you, the robot that defines the boundaries of how you think and behave, fed by emotions from the past, negative ideas of others, or media induced images of reality.

After a week’s time, you start to notice the freedom you have gained. You find the willpower to unplug from previous conceptions and discover you are free to make your own decisions. You find fresh soil for the roots of your being to extract new energy from and sunlight to grow towards your full potential.

When eliminating your old habits, it is very possible that other negative patterns come to the surface. After you feel like you have completely cured the problem you were focusing on, you can repeat the treatment with a new intention. This revolutionary technique allows you to work slowly and focus at one problem at a time. In the end, the tincture gives you the potential to surface all that needs to be dealt with and heal all that limits the freedom of your soul.

Warnings

Without an affirmation, the treatment is ineffective. If not used properly, with the wrong intentions, ingestion of the tincture may even cause damage. Make sure you spend enough time to dig into the soil of your emotions and find the roots of your behaviour. Don’t worry, you do not need to be a psychologist to get to these depths. All the knowledge you need lies inside yourself.

Iboga accumulates in the body. It remains in the body for more than 4 weeks. This means that all the drops you take within 5 weeks will accumulate and remain in the body until they slowly wear off. If the dose you take exceeds 10 drops a day, physical and psychological effects, and perhaps even disorientation and ‘trippy’ effects can occur. Be aware of that some people respond highly sensitively to a few drops only. It is important to listen to the signs of your body at all times and adjust your dosage accordingly. Do not take the iboga tincture before going to sleep. The plant gives you energy and might cause insomnia.

During the period you treat yourself with iboga, it is advised not to use any drugs and keep stimulants such as coffee to a minimum, as well as smoking tobacco or certain herbs. Your receptors will become very sensitive and you may have an unexpectedly strong reaction to them. Also, it is strongly discouraged to combine the healing of iboga with ayahuasca or other visionary or hallucinogenic substances. Lastly, iboga should never be combined with anti-depressant medication such as SSRI's, such a combination would be very dangerous.

Iboga Microdosing Guide - Iboga - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus ​

 

[mr peabody]

Ibogaine significantly reduces opioid withdrawal and cravings

by Eric Dolan | PsyPost | 16 Apr 2018

New scientific research provides more evidence that the psychedelic drug ibogaine can help treat opioid withdrawal and cravings. The new findings are reported in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.

Ibogaine a psychoactive substance found in the root bark of the African Tabernanthe iboga plant, which has been used in the shamanic rituals of the Bwiti religion in West Africa. The drug is outlawed in the United States and many other countries, but remains legally available in Mexico. The new research examined 50 patients addicted to heroin or prescription opioids who participated in a week-long ibogaine treatment program in Tijuana.

“As a lover of biology, spiritual experience, indigenous cultures, and consciousness I developed a curiosity and passion for psychedelic substances, as they perfectly intersect these interests. This led me to pursue formal education and training in psychiatric pharmacy as well as public health, which further inspired me to be involved in researching the utility of psychedelic substances in the treatment of illness,” explained study author Benjamin J. Malcolm of Western University of Health Sciences’ College of Pharmacy.

“Recent (and older) research suggests that many psychedelic substances have potential clinical benefits in a variety of psychiatric illnesses, although ibogaine is seemingly unique in its ability to interrupt opioid addiction,” he told PsyPost. “Given the epidemic of death and harm associated with opioids in the United States presently and limitations of current therapies in treating opioid use disorders it seems very timely to study ibogaine further.”

Malcolm and his colleagues found ibogaine treatment was associated with significant reductions in opioid cravings and withdrawal symptoms. Most of the patients (78 percent) did not exhibit clinical signs of opioid withdrawal 48 hours after receiving ibogaine.

“It seems that ibogaine can interrupt the underlying neurocircuitry of opioid use disorder while delivering a profound psychological experience that reinforces recovery efforts,” Malcolm explained to PsyPost. “In our study ibogaine appeared to be able to reduce both the physical signs and symptoms of opioid withdrawal as well as reduce cravings for opioids.”

“This means that ibogaine may simultaneously address both physical and psychological aspects of opioid use disorder, whereas other therapeutic agents for opioid use disorders address either physical aspects through continued opioid dependence (methadone, buprenorphine) or psychological aspects of addiction like craving (naltrexone), but do not address both and cannot be used together.”

“Furthermore, the psychedelic nature of ibogaine tends to induce a dream-like state in which many report autobiographical subjective experiences, like watching their life as a movie from the vantage point of an observer,” Malcolm continued. “They see the moments of hurt or traumas from the past that predisposed them for substance use and undergo an emotional processing that allows for resolution of the underlying pain.”

In the early 1960s, anecdotal reports surfaced that ibogaine could help defeat drug addiction, prompting some scientists to investigate the anti-addictive properties of the drug. But ibogaine became a Schedule I substance in the United States in 1970, severely limiting the research into the psychedelic drug’s potential.

“Ibogaine and other psychedelic substances that are deemed illegal by the U.S. federal government have demonstrated therapeutic potential, albeit mostly in preliminary studies and anecdotally. This means that many psychedelics are likely subjected to erroneous classification as it is part of the definition of an illegal substance that it has no medical utility.”

“The other piece of the government’s definition of an illegal substance is a high potential for abuse, which is also very questionable with psychedelics, particularly ibogaine that tends to produce less euphoria than others like LSD. This regulatory framework results in oppression of legitimate scientific inquiry, and ultimately hurts the public given epidemic harms of opioids as well as enormous therapeutic need for better treatments.”

However, the new research — like all studies — has limitations.

“There are some caveats to this study as well as many unanswered questions in ibogaine research,” Malcolm explained. “The largest caveat of this type of study is the research design. This study did not have a control group and participants were not randomized to treatment or placebo, which introduces potential biases that can skew results.”

“It was a chart review of participants that received ibogaine at one center and different centers may have different administration or dosing protocols or practices that could enhance or diminish the therapeutic or adverse effects so it’s unclear how generalizable or optimal the studied setting is in the treatment of opioid use disorder.”

“This study also only followed participants through the acute withdrawal phase so lacks information on relapse rates after opioid detoxification with ibogaine. However, there are some other small studies that have partially addressed longer term outcomes and overall appear promising.”

Ibogaine can also have potentially fatal side effects.

“There are cardiac safety concerns with ibogaine and there are some reports of death in the literature, even in clinical settings,” Malcolm said. “Factors that increase risk for adverse cardiac effects require further study (we have some clues) and a cautious approach to participant selection in research is advisable.”

“Some would argue that a drug with a risk of death is too risky to continue clinical research with, although the current mainstay of opioid use disorder treatment is methadone which has FDA black box warnings for addiction, abuse, and misuse as well as fatal respiratory depression (death due to not breathing).”

“Furthermore, opioid use disorder is a deadly illness with 115 deaths per day reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 2016 in the US. So it appears that due to the risk of death from both the illness and current treatments that in this example further research is favorable despite known cardiac safety concerns.”

“Overall, the current body of research would probably be sufficient in other areas of medicine to garner enthusiasm and funding for research, yet due to the stigmas associated with psychedelic substances as well as drug addiction (opioid use disorder), the approach has been to attempt prohibition of research,” Malcolm remarked.

“Studies with more stringent methods are costly, yet due to the illegal regulatory status of ibogaine, are unlikely to be paid for by government or pharmaceutical sponsors without further action such as re-scheduling to a controlled substance instead of an illegal one.”

Malcolm also cautioned that ibogaine should not be over-hyped as the solution to opioid addiction.

“While results are very promising, ibogaine is surely not a magic bullet for the treatment of opioid use disorder and is in experimental stages of drug development as a therapeutic entity. If ibogaine proves to be safe and effective in controlled trials then one possible treatment model could feature ibogaine as the experiential core of a larger treatment intervention that incorporates preparatory counseling/psychotherapy before and after ibogaine as well as residential or inpatient aftercare programming-care to give individuals the best chances at successful recovery.”

“This type of model would combine elements of successful psychedelic protocols from MDMA or psilocybin research with traditional rehabilitation programs used in substance use disorders.”

“I also think for this type of model to work that a fundamental shift away from the stigmatized conceptions society holds for substance use disorders as well as psychedelics are necessary to earnestly facilitate rehabilitation,” Malcolm added.

“As far as substance use disorders, we should also be investigating and aggressively intervening on societal drivers of substance use (isolation, loneliness, lack of spirituality or connectedness, boredom, lack of alternatives to drug use, physical or emotional pain), which would probably offer the greatest rewards for society in the prevention of drug use."

“Lastly, maybe a disclaimer: due to known risks of ibogaine and illicit status in the US, please do not try a home detoxification. Consult medical professionals if you have a problem with opioids. Nothing in this interview is meant to encourage illegal activity.”

http://www.psypost.org/2018/04/trea...-reduces-opioid-withdrawal-and-cravings-51041​

 

[mr peabody]

Ibogaine, a drug to end all drugs

by Tristram Korten

On his 30th birthday, Patrick Kroupa was arrested for possession of heroin in Manhattan. “I turned 30 in the Tombs,” he says, referring to the notorious jail beneath the criminal courthouse. In the dank concrete cell, the magnitude of what he had lost overwhelmed him, and he resolved to quit.

It wouldn’t be his first effort. “I probably tried 18 to 20 medically supervised detox programs over the years, and maybe another 75 do-it-yourself attempts,” he says. Among the programs he tried: substitution therapies like methadone and buprenorphine, which replace heroin with a milder opiate; ultra-rapid detox, in which the addict is anesthetized to help with the withdrawal process; and a medical procedure using a TENS unit in which electrical currents stimulate the brain. But with each method, withdrawal was unavoidable, and Kroupa winces at the memories: “All of them just mean't pain, real pain.” And none of them worked.

Then he heard about a treatment center on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. In October 1999 Kroupa rounded up the $10,000 necessary to enroll. When he first arrived, he was in the throes of withdrawal— cramping, cold sweats. “My spine felt like it was being crushed,” he recalls.

Kroupa’s treatment consisted of wearing a blindfold on a bed in a darkened room, listening to soothing music through earphones, and ingesting about 12 milligrams per kilogram of body weight of ibogaine hydrochloride in capsule form, all the while attached to a bank of machines that monitored his vital signs. “Within 30 to 35 minutes, this ball of heat went up my spine and the pain just let go,” Kroupa recounts. “Nothing has ever done that. It was like my habit was a bad dream, a mirage. And before I can focus on what just happened, I start tripping. Eight and a half hours later, they take the blinds off.”

Kroupa felt cured. He no longer craved heroin. But it didn’t change 16 years of behavioral patterns that led him to heroin in the first place. On his way back to the U.S., Kroupa’s plane stopped over in Puerto Rico, where he immediately copped a bag of heroin. A month later, strung out again, he returned to St. Kitts for another treatment. He’s been clean ever since.​

 

[mr peabody]

Daily low dosing iboga

Dr. Kenneth Alper was among the attendees who gave a presentation on the benefits of ibogaine to the Catalan Ministry of Health. He believes that ibogaine's most likely path to prominence in the U.S. will be as a medication for meth addiction, for the simple reason that doctors and treatment providers have found that small daily 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-psychedelic quantities of ibogaine until recently...

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

-----

Ibogaine has also been given in regimens of small daily doses of 25 to 300 mgs/day and in small daily doses where the dose is increased on a daily basis until the desired interruption of drug dependence is accomplished. These low dose regimens can be traced back some decades to the work of Leo Zeff who in the case of a single patient provided ibogaine on an "as needed" basis via nasal administration to a cocaine dependent patient to substitute for his cocaine use. Lines of ibogaine were somewhat equivalent to lines of cocaine and the patient ceased cocaine use after a week of this daily self-regulated ibogaine regimen. Additionally, reports from Canadian sources indicate multi-week low dose ibogaine therapy 20 mg/day following a therapeutic dose of ibogaine in the treatment of cocaine dependence. Further, reports throughout the ibogaine provider community indicate the use of multiple dosing of varying strength doses over varying time periods in the treatment of opioid dependence. As with all determinations in medicine, decisions must be taken based on observations of the patient, knowledge of the disorder(s) and the medication(s) used.

https://truthtalk13.wordpress.com/20...gaine-therapy/

-----

For those flooding

Best to have new routines in place before the session. It really isn't will power as much as practical plans for dealing with life, and the belief that life can change. All that ibogaine can guarantee is to interrupt the addiction. The more one plans how to handle the stressors, the better the chances of succeeding at whatever goal one has.

I work with people to encourage the best pre and post care possible. Even for those who go back to using, I still see benefit. Like shame and guilt reduction, resolution of issues caused by early trauma, etc. It is not often mentioned, but some require 2-3 sessions. Ibogaine seems to target the most pressing issues first. With a junkie that would be the addiction. Maybe next time, deeper delving into emotional wounds which could have caused using in the first place. I myself have had one flood only, and it worked.

BOOSTERS. No-one should be sent home from a session without some boosters. These are smaller doses of the medicine, safe to take at home. Most benefit from one at 30 days.

-lol_Taco​

 

[mr peabody]

Retired Navy SEAL Marcus Capone and his wife Amber started a
nonprofit to fund psychedelic treatment research for veterans.

Inside ibogaine, one of the most promising and perilous psychedelics for addiction

by Mandy Oaklander | TIME | 5 Apr 2021

Amber Capone had become afraid of her husband. The “laid-back, bigger than life and cooler than cool” man she’d married had become isolated, disconnected and despondent during his 13 years as a U.S. Navy SEAL. Typically, he was gone 300 days of the year, but when he was home, Amber and their two children walked on eggshells around him. “Everyone was just playing nice until he left again,” Amber says.

In 2013, Marcus retired from the military. But life as a civilian only made his depression, anger, headaches, anxiety, alcoholism, impulsivity and violent dreams worse. Sometimes he’d get upset by noon and binge-drink for 12 hours. Amber watched in horror as his cognitive functioning declined; Marcus was in his late 30s, but he would get lost driving his daughter to volleyball, and sometimes he couldn’t even recognize his friends. Psychologists had diagnosed him with PTSD, depression and anxiety, but antidepressants, Ambien and Adderall didn’t help. He visited a handful of brain clinics across the country, which diagnosed him with Postconcussive Syndrome after a childhood of football—then a career punctuated by grenades, explosives, rifles and shoulder-fired rockets. But all they offered were more pills, none of which helped either.

Marcus wasn’t the only one suffering in his tight-knit community of Navy SEALs and special-operations veterans. A close friend killed himself, and Amber knew her husband could be next. “I truly thought that Marcus would be the one having the suicide funeral,” Amber says.

There was one last option.

One of Marcus’ retired Navy SEAL friends, who had similarly struggled, had traveled internationally to take ibogaine, a psychedelic drug illegal in the U.S. The ibogaine experience had been transformative for him, and he thought it might be the same for Marcus. “I thought it was crazy,” Marcus says. “How can you take another pill to solve all your problems?” But Amber begged him to try it, and Marcus gave in. On Veterans Day in 2017, Marcus checked into a treatment center in Mexico, popped an ibogaine pill, slipped on eyeshades and noise-canceling headphones, and went on his first-ever psychedelic trip. After an hour or so, he entered a waking dream state and watched a movie of his life play out before his eyes. It lasted 12 hours, and it was awful at times. “Imagine some of the worst experiences of your life,” Marcus says. “You’re going to experience these again.”

Life events flipped through his mind’s eye in rapid fire. Other times, painful memories slowed to a crawl. Marcus saw himself having conversations with his dead father, with buddies he’d lost to the wars over the years, with God. “You can’t hide from the medicine,” he says. “It’s just going to go down there and basically pull up any traumas, anything hiding in your subconscious that may be affecting you that you don’t even realize.”

When it was over, Marcus felt as if he’d finally put down a heavy load he’d been carrying for years. For the first time in a long time, he didn’t want a drink, and he didn’t touch alcohol for a year after. “I was thinking clear. I wasn’t impulsive anymore. I had no anxiety. I wasn’t depressed,” he says. Amber couldn’t believe it, but when she picked him up, she knew she had her husband back. “When he walked into the room, it was as though I was witnessing him the first time I met him,” she says. “His anger and his darkness and his whole demeanor had changed. All of that was gone. He was easy. He was light. He was present. He was happy. It just absolutely blew my mind.”

Once dismissed as a fringe, counterculture vice, psychedelics are rapidly approaching acceptance in mainstream medicine. These drugs uniquely change the brain, and a person’s awareness of experiences, in the span of just a few hours. This fast-acting shift could be useful in mental-health treatments, and research is already supporting this notion. Just one dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, was recently shown to ease depression and anxiety in cancer patients—an outcome that lasted for years after their trip. Researchers are recognizing that psychedelics can provide a radical new approach to mental-health treatments at a time when innovation is desperately needed.

For addiction in particular, the need has never been greater. More Americans died from drug overdoses last year than ever before, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Weekly counts of drug overdoses were up to 45% higher in 2020 than in the same periods in 2019, according to research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ibogaine is one of the most promising psychedelics for addiction. Few people have heard of it, it’s illicit in the U.S., and nobody does it for fun. It’s not pleasant. It could kill you. But for extinguishing addiction—and a range of other issues—many people swear there’s nothing like it. The drug hails from a shrub called Tabernanthe iboga, which is native to Central Africa. Since at least the 1800s, members of the Bwiti religion in Gabon have eaten iboga bark shavings during initiations and coming- of-age ceremonies; those who consume it report visions of and contact with their ancestors and even God. The wider world encountered the hallucinogenic plant in the form of ibogaine, a compound extracted from iboga bark and packed into a pill.

In France, ibogaine was sold and prescribed as an antidepressant and stimulant called Lambarene for more than 30 years until the 1960s, when the government outlawed the sale of ibogaine. But its antiaddictive effects weren’t well known in the U.S. until 1962, when Howard Lotsof—then a 19-year-old completely outside the medical establishment—experimented with it and noticed it wiped out his heroin addiction. It did the same for several of Lotsof’s peers when he organized 20 lay drug experimenters, all in their late teens and early 20s, to try many hallucinogens including ibogaine. Seven people in the group were hooked on heroin at the time. After they took ibogaine, all seven said they were no longer in heroin withdrawal, and five of them lost their desire to use heroin for six months or longer. Ibogaine was the only drug to have this effect. “Suddenly, I realized that I was not in heroin withdrawal,” Lotsof later said of his own ibogaine experience. Nor did he crave it. “Where previously I had viewed heroin as a drug which gave me comfort, I now viewed heroin as a drug which emulated death. The very next thought into my mind was, I prefer life to death.”

Lotsof found ibogaine so helpful that he launched a campaign to get researchers to dig into it more deeply. But pharmaceutical companies didn’t bite. Ibogaine is a naturally occurring plant compound and therefore difficult to patent; plus, nobody knew exactly how it worked, and drug companies historically did not see addiction medications as profitable. In 1970, the federal government classified ibogaine (along with other psychedelics) as a Schedule I drug, declaring it had no medical use and a high potential for abuse. But case studies in which ibogaine had helped heroin users successfully detox—including Lotsof’s New York City group and another from the Netherlands in the early ’90s—were promising enough that one U.S. government agency took notice.

In 1991, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) decided to fund animal research into ibogaine; the resulting studies (and later ones) in rodents found that ibogaine reduced how much heroin, morphine, cocaine and alcohol the animals consumed. This work primed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to greenlight a clinical trial of ibogaine in humans for cocaine dependence, but it fell apart in early stages because of a lack of funding and contractual disputes. NIDA abandoned its interest in ibogaine, citing safety as one concern. There still has been no completed clinical trial in the U.S. to test ibogaine in people.

Now, for the first time, some upstart pharmaceutical companies, including ATAI Life Sciences and MindMed, are realizing there’s money to be made here, and they’re racing to develop ibogaine or drugs that act like it. But as they start the long slog of chasing FDA approval through clinical trials—with outcomes far from clear—many people are desperate enough to skip the U.S. and try ibogaine in parts of the world where it’s unregulated.

Plenty of these people have shared their experiences with researchers through case reports and survey data. The success stories sound eerily alike: a single dose of ibogaine can take you on a visual journey of your most significant life events. You’re able to forgive yourself and others for past traumas, and the drug seems to rewire your brain, zapping withdrawal symptoms and extinguishing opioid cravings within hours—with results that can last for weeks, months and sometimes even longer. Unlike buprenorphine and methadone, two common approved medications to overcome opioid addictions, ibogaine is not an opioid substitute. “Ibogaine seems to resolve these signs of opioid withdrawal by a mechanism that is different from an opioid effect, and I think that is what is so interesting about it,” says Dr. Kenneth Alper, a longtime ibogaine researcher and an associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at New York University School of Medicine.

Scientists don’t know exactly what ibogaine does to the brain. There’s some recent evidence—in rats—that ibogaine may increase neurotrophic factors in the brain, which are proteins that encourage neuron growth and plasticity (the ability of the brain to change even in adulthood). These appear to be key in helping the brain remodel to overcome an assault like a substance-use disorder. But since other psychedelics also increase neural plasticity, something more is likely going on.

Human clinical trials for ibogaine and addiction are under way. In October, researchers in Spain began testing ibogaine in 20 people trying to wean themselves off methadone. And in an upcoming clinical trial set to begin in Brazil once the pandemic is under control, researchers at the University of São Paulo will give different doses of ibogaine to 12 alcoholic patients to see if it’s safe and effective at reducing the amount they drink.

But many are not waiting for studies. If there’s even a chance that taking ibogaine will help a person overcome addiction, many are willing to try it. Ibogaine is unregulated in many countries, neither illegal nor approved, and that gray zone has allowed dozens of ibogaine treatment centers to pop up worldwide. Americans desperate to shake their addictions spend thousands of dollars at these clinics, which vary wildly in their practices and treatment standards. Some facilities use licensed physicians and monitor heart activity and other vital signs throughout the trip, while other clinics don’t.

Success rates also vary. Some people stop using drugs completely and stay sober for years. Others die. Because of a lack of controlled ibogaine trials, it’s difficult to quantify the risks, but the threats to cardiovascular health are particularly concerning. The drug may block certain channels in the heart and slow down heart rate, which can cause fatal arrhythmias. In one observational study published in 2018, researchers followed 15 people as they received ibogaine treatment for opioid dependence in New Zealand, where ibogaine is legal by prescription, and interviewed them for a year after. Eight of the 11 patients who completed the study cut back on or stopped using opioids, and depression improved in all of them. One person died during the treatment, likely because of an ibogaine-induced heart arrhythmia.

But how much risk is too much when nothing else works?

Four rounds of rehab hadn’t touched Bobby Laughlin’s heroin addiction. He didn’t believe the hype about ibogaine but figured it was his last shot, so he traveled to a clinic in Rosarito Beach, Mexico. Before the flight, he used heroin—and it was the last opiate he ever took. The most valuable outcome of Laughlin’s 30-hour ibogaine experience was that it let him bypass withdrawals, he says, opening a window of opportunity. “One thing that was made very clear to me was that I had to change my life dramatically after the experience if I wanted to capitalize on it and have long-term sobriety,” he says. Laughlin started a private-equity firm in L.A., then a family. “I’ve been able to establish myself,” he says, eight years later. “All roads lead back to ibogaine as the start.”

Alan Davis, a Johns Hopkins University adjunct assistant professor researching psychedelics, has been hired by several clinics outside the U.S.—including the one Laughlin visited—to follow up with clients to see what, if anything, changed in their lives after the treatment. In 2017, Davis published a study in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies in which he surveyed 88 people—most of whom had been using opioids daily for at least four years—who had visited an ibogaine clinic in Mexico from 2012 to 2015. About 80% said ibogaine eliminated or drastically reduced their withdrawal symptoms; half said their opioid cravings diminished, and 30% said that after ibogaine, they never used opioids again. Ibogaine “is not a magic bullet,” Davis says, but even a short-term disruption of the sort the psychedelic provides can give addicted people the space and time to make needed changes to their environment, behavioral patterns and relationships.

Addiction may be only the beginning. In a 2020 research paper published in the journal Chronic Stress, Davis and his team found that among 51 U.S. veterans who had taken ibogaine in Mexico from 2017 to 2019, there were “very large reductions” in symptoms related to every domain they measured, including suicidal thoughts, PTSD, depression, anxiety and cognitive impairment. “Their improvement was way above what we would see with typical currently approved treatments,” Davis says. “Even if you cut these effect sizes in half”—assuming that the data aren’t as accurate as they’d be in a rigorous, controlled trial—”that’s still two to three times more powerful than our currently approved treatments.” More than 80% of the vets surveyed said the psychedelic experience was one of the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives.

“We’re not actually healing problems with medications that we currently have; we’re just trying to treat the symptoms,” Davis says. Psychedelics like ibogaine, on the other hand, "seem to be showing that we might actually be getting below just symptom reduction into a place where true healing can happen.”

Despite intriguing initial data like these, modern pharmaceutical companies until recently had not touched ibogaine. Now they’re interested. ATAI Life Sciences, a three-year-old German biotech company focused on psychedelics for mental health, is trying to develop ibogaine as an FDA-approved drug to treat opioid-use disorder. If clinical trials, which are slated to begin in the U.K. in May, support ibogaine’s efficacy, the company’s hope is that an ibogaine capsule would be used at detox centers in the U.S. “I’m a hardcore neuropharmacologist and physician by training,” says Dr. Srinivas Rao, co-founder and chief scientific officer at ATAI. “I’ve viewed it a little skeptically … but the stories with ibogaine keep surfacing and very similar. People seem to get a lot out of this experience.” ATAI is also pursuing noribogaine—the substance ibogaine breaks down to in the body—as a possible addiction treatment.

Fears about how ibogaine affects the heart have scared away most establishment pharmaceutical companies, but Rao calls those worries overblown. “It does hit some of these channels in the heart, and in very uncontrolled settings, it’s certainly been associated with issues of arrhythmia,” he says. “In the context of more controlled settings with medical support, it has not really been associated with any kind of arrhythmia or significant adverse outcome.” Careful dosing and monitoring can lessen risk, Rao says, and trials will eventually uncover ibogaine’s true cardiovascular impact. However, some risk might be worth it in the context of the drug’s potential benefits. “If this were treating acne, of course—this is not a great choice,” he says. But for opioid addiction, which kills about 128 Americans per day, “some degree of cardiovascular risk is probably acceptable.”

MindMed, a U.S.-based company aiming to develop medicines based on psychedelics, is pursuing a synthetic derivative of ibogaine called 18-MC for opioid addiction. “We do see merit in hallucinogenic drugs,” says J.R. Rahn, CEO and co-founder of MindMed. “We just don’t see the merit of ibogaine, because I don’t think anyone wants to take medicine and have the risk of having a heart attack.” The company’s hope is that 18-MC will have the same impact on withdrawal as ibogaine but won’t come with the psychedelic or heart effects. MindMed’s Phase 1 trial in Australia has so far found no adverse cardiovascular effects with 18-MC. Phase 2 trials, to test if 18-MC lessens opioid withdrawal, are expected to begin this year.

Other synthetic compounds that act like ibogaine are on the horizon. In a study published in December in the journal Nature, researchers at the University of California, Davis, engineered a compound that’s structurally similar to ibogaine but less damaging to the heart. It also appears to be non-psychedelic, at least in mice. Called tabernanthalog, or TBG, it increased neural plasticity, reduced heroin- and alcohol-seeking behavior, and even had antidepressant effects in rodents; researchers are considering pursuing a study of TBG’s effects on humans.

These innovations are still years off. But in the meantime, Marcus Capone knows that his community of special-operations veterans can’t afford to wait. In 2019, he and his wife Amber started a nonprofit called Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS) to fund those who want to receive psychedelic therapies like ibogaine abroad. They’ve funded about 300 veterans so far, with more than 100 currently on the waitlist. VETS is also financing research exploring what ibogaine does to the brains of veterans with symptoms of head trauma.

Marcus hopes that someday, Americans who need it will be able to receive the treatment that, in a single dose, saved his life and gave him a new mission. “This word has to get out,” he says.

Inside Ibogaine, One of the Most Promising and Perilous Psychedelics for Addiction

Derived from the root bark of an African shrub, Ibogaine was ignored in modern medicine until recently

time.com

 

[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/​