November 05, 2009

Ibogaine is an unlicensed medication used for treatment of drug addiction and as a tool for spiritual growth is increasing day-by-day. Though there lies some inherent risks associated with its usage, demand for Ibogaine is surprisingly very high.

About Ibogaine

Ibogaine is naturally available psychoactive compound found in a number of plants, primarily in a member of the dogbane family known as iboga (Tabernanthe iboga). Ibogaine-containing preparations are used in medicinal and ritual purposes within African spiritual traditions of the Bwiti, who claim to have learned it from the Pygmy. In recent times, it has been identified as containing anti-addictive properties.
Ibogaine is an indole alkaloid, which is obtained either by extracting from the iboga plant or by semi-synthesis from the precursor compound voacangine, another plant alkaloid. A full organic synthesis of ibogaine has been achieved, but is too expensive and challenging to produce any commercially significant yield.

Treatment Overview

Any treatment provided by an experienced and knowledgeable ibogaine therapist will include a medical and psychiatric review for the patient’s safety.
It’s prerequisites are:

• Generally good health
• No past psychotic breaks
• No heart problems
• No serious liver problems

Treatment Session

The effect of ibogaine lasts between 15 and 36 hours, depending on the dose and the individual metabolism. A longtime addict should allow her/himself a convalescent period of one to three days after having ibogaine for 2 days. Methadone users should allow themselves at least a week.

Withdrawal symptoms

Depending on the duration of the addiction and the substance of abuse there can be some withdrawal signs, ranging from 0 to 15%  of what the person would have to suffer without medication. These side-effects can be managed with analgesics.

Former addicts may experience some insomnia after the treatment for up to 3 weeks, which is responsive to sleeping medication.

Post-Treatment condition

Post-traumatic-stress-syndrome or anxiety may be observed. Nevertheless, all will find that their treatment involves both physical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions.

• 40 minutes after ingestion a buzzing in the ears heralds dreamlike visions, dancing lights, flashes of images, symbolic or actual representations of current subconscious themes.
• Some 2 to 4 hours later “the waken dreams” will slowly fade away giving room to what is often described as resetting the biochemistry of the brain, i.e. an integration of the first phase.
• 20 to 36 hours after ingestion the last signs of dizziness, ataxia, inability to sleep will disappear and the patient is fully functional again.

Ibogaine is now used by treatment clinics in 12 countries on six continents to treat addictions to heroin, alcohol, powder cocaine, crack cocaine, and methamphetamine, as well as to facilitate psychological introspection and spiritual exploration.

While it has been placed in the strictest drug prohibition schedules in the United States and a handful of other countries. Canada and Mexico both allow ibogaine treatment clinics to operate and openly contribute to further understanding of the addictive process.

Once upon a time, there was a horrible drug that made many people very sick. It trapped those who took it in a downward spiral of addiction.

But one day a new kind of drug came along, one that could almost always counteract the bad stuff. This may sound like a made up story, but it’s no fairytale.

There is currently a drug out there that is extremely potent, curing addictions for drugs such as (but not limited to) heroin, cocaine, nicotine and alcohol. Great Britain, France, and Mexico are just some of the many countries that recognize its effectiveness and permit its use. The drug itself is not addictive. Though it may sound too good to be true, true it is. The problem, however, is that America has yet to get on board and make it legal.

Ibogaine comes from the Iboga shrub in Africa, where it has long been used in tribal and ceremonial rituals. It is considered a hallucinogenic in high doses, which is why the U.S. is wary about its usage and currently forbids it. But there are many benefits from Ibogaine regarding addiction. Ibogaine doesn’t cure an addiction, but instead interrupts the craving. When people take Ibogaine, it puts them into a trance-like dreamy state for about 24 hours. Other than inducing dreams, it hardly stimulates a person compared to other drugs or alcohol. Once the effects of Ibogaine wear off, cravings for whatever drug they were addicted to are highly reduced. Because these cravings are significantly lowered, treatment for the addiction finally becomes doable.

After just two sessions (with recommended rehab in between), cravings can be significantly diminished. Imagine that — a virtual cure for addictions that plague millions. While therapy and counseling are still essential for recovery, Ibogaine carries the addict through the hardest step.

But despite all of these benefits, Ibogaine is currently illegal in the United States. France, Great Britain, Mexico, and Canada all allow it to be practiced legally, as does Australia and a few other countries in Europe (though they have some restrictions). Ibogaine is a safe drug, especially when used by licensed medical professionals. Over the past 20 years of its usage, only two deaths have occurred. One was due to heroin usage during treatment, and the other was because of an undiagnosed heart condition. Since these two unfortunate events, Ibogaine treatments have been monitored more carefully.

So not only is Ibogaine safe, non-addictive, and utilized in a bunch of other countries, it’s effective! Overcoming substance abuse and addiction is incredibly difficult, and the success rate is pretty low — not to mention the high incidence of relapse. It’s time to look for new solutions.

Imagine a future where drug addiction doesn’t exist. Sounds like a lofty idea, but Ibogaine could be a major step towards turning this dream into reality.

As his absent father made millions preaching feel-good self-help, Oran Canfield spiralled into a life of drug-fuelled self-loathing. But can his contentious new memoir of a troubled childhood really be good for the soul?

The Independent
Interview by Nick Duerden
Sunday, 7 February 2010

Thirty-four years ago, Oran Canfield’s father Jack, a man who would go on to become the hugely successful author of the US self-help book Chicken Soup for the Soul, left his pregnant wife and one-year-old son, and moved in with a masseuse. Judging by what is happening on a Berlin stage right now, it is probably safe to suggest that Oran has yet to entirely forgive him.

It is some time past midnight at a venue called West Germany in a particularly gritty part of the city, and Canfield’s band Child Abuse are halfway through a set one can only describe as pure noise terrorism. They’ve already played the songs “Wrong Hole” and “Preemptive Priapism”, and are now on to “I Hate Me”, a deeply unpleasant mess of satanic howl and jarring keyboard jabs, while Canfield pounds away tirelessly on his drums. A crowd of maybe 60 watch with clear bemusement and, in some cases, incipient horror.

By most measures, Child Abuse make horrid music, though deliberately it would seem, for Canfield isn’t the only one with issues: singer Luke Calzonetti was a model, but after turning 30, the bookings dried up. Consequently, he is not a contented man, gurning as he screams into the microphone and regales the crowd with a list of people he loathes. At the moment, he tells us, he particularly hates the Bavarian police (for matters undisclosed), London’s Time Out magazine (for daring to suggest that Child Abuse made for an unpleasant band name), and Mark, whom they met a couple of nights ago in the Czech Republic. “Asshole,” is how he puts it.

The audience doesn’t quite know what to do with this information – none has ever met Mark from the Czech Republic, after all – and several drift to the bar area in what is perhaps the most dilapidated music venue in all of Europe, a decomposing room beneath some train tracks in which it’s not hard to imagine asbestos falling from what remains of the ceiling tiles. But the band’s noise follows them, getting progressively louder, a torture of Guantanamo proportions.

Afterwards, Canfield and I go to the only place open around here, a 24-hour kebab shop. He orders an open sandwich of chopped meat and diced peppers. “I guess I’ve always been drawn to playing really loud music,” he reasons. “It’s therapeutic, cathartic. And I needed the outlet, because I don’t express anger all that well.”

This isn’t entirely true, for he has just written a memoir entitled Freefall, in which he details not just his devastating descent into heroin addiction but also the sustained anger he felt for the father who abandoned him, and a mother who he feels was somewhat negligent. “That’s true,” he concedes, shrugging, “but I still have a lot of… aggression, I guess you’d call it. Banging away at the drums every night helps me release it.”

Kebab finished, he yawns loudly. Not just because it is late, but because throughout the first two weeks of Child Abuse’s month-long inaugural European tour in support of their imminent second album Cut and Run – the band has hit all the high spots: Ljubljana, Freising, Bydgoszcz – they have had to make do with sleeping in squats and on people’s floors, and have been driving through Arctic conditions in a 20-year-old van that breaks down daily, and whose heating system doesn’t work. Consequently, the poor man is exhausted. “I’m 35 years old,” he sighs, rubbing a hand across his face. “Sometimes I think I may be a little too old for all this.”

The drug confessional has long proved a fertile ground for people – invariably American – to suddenly, and all too keenly, unload their demons in literary form, treating the page much as they would the stage at an AA meeting. But Oran Canfield’s is far more entertaining than your average heroin memoir. Though it details his years-long relationship with drugs – he started out on pot before progressing to acid, crack cocaine and heroin – it also recounts what was a bizarre, and at times barely believable, upbringing.

After his father left to reinvent himself as one of America’s foremost motivational speakers, his mother went through some issues of her own – sensitive ones he can no more explain to me now than he could in the book for, he relays with a heavy frown, “legal reasons” – so, as he tells it, he and his younger brother Kyle were offloaded on to a succession of friends and relatives, commune dwellers, libertarian boarding schools and the occasional travelling circus, where a young Oran learnt to juggle while balancing on a unicycle (he’s won prizes for it).

He was introduced to drugs aged 13 by some crazy Mexican cops, and a year later was dropping acid with the daughter of the Grateful Dead’s frontman, Jerry Garcia. By the time his father had authored several self-help books, all national bestsellers, Canfield was addicted to heroin, ‘ regularly stealing from his friends to fuel his habit – if only because stealing from friends was easier than asking his estranged father, whom he saw every couple of years, for handouts. Nevertheless, when things got bad, which they frequently did, that is precisely what he did do. This prompted new waves of self-loathing, which he dealt with the only way he knew how: by getting high. Though his family made several attempts at intervention, packing him off to rehabilitation centres (seven in total), he remained as mistrustful of AA as he was of his father’s books, which he considered a scam.

“I have never had any faith in any of that self-help shit,” he deadpans. But what did he think of his father’s own books, the first of which was dedicated to him? “I refused to read them.”

It was only when, as a last resort, he turned to an experimental treatment using a psychedelic drug called ibogaine that he began to see light at the end of the tunnel. Illegal in the US, he underwent the $12,000 treatment at an exclusive retreat in the Bahamas. In the book, he recounts how it gave him the most vivid nightmares, but also numbed him to the wretched experience of withdrawal. He flew back to California convinced that drugs were at last behind him… and the next day promptly shot up again. This time, however, the heroin didn’t have quite the same effect, and wouldn’t again. Agreeing later to give AA another go, he finally began to win his battle against addiction.

But what really cemented his continued abstinence to this day, he says, was deciding to write a book about it. “I’d never written anything before but friends kept telling me to try. At the time I started seriously thinking about it, I was probably in the darkest period of my life.” He was 31, recently clean and relocated to Brooklyn, where he was working as a bike messenger. “I was living pretty much hand-to-mouth while my dad was this millionaire. Let’s say I was feeling low. I needed to do something positive with my life, so I gave the book a go. Hardest thing I’ve ever done, but also the best.”

The morning after the Child Abuse show, I meet Canfield in an upmarket café on the other side of town. It is a freezing Sunday, and a fresh layer of snow lays on the ground. He looks cold and still tired, and tells me that he slept badly once again, and that he is feeling ill. He orders a coffee and a bowl of yoghurt, but what he really craves is a cigarette; his tobacco pouch sits beside his cutlery on the table in front of him, and he glances at it longingly.

Canfield makes for unexpectedly genial company, a mordantly funny guy with a hangdog expression that makes you sympathise with everything he says. Despite his age, he still dresses like a teenage slacker, in a jeans, T-shirt and jacket combination that he likely slept in last night and will again tonight. Our conversation feels awkward at first, and he admits he finds being interviewed slightly unsettling, not least, perhaps, because since his book’s publication in America last autumn, it has had a divisive effect on his family. Anything he says subsequently can only fuel the fire.

Presumably, Jack Canfield was the one with most to lose here: the first Chicken Soup book, published in 1993, was followed by many others – Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Volunteer’s Soul, even Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover’s Soul – each filled with stories that extolled the virtues of goodness. They proved astoundingly successful worldwide: there are now 100 million copies in print, and they have been translated into 54 languages. So one would imagine his reputation to be somewhat dented when it was revealed that his own family life was riven with problems. But Canfield insists that his father has actually been supportive, unexpectedly so.

“He has always said that making mistakes is part of being human, so…” He smiles wryly. “So I guess he is human, right?”

But it must have made for painful reading?

“It hurt him, of course it did, because I don’t think he ever realised just how bad things got. But then he was never really part of my life. Since he has read the book, we have actually started talking a lot more than we ever did. He even talks about my book at his seminars now.” Laughing incredulously, he adds: “Hey, it’s great publicity.”

It hasn’t gone down quite so well with his mother, however. “Basically, she is not happy with it.” Why? “Well, she doesn’t remember things in quite the way I do. And she is unwilling to accept that I may have had a different experience.”

Is she suing him? “No, but it’s complicated. She’s made certain complaints. There have been letters. From lawyers.”

His mother – who works in a similar field to that of her former husband and insisted Oran refrain from mentioning her name in his book – recently went public, suggesting that much of Freefall was pure fantasy. “It is one story after the next,” she said. “It is false- memory syndrome.”

So which one of them is telling the truth? Canfield exhales, and shakes his head sadly. His fingers reach for his tobacco pouch. “What can I tell you? The book’s all true. It is.”

He maintains that he does not regret writing it – “it was mine to write” – and that its publication represents a high point in his life. “In my time, I’ve been a visual artist, a musician, a juggler… but this is the first creative pursuit that has ever generated any money for me. That’s important.”

And it has made his father proud of him. “I don’t think my father had any particular expectations of me, but he is glad I’m doing things I like to do, even if he doesn’t necessarily get it. He came to see the band play a few months back. It was probably the worst thing he had ever heard, but he saw me in my zone, and that was enough for him.”

What did he say to you after the performance? “He said to me, ‘That was really something,’ and he said it with the kind of enthusiasm to make it seem like a compliment, but it probably wasn’t. I can’t say I’m surprised. I mean, the guy likes Kenny G.”

Breakfast over, we wander out into the snow and back towards the tour van, which he will drive later today on to Hamburg. Hamburg, he says brightly, promises slightly better weather. It is currently -5C in Berlin, but it was even colder in Poland. “I haven’t seen the sun for two weeks,” he laments. “I miss it.”

Nevertheless, he is enjoying the tour, even if it isn’t making him any money, and despite the fact that being on the road is hardly conducive for a former junkie wanting to remain a former junkie. Every night, he has to watch his two fellow band members getting merry with newly made fans, while he turns down every offer of a drink that comes his way. “I know I could so easily say yes to a beer,” he points out, “but the trouble with me is that if I have just one beer, I’ll be doing heroin shortly after. So I ride out the temptation, and then I’m fine.” He gives a theatrical cough. “Well, I say fine, but that’s all relative, isn’t it?”

The most common misconception of the reformed addict, he says, is people believing that, once they have kicked the habit, all is rosy. “It’s what always happens in drug memoirs, isn’t it? They stop using eventually, they find God, and it’s happily ever after. Thing is, it never is, is it? Not really. Right now, that’s what I’m having trouble coming to terms with: that even though I’m sober, I’m simply now in the same headspace as everyone else. I still get depressed, though the self-loathing isn’t quite as bad as it used to be. And I still have all sorts of issues: with responsibility, with paying the bills, with maintaining a healthy relationship. It disappoints me that I’m not better at that. But then I guess that’s part of my chemistry. It’s who I am.”

When he turns 40, Canfield will come into some money – about a quarter of a million dollars – bequeathed to him by his late grandmother. But until then, he says, he’ll have to continue living the perpetual wolf-at-the-door existence that has come to define him. “I have about a month’s worth of savings left right now, then it’s back to job-hunting.”

I ask him what he would like, ideally, to do with his life. “I wish I knew. My father thinks I should keep up with the writing. He says I should try fiction next. I told him I wasn’t sure I could write fiction, and he says, ‘Well, I don’t think your mother would agree with that.’” He thrusts his hands deep into his pockets, tucks his chin in to protect his neck from Berlin’s cruel chill, and chuckles drily. “Hilarious, right?”

‘Freefall, The Strange True Life Growing Up Adventures of Oran Canfield’ is published by Ebury, priced £11.99

Jonathan Dickinson held an information and fundraising event to increase awareness about ibogaine treatment for addictions at the Umi Café on Somerset Street recently. He was also raising money to fund his travel to Tijuana to work in a therapeutic centre for three months starting in early November.

He wants to increase the knowledge about and availability of this drug. Dickinson also plans to try ibogaine himself in order to help guide people through the treatment process.

“It can eliminate 90 per cent of withdrawal symptoms,” says Dickinson, the outreach co-ordinator for Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

Ibogaine is a hallucinogenic drug that has been used to cure addictions by interrupting dependency. It is strong enough to eliminate cravings for heroin and cocaine. While under the influence of this drug, people often experience visions of past conflicts and deal with deep emotional issues.

One patient says he had a vision of his old self, withering away before his eyes. The trip resulting from this drug lasts between 24 to 72 hours, longer than most hard drugs.

When the drug was first used, there was a relatively high associated mortality rate. Dickinson says this is because when the drug was first being used as a form of treatment, people were providing it to addicts in hotel rooms instead of a controlled facility.

Now, the major criticisms of ibogaine are the high cost for treatment, around $4,900, and the severe nausea that is often a side effect. The drug is currently illegal in the US, but not governed by any law in Canada.

Health Canada has not issued any regulations or statements about the drug.

Iboga House, a treatment centre near Vancouver was under investigation by health officials but voluntarily closed down, according to their website for “restructuring and expanding,” before any ruling was made.

Ibogaine comes from the root of the Iboga plant. The drug was first used in Africa for ritual healings and has also been known to cure ailments such as digestive disorders. “The academia distorts things a lot,” says Chikonzero Chazunguza, who emigrated from Zimbabwe four months ago. He believes that the context for using this drug is integral to its effectiveness.

“Back home, it means there is a connection between what is inside and what is outside,” he says. This is why members of the tribe paint the face of the individual going through Ibogaine treatment and sing chants throughout the resulting drug trip.

In the modern western context of treatment centres, ibogaine is taken as white powder and administered in an enclosed facility with the use of a heart monitor and close supervision.

Dickinson says once he comes home, he hopes to raise awareness in Ottawa and to use his experience abroad to help people who are struggling with addictions. However, he says there would have to be a lot more support from the community before this could happen.

Drugs, both legal and illegal, are a huge business, and the search is always on for new substances to use or abuse. One of the newest names being heard in drug treatment circles is “ibogaine.” An alkaloid found in the root bark of the shrub Tabernanthe Iboga, it originates in the West Central African rainforest and some are touting its powers for helping addicts kick other, more addictive substances.

Ibogaine Effects

Currently, the most popular form of ibogaine is ibogaine hydrochloride, in which ibogaine is stabilized in the form of salt. It takes the form of white powder and is usually ingested in capsule form. The effects of the substance begin within an hour of ingestion and the peak “high” lasts for about two hours. During that time, individuals will feel like they’re in a dreamlike state while remaining fully conscious of themselves and their surroundings. Coordination is affected and dizziness is also a side effect. A hangover effect lingers for up to 48 hours and in the first 10 hours, those under the influence of ibogaine need help for the most mundane tasks (using the bathroom, etc.). Because of these side effects, it’s not seen as a recreational drug.

The Risk of Ibogaine

In many countries – including the U.S. and several European nations – ibogaine is an illegal substance. Even in countries where ibogaine isn’t illegal, treatment providers aren’t using it because it’s not a registered medication. While it was identified as having anti-addictive properties back in the early 1960s, thought to help curb use of heroin, alcohol and cocaine, the potential treatment drug remains controversial due to its hallucinogenic properties and other safety concerns.

Substance Abuse Rehab

There will always be new, untested therapies touted as “cutting edge,” but most experts agree that the best way to currently treat addiction is through the proven method of residential treatment. If someone you love is struggling with a substance abuse problem, call The Canyon at our toll-free number, 877.714.1319. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about treatment, financing or insurance.

Salvia Divinorum is a plant that has seen shamanic use as a visionary sacrament in Mexico and South America for centuries. It is a unique drug, as it is the only k-opioid receptor agonist, which has a strong hallucinogenic effect. Scientists have been very interested in researching the medicinal potential of the drug; however, due to growing hysteria surrounding salvia, that research may be cut short.

Salvia and its active ingredient, Salvinorin A, are currently being researched for unique anti-depressant properties, analgesic effects, as well as potential as a treatment for alcohol or narcotic addiction. Just as with the African plant psychedelic Ibogaine(which is one of the best available treatments for heroin and crack cocaine addiction), and LSD (which had a 50% success rate treating alcoholism in the 1950′s), and Psilocybin Mushrooms (which is one of the best treatments for cluster migraines), and MDMA (commonly known as Ecstasy, one of the most effective treatments for returning soldiers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), the war on drugs continues to impede medical research.

It is being said that salvia is the latest craze; a new party drug that is addicting kids everywhere. Are we in the middle of a new drug epidemic? What is the truth about this little known plant?

Smoking Salvia brings on intense hallucinations and altered states of consciousness, and therefore has been compared to LSD. Unlike LSD, however, the effects of Salvia last only minutes rather than hours. The effects of the drug are unpleasant and the smoke tastes like a mix between burnt rubber and rotten fish.

When a person smokes Salvia, it is nearly impossible to say a single word, much less hold a conversation, and it is a very introverted, personal, even spiritual experience.  It is almost the complete opposite of a “party drug”. It does not make a person particularly social and is certainly not “fun”.  Most people who use it gain insight on a particular issue in their life, or learn something about themselves. However, the effects are so unpleasant that most people try it once or twice, then never go back to it. If someone tells you that salvia is addictive, they are lying.

Hysteria about drug use is certainly not new. The drug war in this country began following the 1907 Vancouver riots, in which white British Columbians harassed and attacked Chinese-Canadians. Along with the Chinese Head Tax, drug prohibition was passed into law.  Both laws were passed with the same goal in mind: make Canada a pure, white, Christian society.

Emily Murphy, one of the most famous Canadian feminists, who was also a major league racist and an advocate for Alberta’s forced sterilization program, was the mother of Canadian drug prohibition. Much like those in the southern United States, Ms. Murphy viewed drug use as an extension of the evil of non-whites. Following the 1907 riots, opium and marijuana use among Chinese-Canadians became an opportunity for Murphy to try to force non-whites out of Canada, as well as to control the depravity of the public. Murphy believed that the public are sinful and need to be punished by the federal government, a view similar to that of our current Prime Minister.

She claimed that two puffs of marijuana would make somebody go insane and commit murder. This claim was never challenged and became the basis for our drug laws. Now people are saying similarly ridiculous and unfounded things about Salvia.

Some people who are calling for Salvia to be banned may very well be concerned parents. Keep in mind, however, that two of the biggest contributors to “The Partnership for a Drug-Free America” and other ‘anti-drug’ lobbies are the alcohol and tobacco industries, followed closely by the pharmaceutical industry. The drug war is big business.

You are being lied to, and the media has been useless to expose the lies. I thank The Ontarion for the opportunity to cut through the hysteria. Research the history of drug policy and you too will come to the conclusion that the only rational option is to legalize, regulate, and educate.

He’s tried clinics and therapy, Narcotics Anonymous and rehab. He’s taken up exercise and gone through reduction cures. He’s even given up on giving up. Now, though, Sebastian Horsley thinks he may have found the answer to his lifelong craving for heroin. Only problem is, it’s another dangerous drug…

As I started to feel the effects of the drug I was suddenly seized with fear. I had taken a hallucinogenic which could confuse the dreaming and iwaking states, my adulthood and childhood, and in doing so break the cellophane between myself and insanity. Sometimes drugs have been a trip into the horrors of my life and sometimes a means of flight from them. But nightmares are never more horrific than real life. Are they?

Perhaps I shouldn’t have worried. As a child I saw everything as a novelty – I was always intoxicated. Alcoholism didn’t run in my family, it galloped. By the time I was in my teens I was already sluicing down liquor with the abandon of someone truly spooked by his own existence. And it went on from there.

By the time I was 30, crack had taken me, as swiftly and easily as an eagle taking a rabbit. Crack led to heroin: first smoking, then the needle. I took drugs as an escape from a life which I found unendurable. I took drugs because I enjoyed taking them. The fixing ritual is the sweetest form of pleasure a man can have. The needle, the belt round the arm, the first feeling of the spike sliding through the flesh… The ecstasy of hitting a vein is incomparably pleasurable. Complete happiness is about to be yours. You hear the angels sing. You feel the kiss of God. The whole world is bathed in the luminous glow of entrancement, of contentment, of peace.

Those who have never taken drugs can’t understand this bliss. How could I ever give up? It wasn’t just the pleasure, it was my life. I had always been absorbed by the idea of the decadents – by those doomed visionaries, strutting peacocks possessed of an arrogant lust for life. I wanted to wear their outlaw colours. I wanted to share their fearlessness. Some see addiction as weakness. But for me it was a strength. It was the strength to lose control, to run counter to convention, to escape the banal confines of what I saw as bourgeois life.

Of course, the heroics couldn’t last. In the end, taking crack and heroin is about as glamorous as swigging meths. The irony of the drug experience is that it comes from an outgrowth of genuine longing, a reaching out for meaning, a yearning for transcendence and salvation, and it ends with sitting in a darkened room staring miserably at the wall.

I had wanted freedom, but all I had made was a prison. Just as I can’t describe the pleasure of drug taking, I can’t describe the dead end of loneliness, of abandonment, of the boredom that it led to. So I tried to give up. Then I gave up giving up. The relapses were endless and tedious and sad.

I was like an escapologist who messes up his tricks and gets even more tangled. My life was an ongoing flight. I guess in a way my on/off relationship with drugs was an external expression of my internal struggle. I tried clinics, I tried Narcotics Anonymous, I tried therapy, reduction cures, exercise and, eventually, sheer white-knuckled denial. I had multiple stabs at rehab, and sometimes I managed for maybe a month, maybe more. Finally, I even got as far as a year – quickly followed by a four-month relapse. I was exhausted. I couldn’t see a way out of my predicament. I wanted to want to stop. But I couldn’t get over my cravings. And so I would come to the conclusion that if I was thinking about drugs that much I might as well take them. And so I did. But this time I decided that the drug would be ibogaine.

I had been reading about ibogaine for some years. And I think, to be honest, I had been put off it for the simple reason that I was afraid – afraid it might work. Who would I be without my addiction? If I kicked out my devils would my angels leave, too? Without my caricature to hide in, how could I find a disguise? I was frightened that I had become a self-parody – but without going to the trouble of acquiring a self first.

The time had come to find out. After a grand finale of a relapse which left me more dead than alive, I contacted an ibogaine treatment provider who I had traced through the internet. She was called Hattie Wells and she said she could supply me with the drug at an affordable price and help me go through the experience. ‘This is no pleasure trip,’ she warned.

It’s not a small task. I had to go to my doctor for blood tests and heart scans to check I was up to it. I was advised to take a week or two off work. I had taken my life off already so that was no problem. Then I had to suggest somewhere I could go, a quiet place where I felt safe. Some people go to clinics abroad, in a controlled medical environment. I chose my girlfriend’s house.

But even there I desperately wanted to cancel at the last minute. I had reacquired a heroin habit from my last relapse. I didn’t feel emotionally capable. I was frightened of dying – among ibogaine takers, four (recorded) deaths have occurred suspiciously close to the time the drug was tried. And even more suspicious were my own motives: taking drugs to stop taking drugs. Yeah right, that’s a new one.

Hattie arrived with a doctor who gave me a medical and I signed a form exonerating her from any liability. Then, after a test dose to check that I wasn’t allergic, I took a gel-capped extract of the rootbark powder.

Hattie led me up to my room. She put a bucket by the bed in case I vomited. And I lay down feeling excited, but nervous. I didn’t know where I was going, but I was on my way. And there was no going back. And then… well, nothing much. After an hour of waiting for the sudden drug rush that I had learnt to expect, I felt nothing. A little light-headed perhaps, but nothing dramatic. And then I shut my eyes. And that was it. Sudden images began to emerge out of the darkness like staccato flashes from a film screen. The first was a woman on a raft smiling inanely as she came towards me. I was sceptical at first – you’re not fooling me with this, I thought. This is not real. But then all my self-consciousness was swept away by the sheer force and intensity of the visions.

It was a bit like going down into an echoing cathedral, a yawning underworld. But at the same time it was like being inside a miniature jewellery box. Everything was tiny and winking and gleaming and plush. And my head was filled with a buzzing noise, like a telephone line that has been disconnected.And then, immediately – inevitably – I was back, running about amid my childhood. I was at High Hall in Yorkshire, where I had been brought up.

Face pressed against a window, I watched my mother and my sister inside the study running round and round in circles. I don’t know who was chasing who, but even at the time I took it to mean something about their relationship, eternally unresolved. But I felt that there was nothing that could be done, that I couldn’t interfere.

Then I was flying, soaring over the gardens. It was like lucid dreaming – when you know that you are dreaming and can somehow control your fantasies. But the drug was going to control the visions, not me.

I was strangely aware I was not alone. I heard voices. They could have been simply manifestations of the mind, but at the same time I was aware of the presence of some sort of guide, the spirit of Igoba, the Africans call it. It comes to you as a teacher.

I wanted to swoop through the front door and into the house. It wouldn’t let me. It kept dragging me round to the side. ‘Everything you need to know is at the side door,’ it kept saying.

After the trip, Hattie quoted Gabriel GarcÀa MÀrquez to me: ‘I have learned that everyone wants to live on the peak of the mountain, without knowing that the real happiness is in how it is scaled.’ This made sense to me. I have spent my life going for the hit, the big experience, the extreme situation. I have always needed a drama from time to time to remind me that I still existed. Was this telling me that I could discover beauty in ordinary things? That I didn’t always have to take centre stage, to be hopping up and down in an attempt to get noticed? I could slip back into my life through a quiet side door. My reading, for what it is worth, is that Iboga was trying to teach me that all men are ordinary men – the extraordinary men are those who know it.

I can’t remember the order in which everything happened. But I remember having a vision about my brother with whom my relationship had always been fraught – the usual sibling rivalries carried to some pretty nasty and petty extremes. He was, after all, a potential threat to my individuality. We like to speak casually about ‘sibling rivalry’ as though it were some kind of by-product of growing up, a bit of competitiveness and selfishness in children who have been spoilt, who haven’t yet grown into a generous social nature. But it is too all-absorbing and relentless to be an aberration; it expresses the heart of the creature – the desire to stand out. Now, suddenly, I saw that the war was over. We flew together until we faced each other. I took off my head. He took off his.

I placed mine on his shoulders and he placed his on mine. I have to say that I think he got the better deal. But all the time I was aware of some brooding presence – something that was waiting for me, something I would have to face. It was underneath the surface of everything, glowing away to itself. It was time to face my addiction. I started my journey, soaring and swooping, plunging and diving through forests and mountains and oceans and galaxies. It felt like forever. And then suddenly I was in an opulent room. The sort where kings banquet in fairy-tale castles. I was waiting for an audience with someone – some god who would reveal everything to me. It was an utter inevitability. I waited, resigned.

Then the door swung open… and I walked in. I got up to meet myself. I walked slowly towards me and kissed myself on the lips. And as I did so the other me disintegrated, crumbled away like a china doll. I stepped forward to find it again. It was gone.

This was the end of the road. No more excuses. No more psychobabble. No more alibis. Father didn’t love me? So what. I’m a failure? Who cares. If you simply put heroin down you are avoiding the issue. It wasn’t the horse. It was the Horsley. It had been me all along.

Well, now it was over. Now it was time to be a man. A junkie wouldn’t treat a dog the way he treats himself. And if I had ever believed – as I had – that people are far more interesting if they don’t learn to love themselves, then it was time at least to try and change. I expect that I can’t. I don’t know where I would be without grandiose self-loathing.

But the main thing I realised was the unbearable lightness of addiction. The ball and chain had floated off, light as a feather. It was as simple as the flick of a switch. You just put ‘No’ where ‘Yes’ used to be. So much of my connection with life had always been with the dark side. But throughout my trip I was aware that my death was always with me. I didn’t have to run around looking for it. I didn’t have to open that door any more. I wanted to ask Iboga where I would go instead, and I was shown an image of myself and my girlfriend with a child between us. I have never had a paternal stirring in my life, no desire to breed misfit freaks like myself, so I found this alarming.

Of course, I can only remember a tiny part of my journey, a few snatched fragments of images – perhaps those that meant the most? I opened my eyes. I guessed that maybe 15 minutes had passed. I saw the room through a veil. Hattie was sitting on the floor by the bed.

‘You were under for more than nine hours,’ she said. She told me that my trip had been one of the most acutely physical that she had witnessed. I had been shaking spasmodically, making weird breathing noises. My arms and hands had assumed infantile gestures for much of the trip.

This tallied with my feelings that I had been involved in some sort of exorcism. I don’t believe in spirits, even if they do exist, but I had a real sense that my body had been emptied out. It felt like I had had a blood transfusion, like a benign force had come to help me. That was a complete contrast to the drugs I had been used to taking. Hallucinogens may often be considered sacred – there are peyote cults and bannisteria cults, hashish and mushroom cults – but no one ever suggested that heroin is holy.

There are no high priests of crack. These drugs are profane, pernicious. When you are in the grip of them you could almost imagine you are under some diabolic possession. When you come down you are swamped with guilt and self-loathing. But after taking ibogaine I was overwhelmed with a feeling that something good had happened. I felt that my brain had been reset. Maybe it is a case of things having to be believed to be seen, but throughout the trip there was a buzzing and fizzing and popping in my head, almost as if nerve endings were being sorted, reconnected, cleaned and ordered into parallel lines like the ploughing of a field.

Trying to explain my insights, they start to sound obvious or silly or indulgent. But that wasn’t how they felt at the time. They felt profound, almost divine, delivered with great weight and authority.

I am cynical by nature. Spirituality seems to me to be a form of drug pushing. Our age is a hysterical hot zone of trumped up disorders, imaginary illnesses, panic attacks. We are abducted by aliens. We recall false memories. Truth wears a thousand different faces. Religion is an accident of geography. Nothing more. Nothing less.

My ibogaine treatment was the same. It can be interpreted according to any belief system. It could be reincarnation, astral travel, a shamanistic trip. For me it was merely a chemical substance that made me feel a certain way. And the way I felt was that I had been emotionally reintroduced to myself. It was as simple – and as complicated – as that.

Afterwards I didn’t sleep for two days. I burst into tears all the time. I think it felt like mourning. I was confused for a week or two. I didn’t recognise who I was. I used to be woken every morning with stimulants so that I could drift through the day on sedatives. But now what? Hattie had told me not to worry, to ‘find glory in dismemberment’. But I didn’t like it.

It is now more than three months since I took it. After a while I began to notice that I didn’t need as much sleep as I used to. Apparently this is typical. For most of my life I have been plagued by obsessive compulsive disorder. I have been a slave to endless rituals – touching and counting – all to keep control, to stave off the chaos I sensed inside myself. Sometimes these rituals were occupying two hours a day. And now they had all but disappeared. I still feel sad – a melancholy that is probably part of my character. Clean, my outlook remains deathlike, as it was on drugs. On heroin. Off heroin. I am essentially suicidal. But at the same time I feel centred and calm. And that’s new.

But the most extraordinary thing is that my craving for drugs has disappeared – completely, and yet in a quiet way. In the past I always came out of clinics with all guns blazing, on the so-called ‘pink cloud’. If I could take drugs like a demon then I could go straight like a demon. It never worked.

This time I feel I have replaced the habit of using drugs with the habit of not using drugs, but gently. The whisper can be louder than the shout. I don’t for one moment regret the drugs I have taken. If I had to live my life again, I’d take the same drugs, only sooner. And more of them.

But now I hope it’s over. I’m excited. It’s some time since I’ve been excited about anything except the arrival of my dealer. I’m not sure that things ever get lighter, it’s just that we become accustomed to the dark. But I shall try. Now I’ve tasted the bitter root of drug addiction, I’m hoping the fruit will be sweet.

A pro-cannabis group is pushing for the introduction of a hallucinogenic-type drug as a treatment for P [methamphetamine] addiction.

American drug law reform campaigner Dana Beal will today address a public forum at the University of Otago on the use of ibogaine, a drug which sends people into a dream-like trance for several hours.

Supporters say it reduces craving and leads drug users to confront their drug-taking behaviour after one or two doses, with the help of psychotherapy. Ibogaine has previously been used with heroin addicts and is now being promoted as a weapon against pure methamphetamine.

However the drug is banned in some countries, including the United States and Europe, because of its hallucinogenic properties.

Dr Fraser Todd, a senior lecturer at the National Addiction Centre at Christchurch Medical School, said the main problem with ibogaine was a lack of clinical trials to prove its safety and effectiveness.

It worked in a similar way to ketamine, a drug which had been tested overseas and could be trialled soon in New Zealand.
If that drug [ibogaine] doesn’t have long-lasting side effects from a one-off use and does fix addiction, that’s potentially a major addition to our armoury.”
But drug education campaigner Mike Sabin said the drug could be especially dangerous for the many methamphetamine users who took other medication for mental illnesses.

“There’s a lot of things to be ticked off before you could say this could be safely administered.”

Mr Beal, 62, a longtime marijuana legalisation supporter, has been brought to New Zealand by the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws New Zealand.

President Phil Saxby said ibogaine had some side effects on users but so did medicinal marijuana and aspirin.

“If you banned everything because it had side effects you’d never do anything.”

Auckland psychotherapist Dr Tony Coates, who would like to use the drug as an addiction treatment, said he had tried it himself and found it was “everything it was cracked up to be” in personal accounts on the internet.

He said most ibogaine users remained fully awake but went into a dreamlike trance for five or six hours.

Addicts confronted vivid memories of the experiences which led to their drug taking and could discuss these afterwards with a counsellor. Ibogaine also removed craving for other drugs.

Dr Coates said ibogaine appeared to have no legal status in New Zealand but Medsafe had told him it would have to be registered as a medicine before he could give it to patients. There had been no large-scale clinical trials of the drug and he had found it difficult to interest anyone in starting one.

A parody of a smoker’s desire to quit from the twisted mind of Stephen King.

Fortunately, addiction recovery has improved since Stephen King’s version of the 80s.

Survivor: Gabon's Charlie Herschel (middle) on Iboga

Charlie Herschel, a New York lawyer, was a contestant on the reality show Survivor: Gabon. As a reward for winning one of the show’s weekly competitions, Charlie was flown to a village for a tradition Iboga ceremony. In an interview with TheDeadbolt.com, Charlie describes the experience.

They actually flew us there and we spent the night on cabanas overlooking the water. And the dance that they do and the ceremony that they had literally lasted twenty four hours. The whole time we were there they were performing for us and singing and dancing and feeding us and being very spiritual. We also did Iboga root, which is a drug. So if you were wondering why we were dancing our asses off, it’s because we are highly drugged. It was a fun experience.

Elle est réapparue dans l’Hexagone sous sa forme originelle (une poudre tirée de la racine d’un arbuste) il y a une dizaine d’années. Depuis, distribuée par des tradipraticiens gabonais lors de séminaires occultes, l’iboga servirait au sevrage des toxicomanes. Certains psychiatres alternatifs la prescriraient lors de thérapies introspectives.

Tabernanthe iboga – Eboka:

“West african shrub, used as a stimulant and entheogen by the Bwiti cult.

This entheogen is sacred to the syncretic Christian Bwiti cult of the Fang people of Gabon. It is also used at lower doses as a stimulant and aphrodisiac. Adherents to the cult believe use of eboka allows them to contact their ancestors. Initiation into the cult involves consuming large quantities of the drug (which in a few cases has lead to death), for the purposes of “breaking open the head”

From “Medical Botany” by Walter H. Lewis:

Among a dozen or so of the complex indole alkaloids derived from tryptamine and found in Tabernanthe iboga (Apocynacea) ibogaine is the most important hallucinogen, not only in iboga, but perhaps of all those species indigenous to to the African continent.

Found in Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, a large area of Zaire,and also cultivated in west Africa beyond this natural range, iboga is an important element of life, not only for its hallucinogenic powers but also as an aphroidisiac prized more by the natives for this purpose than the famous African yohimbine. The use may be justified, for the stimulating properties of this drug may well increase confidence and stave off fatigure. Iboga is also taken during religious festivals and rites, esp. by shamans to enhance their psychic powers, increase inspiration and assist in contemplation.” –Lycaeum.org

Ibogaine stops recidivism in addiction. Its time we stop the unjust laws that hinder its use.

Babongo
The Babongo of Gabon have an expertise and knowledge of the forests and are unique in their use of Iboga. Iboga is a powerful hallucinogenic which lies at the heart of Babongo culture and Bwiti religion making them famous throughout Gabon.
The Babongo have recently changed from being nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled villagers with subsistence agriculture supplemented by hunting.

Bwiti
Bwiti is a West Central African religion practiced by the forest-dwelling Babongo and Mitsogo people of Gabon (where it is one of the three official religions) and the Fang people of Gabon and Cameroon. Modern Bwiti is syncretistic, incorporating animism, ancestor worship and Christianity into its belief system. Bwiti use the hallucinogenic rootbark of the Tabernanthe iboga plant, specially cultivated for the religion, to induce a spiritual enlightenment, stabilize community and family structure, meet religious requirements and to solve problems of a spiritual and/or medical nature. The root bark has been used for hundreds of years as part of a Bwiti coming of age ceremony and other initiation rites and acts of healing, producing complex visions and insights anticipated to be valuable to the initiate and the chapel. The root bark or its extract is taken in doses high enough to cause vomiting and ataxia as common side effects.

More about Iboga
Tabernanthe iboga or Iboga is a perennial rainforest shrub and hallucinogen, native to western Central Africa. Iboga stimulates the central nervous system when taken in small doses and induces visions in larger doses. In parts of Africa where the plant grows the bark of the root is chewed for various pharmacological or ritualistic purposes. Ibogaine, the active alkaloid, is also used to treat substance abuse disorders.
Normally growing to a height of 2 m, T. iboga may eventually grow into a small tree up to 10 m tall, given the right conditions. It has small green leaves. Its flowers are white and pink, while the elongated, oval-shaped fruit are orange. Its yellow-coloured roots contains a number of indole alkaloids, most notablyibogaine, which is found in the highest concentration in the root-bark. The root material, bitter in taste, causes an anaesthetic sensation in the mouth as well as systemic numbness to the skin.

The Iboga tree is the central pillar of the Bwiti religion practiced in West-Central Africa, mainly Gabon,Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo, which utilizes the alkaloid-containing roots of the plant in a number of ceremonies. Iboga is taken in massive doses by initiates when entering the religion, and on a more regular basis is eaten in smaller doses in connection with rituals and tribal dances, which is usually performed at night time.

Over the course of a week, we follow the progress of regulars and first timers looking to kick their habit, alongside the family developments and a business struggling to survive. People travel from all over the world to see Sara, as she is often seen as their last chance to deal with their addiction, but they often bring baggage into the house in terms of violent behaviour. Within the rural setting of her household, we discover a number of characters, and their personal journeys and stories of addiction, and often abuse. Set in rural Holland, the chaotic household reflects a struggling family business campaigning for the positive effects of natural drugs alongside the jarring imagery of a ‘family’ business consumed by them. Sara offers a convincing argument for the widespread usage of natural highs, but what sort of example will their own family model portray?

Here’s the BBC description of the film:

‘Detox or Die provides an in-depth portrait of a small-time drug addict seeking redemption.
Addicted to opiates for almost 20 years, filmmaker David Graham Scott decides to opt for a quick fix. The radical detox agent ibogaine puts the user into a gut-wrenching hallucinatory state for 36 hours from which he emerges cleansed of his addiction.
But several fatalities have been reported in connection with the unlicensed drug and Scott must weigh up the options before embarking on the trip of a lifetime.’

Broadcast as part of BBC1′s ONE life strand.

The Venezuelan representatives attended three days of presentations on the use of Iboga in addiction therapy by psychiatrists, ethnobotanists, pharmacologists, entrepreneurs and the media. Besides Venezuela presenters came to D.C. from South Africa, Mexico, and the United States west coast to discuss recent findings by doctors, biomedical researchers, religious practitioners and drug treatment professionals, who have administered Ibogaine to nearly 5,000 patients seeking relief from drug addiction.

The Ibogaine Conference culminated in the presentations of Dr. Cendon and Dr. Dávalos who shared their workshop with noted United States civil rights activist Dhoruba bin-Wahad who discussed how activists in North & South America could work together to humanely combat the scourge of addiction. The Venezuelan representatives promised the full support from their nation’s drug treatment establishment in working to add Ibogaine to the treatment arsenal in the war on drugs.

Dimitri Mobengo Mugianis is a founding member of Freedom Root, The Ibogaine Project. He is an Ibogaine treatment provider working in NYC and a Bwiti initiate and Nganga. Dimitri is a co-founder of VOCAL NYC drug users union and has spoken around the world about drug users human rights, Harm Reduction, Drug policy, and Ibogaine. He has been featured in numerous publications and media outlets including National Public Radio This American Life, and his work is the subject of an upcoming documentary by Michel Negroponte.

Dimitri recently returned from his most recent trip to Gabon, Africa where he participated in several Bwiti initiations in Pygmy, Fang and Tsogo Villages using the sacrament of Iboga.

Included is info about how to kick heroin, crack, coke, cigarettes etc.

Deborah out to a Caribbean island, where we had government approval to conduct research and treatments with patients who were willing to pay for the treatment, understanding that it was not FDA approved. And we collected over 400 treatment episodes. We discovered that ibogaine can be given safely and that it does have efficacy for heroin users, for alcoholics and for psycho-stimulant abuses like cocaine and meth.

For more video information please see the
revealing documentary about the most effective, but criminalized treatment modality for drug addiction available. Rite of Passage

The man who discovered the anti-addictive effects of ibogaine, Howard Lotsof speaks about his experience. And the pleasant surprise.

California News on Ibogaine Treatment 20 Feb, 2004 – BAY AREA (KRON 4) – Drug addiction has been the plague of modern America. But that could now change forever. What started as a rumor may now actually be an incredible breakthrough in the battle against addictions of all kinds. Features Dr. Deborah Mash who says she is going to submit to FDA her data gathered in her St. Kitts clinic, and patient/activist Patrick Kroupa.

JAMA- Journal of the American Medical Association
Addiction Treatment Strives for Legitimacy
Brian Vestag
Journal of the American Medical Association
December 25, 2002

New York — Some drugs are made in laboratories. Others, like penicillin, are discovered by accident. And then there’s ibogaine, a sacramental substance from West Africa that some say interrupts heroin, cocaine, and other addictions. Over the past 40 years, the tale of ibogaine’s flirtation with legitimacy boasts more twists than the roots of Tabernanthe iboga, the shrublike source of ibogaine.
After riding the backpacks of Westerners to the radical 1960s New York City underground, ibogaine rose from a counterculture star to a serious project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In 1995, after spending several million dollars on laboratory and animal studies, the NIH decided not to pursue ibogaine development. Since then, patent disputes have divided the drug’s champions; a growing network of informal clinics has sprung up; and pharmacologists have discovered that ibogaine works on the brain in a manner unlike that of any other known drug.

After all this, ibogaine and two of its derivatives appear closer to legitimacy now than ever before. In 1998, a University of Miami Medical Center researcher opened an ibogaine clinic on the Caribbean island of St Kitt’s. Although the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved human trials with ibogaine, Deborah Mash, PhD, associate professor of neurology and pharmacology at Miami, could not secure funding for a stateside study. Instead, she solicited private investment and won favor from the government of St Kitt’s, where a team of physician counselors and addiction specialists now collect data that Mash hopes will cement support for US trials of ibogaine or its metabolite, noribogaine.

Meanwhile, another pharmacologist, Stanley Glick, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Neuropharmacology and Neuroscience at Albany Medical Center, has painstakingly moved a derivative of ibogaine toward its own clinical trial. After 12 years of basic research on scores of molecular variations on the ibogaine theme, Glick recently forged an agreement that represents his best chance for a clinical trial. Signed in November 2002, the contract obligates investors to raise $5 million within 2 years to fund the first human studies of 18-methoxycoronaridine (18-MC).
But even as ibogaine’s supporters sniff success, they worry that the drug’s origins will continue to stunt its development. “It’s been a continuous battle for respect,” said Glick. “Ibogaine has really become notorious because it didn’t originate in a lab, but in the counterculture.”
Mash is concerned that burgeoning unsanctioned use will compromise years of laboratory and clinical work. “We’ve got this explosion of underground clinics, and I’m scared that everything I work for is going to go right down the toilet,” Mash said in a recent telephone interview. As an endowed, tenured professor, Mash has all the right credentials: a 29-page curriculum vitae listing 155 publications; a history of millions of dollars in federal grants; a spot at the table of several National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) review committees; and a reputation as a brilliant brain scientist.
And yet, Mash feels that ibogaine’s tumultuous history has isolated her. “I’m the only one [doing clinical research],” she said. “I figured, somebody ought to test the damn thing. You know, either it works or it doesn’t.”
Scientists Look Into Use
In 1999, Kenneth Alper, MD, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine, hosted the first serious scientific conference devoted to ibogaine. He and Glick compiled the proceedings into a thick volume (Alkaloids Chem Biol. 2001;56:1-330). In the preface, Geoffrey Cordell, PhD, a pharmacology researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago, writes that while ibogaine probably “won’t save the world from addiction,” it deserves a “prominent position in the list of anti-addictive strategies” under study.
Animal data support Cordell’s conclusion. Dozens of articles referenced in the conference proceedings report reductions in self-administration of morphine, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and nicotine in rodents given ibogaine. The effects last from 1 to 5 days, depending on dosage and other variables. Noribogaine and 18-MC produced similar results.
That means the central hurdle for ibogaine’s supporters is amassing compelling human data. While unknowable scores of addicts continue ingesting ibogaine hydrochloridea purified powder — or ibogaa whole-plant extract containing a dozen or more active alkaloids — few trained researchers witness the events.
“There’s basically one big uncontrolled experiment going on out there,” said Frank Vocci, PhD, head of antiaddiction drug development at NIDA.
Consequently, supporters have had to rely on anecdotal accounts. At a pivotal 1995 NIDA meeting, Howard Lotsof, credited with discovering ibogaine’s purported antiaddictive potential, presented a collection of case reports. He reported that 10 (19%) of 52 treatments led to cessation of heroin or cocaine use for a year or longer; 15 (29%) treatments led to 2 months or less of sobriety. The remaining treatments were followed by sober periods between 2 months and 1 year. Despite Lotsof’s report, the NIDA peer review panel voted nine to four to reject a clinical grant application from Mash.
She regrouped and eventually opened the Healing Visions clinic in St Kitt’s. In 2000, Mash and colleagues published the data from 27 cocaine- or heroin-addicted patients treated at the center (Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2000:914;394-401). The researchers conclude that “self-reported depressive symptoms and craving were significantly decreased” at 1 month after stopping treatment with ibogaine. They also note that ibogaine treatment “decreased participants’ desire and intention to use heroin.” Mash is now analyzing safety and efficacy data for 257 patients.
Safety Concerns
At Healing Visions, patients receive what Mash calls “state-of-the-art care,” with round-the-clock monitoring and access to the latest emergency equipment. But individuals who seek out ibogaine in other settings receive no such supervision. “It’s caveat emptor,” said NIDA’s Vocci.
Vocci also said that safety was “not the main concern” at the pivotal 1995 NIDA meeting, which he chaired. However, that review panel did cite safety issues. One reviewer wrote that the drug’s toxicology profile was “less than ideal,” with bradycardia leading the list of worrisome adverse effects.
In fact, between 1989 and 2000, three reports of patients dying after taking ibogaine surfaced, sparking a swirl of questions about the drug’s safety. The first death, of a 40-year-old woman in France, apparently stemmed from preexisting heart disease. A lack of medical information hindered investigations into the other two deaths and led to conflicting conclusions about whether ibogaine was to blame.
In a 1996 radio interview with WBAI in New York City, Mash said that, in the French case, the patient “was very sick, she had a very sick heart and she shouldn’t have been given ibogaine under any circumstances. . . .” And in the second death, “we don’t completely know the mechanism of lethality, but it did appear to be respiratory collapse in this case. The bottom line is that you need to be under medical supervision. . . . Ibogaine is an important drug but it is not to be used outside the medical establishment, not ever, ever, ever.”
Despite Mash’s warnings, unsanctioned ibogaine use appears to be soaring. A sophisticated “underground railroad” of sorts has sprung up in New York, spearheaded by Dana Beal, a long-time marijuana legalization advocate. When heroin- or cocaine-addicted individuals develop an interest in ibogaine, they often call Beal, who acts as intake counselor.
During an interview in his home, the one-time headquarters of the radical 1960s Yipster Times newspaper, Beal said that if he thinks someone is a good candidate for ibogaine, he helps arrange a visit to an informal clinic.
The best known operation, according to Beal, is in the Netherlands at the Amsterdam home of Sara Glatt, who practices various types of alternative medicine. Glatt has treated some 85 people during the last 3 years. When an addicted individual arrives, Glatt asks for a history of heart problems or bad experiences with psychedelic drugs. Judging from that information and the individual’s weight, Glatt provides between 2 g and 6 g of powdered iboga, the whole-plant extract that contains at least a dozen active ingredients in addition to ibogaine.
Whereas Glatt charges upward of $1000 for her services, the newest clinic, in Vancouver, British Columbia, offers free ibogaine. The clinic’s founder, Marc Emery, won 2000 of 140 000 votes in the 2002 Vancouver mayoral election running on a platform of open access to ibogaine. He recently solicited an ibogaine e-mail list for feedback on a proposed treatment regimen.
Lotsof, on the other hand, has already published a rigorous protocol (Lotsof H, Wachtel B. Manual for Ibogaine Therapy: Screening, Safety, Monitoring, and Aftercare, First Revision. Published online. Accessed November 26, 2002). In the preface to the first revision, Lotsof and coauthor Boaz Wachtel write that the manual is “intended for lay-healers who have little or no medical experience, but who are nevertheless concerned with patient safety and the outcome of ibogaine treatments.” The manual suggests inclusion and exclusion criteria, ibogaine regimens and doses, and considerations for posttreatment care. A naive physician would likely accept it as a standard medical protocol.
Back in the realm of sanctioned drug development, Glick and Mash are now focused on bringing their respective ibogaine derivatives into clinical trials. “That’s certainly the way to go now,” said Vocci. Alper voiced a similar opinion, saying that he views ibogaine as proof of concept that the best hope for a therapeutic drug lies with ibogaine derivatives. Glick, too, is certain that the FDA will never approve ibogaine. In addition to safety concerns and the drug’s social history, the hallucinogenic effects of ibogaine could be problematic.
After NIDA rejected ibogaine clinical trials, both Mash and Glick struck out with the pharmaceutical industry, which has been traditionally cool to antiaddiction drugs. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) reports that in 1999, for example, its roster of drug giants had 10 antiaddiction agents in clinical trials. The same companies had more than 400 cancer drugs in clinical development. When asked to explain the disparity, Jeff Trewhitt, spokesman for PhRMA, said, “We certainly don’t know a reason, unfortunately.”
But ibogaine researchers and others, including a spokeswoman for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), say that addiction stigma and low profit potential are keeping companies away.
Whatever the case, the dearth of pharmaceutical and other treatments means that the societal costs of addiction will continue to climb. SAMHSA reports that in 2000, illicit drug addiction cost the United States $160 billion in medical care, lost productivity, and crime and incarceration, up from $117 billion in 1997. Illicit drug addiction is here to stay.
So too, it appears, is ibogaine.