Ibogaine Drug Addiction Treatment: Breaking Through to the Core
"I have been held by the Goddess and turning back is not an
option. I pray this African medicine gets out to the general
population where major changes will occur. Doesn't the timing
seem right?"
These are the words of Gary, a former methamphetamine addict who
was cured of his addiction by ingesting ibogaine, an alkaloid
derived from the root of Tabernanthe iboga, a shrub that grows
abundantly in West Central Africa. The root of the iboga shrub
has been used for centuries by the peoples of the sub-tropical
rain forests of West Central Africa as part of a once in a
lifetime rite of initiation. Modern researchers, both medical
and metaphysical, have discovered that a derivative of the iboga
root, called ibogaine, is an effective treatment for addiction,
dysfunctional behavior, and spiritual anomie. This would not be
a surprise to the tribal people, who revere Iboga as a god.
Practitioners of West Africa's Bwiti religion use the iboga
plant to induce visions and aid in the hunt. For three hundred
years, the tribal people of the rainforest areas have been
utilizing this shrub as an integral part of their religious
rites. Through its ingestion, they get in touch with their
ancestral hierarchy. For example, they may chew on the bark for
a day or two and then go into an altered state, where they will
dash into the forest and run a mile and a half, then dig under a
tree and find a dowry that was put there a hundred and fifty
years ago.
In the early 1900's Western scientists discovered, after
watching wild boar eat this shrub and go into a frenzy, that
iboga is some sort of psychoactive substance. In the 1940's and
1950's, pharmaceutical companies began experimenting on some of
the alternative uses of the plant, and it was found to be a
stimulant. However, in 1962, a man by the name of Howard Lotsof,
who was then a heroin addict, took it to get high. After a
thirty-six hour trip, he found himself to be free of his
addiction, and consequently gave it to six of his friends. Five
of them became free of their addictions. Lotsof realized that
ibogaine was something beyond just another psychoactive
experience.
Over time, the International Coalition for Addict Self-Help ran
underground trial testing on ibogaine. Their anecdotal evidence
shows roughly seventy-five percent success rates with addiction
to heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, alcohol and nicotine.
In 1965, Lotsof formed NDA International and scheduled a use
patent on ibogaine for treating drug and alcohol addiction.
Scientific study began in the Netherlands in 1991 with more than
three dozen addicts as test cases. Since then, the FDA has
become very interested in this substance, so much that it has
sanctioned the first human studies.
Presently, ibogaine, because of its psychoactive properties, is
classified by the FDA as a "Class 1" narcotic (along with heroin
and cocaine), and has been outlawed in the U.S. since the
1960's. Ibogaine, however, is not and never will be a
recreational drug. In thirty years of U.S. drug enforcement
efforts, only three grams of it has been confiscated "on the
street." An ibogaine treatment, although of substantial benefit
to an addict or a person trapped in dysfunctional behavioral
patterns, is hard work, and not something people want to repeat.
Ibogaine's true status as a non-addictive substance is
demonstrated by the fact that it is legal in every country in
the world except the United States and Belgium.
What is an ibogaine treatment like? This depends, to some
extent, on the purpose for which the ibogaine is being ingested.
The amount of the drug administered varies according to purpose,
and the experience is, to some extent, shaped by the intent of
the participant. A heroin addict seeking freedom from "the money
on her back" will not take the same amount of Ibogaine, or have
the same experience as the long time meditator whose goal is to
become more connected with the Source, or the therapy patient
wanting resolution to a chronic depression or anxiety.
Nevertheless, all three will find that their treatment involves
physical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions.
All ibogaine treatments have three stages. Stage one involves
ingesting the ibogaine, which is given in capsule form. The
potency is calibrated according to body weight. In the past,
low-does ranges have been used for therapeutic sessions. At a
low-dosage level, pictures and insights come slowly enough to be
worked with by an attending therapist. A mid-range dose of
ibogaine is given to a spiritual seeker wishing to have an
initiatory experience. Recent experience suggests, however, that
it may be unnecessary to calibrate dosage ranges differently for
psychotherapeutic or spiritual purposes. If the person ingesting
the ibogaine has experienced severe trauma, it is best to ingest
a low-dose and have a therapist on hand, but many people can
handle a mid-dose range and can access healing memories on their
own.
In many cases, the insights received do not have to be
experienced in the traditional Western psychotherapeutic mode. A
readied initiate will experience a dissolving of emotional
baggage on more abstract levels, which can be shown to be both
cumulative and behaviorally altering. A high dose is used to
interrupt addictions. It is necessary that the dose be high
enough to overwhelm the addict's drug programmed mind and body.
Even at a high dosage range, however, ibogaine does not fragment
an addict's ego, which emerges from the experience intact and
cleansed of cravings for the drug or drugs of choice.
The person ingesting the ibogaine may seem to journey backward
in time and to re-experience significant life events. Some
people undergo a "life review" similar to that described in The
Tibetan Book of the Dead, and in modern accounts of near death
experiences. If the person is an addict, he or she is sometimes
brought to the place where the core issue that helped facilitate
the addiction took began. The emotional content of that
experience is relived, along with the visual, pictorial gestalt
of the experience itself. In most cases, the experience is
complete with 3-D effects and the sensation of actually "being
there." Yet, there is also the presence of the witnessing self,
who watches and finds understanding. It is this understanding
that seems to allow the former addict to begin again, making
new, healthy choices.
Miraculously, there are no withdrawal symptoms whatsoever from
the former drug, or drugs, of choice. The withdrawal period is
interrupted for several reasons. One is that after ingesting the
ibogaine, the addicts simply cannot get out of bed to find the
fix. Also they are too preoccupied and overwhelmed with that
they are experiencing to remember that they need a fix. In
addition, medical research conducted at hospitals and
universities in this country suggest that ibogaine inhibits the
production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter thought to play a
central role in addiction. Since many addicts stay addicted
simply to avoid the overwhelming pain and stress and withdrawal,
absence of withdrawal is a key element of ibogaine's amazing
success in treating addiction.
Stage two of an ibogaine treatment seems to be a somewhat
individual experience. Some people sleep for three to twelve
hours. Most people, however, don't sleep at all, but experience
a dreamlike, reflective period. If they sleep, they usually wake
up completely alert and ravenously hungry. This is a miracle in
itself for a heroin addict of ten years.
Stage three lasts another twenty-four hours. Since a person
feels quite open and vulnerable at this time, this twenty four
hour period seems to provide the time necessary to reacclimate
oneself to "real time." People are functional, albeit slow and
reflective, and much softer, but are not experiencing the
full-fledged effects of the ibogaine.
After the ibogaine session, the former addict will now
experience a three to six month period of freedom from craving
the drug or drugs of choice. During this time, he or she needs
to seek therapy and support to ground the changes and insights
that have been set into motion. If this follow-up work is not
done, the psychological factors that originally caused the
addiction will come back. The same is true for people who take
ibogaine to explore and interrupt dysfunctional behavior
patterns, i.e., the effectiveness of the ibogaine treatment is
"sealed" and extended by follow-up therapy. About twenty five
percent of addicts who ingest ibogaine are not freed from their
addiction, but most of these are successful after a second
treatment.
People who take the lower, therapeutic dose of ibogaine
experience its psychoactive effects at a lower, less intense
pace. They maintain the control associated with normal, waking
consciousness and are able to explore the insights ibogaine
gives with an attending therapist. These insights can be most
profound and poignant. One participant, adopted at birth,
describes re-experiencing her connection to her birth mother: "I
could kind of feel where I was this small infant, but I was part
of this cast amount of soft skin, also. And I could feel the
warmth and the smell, and everything was me! It was me... it was
right... it was me. It was bigger than me, but it was me. And I
could feel this woman's tenderness. And there were points where
I could feel tears hitting my body. I could feel her sadness,
and it was my sadness. It was a sadness I have felt throughout
my life... after awhile I felt "Okay, I think I've got it now!
I've got it. I see now how this all got started." This woman
regards ibogaine as the greatest gift she has ever received.
There is less data available, outside of West Central Africa, on
the use of ibogaine for spiritual initiation, but it is being
used by Western people for this ancient purpose. The dose taken
is less than that used for interrupting addiction. Some loss of
waking consciousness is needed, to bypass the iron grip of ego,
but not the amount needed to interrupt addiction. One initiate
user, who had been doing inner, spiritual work for ten years
prior to ingesting ibogaine, had this to say: "Ibogaine unravels
all our set patterns- putting everything into motion- in flux.
Even while it was deconstructing the world around me, the
accelerating power of the Iboga was sending me outward to a
level of fluidity where I could still reconfigure myself while
the universe danced all around me... Ibogaine is an analog- a
variation- of the Tree of Life. It has the capacity to help us
achieve a new relationship with ourselves by assisting us to
attain a never before achieved relationship between God and
Self..."
Does ibogaine have side effects? For ninety five percent of the
population, the answer is no. The three to five percent of the
population who have had psychotic breaks or catatonia may
experience hallucinations on ibogaine, and it is not recommended
for use by this group.
Clearly, in a world devastated by addictions to alcohol,
cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, methadone, and nicotine, with all
the accompanying death, disease and crime, in a society where
dysfunctional behavior is the rule rather than the exception, in
a humanity hungering to reconnect with God, ibogaine has
profound implications. At this writing, however, ibogaine is
available to relatively few people outside of Africa. Howard
Lotsof's organization, NDA, administers ibogaine sessions in the
Netherlands or Panama. This writer's organization, I Begin
Again, has been able to access ibogaine to a small but growing
number of persons in a clinic located in the international
waters of the Caribbean.
The opposing forces to widespread treatment with ibogaine are
both economic and political. At the present time, taking the
ibogaine treatment involves the expense of traveling to the
international waters of the Caribbean Sea. Since it takes
twenty-five pounds of plant material to make one and a half
pounds of the shavings from which the ibogaine alkaloid is
extracted, the supply is limited and expensive. Synthetic
ibogaine is being manufactured, under the auspices of the NDA,
but needs to be improved. The political opposition to the
legalization and manufacture of ibogaine is all pervasive and
deeply rooted. A drug which is a true cure for addiction
threatens vested economic interests in the underground world of
international drug cartels and also in the aboveground economy.
Addiction, like cancer, is a multi-billion dollar industry. In
addition, giving any sort of legal status to a psychoactive drug
goes against long standing cultural taboos. Nevertheless, the
pressure to end the scourge of addiction is sufficiently intense
that ibogaine may eventually receive FDA approval. In the
meantime, ibogaine treatments are available at clinics outside
the United States, albeit in limited numbers.
What is the future of ibogaine in Western society, and
particularly in the United States, where the scourge of drug
addiction has approached genocidal levels, particularly in the
inner city?
A wise man said, "It is better to light one candle than to curse
the darkness." The I Begin Again Clinic, where I am presently,
with the help of trained assistants conducting ibogaine
sessions, is such a candle. It is my hope and my plan that over
the next several years, a multitude of such candles be lit, to
the point that we see visible and substantial improvements in
the societal chaos and personal suffering of addiction and
dysfunctional behaviors. I am actively seeking both individual
and corporate funding for such clinics.