Why Tabernate Iboga treats addiction.

[Guest]

What are the effects of Iboga on addiction?

[LudlumFan]

I'm not sure if you can become addicted to Iboga but it can help to cure addiction for other drugs:


"Over the last decades, iboga has developed a cult following in the United States and in Europe, where it is known as ibogaine. In the West, the psychedelic is being promoted as a potential one-shot cure for treating addiction to heroin and other drugs. Some researchers believe that ibogaine has the ability to "reset the switches" of addiction, freeing addicts from withdrawal symptoms and all drug cravings for up to six months. Animal tests seem to have reinforced these claims."


http://www.salon.com/travel/feature/1999/11/03/iboga/ ("")

[Guest]

PROBLEM ROOT

A West End addiction clinic test-drives tries an African drug.

Residents of the West End live on top of each other, but they're often clueless about their neighbours. Consider the tenants of a particular condo tower near Stanley Park. The retirees drifting back from breakfast, the Japanese girl heading out for a run-they'd never guess that up in one neighbor's apartment this morning, a Seattle dominatrix is trying to kick her addiction to heroin by undergoing a treatment rooted in African shamanism.

Kelly, 34, pale and thin, her eyes flickering, is wrapped in sheets on a bed, whispering of dragons and wolves. She's 24 hours into a three-day hallucinogenic trip induced by ibogaine, an extract of Tabernanthe iboga, a shrub native to Gabon. In that region's Bwiti religion, it's believed that chewing the plant's root enables people to speak with the dead. "She's been speaking in tongues, too," says Marc Emery, munching on 7-Eleven crudites in the living room. "They don't understand what they're seeing. It's after, when they're clean, that they reflect on it."

Emery's no doctor. He is, of course, better known as Vancouver's loudest pot activist and the owner of a $3-million marijuana seed business. Now some of that wealth funds his clandestine Iboga Therapy House, a free clinic and the first of its kind in Canada. Over the past year, he's dosed 28 hardcore addicts-including his own adopted son-with ibogaine, which reportedly purges all cravings for drugs after its hallucinations fog the trauma of withdrawal. "From our perspective, it's going great," says Emery- although nearly all of his "patients" have relapsed into drug use after a month or two clean, and he's now getting them in for week-long follow-up treatments. ( His son, after a third treatment, has stayed off heroin for six months. ) Emery says the ibogaine and round-the-clock "facilitators" trained in first aid cost him $2,000 per patient. "But all education costs money."

Ibogaine is illegal in the United States, but it isn't in Canada, which is why Emery's clinic has recently been cited in publications ranging from LA Weekly to the Journal of the American Medical Association. It's been applauded by U.S. drugpolicy liberals, who claim it could complement Vancouver's new safe injection site by reducing the demand for hard drugs.

But Emery has also enraged addiction doctors in the States who accuse him of running a dangerous, uncontrolled experiment: over the past 20 years, at least three patients at other clinics have died after taking ibogaine. ( Emery insists all of his patients have a full medical beforehand. "Even though we're dealing with vulnerable, healthimpacted individuals, I never really see any serious health anomalies. It seems very safe to me." ) Emery has also angered members of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, who say he refuses to treat addicts from the downtown east side, and plans to create a "detox resort" like similar ibogaine clinics in Panama and the Virgin Islands that charge up to $15,000 per treatment. But Emery says he can't waste his money on someone headed straight back to a welfare hotel awash in smack. "I need these people to have some ability to succeed," he says. "And I've never asked anybody for a cent."

The real question, of course, is whether ibogaine really helps the people who take it. Kevin, a Coquitlam car salesman, subjected himself to Emery's treatment to break a decade-long crack habit. He suffered 19 hours of vomiting and gruesome hallucinations, "like something out of Caligula," he says. Neurologists have found that ibogaine increases serotonin levels, like an antidepressant, and simultaneously shuts off cocaine and heroin receptors in the brain-but, Kevin says, "it had absolutely no effect on me whatsoever." He went back to using within a month. Still, at least that was a month clean. A fresh start. And for that, he's grateful. "Whether or not I like Marc and his tactics, I have to respect him. At least he gave me the opportunity to change my life."

[Guest]

TEN YEARS OF THERAPY IN ONE NIGHT

Could a single trip on a piece of African rootbark help a junkie kick the habit? That was the claim in the 1960s, and now iboga is back in the spotlight. But is it a miracle cure? Daniel Pinchbeck decided to give it a go. And life, he says, will never be the same again...

In 1962, Howard Lotsof, a 19-year-old heroin addict in New York, ordered from a chemist iboga, a plant used in West African rituals, and tried it for extra kicks. After consuming the bitter rootbark powder, he experienced a visionary tour of his early memories. Thirty hours later, when the effects had subsided, he found that he had lost all craving for heroin, without withdrawal symptoms of any kind. He said he then gave iboga to seven other addicts and five stopped taking drugs immediately afterwards.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emery estimates that treatment for each patient at the clinic costs around $1,500 ( UKP943 ), which includes two administrations of the drug. "When I found out about ibogaine, I felt that someone should be researching this, but the drug companies aren't interested because there is no commercial potential in this type of cure." Neither he nor Polanco is too concerned about ambiguous studies on ibogaine's toxicity. As the Jama article noted, "One reviewer wrote that the drug's toxicology profile was 'less than ideal', with bradycardia [an abnormally slow heartbeat] leading the list of worrisome adverse effects."

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

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

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

Randy Hencken drove us from San Diego to the Ibogaine Association. A 25-year-old former heroin addict who had kicked the habit after two ibogaine treatments at the clinic, he was now working for the association, going to local methadone centres with flyers and keeping in contact with former patients. The first treatment costs $2,800 ( UKP1,760 ), including an initial medical examination and several days' convalescence afterwards, but subsequent visits are only $600 ( UKP377 ) - and it seems most addicts need at least two doses of ibogaine to avoid relapsing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daniel Pinchbeck's book about his experiences, Breaking Open The Head: A Visionary Journey From Cynicism To Shamanism, is published by Flamingo at UKP12

[Guest]

KICK STARTER

Thank you so very much for your courage to publish an article ["Turn On, Meet God, Get Straight," August 22-28] about a Schedule 1 ( no medical value ) plant called iboga that is the only non-opioid that can take away opioid physical addiction.

I personally stopped cold turkey ( with iboga ) using a dose of 263 ml a day of methadone ( the clinic starts 20-year heroin junkies off at 30 ml ). This is a miracle cure, and it is simply being suppressed in the media. It should be on the front page of every paper, but it's not.

The NIH and FDA cannot suppress this miracle cure for much longer. The word has been getting out for 30 years now, and other countries have been using it successfully for years.

Jason Bursey

Arlington, Texas

[Alfa]

Tripping on iboga
In Gabon, a disenchanted journalist embarks on a hallucinogenic tribal rite.



- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Daniel Pinchbeck





Nov. 3, 1999 | <CONTENT>Tabernanthe iboga is an ordinary-looking shrub found in a small area of West Africa. The bush produces simple yellow blossoms and edible orange-colored citrus fruit that is tasteless and oddly sticky. Under optimum conditions, iboga can grow into a tree rising as high as 35 feet.


Despite iboga's common appearance, in those few nations that know of it, the plant is worshipped as the source of spiritual knowledge and as a tool for accessing the wisdom of the ancestors. The root bark -- scraped off, ground into powder and eaten -- contains one of the world's most powerful, long-lasting and mysterious psychedelic agents. The tribal religion associated with iboga is called Bwiti and exists in only two equatorial countries, Gabon and Cameroon. When Bwiti shamans eat iboga, they believe they are granted the power to see the future, to heal the sick and to speak with the dead.


"The Bwiti believe that before the initiation, the neophyte is nothing," my guide, Daniel Lieberman, told me on my first morning in Gabon, as we took a cab through Libreville, the nation's capital. "Through the ceremony, you become something."


<A name=PG4></A>


"What do you become?" I asked.


<A name=PG4></A>


"You become a baanzi, one who knows the other world, because you have seen it with your own eyes."


"How do the Bwiti think of iboga?" I asked


"The Bwiti believe that iboga is a superconscious spiritual entity that guides mankind," he said.


I had found Lieberman, a botanist from South Africa, on the Internet, where he offered to bring Westerners to a shaman's tribal village, for a fee. "I have spent time in the rain forests of Africa east and west, Madagascar and the Amazon working with shamans, brujos, witch doctors, healers," Lieberman e-mailed me beforehand. "Iboga I feel to be the one plant that needs to be introduced to the world, and urgently."


In person, the botanist was thin and pallid, in Teva sandals and safari clothes, and quite a bit younger then I expected. He said that his ghost-white complexion was due to a nearly fatal bout of cerebral malaria. "I caught it during a Bwiti ceremony a year ago," he told me. "It took me months to recover."


This was worrisome. I had expected my guide to be robust and adventurous. Instead, he turned out to be younger then me, and shakier.


Libreville was a hot and stagnant city. Sunlight reflected off gleaming glass corporate towers, the headquarters of oil companies. Because of its oil deposits, Gabon is richer and more secure than other countries in the region. Iboga is another natural resource, but one that has yet to be exploited by the Gabonese.


"Why would the Bwiti allow me to join their sect?" I asked my guide.


"Bwiti is like Buddhism," he replied. "Anyone can join. The word 'Bwiti' simply means the experience of iboga, which is the essence of love."


Over the last decades, iboga has developed a cult following in the United States and in Europe, where it is known as ibogaine. In the West, the psychedelic is being promoted as a potential one-shot cure for treating addiction to heroin and other drugs. Some researchers believe that ibogaine has the ability to "reset the switches" of addiction, freeing addicts from withdrawal symptoms and all drug cravings for up to six months. Animal tests seem to have reinforced these claims.


In America, scientists at Harvard, New York University and elsewhere are studying the ibogaine molecule, seeking to unlock its mechanism. Later this week, on Nov. 5 and 6, the NYU School of Medicine is hosting a conference on ibogaine's potential as a treatment for drug addiction. Papers will be presented by various scientists, including Kenneth Alper, the conference director and a professor of psychiatry and neurology at NYU; Stanley Glick, chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Neuroscience at Albany Medical College; and Zbigniew Binienda, a senior research scientist in the Department of Neurotoxicology at the FDA. James Fernandez, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, will talk on the Bwiti's ritual use of ibogaine. The NYU conference symbolizes the growing worldwide interest in the healing powers of the sacred plant.


Because of this growing interest, a music magazine had agreed to pay my expenses to Africa. The trip was not without its dangers -- malaria being one of them, the intense tropical heat throughout most of the year another. It was in the jungles of Gabon that the deadly ebola virus first appeared. Then there were the hazards of trying a little-known, long-acting hallucinogen far from the nearest hospital. After iboga is in your system for a while, it must be vomited out -- producing what one study euphemistically described as "tremendous cleansings." In rare cases, Bwiti initiates have overdosed and died during the initiation.


But none of this mattered to me. I was eager to try iboga for myself. I had reached a point in my New York life where I felt spiritually stunted, morally anesthetized, psychically detached. I was losing interest -- not in anything in particular, but in everything. I sometimes felt like I could float off the surface of the planet. Sick of my own culture, my own self, I yearned for access to a different dimension. But could I be guided into the African spirit world?</CONTENT>

[Alfa]

&lt;!--StartFragment--&gt;Here is an article on ibogaine from the July 4 1992 issue of _The Philadelphia
Inquirer_. Got it from Dana Beal, who has been doing a lot of work on subject.
(w/o permission, typos mine)

**** Begin quoted article ****

It's from an African shrub. Howard Lotsof says it got him off heroin and
cocaine.

To help battle addiction, he advocates the use of a drug

By Andrew Maykuth
Inquirer Staff Writer.

NEW YORK - Howard Lotsof was a 19-year old college dropout hungering for a new
drug adventure in 1962 when somebody gave him a hallucinogen called ibogaine.

He sampled the drug, derived from the root of an African shrub, and
experienced strange, colorful three-dimensional visualizations that kept him
awake for more than a day.

In a sense, the trip has lasted for 30 years.

For what Lotsof said he discovered in 1962 is a drug that treats addiction. He
said that ibogaine erased his dependency on heroin and cocaine without the
agony of withdrawal-- a claim endorsed by other addicts who have tried it.

Lotsof has become the guru of a small band of evangelists, who speak of the
drug almost reverentially. They accompany addicts to the Netherlands for legal,
experimental treatment. Lotsof says the drug's effect "is like going through 10
years of psychoanalysis in three days."

Scientists regard the claims about ibogaine skeptically. But several studies
have shown that Lotsof may be right.

"I decided to pursue a preliminary study as a lark, and it turned out it has
some interesting effects," said Stanley D. Glick, chairman of the department of
pharmacology and toxicology at Albany Medical Center.

"I think it merits further attention," said Patricia A. Broderick, a
pharmacologist at the City University of New York Medical School, whose studies
indicated that ibogaine inhibited the pleasurable effects of cocaine in
laboratory rats.

The preliminary studies helped convince the National Institute on Drug Abuse
(NIDA) to add ibogaine to its list of about two dozen drugs that merit research
for addiction therapy. This year, NIDA is funding 10 studies to explore
ibogaine's potential.

"This drug at first I found a little hokey," said James W. Cornish, director of
pharmacotherapy at University of Pennsylvania's Treatement Research Center.
"But the fact that NIDA is doing a study is very important."

The medical community's interest has given a measure of legitimacy to a
compound that the Drug Enforcement Administration lists as a dangerous
controlled substance, although there is no record of ibogaine addiction.

"I don't like to take it," said Lotsof, who formed a small company that
operates out of his Staten Island home, which has obtained the patents to use
ibogaine in addiction treatment.

"Ibogaine kind of knocks you on your butt, which is good because you can't go
out and get drugs," said Dana Beal, a former Yippie and smoke-in organizer, who
has become the drug's leading promoter. "By the time the ibogaine wears off,
you don't have any craving."

Getting mainstream medical laboratories to look at ibogaine is largely the work
of Lotsof and his disciples in New York's counterculture-- an alliance of aging
hipsters, Lower East Side political activists and drug-decrimnalization
advocates.

Lotsof's appearance is not outlandish. He has short, thinning gray hair and a
trimmed mustache and wears conventional clothing. He speaks in humorless,
measured, hushed tones. He accknowledges he has a history of drug abuse. He
spent 18 months in jail in 1966 for conspiracy to sell LSD.

In the early 1980's, after he was disabled with a back injury from his job as a
film producer, Lotsof harkened back to his experience with ibogaine and decided
to promote it as a treatement for addicts who were unable to cope with the
debilitation of withdrawal.

Lotsof learned that ibogaine is derived from the iboga shrub, native to West
Africa. Natives use it as a stimulant to keep hunters awake, and members of a
religious sect in Gabon consume it in initiation rites, allowing them to speak
with their ancestors.

Ibogaine had received little notice in the West, except for Hunter S. Thompson,
the writer and noted drug sampler, who commented satirically that the
statements of some candidates in 1972 presidential campaign were probably
caused by ibogaine hallucinations.

Some pharmaceutical companies studied ibogaine over the years as a heart
treatment or as a psychiatric medication, but they developed no drugs and their
patents expired in the 1960s.

Lotsof got his friends to invest-- he says that his company, NDA International,
has spent about $1 million-- and persuaded a few pharmacologists to study
ibogaine's effect on addiction.

While researchers are interested in ibogaine's apparent ability to inhibit drug
dependency and are leery of its hallucinogenic properties, Lotsof and his
followers argue that the drug's psychoactive nature is an essential part of its
healing power. The "visions"-- Lotsof denies they are hallucinations-- help
addicts deal with the underlying behavioral problems that cause their
addiction.

"If people don't see anything, you're interrupting the therapy," said Bob
Sisko, 46, a new York activist who kicked heroin with ibogaine and has helped
promote its legalization. "Forget about that."

But the descriptions of ibogaine's hallucinatory effect hardly appear to
conform with conventional pharmacology's preference for predictable results.

In a recent presentation to the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power-- ACT UP is
interested in treating drug addiction because of its relation to the spread of
AIDS-- Lotsof described a two-day treatment of ibogaine as a kind of high speed
home movie.

"You are literally speeding through your life's decision-making history," he
said. "Whoa! I did that and there were four other things I could have done.
Zap. Next situation."

In an interview, Lotsof was more restrained in his description. He said that
the release of memories is followed by "a period of intellectual evaluation,"
followed by "residual stimulation" and then sleep.

But not everybody gets the this-is-your-life treatment that Lotsof describes.

Carol-- not her real name-- is a 39 year old HIV-positive real estate
saleswoman who has been addicted to heroin and methadone for 25 years. She
recently paid about $5,000-- the amount she would spend in a month on heroin--
to travel to Amsterdam, Netherlands, with Lotsof to undergo a medically
supervised ibogaine treatement.

"It's like seeing a movie on your eyelids," said Carol, a plump woman who wore
a black jumpsuit with an abundance of zippers. She said the visions-- which
appeared only when her eyes were closed-- were mostly unfamiliar faces of
medieval, mythological characters.

"If I would concentrate too long on one they would get ugly and I would get
scared," she said.

But Carol said she saw no visions from her own life.

"I did have one vision that stuck with me," she said. "That was my brain, like
a hand holding my brain, and this deep brown liquid dripping in thick oozy
drops out of it. I felt in myself that my brain was soaked with ibogaine."

Carol said the 22 hours of visions were unpleasant-- she vomited frequently and
her legs were so wobbly she could not stand. For days afterward, she said, she
had no appetite and suffered from hand tremors and sleep disruption.

But Carol said that as uncomfortable as the experience was, it was mild
compared to her previous attempts at drug withdrawal, during which she was
overcome with pain, weepy eyes and discomfort for weeks.

"There was no sweating, no sniffling, no diarrhea, no cramps," she said. She
has not taken any narcotics wince the treatement in early April.

"This is like an amazing miracle."

Lotsof said that he and other ibogaine advocates have taken about 30 addicts to
Amsterdam for treatment in recent years and few of them suffered withdrawal.

Lotsof has refused to make the drug available to desperate addicts in the
United States because possission of ibogaine is illegal. "If we want to get
this to the market, we have to do it properly," he said.

That is not entirely true.

"The people advocating ibogaine make it sound like the fact that NIDA is
looking at, that's a validation that the drug works," said Charles Grudzinskas,
director of medications developement for NIDA. He said it could be years-- if
ever-- before NIDA develops a useful drug from ibogaine.

"These claims are made about almost every drug," said Ronald Siegel, a UCLA
psychopharmacoligist. "Cocaine was once promoted as a cure for morphine.
Morphine was promoted as a cure for cocaine. Psychedelics, including ibogaine
and LSD, were all promoted as psychotherapeutic cures for all kinds of
ailments, including drug addictions."

Undeterred, Lotsof said physicians are envious that somebody outside the
medical field devised a treatment.

"If you're the person at the cutting edge," he said, "there's very little
training to be obtained."

**** end of article ****

For more info: (212)677-4899 [ACT UP NIDA Working Group]

regards.max
mmonningh@igc.org

From mimsy!haven.umd.edu!uunet!olivea!sgigate!odin!sgi! cdp!mmonningh Fri Oct
9 00:04:28 EDT 1992

Here is the March 1992 _High Times_ article on ibogaine.

**** Begin Quoted Article ****

By Linda Gibson

IBOGAINE
A Psychedelic Treatment for Drug Addiction.

For years, Howard Lotsof has struggled to get the government interested in a
natural, nonnarcotic treatment for addiction made from the roots of an African
shrub. Finally, the government is responding.

In July, the National Institute on Drug Abuse notified Lotsof it will begin
testing ibogaine. Dr. Charles Grudzinskas, director of NIDA's medications
development division, says the drug will be tested on animals to see if it's
toxic. If not, it then will be tested on cocaine addicts. (He was not willing
to give more information, saying that _High Times'_ questions were too specific
and that he'd have someone from the public relations office call back.)

The NIDA decision helped convince state Senator Joseph Galiber, a democrat from
the Bronx in New York, to file a bill last fall seeking state funding for
research on ibogaine. The senator's legislative director, Nathan Riley, says
the bill sets no dollar figure and he doesn't know yet what kind of support for
opposition it might attract. Natives of Gabon have long used a compound from
the Tabernanthe iboga bush to induce hallucinations during initiation
ceremonies and to enable hunters to withstand hunger, thirst and fatigue.
Almost 20 years ago, Lotsoff discovered by accident that the drug also has
profound effects on the craving and withdrawal symptoms that are the hallmarks
of adiction. A former heroin addict himself, Lotsof came into possession of
ibogaine from a drug researcher cleaning out his refrigerator. He and six other
addicts tried the stuff purely for recreational reasons back in the '60s.

When thier trips ended some 36 hours later, five of them were surprised to find
they had no desire to resume using heroin. They also suffered none to the usual
painful physical symptoms of withdrawal. Their experience has been replicated
numerous times since then by other addicts, who found additionally that their
desire for alcohol and cigarettes also was drastically lessened or eliminated
by a single trip on ibogaine. These effects can last from six months to
several years.

An ibogaine trip is like an intensive, marathon psychotherapy session conducted
entirely within one's head. Those who've experienced ibogaine say it enabled
them to review their lives in minute detail with a new and detached
perspective. When it ended, they believed they had gained enough insight to
keep from repeating mistakes of the past.

"it's a very heavy trip," said an addict who underwent the treatment in
Amsterdam in 1990. "Like a meeting with God or the Supreme Being." He described
a voice coming from colored clouds asking him, "Do you know *now*?"

Lotsof holds patents on the use of ibogaine for the treatment of addictions in
a program he calls Endabuse. He expects to treat up to 50 addicts this year by
arranging trips for them and a treatment team to Europe or Africa, since the
drug can be obtained here only for research. The cost varies from $10,000
to $22,000. In heroin and methadone addicts, one treatment with Ibogaine has
succeeded in eliminating further craving for the drugs in 60 to 70% of the
clients, while it was 100% successful in eliminating their withdrawal symmptoms.
Endabuse has treated one coke addict: that person remains free of addiction
three years after a single ibogaine experience, says Lotsof.

In his push for federal approval, he has helped sponsor research on ibogaine by
Dr. Stanley Glick, chairman of the Pharmacology and Toxicology Department at
Albany Medical College. The published findings-- that ibogaine reduced the
intake of morphine by rats who self-administered it-- attracted NIDA's
attention.

"It's a very interesting drug and it merits further study," says Glick. That's
also the opinion of Dr. Lester Grinspoon, an assistant professor in psychiatry
at the Harvard Medical School. "I've been following it with a great deal of
interest. I had an opportunity to interview one patient who had gone through
the treatment in some detail. Her story seemed quite compelling."

Grinspoon laments the anti-drug "hysteria" that halted and still impedes
research on pharmaceutical cures for addiction after a brief heyday in the '50s
and '60s. "Psychiatrists didn't lose interest, we were compelled to stop," he
says. "There was a lot of bathwater throun out but there was clearly a baby
there, too. We should be able to open this to research. Ibogaine would
certainly be one of those areas crying for exploration."

As we went to press, NIDA approved ibogaine for "fast tracking," which means
they plan to go from chemistry to clinical studies in 12 to 18 months. This
could mean Compassionate INDs-- human testing-- within months. (See Highwitness
News, page 19). [story about the DPF and NORML conferences last November-- max]

Lotsof can be reached through NDA International Inc., 46 Oxford Place, Staten
Island, NY 10301 or at (718)442-2754.

**** end of quoted article ****

One significant thing about ibogaine is that it's being developed by what Dana
Beal refers to as the "Pot People;" Hemp activists.

An observation: if ibogaine *really* works, Lotsof and Beal are going to be
treading on some *verrry* powerful toes.

regards.max
mmonningh@igc.org

[Alfa]

Is This Root A Real Cure For Heroin Addiction?
by lain S. Bruce

color=#0000ff Scotsman UK ("")
March 31, 1999


<HR>

LINDA Scott was a serious junkie with 25 years of drug addiction behind her - - then somebody gave her the most intense hallucinogenic trip she had ever experienced. By the time the Californian had emerged from the ordeal four days later she felt cleansed, liberated and that she had finally thrown off a dependency that had hounded her for decades. "I had a window of opportunity and I went through it," she explains. "I was fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of the gift of freedom - ibogaine."

A natural alkaloid compound extracted from the roots of a West African shrub, ibogaine has been a central plank of the Cameroon-based Bwiti religion for centuries, its potent hallucinogenic properties highly prized as an effective catalyst that allows tribesmen not only to achieve spiritual enlightenment but to enjoy a euphoric haze that bestows the ability to dance all night. Now Western researchers, who claim that the drug could cut the number of heroin addicts by a third inside three years, are bringing it to Scotland.

"There are no easy words to describe ibogaine, no convenient ways to explain," says Dan Leiberman, a South African ethno-botanist who brings the results of his 12-year study of the substance to Edinburgh next month. "Taking the substance is a powerful, intense and fundamental experience that has brought a massive response from many people seeking to deal with addiction to heroin. It takes strength and determination, but finally many psychologists are beginning to recognise the healing power it commands."

Since first learning of the drug's existence from a Peruvian shaman in 1989, Leiberman has devoted most of his life to researching the effect it has had on followers of the Bwiti religion. He claims they are a people living out a completely peaceful, contented existence deep in the central African jungle and holds regular sessions on his South African farm where he introduces a collection of curious hippies and desperate heroin addicts to the drug. Although he says that many addicts have enjoyed remarkable recoveries, the sessions are never advertised and no claims are made that he offers a cure for addiction. "I facilitate the experience and monitor the events that follow," he says. "After that it is between them and the iboga."

Certainly, a growing army of ibogaine proponents is emerging to champion the drug as a major step forward in the fight to help recovering addicts. Howard Lotsof, the American researcher who has championed the drug as a detoxifying agent for over 30 years, says that experiences like those of Linda Scott, where addicts awake to find themselves completely untroubled by withdrawal symptoms, are the usual consequences of the treatment. "After a trip of 36 hours or more the subjects usually fall asleep, then wake up alert and ravenously hungry," he says. "It's a miracle for a heroin addict of ten years, who has been shooting up a gram and a half a day, to wake up wanting steak and eggs for breakfast."

Lotsof discovered ibogaine's allegedly miraculous properties in 1962, completely by accident, when as a New York film school student he was offered ibogaine. The 19-year-old hedonist - who was already using heroin regularly and had already experimented widely with hallucinogens such as mescaline, LSD and DMT - leapt at the chance. While the 33 hours that followed had only ever meant to be fun, Lotsof emerged from the party to discover that he no longer felt the need to take smack, and became immediately convinced that a radical new rapid detox method had just been uncovered.

As ibogaine is classified as an illegal stimulant in the US - so little is known about it in the UK that it does not feature on any official drugs register - Lotsof was forced to pursue unofficial research through tests on addicts over the next 22 years. In 1990 he began supervising trials on over 40 addicts in the Netherlands, with claimed results so successful that the American Federal Drug Administration expressed interest in a programme of ibogaine tests. Examples and apocryphal tales of addicts claiming to be cured by ibogaine continue to proliferate across the globe, and it would appear that some highly respected scientists share Lotsof's belief that they are on the verge of a major breakthrough in addiction therapy. Professor Piotr Popik, of the US National Institute of Health, has called the treatment "a potentially life-saving new strategy for treating addiction to a diverse range of drugs".

Opponents of giving addicts methadone as a heroin substitute - the predominant detox method in the Edinburgh area - have demanded ibogaine's use be investigated and widely promoted. While ibogaine would certainly seem to have great potential, the loud claims of its many proponents that the substance is a cure-all drug capable of combating any heavy addiction would seem extremely suspect. Linda Scott, whose personal testimony is frequently brandished as evidence of the cure's potency, experienced a rapid return of her craving for drugs, an event that led to her suicide in December 1997, less than a month after she had believed herself cured forever. The only Briton known to have completed a course of treatment, Yorkshireman Richard Harper, similarly fell off the wagon after initially believing himself free of heroin's hooks.

"It was certainly the best way of quitting I had ever come across," he said. "I was able to quit methadone without any cravings whatsoever. I don't know what has changed, but I do know that my past is not such a burden now. Ibogaine has given me a new freedom. It isn't a drug, it's something divine - which sounds stupid, but it's true."

Dan Leiberman points out that if an addict returns to his old haunts soon after the treatment he is sure to be tempted into his bad old ways. To illustrate, he describes a Johannesburg radio DJ who threw off a long-standing dependency to heroin but restarted his habit after a few months back in the social whirl. To cure himself this time, he is returning to spend many months working the ibogaine programme. "The drug will definitely get you through the withdrawal period painlessly," says Leiberman. "The problem comes later when you are still in the same environment that got you into drugs in the first place. That is the real problem, that is what Scotland must consider."

All is far from rosy, and there is still considerable concern from some researchers that ibogaine might have contributed to the deaths of addicts undergoing treatment. In 1994, Nicola, a 25-year-old German heroin addict, decided to undergo the treatment alongside her boyfriend Marcel, also a heavy drug user. At a discreet location in Amsterdam, the pair both took the substance and passed through the traditional sequence of events, an experience beginning with mild, LSD-like distortions of sound and light and ending after a three-day inner journey from which users regularly report having been transported down tunnels of light and "chanted clean" by groups of African people. As expected, Marcel awoke a new man, demanding a hearty breakfast to prepare him for the fresh, drug-free path that lay before him.

Just before dawn that day, however, Nicola suddenly gurgled, stopped breathing and died. The post-mortem that followed failed to pinpoint the exact reason for her death. It could well have been the ibogaine, but she had only taken 10 per cent of the known fatal dose. It could just have easily been the heroin that still coursed around a body still ravaged by the effects of prolonged opiate abuse. It could have been practically anything, but the real answer will never be known, argues Lotsof, until the FDA, or some other responsible body, completes the exhaustive programme of testing he believes ibogaine deserves.

To Lotsof, there are two reasons why ibogaine, despite 30 years of research, has failed to make a significant impact on the traditional medical establishment working in the field of drug addiction. First is an obvious reluctance on the part of men of science to embrace a practice only known due to its role in what is perceived to be a primitive, ignorant religion. Second, and perhaps most crucial, has been their dyed-in-the-wool conservatism. "Any new technology will be met by some resistance from the old guard," he says. "But even some of the methadone fans are finally starting to come around. The truly responsible researchers working out there want - and deserve - every possible tool at their disposal to help people dependent on drugs."

Dr Juan Sanchez-Ramos, the head of the University of Miami ibogaine research programme, is convinced that if ibogaine can throw off its common perception in the scientific community as an illegal drug similar in both use and effect to LSD, then such a tool will soon be available and a major breakthrough in narcotic treatment will have finally stepped out of the shadows.

"We have to take this out of the realm of mythology, he says. "A drug that is taboo can be extremely useful, but if it remains taboo then we will never find out."

[Alfa]

<H3>The Religion of Iboga or the Bwiti of the Fangs</H3>


P. Barabe
Chief physician, Professor of Tropical Medicine


Sample of the JC Cheyssial movie on Bwiti: sample (Mpg - 8 megs) (http://www.iboga.com/IBOGA/index_fichiers/BWITI_IB0GA_MOUTAMBA.mpg)





Translation from French, "La religion d'Eboga ou le Bwiti des Fanges", Med. trop. 12(3):251-257, (May/June) 1982. Copyright English translation 1997 by William J. Gladstone


Lecture given at the closing session of the course of instruction for the class of 1981 on July 10, 1981.


Among the different countries of central Africa, Gabon is certainly one of the most fascinating and mysterious. Its geographic location accounts for its equatorial water and climate conditions and the existence of a dense forest which was long a barrier to the establishment of routes of communication and delayed the exploitation of its natural resources. This forest which is penetrable only with difficulty and is the site of an invisible and fantastic world of the spirits has an irresistible effect on the individuals. Also, the different ethnic groups, some forty in all, remain isolated from each other and retain their way of life, traditions, rites and beliefs.


http://www.iboga.com/IBOGA/index_fichiers/KOMBO.jpgIn the words of Bureau, "Gabon is to Africa what Tibet is to Asia, the spiritual center of religious initiations".
We will concentrate our attention more particularly on two ethnic groups and two regions:
Tsogo land and the Mitsogos;






Woleu N'Tem and the Fangs or Pahouins.


Tsogo land extends from Fernan Vaz lagoon in the West to Chaillu Mountains in the East, named after the explorer Paul Belloni du Chaillu who, from 1857 to 1865, penetrated in the interior of the country. This region is flat and dotted with lagoons along the ocean shores; it becomes rugged and mountainous east of Mouila and reaches an altitude of 1575 meters on Mount Iboundji. It is covered by a thick, oppressive forest which in most places forms a veritable canopy of vegetation.


The mountains are always veiled by mist, and the combination of a low degree of sunlight and a high humidity accounts for the rather low temperature, particularly during the dry season. "It is an unhealthful type of heat, the kind of heat you associate with fever and hospitals", said G. Simenon in his novel "Coup de lune" in 1932.


Because of the inhospitable natural surroundings, the damp warmth of the valleys, the tribal wars of the last century in which the Mitsogos were driven back by the Bakeles between the left bank of the Ogoue and the Ngounie, the villages are located on the high grounds.


The essential preoccupation of the Mitsogos is the Bwiti, a primitive Bwiti. According to Raponda Walker, the Bwiti of the Mitsogos may be defined as "a male secret society that has its rites, its regulations, its secret sessions and public sessions". There is no supreme chief for all of the tribes that have adopted it and each village practices the Bwiti independently of the others, under the authority of a local president. To join the sect, you have to take an oath and swear "Na bwiti a besu" (by our bwiti) before receiving an initiation with the sacred plant iboga.


The Bwiti originally belonged to the Mitsogos and also to the Okandes and the peoples of the Eshire group; subsequently, it extended down to the coastal areas, the regions of the Middle Ogoue and the Woleu N'Tem where the Fangs are to be found.


The Woleu N'Tem, the northernmost region of Gabon, is relatively isolated from the rest of the country by the chain of Crystal Mountains. This Plateau is difficult to reach and is situated at an elevation of 700 to 1200 meters. A single winding road goes there. It is along this road, somewhere between Oyem and Mitzic, that Pierre Benoit laid the plot of his novel "Monsieur de la Ferte". http://www.iboga.com/IBOGA/index_fichiers/initiee.jpg


In this region of Woleu N'Tem, "the novelist describes the equatorial forest as gloomy, hostile, frightful, and evil. Every backwater pool teems with caimans, and as soon as nightfall comes to the bivouac, you can expect at any time to see lizards and snakes fall into the wrought iron mess kits. But, still according to Pierre Benoit, these terrifying and unseen hosts are nothing compared to the men who haunt the Gabon forest". These men are the Fangs or Pahouins. They probably came from central Africa, perhaps from the regions of Ubangi and Chari, fleeing before Islam in a southwesterly direction toward the ocean. They are sure of their own strength and of their ability to dominate, eager to receive that which is new, convinced that they can integrate all techniques and ideas into their own culture, and it became obvious around 1910 and especially since 1925 that they would take possession of the primitive Bwiti of the Mitsogos and modify it. To it they added their memories, their traditions and introduced ideas and rites that came from Catholicism; finally, they initiated men and women. However, the chants usually remained in the Tsogo language, the official language which is to Bwiti what Latin is to the Church.


Currently, the primitive Bwiti of the Mitsogos is on the decline while the Bwiti of the Fangs is expanding, though perhaps, according to some, it is losing a little of its initial purity.


The Gabon forest is a veritable phytotherapeutic gold mine and its plants are an element indispensable to sylvan life and rites. Among the plants with magical properties, the most widely used is the sacred plant, a type of apocynacea, Tabernanthe iboga, the foundation of the Bwiti and the basis of visions of the next world.


Tabernanthe iboga is a small smooth shrub that grows up to a height of 1.5 meters. The flowers are white with pink spots and the ellipsoid fruits have globular seeds. It has a pivoting branching root that is more or less twisted. When you chew its bark, it has a bitter, astringent taste and produces an anesthetic sensation after a few minutes. The alkaloids are found mainly in the cortex of this root but are contained in every part of the plant. The number of alkaloids known at this time is 22. The principal ones are:
Ibogaine
Tabernanthine
Ibogaline.


Ibogaine and the related alkaloids have very special properties. In low doses, ibogaine reduces sleep, makes it possible to resist hunger and fatigue, activates circulation and respiration, promotes and activates secretions and diuresis.


In high doses, it produces a hallucinatory inebriation with motor incoordination, and sometimes a state of lethargy lasting 4 to 5 days. In massive doses, ibogaine may cause death as a result of bulbar involvement and paralysis of the respiratory muscles. The essential effect is its hallucinogenic property. The drug is a psychodysleptic that produces a state of anxiety and extreme apprehension and a visual hallucination, considerably enhanced by darkness, the ambiance and suggestion. This action is not unlike that of LSD, mescaline and amphetamines.


The current studies by Goutarel, Potier and Dacosta suggest that these are substances of particular interest which produce an increased state of wakefulness without producing side effects.


The Pygmies attribute the discovery of this plant to the warthogs who, it seems, are very fond of it. These animals dig holes at the foot of the iboga shrubs to chew the bark of the roots. They then go into a state of wild frenzy, leaping and fleeing as though they were prey to terrifying visions. Porcupines and gorillas also search for these roots.


This plant was recommended for use in human clinical practices in 1905 by Pouchet and Chevallier who advocated it in the treatment of neurasthenia and in convalescence, and by Kuborn who recommended it in the treatment of sleeping sickness. The iboga alkaloids have their place in the pharmacopoeia under the name of Lambarene and glutaminic Lambarene B2 PP; these products were withdrawn from the market about ten years ago. Iboga is still used as a stimulant by hunters and warriors who stalk at night, by trackers, and by those who paddle canoes and pirogues. Actually, iboga is reserved for the bwiti cult. This sacred plant has served to unify a whole people, and to some extent has enabled it to resist the influence of Western civilization.


Iboga is the very source of the bwiti religion, commonly called "religion of Eboga". Iboga gives knowledge of the beyond through the spiritual death, in advance of its time, that it produces. By the visions that it brings about, ritual mastication of iboga permits contact with ancestors and gods: Mebeghe is the name of the divinity in the Fangs, a supreme being without mother or father or spouse. It engenders the three divinities by bursting the divine primordial egg.


Nzame-Mebeghe, God, is born with his brothers and sister but remains pure.
Nyingone-Mebeghe, "sister of God", the female principle of the universe, goddess of fertility and of the night. At the instigation of Evus, she committed Nsem, incest, with None. As punishment, she must carry the earth on her head.
None-Mebeghe, the third individual in the divinity, the male principle, has committed Nsem.
Ekurana has issued fourth from the placenta and umbilical body of the divine egg. It possesses thunder and makes order reign.
Evus, twin brother of Ekurana, has been punished with a thunder clap on orders from Nzame. He is the tempter and initiator of Nsem.


All of these divinities are represented in the temple, the place for night-time ceremonies, the place for celebrations on the occasion of feasts and initiations, the place for funeral dances on the death of a person of standing. The temple may also serve as a meeting room, as a courthouse or a guardhouse. It is called Mbandja. It is a vast rectangular hut, measuring on the average twenty meters in length and ten meters in width, completely closed in the back, partially or completely closed on the sides, and with a wide opening in the front. The dimensions depend on the size of the village, the repute of the chiefs, the number of followers and their wealth. The long axis is laid out northeast by southwest, parallel to the route followed by the Pahouin group during its migration in the last century. The roof is covered with ordinary matting or with raphia leaves or preferably with leaves of sclerosperma, a sort of dwarf palm. The curved canopy must always be made of sclerosperma leaves. The framework is supported by different columns. The great column with a highly sculpted base, situated at the entrance to the temple, partly hidden by the canopy, has an essential symbolism. At the foot of it burns a torch of oleoresin of Copaifera religiosa from the sacred tree Olumi or Andzem. Among the Mitsogos, the column rests on the remains of ancestors (skulls and tibias) and it is strictly forbidden to lean against it out of respect for the ancestors. When it is no longer used because of its deteriorated condition, it is laid down with care and takes its place in a corner of the temple or against the sacred tree.


The sanctuary proper is located in the completely closed back part. This is where the musicians and the chief of the community, the Kombo, will take their places. In the same location, we can see the Bwiti symbolized in the form of small carved statuettes. The side walls of the temple are sometimes bare or may be decorated, painted, or may be hung with emblems: snake skins, trophies, musical instruments. There are often bas-reliefs highlighted by very lively colors and wooden boards decorated with paintings. The use of iboga which gives colored visions may not be unrelated to this decorative art. Despite the sacred character of the temple, travelers or strangers may stop there for a rest, and one often sees old people sitting there, smoking their pipe.


Indeed, everything there is a symbol. Bwiti writings describe perfectly the significance of its principal elements. This temple represents the image of man lying on his back. The ground covered by the canopy represents the legs. The back of the temple, the sanctuary, represents the head. An indoor wood fire is the heart. The navel is depicted by a round piece of basketwork or a bicycle wheel suspended from the roof. It symbolizes the place where all the world's creatures are connected to the divinity, and what an excellent symbol is the use of the wheel and its infinite number of spokes to express complex metaphysical concepts. The carved main column represents the external sex organ of this man stretched out on his back, as the bwitists say, "a link between the sky and the earth". It supports the crest of the roof which, with the rafters, represents the spine. Along the axis of the temple, the center of the column is pierced with a hole of 10 to 20 centimeters in diameter which is far higher than it is wide. This is the female external sex organ. Binet has specified its symbolism and has emphasized this complementarity of the sexes. It is the door that every man goes through as he comes into the world. It is the "ozamboga", the opening to the future hoped for by the Fangs after completing their migration with so many difficulties. At the same time, it is a window that opens out on the beyond which permits communication from one world to the next. A second smaller hole above represents the gate of heaven through which one must pass to join God. It divides the temple into a left and a right part. According to Binet, who has made a particular study of the Bwiti of the Fangs, one should enter on the right side, i.e., the "left foot", and go out on the left side. The right side symbolizes life, the sun and man: it is the men's chamber. The left side symbolizes death, the moon and woman: it is the women's chamber. At the location of the neck is a second pillar that represents Nyingone in a state of expiation for the incest, the Nsem, that she committed with None under the influence of Evus. For this purpose, she must have her hands raised and lift up the earth above her head; the planet is then both a diadem and a burden. Above is a depiction of a knot symbolizing the bond between the here and now and the beyond, between earthly existence and divine existence.


Thus, the first half of the temple presents binary realities, the male side and the female side, with the influence of None and Nyingone. The deepest part, that of the chancel, situated past the fire, has a ternary symbolism, because we also see the action of the sky with Nzame. That is where the breath of God passes.


In the back is the harp player and the two musicians who play the obaka, a sort of sonorous rod symbolizing the sound of the hammer on the anvil originally made by None. That is the place where the Kombo, chief and father of the community, holds office; he will direct all of the ceremonies, dominated by chanting and dancing. The musical instruments are numerous and symbolic. The rattle is carried by the initiates in the right hand. It symbolizes the genital organs of Bunenge who, according to Fangs mythology, died while picking fruit in an "atangatier". His body was found by his wife Benzogho in the river. The fly-whisk symbolizes the genital organs of his wife Benzogho, sacrificed after taking iboga which had made it possible for her to see her husband again. Benzogho, initiated by the Pigmies, paid with her life for the knowledge she acquired and is responsible for the foundations of the Bwiti. The musical bow symbolizes Nzame, whose wood represents the spinal column. It is very difficult to play this instrument and the Mitsogos are the only specialists.


http://www.iboga.com/IBOGA/index_fichiers/arc_en_bouche.jpg musical bow: mougongo, leading the Bwiti Mitshogho ceremonial (mp3): Sample (http://www.iboga.com/IBOGA/index_fichiers/arc_en_bouche.mp3)


The clear-toned rod or obaka punctuates all events, and notably the bursting of the divine egg. It symbolizes the deafening din of thunder. The eight-stringed harp (Ngoma or Ngombi) issued forth from the body of Benzogho. It is a cithara in which each string represents a part of his body. It also symbolizes maternal and paternal relationships and is a veritable family organization chart. The harp made of Anzem wood is the object of exceptional veneration. It is considered as a living being. Initiated, dressed and bathed, it possesses a celestial spirit within its body.


http://www.iboga.com/IBOGA/index_fichiers/ngombi.gifListen to a sample of gabonese harp: Ngombi (mp3): Sample1 (http://www.iboga.com/IBOGA/index_fichiers/harpe_sacree.mp3) - Sample2 (http://www.iboga.com/IBOGA/index_fichiers/harpe_sacree2.mp3)


A high priest poetically described the role of the instrument and the music as follows: "To see God, one must eat the body of God symbolized by iboga, and the cithara, Ngoma, takes us by the hand and leads us toward God. It is a pirogue that takes us from the here and now to the beyond, from the profane world to the sacred world, from the world of the living to that of the dead". When the harp plays, it is woman who cries, and the woman is Benzogho, the first victim of Eboga. The great moments of the cult are announced by the horn, usually an antelope horn, and the hand bell which plays an essential role and sets the rhythm of the prayers. It notifies the arrival of new participants and the deposit of offerings at the foot of the second column. It symbolizes the heartbeats of God. The audience also sings to the rhythm of tom-toms and cattle bells made of round fruits, sort of leguminous plants with large seeds.


Like most religions, Bwiti has initiation ceremonies, a ritual, a liturgy. The initiation ceremonies remain secret, and among the Fangs take place on a Wednesday or a Thursday. They are followed by several ritual nights. The initiation, which takes place from the age of 10 to 12, the age of discretion, must be received as a great honor and is indispensable for understanding the ways of the "things of the earth". No one may be initiated without first chewing iboga in a sufficient quantity to bring about visions of the beyond.


The plant of initiation, the Ndjimba, is situated in the midst of the forest, among the Mitsogos. It is the site of secret sessions. It is located in a place fairly far from the village, under a Copaifera religiosa, Olumi or Andzem, a tree with a red trunk whose color contrasts with the green of the forest, the tallest tree, a mysterious tree that resounds when struck because of the hardness of its wood, a tree that insures riches, honors and fame. The resin of its bark is used to prepare torches, and a decoction provides the lustral water necessary for washing the Bwiti statuettes and the purification of the followers. Among the Fangs, the Ndjimba, against the backdrop of the forest, is a short distance from the temple and often right opposite in a place swept perfectly clean, surrounded by tree trunks that serve as benches. That is where the future initiates gather. One always finds there the tree with a straight trunk whose size symbolizes how difficult it is for a man to rise to the divine level.


Between the Ndjimba and the temple is the Otunga, the very place of the sacrifice that must be paid to be accepted for the new spiritual birth. The Otunga is often a tree. It is in fact a trial and symbolically the leader of the chorus is beaten there and thrown to the ground.


The initiation begins with a bath in a forest stream while the cithara is heard. The candidates receive a handful of freshly picked iboga roots, a set quantity chosen for each of them. They use small baskets of woven rattan, the size of saucers, manufactured for this purpose and tied together three by three. The young sometimes show a certain reluctance to chew these roots, and they may be given the contents of a gourd to drink, consisting of water in which the iboga root has been macerated. The boy often vomits, but that is a good sign because "you must vomit (everything) up to the first drop of milk", meaning that you must totally reject earthly life to accede to another life. Very quickly, highly colored images appear, the initiates lose consciousness of the outer world and fall into a deep sleep on a mat laid out on the ground. The state of lethargy depends on the dose of iboga ingested and may last 4 to 5 days during which time no food is taken. The purpose of absorbing this "beverage of bitterness" is to be able to see the beyond thanks to the hallucinogenic properties of iboga, to communicate with God and the ancestors, and to die on this earth in order to be reborn closer to God.


During the period of lethargy, the initiate sees fantastic apparitions. An endless procession of masked, bony, lame, crippled, grimacing, terrible dead files past rapidly. The belly is always open, as a consequence of ritual autopsy. Gradually, the specters disappear, the visions dissipate and the initiate recovers from his state of inebriation and dazed condition.


The initiates then undergo a thorough examination by the Kombo and must be able to answer the questions to determine whether they have seen Bwiti, how he appeared to them and what he told them. If the answers are satisfactory, the successful candidate is admitted into the sect. In the opposite case, which is rare, a new initiation with iboga must be performed.


However, it is not all over yet for the young initiate. Ibama Ngadi, the thunder plant, a ritual solution that burns like pimento, is poured into his eyes while he stares directly at the sun. The purpose is to show him that now that he has experienced the initiatory light, he can henceforth look at the profane light of the sun without being blinded by its rays.


There are three degrees in the initiation, or three levels of maturity corresponding to childhood, adulthood and old age. The Bandji is the young initiate; when a Bandji proves to have sufficient maturity, he will be made a Nima, and will soon be a Nima Na Kombo. The Kombo is the chief, the patriarch who belongs to the assembly of ancestors. He sees to it in the community that the secrets are not divulged.


This initiation is followed by three Ngozes, ritual nights, whose names are:
the first night, Efun, the genesis
the second night, Mesoso, the bath
the third night, Otunga, the dues.


The ritual nights, or Ngozes, take place from sunset to sunrise. Night, the time of fertility but also the time of the moon and the earth, must be as inconspicuous as possible. The Ngozes are scheduled long ahead of time. There is a calendar of holy days patterned on that of the Catholic Church. Christmas and Easter are major celebrations. The Ngozes usually take place after the initiation rites. A Ngoze can also be held to make up for the initiation of a prematurely deceased relative, or offer prayers to the dead, to find out the cause of a disease and to cure it, to get manioc, fish, and children. Ritual nights are public and anyone may be invited to attend. Actually, non initiates depart before the important rites begin: one cannot remain until dawn for several nights in succession without chewing iboga. By morning on the day of worship, the Mbandja is decorated with garlands, with greenery, particularly from palms and creeping club mosses (lycopodia) or ferns of the Platycerium stemaria type (it should be mentioned that this plant has another purpose and there is a preparation made for the care and preservation of the hair, consisting of ashes of Platycerium stameria leaves and vegetable butter, to be applied in the morning and the evening). The followers prepare to take part in the worship by chewing some pieces of iboga root. Alcohol and wine are also distributed in moderate quantity. Prior to any ceremony, purification by fire is performed by the leader of the chorus. He brandishes a torch of okoume resin, circulating in all directions inside the temple. The women decorate the forehead of the initiates with a red vertical line and a white horizontal line as a symbol of the male and the female sex. The women wear a white robe and the men who rank high in the hierarchy wear a large white robe and a red belt. Once the assembly is gathered, the Kombo gives the news and the instructions for the day. The ceremony, announced by sounding the horn, takes place at night in three stages:
- The Efun, that is to say, the origins, the genesis, the birth and the beginning of God, marks the beginning of the ceremonies. The musical bow and the obaka are heard: this is the bursting of the divine egg. At midnight, at the sound of the horn, the initiates kneel, addressing Nzame in their prayers, thus ending the celebration of the genesis;
- Mvenge, death, the second stage, relates the life and death of the individual, often with scenes that more or less depict the passion of Christ. As the dancing and chanting reach their highest intensity, the cithara is heard and Bwiti will materialize by the appearance in the forest of a cross of straw and wood several meters high which is set ablaze and waved in all directions. It may also appear in the form of banana leaves in an oval design with two torches for the eyes and one for the mouth in the center;
- The third stage is the beyond, or Meyaya. The rites of the descent into the grave are performed before the kneeling assembly. The faithful, torch in hand, then leave the temple and go through the main streets of the village, taking three steps forward and two steps back. This night march when the moon is at its zenith is particularly impressive and majestic. The horn sounds, announcing each move and setting the pace for this retreat in single file.
After this long walk, they return to the Mbandja. The dancing will continue uninterruptedly until dawn's early light. The night-time ritual has made them pass from daylight to daylight, from the here and now to the beyond, and night has been erased. The faithful will go to sleep. In addition to the sensations produced by the mastication of iboga, they will feel the inebriation due to palm wine and the smoke of Indian hemp.


Thus, during 12 hours by the clock, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., the uninterrupted, endlessly diversified concatenation of chants, dances and rites performed by individuals perfectly familiar with the symbolic actions leaves an impression of impenetrability.


The next day, despite the physical and mental exhaustion, will be a day of feasting and the menu will be presented in a large cooking pot with meat, fish, bananas, taros, prepared exclusively by the women.


Such is the Bwiti. Some conclusions are called for in order to understand this religion better.


By definition, the doctrine of a secret society is reserved solely for the initiates. The fear of punishment is a major obstacle to the disclosure of secrets, by deference to the ancestors and the pride of keeping such "great secrets".


The Bwiti is, first and foremost, a remembrance of great ancestors whose skulls and tibias are piously preserved, but although that is the primary goal, it is not the only one.


This society which includes the notables of the village permits a discussion and a better understanding of the social problems relating to the clan, the village and the ethnic group and particularly relations with other clans, villages and ethnic groups.


The Bwiti has brought about changes in social structures, and the mystical bond that unites the initiates often eclipses blood ties. It has played a major political role. Some see it as a veritable State religion, as a national cult.


The liturgical rites are not very demanding and consist of chants and dances. It is adapted to modern life and the strictly occult side of the secret ceremonies is of diminished importance in relation to the outward opening of the ritual nights.


The Bwiti is not antichristian nor racist, and Europeans may join. Its universalist tendency blurs the distinctions between races and between sexes. The spirits in the next world are described as white, and during the ceremonies the initiates cover their faces with white powder, showing that they have penetrated in the beyond.


While the Catholic Church assembles its masses, the Bwiti cult is more of a family affair that assembles relatives and friends. With its chapels, it permits the heads of households to reunite their families and to give their authority a religious and sacred character that had become blunted since ancestor worship had been on the decline. Many excellent Christians see this cult as a complement to religion.


The Fang Bwiti is dynamic in the face of the universal religions, it is individualistic and feminist, and preserves the community spirit; this religion of Eboga is well adapted to society and is in full expansion. The Bwiti, which is favorable to individual accomplishments, has the further advantage of integrating all of man, and what the Christian derives from reading the Bible, the Bwitist knows through iboga.
<H3>General bibliography</H3>


1. Benoit, P.: "Monsieur de la Ferte", Albin Michel Publishers, 1934.

2. Binet, J.: "Drogue et mystique. Le Bwiti des Fangs" (Drug and Mystical Practices. The Bwiti of the Fangs), Diogene 86:34-57, (April/June) 1974.

3. Bureau, Rene: "La religion d'Eboga" (The religion of Eboga), doctoral thesis in literature and the humanities presented at Paris V University, 1971, Vol. I: "Essai sur le Bwiti Fang" (Essay on the Fang Bwiti), 321 pages, Vol. II: "Lexique du Bwiti Fang" (A Fang Bwiti lexicon), 237 pages.

4. Prince Birinda: "La bible secrete des Noirs" (The secret bible of the Blacks), one vol., Champs-Elysees Pubs., Paris, 1952.

5. Raponda Walker, A., and Sillans, R.: "Rites et croyances des peuples du Gabon" (Rites and beliefs of the peoples of Gabon), 1 vol., Presence Africaine, 42 rue Descartes, Paris, 1962.

6. Simenon, G.: "Le coup de lune" (Moonstroke), 1932.

7. Thomas, L.V.: "Les religions d'Afrique noire. Texte et tradition sacres" (The religions of Black Africa. Sacred text and tradition), 1 vol., Fayard Denoel Publ., 1969.

8. Traorf, D.: "Medecine et magie africaine" (Medicine and African magic), 1 vol., Presence Africaine, 25 bis Rue des Ecoles, Paris, 1966.

9. Walker, A., and Sillans, R.: "Les plantes utiles du Gabon. Encyclopedie biologique" (Useful plants of Gabon. Biological Encyclopedia), 1 vol., Paul Lechevalier Publ., Paris, 1961.

10. "Rencontres internationales de Bouake. Les religions africaines traditionnelles" (Bouake International Meetings. The traditional African religions), 1 vol., Seuil, 1965.
<H3>Bibliography on Iboga</H3>


1. Dacosta, L., Sulklaper, I., and Naquet, R.: "Modifications de l'equilibre veille-sommeil du chat par la tabernanthine et quelquesuns de ses derives" (Changes in the wakefulness-sleep balance in the cat with tabernanthine and some of its derivatives), Rev. EEG Neurophysiol. 10(1):105-112, 1980.

2. Delourme Houde: "Etude de l'Iboga, Tabernanthe iboga H. Bn." (Study of Iboga, Tabernanthe iboga H. Bn.), doctoral thesis in pharmacy, Paris, 1944.

3. Gaignault, J.C., and Delourme Houde: "Les alcaloides de l'iboga, Tabernanthe iboga H. Bn." (Alkaloids of Iboga, Tabernanthe iboga H. Bn.), Fitothrapia 48(6):243-265, 1977.

4. Goutarel, R.: "Recherches sur quelques alcaloides indoliques et leur relation avec le metabolisme du tryptophane et de la dihydroxyphenylalanine" (Research on some indole alkaloids and their relation to tryptophan and dihydroxyphenylalanine metabolism), Doctor of Science thesis, Paris, 1954.

5. Khuong Huu, F., Cesario, M., Guilhem, J., and Goutarel, R.: "Deux nouveaux types d'alcaloides indoliques. l'ibophyllidine et l'iboxyphylline retires des feuilles de Tabernanthe iboga Baillon et de Tabernanthe subsessilis stapf" (Two new indole alkaloids, ibophyllidine and iboxyphylline, obtained from leaves of Tabernanthe iboga Baillon and Tabernanthe subsessilis stapf), Tetrahedron, Vol. 32, pp. 2539-2543,


Credits to Iboga.comEdited by: Alfa

[dr ACE]

sounds like a very serious drug.kind ofironic that such a contreversial hallucinogenic type drug could actual be the best kindofhelp some addicts might ever get

[Chaote]

I was reading and found some info that speculates that iboga treats addiction because ppl who are suseptable to addiction do not have "equal" brain hemispheres, and when they take the iboga it makes them "equal", now this isn't conclusive but I just thought some might be interested.

[sunyata]

Please post links to this info, if it can be found on the web. I would be very interested to hear more about that.

[sands of time]

From what I've heard about iboga is that it puts you into such a powerful trip that you really don't care about anything other than staying perfectly still. It's also a very nauseating experience in itself, and it lasts for quite some time.

[Chaote]

It wasn't on the web it was in the book "Breaking open the head" by Daniel Pinchbeck there is only a paragraph or two though, more like an interesting little fact than a big chapter on it

[sands of time]

I don't think you gonna find "unequal brain hemisphere" in any of the DSMs. I'm sure most normal human beings are suseptable to drug addiction. If you have a brain, you can program it to get hooked, thats just the way it is. What would it even mean to have "unequal brain hemispheres"?

[bcStoner420]

I have read before that it basically cuts you off from the part of the brain associated with addiction, impluse actions etc. This doesn't explain why they supposedly feel no physical withdrawals though. In the case of heroin users experiencing no withdrawal symptoms after using ibogaine, would mean that it must sort of "kickstart" the brain to start producing endorphins again?

I have read reports that after ibogaine useage peoples personalities have been reported to change, not usually in a good way if at all.

[sands of time]

http://remfractal.mclean.org/ibogaine.html

A worthy read.

[HazeInMyBong]

Recent findings by many researchers, including the author, that stress or abuse in early life induces abnormal hemispheric functional asymmetries, disrupting REM sleep and predisposing patients to addictive and self-defeating behaviors resulting from impaired interhemispheric integration
Chaote may have just worded it differently. Its not so much that the hemispheres are un-equal, its more that they don't function symmetrically.

[CrookedEye]

http://www.ibogaine.org/science.html for scientific information explaining actual effects... I know the reason that it works for opiate addiction is because it fills the receptors that opiates normally would, and it remains there for 3 days ro 3 months, preventing withdrawal and it helps begin the repair throughout the body in various ways..

[Yeahsme]

I don't think you gonna find "unequal brain hemisphere" in any of the DSMs. I'm sure most normal human beings are suseptable to drug addiction. If you have a brain, you can program it to get hooked, thats just the way it is. What would it even mean to have "unequal brain hemispheres"?

I disagree because most human beings dont have the genetics to become addicted to drugs. It explains why people who are usually "mentally weak" can do cocaine or heroin a few times and not get hooked on it. On the other hand the "mentally strong" people get addicted after just one line of coke.

You have to understand that your genes determine EVERYTHING that happens in your body(that originates from your body). Lung cancer would be an example of something not originating in your body. But the susceptibility to getting lung cancer(or any other cancer) is something that is controlled by genetics.

[pharmapsyche]

This is an interesting article that I found about this subject, I thought it might help,
it also shows a picture of the Ibogaine plant as well as the chemical structure..

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 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

3116

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 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.
Tabernanthe iboga, the West African source of ibogaine, used by some to treat addiction.
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.
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 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. 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.

[sands of time]

I disagree because most human beings dont have the genetics to become addicted to drugs. It explains why people who are usually "mentally weak" can do cocaine or heroin a few times and not get hooked on it. On the other hand the "mentally strong" people get addicted after just one line of coke.

You have to understand that your genes determine EVERYTHING that happens in your body(that originates from your body). Lung cancer would be an example of something not originating in your body. But the susceptibility to getting lung cancer(or any other cancer) is something that is controlled by genetics.

Yes, some people get hooked easier than others, but just about everyone can get addicted. This is not because of individual genes, it's the way the human brain funtions. If you use an addictive drug for a prolonged period of time, chances are you will be addicted and experience withdrawals if you discontinue. Genetics may determine susceptability towards getting hooked, but just about anyone can get hooked.

An example... How many people smoke cigarettes consistently for 5-10 years and expereince no withdrawals when they stop? Thats the point I'm trying to make. Some may experience less, and some may take longer to get hooked, but just about everyone does.

[Richard_smoker]

I think that one plausible theory for Ibogaine's activity is very SIMILAR to 'disconnecting the right and left hemispheres.'

This would be: DISCONNECTING THE TOP (CORTEX) OF THE BRAIN FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE BRAIN (ADDICTION, MEMORY, REPTILIAN BRAIN).

Also, it seems to be a long-acting opiate agonist as well. This would ease the physical & psycho-physiological signs of withdrawal while the drug is also acting the DISTRACT the brain away from its 'normal' programming of addiction.

So in short, I agree with SandsofTime on this one, but don't forget that there is also some opiate receptor activity--perhaps just enough to allow you to focus on something other than needing more opiates.

Again, more research needed on NMDA-antagonists! DXM and Ibogaine seem to work very similar to each other in this regard and in terms of addiction-interruption; however, i haven't been able to find any direct comparison between the two drugs.

-RS

[ojos_de_brujo]

Swim is wondering if any SWIYs out there have tried iboga in low doses as a daily supplement/medicine?

Iboga is mostly used in very high doses to withdraw from opiates.
Swim has not gone through (heroin) withdrawal with iboga, but finds the things she read on the net very promising.

Swim started wondering if there was a way of using iboga to relieve some of her problems (opiate craving). Since Swim is not used to tripping, and is actually quite scared of it going bad, she hesitated for a long time. Continuing to read about iboga, she found a dutch commercial site promoting iboga to be taken in small, non-tripping daily doses.
The concept is that iboga levels in your system can be gradually build up by taking a daily dose, so a heavy tripping dose would not be necessary.
Since Iboga is known not to be a pleasant trip, this would be handy.

Swim decided to give it a try. She did not order the Iboga from this Dutch site since it was pretty expensive, but ordered 10 grams of plain shredded Iboga root.

Before the Iboga experiment, Swim was in a pretty lousy state. She was having severe cravings for opiates, alternating between running to the city for some heroin or trick some doctor into prescribing opiates.
So Swim put herself on a 0.5 grams of iboga daily for about 2 weeks.
The site where she ordered it advised to make a tea out of it, but Swim could not swallow this, even with lots of honey. So she just took some root in her mouth and swallowed it with water.
The first few days she did not feel that much, maybe a little more energy.
Then she started to feel less depressed, not thinking about opiates all the time. She even quit diet Coke for a few weeks, something she normally drinks bucketloads of, and could never quit for more than a day before. Might seem like a small thing, diet coke, but for Swim this really was important. She had tried many times to get of it since it's so unhealthy, and never could before.
The complete lack of opiate craving lasted for about 3 weeks after the last time Swim took her Iboga.

Swim will start a new iboga regime, but is a bit reluctant to order over the internet since she happens to live in one of the few countries where iboga is as illegal as heroin.

Swim always thought tripping doses were essential to get new insights and somehow subconsciously decide to stop addictive behavior.
However, iboga's Maoi function and it's way of attaching to opioid- receptors, and maybe a good deal of placebo-effect, seem to have worked for me.

Swim has only read some other experiences of this daily iboga regime on a commercial site. Of course, those were all very positive.
Has anyone else tried iboga like this to beat cravings or addictions, succesfully or not?