The MAPS-sponsored study on Ibogaine and addiction which was published earlier this year found that the entheogen was effective against opiate addiction — 12 of 30 participants reported 75 percent reductions in their drug use 30 days following treatment, and 33 percent reported no opioid use three months later.
The results of the study were published in May of this year. But what is at times lost in the statistics is the more mystical side of the plant medicine, the side that’s harder to quantify with numbers. We know that ibogaine works to treat addiction, resetting the neurons to baseline so when the treatment is over, the patient is no longer in withdrawal, and no longer craves heroin. But there’s another side to the medicine — the psychological side, the hallucinations — that can show you why you started to use in the first place.
“Ibogaine’s value is not only the interruption of withdrawal but, by mechanisms not fully understood, to assist the patient in changing learned behavior and becoming more aware of their behavior in order to change it. After ibogaine therapy, many patients become more agreeable to change,” write Howard Lotsof and Boaz Wachtel in their Manual for Ibogaine Therapy.
At the recent Psychedelic Science Conference in Oakland in April of last year, Thomas Kingsley Brown, PhD, who ran the Mexico study on Ibogaine, gave a talk in which he discussed the more metaphysical aspects of the ibogaine experience, which can be just as important as the physiological effects.
He explained that a large percentage of patients reported seeing visions of what their lives would look like if they continued using heroin. The visions were extremely detailed and realistic, based on the current conditions of the patients’ lives.
“My ibogaine experience was very profound. It opened up a portal. Over the next few days I had visions of myself continuing to be a heroin junkie, living with the rats in the sewers of New York City,” reported one participant.
“At the final part of my trip…I realized why I was in a self destructive pattern. Then, for what felt like hours, I saw my future as a heroin addict. I was in and out of prison for a long time ’til I was old and decrepit and alone…I felt like I’d wasted my whole life. Then I was under a collapsing bridge; it fell on me. I died,” says another.
“[The ibogaine] showed me that if I continued on opiates I would some day be smuggling heroin into Florida…I had an affair with my brother’s wife and then murdered [my brother.],” reported another man, who had recently bought a yacht with his brother.
In addition to seeing the painful paths their lives would follow were they to continue using, the patients reported having mystical visions as well. Many “sense that someone is watching over them or that everything is going to be okay, and that they are on their way to health,” said Brown.
Just as importantly, others reported healing damaging relationships with their family members, seeing clearly at last the pain they had caused others, or being freed from painful familial patterns.
“I had acquired from dad a relentless and very negative voice in my head. During that journey, that voice left me — it was extraordinary! It was like a tape loop in my head broke and the tape spun off into space…I could sense the space in my mind that was freed up by its departure,” reported one patient.
“[I felt] a profound sense of love for my family and their love for me and an intense, almost piercing agony as I was overwhelmed with the remorse and the waste and loss, feeling empathy with my family over all their hopes for me dashed by my relentless pursuit of drugs,” said another.
“On the 10th day after the start of treatment, while still at the clinic, I woke up and realized suddenly that all my life experiences made me who I am today, and with that realization I totally forgave my mother and father. Before Ibogaine I hated my father. Now I am thankful for all that I learned from him,” reported a third.
The Anzelmo Wellness Center is an integrated clinic dedicated to healing severe addiction, deep trauma, and other challenges that life hands us. Our treatment philosophy combines the best of Western treatment modalities with ancient healing techniques and traditional indigenous wisdom.
“Rockland County Times: Ibogaine: Addiction Cure for Many, Lethal for a Few.” MAPS, 2017, https://maps.org/news/media/6702-rockland-county-times-ibogaine-addiction-cure-for-many,-lethal-for-a-few.
