At The Anzelmo Ibogaine Center we have carefully selected various therapies as part of our detox plan and recovery program. These therapies help you on a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual level, in order to make your transition into a sober lifestyle as easy as possible after your Ibogaine treatment. When a recovering addict opens up new body and mind pathways of thought, emotion and being, new vibrations are created, thus disrupting and decreasing previous addiction memory pathways. As you remove your old habit — addiction — we want to replace it with new habits: positive and supportive techniques that you will take with you when you leave and start rebuilding your life. Kundalini yoga is one of the classes we offer at the Anzelmo Wellness Center, A recent patient, AP, 39, a plumber from Baltimore, talks about how Kundalini yoga helped him: “Kundalini has probably been the biggest impact on me since I’ve been in treatment, other than the Ibogaine. It’s hard and it makes my shoulders hurt, but at the same time the feeling of triumph makes me leave my body,” says AP. According to the James McCrae and his blog, Shit Your Ego Says, “Kundalini is an ancient Sanskrit word that literally means “coiled snake.” In early Eastern religion (long before Buddhism and Hinduism) it was believed that each individual possessed a divine energy at the base of the spine. This energy was thought to be the sacred energy of creation. This energy is something we are born with, but we must make an effort to “uncoil the snake,” thereby putting us in direct contact with the divine. Kundalini Yoga is the practice of awakening our Higher Self and turning potential energy into kinetic energy.” “If I hold the kriya (In Kundalini Yoga a kriya is a series of postures, breath, and sound that affect the body, mind, and spirit simultaneously) long enough, I leave my body. And every time I leave, I go see my brother. He’s been dead since I was two and I never consciously knew him,” says AP. “When the kriya is done I lay on my back, and I get the exact feeling I got on Toad (5 MEO DMT), which is a feeling of comfort and bliss. It’s my absolute favorite thing to do here. Kundalini is the crack cocaine of yoga. I see colors in the ceiling. I haven’t done any research, I had no idea what to expect. I don’t want to do any research. Kundalini is my go to now. I never meditated once before I came here. I’ve done vinyasa yoga, but that’s all. My outlets seem to be meditation and kundalini.” “During the kriyas, when it hurts to the point where I want to drop my shoulders, it’s almost like I feel like they’re held up by my brother. I know it’s my brother.” “I started out with painkillers and went to heroin. I used because something was taken from me as a kid that I wanted back. My brother. I started using ten years ago and it turned into a full blown addiction seven years ago. I came here because I knew if I didn’t quit using I was going to die.” “I’ve already found a kundalini studio to practice in at home. It’s already in my recovery plan. It’s giving me a connection to something that I’ve obviously been missing for 37 years and seven months, since my brother died.” “I got my first taste of how powerful Kundalini is a few days ago. I left my body for a second. And after that I was hell bent determined to get a full dose. And the next time it was absolute glory. And since then I’ve been able to meditate and slow my breathing down enough to get a little taste of it just through breath. And if it’s all in my mind, I’m comfortable with that. It’s all in my mind anyway.” “I had a craving the other day and I talked to Lily about it and we did a meditation to Ganesh, the remover of obstacles. We just did a meditation with a chant, and it helped.” “That’s the thing I was looking for with drugs — this feeling of bliss and comfort within my own body — and now I have it inside me. So that’s what I’m gravitating towards. Right now it’s going to be two nights a week when I get home, and it might even become more.” “I’m a Christian, but I’m more religious than spiritual. I used to go to church but the deeper I got into my addiction, I sort of stopped. I’ve done more praying than church going. Now I think I kind of have them both — the spiritual thing and the religious thing — working for me.” “I feel prepared to go back home. Adamantly, yes. No more using. It’s a pretty good feeling. I was using between 100 and 200 dollars a day — I spent $450,000 over ten years. Kundalini is a lot cheaper. I’m ready to get on with my life.” Kundalini yoga is a vital step in a 10-part program at The Anzelmo Ibogaine Center. We have found that this ancient Hindu practice will not only increase vitality but is directly able to re-direct cravings into emotional balance. The Anzelmo Ibogaine 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.
Archive for category: Addiction Treatment
At The Anzelmo Wellness Center we use plant medicines to help clean your system of opiates, but also to help you to see yourself: your habits, your pains, wounds, traumas, and the roots and cause of your addictions or depression, in such a powerful and clear way. Ibogaine can show you why you have your anger, stubbornness, loneliness, separation, sadness, reactions, and emotional triggers. It can help you release the shame, guilt, and self-judgement. And can help you forgive yourself, for all the suffering you caused others, yourself, and the wrongs that have been done to you. A recent patient, Kim, shares her story: “It’s been 77 days since I got to The Anzelmo Wellness Center and I’m still sober and I feel great. Every morning I wake up and I tell myself what I’m grateful for. I go to two to three meetings a day. I have a sponsor, I’m doing service work. I’m going to talk to schools during Drug Week. When I was in high school, my drug program was focused on weed and drinking they never talked about hard drugs ever. I feel like schools need to concentrate on heroin. They need to know they really could ruin their lives if they use. That’s my dream, to go around talking to kids about meth, crack, heroin and how it ruins your life.” “I don’t know if it will help but I look really young and I feel like they would actually listen. Maybe not, but even if I’m talking to 200 kids and just one kid came up afterward and started talking to me, I would feel so good about that.” “I will tell them how I started using and how I lost everything. I’d tell them about my dad, who was a drunk, and how I grew up in a my dad’s friend’s bar, serving drinks to the old guys who would tip me because I was cute. My dad worked there, he’d get super drunk and then we’d walk home at five in the morning together.” “I was introduced to drinking when I was 11 by my sister. I started with Bacardi 151. I thought I was so cool. Then I started smoking pot, the older kids thought it was cute that I smoked. Then at 13 I was doing coke, experimenting with ‘shrooms and ecstasy. Then my dad stopped drinking and my mom started drinking.” “My boyfriend was abusive mentally, physically, and he cheated on me. We were together for 8 years. He was a dealer so girls would throw themselves at him. When I was 19 I got into a car accident and I fractured my pelvis in two spots and I was prescribed Oxycontin. I was on bed rest for six months. When they stopped prescribing it to me, I tried to get them on the street but they were really expensive so one day my boyfriend said “Just do a bag, it will make you feel better.” So I did. And then I just started using heroin because it was cheaper than Oxy. I sniffed it at first and then a month later I was shooting it.” “I was using it for three years and when I got pregnant I was clean for nine months and when I was breastfeeding. But at the hospital they gave me pain meds to help after the pregnancy and that started me using again. I was still a good mom. I was working at a bank. But in 2011, I got a settlement from my car accident — $90,000 — and I spent it all on drugs. I was spending $1,000 every other day for my habit – three stacks every two days. My son and I were in and out of shelters, living on other people’s couches. I moved back in with my abusive boyfriend and Children’s Services were called on me four or five times but somehow I beat it every time. I tried to get clean a million times. I would go to detox, rehab, detox, rehab, for three years. I would get out of the program and immediately be using again. In April of 2017 my new boyfriend, Christian, died of an overdose.” “I went to his funeral and I watched him get put in the ground and I thought, “That could be me in the ground and Dominic standing where I am.” A week later I asked my mom to meet me at a park. I hadn’t talked to her for 3 years. I told her I really need to get help. It so happened that a friend of her’s had a son who had heard about Ibogaine Institute so I went. I didn’t know anything about plant medicines.” “I’ve been in and out of more than 20 rehabs. The Anzelmo Wellness Center wasn’t like any of those. At the rehabs, they just wanted you in and out. They didn’t really care about how I was doing. They were about making money. When I first got here, I was really resistant. But the staff never gave up. I almost got kicked out like 4 different times and they actually cared enough to knock some sense into me. They listened when I talked and they gave me amazing advice. They’re like a family. The doctors and the nurses were so great. I gave the nurses so much shit but they took it and never got offended and just tried to help me.” “The ibogaine cleaned my system, but it was the ayahuasca that really saved me. It’s not like you’re tripping, it makes you dig deep into your soul and see things that you never wanted to deal with — the things that got you using in the first place. I was in so much pain from my car accident, my body hurt so badly. But during one night of ayahuasca, I just started to accept the pain. I finally gave up and accepted it. And my body hasn’t hurt since then. As soon as I accepted it, it went away instantly. My back has not hurt since then.” “And then I dealt with Christian’s death. I kept avoiding it during the first five ayahuasca ceremonies, but on the sixth night I accepted it and I cried and cried about it. I can’t say my grief is gone but I’ve accepted that he’s gone. The heaviness lifted. I still think about him all the time.” “Now I’m living in a sober house in Florida and I have no desire to use anymore. I work the program, too. The medicine saved me, but after you leave the Institute you can’t expect to stay clean if you don’t go to meeting and do service work and have a sponsor and work the steps. I do all of that. I feel great. I am so happy. I wake up every morning and say what I’m grateful for. I’m so proud of myself.” 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.
At The Anzelmo Wellness Center we use plant medicines to help clean your system of opiates, but also to help you to see yourself: your habits, your pains, wounds, traumas, and the roots and cause of your addictions or depression, in such a powerful and clear way. Our unique approach walks you through your work to have deeply entrenched patterns fall away to be replaced with new habits and the discipline to resolve future cravings, create supportive relationships, resolve past wreckage, and get back to building the life you dream about. Many heroin users turn to suboxone to get off dope. But at the The Anzelmo Wellness Center, we know how hellish it is to get off of suboxone. We talked to our patient Andrew, who came here to get off of suboxone, about how hard it is to detox from a drug that is just as addictive as heroin. “I tried to stop taking it, but I couldn’t function. You get restless leg syndrome, you’re sick, depressed, confused, sweating, you have diarrhea, you’re vomiting, you’re confused, and sleep is out of the question. “Doctors claim that it’s easy to get off of, but it’s not true. They don’t really talk about that part too much, but if you ask, they say it’s not a big deal. But it is a big deal. Its awful. It’s like heroin withdrawals, not perhaps as intense, but they last for weeks instead of days. It’s just awful. I’ve been trying to get off myself but that’s a hopeless situation. I came here because I was desperate.” “When you try to go off on your own, you can’t do anything. You get desperate. You get restless leg syndrome, you’re sick, depressed, confused, throwing up, sweating, you have diarrhea, you’re vomiting and sleep is out of the question.” “The drug itself is very sticky. It sticks to your brain receptors, it just hangs on to your brain and it doesn’t let go. It’s a living hell to get it out of your system.” “Doctors put you on it too easily. The idea is that you’re getting free of your addiction by taking this, you’re taking something safer than heroin, but suboxone is the definition of addictive.” “People stay on it for their whole lives unless they want to go through several months of hell. I’ve heard that people who go off it, it takes about a year until they feel normal. I tried to stop taking it, but I couldn’t function. That’s why I’m here.” 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.
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. “ 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 ,” 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. “ 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.
How does Qigong help people suffering from addiction? At The Anzelmo Wellness Center we have carefully selected various therapies as part of our detox plan and recovery program. These therapies help you on a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual level, in order to make your transition into a sober lifestyle as easy as possible after your Ibogaine treatment. When a recovering addict opens up new body and mind pathways of thought, emotion and being, new vibrations are created, thus disrupting and decreasing previous addiction memory pathways. As you remove your old habit — addiction — we want to replace it with new habits: positive and supportive techniques that you will take with you when you leave and start rebuilding your life. Our Qigong instructor talked to us about how Qigong works, and why it’s so effective for those suffering from heroin addiction: “Qigong helps us to get back to all the energy that we have lost to addiction. By doing this energy exercise, we help ourselves to retrieve it. We redistribute the energy in all the channels in a flowing way,” she says. “For recovering addicts, Qigong helps to reduce stress by letting go of old energy that is obstructing the free flow of energy through your body. Once we reduce these blocks, we reduce the amount of stress that we carry and our bodies can start to heal themselves.” “Qigong helps to return all the energy that we’ve lost to addiction — bad thoughts, unhealthy emotions, etc. It helps our bodies get stronger and helps us maintain a peaceful state. It helps us have more strength and more willpower so we don’t relapse.” “If they do the practice, step by step they will start to feel that it’s not really necessary to go and do the same things that they used to do to relax or find peace. They find that they don’t need a drug anymore to help them feel good. They have the power to make themselves feel good, inside of themselves, that they can access whenever they want.” QiGong is a vital step at The Anzelmo Wellness Center. We have found that this ancient Chinese practice will not only increase vitality but is directly able to re-direct cravings into emotional balance…in five short minutes. 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.
At the Anzelmo Welness Center we have carefully selected various therapies as part of our detox plan and recovery program. These therapies help you on a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual level, in order to make your transition into a sober lifestyle as easy as possible after your Ibogaine treatment. When a recovering addict opens up new body and mind pathways of thought, emotion and being, new vibrations are created, thus disrupting and decreasing previous addiction memory pathways. As you remove your old habit — addiction — we want to replace it with new habits: positive and supportive techniques that you will take with you when you leave and start rebuilding your life. Our Qigong talked to us about how Qigong works with plant medicines, and why it’s so effective for those suffering from heroin addiction: “It’s very useful to do Qigong before taking the plant medicines, in preparation and also to do it after. It will help reduce the amount of stress people will have before their journey. It’s normal to have stress because they know they are about to alter their nervous system very powerfully. That’s what these sacred plants do. It works in a very intense way in our brain and our nervous system. I’ve notice a big difference in the people who practice and the people who don’t practice. Those who practice are more peaceful; they have more energy and are less stressed. Their bodies are more open to receiving the medicine without fighting back or resisting the medicine.” “After they take the medicines, it will help them to get back to everyday reality. After the medicines, their perception has been altered in a big way, so it’s going to help them be grounded again, to have their own center again, and to find more ways to keep working with all the information and all the treatment they’ve just received from the medicines. It’s very useful for processing the effects of the medicines in the body.” Qigong is a vital step in The Anzelmo Welness Center program.. We have found that this ancient Chinese practice will not only increase vitality but is directly able to re-direct cravings into emotional balance…in five short minutes. The Anzelmo Welness 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.
At The Anzelmo Welness Center we have carefully selected various therapies as part of our detox plan and recovery program. These therapies help you on a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual level, in order to make your transition into a sober lifestyle as easy as possible after your Ibogaine treatment. When a recovering addict opens up new body and mind pathways of thought, emotion and being, new vibrations are created, thus disrupting and decreasing previous addiction memory pathways. As you remove your old habit — addiction — we want to replace it with new habits: positive and supportive techniques that you will take with you when you leave and start rebuilding your life. Our Qigong instructor talked to us about how Qigong works, and why it’s so effective for those suffering from heroin addiction: “If someone comes here, they will learn some simple exercise to keep doing on their own when they go home. They need to practice 20 minutes a day. They need to stay still for a moment, relax, make their energy flow, give themselves the time, the intention of not just using your energy but recharging it.” “If they feel that they are having a craving, they should stop and do the exercises. That will change everything. The thing with addiction is that it’s very unconscious and very mechanic. There’s already a path wired into their brains and also in their nervous system, and all the cells; their whole body, a path that tells them to take drugs. Their body remembers how they feel after they take heroin so they are trying to get back to that feeling again.” “But people who are addicted to drugs are very lazy. They want to feel better fast, right away. And they don’t want to make any kind of effort. They don’t want to have to do anything to feel good except to inject themselves with heroin. But if you want to keep feeling better, you have to work for it. You need discipline. And it’s not something you’re going to get if you don’t practice. Even if it’s just five minutes, ten minutes, those ten minutes are going to help you.” “We have 24 hours a day and when our energy is focused outside of us, which is at least 12 hours or 18 hours a day, and if we don’t do a practice to actually focus or recharge ourselves in some kind of way, we’re just going to lose our energy. If we don’t put it back in some way, sooner or later, we are going to feel sick, and weak.” “We all want to feel alive, energetic, we want to find peace. But we all have different practices to get there and some of them are not intelligent or wise. And addicts have to pay a very high price for the practice they’ve chosen because they’ve damaged their nervous system. They’ve damaged their liver and their kidneys. But with Qigong, they can begin to unwind the damage they’ve caused.” “These main organs are filters that have gotten blocked by the heroin, and they stop working in their own capacity; they start to malfunction. Qigong can help it to start working again, but you have to practice. And if you practice, you will feel better. I’ve seen it over and over again. It’s so refreshing to witness how people are when they arrive, and how they are when they leave. They are so different.” Qigong is a vital step in The Anzelmo Welness Center program. We have found that this ancient Chinese practice will not only increase vitality but is directly able to re-direct cravings into emotional balance…in five short minutes. At The Anzelmo Welness 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.
At The Anzelmo Wellness Center we have carefully selected various therapies as part of our detox plan and recovery program. These therapies help you on a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual level, in order to make your transition into a sober lifestyle as easy as possible after your Ibogaine treatment. When a recovering addict opens up new body and mind pathways of thought, emotion and being, new vibrations are created, thus disrupting and decreasing previous addiction memory pathways. As you remove your old habit — addiction — we want to replace it with new habits: positive and supportive techniques that you will take with you when you leave and start rebuilding your life. Our Qigong instructor talked to us about how Qigong works, and why it’s so effective for those suffering from heroin addiction: Many addicts are very emotional. When we have an addiction, it’s very related with emotions. We are trying to find something outside of ourselves to calm our emotions, to make us feel better, because we don’t know how to find it inside of ourselves. So we want something external to give us the balance that we don’t have in a natural way, because we don’t know how to do it for ourselves. In general, people with addiction are trying to find something to help them get some balance in their lives, or to have more joy in their life, or to handle some issues that they have, like trauma or fear or pain. So the first thing that Qigong does it to get back a little bit of peace, peace of mind, because it works in a very direct way in our nervous system. It helps us to calm down our nervous system which has been very altered by these different substances that the patients have been consuming for years. So it’s very altered, it’s not working in a peaceful, normal way. It’s a very slow process of learning how to feel your body again. Addiction numbs your body – drugs give you peace, but it’s a fake peace because it doesn’t last. This will help them begin to feel their bodies again. There are so many things that can affect the nervous system. The principal thing is stress, and the body gets very stressed with the chemical substances that addicts are using to calm themselves. On the one hand, they feel relief for one moment, but on the other hand it’s not natural, its external – it’s something that you have to keep taking, that you have begun to medicate yourself with. And your system is going to pay for that later because it’s not natural, it’s not your own, so you away need more and more and more and more. So you end up making your own body lazy. It no longer knows how to make you feel better on your own. And that’s what Qigong does, it wakes up our capacity to heal ourselves. It allows you to do it for yourself, but it takes practice. Everything we need to be healthy and be peaceful and have joy in our lives, it’s already inside of us and just by clearing our energy channels we can start to access it again. Qigong is a vital step in a 10-part program at The Anzelmo Wellness Center. We have found that this ancient Chinese practice will not only increase vitality but is directly able to re-direct cravings into emotional balance…in five short minutes. The Anzelmo Wellness Center is an integrated clinic, using holistic methods 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.
At The Anzelmo Wellness Center we use plant medicines to help clean your system of opiates, but also to help you to see yourself: your habits, your pains, wounds, traumas, and the roots and cause of your addictions or depression, in such a powerful and clear way. Ibogaine can show you why you have your anger, stubbornness, loneliness, separation, sadness, reactions, and emotional triggers. It can help you release the shame, guilt, and self-judgement. And can help you forgive yourself, for all the suffering you caused others, yourself, and the wrongs that have been done to you. A recent patient, Mason, shares his experience with Ibogaine, 5MEO DMT, and Ayahuasca: “I’ve been in four treatment centers. This is my fifth. I’ve also been in jail, so I’ve gotten clean there. This place is so different. All rehabs are NA, AA, 12 steps. They don’t offer yoga, or any type of spiritual care. All that stuff was foreign to me when I got here. Other rehabs, it’s just meeting after meeting after meeting about drinking and using drugs. It’s a very closed environment and a much bigger population. It’s not coed. It’s like being in an institution. It’s bunk beds, you don’t have your own room. It’s like human trafficking.” “Ibogaine allowed me to look at my life in a different perspective and look at things that have happened to me, that have caused me pain and grief. It allowed me to let them go and deal with them in a healthy way. And it reset my serotonin and dopamine, which have not been normal since I was 11 years old.” “I’ve never been sober since I was 11. My mind has always been so polluted. I’ve always been in a foggy state. I couldn’t tolerate the discomfort of my own self. I didn’t know why then. I couldn’t pinpoint it then. But now with three nights of ayahuasca and one night of ibogaine, I know the cause of it.” “Going into my ibogaine treatment, I was really nervous because I knew I was going to see the truth and see something that would cause me pain. It wasn’t horrible but it was difficult. Mentally it was rough to go through my past again. And look at all the things that I had tried to forget. Waking up that next morning after ibogaine, I felt and looked like a different human being. I looked in the mirror and did not recognize myself. I did not see myself as a drug addict anymore. Something in my brain was different.” “I asked myself, if I had heroin in my hand right now, would it sound like a good thing to do? And I thought no, I don’t need it anymore. I felt happy with myself. I thought I don’t need a chemical to do it anymore. I felt happy. I felt okay with myself. I accepted who I was. It was just like something I can’t explain. but it brought joy to me. My heart felt warm. For so long I have not been able to feel comfortable or loving towards myself. I felt like I loved myself again. I felt like I loved who I was.” “The first night of ayahuasca was like the Toad (5MEO DMT), it was really euphoric. Really uplifting. I felt weightless, like there wasn’t a care in the world that could bring me down. Nothing could bring me down. I felt like I saw god. The second night was when I asked the ayahuasca to allow me to see why I chose to do heroin and meth and drugs to numb my pain instead of dealing with it the right way like normal people do. It showed me that what I had thought had originally caused me to hurt myself was wrong — I had a distorted view of what had happened. I had forgotten how bad my uncle treated me and my cousin and how much he hurt us. I never really realized how much he hurt me. I always thought it was my dad’s fault. I feel like I can forgive my dad and myself and I can tell him to his face, It’s not your fault. I feel like I can accept what I’ve done and move on now. I feel like I’m free from the chains.” “The third night I purged I felt like I got me ego ripped out of me. I was able to get all those bad emotions and the bad feelings about other people out, and I was able to be one with everything else around me. We’re all on a level playing field. We all get the same chances. I felt loved.” “Going back I feel I’d be lying if I said I’m 100 percent not nervous or scared. But I’m not scared of what I have to do. I’ve just never had to face life on life’s terms out there in the real world. But now that I have these tools, I feel like I have the power to do it. The tool of forgiveness, and the stuff I’ve been able to let go of. I can’t change the past.” “I don’t feel like getting high anymore. It sounds disgusting now. I hate it. I can actually say that now and mean it. I always before would say it but knew I would get high again. Now I feel like I don’t have to say yes, I feel like I can make a choice. And I’m not choosing it. Now that all this plant medicine has restored my brain and my chemicals, I am so much happier without it. It doesn’t appeal to me in the same way it used to.” The Anzelmo Wellness Center is an integrated clinic dedicated, utilizing holistic treatment methods, 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.
At The Anzelmo Wellness Center we use plant medicines to help clean your system of opiates, but also to help you to see yourself: your habits, your pains, wounds, traumas, and the roots and cause of your addictions or depression, in such a powerful and clear way. Ibogaine can show you why you have your anger, stubbornness, loneliness, separation, sadness, reactions, and emotional triggers. It can help you release the shame, guilt, and self-judgement. And can help you forgive yourself, for all the suffering you caused others, yourself, and the wrongs that have been done to you. Ibogaine works on both the brain’s “hardware” – the neural circuitry, neurotransmitters and receptors, and the brain’s “software” — a patient’s personality, according to chemist Ignacio Carrera, in an article on Chacruna.net During an ibogaine treatment, the patient experiences a psychedelic trip that often shows them two paths — one if they were to continue to use drugs and one if they were to stop. It can also show them their past through a new prism — they can view old and sometimes forgotten memories in a new light; helping the patient to understand why they used drugs in the first place. The patient can gain tremendous insight into their personality and addiction, helping to “pursue profound changes in their lives, including changing their relationship with their drugs of abuse,” writes Carrera. While the patient is undergoing the psychedelic portion of the treatment, the root bark of a little shrub from Africa — the iboga tree — is essentially doing surgery on their brain by resetting the neurons back to baseline; essentially where the brain was before the patient began using drugs. When they finish the treatment, they are no longer addicted to heroin. But in addition to that, the old neural pathways are temporarily taken offline, giving the patient a break from their old habits — enough time, hopefully, to allow them to form new, healthier habits. In addition, says Carerra, ibogaine affects the patient’s “hardware” – “receptors in the brain and in the neurotransmitter systems,” he writes. “Ibogaine can promote the release of small proteins called “neurotrophic factors” in some parts of the brain.” Neurotrophic factors, explains Carrera, are substances that promote “survival, repair, and protection processes in the brain tissue.” Neurotrophic factors can also promote “neurogenesis (the generation of new neurons from progenitor cells) in the developing nervous system and in some areas of the mature human brain,” he writes. “These substances are of vital importance for the development and function of the nervous system.. . .Since ibogaine can promote the release of these neurotrophic factors in some regions of the brain, it is proposed it could repair and protect the damaged neural circuits involved in drug addiction.” 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.
