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. Our Kundalini instructor, Lily, talks about how Kundalini works: “We do traditional Kundalini yoga here at the institute, as it was taught by Yogi Bhajan, the spiritual teacher who originally introduced Kundalini Yoga to the United States.” “there aren’t a lot of Kundalini yoga teachers in Tijuana. I really respect him for wanting to add Kundalini to his program, because it’s such a beautiful practice, and not everyone understands how powerful it is.” 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.” “In Kundalini, we’re always in a meditation process. You go very deep within your soul. You start with a mantra for protection, then we do a small warm up, and then we do the kriya. In Kundalini Yoga a kriya is a series of postures, breath, and sound that affect the body, mind, and spirit simultaneously. It’s a position that is connected to the breath in a certain way. The breath is connected to the brain and the heart and the lungs, so what we are doing is rewiring the brain. You are sending messages to your brain, teaching it to be different through breath, through pranayama breathing.” “Through Kundalini, you can reprogram your DMT levels. Kundalini works with the DMT that the body naturally produces. You can reach the same places you get to on ayahuasca through Kundalini. I always feel like I am raising my vibration through my own breath.” “With Kundalini, we are working on the very cells of the body. We are getting them to vibrate on a higher level. With the breathwork, we get the oxygen levels where they are supposed to be. We are cleansing the body, we are healing the body, the mind, and the soul. Kundalini goes beyond where you would go with regular yoga. It will take you out the space and connect you with the divine, with the source.” “When Yogi Bhajan, the spiritual teacher who first brought Kundalini to the United States in 1968, the first people he worked with were heroin addicts, and he healed them. That’s how he became famous. Once you can go to that place of peace, you’ve rewired the brain and your body produces its own DMT, and you are able to heal yourself. You are healed because it rewires your brain, so you get to the point where you don’t need anything else to make you feel better. You have the Kundalini glow.” “We all have energy in our root chakra. Our creative energy. When you want to take it up through the third eye so you can create something, you elevate your energy, your love. That’s the process of creation. You take the energy up the spine. Your spine is your lifeline. As long as you have a healthy spine you are young. If you have a stiff spine and you are old. The main focus of kundalini is breath and the health of the spine, breath and the muscles of the body.” “So many of the patients here never heard of Kundalini before they came here and they leave loving it. It’s not for everyone, but if you are ready to go inside, it’s for you. Most rehabs just do yoga classes. But here, they want to make sure people have a tool for when they get home. It solves your problems because it works from within. It works with your soul. So if you are okay, everything else is going to be okay. It’s a magical practice.” 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: Ibogaine Treatment
Anzelmo Ibogaine 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 and ayahuasca 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. Gabor Maté, MD, is an addiction specialist who believes addiction stems from a spiritual illness, a history of trauma, and is a disease of isolation, not a physical one, writes Roger R. in Psychedelic Times. Maté’s work stems, in part, from a “1981 study called the Rat Park Experiment in which psychologist Bruce Alexander first showed addiction as our adaptation to isolation and purposelessness—what he calls a “poverty of spirit.” Alexander thought that people who are addicted have a void to fill. When they can’t fill it with love, community, and a sense of meaning, they fill it with whatever substitutes—or substances—are available,” writes Roger R. Mate argues that “addiction is a direct extension of the coping mechanisms we develop early in life to deal with stress, trauma, or abuse. . .When we are young, we use mechanisms like detaching ourselves to keep traumas from overwhelming us. But as we get older and those traumas are no longer relevant, the attitude still sticks. It’s difficult to get close to others, and we don’t develop a stable community or identity. We feel empty or uncomfortable in our own skin,” Roger R. writes. “So people turn to drug abuse or compulsive behaviors, which temporarily numbs instead of providing lasting relief.” “Dr. Maté believes that we can only resolve this emptiness by turning inward. It takes a spiritual, healing experience to undo the detachment and reconnect with ourselves. Recognizing its psycho-spiritual healing capabilities, he advocates ayahuasca as a source of treatment for these issues.” We treat patients with three Ayahuasca ceremonies after their ibogaine treatment. While the ibogaine resets the brain, erases the cravings, and shows the root causes of addiction, the combination of ibogaine and ayahuasca allows patients an even more potent chance at healing. Led by a Yaqui shaman, Arturo, the three nights of ayahuasca ceremonies work to uncover root trauma and release it. The three successive ceremonies work away at the patient, each night revealing more as the patient grows more comfortable working with the sacred plant. Each night the patient resists less and is granted access to more and more information about his or her past. By the last night, hopefully, they are able to release the trauma that drove them to addiction. We agree with Dr. Mate, that addiction is a spiritual issue stemming from unresolved trauma. The plant medicine treatments — Ibogaine, Toad, and Ayahuasca — work in tandem with each other to release the trauma, working it out of the system like a psychic splinter buried deep underneath the skin. 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.
At The Anzelmo Ibogaine 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. Two promising studies published in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse found that Ibogaine Treatment should be further studied as a treatment for opioid dependence – especially for those for whom other treatment options have not worked. Found in the iboga plant of Africa, ibogaine is a naturally occurring psychoactive substance that is used to treat various addictions including alcohol, methamphetamines, heroin, methadone, and food. It’s also effective treating anxiety and depression, as well as other types of mental illness. Both studies were sponsored by MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. The study in Mexico, which came out on May 25, had 30 participants. 12 of 30 reported 75% reduction in their drug use 30 days following treatment, and 33% reported no opioid use three months later. “Iboga could give an opiate addict several months to half a year of freedom from craving, and a period of time in which to get their life together and learn to face things straightforwardly, directly and honestly. Iboga will not do the work for you,” said one participant in the Mexico study. The second study, from New Zealand, which came out April 12, showed that a single dose of ibogaine could reduce withdrawal symptoms for heroin and opioid users, and result in complete abstinence from the drug or a consistent reduction for up to 12 months. One patient in the New Zealand study who was not properly monitored by the medical staff, died. It’s unclear what caused her death, exactly. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that the opioid epidemic caused 91 deaths per day in the United States in 2016. 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.
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. 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 can be dangerous to those with heart conditions – most of the fatalities reported from ibogaine treatments are as a result of QT Prolongation. “After each heartbeat, your heart’s electrical system recharges itself in preparation for the next heartbeat. This process is known as repolarization, according to the Mayo Clinic. “In long QT syndrome, your heart muscle takes longer than normal to recharge between beats. This electrical disturbance, which often can be seen on an electrocardiogram (ECG), is called a prolonged QT interval.” QT Prolongation is often the result of abnormalities in the heart’s electrical system that are either inherited or acquired, due to a medication or an underlying medical condition. A side effect of ibogaine is that it can slow the heartbeat of healthy individuals with normal heart rates, and increase QT intervals. In a patient with normal heart rhythms, this won’t cause any risk. But in patients who have preexisting QT prolongation, ibogaine can cause the heart to slow too much, posing a risk for ventricular tachyarrhythmias and sudden death. The staff at The Anzelmo Wellness Center performs an exhaustive medical assessment and rigorous cardiovascular monitoring prior to treatment to prevent any risk to our patients. This includes a comprehensive assessment of the patient’s medical background and current medical conditions. Each patient is given an EKG (electrocardiogram) which measures the electric impulses that pass through the heart, causing it to contract and release. Our doctors are trained specifically to screen for those who have QT prolongation. Those with an abnormal EKG reading will be seen by an outside cardiac specialist who will map the heart through a 3D rendering to see how it will react under stressful conditions. Anyone that we treat — normal heart rate or not — will have a heart monitor affixed to their chest during the entire treatment. A doctor and two nurses are with the patient for the duration of the treatment, and an EMT and ambulance are on standby throughout the night. Those who don’t pass muster with the outside cardiologist can still be treated with ibogaine, but instead of a “flood” dose — 10–25 mg/kg of body weight — they will be given a microdose regimen of the medicine, which means they will get the same amount as a flood dose, but spread out over 14 days. That way there is never a high enough concentration in the body to cause a QT prolongation, but the end of the 14 days, they will have taken enough to end their addiction without withdrawal. It will be administered slowly enough to keep the slow heart rate from being affected. 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 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. In addition to preparing yourself physically for your ibogaine treatment by ensuring that you are off any drugs that contraindicate with it, there are other things you can be doing to get yourself ready for the experience. Ibogaine is one — if not THE – most powerful hallucinogens on earth. If you are nervous about working with this plant medicine — you are right to be. It’s a warrior’s medicine and it should be treated with the respect it deserves. It’s also likely one of the most bizarre and beautiful things you will ever do. Oh, and at the end of it, you won’t be addicted to heroin anymore. For those of you who don’t have a lot of experience with hallucinogens, here are a few guidelines to follow: Don’t resist. This is a big one. If your body starts to hurt and you start saying over and over again in your brain, “I don’t like this, I want it to stop, make it stop,” you will just prolong the pain. Instead of asking the medicine to stop, just breathe. Say to yourself, “This is temporary. The ibogaine is trying to heal me. Please heal me. Thank you for healing me.” And relax your body as much as you can while you say it. Try not to focus on the pain. My friend Derek taught me that whenever he gets nauseous from ayahuasca, he doesn’t focus only on the pain in his stomach – instead he focuses on his entire body, just following his breath, and once he does that, his stomach pain becomes muted. The more you relax, the easier time you will have. This goes for your mind as well. Your mind is going to want to make sense of what’s happening — but it won’t make any sense. Don’t try. Try to shut your mind down, entirely, if possible. Do this through breath. Just focus on breathing, in and out, in and out, and try to keep the rational part of your brain quiet. It’s going to want to control the show, to make a story out of the images you might be seeing — try not to let it. Say, “Thank you, brain, for trying to help, but please be quiet now.” And go back to focusing on your breath. Mediate. The single best way to prepare for Ibogaine is to mediate. Spend 20 minutes a day sitting alone quietly, cross legged, with a straight spine, training your mind to be still. If you want, repeat a mantra to yourself to give your brain something to occupy itself. Russell Simmons is a big Transcendental Meditation guy and he gave away his mantra freely in one of his books — it’s “Rhum.” So say “rhum rhum rhum rhum rhum rhum” to yourself as you breathe in and out for twenty minutes each day to let your mind get used to being a little quieter. This will be a really useful tool for the hour or so you’ll wait after taking the ibogaine, before the effects come on, when you’re anxiety might be at its peak. Repeat a mantra to keep yourself calm. Pray. Prayer can get you through some tight spots during intense hallucinations. Keep your eyes closed. It’s a good idea to have an eyemask with you. It seems that the visions stop when you open your eyes, and it can be hard to keep them shut when what’s going on behind your lids is so intense. An eye mask works to keep your lids down. Do some research, but not too much. Skimming Erowid can be really useful, but I suggest reading the last few paragraphs of the entry first — make sure the experience was positive for the user before you read it. There is ZERO point in reading the negative ones. The vast majority of entries are wildly positive. Don’t have too many expectations, or any, really. The beauty of ibogaine is that even if the hallucinations are not strong, the medicine is still working on your brain. So know that whatever happens during the night — even if nothing happens — you will be free from addiction, or anxiety, or depression — whatever your demon is — the next morning. The ibogaine is in your system the minute you swallow the pill, and it will reset your neurons with or without any hallucinations. You’ll have a second chance. 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. Ibogaine and Ayahuasca 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. Most of the staff at The Anzelmo Wellness Center found their calling through the plants. As they cleared their own pain, heartache, and addiction, the darkness that had been eddying in little pools inside their bodies began to run clear, and into that lightness came the message: help others find this path. As their souls grew shinier that mission became a reality — three houses on the beach in Rosarito filled with shamans, healers, laughter, and, most importantly, patients dedicated to their own sobriety, and their own souls. When the staff needs to reconnect with that mission, they go back to the plants for more healing, more information, and more courage. This weekend a group of staff members and their friends sat in ceremony with Kasia and Chance, shamans from Pheonix, to give their souls a little tune up. This weekend is about finding your sweet spot, Kasia instructed us as we sat in a circle. It’s about tuning in to the frequency you want to live in. You can choose the energy you want to align with. Is it love or is it fear? It’s that simple. This is your chance to interact with the divine, she said. Take it. Kasia and Chance take their work seriously. They are not messing around when it comes to enlisting soldiers into the Soul Army. Kasia is a general, directing her troops with a smile and a straight spine. Chance is in the black ops. They never see him coming. Gen. Kasia began to sing, and as she called in the Grandmother, asking for her blessings, the purging began. Like a spiritual Florence Nightingale, Kasia flitted from one to the next, tending to the wounded, who lay in helpless heaps over their buckets, helping to bandage psychic wounds. Around the circle she went, her arms tinkling with the soft sound of her bracelets. Chance, the red-headed wizard, had disappeared to the back room to help clear some dark energy from a woman who was drinking for the first time and felt she was being haunted by dark forces. As she struggled in discomfort from the medicine, Chance conducted psychic surgery, enticing the blackness to leave her body — tricking it with his wit, slicing at it with his hands, joking with it to get it off its guard. In one corner of the living room, F. sang to herself quietly, a song from her childhood, that made her feel loved. “This place is so beautiful,” she said. “I never want to leave.” S. held space from the center of the room, telepathically checking in with everyone, sending them signals to help them deal with their grief. The two tall brothers, strong and capable and wrapped in blankets, walked swiftly throughout the house, bringing water and kleenex to whoever needed it. Kasia continued disappearing and reappearing like a hummingbird, alighting on your shoulder just as you started to cry. Chance finally emerged from the back room energized by his battle with darkness. Behind him, the young woman who had been doubled over in pain an hour before was smiling and radiant, a new devotee of the medicine, the pain gone for the first time in years. Soon the energy in the room lifted and the heaviness in the room began to lighten. Small clusters formed outside on the grass as we began to talk about the messages, we’d each received, the visions the plants had shown us, the new tools she’d given us. Whispers gave way to laughter, and soon the whole room was laughing at something, sending sounds of joy into the earth, little prayers of gratitude in the form of giggles. 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. 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.
