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.
