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.
