Thursday 4 July 2013

Ibogaine is finally available in London and other parts of the UK

I’m a scientist and after years of studying all aspects of addiction (there are more than you think) I was about to start working on a PhD. Then I discovered that in 1962 the late Howard Lotsof accidentally found that Ibogaine was a cure for all kinds of addiction (and potentially might even work with depression). He took out several patents in the USA and spent his remaining years trying to promote Ibogaine. To his utter amazement he couldn’t get any of the American drug companies or research facilities interested in developing or researching Ibogaine.

51 years, and thousands of wasted lives later very little has actually happened. It is after all, not in the interests of either drug companies or treatment providers to cure people of all their addictions in one single treatment. Why would they kill the golden goose of life-long-maintenance and put themselves out of a well paid job? Another drawback to research and development was that Ibogaine was deemed to be a hallucinogen and demonised along with LSD and was therefore, banned in America; it is also illegal in the UK and most of Europe.

Nobody should attempt Ibogaine therapy without medical supervision

This frustrating situation tempted some desperate addicts to treat themselves with Ibogaine obtained illegally. Most were successful but without medical supervision there were several deaths from exhaustion, dehydration, or undiagnosed heart conditions. Anyone contemplating using Ibogaine needs to be reasonably fit and it is crucial to have had their heart and liver functions checked first.In 1999, a woman neuroscientist called Deborah Mash began exploring the potential of Ibogaine. She has been especially keen to reduce some of the risks and rigours involved in the original formula, which produces a highly intense 36 hour long ‘trip.’  

To put it in very simple terms the brain’s opiate receptors (and the addiction related neurotransmitters) are ‘repaired’ during the Ibogaine experience. Professor Mash has recently complete first stages of trials of a new derivative of the iboga herb that will be much safer, especially for people with health issues such as heart conditions. Until human testing is completed it is impossible to know whether this version will be as effective as Ibogaine version one. If the rest of us just sit back silently and wait it could be another fifty-one years before Ibogaine finally becomes widely available.   

Ibogaine is still almost completely unknown in the west and nobody else is working on it; and in Britain nobody is doing anything about researching Ibogaine at all. In fact none of the treatment agencies, with whom I have spoken in England are offering it, or had even heard of it. There is one thing that everyone can do and that is to spread the word about the existence of Ibogaine; not only to those who need it but also to those whose job it should be to provide it.

Ask your health care providers whether they know about it and if not, ask them why not when it has been around for 51 years. Write to politicians and anyone else you can think of - let’s get our brains in gear to find some way to get this treatment into clinics and saving lives. I am doing everything I can think of as a scientist, a writer, and human being but it is all taking too long and people are still dying. Nobody in the area of addiction science appears to be interested in doing Ibogaine research. They all seem content to wait for the team in Miami. I hope that if the public know that the Ibogaine option exists, and that it works (it has been used successfully in Mexico for ten years) they might be able to bring pressure on the British NHS to begin offering Ibogaine to the thousands of British addicts who currently have no hope except methadone (with its 3% success rate after 2 years).

In 2004, film-maker David Graham-Scott made his documentary on Ibogaine therapy, Detox or Die! (shown on British TV and can be seen on YouTube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehpa01s7jUM There are now between one and three Ibogaine therapists working privately in London but none of these are licensed by the British Government (and two out of the three related websites won’t open so they might have been closed down). The only treatment offered in Britain by NHS clinics is the highly dangerous and equally ineffective methadone (see Wikipedia for methadone related deaths MRDs; and methadone rehab figures. You can find them in Google. You might also wish to explore the Ibogaine Dossier www.ibogaine.org where you can confirm what I have said and learn more). Nobody should attempt this therapy without medical supervision. 

If you have a problem addiction and want to learn more about this therapy put Ibogaine treatment + UK into Google.or go here: http://www.ibogaine.co.uk/options.htm#.UdW9iDs3t4Y