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