Articles for Further Information

AT NIRVANA’S GATEPOST: IT’S THE SPIRIT OF IBOGAINE, AGAIN…

How One Exotic Plant Medicine Keeps Growing Roots...

Four years and hundreds of long, psychoactive sessions later, the root of the iboga plant, extracted as ibogaine, continues along its mysterious underground path. An article published in this magazine in 1995 helped lay some of those tracks here in the West, extending a journey that began centuries ago when groups of pygmies venturing westward from the jungles of the Rift Valley introduced iboga plant medicine to the Fang of West Africa. Since then, the exotic derivative of the humble looking tabernathe iboga has found a way to intervene powerfully in the lives of thousands.

How the pygmies of East Africa used iboga is not clear. But the Fang living in the equatorial areas in and around Gabon soon incorporated it into their lives, their rituals and their mythology. These were people suffering deeply from the traumas of colonization. In Bwiti, the religious West African community that developed around iboga use, the alkaloid’s ability to punch through ordinary doors of perception to provide cosmic visions, personal guidance, and healing, has been used to help hold tribal identity and individual self-esteem together under the terrible stresses of colonial life. It’s hardly any wonder that the physical and psychological rebirth potential of the iboga root has become central to their passionate spiritual culture.

In the West, in the last half-century, ibogaine’s psychoactive properties have been coming to light on a slightly different route. Ibogaine’s success as an addiction interrupter has been well documented due to providers’ insistence on first person written reports of sessions. This has grown into a library of documentation including a growing literature by people seeking therapy for life’s other problems. The common vernacular refers to many problems not related to substance abuse as addictions- one man signed on for a dose of ibogaine to help rid himself of his “addiction to consensus reality.”

Whether they have chosen a session for addiction interruption, other healing, or initiatory purposes, ibogaine users usually report fantastic voyages into the underworlds and netherworlds of consciousness, where imagination and feeling have free reign over their focus, and they are literally physically forced into a witness position as the events of their life and mind play out. Writings later describe awareness in “both worlds,” the timeless inner, and the temporal outer, similar to descriptions of lucid dreaming.

Under the influence of ibogaine, women and men alike report a clarity of awareness, a focus on emotional healing, and major growth in their ability to understand their own lives. Almost without exception, the majority report coming to experience a deep sense of security along with a profound opening to self-reflection and honesty without judgement. More than one account mirrors one subject’s grateful experience of “an incredibly benign beauty in the way the plant medicine was willing to not confront an issue head on, if I didn’t want to explore it any further.”

Although most of the sessions in this hemisphere have been held during brief sojourns in various off-shore locations- ibogaine is a Class One drug in the U.S., also outlawed in Belgium- the inner window of awareness that remains open sometimes for months is giving peace seekers something to travel for. Those who want to end a substance abuse habit have either left their addictions permanently or returned within six months for a second, more successful dose. Those who want the experience for its therapeutic processing or spiritual growth benefits seem to be likewise fulfilled.

The line, if any, between the needs of a cocaine addict, a common anxiety addict, and a spiritual seeker can in fact be very vague. A recovering addict recollected that during the more intense parts of his ibogaine experience he found himself spontaneously repeating the phrase “I surrender my old self, I am born again continuously with each breath.” How much different can the motto be on nirvana’s gatepost?

Ibogaine journeys in the West consistently portray the spirit of Ibogaine as a powerful, loving ally. One recent experimenter seeking initiatory experience said he felt “infused and in contact with… a vast nature deva walking with enormous, silent, measured steps over the earth.” A grateful ex-speed addict remembered being unafraid as the drug began to take effect. “This had nothing to do with any bravery on my part, but everything to do with this astonishing, benign, loving presence that seemed to have wrapped itself around me.”

Subjects seen unanimous in their appreciation of the effects of ibogaine, which includes renewed energy, released emotional baggage and relief from physical pain, in addition to withdrawal-free cessation of cravings from addictive substances from tobacco to alcohol to methadone. A woman from Hawaii said her massage therapist estimated a 95% cleansing of her lymphatic system had occured after her ibogaine journey. She also reported that “the bumps in my breast were gone and my muscles weren’t tight.”

A man who chose to experiment with ibogaine “primarily out of the spirit of adventure” was initially apprehensive about the impact of the drug on his body. “Two hours into the experience,” he later wrote, “I knew there was nothing harmful for my body in any way. In fact a powerful cleansing was taking place throughout my whole system. I felt chronic pains in my neck disappear. In fact, whole knots that had been there for years softened and dissolved.” Three months afterwards, none of the stiffness or pain had returned.

Researchers and participants have identified three typical stages in an ibogaine journey: an initial, mostly hallucinatory stage; a middle, primarily insightful stage; and a final, more reflective stage which tends to continue even beyond the first twenty to thirty hours of intensity. One of the most commonly reported experiences is the sense of the ibogaine coming on in waves. “I felt at least three distinct standing wave patterns moving through me,” reported one subject. “Front to back, right to left, and side to side.” Some subjects remark on the seemingly interactive quality of their experience, reporting for example that the effects of the drug intensified whenever they began to wonder in the altered state had worn off.

Most users say auditory experiences, included heightened sensitivity and auditory hallucinations happened for them first. Many claim visuals didn’t occur at all until they began to focus in that channel of perception. Subjects commonly describe a place in their journey where they traveled from the beginning of time to a possible end, which, without fail, resulted in an increased sensitivity to Earth and the environmental crisis.

Almost everyone experiences a stage in which “hundreds of scenarios” representing wounded places in their emotional body come up to be resolved. Sometimes these appear animated or supernatural, sometimes realistic; in either case subjects report observing their issues being symbolically worked out, one by one, but usually with such extreme rapidity that any conscious effort to analyze them is impossible. Once each issue is “washed through,” people are typically amazed at how emotionally cleansed they feel.

“There was no way to make any interpretation of them or change the ‘movies’ from my past,” one thiry-eight year old man remembered. He likened his experience to the process of defragmenting a hard drive. “Any memories… stored in my brain that were incomplete or stuck in some way were systematically cleared out.”

“If a life experience is not allowed to complete itself in some way,” he theorized, “then some belief is constructed and emotional energy tied with the memory hangs around… kind of stuck in the brain, tying up vital life energy from that point on.” This man is not alone in reporting a sense of the ibogaine entering his brain and making “contact with this stuck stuff, firing off the neurons (for) producing a picture and clearing the emotional charge all at once.” Over and over, subjects credit the emotional reprocessing stage of the journey for leading them to assume clear responsibility for past choices, as well as for those they are yet to make.

Despite tremendous shifts in physical and emotional states, it is not unusual for someone to be incredulous at “how conscious, aware, and alert I was throughout the whole experience.” One man described finding it “extraordinary to have a somewhat intact ego that can come to the forefront at any time and then allow the altered state to take over, to surrender to it.”

The opportunity to penetrate the death experience comes up for some people who have been on a spiritual path, although many report desiring, and immediately manifesting, a retreat from that edge. Everyone who reported they did not take that particular opportunity stated that they were, however, quite regretful.

The focusing power of thought and intention brought on by ibogaine seems universal, particularly during the early, hallucinogenic hours. “My normal thought processes continued the whole time and things or people would appear visually or music would play if I thought of it,” wrote one participant. “If I focused on one of these it would begin to become larger and more involved. I could play with them, or discount them.” More than one subject discovered how “the ever-present sounds, pictures, and rocking motions could be made uncomfortable or relaxing depending on my perspective.”

Quite a few ibogaine journeys have included a period of darkness, which one person described as acknowledging his “shadow self.” These periods can evoke heavier emotions like depression and hopelessness, giving the witnessing attention opportunities for much psychodrama, but they are always reportedly transmuted by the uplifting, insight-generating effects of the drug.

Some folks’ ibogaine journeys center around particular themes. One participant who started out with questions about emotional balance received very specific counseling. “Emotions need to be fluid, a cry should come as easy as a laugh. Some people in your life abuse their emotions by holding them and expressing them later. They need to live in the now.”

Insight about the purpose of fear in her life was shared by a woman searching for the roots of her food addiction. As she focused on it, her fear became so intense it was palpable to her. “I felt an electricity around my entire body about a half inch out from my skin… (which) I identified as the physical manifestation of my fear. Later it occurred to me that I may have placed this ‘shield’ of electricity and fear around me with the idea of protecting myself, but) I saw how) it was acting as a barrier to meaningful connections and true intimacy.”

“Bursts Within Bursts”

Intense initial auditory phenomena, difficulty with movement, wavelike energy bursts, a deep, restorative post-session sleep, and various styles of introspective, emotionally healing vignettes occur in almost every ibogaine session report.

One startling possibility exists that the bursts of energy experienced as waves in ibogaine sessions may follow fractal time patterns similar to those observed during fetal rapid eye movement (REM), when a huge amount of early integrative brain activity occurs. (REM sleep, which is disrupted by drug abuse and traumatic experiences has proven essential for emotional regulation, learning and memory consolidation).

Fractals appear in space as clusters within clusters within clusters, recognizable in clouds, in broccoli flowers, and on the surface of the brain. They appear in time as everything from fluctuations in neurotransmitter release patterns and the firing patterns of neurons to the searching patterns of animals, the decision making behavior in humans, and as far afield as traffic patterns both on our motor and cybernetic highways.

These “bursts within bursts” are “a universal characteristic of spontaneous behavior in living systems” observable also in the early movement patterns of embryos. Adjusting to and integrating brain changes seems to be the purpose of fractal-patterned REM sleep. Similarly, ibogaine may reset brain function in such a way as to allow profound restructuring of many internal factors affecting decision making and behavioral patterns.

At the chemical level of addiction, the ibogaine metabolite fills those brain receptors habitually satisfied by the addictive substance. Perhaps this includes those chemicals naturally produced by the chronic emotional conditions. It also interacts with neurotransmitter systems in the brain to drive key brain functions into a critical, dreamlike state. Research is suggesting that ibogaine may destabilize the connective function if the hemispheres of the brain, creating a “functional plasticity” that facilitates reintegration of traumatic memories. Perhaps it is these reintegration experiences that lead to complete interruption of addictive patterns.

Clinical explorations have yielded dramatic manifestations of impaired interhemispheric integration, specifically dual personalities in subjects suffering from childhood abuse or post traumatic shock disorder (PTSD). Thus the hypothesis that each brain hemisphere has a distinct personality; and that while one hemisphere retains the traumatic memories, the other seems to continue undisturbed. Under stress, the traumatized side, though less stable or less mature, has more often been observed to dominate the more stable or mature side. Clinicians, positing that this interhemispheric struggle may be at the root of addiction, are working therapeutically to help subjects gain full awareness of internal personality struggles and facilitate some amount of healing and balance.

Theorists compare the hemispheres of the brain to Siamese twins- distinct in most ways, yet substantially attached. In normal circumstances, the hemispheres of the brain grow into a relational harmony or symmetry that permits normal personality development. Stress or abuse in early life, however, create abnormal symmetric function, disrupting REM sleep and predisposing subjects to addictive and self-defeating behaviors.

Traumatic experiences as well as chronic drug use alter REM sleep processes, and it is interesting to note that long periods of REM sleep are typical after withdrawal crises. The extended, deep recovery sleep following a withdrawal crisis from alcohol addiction had long been noted. Ibogaine sessions are also almost universally followed by a prolonged, refreshing period of deep sleep.

Root of Enlightenment

Dr. Carl Anderson, a researcher at Harvard’s Department of Consolidated Psychiatry, proposed the intriguing idea that drug seeking and drug consuming behavior in addicts represents extremely complex sequences of brain activation triggered by sensory dependent chemical reactions in the brain during critical states. He believes addiction interruption with ibogaine may be related to its ability to induce a brain state that interrupts patterns and “resets” the mind. He suggests that ibogaine drives the involved brain systems into a self-organized critical state that demonstrate “avalanches” of energetic experience similar to patterns observed in early fetal development.

If the energetic patterns experienced during ibogaine use reflect similar fractal patterns in developmental processes everywhere in nature, and its success in supporting addiction interruption and personal growth agendas is the result of bihemispheric brain integration, it may also be entirely possible that we are witnessing the catalytic action of a plant extract on the natural evolutionary potential of the human spirit.

Eric Taub, perhaps the most dedicated and long-standing proponent of ibogaine in the West, thinks we are. While still searching for a permanent clinic location out of U.S. borders, he continues to discover the healing potency and spiritual potential of ibogaine. This dedication (he calls it his “dharmas”) is no less fueled by his initial desire to save the addicts of the world as it is by the ongoing feedback from non-addicts. He commonly hears exclamations like this one: “As a result of the restructuring of my understanding of who I thought I was, I’m experiencing more insight, and all the intentions I came into the experience with have been worked through. I’m considering doing it again maybe six months from now.”

Ibogaine’s effectiveness in addiction interruption seems to follow an age-related course, with 70% of addicts over forty succeeding with a single session and only 30% of younger subjects succeeding on their first try. Taub speculates that older addicts are more likely to have hit bottom and experienced serious losses of family, work, money, friends, health, etc., and therefore are more willing to do the essential follow-up therapy. However, anyone is likely to succeed who is willing to do personal work in an aftercare group or individual therapy setting while the insight enhancing influence of the metabolite is still in their body. “If,” says Taub, “they’ve done their work over a period of a couple of months, then by the time the metabolite washes out of their receptors, they’ve behaviorally changed themselves profoundly enough so that the craving doesn’t come back.”

Without craving, what’s left? A woman who generally enjoyed personal power and happiness took ibogaine with expectations of dramatic pictures and insights aplenty, but received no visuals, no voices, and no conscious insights. Taub analyzes her rare experience as an example of one of the two ends of the “spiritual equation.” In his view, “one end of the equation is creating a healthy sense of the self, or ego, and the other is offering it up- surrendering it. And you gotta do one before you can do the other.” Since this woman’s life had already reached what he calls a “high plateau,” her next step in the equation would be to let it go. Things weren’t a total flop, however, for the disappointed woman. After ten days she called to say she was using half the energy she used to require for her work. A year later she reported being in a constant state of unity consciousness for eleven months, a state she had previously only glimpsed.

Taub concludes it makes no difference whether someone experiences sixteen hours of visions or nothing at all. Changes in one’s behavior patterns, as well as one’ understanding of them, occur regardless. “I have slowly let go of being attached to giving people what they want,” Taub confessed, “and accept more and more the process of them giving themselves what the need.

When he speaks about his own experiences with ibogaine, Taub is much less exuberant than in the early days. With several sessions under his own belt, from family healing to cosmic consciousness, his life seems to have become less exciting. Nonetheless, his experience of himself has gained a quality of emptiness he can only recall coming from sitting in meditation all day for weeks. He’s on the road a lot now, but would be far more content staying close to home, undisturbed by the trappings of consumer culture.

It’s ironic that Westerners now taking ibogaine are, like the Bwiti in Africa, also seeking recovery from the traumas of colonization. Perhaps no group can colonize another without falling prey to the mindset of the colonized, even though they may themselves enjoy greater power and privilege. Certainly modern industrial culture, which has colonized the Earth, and the natural resources of life, is producing people who are drained and traumatized.

Replenished energy stores and healing of life’s traumas have long been the promise of spiritual paths and mystery schools. Some of these require years, even lifetimes, of dedicated hard work, and others teach that enlightenment comes in an instant, or can be transmitted by a spiritual master. Today, somewhere between these extremes, some seekers are finding guidance toward enlightenment through the spirit of a plant called ibogaine.

Perhaps the final gift of ibogaine then, could be a return journey to a state of oneness not unlike the original iboga-bearing pygmies. Neither time, not history, or any other separative perspective disturbed their symbiotic relationship with nature. Westerners who met them described their lives as flowing smoothly, “like a knife through water.” Could such consciousness manifests in this day and age, in the middle of industrial civilization? Are we on the brink of it? Can ibogaine help?

Other Articles and Links