Posted on 02/22/2005 1:21:45 PM PST by dead
Addicts may get new lives, as clinical studies of exotic, controversial ibogaine are set to resume.
If all goes according to plan, a select group of cocaine addicts could be lining up in Miami this April for a chance to get quickly and painlessly clean.
Now that University of Miami neurologist Deborah Mash has the cash needed to resume clinical studies of ibogaine—the drug that could be the best anti-drug the CIA never told you about—there's new hope for hard-core drug addicts and alcoholics. She got the go-ahead from the Food and Drug Administration 10 years ago, but after negative reviews by other scientists, the National Institute on Drug Abuse refused to fund her.
For a decade it seemed that ibogaine trials would be relegated to offshore clinics, but a few weeks ago an anonymous, private donor stepped in to save the day. Mash won't say how much he or she gave, only that it's enough cash to get started again.
Ibogaine has a history made for Hollywood. Stories about its origins and powers abound, as do juicy rumors of a conspiracy that some believe has been keeping it out of U.S. treatment centers. The legend begins with powder made from the root of a flowering shrub. Iboga grows in the rain forests of West Africa, where traditional game hunters use it to maintain perfect stillness for hours on end as they wait for prey.
Fast-forward to '60s New York, where college student and self-described recreational heroin user Howard Lotsof gets freebie capsules of ibogaine from a chemist friend cleaning out his freezer. Lotsof takes one for the hell of it. To his amazement, when he comes down his brain is washed clean of desire for any drug whatsoever. He hands out capsules to friends and soon realizes he is sitting on a gold mine.
Twenty years later, Lotsof takes out a series of patents for potential future uses. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration bans the hallucinogen, so Lotsof hooks up with fellow enthusiasts in the Netherlands and introduces the drug to people who want to get clean. He reports many successes: Patients detox in a matter of days, without painful withdrawal symptoms. And then there's the bonus: one last high. The approximately 48 hours under iboga's spell are spent in a dream-like state (or nightmarish state, depending on the individual). Afterwards, many say they have greater insight into their problems.
The results are impressive enough to turn the head of respected neurologist Deborah Mash, and the University of Miami enters into an agreement with Lotsof: He supplies the ibogaine, she'll do the science. In the early '90s, Mash persuades the FDA to approve her proposal for studies on human subjects. Getting permission is one thing, but getting the cash is another. Trouble starts when a fellow researcher from Johns Hopkins says his studies show that ibogaine causes brain damage. A couple of years later an independent review committee from the National Institute on Drug Addiction concludes that the drug is too dangerous to try on people. In the end, Mash loses her chance for government funding.
At the same time, Lotsof and Mash's business relationship disintegrates. A female heroin addict dies at Lotsof's center in the Netherlands. Progress is further bogged down by disputes over patents. Yet these setbacks do nothing to inhibit the proliferation of makeshift ibogaine treatment centers—sometimes not much more than hotel rooms—in Europe and elsewhere. Mash gets scared when she realizes how many non-doctors are administering the drug in questionable settings. With private investors, she opens a clinic in St. Kitts where patients pay around $10,000 to get clean with ibogaine.
Back in the States, conspiracy theories multiply. Why did the National Institute on Drug Abuse really withdraw support? Was it just-say-no paranoia about an exotic cure that also brings visions and insight? Ibogaine true-believers go further, suggesting that the answer lies in the perpetuation of the prison-industrial complex. People like Dimitri Mugianis, a self-described "addict self-determinationist," contend that ibogaine works well enough to put prisons out of business.
But it isn't just independent "self-helpers" and the Bleecker Street Yippies who are willing to consider that something other than pure intentions are behind the withdrawal of public funding. Bill O'Reilly gave Lotsof a sympathetic ear on Fox when the addict-cum-advocate suggested that the National Institute on Drug Abuse is not very interested in a single-dose cure all. Primarily, Lotsof contends, the bloated government bureaucracy wants more of the same. More addicts, more allocations for studies of treatments that might work one day, more federal millions to divvy up.
"People can make any kind of assertion that they'd like, but we are constrained by the truth," says Frank Vocci of the NIDA's Medications Development Division. "We'd love to find a cure for drug abuse. Then we could move on to something else."
Yet the cynical take was bolstered by the work a decade ago of a television reporter in upstate New York. Rochester's Al White did a three-part investigative special on the CIA's relationship with ibogaine. He discovered documents in 1994 that show the CIA sponsored secret clinical studies on ibogaine's effect on drug addicts in the '50s. What the scientists at the Federal Narcotics Hospital in Kentucky concluded is anyone's guess, since the actual findings haven't resurfaced. But White, who now lives in North Carolina, tells the Voice that he has no doubt the CIA concluded that it works. "What makes me mad," he says, "is to think of all the crime and misery that could have been prevented but wasn't."
That there seems to have been a government attempt to suppress ibogaine is not of much interest to Mash. Actually, she'll have none of it. "That's a bunch of crap from the underground," she says. "They're a bunch of conspiracy yokels!"
The real money for drug development doesn't come from the government anyway, notes Mash. It comes from the pharmaceutical industry. If the right corporate partner materializes, and if the clinical trials run smoothly, she says, a safe and effective drug derived from the drug-to-end-all-drugs could be FDA-approved in three years.
My hubby got a script for the Welbut stuff and it made him
a zombie. He couldn't stay awake for two hours on the stuff.
He quit taking it.
That's about what I did, when they went up over $2. It seemed so wasteful to be burning $2 a day. Kind of like buying a new pair of socks or underwear every day and just throwing them out after one use. Or like having $700 in the bank at the end of a year and setting fire to it. And probably no healthier than spending $2 a day on cable television.
Why would government care about the costs of addiction, when any portion of that cost they pay, they use someone else's (my) money? Addiction creates jobs for many suckling at the government teat.
Or alcoholics (alcohol being more addictive than pot)?
Well if you think about it.... the reason drugs will never be legalized is that the money flowing through 3rd world country banks is paying off loans those 3rd world nations owe to ... er.... first world nations. If this drug ( and I have been reading about it for several years) is true and a big drug maker signs up for it.... it will be very interesting how it plays out.
Makes more sense than any of the bilge spewed by WOD supporters.
"Doubt it...you gotta want to quit!!"
I guess it's not well known any more, but LSD was also tested for psychiatric utility way back when. Timothy Leary and that crowd stirred up such a fuss that all testing was halted (except military, and that went nowhere).
This is far from scientific, but people have undergone dramatic, permanent personality changes, good and bad, after one administration of LSD. Early accounts of alcoholics being cured circulated.
People have also gone entirely off their rockers. Very dangerous.
My point is, though, that it's not impossible that a hallucinogen could produce personality changes that would "cure" addiction.
I have a brother who recently relapsed. He's almost fifty, started out as an alcoholic, and now it's drugs. He says cocaine, but it might be meth. I've just come to the sad conclusion that even if I think he's clean, he may not be, he's lied so many times. He's rotten to the core. I had never really "given up on him" until now. He knows Christ, but he just throws everything away to be "tweeked." I even suspect he got loaded the day before my mother died of cancer. He's truly sick. Doesn't it just cripple you with pain sometimes?
I don't doubt that at all! My post was suppose to be humorous about getting the DUers off the kool aid! :)
Oops, guess I lost track of the thread, sorry.
Some people were talking about addicts going right back on drugs after the physical addiction had passed. Thought you were commenting on that.
Nope...I wouldn't make such a statement because I broke an addiction and have stuck with it for over 3 years! Quit smoking cold turkey!
It's ok though...I didn't take offense!
I want a new drug
One that won’t hurt my head
One that won’t make my mouth too dry
Or make my eyes too red
One that won’t make me nervous
Wondering what to do
One that makes me feel like I feel when I’m with you
When I’m alone with you
I want a new drug
One that won’t spill
One that don’t cost too much
Or come in a pill
I want a new drug
One that won’t go away
One that won’t keep me up all night
One that won’t make me sleep all day
One that won’t make me nervous
Wondering what to do
One that makes me feel like I feel when I’m with you
When I’m alone with you
I’m alone with you baby
I want a new drug
One that does what it should
One that won’t make me feel too bad
One that won’t make me feel too good
I want a new drug
One with no doubt
One that won’t make me talk too much
Or make my face break out
One that won’t make me nervous
Wondering what to do
One that makes me feel like I feel when I’m with you
When I’m alone with you
I read about this a few years ago. Considering the alternatives, I recommended it to a drug addict I know. I HATE DRUGS!!!!!!!!! I wish I knew how to make them less appealing and available. It's a cinch that the war on drugs hasn't done anything but punish honest people while the dealers get rich.
Having friends and family who are addicts, some of whom have died from OD's and others who have ruined their lives and their families lives, I will pray for your brothers tonight.
God bless you guys...
Actually, that would work. (warning: link is to an Onion Article, Rated R)
Wellbutrin makes some folks incredibly nervous.
Several friends never made it all the way back. Things are still just a little too..., well, do I have to talk about it...?
"Several friends never made it all the way back."
That's why I say LSD is just too dangerous.
"well, do I have to talk about it...?"
Of course not.
The best thing about acid was you could drink a ton of beer....
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