Posted on 11/21/2010 4:14:51 PM PST by FTJM
A hallucinogen called ibogaine has helped addicts kick heroin, meth and everything in between. Is it the trip that does the trick?
Ron Price needs his milkshake. Its 10 oclock on a Monday morning, and the baldheaded, barrel-chested former bodybuilder is shuffling around the kitchen of a posh rehab clinic in Tijuana, wearing slippers and a blue Golds Gym T-shirt. Price was employed as a stockbroker in New Mexico until his training regimen left him with debilitating injuries that forced him to undergo 33 surgeries in less than a decade. His doctor prescribed Oxycontin, and Price quickly became dependent on the potent painkiller. More recently, he started snorting cocaine and chugging booze to numb the pain. Now, 53 years old and three weeks into rehab, all he wants is a milkshake and to crawl back into bed.
Clare Wilkins, the vivacious 40-year-old director of Pangea Biomedics, pops the lid off the blender to check the consistency of the concoction Price craves: peanut butter, soy milk, agave syrup, hemp protein powder and a few scoops of chocolate-flavored Green SuperFood.
Oh, and a half-teaspoon of root bark from the tabernanthe iboga plant.
Taken in sufficient quantity, the substance triggers a psychedelic experience that users say is more intense than LSD or psilocybin mushrooms. Practitioners of the Bwiti religion in the West African nation of Gabon use iboga root bark as a sacrament to induce visions in tribal ceremonies, similar to the way natives of South and Central America use ayahuasca and peyote. Wilkins is one of a few dozen therapists worldwide who specialize in the use of iboga (more specifically, a potent extract called ibogaine) to treat drug addiction.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocweekly.com ...
Price was employed as a stockbroker in New Mexico until his training regimen left him with debilitating injuries that forced him to undergo 33 surgeries in less than a decade.
No wonder he was still in training, he wasn’t doing it right. Every stockbroker I know doesn’t even break a sweat churning their client’s accounts.
Woah... this has some pretty damn serious implications FOR its use in treating substance abuse!
VERY interesting story! Thanks for posting it!!
Call me unimpressed. Any drug treatment that substitutes one drug addiction for another is not a real treatment.
I just read a similar study. I don’t remember the details, but it was essentially the same thing. The researchers reported better success with treating whatever drug addiction it was with a regiment that essentially substituted the old drug with a new one than with a regiment that involved removing all drugs. I fail to see what the improvement is.
Not using the drugs one is addicted to works, also.
You’re welcome. It’s strange which treatments get approved and which ones don’t.
From FEAR AND LOATHING: ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL ‘72
By Hunter Thompson
Not much has been written about The Ibogaine Effect as a serious factor in the Presidential Campaign, but toward the end of the Wisconsin primary race — about a week before the vote — word leaked out that some of Muskie’s top advisors had called in a Brazilian doctor who was said to be treating the candidate with “some kind of strange drug” that nobody in the press corps had ever heard of.
It had been common knowledge for many weeks that Humphrey was using an exotic brand of speed known as Wallot . . . and it had long been whispered that Muskie was into something very heavy, but it was hard to take the talk seriously until I heard about the appearance of a mysterious Brazilian doctor. That was the key.
Big Ed discussed the marijuana question
for the dope-smoking students in Madison,
Wisconsin, moments before refusing
to take a toke himself. Later
in the campaign, however, it was
reported that Senator Muskie was a
known user of a powerful drug called Ibogaine.
I immediately recognized The Ibogaine Effect — from Muskie’s tearful breakdown on the flatbed truck in New Hampshire, the delusions and altered thinking that characterized his campaign in Florida, and finally the condition of “total rage” that gripped him in Wisconsin.
There was no doubt about it: The Man from Maine had turned to massive doses of Ibogaine as a last resort. The only remaining question was “when did he start?” But nobody could answer this one, and I was not able to press the candidate himself for an answer because I was permanently barred from the Muskie campaign after that incident on the “Sunshine Special” in Florida . . . and that scene makes far more sense now than it did at the time. Muskie has always taken pride in his ability to deal with hecklers; he has frequently challenged them, calling them up to the stage in front of big crowds and then forcing the poor bastards to debate with him in a blaze of TV lights.
http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/HIUS316/mbase/docs/hsthomp.html
Where in the article does it say that people treated with ibogaine became addicted to it?
The article mentions LSD and the differences between it and ibogaine.
If only it were that simple.
If only it was that simple.
It is, actually. Ponder upon it.
Nope, it isn’t.
Perhaps this should be tried by many in government to reduce their addiction to the spending of others' money.
It is, correctly, a choice that is made every time it is used, or not used.
Simple, and immediately within the scope/range/power of just about anyone.
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