IBOGAINE'S LONG, STRANGE TRIP

How Fear And Loathing Have Kept An Addict's Best Friend Underground

Kevin Peace's addiction was no different than others' -- until he found
a treatment few addicts knew existed. In his yearlong attempt to spread
word of a miraculous treatment, he says he fixed a dozen lives. But he
also broke the law and learned how hard it is for a controversial cure
to reach the people who need it.

For most of 1997, the white-collar twentysomething was making morphine
from scratch, telling himself it would be just a luxury, a weekend
thing. But the high was so good that, after a year, Kevin Peace was
swallowing his homemade pills before he left for work. Once a week, he
was making the trip from Atlanta to his North Georgia poppy field to
harvest the red flowers that fed his habit.

Pathetic, Peace thought one day. When he learned his wife was pregnant,
he sank even lower. She's carrying a child, he realized, and I'm
carrying a drug addiction. He typed "opiate drug treatment" into an
Internet search engine. A few clicks later, Peace was reading about
ibogaine.

Ibogaine has been the bastard child of pharmacology since arriving in
America almost 50 years ago. Because ibogaine is a psychedelic that may
kill brain cells, the federal government has outlawed the drug, placing
it in the same category as cocaine or heroin. As for the street appeal
of ibogaine, there is none: the drug, which is extracted from the root
of the African iboga plant, is a trip that lasts too long and can be too
unsettling for those out for a good time.

Still, ibogaine does have a constituency. For addicts of such drugs as
morphine and heroin, ibogaine is like an analgesic; it's a substance
that meets drug addiction where it hurts most -- in both the brain and
the body. Take ibogaine, believers said, and your cravings for opiates
and your withdrawal symptoms will dry up.

Peace was intrigued -- and desperate enough to roll the dice. He finally
found an overseas supplier who could mail him three grams of ibogaine,
extracted from the plant, powdered and packaged in capsule form.

Wanting to play it safe, he took one pill a day for three days, even
though the online gurus advised to take them all at once. An hour or so
after the first capsule, the drug took hold.

Ibogaine gripped his mind, forcing him to face the errors of his past.
"I just got this sudden realization that for the past five years I had
totally wasted my life," Peace says. "I had waking dreams but not a
hallucination, per se. Because if you've got your eyes open you don't
see anything that's not there."

After his ibogaine session in the spring of 2000, Peace no longer felt
the aches of morphine withdrawal, and he didn't desire the drug anymore.
As an ibogaine convert, he wanted to share the good news.

He's treated 14 patients with ibogaine, most of them coming to Atlanta
from out of town. Peace realizes he's breaking the law, but to him, it's
worth the risk to free others from the shackles of addiction.

"Going through the pain of withdrawals, which I went through many times
without ibogaine, and then seeing someone in your situation, you just
want to help them out," Peace says.

While the ibogaine community is full of believers such as Peace, the
drug still can't shake the stigma of being little more than another acid
trip -- an acid trip that might kill. Three deaths in Europe have been
linked to ibogaine. In the U.S., doctors are mostly unaware of it or
deem it too kooky or dangerous for conventional care. It is, after all,
illegal. Government funding for research into ibogaine has dwindled.

"Of all the hallucinogens, this is probably the most toxic one that
people take," says Dr. Frank Vocci, head of treatment research and
development at the National Institute for Drug Abuse. "The FDA might
want to proceed very cautiously, given the deaths that have occurred."

We'd ask the Food and Drug Administration ourselves, but over the course
of two weeks, they didn't return phone calls.

It is ibogaine's curse that the one home the drug has found -- among
researchers and passionate advocates -- has turned out to be a
dysfunctional one. The family of ibogaine believers fought over who
should get credit for its use. Allegiances have been made and broken.
Lawsuits and countersuits have been filed.

So great are the differences within the ibogaine community, in fact,
that the acrimony may have stalled the one thing that all the believers
want: the broad acceptance of ibogaine as a treatment for opiate
addiction.

Certain aspects of the drug's history, though, are undisputed. In 1962,
a 19-year-old heroin addict named Howard Lotsof knocked on the door of a
Manhattan black-market chemist. The chemist reached into his freezer and
pulled out a white powder. He told Lotsof the drug was called ibogaine
and would give him a trip that would last a day and a half.

"I did not want a hallucinogen that lasts 36 hours," Lotsof recalls from
his Staten Island, N.Y., home where he has been forced into retirement
from a career in ibogaine. "I had a friend of mine, though, who was into
the rare and exotic."

Lotsof gave his friend the ibogaine. A month later, Lotsof got a call.
"He was ecstatic," Lotsof says. "He said it was a food, that we have to
call Congress. It took me two to three months to obtain additional
supplies. That's when we started turning up the very specific effects of
ibogaine."

Lotsof took the powder in capsule form by himself, at his parent's New
Jersey home. Thirty hours later he woke, dressed, walked outside and
paused.

He should have been in the throes of heroin withdrawal. He wasn't.

"I immediately realize that my entire perception toward heroin has
changed," he says. "Where previously I viewed heroin as a drug which
gave comfort, I now view heroin as a drug that emulates death. And
suddenly I realize that for the first time in my life I'm not
frightened. And I realize that heroin use is related to fear and the
covering up of that fear, and all of that's gone."

While no two ibogaine trips are the same, they seem to share similar
phases. In the first phase, patients close their eyes and see images
from the past or symbols that represent past struggles. Some people say
they view themselves at various ages as if watching scenes from a film,
only faster and more chaotic. Many say that for the first time in their
lives, they view their actions objectively, helping them to understand
where their desire for drugs originated.

Dr. Mark Molliver, a professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School, has
studied ibogaine's effects in rats and monkeys. He says it causes the
brain to work harder than usual by releasing an excess of the chemicals
that transmit neurons. He says that as neurons start firing faster, the
brain can overheat, in a sense, and burn up cells in the cerebellum.

"The cerebellum is now thought to have many functions," Molliver says.
"One of them is in balance and coordination of movement. But it also may
affect cognitive functions, learning and memory, various aspects of
thinking that haven't been terribly well-defined as yet."

Molliver says the cells that are lost in the cerebellum won't come back.
"There's little doubt about that. It's very consistent." Yet other
studies have shown that ibogaine is safe when administered in doses up
to 25 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. That's the highest dose
most researchers have used on humans, and the highest most websites
recommend.

After three or four hours, the patient enters the second phase of the
trip -- eight to 16 hours of intense insight, when the patient can call
on specific memories at will, analyze the habits she's acquired and use
her insights to reverse learned behavior. Those who benefit most from
the insights say each trip is the equivalent of years of psychotherapy
packed into a workday.

The third phase lingers for up to 24 more hours, then tapers off slowly.
Colors may seem brighter, sounds sharper, thoughts more connected.

Lotsof wasn't thinking about neuron transmitters or cerebellums in the
early 1960s, when he walked out of his parent's house after his ibogaine
trip and realized his heroin addiction was gone. He was wondering if his
reaction was rare, or if ibogaine would affect others the same way. He
handed the drug out to 20 of his friends. Seven of them were addicted to
heroin. After their ibogaine trips, he says, the seven experienced no
signs of heroin withdrawal. Five stopped using heroin for up to six
months.

Lotsof determined that ibogaine wasn't exactly a long-term cure for
heroin or opiate addicts. But he decided it was useful in that it
eliminated his narcotic withdrawal and left him with the desire to heal
himself.

He tried in the 1960s to introduce ibogaine as a street drug. But
ibogaine, ever the misfit, couldn't even find a home in the decade of
experimentation.

"There were no ibogaine scenes," Lotsof says. "There were no ibogaine
factories. There were no ibogaine parties."

No one was buying. The intense self-revelations and waking dreams could
be unpleasant, showing a person too much of himself. And the sheer
length of the trip was too much of a hassle for junkies looking for a
quick high. Ibogaine just wasn't fun.

Lotsof also learned he'd get no repeat business, because ibogaine isn't
addictive, either.

So in the late 1960s, shortly after ibogaine was declared an illegal
substance, Lotsof put aside his notions of selling the drug. He enrolled
in film school at New York University, earned a living as a plumber and
went on to work in film production.

In 1981, Lotsof struck up a conversation with a woman whose boyfriend
had a drug problem. Lotsof told her about his ibogaine experience. The
woman said she'd give him a grant to study the drug's merits, and so
Lotsof returned to ibogaine.

He spent a year researching the drug's origin and history. He found that
the Bwiti tribe in the West African country Gabon has used ibogaine for
centuries during rite of passage ceremonies, claiming it allowed them to
communicate with gods and dead ancestors. He also learned that a
Kentucky doctor used ibogaine in the mid-1950s to treat eight morphine
addicts. In 1983, he began applying for patents. He would eventually
patent ibogaine's use as a treatment for addictions to opiates such as
heroin, cocaine, alcohol and nicotine. And he started raising money.

In 1986, he founded NDA International Inc., a for-profit business based
in Staten Island and devoted to the future development and marketing of
ibogaine (the FDA would have to approve it first). The following year,
Lotsof visited Gabon, met with the country's president and through him
obtained kilograms of ibogaine for research.

He brought the results from European studies back home to the U.S. in an
attempt to convince the drug-funding arm of the government to start
pitching in.

In 1991, after seven years of solicitations from Lotsof, the National
Institute for Drug Abuse allotted $2 million for pre-clinical studies in
animals.

Lotsof, energized by the government's interest, searched for patients to
bolster his research. He contracted in 1991 with a Dutch doctor who
would treat heroin addicts with ibogaine in an Amsterdam hotel or in
their home. Lotsof hoped the results of these treatments would prompt
the FDA to approve similar studies on humans in the United States.

Then Lotsof met Dr. Deborah Mash, a brain researcher at the University
of Miami. He thought he'd struck gold.

"She was the exact person we were trying to meet," Lotsof says. "She had
the interest and the ability."

She also had the reputation, with a major university to back her. Mash,
who had won national acclaim for studies of Alzheimer's disease and
cocaine toxicity, had heard about ibogaine in 1992. Lotsof says she
contacted him because she was interested in his supplies of
pharmaceutical-grade ibogaine, which nobody else had.

The two signed a contract, in which Mash's lab would study ibogaine and
Lotsof's company, NDA, would be able to patent any findings she reached.
In 1993, Mash became the first researcher to win FDA approval to study
ibogaine in humans. By then, ibogaine treatments in Amsterdam were going
so well that Lotsof invited a New York Times reporter to observe one.

His timing couldn't have been worse. The patient, a 24-year-old woman,
died in the hotel 16 hours after taking ibogaine.

"It was a disaster," Lotsof says. "It then played out both politically
and medically."

A Dutch coroner could not reach a definitive conclusion about what
killed the woman. She may have sneaked into a bathroom and used heroin.
Ibogaine patients must be clean of heroin for 24 hours before treatment,
as well as during treatment, because it can exaggerate the effect of
heroin and possibly other drugs.

>From there, ibogaine research, at least as far as Lotsof was concerned,
took a nosedive. The Amsterdam experiment with the Dutch doctor
dissipated. Soon after, the relationship between Mash and Lotsof broke
down. Mash had discovered another extract from the iboga plant, which
she named noribogaine. Noribogaine seemed to curb addictions but caused
no hallucinations. But instead of moving forward with research of both
extracts, Mash filed suit against Lotsof.

Lotsof says accounts of what spawned the lawsuit differ. But he says
differences between he and Mash had been brewing long before the 1997
filing date. (Mash couldn't be reached for comment.)

Others familiar with ibogaine research say the two had grown too
power-hungry to be in the same room.

"I think that ibogaine just happened to, for some reason, attract a
couple people that wanted to control the whole show, who wanted to be
harbingers of ibogaine," says Eric Taub, a Gainesville, Fla., man who
organizes ibogaine treatment on international waters.

Soon after the lawsuit was filed, Lotsof's company went bankrupt. A
debtor obtained, through a court order, all but one of Lotsof's patents.

The trial between Lotsof and Mash was scheduled two years later, in June
2000. But days before jury selection, Lotsof felt too weak to proceed.
He says he settled out of court with Mash. He later learned that he was
ill with leukemia.

But what was lost on lawsuits and infighting was recovered elsewhere --
in places like Atlanta, where Kevin Peace was seeing the ibogaine light.

Lotsof says that during the years that ibogaine foundered on the
bureacratic level, the number of Kevin Peaces in the country grew.
"There are so many people popping up here it's almost a blur," Lotsof
says. "The Kevin scenario is not an uncommon one."

It's a Tuesday afternoon, and Peace should be at his 9-to-5. But he's on
vacation.

He is sipping Starbucks hot chocolate as he flips through this week's
issue of The Economist. His wife, carrying their 8-month-old infant,
wanders through the adjoining bookstore.

Peace seems nothing like a psychedelic-touting renegade and every bit
like the fellow patrons of this Buckhead coffee shop, where he has
arranged past meetings with two ibogaine patients. Button-down shirt
tucked into blue jeans. Dirty blond hair cut close and neat. Cell phone
on hip.

He dials East Cobb. He thanks the woman on the line for having him and
his family over for dinner. He compliments her on the salmon. And he
gets to the point. He tells her to keep an eye on her daughter, to let
him know if she notices mood swings or depression. "Has she gained any
weight?" he asks. "She's up to 110? Wow. That's great."

Peace, a pseudonym not to be confused with any K. Peace listed in the
Atlanta phone book, does not have the bearing of a drug dealer, or even
a businessman out to make a buck. He considers himself a healer. He
meets his patients in their homes or hotel rooms and feeds them that
seemingly magical capsule, ordered from a company in Asia.

Six weeks have passed since Peace treated the woman's daughter, a
27-year-old who grew up in upscale suburbia, works in-town as a
freelance art director and, as of April, was struggling with a
$400-a-week heroin habit.

"I wanted to stop drugs but just wasn't strong enough," she says. "I was
in the trap. Stopping cold turkey meant going through a lot of pain for
about a week or two, and I just couldn't handle it."

Her boyfriend was the one who found Peace, through a listing in the
happenings section of this newspaper: "Heroin & Opioid Addicts: Join us
to share information about the plant Ibogaine, which has growing
testimony that it can cure addiction with only one use and little or no
withdrawal symptoms."

The young addict sent an e-mail to Peace, who wrote back and accepted
her as his 14th patient. On April 13, she ingested one gram of ibogaine
at her boyfriend's apartment. Peace kept vigil for four hours, then
returned the following morning before work, during his lunch break and
after work. Since then, he's called her mother weekly.

"I was a little worried, but once I had taken it I wasn't afraid at
all," his last patient says. "He was excellent. He's like my little
angel."

She says she has not returned to heroin use. She says she has no
lingering cravings. And ibogaine, through Peace, cost her practically
nothing. Peace asks only that he be reimbursed for the cost of the drug.
He says he's not in it for the money.

Others, however, see a business opportunity.

Taub, the Floridian who treats clients on international waters, says he
has conducted about 350 ibogaine sessions, half of them for drug addicts
and the other half for "spiritual pioneers." He attracts clients, mostly
from the U.S., via his website. He flies with them from Florida to a
Caribbean country, such as Guatemala or Costa Rica, and then sails them
to a place where he's untroubled by laws and the question of legitimacy.

The cost runs between $1,200 and $6,000, before airfare. (He says he is
willing to waive the cost of the session for special cases.)

Taub's operation, although well-established, is the object of scorn from
the scientific community. But, having treated more people than most
researchers, he says he's just as qualified as they are.

"They believe, I suppose, that it should be conducted only by doctors in
a very regulated clinical setting," says the former jewelry maker. "It's
a plant. I think people should have the opportunity to heal themselves.
And I think people should have the choice to take whatever they want."

Other entrepreneurs, as well as doctors and researchers in search of
test subjects, charge anywhere from $1,500 to $15,000 for ibogaine
treatment. Mash, with the University of Miami, currently offers ibogaine
treatment off the coast of Florida on the West Indies island of St.
Kitts. A session at the private clinic, Healing Visions, costs around
$10,000.

At least five ibogaine-related websites offer out-of-country treatment,
with varying levels of supervision and legitimacy, in locales from
Pakistan to Panama.

Although, some of these clinics have shown that ibogaine can turn a
profit, the drug still has miles to go before it attracts the interest
of U.S. drug companies.

It takes about 80 studies, and close to $200 million, to develop and
market a drug in the U.S., says the federal drug institute's Vocci. His
agency doled out about $2 million in grants for 18 ibogaine studies in
the early and mid-'90s -- a drop in the bucket, and a drop that's fast
evaporating. Typically, drug companies pick up much of the tab. But with
ibogaine, they're not biting.

>From a profit standpoint, ibogaine makes little sense. It's not a
maintenance drug, so drug manufacturers, like pushers, couldn't count on
much repeat business. What's more, ibogaine patients -- by dint of their
addiction -- pose a liability risk. Finally, no drug with "psychedelic"
qualities has ever been marketed in this country.

"Obviously there's the pessimist's and the optimist's answer," says
Kenneth Alper, a New York University professor who hosted a 1999
ibogaine conference. "There are those that are convinced that the
government is dead-set against it and that it's an intractable
situation."

The future of ibogaine development may not focus on ibogaine itself but
on that other derivative of the iboga plant, Mash's noribogaine. Because
it causes none of the visualization or intense insight, it may win a
little more popularity -- or attract less resistance -- than its sibling
does among FDA officials and even drug companies.

But addicts who have experienced the waking dreams of ibogaine swear
that the psychological insight is crucial to kicking the habit.

A Chicago body piercer who took ibogaine in May to help him withdraw
from a methadone addiction says that without the insight ibogaine
offered into traumatic events, his treatment would not have worked. Part
of what led to his drug abuse was the death of his wife eight years ago.
Ibogaine not only got him over his 120-milligram-per-day methadone
addiction, it helped him cope with the very grief that drove him to
addiction to begin with.

"I resolved so many issues that I just never thought would be resolved,"
says Bob Bruner, 45. "I did not expect anything remotely like this. I
was going through all of the experiences that had been important to my
life. Eventually, it all starts to form a pattern, and the pattern makes
a lot of sense."

Bruner did admit, however, that that common sense wasn't shared by his
methadone provider. Bruner had been paying the clinic about $300 per
month. After Bruner took ibogaine, the clinic lost his business.

Meanwhile, even ibogaine's believers are pulling back. The ailing Lotsof
admits that he has failed in his goal to make ibogaine a mainstream
treatment for drug addicts. But he's still holding out for that somebody
who will be able to do what he couldn't. "The benefits would be enormous
both to individuals who have chemical dependency and to society as a
whole," he says. "It would just be like a safety valve on this entire
drug insanity."

Yet the FDA, drug companies and critics may never see the worth of
ibogaine. If the drug is relegated to the Peaces of the underground,
Lotsof says, so be it.

"I'd like to see it within the medical context," he says. "But if you
don't have a medical community or a government that's taking
responsibility, then you can expect to have people to step into that
position and assume those responsibilities themselves."

But even Peace, now listed on the website he first visited years ago as
the American contact for ibogaine questions, is thinking of taking down
his shingle. It's not fear of getting busted that's pushing him out of
the trade, he says. He's confident that drug enforcement agents have
little interest in cracking down on the minuscule amount of ibogaine
entering the country. Nor is it the hassle, or the expense, or a
lawsuit, or any of ibogaine's past impediments.

"With my new baby and everything, I've just got to change my life focus
away from it. I feel I've done more than my fair share of giving back,"
Peace says. He pauses. "I might do a few more."