IS THIS ROOT A REAL CURE FOR HEROIN ADDICTION?

A hallucinogenic plant used in African religious ceremonies might free
addicts, reports Iain S Bruce

LINDA Scott was a serious junkie with 25 years of drug addiction behind her
- - then somebody gave her the most intense hallucinogenic trip she had ever
experienced.

By the time the Californian had emerged from the ordeal four days later she
felt cleansed, liberated and that she had finally thrown off a dependency
that had hounded her for decades. "I had a window of opportunity and I went
through it," she explains. "I was fortunate enough to be on the receiving
end of the gift of freedom - ibogaine."

A natural alkaloid compound extracted from the roots of a West African
shrub, ibogaine has been a central plank of the Cameroon-based Bwiti
religion for centuries, its potent hallucinogenic properties highly prized
as an effective catalyst that allows tribesmen not only to achieve
spiritual enlightenment but to enjoy a euphoric haze that bestows the
ability to dance all night. Now Western researchers, who claim that the
drug could cut the number of heroin addicts by a third inside three years,
are bringing it to Scotland.

"There are no easy words to describe ibogaine, no convenient ways to
explain," says Dan Leiberman, a South African ethno-botanist who brings the
results of his 12-year study of the substance to Edinburgh next month.

"Taking the substance is a powerful, intense and fundamental experience
that has brought a massive response from many people seeking to deal with
addiction to heroin. It takes strength and determination, but finally many
psychologists are beginning to recognise the healing power it commands."

Since first learning of the drug's existence from a Peruvian shaman in
1989, Leiberman has devoted most of his life to researching the effect it
has had on followers of the Bwiti religion. He claims they are a people
living out a completely peaceful, contented existence deep in the central
African jungle and holds regular sessions on his South African farm where
he introduces a collection of curious hippies and desperate heroin addicts
to the drug. Although he says that many addicts have enjoyed remarkable
recoveries, the sessions are never advertised and no claims are made that
he offers a cure for addiction. "I facilitate the experience and monitor
the events that follow," he says. "After that it is between them and the
iboga."

Certainly, a growing army of ibogaine proponents is emerging to champion
the drug as a major step forward in the fight to help recovering addicts.
Howard Lotsof, the American researcher who has championed the drug as a
detoxifying agent for over 30 years, says that experiences like those of
Linda Scott, where addicts awake to find themselves completely untroubled
by withdrawal symptoms, are the usual consequences of the treatment.

"After a trip of 36 hours or more the subjects usually fall asleep, then
wake up alert and ravenously hungry," he says. "It's a miracle for a heroin
addict of ten years, who has been shooting up a gram and a half a day, to
wake up wanting steak and eggs for breakfast."

Lotsof discovered ibogaine's allegedly miraculous properties in 1962,
completely by accident, when as a New York film school student he was
offered ibogaine. The 19-year-old hedonist - who was already using heroin
regularly and had already experimented widely with hallucinogens such as
mescaline, LSD and DMT - leapt at the chance. While the 33 hours that
followed had only ever meant to be fun, Lotsof emerged from the party to
discover that he no longer felt the need to take smack, and became
immediately convinced that a radical new rapid detox method had just been
uncovered.

As ibogaine is classified as an illegal stimulant in the US - so little is
known about it in the UK that it does not feature on any official drugs
register - Lotsof was forced to pursue unofficial research through tests on
addicts over the next 22 years. In 1990 he began supervising trials on over
40 addicts in the Netherlands, with claimed results so successful that the
American Federal Drug Administration expressed interest in a programme of
ibogaine tests.

Examples and apocryphal tales of addicts claiming to be cured by ibogaine
continue to proliferate across the globe, and it would appear that some
highly respected scientists share Lotsof's belief that they are on the
verge of a major breakthrough in addiction therapy. Professor Piotr Popik,
of the US National Institute of Health, has called the treatment "a
potentially life-saving new strategy for treating addiction to a diverse
range of drugs". Opponents of giving addicts methadone as a heroin
substitute - the predominant detox method in the Edinburgh area - have
demanded ibogaine's use be investigated and widely promoted.

While ibogaine would certainly seem to have great potential, the loud
claims of its many proponents that the substance is a cure-all drug capable
of combating any heavy addiction would seem extremely suspect. Linda Scott,
whose personal testimony is frequently brandished as evidence of the cure's
potency, experienced a rapid return of her craving for drugs, an event that
led to her suicide in December 1997, less than a month after she had
believed herself cured forever. The only Briton known to have completed a
course of treatment, Yorkshireman Richard Harper, similarly fell off the
wagon after initially believing himself free of heroin's hooks.

"It was certainly the best way of quitting I had ever come across," he
said. "I was able to quit methadone without any cravings whatsoever. I
don't know what has changed, but I do know that my past is not such a
burden now. Ibogaine has given me a new freedom. It isn't a drug, it's
something divine - which sounds stupid, but it's true."

Dan Leiberman points out that if an addict returns to his old haunts soon
after the treatment he is sure to be tempted into his bad old ways. To
illustrate, he describes a Johannesburg radio DJ who threw off a
long-standing dependency to heroin but restarted his habit after a few
months back in the social whirl. To cure himself this time, he is returning
to spend many months working the ibogaine programme. "The drug will
definitely get you through the withdrawal period painlessly," says
Leiberman. "The problem comes later when you are still in the same
environment that got you into drugs in the first place. That is the real
problem, that is what Scotland must consider."

All is far from rosy, and there is still considerable concern from some
researchers that ibogaine might have contributed to the deaths of addicts
undergoing treatment. In 1994, Nicola, a 25-year-old German heroin addict,
decided to undergo the treatment alongside her boyfriend Marcel, also a
heavy drug user. At a discreet location in Amsterdam, the pair both took
the substance and passed through the traditional sequence of events, an
experience beginning with mild, LSD-like distortions of sound and light and
ending after a three-day inner journey from which users regularly report
having been transported down tunnels of light and "chanted clean" by groups
of African people. As expected, Marcel awoke a new man, demanding a hearty
breakfast to prepare him for the fresh, drug-free path that lay before him.

Just before dawn that day, however, Nicola suddenly gurgled, stopped
breathing and died.

The post-mortem that followed failed to pinpoint the exact reason for her
death. It could well have been the ibogaine, but she had only taken 10 per
cent of the known fatal dose. It could just have easily been the heroin
that still coursed around a body still ravaged by the effects of prolonged
opiate abuse. It could have been practically anything, but the real answer
will never be known, argues Lotsof, until the FDA, or some other
responsible body, completes the exhaustive programme of testing he believes
ibogaine deserves.

To Lotsof, there are two reasons why ibogaine, despite 30 years of
research, has failed to make a significant impact on the traditional
medical establishment working in the field of drug addiction. First is an
obvious reluctance on the part of men of science to embrace a practice only
known due to its role in what is perceived to be a primitive, ignorant
religion. Second, and perhaps most crucial, has been their dyed-in-the-wool
conservatism.

"Any new technology will be met by some resistance from the old guard," he
says. "But even some of the methadone fans are finally starting to come
around. The truly responsible researchers working out there want - and
deserve - every possible tool at their disposal to help people dependent on
drugs."

Dr Juan Sanchez-Ramos, the head of the University of Miami ibogaine
research programme, is convinced that if ibogaine can throw off its common
perception in the scientific community as an illegal drug similar in both
use and effect to LSD, then such a tool will soon be available and a major
breakthrough in narcotic treatment will have finally stepped out of the
shadows.

"We have to take this out of the realm of mythology, he says. "A drug that
is taboo can be extremely useful, but if it remains taboo then we will
never find out."

Dan Leiberman will be at the Salisbury Centre, Salisbury Road, Edinburgh,
on Friday 30 April. Tel: 0131-667 5438 for further details.