POWERFUL PSYCHEDELIC SAID TO FIGHT DRUG ADDICTION

Derived From a West African Root, Ibogaine May Be a Pain-Free Drug
Detox - but in the U.S. It's Highly Illegal.

They've given you the pills and now they're checking your heart rate -
it's skyrocketing - when you see it in the corner of your eye. It
could be a caterpillar, a cat, your first bicycle. It's growing, and
then there's another - a lion? A tiger? A bear? - and soon that's all
you can see. It begins: a kind of "movie" of your life, things you
didn't know you remembered, drawn out from your mind like barbed wire.
A comedy, maybe; a tragedy, definitely; and yours alone. It will stay
this way for a good, long while.

But when it's over - how long has it been? - things seem to fit a
little better. The ache in your joints isn't there. The migraine, the
fever, all gone. And, grasping at the whatness of whatever it was that
you saw, you realize that you never want to use again.

Ibogaine is the rumored "wonder drug" of addiction treatment. More
effective than methadone at combating withdrawal symptoms, more potent
than peyote. And very illegal.

Howard Lotsof, a lifelong advocate for Ibogaine legalization, says
that the western world discovered the pharmacological properties of
Tabernanthe iboga in the 19th century, though the root had probably
been used in initiation ceremonies in West Africa for generations. The
drug went ignored until 1962, when a group of heroin addicts
discovered, following a nearly two-day Ibogaine "trip," that they
weren't exhibiting withdrawal symptoms.

According to the Mexican Ibogaine Association, though molecularly most
similar to anti-cancer drugs the drug works by remaining active in the
body's opiate receptors. These receptors, "stoked" during drug use,
can cause a lot of pain for someone who quits an addictive drug cold
turkey. Ibogaine effectively "distracts" opiate receptors until
whatever healing - psychological and physical - can take place.

The medical establishment remains either ignorant or suspicious of
Ibogaine. Those who have experienced the drug firsthand, facing the
bull's horns of criminal implication and social ostracism, don't want
to go on record. It takes me almost two weeks to make contact with a
former Oxycontin addict now living in Port Angeles, who chose to speak
to me as just Ryan.

By age 20, Ryan was spending nearly $200 a week on Oxycontin. After
deciding to get clean, withdrawal gave him everything from pain in his
joints to diarrhea to insomnia. Like every addict, he wanted to use
again.

When a friend told him about Ibogaine, available in Mexico and Canada
as an "experimental medication," he decided he didn't have much to
lose.

"I don't know how to describe it. it kind of hit a 'reset' button in
my brain," says Ryan, who received treatment near Tijuana. "When I got
back to my old environment I just had less desire to use . and I
wanted to stay sober." He's been Oxy-free since.

There are hundreds of accounts like Ryan's out there - people who
decide to get clean and escape through the window Ibogaine opens.

There are even a few in the medical field who have researched the
drug. Though hesitant to call it a cure-all, clinical social worker
Barbara Judd claimed at a meeting of the International Conference on
Drug-Related Harm that her after-care group "did not appear to need
self-help type assistance to reduce their drug urges," also noting the
drug's ability to mitigate withdrawal.

But Judd's study is one of very few, and the FDA, writes the Schaffer
Library of Drug Policy, is hesitant to invest money into researching a
"controlled substance." Unsurprisingly, more than a few are skeptical.
As Ron Jackson of Evergreen Treatment Services put it, "There is not
one shred of credible scientific evidence that [Ibogaine] is an
effective intervention for any kind of drug addiction."

The fact remains that Ibogaine is a potent psychedelic and has been
linked to at least one death. Were the drug to become available to the
public, people on both sides of the debate agree, it would need to be
well regulated. Still, what's clear is that Ibogaine has worked for
some - and that it has gone almost completely unstudied by the medical
community which speaks to the strange ironies of the drug problem itself.

"I don't know if it's for everyone," says Ryan, "I just know it worked
for me."