PROBLEM ROOT

A West End addiction clinic test-drives tries an African drug.

Residents of the West End live on top of each other, but they're often
clueless about their neighbours. Consider the tenants of a particular condo
tower near Stanley Park. The retirees drifting back from breakfast, the
Japanese girl heading out for a run-they'd never guess that up in one
neighbor's apartment this morning, a Seattle dominatrix is trying to kick
her addiction to heroin by undergoing a treatment rooted in African
shamanism.

Kelly, 34, pale and thin, her eyes flickering, is wrapped in sheets on a
bed, whispering of dragons and wolves. She's 24 hours into a three-day
hallucinogenic trip induced by ibogaine, an extract of Tabernanthe iboga, a
shrub native to Gabon. In that region's Bwiti religion, it's believed that
chewing the plant's root enables people to speak with the dead. "She's been
speaking in tongues, too," says Marc Emery, munching on 7-Eleven crudites in
the living room. "They don't understand what they're seeing. It's after,
when they're clean, that they reflect on it."

Emery's no doctor. He is, of course, better known as Vancouver's loudest pot
activist and the owner of a $3-million marijuana seed business. Now some of
that wealth funds his clandestine Iboga Therapy House, a free clinic and the
first of its kind in Canada. Over the past year, he's dosed 28 hardcore
addicts-including his own adopted son-with ibogaine, which reportedly purges
all cravings for drugs after its hallucinations fog the trauma of
withdrawal. "From our perspective, it's going great," says Emery- although
nearly all of his "patients" have relapsed into drug use after a month or
two clean, and he's now getting them in for week-long follow-up treatments.
(His son, after a third treatment, has stayed off heroin for six months.)
Emery says the ibogaine and round-the-clock "facilitators" trained in first
aid cost him $2,000 per patient. "But all education costs money."

Ibogaine is illegal in the United States, but it isn't in Canada, which is
why Emery's clinic has recently been cited in publications ranging from LA
Weekly to the Journal of the American Medical Association. It's been
applauded by U.S. drugpolicy liberals, who claim it could complement
Vancouver's new safe injection site by reducing the demand for hard drugs.

But Emery has also enraged addiction doctors in the States who accuse him of
running a dangerous, uncontrolled experiment: over the past 20 years, at
least three patients at other clinics have died after taking ibogaine.
(Emery insists all of his patients have a full medical beforehand. "Even
though we're dealing with vulnerable, healthimpacted individuals, I never
really see any serious health anomalies. It seems very safe to me.") Emery
has also angered members of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, who
say he refuses to treat addicts from the downtown east side, and plans to
create a "detox resort" like similar ibogaine clinics in Panama and the
Virgin Islands that charge up to $15,000 per treatment. But Emery says he
can't waste his money on someone headed straight back to a welfare hotel
awash in smack. "I need these people to have some ability to succeed," he
says. "And I've never asked anybody for a cent."

The real question, of course, is whether ibogaine really helps the people
who take it. Kevin, a Coquitlam car salesman, subjected himself to Emery's
treatment to break a decade-long crack habit. He suffered 19 hours of
vomiting and gruesome hallucinations, "like something out of Caligula," he
says. Neurologists have found that ibogaine increases serotonin levels, like
an antidepressant, and simultaneously shuts off cocaine and heroin receptors
in the brain-but, Kevin says, "it had absolutely no effect on me
whatsoever." He went back to using within a month. Still, at least that was
a month clean. A fresh start. And for that, he's grateful. "Whether or not I
like Marc and his tactics, I have to respect him. At least he gave me the
opportunity to change my life."