If you heard that there was a new method for treating drug addictions of all types — from cocaine to heroin to alcohol and painkillers — you’d be right to be skeptical. If you also heard that this new treatment was a hallucinogenic plant that’s illegal in the United States, then you’d again have every right to be skeptical.
And yet… All of that might be true. Ibogaine is a psychoactive substance found in plants that has been used medicinally and religiously in African cultures for centuries. Supposedly, addicts who take ibogaine can be cured of cravings and withdrawal symptoms with just one trip.
While some American researchers are interested in studying the drug, it hasn’t been approved for use or trials within the U.S. However, there are ibogaine treatment centers in Mexico and the Caribbean that cater to U.S. patients and staff U.S. neurosurgeons trying to understand how the drug works — while helping addicts in the process.
Still sound too good to be true? Here’s the full scoop.
Who?
Ibogaine is currently being studied and used as a method for opiate addiction, alcohol addiction, cocaine addiction, adderall addiction, oxycontin addiction, and more. It’s estimated that over 20 million adults in the U.S. over age 12 have some kind of drug addiction, not including tobacco.
Its uses and properties as a drug treatment were reportedly first noticed by a heroin addict seeking to simply get high from ibogaine. When he came down, he found himself utterly uninterested in heroin anymore. He gave it to several of his friends who were also addicts, and they had similar reactions.
How?
It seems impossible that one drug could alleviate the cravings or symptoms of so many different kinds of other addictive drugs, since they all work on different parts of the brain. But the speculation is that ibogaine therapy actually re-sets the process of psychological addiction itself. The effects of the drug linger in the brain for months, during which time addicts can move towards full recovery and stay off their other drugs of choice. Ibogaine has so far been up to 98% effective in relieving withdrawal and craving symptoms of alcohol and opioids.
So why aren’t ibogaine treatment centers more well known and popular? They’re still highly experimental — and expensive. Because the government hasn’t gotten behind funding for the drug yet, and because pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to back a drug they can’t patent or sell en masse, development is slow-going.
Still, the potential of ibogaine and ibogaine treatment centers may hail a new, safe, and healthy future for addiction treatment not too far down the road.
