An important warning: Ibogaine has been associated with a considerable number of deaths. Some of the deaths even occurred within the context of clinical trials, under medical supervision. Ibogaine has some chemical properties that are highly undesirable for medication because it directly interacts with the cardiac system as a side effect.
It is actually an old drug with a long history of being tried for different conditions and was once even marketed commercially in some countries. It goes through cycles where news stories are written about how it might be a treatment for problems which inspires some people to seek it out, but I strongly caution people not to do this. If you try one of the ibogaine clinics you may not even been given real ibogaine, and if you do you’re playing a dangerous game.
Anecdotally: I’ve known a couple acquaintances and their friends who tried ibogaine for different reasons. Among them, there was a 100% rate of feeling convinced it solved their problems in the weeks following their experience. There was a 0% rate of actual improvement in the problems after weeks to months. I think it’s good that this is being researched, but the claimed curative powers of the drug have also become enhanced through the mythology and mystery around it.
I’m sure someone will find some reason to dismiss or excuse these deaths, as anyone who brings up the negatives of psychedelics is usually shouted down on this site.
The cardiotoxic effects of ibogaine are well known, though. This is why analogs without the cardiotoxic effect are an active area of study.
Of all of the incredible claims about ibogaine in this thread it’s sad that the only one where sources are being demanded is for the high risk of death, which even among ibogaine communities is well known.
To give context to this, the person didn't post a study in which anyone died, instead a study that claims 2 people have died in 2 separate studies. Despite this claim, it actually only references one of these studies, the second one is never referenced.
If you look at, at the one referenced study, there was a coronial inquiry and an investigation by New Zealand's Health and Disability Commissioner that found the doctor who was supervising was in breach of their duty of care.
Yes, there can and have been negative side effects for MANY drugs, but blaming the drug, when a government body has investigated the incident placed the blame elsewhere is an outrageous bad faith claim.
Additionally, that study was for Opioid addiction, and a person also died before even getting into the study (so, iBogain is probably the lesser of two evils).
As for the snarky comment about people finding excuses on this site, no, people actually just read citations on this site, instead of just trust me bro. When your citation claims a doctor is responsible, but you say it was the drug, do you see how one can only assume you are disingenuous?
> A third patient of Provider 1 died during treatment before they were formally enrolled. Of 13 participants enrolled through Provider 2, one voluntarily left the study at eight months and a second was lost to follow up at 11 months post-treatment. The fatality was the subject of two investigations, a coronial inquiry and the second involving New Zealand’s Health and Disability Commissioner (HDC). The latter, completed first, described the treatment provider as being in breach of their duty of care but did not offer a medical explanation for the death.
The article acts like ibogaine is a newly discovered drug. This is an old hallucinagenix drug that has helped thousands of people get over ptsd. The only thing holding this back is government bureaucracy and red tape. I’m happy that people will get there chance to benefit from this after decades of stupid government policy.
I have a friend who received ibogaine as a treatment, in mexico, for opiate addiction and it is not at all like your average hallucinogenic drug.
for starters, she had to go through cardiac tests before they would even administer the stuff because it can cause serious cardiac symptoms, up to and including death. Somebody in her group was kicked out because they had been using meth the week of the trip (no pun intended). They were telling them that even too much caffeine could increase their risk of cardiac symptoms.
Then the trip itself was like 48 hours and it wasn't a fun trip like acid or mushrooms. The few things she would tell me about were awful, and she still won't talk about most of it almost a decade after the fact.
Some drugs don't need to be caught up in federal approval but ibogaine is absolutely a drug that needs the red tape and all the pomp and circumstance of FDA approval.
as far as I know. She also had to do serious therapy and addiction recovery stuff, so it wasn't like she was magically cured of being addict simply by using ibogaine, in, case that is how my story came off.
> The only thing holding this back is government bureaucracy and red tape.
Not really true. There have been clinical trials for Ibogaine over the years in the US and abroad. The United States isn’t the only country capable of running trials.
A big blocker for ibogaine is that it’s cardiotoxic. Multiple deaths have occurred within clinical trials for ibogaine. It’s really hard to justify and get approval for additional clinical trials for a drug that has caused deaths even in small trials.
There are analogs of ibogaine being studied, too. These are designed to lack the cardiac properties of ibogaine and would hold much more promise. There’s a real problem of mistrust with “artificial chemicals” that causes this to be ignored while ibogaine gets the attention. I suppose that’s to be expected with politicians driving research.
Those deaths were clustered in an earlier time frame. Standard practice now is to monitor cardiac symptoms and administer IV Magnesium and sometimes Phosphorus to nudge the heart rate back to stability.
I always wonder why ECT doesn't get more press. It very very often works on depression (and bipolar disorder, catatonia; anything affective-related really), although the effects may wane over time when the treatment is discontinued. Memory loss is one of the side effects, and it could actually be beneficial here.
My point exactly. I am not saying psychedelics do not help people, they clearly help some people with some problems. But the balance of research and general interest is not proportional to how promising both paths already look. For example, which treatments are safer long term? It's unclear. At the same time it's clear that there can be unwanted long term side effects. In one very particular case, pregnant women that unfortunately do need something, we already know from physics and data on anesthesia that ECT is the better choice.
Sorry if I find that things like https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39804212/ existing in checks 2025 repulsive. Especially when those are the same arguments put forward for lobotomies. If somebody is capable of _ELECTING_ ECT, fine. But don't pretend that dosing somebody unconcious with benzos so they Can't seize, and reducing shock duration and intensity so theres no skin burning makes intentionaly brain damaging somebody to fit in with society any less horifying. If you don't like that example- theres plenty more for things like dementia among the elderly. Especially if they're in a retirement facility.
As for TCMS? It works- if you can find a place that's not a farm.
This is nuts. Bringing ECT into the discussion of a novel psychedelic medicine.
Totally different ballparks. Well-established results vs. very little formal research.
Have you had ECT, or do you know anyone who has? It's a last resort for horrible depression and not much else. It has huge risks, and while it does often make these people's lives manageable, it shouldn't be in the same discussion as a medication that's been out of discussion for political reasons.
I do wonder how many more people would be open to ECT if instead of using the electrical pulse we would give people some drug that causes a brief seizure. Right after the anesthesia, of course, just like now - but there's no electricity involved. I don't even know if such a safe drug exists.
Would the treatment be any different? It's my understanding that were have no way of accelerating repair from neurological damage and instead focus on therapies to regain ability.
Nope - I mean PTSD. there is a growing body of evidence that PTSD may be caused (In many of most or the diagnosed cases) by concussions causing brain damage. This manifests from either enemy munitions, or the shock wave from your own artillery, explosives, or large-caliber weapons.
The WWI name of "shell shock" describing the same phenomenon was probably more accurate than "PTSD".
There are 0 requirements for head trauma with PTSD, it's a stress response.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the top tier, evidence based treatment for PTSD. 60-80% can actually lose their PTSD diagnosis through CBT in some studies.
I'm not saying CBT is the magic cure, but it's very helpful for retraining the body's fight or flight response.
For TBI, there is not really any amount of CBT that can impact it due to the physical changes in the brain. This is why things like ibogaine and psilocybin are encouraging, because they seem to be causing neurogenesis.
I'm somebody that has spent my life dealing with both of these issues through combat sports and military combat. It's something I stay on top of.
WW1 shellshock was a diagnosis consisting of an undifferentiated mix of concussion and ptsd, the diseases may have been completely untangled by now but it’s not impossible that there is still some blurring
Open-label study, no control group, and ibogaine was not the only compound administered.
Any study like this is nearly useless without a control group, unfortunately. There is no way to tell if the treatment caused the changes or if they naturally occurred over the study period.
I’m sorry, but people really need to understand how these drugs “treat addiction“. ibogaine acts on an opioid receptor. So all you’re doing is changing one opiate for another.
It acts on the KOR receptors instead of the MOR receptor, which most openly act on. But it’s not like you’re going to be cured from opioid addiction. You’re just replacing one opioid with another that doesn’t affect the respiratory system.
You say this like "oh it's just acts on a different kind of opiod receptor" means that it's not meaningfully different.
Your comment also seems to imply that this treatment involves consuming ibogaine habitually or regularly
The protocol for ibogaine treatment, according to the article and the experiments being done, do not have this requirement.
Like other treatments involving psychedelics and hallucinogens, the protocol here is that a one-off treatment, a single dose, results in meaningful improvements in both addictive behaviors and PTSD symptoms a month later and potentially longer
This is not the same as something like methadone or naltrexone, which _are_ what you describe: replacing a more harmful opiate with a less harmful one.
Actually it purges a small amount of brain cells deep in the center of the brain, that handles automatic movement. It also seeds a bunch of cofactors stimulating nerve growth factors and that area then regrows back with less of the addiction hardwired. It also helps to prop up the mood for a couple of months to give the person a chance to get going in another direction.
Saliva divinorum is inherently dysphoric due to its agonism of the kappa opiod receptor. For a different cheap legal drug that affects serotonin and the NMDA receptors like ibogaine does, there's always off label use of dextromethorphan (cough medicine)!
Again I'm a bit baffled as to what the unstated thought process is. Ibogain and Saliva divinorum share a short term dysphoric experience from kappa opioid receptor interference that might be an effective way to eliminate Trauma from earlier memories. Why use the more dangerous of the two and why avoid the experience if the experience is the intervention?
"The action of ibogaine at the κ-opioid receptor may indeed contribute significantly to the psychoactive effects attributed to ibogaine ingestion; Salvia divinorum, another plant recognized for its strong hallucinogenic properties contains the chemical salvinorin A, which is a highly selective κ-opioid agonist"
I've been assuming it was some sort of profit motive as TX has been pumping money into it. It seems like there might actually be science driven though. For tramatic brain injury combined with ptsd ibogaine causes a release of glial cell factors that help neuroplasticity wire around the damage. Its also horribly unsafe from a cardiac perspective so you would need a constant eeg during therapy driving up prices. So probably a little of the original motivation too.
Not really "horribly unsafe", it seems that with proper prescreening and magnesium supplementation cardiac risk can be safely managed. I was looking into this a few weeks ago.
However there is certainly a lack of data, and facilities doing treatment now are probably incentivized not to share adverse events.
I wonder about the editorial choice to use veterans rather than, say, women who have PTSD from assaults, which is a much larger group of people. (Approximately 4% of US men and 8% of US women experience PTSD every year across all reasons like accidents, sexual assaults, combat, etc.)
Presumably this treatment would help everyone? Or is it somehow supporting only vets?
If this was a study on ptsd in assault survivors you could make the exact same comment asking why they didn’t try it in veterans (and I have no reason to doubt someone would)
> you could make the exact same comment asking why they didn’t try it in veterans
That would be an extremely odd comment to make, though. Not only does the category "assault survivor" obviously not exclude veterans, why would you single them out to care about?
The war machine is the one funding so the framing makes sense.
Not that I like it... I would prefer that the concept of a war veteran was non existent but that is akin to wishing the moon was made out of cheese.
The research on ptsd began with US veterans afaik. It’s probably the group that is most studied for it and also receives trials.
The US also spends a large amount of money on each veteran. If they can find a cure for trauma they would benefit hugely from it. The side effect of this is that others would benefit as well.
Way back in something like 2002, I was in college. One day at my then-girlfriend’s apartment east of campus, she got a phone call. An old friend of hers was in town, so she told him to come over. I don’t know his name, but let’s call him J., which is a randomly selected letter.
J. was a traveling Ibogaine ... healer? He went from city to city, summoned by the loved ones of advanced heroin addicts, to attempt one last Hail Mary shot at recovery.
These were situations of absolute desperation, and I can’t overstate the seriousness with which he took his adopted occupation. He described to us in detail his process.
First, he interviewed the person requesting help, seeing what else they had tried and trying to suss out if Ibogaine would be worth the risk. He turned away most callers.
Those who he accepted would be dropped off at his van, inside which was a mobile, DIY ICU of sorts: a bed, food, water and emergency medical supplies. He would administer the ibogaine (I don’t know what form this took), and then, in his words, the patient would undergo a 2 to 3-day continuous hallucination.
During this time, in J.’s observations, the patient was almost always ‘visited’ by dead relatives, who typically admonished the patient for what had become of them, laying into them with real talk about the state of their life.
J. said half of the patients came out of this experience fundamentally changed, and effectively cured of their addiction to heroin. I don’t know if he had any data (anecdotal or otherwise) on recidivism, but the implication was that this was likely to be permanent.
But, he said, the other half went insane, which is why he spent a great deal of effort screening families and informing them of the risks.
I don’t know how much, if any, of this is true. I don’t know what ‘insane’ means, or meant. But I remember vividly how seriously this guy took it, without ever coming off as some kind of self-satisfied guru or medicine man, believing himself to be a god, or anything like that. He never accepted money. He lived somewhat roughly. I wonder whatever happened to that guy.
I always associated it with treating opioid and alcohol addiction. I suspect there's something to do with funding here. Same with the whole "we could use MDMA to treat veterans" angle when veterans are a tiny percentage of the population worth treating with it.
It's who the trials are done on. US veterans have their own health care system, so that may have played a role in why they were targeted for the research.
I mean, that does sound pretty crazy. Specific wars are often ill-advised or largely pointless, but "stop doing war" presupposes that all other countries in the world will also "stop doing war", otherwise what you're suggesting is just unilateral surrender under the guise of stopping war.
> presupposes that all other countries in the world will also "stop doing war"
No it doesn't. But making efforts to stop it ourselves is necessary to achieve that. Same reason it's worth doing nuclear disarmament: because not disarming guarantees nuclear war eventually.
My interpretation of the parent comment is: Americans should stop aggressing other countries, slaughtering the population, and then publishing scientific breakthroughs on treating ptsd among the killers.
I'd say the comment says nothing about wars of survival, which is not what veterans have ptsd for. No one is 'doing war' at America.
Game theory and history say otherwise. If you want to be a fool, have at it. Just don't expect the rest of us to go along or respect you because of it.
Stopping doing wars doesn't mean not having a military capable of wars. It means not starting them. The US hasn't been involved in justified military action since the 40s.
It's political posturing, makes it more likely to get bipartisan support. Female rape victims are not as unimpeachable as the (superficially) hallowed veteran in American society.
Presumably isn't how science is done. They did an experiment with veterans who had ptsd and ibogaine so the results are relevant to veterans with ptsd using ibogaine.
One could, presumably, extrapolate that result to an even wider audience and say "hallucinogens could help people who experience trauma" but that'd be unscientific and irresponsible to imply this study showed that.
As someone who takes antidepressants this is nonsensical to me. I don’t feel 100% normal on an SSRI, I experience the normal side-effects of flat affect and weird tastes, etc. But the alternative is regular panic, exhaustion, indigestion, and general volatility that makes my life difficult and hard for others to interact with me.
If dissociation is better than regular PTSD, then go for it. We don’t expect people with hip replacements to have 100% mobility. We don’t expect cochlear implants to hear better than healthy ears. Mental health interventions have similar tradeoffs.
Exactly this - I don't believe that it's meant to be a "you're now completely fixed" type of solution, but it does seem like it would increase quality of life as it is meant to. Similar to SSRIs.
While I’m broadly open to research on the therapeutic applications of these drugs, right now the landscape is perilous because of the combination of illegal status and a spike in “wellness” pseudoscience. Outside of the few supervised, IBR-approved studies there is a world of (for lack of a better term) therapeutic cults that prey on some of the most psychologically vulnerable people. (related 2023 article: https://www.wired.com/story/psychedelic-therapy-mess/)
Very America to create a drug and sell it back to people instead of intermittent fasting, couple with talk therapy coupled with 1, micro dose HBOT 1.5 session. Diet changes and talk therapy while you let your cells repair and watch what happens. Talk to your doc but the answer isn't more drugs. We already have solutions all around us the army just doesn't want to spend the money nor create a PR mess when folks actually start healing and folks realize how jacked up the stress from combat makes you. Won't be as easy to recruit etc
I'm working on it, I have to find someone who's not after the money and is well endowned. As no one really benefits other than the patient and we know what drives innovation in this space.
An important warning: Ibogaine has been associated with a considerable number of deaths. Some of the deaths even occurred within the context of clinical trials, under medical supervision. Ibogaine has some chemical properties that are highly undesirable for medication because it directly interacts with the cardiac system as a side effect.
It is actually an old drug with a long history of being tried for different conditions and was once even marketed commercially in some countries. It goes through cycles where news stories are written about how it might be a treatment for problems which inspires some people to seek it out, but I strongly caution people not to do this. If you try one of the ibogaine clinics you may not even been given real ibogaine, and if you do you’re playing a dangerous game.
Anecdotally: I’ve known a couple acquaintances and their friends who tried ibogaine for different reasons. Among them, there was a 100% rate of feeling convinced it solved their problems in the weeks following their experience. There was a 0% rate of actual improvement in the problems after weeks to months. I think it’s good that this is being researched, but the claimed curative powers of the drug have also become enhanced through the mythology and mystery around it.
Please provide a source for your claim that deaths have occurred in clinical trials under medical supervision.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35012793/
I’m sure someone will find some reason to dismiss or excuse these deaths, as anyone who brings up the negatives of psychedelics is usually shouted down on this site.
The cardiotoxic effects of ibogaine are well known, though. This is why analogs without the cardiotoxic effect are an active area of study.
Of all of the incredible claims about ibogaine in this thread it’s sad that the only one where sources are being demanded is for the high risk of death, which even among ibogaine communities is well known.
To give context to this, the person didn't post a study in which anyone died, instead a study that claims 2 people have died in 2 separate studies. Despite this claim, it actually only references one of these studies, the second one is never referenced.
If you look at, at the one referenced study, there was a coronial inquiry and an investigation by New Zealand's Health and Disability Commissioner that found the doctor who was supervising was in breach of their duty of care.
Yes, there can and have been negative side effects for MANY drugs, but blaming the drug, when a government body has investigated the incident placed the blame elsewhere is an outrageous bad faith claim.
Additionally, that study was for Opioid addiction, and a person also died before even getting into the study (so, iBogain is probably the lesser of two evils).
As for the snarky comment about people finding excuses on this site, no, people actually just read citations on this site, instead of just trust me bro. When your citation claims a doctor is responsible, but you say it was the drug, do you see how one can only assume you are disingenuous?
The full Journal is here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00952990.2017.1...
Here is a relevant extract:
> A third patient of Provider 1 died during treatment before they were formally enrolled. Of 13 participants enrolled through Provider 2, one voluntarily left the study at eight months and a second was lost to follow up at 11 months post-treatment. The fatality was the subject of two investigations, a coronial inquiry and the second involving New Zealand’s Health and Disability Commissioner (HDC). The latter, completed first, described the treatment provider as being in breach of their duty of care but did not offer a medical explanation for the death.
The article acts like ibogaine is a newly discovered drug. This is an old hallucinagenix drug that has helped thousands of people get over ptsd. The only thing holding this back is government bureaucracy and red tape. I’m happy that people will get there chance to benefit from this after decades of stupid government policy.
I have a friend who received ibogaine as a treatment, in mexico, for opiate addiction and it is not at all like your average hallucinogenic drug.
for starters, she had to go through cardiac tests before they would even administer the stuff because it can cause serious cardiac symptoms, up to and including death. Somebody in her group was kicked out because they had been using meth the week of the trip (no pun intended). They were telling them that even too much caffeine could increase their risk of cardiac symptoms.
Then the trip itself was like 48 hours and it wasn't a fun trip like acid or mushrooms. The few things she would tell me about were awful, and she still won't talk about most of it almost a decade after the fact.
Some drugs don't need to be caught up in federal approval but ibogaine is absolutely a drug that needs the red tape and all the pomp and circumstance of FDA approval.
But did it work?
as far as I know. She also had to do serious therapy and addiction recovery stuff, so it wasn't like she was magically cured of being addict simply by using ibogaine, in, case that is how my story came off.
> The only thing holding this back is government bureaucracy and red tape.
Not really true. There have been clinical trials for Ibogaine over the years in the US and abroad. The United States isn’t the only country capable of running trials.
A big blocker for ibogaine is that it’s cardiotoxic. Multiple deaths have occurred within clinical trials for ibogaine. It’s really hard to justify and get approval for additional clinical trials for a drug that has caused deaths even in small trials.
There are analogs of ibogaine being studied, too. These are designed to lack the cardiac properties of ibogaine and would hold much more promise. There’s a real problem of mistrust with “artificial chemicals” that causes this to be ignored while ibogaine gets the attention. I suppose that’s to be expected with politicians driving research.
Those deaths were clustered in an earlier time frame. Standard practice now is to monitor cardiac symptoms and administer IV Magnesium and sometimes Phosphorus to nudge the heart rate back to stability.
> red tape
Just frame it as "this drug lets you send scarred soldiers right back into the fray for pennies" and see that red tape dissolve
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7008682/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_acc...
I always wonder why ECT doesn't get more press. It very very often works on depression (and bipolar disorder, catatonia; anything affective-related really), although the effects may wane over time when the treatment is discontinued. Memory loss is one of the side effects, and it could actually be beneficial here.
Anecdotal, but I had a friend who had ECT for their depressive symptoms.
They ended their life a few years afterwards.
So no, ”very often works on depression” is not a characterization I would use.
I had a friend who just went through ECT. It did nothing for their depression and I left them with severe memory loss, and cognitive decline.
You’d be surprised to read the statistics about how poorly ECT works, and how little they understand about how to use it a treatment.
It's strange how much attention novel psychedelic treatments get compared with older, less glamorous interventions that already help a lot of people
Bring back lobotomy!
Yeah, super weird how people want to get away from the "less glamorous" intervention of deliberate brain damage.
My point exactly. I am not saying psychedelics do not help people, they clearly help some people with some problems. But the balance of research and general interest is not proportional to how promising both paths already look. For example, which treatments are safer long term? It's unclear. At the same time it's clear that there can be unwanted long term side effects. In one very particular case, pregnant women that unfortunately do need something, we already know from physics and data on anesthesia that ECT is the better choice.
Because ECT is whitewashed shock therapy, which in turn- is a whitewashed lobotomy.
What about transcranial magnetic stimulation?
I suggest you read some publications on the topic, and not internet forum conspiracies.
Sorry if I find that things like https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39804212/ existing in checks 2025 repulsive. Especially when those are the same arguments put forward for lobotomies. If somebody is capable of _ELECTING_ ECT, fine. But don't pretend that dosing somebody unconcious with benzos so they Can't seize, and reducing shock duration and intensity so theres no skin burning makes intentionaly brain damaging somebody to fit in with society any less horifying. If you don't like that example- theres plenty more for things like dementia among the elderly. Especially if they're in a retirement facility.
As for TCMS? It works- if you can find a place that's not a farm.
This is nuts. Bringing ECT into the discussion of a novel psychedelic medicine.
Totally different ballparks. Well-established results vs. very little formal research.
Have you had ECT, or do you know anyone who has? It's a last resort for horrible depression and not much else. It has huge risks, and while it does often make these people's lives manageable, it shouldn't be in the same discussion as a medication that's been out of discussion for political reasons.
shivers at the thought of ECT
I do wonder how many more people would be open to ECT if instead of using the electrical pulse we would give people some drug that causes a brief seizure. Right after the anesthesia, of course, just like now - but there's no electricity involved. I don't even know if such a safe drug exists.
This is, I am assuming from the context, not opporating under the assumption PTSD often is rooted in brain damage from exposure to shockwaves.
Would the treatment be any different? It's my understanding that were have no way of accelerating repair from neurological damage and instead focus on therapies to regain ability.
PTSD doesn't have anything to do with brain damage.
PTSD is a trauma response.
Are you thinking of TBI? TBI is a cumulative impact of small and large head trauma.
Nope - I mean PTSD. there is a growing body of evidence that PTSD may be caused (In many of most or the diagnosed cases) by concussions causing brain damage. This manifests from either enemy munitions, or the shock wave from your own artillery, explosives, or large-caliber weapons.
The WWI name of "shell shock" describing the same phenomenon was probably more accurate than "PTSD".
You are completely wrong. Its kinda scary how confident you are in your misunderstanding.
Is this pair of sentences indented to be satirical?
What in the world are you talking about?
There are 0 requirements for head trauma with PTSD, it's a stress response.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the top tier, evidence based treatment for PTSD. 60-80% can actually lose their PTSD diagnosis through CBT in some studies.
I'm not saying CBT is the magic cure, but it's very helpful for retraining the body's fight or flight response.
For TBI, there is not really any amount of CBT that can impact it due to the physical changes in the brain. This is why things like ibogaine and psilocybin are encouraging, because they seem to be causing neurogenesis.
I'm somebody that has spent my life dealing with both of these issues through combat sports and military combat. It's something I stay on top of.
WW1 shellshock was a diagnosis consisting of an undifferentiated mix of concussion and ptsd, the diseases may have been completely untangled by now but it’s not impossible that there is still some blurring
Maybe in 1918 we thought so but we've known better since prior to the DSM-III in 1980. Over 46 years.
Another very interesting possible benefit of ibogaine not mentioned in the article is potential for treating TBI.
from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41883580/:
>Longitudinal analyses assessed cortical thickness, subcortical volume, and predicted brain age (pBA), estimated from T1 scans. pBA was significantly reduced at 1 month relative to baseline (-1.3 years). Cortical thickness analysis revealed post-treatment increases in 11 regions. Subcortical analyses revealed significant volumetric expansion in 8 regions. Magnesium-ibogaine therapy was associated with increased cortical thickness, subcortical expansion, and reduced pBA at 1 month.
Open-label study, no control group, and ibogaine was not the only compound administered.
Any study like this is nearly useless without a control group, unfortunately. There is no way to tell if the treatment caused the changes or if they naturally occurred over the study period.
I’m sorry, but people really need to understand how these drugs “treat addiction“. ibogaine acts on an opioid receptor. So all you’re doing is changing one opiate for another.
It acts on the KOR receptors instead of the MOR receptor, which most openly act on. But it’s not like you’re going to be cured from opioid addiction. You’re just replacing one opioid with another that doesn’t affect the respiratory system.
You say this like "oh it's just acts on a different kind of opiod receptor" means that it's not meaningfully different.
Your comment also seems to imply that this treatment involves consuming ibogaine habitually or regularly
The protocol for ibogaine treatment, according to the article and the experiments being done, do not have this requirement.
Like other treatments involving psychedelics and hallucinogens, the protocol here is that a one-off treatment, a single dose, results in meaningful improvements in both addictive behaviors and PTSD symptoms a month later and potentially longer
This is not the same as something like methadone or naltrexone, which _are_ what you describe: replacing a more harmful opiate with a less harmful one.
Actually it purges a small amount of brain cells deep in the center of the brain, that handles automatic movement. It also seeds a bunch of cofactors stimulating nerve growth factors and that area then regrows back with less of the addiction hardwired. It also helps to prop up the mood for a couple of months to give the person a chance to get going in another direction.
It seems strange to me to choose ibogaine when Salvia divinorum seems like it has a similar psychological experience without the physical heart risk.
Saliva divinorum is inherently dysphoric due to its agonism of the kappa opiod receptor. For a different cheap legal drug that affects serotonin and the NMDA receptors like ibogaine does, there's always off label use of dextromethorphan (cough medicine)!
Again I'm a bit baffled as to what the unstated thought process is. Ibogain and Saliva divinorum share a short term dysphoric experience from kappa opioid receptor interference that might be an effective way to eliminate Trauma from earlier memories. Why use the more dangerous of the two and why avoid the experience if the experience is the intervention?
Really difficult to find a cough syrup with only high amounts of DXM and nothing else. All the brands changed their recipes in the late 90s.
They just sell DXM in softgels and tablets now
Edit: apparently that’s not true. There’s a brand of DXM-only syrup called Robocough now. What a ridiculous name for a Legitimate Cough Medicine
DXM is also the active ingredient in the antidepressant Auvelity (combined with bupropion)
Lot of interesting studies and anecdotes on its efficacy as an antidepressant
What? These two substances aren't even in the same ballpark.
Maybe I have a liberal view of ballpark sizes but:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine
"The action of ibogaine at the κ-opioid receptor may indeed contribute significantly to the psychoactive effects attributed to ibogaine ingestion; Salvia divinorum, another plant recognized for its strong hallucinogenic properties contains the chemical salvinorin A, which is a highly selective κ-opioid agonist"
Or LSD, or magic mushrooms.
I've been assuming it was some sort of profit motive as TX has been pumping money into it. It seems like there might actually be science driven though. For tramatic brain injury combined with ptsd ibogaine causes a release of glial cell factors that help neuroplasticity wire around the damage. Its also horribly unsafe from a cardiac perspective so you would need a constant eeg during therapy driving up prices. So probably a little of the original motivation too.
Not really "horribly unsafe", it seems that with proper prescreening and magnesium supplementation cardiac risk can be safely managed. I was looking into this a few weeks ago.
However there is certainly a lack of data, and facilities doing treatment now are probably incentivized not to share adverse events.
Or DMT. I also question how they derive the consclusion of a "horrible heart risk". Imo there is not enough evidence for that.
It feels promising, but also exactly the kind of treatment that should move through careful clinical trials
Only veterans?
I wonder about the editorial choice to use veterans rather than, say, women who have PTSD from assaults, which is a much larger group of people. (Approximately 4% of US men and 8% of US women experience PTSD every year across all reasons like accidents, sexual assaults, combat, etc.)
Presumably this treatment would help everyone? Or is it somehow supporting only vets?
If this was a study on ptsd in assault survivors you could make the exact same comment asking why they didn’t try it in veterans (and I have no reason to doubt someone would)
What a strange and presumptive thing to say. I'm wondering why not all PTSD cases, why specifically this relatively small group?
Like, obviously we should treat veterans with PTSD, but the article is unclear about whether it's just them.
> I'm wondering why not all PTSD cases, why specifically this relatively small group?
Because then it’s another variable in the study.
That's a reasonable answer!
> you could make the exact same comment asking why they didn’t try it in veterans
That would be an extremely odd comment to make, though. Not only does the category "assault survivor" obviously not exclude veterans, why would you single them out to care about?
They are an easy group to recruit or reach and have complete medical histories on file. Remember this is a military study.
The war machine is the one funding so the framing makes sense. Not that I like it... I would prefer that the concept of a war veteran was non existent but that is akin to wishing the moon was made out of cheese.
The research on ptsd began with US veterans afaik. It’s probably the group that is most studied for it and also receives trials.
The US also spends a large amount of money on each veteran. If they can find a cure for trauma they would benefit hugely from it. The side effect of this is that others would benefit as well.
That's damning in another way -- it suggests we aren't spending money on the other, larger groups of PTSD survivors.
Shame it has to be a side effect.
I read it less as "this only helps veterans" and more as "veterans are the group this particular research and funding path is centered on"
Way back in something like 2002, I was in college. One day at my then-girlfriend’s apartment east of campus, she got a phone call. An old friend of hers was in town, so she told him to come over. I don’t know his name, but let’s call him J., which is a randomly selected letter.
J. was a traveling Ibogaine ... healer? He went from city to city, summoned by the loved ones of advanced heroin addicts, to attempt one last Hail Mary shot at recovery.
These were situations of absolute desperation, and I can’t overstate the seriousness with which he took his adopted occupation. He described to us in detail his process.
First, he interviewed the person requesting help, seeing what else they had tried and trying to suss out if Ibogaine would be worth the risk. He turned away most callers.
Those who he accepted would be dropped off at his van, inside which was a mobile, DIY ICU of sorts: a bed, food, water and emergency medical supplies. He would administer the ibogaine (I don’t know what form this took), and then, in his words, the patient would undergo a 2 to 3-day continuous hallucination.
During this time, in J.’s observations, the patient was almost always ‘visited’ by dead relatives, who typically admonished the patient for what had become of them, laying into them with real talk about the state of their life.
J. said half of the patients came out of this experience fundamentally changed, and effectively cured of their addiction to heroin. I don’t know if he had any data (anecdotal or otherwise) on recidivism, but the implication was that this was likely to be permanent.
But, he said, the other half went insane, which is why he spent a great deal of effort screening families and informing them of the risks.
I don’t know how much, if any, of this is true. I don’t know what ‘insane’ means, or meant. But I remember vividly how seriously this guy took it, without ever coming off as some kind of self-satisfied guru or medicine man, believing himself to be a god, or anything like that. He never accepted money. He lived somewhat roughly. I wonder whatever happened to that guy.
I always associated it with treating opioid and alcohol addiction. I suspect there's something to do with funding here. Same with the whole "we could use MDMA to treat veterans" angle when veterans are a tiny percentage of the population worth treating with it.
It's who the trials are done on. US veterans have their own health care system, so that may have played a role in why they were targeted for the research.
Vets kill themselves a lot so I guess it's easier to propose crazier stuff because the alternative is very bad.
Veterans also make it easier to get wider political support for legalizing the treatment.
Though notably never anything really crazy like “let’s stop doing war”
I mean, that does sound pretty crazy. Specific wars are often ill-advised or largely pointless, but "stop doing war" presupposes that all other countries in the world will also "stop doing war", otherwise what you're suggesting is just unilateral surrender under the guise of stopping war.
> presupposes that all other countries in the world will also "stop doing war"
No it doesn't. But making efforts to stop it ourselves is necessary to achieve that. Same reason it's worth doing nuclear disarmament: because not disarming guarantees nuclear war eventually.
You're strawmanning I think.
My interpretation of the parent comment is: Americans should stop aggressing other countries, slaughtering the population, and then publishing scientific breakthroughs on treating ptsd among the killers.
I'd say the comment says nothing about wars of survival, which is not what veterans have ptsd for. No one is 'doing war' at America.
Game theory and history say otherwise. If you want to be a fool, have at it. Just don't expect the rest of us to go along or respect you because of it.
Just because it used to happen doesn't mean it should continue. It will be death of all of us collectively.
But didn’t you know: game theory!!!!
Nash equilibrium is the religion for millennials who didn’t get sucked into the boomer/gen-x Ayn Rand bullshit
States are not rational actors. Game theory does not apply to them.
Stopping doing wars doesn't mean not having a military capable of wars. It means not starting them. The US hasn't been involved in justified military action since the 40s.
Hey if that’s the world you wanna live in then continue to do what you’re doing
It's political posturing, makes it more likely to get bipartisan support. Female rape victims are not as unimpeachable as the (superficially) hallowed veteran in American society.
> Presumably...
Presumably isn't how science is done. They did an experiment with veterans who had ptsd and ibogaine so the results are relevant to veterans with ptsd using ibogaine.
One could, presumably, extrapolate that result to an even wider audience and say "hallucinogens could help people who experience trauma" but that'd be unscientific and irresponsible to imply this study showed that.
People like to use us war veterans to wash their agendas through
We’re one step below “think of the children”
Original title: Ibogaine is a banned hallucinogenic drug. Scientists believe it can help veterans overcome PTSD
Does it really help or are they just too dissociated after taking it
As someone who takes antidepressants this is nonsensical to me. I don’t feel 100% normal on an SSRI, I experience the normal side-effects of flat affect and weird tastes, etc. But the alternative is regular panic, exhaustion, indigestion, and general volatility that makes my life difficult and hard for others to interact with me.
If dissociation is better than regular PTSD, then go for it. We don’t expect people with hip replacements to have 100% mobility. We don’t expect cochlear implants to hear better than healthy ears. Mental health interventions have similar tradeoffs.
Exactly this - I don't believe that it's meant to be a "you're now completely fixed" type of solution, but it does seem like it would increase quality of life as it is meant to. Similar to SSRIs.
Roe Jogan, senior pharma correspondent at the BBC
While I’m broadly open to research on the therapeutic applications of these drugs, right now the landscape is perilous because of the combination of illegal status and a spike in “wellness” pseudoscience. Outside of the few supervised, IBR-approved studies there is a world of (for lack of a better term) therapeutic cults that prey on some of the most psychologically vulnerable people. (related 2023 article: https://www.wired.com/story/psychedelic-therapy-mess/)
Ibogaine may or may not work. Iocane powder usually effects a complete cure.
Very America to create a drug and sell it back to people instead of intermittent fasting, couple with talk therapy coupled with 1, micro dose HBOT 1.5 session. Diet changes and talk therapy while you let your cells repair and watch what happens. Talk to your doc but the answer isn't more drugs. We already have solutions all around us the army just doesn't want to spend the money nor create a PR mess when folks actually start healing and folks realize how jacked up the stress from combat makes you. Won't be as easy to recruit etc
Go ahead and run your randomized clinical trials and report back.
The healthcare community would be thrilled to find out – with certainty – that your interventions work.
I'm working on it, I have to find someone who's not after the money and is well endowned. As no one really benefits other than the patient and we know what drives innovation in this space.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24905167/
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/1...
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3...
CBT is on the VA PTSD page.