r/Ibogaine

I did 5MeODMT a year ago to round out an Ibogaine retreat. In the past year I’ve been alcohol free which was my intention. While living without addiction has been the relief needed to press on, cleaning up the messes created during years of addiction is challenging to say the least. I am still getting to the root of issues that fueled my addiction and behavior which is tough but positive and necessary. I didn’t have a “breakthrough “ during the 5MeODMT. I had a “blacking out” feeling similar to what I’ve felt going under anesthesia. I was told I purged and said “I shouldn’t have done that”. I had felt miserable from the Ibogaine because I truly didn’t think it worked at the time, I didn’t have much of an experience with it and over time had to trust the medicine was doing its thing and since I’m typing this now.. I was correct, it (Ibogaine) did. After feeling unsettled and angry that not only had the Ibogaine “not worked” I simply felt like i went unconscious for a few moments and then was back with someone telling me what I said. I felt nothing at all except further disappointment. I did set intentions and truly open myself to this and I decided to ask for a second round while I was still there and had access to it, and did it again later the same day. Similar experience only this time I remember coming to and was upset and crying when I came back. They told me I said repeatedly, “I’m not okay”. I have no idea what “I shouldn’t have done that” and, “I’m not okay” meant.

TLDR: I feel called to find a way to reach deep within myself to see if I can love myself. I have such self hatred it’s becoming a bit scary to me and it’s effecting me in not great ways which sucks now that I’m living, actually living, and not walking in addiction every day. I believe in this type of medicine. I believe psychedelics are the method I need for healing. Prior to Ibogaine and 5MeODMT I had not done any sort of psychedelic therapy. With all of the options out there, how do you choose what to take to start a healing journey such as this?
Yes, logistics and finances are always an issue but I don’t want to limit myself either. FWIW, 50yof, located in Southeastern US, will find my own source, etc. once I determine what is best. Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts.

TLDR: I believe I was given some kind of horrible synthetic hallucinogen at what I thought was a trusted Ibogaine retreat.

Sorry if this drags on, but I have to get all of this down in as much detail as I can. I'm still trying to make sense of my experience, and am so curious to know if others have experienced anything similar. If this sounds familiar at all please reach out to me. I'm not ruling out the possibility that I just had a bad trip, but certain things just aren't adding up and I'm not totally convinced that there was not some wrongdoing on behalf of the retreat. If that's the case then I'll do whatever I can to prevent people from being harmed by this place in the future.

Last weekend I visited what I thought was a reputable, high end Ibogaine retreat - it has outstanding reviews, luxury accommodations and what appears from the outside to be a solid reputation as a legitimate retreat facility. I was incredibly nervous leading up to my trip, but my worries were mostly settled upon arriving. The staff were lovely and accommodating - they seemed to have a genuine investment in each of the guest's individual healing journeys. There was no cause for concern until the first medicine session on the second day of the retreat. I started feeling the medicine pull me in around 1 hour after taking a boost dose - I felt nothing for nearly 2 hours after my flood dose and was worried nothing was going to happen. Suddenly my heart rate spiked - the 2 "nurses" (who struggled to figure out how to use the ekg/hook me up to the IV bag) came over to my side and took my pulse and seemed concerned about how fast my heart was beating. This lasted around 20 minutes. I'm pretty certain I was having a panic attack - from there the trip only got worse.

It's hard to put my experience into words; the only way I can think to describe the feeling is pure terror. I saw totally senseless, incoherent nightmare visuals on what felt like an infinite loop. This lasted for around 10 hours. No life review, no introspection, no spiritual insight, just terror. It felt as though my head had been split open and broken into a million pieces - this was an actual physical sensation that accompanied the trip that is still lingering with me now, kind of like my brain is constantly inflamed/being squeezed or something. The "medicine," or whatever it was they gave me, kept telling me throughout my trip that as a result of taking this drug I was now schizophrenic, and that it had done irreparable damage to my brain. I can't overemphasize just how terrifying and traumatic this all felt in the moment. I was completely convinced that my life as a knew it was over, and that I'd live out the rest of my life in a psych ward.

I emerged from the experience totally debilitated. I had never felt so much pain in my life, both physical and psychological. I was experiencing some of the symptoms typically associated with ibogaine use like nausea, confusion, ataxia, but to an extent that I didn't know was possible. It was like a million hangovers all at once. Then came the hallucinations, both auditory and visual for the next 6-8 hours - plants were jumping up and down and dancing, paintings were moving accross the walls, at one point I saw a dog appear in front of me in crystal clear detail, then suddenly vanish when I looked away. I don't know if any of this is unusual to experience post-ibogaine, but from the moment the trip started I knew something wasn't right - my brain kept telling me that what I was experiencing was not ibogaine. It felt like a terrible synthetic ibogaine imitation or something. I had no way of proving it but it all scared me so much that I demanded to be taken to the airport the following morning. I couldn't trust anything that the employees were telling me. It all felt so wrong and horrifying. I briefly spoke with some of the other guests that morning - it was nearly impossible for me to think clearly much less communicate so our interactions were pretty limited - but each person I spoke to had almost the exact same experience as me. They said it was nonstop horror and fear, nothing resembling a therapeutic experience in the slightest.

At this point I was convinced that the people working at the retreat had deliberately given us something toxic, and my fight or flight senses kicked in. I remembered how incompetent the medical staff was - no one seemed to know how to do their job correctly. It took around 20 minutes for the nurse to get the IV in my arm, and they repeatedly fumbled with the buttons on the ekg when it wouldn't stop beeping. The overwhelming feeling was that I was being scammed by this place. Again, I don't have verifiable proof of any of this - it's been 7 days since I took the drug they gave me, and this feeling hasn't wavered in the slightest. I'm also still feeling disoriented, dizzy, foggy and the same "squeezing" sensation in my head I described earlier. The staff eventually drove me to the airport - 3 staff accompanied me in the car, which felt so weird and unnecessary and just compounded my existing paranoia. I returned to the US and decided to get a blood toxicology report to see if anything weird or illicit showed up in my system. It was a 10 panel blood test, so it only checks for the more well known substances like cannabinoids, amphetamines, opiates, benzos etc. Nothing was detected from the test. It's all making me feel insane to be honest. All I know is that my gut has told me through this whole experience that the drug that they gave me was something destructive or dangerous. Why else would I feel worse, both physically and mentally, a week after taking it? None of it (besides the ataxia) sounds like ibogaine to me. I'm just so lost and so confused by all of this. If any of this resembles an experience you or someone you know has had, please reach out to me. Looking for any clarity I can get. Thanks.

Tell me if I’m wrong, but right now in my life the only thing I feel that will set me straight is Ibogaine. I have tried for a while to find a place in Mexico for example but all are months out to even take a call.

Doesn’t that almost void that out as an option?

I really wonder why if so many people need this option, why can’t they expand their operation.

Months out??? What clients are they looking for, it seems celebrities whom are already on suboxone and methadone who can function for that long.

I personally don’t have a major drug addiction other than kratom and beer. I feel I have to take kratom to function in this world, I have anxiety like no other, pharmaceuticals don’t seem to help. I can function but I can’t keep going in this way. I have been at the edge of life for a while. I’m afraid I don’t want to off myself. But these are the things that have kept me going. I am a travel social media influencer and have quite a following and that is what keeps me going. But I need help and don’t know what steps to take forward.

https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/HB26-1325

This is a very exciting development. Colorado passed a law June 4th authorizing 5 pilot clinics to be established. They have protections for the clinics, and will be funded by donations.

Check out the full text link above. Go Colorado!

Do you think based on these characteristics that I will have an easy/okay-ish time physically/mentally with a flood dose of Ibogaine?:

I am 29F. I don't take any prescriptions each month/week/day besides Tylenol/Ibuprofen when I have pain in my SI joint (from being overweight/barely obese), The only drug I use everyday is legal cannabis (Oregon) for my CPTSD and Social A.D...I eat a whole foods/low inflammation diet, and I get a moderate amount of exercise (walk everywhere everyday and I do yoga), no health issues besides BMI: 30.1 (slight obesity) and stage 1 lipedema (managed with compression socks and diet/exercise currently). I have no actual heart issues, although I do get a fast heart rate with my social anxiety disorder that I manage with meditation, weekly ice baths, and daily ice water to the face. My mental health disorders are CPTSD, MDD and Social A.D....I currently treat the CPTSD with EMDR, CBT, DBT, and IFS...I have taken different medications in the past but it only blunted my life experience and I still am not experiencing relief from traumatic symptoms. Do you think that I would be okay based on my characteristics and descriptions?

I’ve done ibogaine twice.

Both experiences were completely different. Both gave me exactly what I needed at the time.

I originally sought it out after a major trauma in my life. Like many people, I wasn’t looking for optimization, biohacking, or a spiritual trophy. I was looking for relief.

I ended up working in neuroscience and had access to quantitative EEG equipment. At the time, there wasn’t much research on how ibogaine affected the brain, so I became curious.

Did it actually change the brain?

I started collecting pre- and post-EEGs on people before and after treatment.

What I found surprised me.

Yes, I saw significant positive changes in many cases. I saw improvements in brain function that were measurable and visible on the scans.
But I also saw something else.

The people who experienced the most dramatic and lasting changes weren’t necessarily the people who had the most intense ibogaine experience.

They were the people who took the 3-month period afterward seriously.

In case after case, that window seemed to matter more than almost anything else.

The people who changed their habits, relationships, routines, thought patterns, sleep, nutrition, and environment often showed remarkable improvements.

The people who went back to doing exactly what they were doing before frequently showed far less change.

My personal opinion is that ibogaine doesn’t “fix” people.

It creates an opportunity.

What happens next is largely up to you.

I’ve been paying attention to the recent conversations about ibogaine becoming more mainstream, including Joe Rogan discussing it publicly and the growing push toward legalization.
I have mixed feelings.

Ibogaine saved my life. I have the utmost respect and love for this medicine. It is sacred. It is intuitive.

But I also don’t love seeing it become commercialized.

I don’t love watching treatment costs climb higher and higher every year.

I don’t love seeing it marketed as the next luxury wellness experience for wealthy people looking to optimize themselves.

This medicine deserves respect.

It’s powerful. It’s demanding. It’s not something to casually check off a bucket list.

And if we’re going to have serious conversations about bringing ibogaine into the mainstream, I think we also need serious conversations about the Bwiti communities who have worked with this medicine for generations.

Their voices should be part of the conversation.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I’m posting this because I genuinely want to open up a thoughtful discussion and hear what other people think.

For those who have worked with ibogaine, studied it, facilitated it, or gone through treatment themselves: what have you seen? What concerns you about where this field is headed? What gives you hope?

I’m just someone who has sat with this medicine twice, spent years studying brain changes afterward, and watched the field evolve from the sidelines.

My biggest takeaway is simple:

Ibogaine may open the door.
What you do in the months afterward determines whether you walk through it.

I've gotten a few DM's from others in this sub that lauded the gains ibogaine helped them make for TBI. I wanted to post this and ask more widely about the experience of others in this sub; has ibogaine helped you or someone you know? What improved and to what extent?

Thanks!

Hi there,

I’m after some advice. I have been dealing with daily headaches/ head pressure/ ear pain for coming up to two years now.

I’m functional to a degree but in pain of some sort every day from it.

No medications have been affective so far apart from Xanax. Which for whatever reason completely take the pain out temporarily. Not a fix by any means.

The pain does go when I fall asleep at this stage.

I wondered if anyone had had relief from headaches from ibogaine?

The matter has taken a big tole on my mental health over the two year period.