This is part 2. You should have read Part 1 already.
Note: I suggest first reading my inner child therapy and neurological de-armoring guides before working on trauma or addictions with iboga.
Effectiveness
How effective is Iboga for therapy or spiritual insight?
For some people I know, male iboga “flood” (full visionary) doses have produced just hellish mega trips with no benefit whatsoever. I suggest you start with low doses and only take more if you feel you are benefiting from it and want to go deeper. I do not support the zero-to-60 blind-flooding approach that is promoted by most people. Take it slow and listen to your mind, heart, and body.
If your iboga dose is low enough to allow you to remain consciously aware and talkative, you can dramatically increase the therapeutic benefit of the drug by combining it with inner-child self-love meditation, and self-hypnosis, which should also be continued throughout each day as if you actually have a baby in your arms at all times. Stay in dialog with your inner child and become your own perfect parent! If you avoid this step you can get stuck in the traps of spiritual bypassing or intellectual bypassing.
How Effective is Iboga for Drug Addiction Interruption?
Do not over-estimate the benefits of large doses of iboga for help with addictions. As the famous underground ibogaine provider, Dimitri Mougianis (who has since sold out to the horrible ketamine craze as of 2024), mentions, in "Why Ibogaine is Not the Answer to the Opioid Crisis," iboga offers a space for inner exploration, but it is not a cure in itself. Although iboga does offer some unique benefits, there are much cheaper and safer ways to comfortably detox from many drugs, which I will list at the end of this article. (On the other hand, iboga might be the answer to the ketamine craze!)
As Dimitri points out, iboga is not just a physical addiction interrupter, as some like to claim, for if it were, there are safer alternatives as mentioned. Nor is iboga just a transcendent spiritual experience, for if it were, loveyhuasca would be a much safer route, not to mention spiritual practice which can be utilized to enable the inner-child self-love re-parenting. Having said all that, iboga is a uniquely "human" type of spiritual psychotherapy that often talks to you in the language you can understand, with benefits that can be felt for months.
The types of people who are able to break addictions for good from an iboga "flood" are those who are already highly motivated to do so, with a supportive environment. Others will relapse repeatedly, especially if their mindset or environment hasn't changed. On average, the 12 month success rate for ibogaine clinics seems very low, but it's still probably a lot better than the suboxone or 12-step program success rates.
Also, people who fail to stay clean after the first experience often will benefit from the second or the third done many months later, especially if they have identified the cause of their failure. With more extensive aftercare in a good rehab program, long-term success rate goes up to 90-95%, which is also achieved without any herbal or medical interventions, merely via a total change of lifestyle, such as is offered by recovery-focused farms which are common in Europe, but not so common in America due to a greater focus on profits. One such place in USA is the Denver Rescue Mission's Harvest Farm.
Which Drug Addictions Can Iboga Help With?
OPIOIDS: Iboga is very helpful for addiction to short-acting opioids (and somewhat for buprenorphine), but make sure you check the drug interaction information in the safety section further below. Timing is critical. It makes sense to use SR-17018 first to get off of opioids and then use iboga to remove cravings and psychological dependence background. For treating abrupt (not fully tapered) withdrawals, a flood dose of iboga is generally required, and that still only works very well maybe 1/3 of the time.
Ketamine, nicotine, cocaine, and amphetamines: Iboga is also very helpful for getting off these drugs. Check the stimulant drug interactions section further below to ensure your timing is safe if getting off stimulants like amphetamines.
Benzodiazepines, GHB, barbiturates, hypnotics, or alcohol: Iboga is not usually effective for these gabaergic drugs (what does work for this class of drugs is Syrian rue or Haoma).
THC Cannabis: Iboga has limited benefit for cannabis addiction (for that problem try CBD and palmitoylethanolamide), but even a low dose of iboga can easily reset cannabis tolerance. See the drug interactions section for THC below to get the safety info.
Some other beneficial supplements to help withdrawal symptoms for all of these drugs and general health include: Ecklonia cava (the king of brown algaes, best cure for restless leg syndrome and helpful for sleep (see my full sleep guide), but note that it lowers blood pressure, as does iboga, so dosing should be careful and spaced out to avoid passing out from low BP), CBD (note that over 200mg CBD inhibits metabolism of iboga, making it stronger), niacin (vit b3), N-Acetylcysteine, and Dimethylsulfoxide), Agmatine, Corydalis yanhusuo, and hourly Vitamin C to bowel tolerance (liposomal is best if you can afford it, Aurora brand is best value).
As mentioned prior, it's absolutely crucial to have a good inner child self-love re-parenting practice, and proper mindset.
How effective is Iboga for physical ailments?
Some people use iboga to heal from physical conditions like IBS and Lyme disease, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, TBIs, PTSD, other brain diseases, and other ailments that don't have easy cures (although in many cases there are more targeted therapeutic approaches). Anecdotes of miracle cures abound, but there is not much data on how common they are. There seem to be multiple mechanisms of action both physically and mentally/spiritually. One thing iboga seems to help with is giving people a greater sensitivity to what their body needs to be healthy. Soma can also help with this.
How safe is iboga for non-pregnant, mentally stable, physically healthy people?
As explained in the video above, iboga is a lot safer than ibogaine, since you cannot absorb a massive dose of iboga rapidly in the way you can with ibogaine. But doctors being doctors, highly purified versions of herbs are considered safer because the dosage of drugs in whole herbs is not standardized. Ironic!
One of the most obvious dangers of using iboga at any dosage level is that it resets tolerance to a variety of other drugs, so if you go back to using your drug of choice at your old dose, you could easily overdose. Assume you have no tolerance if you fail to stay away from your drug of choice at some point, and work your way up slowly. Patience pays.
Also keep in mind that by using *any* other drugs within a month of an iboga flood dose, you are reducing the effectiveness of the noribogaine and the integration period, and there could be dangerous interactions, so it is highly inadvisable, although some people have used ayahuasca, kambo, and cannabis to good effect, but keep in mind that the effects of other drugs are often amplified when iboga is still in your system (and sometimes, the reverse).
What meds interact with Iboga?
Drugs and herbs (together referred to as meds) in general should be assumed to be dangerous with iboga (and even within days or weeks of iboga depending on the drug half-lives and fat sequestration), but especially psych meds (which can cause mental instability for up to a year post-discontinuation), any meds that prolong the cardiac QT interval (there is not enough research to know fully, but here is a non-exhaustive list--even anxiety can prolong the QT interval), blood pressure or heart meds, corticosteroids, and anything that inhibits hepatic metabolism via cytochrome P450-2D6, like cannabis, grapefruit and turmeric).
Be extra careful with any drugs which have their tolerances reset by iboga, especially opioids, stimulants, and THC:
Long-acting opioids (including fent, because it’s stored in fat) should be switched to short-acting opioids for at least a month to avoid overdose, or the lesser known issue of serotonin syndrome (which can happen even with non-serotonergic opioids due to GABA signaling inhibition that allows extra serotonin production). Some people do use iboga to taper down on suboxone/subutex/buprenorphine, which is less dangerous than tapering off fent or methadone, because it doesn’t cause respiratory depression nor does it increase serotonin production. However, buprenorphine and ibogaine are both metabolized by the CYP2D6 liver pathway, so they block each other’s excretion, which can unpredictably increase blood levels of each of them.
After the switchover period, short-acting opioids should be discontinued prior to using iboga. You should be in withdrawal serious enough that you experience: goosebumps, pupil dilation, hot and cold flashes and forehead sweating while at room temperature, clammy/cool skin, hand tremors when arms are outstretched. Until that point, iboga won’t be able to take the receptor spots occupied by the opioids, and it might have dangerous interactions.
Stimulants: avoid iboga until 10 half-lives of the drug have passed. Example: about a week is safe for methamphetamine. Syrian rue is another option that seems to work, but same precautions, deadly when taken with the amphetamines, and additional MAOi interactions to check.
THC: Some people find iboga can reset tolerance to THC and some people find they combine well, but watch out for THC psychosis which may occur any time in the future after using iboga:
What Medical Doctors Say About Ibogaine Safety
If you look at the intro & conclusion to this Pubmed study, you will note that not only has ibogaine (not iboga) killed some people, but there is no totally safe way of taking a large (aka flood) dose of ibogaine without close medical supervision to monitor your heart rate, blood pressure, and electrolytes. And even with such medical supervision, deaths do occur.
Contrary to modern myth, doses cannot be estimated based on body weight, either, since people vary considerably in their ability to absorb and metabolize the alkaloids (like ibogaine) in iboga. Do not think that you can just go to your primary doc and get a clean bill of health which indicates you can take a large dose of iboga without risk, although it can be reassuring to have the following tests. Once you get these tests, plug them into Gemini for analysis to see how safe iboga would be for you. Use my general health research prompt first, and then add this specific cardiac-nurse-approved ibogaine prompt before uploading these tests to Gemini:
ECG/EKG for heart function
Thyroid function panel (low thyroid prolongs QT interval)
Liver function panel
Serum magnesium level test
Stress test
CYP450 genotype
Complete metabolic panel
Note: Gemini is pretty good, but if you want to be more sure of your safety, I suggest you consult with my friend Sam, who is a cardiac nurse. Contact me for a referral.
What Traditional Practitioners Say About Iboga Safety
My friend Andegue, whose grandmother is a Pygmy iboga shaman, says nobody ever died in an iboga ceremony that he knows of. Other Bwiti have told me the same. The legitimate iboga shaman has the gift to enter into the spirit realm and guide the participant safely.
So why does ibogaine seem so dangerous for First-Worlders?
You can rapidly absorb a massive amount of ibogaine compared to the amount of iboga root bark you can absorb in that time.
The average chance of dying at an ibogaine clinic treatment is less than 1/400 for a drug addict. Much of the time it was not even proven to be caused by ibogaine, and was likely caused by other drugs people snuck in or heart conditions they didn't mention. Chances of dying from overdose while on conventional methadone treatment may actually be slightly higher, according to myeboga.com.
However, an informant of mine who has worked in various iboga and ibogaine clinics in Mexico and Costa Rica revealed that very few deaths are actually reported. He said he witnessed one patient dying every month. Almost all of them were fent addicts. No reputable clinic would ever give iboga to a fent addict, because fent is fat-soluble, meaning you can’t know when it’s out of your system. You could take iboga and then go to the gym, burn some fat, and OD and die.
First-worlders tend to be more full of environmental toxins than Africans, and as iboga is a master cleanser, one could potentially die from too rapid of a detox reaction (herxheimer effect).
Many first-worlders would already be dead if not for their medication regimens or medical interventions, so the gene pool is not as robust as it is in third-world countries.
First-worlders tend to have a lot more childhood trauma than tribal people, because of how sick modern society is. Because of this, even with just one flood dose of iboga, many people with latent mental instability end up in a manic state which is very difficult to deal with, which is why it is best to be in a clinical or ceremonial environment where you can be properly cared for, not just dosed up and dumped back home a day later.
Confess Your Sins Or Die
The purpose of iboga initiation ceremonies for the Bwiti tribes in Gabon is for people to visit the spirit world (while unconscious for days at higher doses) and commune with the ancestors and/or God while seeking guidance for their lives. This is used as a coming-of-age ceremony for adolescents, as well as for anyone who wishes to join Bwiti at any age.
The main risk during an iboga initiation ceremony is that a person who has done evil deeds (especially murder) will fail to confess their sins beforehand. Iboga will then multiply the evil in their heart since they didn’t release it in confession, and they will end up dying from that magnified evil (Samorini, 1997-98). This is a simple way of removing psychopaths from one’s society.
Psychopaths in your society are probably a lot more dangerous than the iboga you plan to eat!
Continue to Part 3 for info on Usage, Integration, Providers, Alternatives, & Consults:
Iboga helped me have a healthier relationship to all substances (especially cannabis). It also helped free me of addictive maladaptive behavioral patterns and compulsions. It did wonders for my mental health and freed me of my OCD brain. Brought me so much peace and spiritual insight. It’s the medicine of truth.