L.A. Times Ibogaine Article

In my quest to bring you the best articles and information on ibogaine, I came across an article from the Los Angeles Times written by Vince Beiser in 2004. I know this isn't exactly timely, but I believe content is king, and there's no doubt Mr. Beiser has composed a well written and researched journalistic piece on ibogaine treatment.

Beiser follows the treatment of Craig (not his real name) from Salt Lake City to San Diego to Tijuana, Mexico to be treated for his $1500 a month addiction to OxyContin and other painkillers.

Yes, there's all that stuff about Howard Lotsof and his discovery in the 1960's, the oft-repeated tale that has now become a full fledged urban legend and made Howard a bonafide folk hero and anti-establishment renegade. He's the poster child celebrity for addiction treatment around the world.

But when you peel away the repetitive addict crusader sub-story, there are actually kernels of information about Drs. Stanley Glick and Deborah Mash's significant efforts to obtain FDA approval for ibogaine analogues and metabolites. Not to mention Mash's Saint Kitt's Caribbean clinic where she has gathered scientific data on hundreds of patients. Mr. Beiser also reports on the efforts of Marc Emery, founder of the Iboga Therapy House in Vancouver, Canada and the Ibogaine Association in Mexico.

Overlooking the fact that Ms. Mash and Mr. Lotsof have had well publicized disputes and all around nastiness between them, I will say she did become an advocate and has done more in the scientific arena to bring ibogaine treatment to the people than any other scientist.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Getting that kind of proof requires controlled experiments on human subjects, which is what Mash is working toward. She has isolated a molecule called noribogaine, which is produced in the body as it metabolizes ibogaine, and which she believes is the key agent that blocks drug cravings. She is trying to get FDA approval to start human testing. On a parallel track, Stanley Glick has synthesized a chemical cousin of ibogaine dubbed 18-MC, which he also hopes to market.

Both Mash and Glick think their ibogaine derivatives will give users the drug-blocking effect without the hallucinations–something both believe is necessary if the FDA is to approve their products.

But would eliminating ibogaine’s psychedelic side diminish its effectiveness? No one knows. “For me, the ideal would be for people to take ibogaine in a controlled environment, and use the experience as part of their psychotherapy,” Mash says. “Then slap a noribogaine patch on them.”

To read the complete article, click The Magical Mystery Tour.

The ENDABUSE Report Video on Ibogaine - Part 1 of 6

In 1994 Howard and Norma Lotsof and I decided to produce a corporate video on the status of NDA International's patents involving the ENDABUSE Procedure using Ibogaine Hydrochloride in the treatment of addictive chemical dependency disorders. The result was a 56 minute video that featured Howard as NDA president, scientists that presented ethnobotanical research (BeLinda Hayes, PhD) and animal studies (Patrica Broderick, Phd; Stanley Glick, MD and M.R. Dzoljic, PhD, MD) to the Food and Drug Administration, 6 addicts who were treated with ibogaine, social workers Rommell Washington and Barbara Judd, and a doctor who observed patients using the ENDABUSE Procedure (tm).




Part 1 of this 6 video series features the scientists who performed animal studies. Future videos will focus on testimonials from addicts and those who work with them.

Howard, Norma and I met as film students at New York University in 1973. It was a natural for us to document the early history of this project. I shot all the footage with Howard's assistance on lighting and Howard, Norma and I spent days in the editing room with a NewTek Video Toaster system painstakingly constructing each edit on a linear editing system using 2 VCRs. Although primitive compared to non-linear computer video editing systems today, we made do with what we had and put together the very first comprehensive video documenting the science of ibogaine combined with addict, social worker, and medical testimonials on its efficacy.

Since 1994, The ENDABUSE Report video has been shown at conferences all over the world to scientists, lay-people, organizers, and addicts. Dana Beal has ripped off parts without my permission for use in his own ibogaine videos (Dana is a friend, so I'm okay with this. He just never asked me for my okay).

This video has to be viewed in the context of history. In 1994 Howard Lotsof was still considered by the medical and 99.9% of the scientific community to be an ex-addict crackpot with unsubstantiated and ridiculous, laughable claims for a Schedule 1 illegal hallucinogen derived from the root of an African shrub that indigenous peoples have been using for centuries.

Nobody outside of a handful (counted on one hand) of scientific researchers and a very few of the addict community believed anything Howard had to say. To the medical, pharma-industrial complex, and our government, why should they believe a word of what this lay person and a bunch of outcast drug addicts were saying? Who the hell cares about society's lepers and this whining, pain-in-the-ass, ex-addict who just wouldn't shut up about ibo-who? Who did he think he was, anyway?

Fourteen years later over 300 scientific papers have been published on ibogaine. Ken Alper, MD, of NYU Medical Center estimates over 4,000 addicts have been successfully treated in mostly non-clinical settings using ibogaine to eliminate narcotic withdrawal and reduce drugs cravings from weeks to months to years. The U.S. government and your friendly neighborhood pharmaceutical conglomerates with tens of billions in profits each year continue to ignore ibogaine and millions of addicts around the world and choose to focus on drugs to maintain male erections (sorry for the dig, I know they manufacture a lot of very important drugs to treat diseases and help people like you and me).

Enough of my ranting! Thank goodness for blogs so people like me can rant and chill out in my spare time when I should be watching the tube.

BTW - I apologize for the quality of this video. The original was shot and edited on S-VHS; only a VHS dub could be found at this time to be digitized. I'm still in the process of locating the S-VHS edit master and hope to re-post a higher quality excerpt in the future.

In the meantime, please sit back, pull on some good squeeze, and enjoy.