The Ibogaine Problem
can the problem-reaction-solution game be beat?
My love for iboga started off with a naive interest in the wisdom of the Bwiti tradition, which I found personally revolutionary and profound in its simplicity. Questions Bwiti demands of its practitioners include:
Who am I?
What do I want?
How can I treat myself as my own first-born child?
And its even simpler recommendations:
Only confirm what you can sense from 2 out of the 6 senses, the 6th being the intuition. (Be vigilant with your beliefs. Ask yourself, is this really true?)
Become your own sovereign soul by communicating with your intuition and God
Remember that life is a gift
Care not to care (be mindful of the things that you care about)
These perspectives are deceptively simple; and yet, incredibly difficult to master — as are most of the teachings from the great wisdom traditions.
Alas, imagine my surprise — a few years into this — when I began to figure out that not everyone’s interest in iboga was so pure. Ha!
Photo credit: Author via MidJourney
Iboga speaks to my interest in root-cause thinking, which traces back to my interest in literature and psychoanalysis, and my own personal battles with being gas-lit and emotionally abused as a child. From an early age, I did not understand the behaviors of those around me, in particular, my emotionally volatile parent. My childhood allowed me to develop a deep sensitivity to my environment, which is in part a soul-endowed gift and a trauma response.
As I’ve continued on in my spiritual development with its lurks and perks, I’ve grown to appreciate the healing power of love to reverse all suffering and have seen with greater depth into the shadow realms of this 3D reality: greed, power, control, centralization, and death.
Because I do not wish to be overly pedantic or righteous in my views, I will instead attempt to guide a path towards inner-inquiry and self-realization as recommended by the great contemplative practices — Bwiti, the Tao, the Vedas and Buddhism. It is more compelling when insights come to us rather than when we seek them out through external sources.
Given the recent sensationalized results of ibogaine studies done by Dr. Nolan Williams at Stanford and his subsequent suicide, the Netflix movie In Waves and War, and Texas’ 50-million dollar initiative to study FDA-approved clinical trials with ibogaine in partnership with a drug developer, three primary questions have been circling around my brain:
Why does ibogaine exist?
Why do we have addiction, PTSD and Navy SEALS?
Who profits from ibogaine?
This is my current unpacking of these questions. Please take them with a grain of salt and come to your own conclusions.
To me, ibogaine exists because pharmaceutical companies cannot patent nature and exists to control the concentration of medicine to ensure consistent effects across participants.
Post-traumatic stress disorder was a term created after viewing the behavioral symptoms of soldiers returning home from World War II. Symptoms include flash-backs, nightmares, avoidance behaviors, suicidal thoughts and behaviors and hyper-vigilance, to name a few.
Addiction, particularly opioid addiction, which iboga can reverse in one treatment, has been an epidemic officially traced back as being created by the Sackler family
Which leads me to my next question, who creates wars?
I don’t see Gabon invading any other countries.
Who are Navy SEALS?
Navy SEALS are of some of the world’s most elite and highly-trained killers and operators of war hired by our government to protect our democracy. Soldiers are often firsthand victims of misunderstanding the cause-and-effect process of murder, which can induce intense feelings of guilt and remorse, especially if a disillusionment process of was I really killing bad guys? begins.
Who profits from ibogaine treatments?
Because iboga cannot be patented, the pharmaceutical company who can patent a synthetic derivative of ibogaine stands to win big financially and the insurance companies who can bill for it. An ibogaine treatment will likely start, at the very least, $20,000.
There is a lot of money at stake with the ibogaine movement and this is a problem.
Photo credit: Author via MidJourney
Bwiti Fang Grandmother Bernadette Rebenoit, upon the completion of an indigenous grandmother council of 13 that started in 2003, stated:
it’s no longer OK to come into our forest and patent our plants and use them without their teachings.
I am beginning to consider that the suicide of Stanford ibogaine researcher Dr. Nolan Williams, in the fall of 2025, as a large warning shot from across the veil.
Tread carefully. Manage your pride and your greed. If your motivations are not pure, iboga will root them out and show you in a dramatic fashion how to bring yourself back to the present moment for iboga is the medicine of the present moment, which is unconditional love. And as I’ve mentioned before, the cause-and-effect of iboga is more like a Ferrari than the Honda of psychedelics—psilocybin. It can move fast — too fast if you aren’t ready.
The war machine will not be stopping anytime soon, and even those naive enough to believe they are protecting our democracy nevertheless still deserve medical treatment if they are suffering, so what is the win-win-win in this situation?
Firstly, it is important to understand that to produce ibogaine is incredibly wasteful. For reference, it takes approximately 1 kilo of root bark to produce 1-1.5g of ibogaine HCL. A full treatment of ibogaine HCL is around 1-2g, whereas one could treat at least 10-20 people with 1 kilo of iboga at 10-40g per person per one flood dose.
Some good news: Scientists at UC Davis have created “ibogaine analogues and related compounds from pyridine — a relatively inexpensive and widely available chemical.” While one was shown to not be as effective, “the second analogue of interest was (-)-10-fluoroibogamine… exhibited exceptional effects on neuronal structure and function, promoting growth and reconnection. Additionally, it showcased powerful effects on serotonin transporters, which are proteins that regulate serotonin levels at synapses.” This may provide a sound middle-ground approach — create a product that mimics iboga but does not use any of it to make it.
Moreover, this detail may inhibit FDA-approval. Ibogaine is primarily metabolized in the liver by the cytochrome P450 enzyme CYP2D6, which converts it to its main active metabolite, noribogaine (also known as O-desmethylibogaine or 12-hydroxyibogamine). This is a concern because CYP2D6 is highly polymorphic, leading to significant inter-individual variability in enzyme activity. Approximately 5–10% of individuals in many populations (e.g., Caucasians) are poor metabolizers due to genetic variants that result in little to no functional CYP2D6 enzyme. In these individuals, ibogaine clearance is markedly reduced (often by more than 10-fold compared to normal metabolizers), leading to higher and more prolonged plasma concentrations of the parent drug ibogaine. This can intensify its pharmacological effects, including cardiotoxicity risks such as QT prolongation. While genetic testing for CYP2D6 variants is available, it can be costly, and results may not always fully predict phenotype due to factors like enzyme induction/inhibition or complex allele combinations. This pharmacokinetic variability contributes to safety challenges in clinical development and may complicate efforts toward regulatory approval (e.g., by the FDA), as it requires strategies like genotyping, dose adjustment, or careful patient selection to mitigate risks (summary written in partnership with GrokAI).
In an attempt to invert my own naiveness, I will state that it is my opinion and belief that I do not believe iboga/ibogaine is for everyone and it is a calling for those with pure intentions.
Ibogaine does not need to be made available to you just because you have a severe mental or physical addiction problem. This form of entitlement must be questioned as well. This gets into the moral and ethical realms of our medical system ie) does a murderer deserve a heart transplant over a child who can’t afford it? Again, themes of power and control permeate all throughout the ibogaine space.
This leads me to my next root-cause examination. The West has a nasty pattern called: problem-reaction-solution. Centralized systems of power create a problem, victimize victims, and then become the savior by ushering in a “magical” solution. Until we begin to see this, we will continue to praise the wrong things. Ibogaine, PTSD, addiction and war veterans are all symptoms of the western military-industrial-congressional complex and would not exist if the system did not create conflicts for more power and control of resources.
The root cause issue here is that in the West, the powers that be create the problem and then sell you back the solution and use marketing as a way to diminish and cover up these crimes. (Netflix’s In Waves and War documentary is war glorification propaganda. Navy SEALS are not helpless victims — they are elite guns-for-hire committing violent acts). We then steal precious resources from indigenous cultures and claim — or altogether demolish — their wisdom along the way. (Hello, did we not all watch Avatar?)
It is difficult to not feel super cringe about the ibogaine movement. Too many pieces are not adding up, too much money is getting involved, and too many power players are jostling for attention.
There is a long road ahead for ibogaine in the United States because it is a Schedule 1 drug, and in this instance, I am glad for the bureaucratic red tape involved in getting iboga imported and studied.
Is there a win-win-win outcome for the ibogaine movement?
Unless some sort of tithing is done back to Bwiti tribes or Bwiti elders are brought in to train western Doctors, I don’t see how this creates a winning solution for all parties. So far, it is looking more like a trendy flash in the pan movement with, hopefully, minimal legs.
Another potential solution I see is for people to stop depending on their health insurance for heath. Health insurance is for emergency care only. Save your premium and use the money to see alternative health practitioners. Yes, the standard of care is not as regulated, but you stand a better chance of healing than getting hooked on more drugs, which is what centralized healthcare will get you to do because, once again, you cannot patent/make money off of natural cures.
If you are drawn to iboga, please, be humble and be sure to make your intentions for:
the love of wisdom.
If you would like to support my Nima and his Bwiti tribe in Gabon, please consider a donation of $5—beyond.
Venmo: @soniahsieh-pllc
All proceeds will be donated directly to them.
Basse.