My Experience with a Psychedelic Plant That Thousands Have Used for Release from Severe Addictions

This is the second of a two-part series on Ibogaine. Go here if you missed part one. 

Before Clare gives me the ibogaine she has me write out my intention for my journey, what I hope to get from the experience, and whatever questions I may want to ask the iboga spirits. She takes my intention and places it on a small altar she has built with candles and feathers. She runs my body over with burning sage and then spreads the smoke around the room, clearing spiritual energy and opening up the space for the iboga spirits to enter and do their work.

She has me lie down on the bed. Next to me on the pillow are a set of headphones hooked up to an ipod, and a special kind of visor allegedly designed by famed psychedelic and spiritual artist Alex Grey that improves psychedelic visions. Clare takes my hand into hers.

“As part of the treatment plan here, I make a life contract with all of my clients. Sometimes the medicine will open a door to the other side and it will tell you you can go into it if you want. I make my clients promise me they’ll stay here in this life. They came here to live, and that’s exactly what they’re going to do. I know you’re not in that place, but I gotta say it anyway. Who knows what you may want to do once you’re up there.”

“No problem,” I laugh, “I’ve got a lot to live for,” and was warmed by the truth of it. It was the perfect last thought before I began.

“Good,” she replied. “Here’s your test dose to get things started.”

She hands me two large yellow and green capsules containing an 85% pure mixture of ibogaine hydrochloride and alkaloid extract, In total I would be administered 1.42 grams in three doses between 11:15 pm and 2:15 am for a 17mg/kg overall dose, substantial for iboga. Clare puts on some ethereal music with elegant and comforting female voices and then turns off the lights in the room and leaves Joaquin, Jeff and I in candlelight to await the onset.

The first sign that ibogaine is working is generally a loud buzzing or ringing in the ears, which for me begins within the hour. Soon after that I begin to feel warm and things take on a light golden glow. I begin to see tracers following any movement, and it grows increasingly difficult to focus my eyes on anything. That’s when I decide it’s time to put on the visor and headphones and settle into the journey.

The shift to inner space almost immediately kickstarts a visionary phase. The blackness that is enveloping me suddenly forms depth and texture, morphing into a paisley-like tapestry that floats backwards, forming a three dimensional space that looks like I can reach out and touch it. The tapestry floats up and to the right, and then sails away out of my vision like the magic carpet of Aladdin. This pantomime, repeated over and over, would become the transitional metaphor for each new vision I would have as the journey unfolded, as if the floating tapestry was the stage curtain between acts of a play, or the title card between scenes of a film.

I begin to see kaleidoscopic fireworks, bursts of color and light, geometric patterns casting across the inner transom. They look almost like neurons and synapses firing, like molecules passing back and forth, valent energies interweaving. Then they begin to take on more animation and I sense—have an intuitive understanding—that the lights and patterns each have individual consciousness, that they are alive.

When Clare returns with my second dose, I remove the visor and see elongated grey spirits resembling the paint splotches of Jackson Pollack rapidly circling the room behind Clare’s head. Floating suspended in the same space are glowing blue orbs like energetic jellyfish. The spirits would plow through the blue orbs, separating them into droplets like oil in water. Just outside the sliding glass doors on either side of the room are pools of spirits and blue energy that cannot enter my room. In the background, massive spirit shapes bigger than city buses pass by. I relate this information to Clare, pointing out where I am seeing the shapes. She smiles and nods, knowingly.