WHAT IS IBOGAIN?

By Gypsy Taub

Ibogaine is a naturally occurring psychoactive substance found in plants in the Apocynaceae family such as Tabernanthe iboga, Voacanga africana and Tabernaemontana undulata.

Iboga is a shrub used by the Bwiti tribes in Gabon for sacred ceremonies and healing.

The root bark is powderised and ingested.

Spiritual qualities:

Ibogaine is so magical and powerful due to its spiritual properties.

Ibogaine helps you get in touch with your true self, with your higher self, with your soul, with God, Goddess, with higher consciousness. Ibogaine shows you the truth about who you truly are, as well as who you are not. It shows you the truth about how you live your life. It will show you how much pain you are causing people around you if you are living your life unconsciously. It will show you who is playing a positive and who is playing a negative role in your life. It will mercilessly shatter your ego into a million pieces to reveal what is eternal and true within you and your Universe.

Many people will experience dark emotions such as fear, dread, despair, hurt - during their first and usually in their consecutive treatments too. Those emotions come from repressed memories of deep trauma, often times associated with infant and early childhood abuse. Those are the reasons for addiction which is an attempt to run from that trauma and the agony associated with it.

Ibogaine reveals, helps you truly feel and then heal those dark emotions, for the only way to heal is by feeling your true emotions intensely.

Ibogaine takes you on a journey through the dark night of your soul and into the morning light, so to speak. Once you process a certain amount of your dark emotions you are able to see the light a lot more clearly. It helps you reclaim your true self, your soul and your true power which is immense.

Iboga is a beautiful spirit guide, a deeply loving and a tremendously wise friend, filled with compassion, a magical being beyond our conscious understanding.

In my language (Russian) “bog” means “God”. I am not sure if there are any direct linguistic connections here but to me it’s the best way to describe iboga (and ibogaine). Of all the psychedelics that I have done ibogaine brought me the closest to God.

Chemical composition of iboga / ibogaine:

I consulted the leading ibogaine chemist in the US (if not on planet Earth), Chris Jenks about the chemical composition of iboga. Chris has a PhD in Organic Chemistry from UC Davis, and about 22 years (on and off) working on ibogaine-related chemistry projects.

Here is what Chris had to say:

“Good iboga bark has about 5% active alkaloid in it, meaning ibogaine and close analogs of ibogaine which are likely to be psychoactive. The alkaloid content varies, maybe from 3-10%. One analysis I've seen had this composition for the known alkaloids in a very good bark sample:

Ibogaine: 7%
Ibogaline: 1.5%
Ibogamine: 2.3%
Voacangine: 0.2%

Ibogaline seems to be 2-3 times as potent as ibogaine with similar effects and maybe longer duration. Voacangine does not seem to be psychoactive and instead causes gastrointestinal distress, though probably not at normal doses of bark. I am not aware of anyone testing ibogamine in pure form. Tabernanthine may also be present but has not been recently detected.”

An extract of iboga that contains about 90% ibogaine and 10% other alkaloids appears to be the best for ibogaine treatments.

When the ibogaine community became concerned about the threat that the growing popularity of Tabernanthe iboga posed to its survival on this planet, many ibogaine manufacturers switched to deriving ibogaine from Vocanga.

I personally tried different kinds of ibogaine and discovered that the ibogaine derived from Vocanga was not nearly the quality of Tabernanthe derived ibogaine. Almost all my friends who experimented with me reported the same results.

After talking about it with Chris Jenks, I found out that what made my experience with vocanga ibogaine inferior to the original ibogaine was the fact that it was 99% pure and was lacking other alkaloids one of which, for instance, is 2-3 times as psychoactive as ibogaine is. Chris told me that in order to have a more emotionally and spiritually fulfilling experience one needs the presence of other alkaloids.

I have tried several types of ibogaine from different vendors. By far the best was Tabernanthe derived ibogaine from one specific vendor who used to sell to a lot of providers and whose medicine remains the most popular. Due to different circumstances that medicine is hardly available any more and for legal reasons I cannot name the author. But I did send a sample of it to a lab and the analysis showed the content of ibogaine to be 90%. That’s how I concluded that the best ratio appears to be 90% ibogaine and 10% other alkaloids.

After a few years of use most ibogaine providers came to the same conclusion as I did: Vocanga based ibogaine is not nearly as good as Tabernanthe based ibogaine.

What some providers do nowadays is mix vocanga ibogaine with a little bit of TA (total alkaloids) or root bark.

If you ever get a treatment I highly recommend that you ask the clinic /provider what type of ibogaine they use and make sure that you get Tabernanthe ibogaine. However, by now most providers know that vocanga ibo is less desirable and can easily lie to you about what type of ibogaine they really use.

Due to its illegality in most countries, high quality ibogaine can sometimes be very difficult to obtain even for providers and clinics. That’s why not everybody has Tabernanthe ibogaine and some providers/clinics use vocanga instead.

There are many websites out there with information about iboga plant. You can easily find them.