Why Ibogain

I am not a licensed doctor. All the information provided on this website comes form my personal experience and research.

By Gypsy Taub

Ibogaine is used to treat addiction, alcoholism, PTSD, borderline personality disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, paranoia, and other emotional disorders.

Here are my favorite ibogaine treatment testimonies:





On the physical level, ibogaine repairs the damaged neuronal circuitry, heals memory problems, cures chronic pain, infertility, weak brain function, autism, Parkinson’s disease. Ibogaine has hardly been explored by modern science. There is a good chance that it possesses many more undiscovered healing properties. Based on the results obtained so far it is a very promising herb that needs to be decriminalized, widely researched and made available to every human being on this planet.

When you encounter a problem the first thing you need to do is uncover and understand the origins of it so you can eliminate it at the core instead of chasing symptoms and replacing one manifestation of the same problem with another.

The root cause of addiction is childhood and especially infant trauma. Most people don’t have any memories of their trauma. Due to its severity, the mind created a wall between the child in pain and terror and the present you as you perceive yourself.

When I encountered my infant abuse in my ayahuasca journeys, I realized that I had spent my whole life and most of my energy on maintaining that wall that separated me as I knew myself then from my abuse.

All the unidentified fear, anxiety, dread and despair stem from those terrifying events of early childhood abuse. Having no memories makes it even more confusing. Many if not most addicts have no memories of abuse. Our mind shoved those memories into the subconscious in order for us to survive. Another mechanism of survival is shame. Our abuser and our own defenses convinced us that we were flawed, defective, subhuman. We felt that we deserved the abuse, and that helped us survive at the time. But at the present moment that shame is destroying our lives, and the wall that was maintained so diligently to separate us from the pain, terror and shame of our abuse, is no longer serving us but preventing us from feeling our emotions honestly, from healing and being happy.

Hungarian-Canadian ayahuasca therapist Gabor Mate said that addiction is an attempt to run from the pain and to fill the void. The pain comes from the abuse itself. The void comes from the separation that our mind produced to help us survive the abuse.

In conclusion, addiction is a direct result of rape and torture that so many of us have been subjected to as children, and even infants. Our society is unwilling to face how rampant infant abuse is. It is way easier to blame individuals and distract people from the real issues than it is to really face its own ugliness and to recognize the desperate need for not only extensive reform of our social and political system, but even more so to recognize the desperate need for a spiritual transformation at the core of our very souls.

And that’s where ibogaine comes in.

Of all the psychedelics that I have worked with (LSD, MDMA, peyote, 5-MeO-DMT, ayahuasca, psilocybin) I find ibogaine to be the best.

I am deeply grateful to all the above sacred plant medicines for their tremendous help in my healing process and my spiritual evolution. However, I favor ibogaine and here is why:

As opposed to all the above, ibogaine lasts the longest (a standard flood dose can last from 24 to 72 hours, as opposed to 8 to 12 hours for LSD, 4 hours for MDMA, a standard peyote ceremony lasts 12 hours while peyote is ingested multiple times throughout the ceremony, a bufo treatment (5-MeO-DMT) last about 20 minutes, ayahuasca lasts about 6 to 8 hours, psilocybin last about 4 hours).

The length of the journey is important and so is the intensity. The more intense the experience the more healing and the more life changing it is. Peak experience is essential for an ibogaine treatment to produce deep healing and to be life changing.

The peak experience is followed by 2 to 3 days of a lighter trance that allows processing of the peak experience. It is crucially important in my opinion to stay until the medicine wears out all the way, it is very important to stay for those extra 2 to 3 days and to allow yourself to integrate what ibogaine has uncovered. That time is also essential for guidance. People get a lot of guidance that helps them solve life problems that seemed to have no solutions.

Ayahuasca is the closest to ibogaine in the above list of medicines. I have tremendous respect for this medicine. Ayahuasca is very intense when a good dose is administered. It can take you straight to the core of your problem. However, in my opinion, ibogaine is easier to handle and less terrifying.

I had a few ayahuasca journeys that were utterly terrifying. 99% of the people would have never done it again. I find ibogaine more balanced where in one treatment you experience both the darkness and the light. In my opinion it is much easier to connect with the light on ibogaine than it is on ayahuasca. There are probably people who will debate that. I don’t claim to be an expert on ayahuasca. My personal experience with this medicine is limited.

Another thing I really appreciate about ibogaine is how clear the messages are. While there is a lot of symbolism and a lot of powerful mystical imagery in an ibogaine journey, there is also a lot of very clear guidance and insights into one’s life.

I will say that no other psychedelic, nor any other medicine in general has given people greater inspiration than ibogaine. It is very common for people who had their first ibogaine treatment to become fanatical (in the best sense of the word) about giving it to all their loved ones and to the whole planet. Many people volunteer at the ibogaine clinics and become avid advocates of ibogaine.

Ibogaine breaks down that wall of defense against the memories of abuse that is no longer serving us. It allows us to reconnect with our true emotions and our true selves.

While reexperiencing our traumatic memories (either literally or in the form of monsters that represent the emotions that we felt while being abused), we finally get to reclaim our true selves. After the negative emotions get cleared out and healed at least to some degree we are able to feel genuine joy and gratitude for life that many of us have not felt since childhood. Some people were so broken so early in their lives that they may not have felt those feelings at all, or have completely forgotten them.

In my opinion, the worst mistake we continue making as a civilization (I am talking about Western European civilization in particular) is that we run from our negative emotions such as fear and pain. To the contrary, the greatest lesson I learned from the Navajo Indians was to embrace the pain and face the fear. That’s what happens a the peyote ceremonies. Peyote helps people open up to their emotions and feel them intensely. That’s how those emotions get healed and it is the only way they will get healed - through re-experiencing them with full intensity. That’s what all psychedelic medicine is about - reconnecting with the disconnected emotions, healing them by feeling them intensely and then feeling the positive, expansive emotions like never before, which is also a deeply healing experience.

Our mainstream society is so nasty and hostile towards anything psychedelic because it goes against its oppression of the individual. We are force fed (often starting in childhood) toxic pharmaceuticals, or psych meds that are deeply destructive to the soul, mind and body and that never lead to healing, but instead help us suppress our true emotions even more, taking us even farther away from healing.

Mainstream doctors take us off of street drugs and put us on “socially acceptable” opiates or other nasty drugs that are often times worse and even more addictive and destructive than the street drugs. In the meantime people are thrown in jail for possession of street drugs. In jail the inmates get in line and receive pharmaceutical drugs to get fucked up on (I witnessed that myself when I was in San Francisco jail for 3 days). They put people on those terrible drugs and then call their so-called drug treatment a success.

We don’t do that. We only call it a success if our patient has no cravings and no need for any form of drugs to distract themselves from pain because the pain itself has been healed sufficiently to where it is manageable without any drugs. Furthermore, our patients are taught meditations, emotional release techniques and other progressive methods of healing and growing that allow them to truly begin and continue a new life without any further help from us.

I personally feel that we all need to receive ibogaine treatments at least once every 6 months in order to really heal and to be happy in the truest sense of the word. That’s what many indigenous tribes do - they part-take in shamanic rituals and consume sacred visionary plants on regular basis. They are a lot more in touch with their true life purpose and with their spirituality than most people in the Western world. Their society is far more healthy than ours, it’s like another planet.

I also strongly recommend microdosing with iboga on regular basis. I recommend that to everyone who wants to heal and grow spiritually regardless of how “successful” they may seem to be on the outside. You can read my recommendations about microdosing in the “microdosing” tab.

And finally,
why is ibogaine illegal?

Ibogaine was made illegal in the United States after it was taken by only 100 people in New York, as soon as mainstream media published a story about how well it cures addiction. I got this information from one of the older documentaries about ibogaine. (I am not sure which one. I might figure it out and add a link here).

There is not a shadow of doubt in my mind that ibogaine was made illegal because it is a threat to our heroin dealing government and to the pharmaceutical corporations who profit from their phony and outrageously expensive drug treatments (that, by the way, kill 100,000 people a year in the US alone). Furthermore, the same pharmaceutical companies are at risk of going bankrupt because ibogaine cures depression, PTSD and other emotional and mental disorders, that otherwise bring astronomical profits to the psych- meds manufacturers.

Here is a great presentation by a whistle-blower, a dear friend and one of the very first big 911 truth activist (who was assassinated by the government) that talks about heroin money and how it runs the US economy:



If you want to learn more about the deadly drug detox clinics in the US watch this episode of John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight”:



It will help you understand why ibogaine is demonized while millions of dollars are made by the deadly drug-pushing corporations.

Ibogaine also wakes us up and liberates us spiritually. That too is a threat to the New World Order, a threat to any and all totalitarian regimes worldwide.