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Your weekly dose of drug facts while dispelling fiction
Unknown Speaker 0:00
This is a kunv Studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education. We're
Unknown Speaker 0:32
Welcome to another episode of the chemical collective. The chemical collective offers you your weekly dose of Drug Facts while dispelling fiction. Today, we're diving into the world of Ibogaine, a substance known for its psychoactive and therapeutic properties, particularly in treating addiction. We'll explore the history of Ibogaine, the country, the cultural significance behind its use, the effects it has on the brain and body, and how Ibogaine impacts both individual and public health. I'm Missy Bothwell. I'm Dr Dustin Hines and I'm April Contreras. Thank you both for joining me today. Let's begin by setting the stage with some historical and cultural context for Ibogaine. April. Where does Ibogaine come from? And when did humans start consuming it? Ibogaine comes from the plant tabernanti. Iboga native to Central Africa, particularly in countries like Gabon Cameroon and the Congo and indigenous groups, most notably the buiti people, have used it for centuries in their spiritual and healing practices. They've incorporated it into rituals aimed at connecting with the spiritual realm and ancestors. And the use of the bogain especially in the context of the buiti religion is believed to date back to pre colonial times, with the fang people of Gabon among the earliest documented users. That's super fascinating. You know this section where we always talk about the history and where we kind of found this out for the first time as humans, always the most fascinating to me. April, thank you. From a neuroscientific perspective, what's particularly really cool to me is how long indigenous people have used substance like Ibogaine in both spiritual and medicinal purposes. These cultures don't ever see it just as a recreational drug. They really see its medicinal qualities long before anyone else has that figured out. These practices just really not people going around, eating things, trying things, what's going on, but really a deep understanding of the substances, psychological effects, long, long, long before people like me, last year, published a paper on these type of chemicals. So super cool that people have known about this forever. Yeah. Super cool. Can we talk more about the origin story of Ibogaine? Yeah. So the origin story, really, of Ibogaine, is tied closely to the Buddha religion, these traditional rituals, Iboga, as it's called, is considered a sacred plant because of its properties that allow participants to communicate on a different astral plane or with their ancestors and gain some insight into what's going on in their personal and collective lives, allow them to deal with traumas. But ultimately, what these people use these drugs for is to seek healing. The ceremonies are profound. They're not something taken lightly on a Friday night. They're something that the whole culture comes together. And they're transformative. They often last multiple days. And When Europeans first really encountered Ibogaine in the late 20th century, they initially isolated it the tbgs, the tamarifa loss in 1901
Unknown Speaker 3:23
and then became interested in the stimulant property of plants long before its hallucinate hallucinogenic therapeutic potential became more widely studied, yeah. And I think it's really interesting to consider that shift, and how it wasn't until kind of in contemporary Western science that we're really looking at ibogaines effects on treating addiction, and it's I find it just absolutely fascinating to see how the cultural use and origin of Ibogaine is deeply spiritual, and we're now exploring it for very clinical and psychological applications to kind of
Unknown Speaker 3:58
exemplify The convergence of these two worlds. Yeah, and there's companies now too. It's not a shout out to anyone like deluxe and others. We're really riding this wave of psilocybin right now. But you know, there's way better drugs than psilocybin for curing things like major depressive disorder, PTSD and Ibogaine is one of those ones that, along with some of the mescaline compounds, I think, is going to be on the front page of the news in the next five years. So when someone says, Ibogaine, is it? Are we all talking about the same thing? Is there just one type, or are there different strains and variations of the plant?
Unknown Speaker 4:33
Yeah, there actually are different strains, but Ibogaine itself primarily comes from the tabernacle Iboga plant, and from this major plant, there's different variations that stem off and include this includes the VOA Kanga Africana and the tabernant Montana undulata, which both contain Ibogaine but also some very similar alkaloids and chemicals and but what's really interesting.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
About plant medicine is that these different plants contain different concentrations of iboga, and that while these plants all grow in similar regions of Africa, things like the actual plant species, the age of the plant, the environment it's grown in, the content of the soil, will kind of alter its concentrations. And it's really up to the people that cultivate these plants that expertly become aware of how to apply this in ritual practices. Yeah, and with that alkaloid too, again, this is one of the reasons I have, you know some interest in this compound, is that things like psilocybin, again, very popular right now. The active alkaloid in that is something called silosin
Unknown Speaker 5:43
the tabernalogues, which they're called, can really be modulated a lot, so you can change them slightly to give different properties. So exactly what April's saying, the biochemical perspective, these alkaloid contents in the plant can be quite variable in of themselves, different weather conditions, I imagine, different soil conditions
Unknown Speaker 6:02
also, there's been some studies that really show the time of year and how hot the year was, much like, you know, any of the solanaces, tomatoes, peppers, etc, how hot it is where they're hot, it really changes the potency of the plant in a clinical setting. People don't usually work with the plant. They you work with a purified Ibogaine to ensure consistent dosing. And in traditional practices, you know, they have somebody that really understands this, maybe has taken a small dose themselves to understand what kind of the current yield is. So, speaking of purifying it, how, how do you prepare Ibogaine? So in these traditional Buddh ceremonies, the Root Bark, it's almost always the root in the alkaloids, because that's where alkaloid plants, that's where it's consecrated, is harvested, dried and then either chewed, but like most alkaloids, it tastes terrible, right? So then it's ground into a powder. So something that you can more easily swallow quickly, the Root Bark contains the highest concentration of the Ibogaine, and participants usually consume it in some sort of ceremonial setting, often over the course of several hours or days. In more modern therapeutic context, Ibogaine is usually extracted for the sole purpose and purifloid into Ibogaine hydrochloride, which then becomes very easy to dose.
Unknown Speaker 7:20
Yeah. And it's this modern preparation that allows us to administer the substance in a controlled way, right? By using this hydrochloride salt form, we can ensure that the compound is stable and that make that patients are getting that accurate dose, which is crucial for safety applications, especially because of it, again's potency and potential risks, yeah, and again, because it goes into that hydrochloride salt form, it's very easy for us to manipulate this. Some alkaloids really don't go into solution. This one does, and then can absolutely be modulated in many different ways. How does the preparation of ebogain change across different cultures? Well, in Africa, the preparation tends to remain closer to its traditional roots, focusing on minimal processing of the root itself, and so the Root Bark is consumed, sometimes raw or slightly ground. And in western contexts, like Dr Hines mentioned, we've moved towards extracting and purifying the compound for clinical use. And this change reflects the different priorities, ritualistic versus therapeutic to guide its preparation. And, you know, I'm not all against plant use and what we're using in plants, but another issue is there's all kinds of other chemicals in these plants. Some of them may be even beneficial, but some of them are harmful. So it's important, then for safety, that we, you know, take these extracts in a lab and we're getting something that's consistent from batch to batch, versus one batch that you know might have something toxic, and it'll be three times the concentration, way more potent. And this is common when you're dealing with things like roots that are really evolved to concentrate all kinds of alkaloids, chemicals, proteins, etc. So ibogaines use is different between different cultures. How has it changed over time? Well, the use of Ibogaine has changed dramatically. Traditionally, it was used exclusively within this culture that we're talking about, a religion, the bowitty religion only for healing purposes. Over time, though, and in the mid 20th century, it started gaining attention in the West as its potential to treat addiction. So again, this is another one of those psychedelics, and most of them have this property. People are not aware of it that are anti addictive. I get asked that question all the time, are psychedelics addictive? No, not only are they usually not addictive, they're anti addictive. So in the 60s, a man named Howard lotzoff, who was a former heroin act himself, discovered Ibogaine, and he found that when he took it, he had almost zero cravings for heroin, and the withdrawal symptoms almost went away. And this really marked a shift in how Ibogaine was viewed, moving from a sacred substance to more of a potential medical treatment. Yeah, and I find this to be a.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Interesting trajectory, again, from a spiritual tool to medical therapy and lots of discovery kicked off kind of a wave of underground treatment centers in the 80s and 90s. But despite the fact that Ibogaine remains illegal in many countries, and what makes this shift so significant is that Ibogaine wasn't just reducing the withdrawal symptoms, it appears to have really long lasting effects, with many people reporting these reduced cravings for months after a single dose. Yeah, for months after a single dose, that's that's crazy. So when did people start consuming ebogain in the way we know it today? Well, people have started consuming it in a more therapeutic context, and again around the 60s, after lots of discovery, and although Ibogaine was used underground in many places, it's become more popular, popular in treating, particularly opioid addiction. By the 1980s underground clinics began to kind of emerge, offering Ibogaine as an alternative detox treatment for people struggling with substance abuse, and since then, while it remains illegal in several countries, its therapeutic use has really grown, especially in places where it is legal or on the unregulated Yeah. And what's really worth noting is that the clinical use of Ibogaine today is very different from traditional use in therapeutic settings, we really control the environment dosage and monitor patients closely for any potential side effects, particularly cardiovascular risk. These are always the risk with any serotonergic drug drug, because there you have a lot of serotonergic receptors in your heart. Also, the contrast with this is more spiritual, rich context in which Ibogaine was traditionally consumed, has different applications. So this idea of set and setting that we see in psychedelics is critical in it. You know, I really hope we can start to bridge those two worlds.
Unknown Speaker 11:53
Are those traditional customs or ceremonies we've been talking about? Are they still associated with Ibogaine? Yeah, definitely. In Gabon, for instance, Ibogaine remains a key element of the voided religious practice. The ceremonies can last for days, as we talked about already. They're highly structured, and really the goal of these is to undergo some huge change, some healing in people's lives. And these customs are still very much alive and seen as a rite of passage. I also was online, and although it's the internet and not factual, there's pictures and evidence of people now doing some form of what I would call holistic tourism, where they're going to some of these places to try the Ibogaine in these rituals themselves. Yeah, and I find it really fascinating how these ceremonies are preserved and kind of remain intact. And even the Western uses of ebogain focus more on just the clinical addiction therapy component, the spiritual component can't be underestimated, the same with all other psychedelic assisted therapy. So for some these experiences can have profound psychological benefits that go way beyond just the neurochemical effects of the substance. I want to talk about the science a little bit more. April, can you explain how Ibogaine works in the brain and what kind of receptors are involved? Yeah, so Ibogaine interacts with multiple receptor systems in the brain, which really makes its mechanisms of action kind of complex, but it primarily binds to serotonin receptors, particularly the 5h two, two, a receptor which is involved in the effects of classic psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin, and this is likely responsible for those hallucinogenic effects that people experience. But beyond serotonin, Ibogaine also modulates the NMDA receptors, which play a critical role in synaptic plasticity and memory, and additionally, its effect, it affects the dopaminergic system, which is critical for reward and addiction pathways and opioid receptors, which helps explain its ability to reduce cravings and withdrawal symptoms in people with opioid addiction. And there are actually a lot of research papers that kind of document this complex system when in particularly main targets of Ibogaine and orbogaine associated with its putative anti addictive effects. So there's papers in highly reputable journals, like the Journal of Psychopharmacology, that kind of explain the intersections of these complex modulatory systems. Yeah, and I think that's the ONA et al 2023 in journal psycho pharmacology you're talking about, which is a key paper. One of the things I really like in that paper too, and a receptor system that you didn't mention is really the nicotinic receptors. So these are, like, last week we've talked about vaping and tobacco. Most of your cortex really is acetylcholine, and most of that has nicotine and acetylcholine receptors. And it seems like Ibogaine is doing something there that we don't really understand, and this could be part of the neurotrophic factors relating to BDNF. But absolutely fascinating science coming out of it. It's really incredible. And to me, This drug has a.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
Lot of potential to touch so many different aspects of brain function. I keep trying to find a way to find a drug to say these drugs work on only this, but most of the serotonergic drugs have profound effects on PTSD, MDD, anxiety, eating disorders, and so they could really be a pency of a whole bunch of new findings and whole bunch of new drugs for us. So how much of the drug do you need to feel its effects in clinical settings? The dose of ebogain hydrochloride usually ranges between about 10 and 20 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. So for an average adult, that would be around 600 to 1200 milligrams, and this is enough to produce a strong psychedelic experience that can last from 24 to 36 hours. So again, this isn't something that you're just going to take off a whim in traditional settings, doses are typically less precise with participants consuming that raw Iboga Root Bark, but the goal is still to reach a potent consciousness altering effect. Yeah. And so again, in these ceremonies I was alluding to this earlier, the dosing is more, I guess, intuitive. And so when you're stepping this up from 24 to 36 hours, you kind of have time to increase the dose slowly. But a lot of times, what will happen is the person administering this, the shaman or the religious ceremony master will take, you know, I hate this word, a microdose, but, you know, a sub threshold dose where they just start feeling a little bit and then he'll give people a little more than that and make some judgments based on body size, etc. But it really is their experience, not measured as precisely as a clinical environment. So we talked a little bit about nicotinic receptors, serotonin and dopamine. Are there any other neurotransmitters that ebogain effects? Yeah, so absolutely. And in relation to, in addition to serotonin, dopamine, the one we already talked about was acetylcholine and norepinephrine. And these are big, big systems in your brain, and they're involved in pretty much everything. So they're involved in things like cognition, arousal, and with such a wide ranging system and interaction, multiple neurotransmitter systems also are in play. Sobogania is really a drug that's broad spectrum. Its effects impact mood, cognition, autonomous nervous system, everything. And I think, you know, when we think about drugs, we sometimes call them dirty drugs. These are dirty drugs, which isn't a good or bad thing, it just means they hit a lot of different receptors. Yeah. And I think that's an interesting take, because
Unknown Speaker 17:37
if you're thinking about the kind of catchphrase, and like psychedelic research, is that you're rewiring the brain. How could you expect just one neurotransmitter, one chemical, to be able to induce that much rapid, profound change? So the idea that Ibogaine affects multiple modulatory systems really fits well with the traditional use, because it's a substance that brings both physical and spiritual healing? Yeah, absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 18:04
So talking about Ibogaine as a dirty drug that's hitting all these different kinds of neurotransmitter systems, how would that affect, like memory and memory consolidation? I think that's a really good question, especially when you think of its therapeutic applications, because Ibogaine interacts with these NMDA receptors, which are crucial for synaptic plasticity, so getting those little synaptic connections to wire together and so that suggests that it plays a role in memory consolidation itself. And studies have shown that NMDA receptor modulation can actually affect how we process and store information, particularly for traumatic memories. So you can think about if you're rewiring the synaptic connections that are related to those traumatic memories with Ibogaine or addiction, you can see how Ibogaine can be therapeutic and alternatively, ibogaines impact on acetylcholine itself supports its role in general cognitive functions, including memory. And some research suggests that ebogain might help, again, reorganize or rewire these neuronal circuits to help process past experiences, especially those that are directly linked with addiction or trauma. Yeah, and also super cool, because you like, There's a very famous book by vandercool called the Body Keeps the Score. He's really the person that got PTSD into the modern day. DSM had us looking at trauma as something real, and his idea is that most of our trauma we're actually not privy to, like we can't see it. And so what a lot of these experiences are, and what the BI woody ceremonies are all about, are revisiting this personal trauma so you can deal with it as a group. You can name it, you can start to talk about it, and then potentially deal with it. So again, amazing that cultures have known about these compounds and how to effectively use them for millennia. Yeah, talking about the relationship between brain and body. How does Ibogaine affect the body?
Unknown Speaker 20:00
Yeah, ebogain has a variety of effects, effects throughout the body, and so in addition to its psychoactive properties, it influences the autonomic nervous system, which regulates functions like your heart rate and blood pressure. And users often report GI or gastrointestinal systems like nausea or vomiting, particularly during the onset of drug action.
Unknown Speaker 20:25
Ibogaine can also cause tremors, ataxia and altered motor coordination, and these physical experiences can be pretty intense, especially during the peak of the experience. So that's why it's really important to monitor patients closely in clinical settings. Yeah, and again, online, you can see some ceremonies that take place with this. And it really mirrors what we see. The physical symptoms are really seen by these cultures as a purification, a process that people need to get something that's stored inside them out, and really that's what allows these people to move deeper into their spiritual journey.
Unknown Speaker 21:00
So I know we mentioned that
Unknown Speaker 21:03
any drug that's affecting the serotonergic system can then have cardiovascular risks because of serotonin receptors in the heart. So can we talk more about how bubo gain affects the cardiovascular system? Yeah, so it's back to those serotonergic receptors. Remember, there's different subtypes, and the main subtype that hallucinogens work on is the five ht, two A. So you have two a in your heart and in your brain. You also have 2b in your heart and your brain. So there is really no drug right, that hits just perfectly one receptor. And so when you're getting a little with the two a that's causing the experience with Ibogaine, you're getting some tube that's altering your heart. And what happens is that you can get something called bradycardia, which is a slowing of the heart rate, also hypertension, elevated blood pressure. And so these are all changes that really come about from ibogaines effect, as April was talking about, on the autonomic nervous system. And then it further hits what are called her channels, but ion channels in your heart, and in some cases, especially with higher doses, there's a risk of developing, you know, your heart not beating exactly the same way each time, which we call an arrhythmia, or even Sudden cardiac events. Although I wasn't able to find this for Ibogaine, but definitely for to be like drugs. This is well known. And again, this is why these are powerful medicine. And right? Medical supervision is critical for anyone who's thinking about using these. And as we'll talk on a second, they're illegal.
Unknown Speaker 22:35
Yeah? So in traditional ceremonies, these risks are going to be less understood, but participants are closely watched through the whole experience by experienced healers, and so while these ceremonies are intense, they also have layers of spiritual meaning that people can guide others through these physical challenges. So we've talked a lot about the benefits of ibagan and a little bit about some potential risks. Can we talk some more about the use and misuse? Is there a recommended daily intake? Well, there's no recommended daily intake of ebogain. It's not a substance that's meant to be taken regularly, and in most therapeutic contexts, it's administered as a one time or very occasional dose, particularly for addiction treatment, and that's part of what makes these substances so interesting and exciting to research, too. And the idea is that a single high dose can provide this reset for the brain's neurochemistry. And aftercare focuses actually more on the psychological integration, rather than repeated dosing. And some individuals experience experiment with taking very small doses or micro doses over a long period. But that's not well studied, and it doesn't really have a standardized guide, guideline for this substance. And you know, traditionally,
Unknown Speaker 23:54
Iboga Ibogaine is not something you would take often in these cultures, it was something used again for sick people, once or twice in a lifetime. We get this a lot. And you know, anyone who's taken psychedelics, you know, there's, it's usually a pretty traumatic experience in and of itself, the not looking to wake up the next day and do it again, if, if ever, right? So most people that do psychedelics, on the most part, do it once or twice in a lifetime, and it became pretty serious. So it's really considered a rite of passage in these cultures, something you would only do once or twice in your life, and under very particular circumstances, the experience is super profound on all psychedelics. It's not something that needs typically to be repeated frequently.
Unknown Speaker 24:41
Can we talk more about the addictive properties or the anti addictive properties? Oh, yes, please. This, this is, this is the big one I always like to talk about. And I know April, you know lots of papers on this, because we've been talking about this in your thesis a lot lately. But almost all psychedelics are anti addictive. So if you get one.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
A message today, please hear that. Yeah, that's something that I really am. Probably the first thing that comes out of my mouth when people ask me about psychedelics is I can't express enough that Ibogaine and other psychedelic compounds are not addictive, and in fact, their effects exert quite the opposite. They're used to treat addiction, and we kind of talked about this earlier, but they help treat addiction related to opioids, alcohol and other stimulants. And so the changes it induces actually help reduce these cravings and withdrawal Cyst Symptoms, which is why it's super effective in detox settings. And again, while the experience can be intense and even transformative for some people, it doesn't seem to reduce the same compulsive behaviors associated with addictive substances. However, again, it's important to note that some individuals might develop a psychological attachment to the experience itself, but I find that to be really rare, and there's a plethora of systematic literature. I found this great literature review in humans, not just rodent animals, because I think that's another thing that people bring up too, that a lot of the research is just in preclinical models, but in human studies, there's this dos Santos paper from the Journal of Psychedelic Studies in 2017 that records papers as Early as 1994 that document the main results of
Unknown Speaker 26:22
removing withdrawal symptoms after 24 to 38 hours, or reducing and increasing abstinence from a certain compound over time. So the paper is there, and the research is there, and it's just hard to argue with. Yeah, and super cool in that paper, the DeSantis 2017 is that some of I don't know if you have Alpers work, but Alpers works pretty cool. Alpert 99 and then we also have Alper 2001 a big player in this field, showing, look, these compounds are anti addictive. That's really exciting. That's something you can take once. Could have anti addictive properties for different types of addictions? Can we talk about how Ibogaine can play a role in anxiety or depression? Yeah, there's growing evidence that Ibogaine might help alleviate symptoms anxiety and depression, particularly in individuals who are dealing with addiction. So we know addiction isn't somebody that just wants to take drugs, right? It's somebody that's usually using drugs to treat something, typically trauma. And so we say trauma is the number one gateway to addiction. So by addressing the root causes of the addiction and helping people have this reset of the reward system, it again can really lead to improvements in mood and give people emotional clarity. This is what we talk about when we talk about the profound experience. However, like all things, it's not a cure all. You don't just take this. This this is what you need, and everything's better. And these, these effects really vary from person to person.
Unknown Speaker 27:49
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, because in boide ceremonies himself, Iboga is often used to help people face their fears, which can be very personal and laden with a history of experience, or these unresolved traumas. And so the idea is that by confronting these issues head on, you can move past them and find peace and healing. But it's not always easy, and it can be emotionally challenging. Is it possible to overdose? Yes, and here's something with other drugs like psilocybin, it's always possible to overdose. But, you know, psilocybin, I think the best result shows about
Unknown Speaker 28:26
28 pounds of mushrooms are needed. That's not the case with Ibogaine. So there have been reported fatalities, particular unsupervised settings and all kinds of other areas where there is, you know, serious mistakes been made with doses. Yeah, and in traditional ceremonies, there's always a healer or guide present to monitor participants. They understand the risks and know how to support people through the experience, but it's still powerful and potentially dangerous if not used properly well. Thank you both for such a comprehensive discussion on ebogain. This has been fascinating.
Unknown Speaker 29:00
I run Venom knife. When I step into the jungle, I move. I've never been a winner.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai