S2E43: Ibogaine Inquiries Part V: Before the Forest Is Gone

As global interest in ibogaine accelerates, the consequences are already being felt in Gabon. Wild Iboga is disappearing, prices are rising, and traditional practitioners are losing access to a plant that has shaped spiritual and communal life for generations. And beyond the forest, inexperienced providers are beginning to offer powerful ceremonies without the training, accountability, or relationships that Bwiti leaders believe the work requires. In the final episode of The Ibogaine Inquiries, we examine what can happen when a sacred medicine spreads faster than the wisdom surrounding it. Conservationist Yann Guignon, Bwiti master Simon Pierre, and Indigenous scholar Dr. Christine Dindisi explore the dangers of commodification, and the possibility of a different path forward. _______ A note to listeners: This series is intended to inform, not encourage the use of ibogaine. Ibogaine is a powerful psychoactive substance with serious medical risks and should never be used without thorough medical evaluation and appropriate supervision. As you'll hear throughout this series, increasing global demand has also had profound consequences for the Indigenous communities in Gabon who have safeguarded Iboga and its traditions for generations. We encourage you to listen to the full series before drawing conclusions or seeking out treatment. _______ To support the indigenous peoples of Gabon, Africa and help protect the sacred Iboga plant, please visit https://blessingsoftheforest.org/ where you can learn about those who use this medicine ceremoniously, have for thousands of years, and whose access is in grave danger. _______ Join The Telepathy Tapes Backstage Pass to get ad-free episodes, never-before-heard interviews, behind-the-scenes documentary footage, and access to our private Discord community. This is your invitation to come closer. To help shape what’s next. To be more than a listener… to be a co-creator of this paradigm shift. So if you’ve felt moved, if you’ve felt seen, if you’ve felt the call, subscribe today and join us: thetelepathytapes.com. https://thetelepathytapes.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:32Speaker 02

  Before we begin, a brief disclaimer. Ibogaine is a powerful psychoactive substance. It is not legal in the United States, can be dangerous when administered improperly, and is not appropriate for everyone. This series is not intended as medical advice or an endorsement of treatment. The experiences described by guests reflect their personal accounts, and listeners should conduct extensive research and consult qualified medical professionals before making any decisions related to ibogaine or other psychedelic substances.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Hi, everyone. This is Kai Dickens, and welcome to The Ibogaine Inquiries, a mini-series from TTT Media exploring one of the most promising, controversial, and misunderstood substances in the world of mental health and addiction recovery. This is part five, the final episode of Ibogaine Inquiries. Last episode, we explored how iboga, a sacred medicine protected by the people of Gabon for generations, gradually made its way into Western science. We heard how decades of research, patents, and growing global interest left many in Gabon feeling that their knowledge had been shared without their voices. We also introduced you to the Nagoya Protocol, an international agreement created to ensure that when indigenous knowledge and biological resources are used, the communities who have stewarded them

• 2:54Speaker 02

  are included in the process and share in the benefits. But even with these protections in place, people are finding their way around them to expedite the use of this sacred plant. Today, we turn back to Gabon, where conservationists and traditional Bwiti practitioners say the consequences are very much happening already.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  What is happening in Gabon is in 50 years, we estimate that 85% to 90% of the iboga from the wild area, from the public domain, disappeared, has been poached.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  That's Yan Ginyan again. We heard from him throughout this series. His mission involves protection for the iboga plant and traditional knowledge that goes along with it. Yan says the amount of poaching they're seeing is largely restricting access to something very spiritually essential to local communities, who have traditionally had easy access in the wild. I'll let him and our producer Catherine take it from here.

• 3:48Speaker 03

  So it started to be a big business, and iboga started to disappear into the wild. It started to become a problem for traditional practitioners. And now 80% of Gabonese people are living in the cities, where you can't grow iboga. So they depend on the public domain. I mean, they want some iboga. They go into the forest and to harvest iboga. But now it's become very complicated to find iboga in Gabon.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Today, roughly 80% of Gabon's population lives in cities. Traditionally, people could harvest the iboga they needed from the surrounding forest. But as wild plants disappear, that access is becoming much more difficult.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  There's a huge traffic around iboga to sell to the West. Because for two centuries, the West is looking for iboga. Gabon is a very little country. It's 2 million people. And 80% of people are in the cities. The countryside become empty. So there's nobody to check what's going on into the public domain.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Additionally, with all the poaching, the quality of the plant is decreasing. The plant takes many years to fully mature. And the younger it is when uprooted, the lower the quality of the medicine will be. The demand versus Gabon's ability to plant and give the shrub time to mature is not lining up.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  The quality is decreasing of iboga because the biggest ancient tree are harvested. You know, in the US, when you talk about iboga, you used to tell it's a bush, a little tree. It's not true. If you let iboga grow, I know some places in Gabon where there's some trees that are eight meters high. But all the big tree has been harvested because it provide more root bark, you know? That is, that contains the medicine. So now the quality become low and low because younger the tree is, lower the quality is, right?

• 5:30Speaker 02

  With limited oversight across such a large forested region, professional poachers have been able to harvest iboga from the wild and sell it into an increasingly lucrative international market.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  And also, what's going on is that iboga poachers prefer to sell to Westerners that pay more expensive than medicine than Gabonese themselves. They give the priority to the West that pay more expensive. The price become higher, including for Gabonese people, because the medicine is more hard to find.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  As wild iboga becomes harder and more expensive to access, more people are relying on medicine sold in city markets. Yan says some sellers mix the root bark with other plants to increase the volume, substitutes that can sometimes be toxic.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  So now it creates an accident because it's mixed with other plants that could be dangerous.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Because of this strain, people who have been practicing Bwiti, unable to find the shrub, are turning to alternative substances to practice the sacred ceremony of initiation, which has never been done before and is negatively affecting not only their spiritual process and connection, but also their mental and physical health.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  And also, because the medicine is not easy to find and expensive now in Gabon, you can go to ceremonies where people do not have iboga so much. It's very rare that some ceremonies, only elders take some medicine.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  There are gatherings where only elders receive iboga, or where there is not enough medicine for everyone. In some cases, participants have begun using alcohol, or occasionally cannabis, to approximate an altered state. This can change the energy and meaning of the ceremony itself.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  So it corrupts the traditions because now people are on the influence of the alcohol during some ceremonies, sometimes more than on the influence of iboga. It totally changed everything. I will not enter into the detail, but it's not the same energy at all, right? So there's the consequences on the Gabonese side.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  But Yan says the damage may extend beyond the forest. Traditionally, becoming qualified to serve iboga can require years, or even decades, of training. When younger Gabonese people see outsiders return home after a brief initiation, begin administering this medicine, and earn significant money doing it, the traditional path can begin to look unnecessary. In Yan's view, commercialization isn't only extracting the plant. It is gradually eroding the value of the knowledge surrounding it.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  So now it discourages Gabonese young people to respect the rules of the elders because they see Westerners that do not respect it, and there's no punishment, no penalty. And they make a lot of money, and then they come back to Magambon with lots of money. And they start to corrupt the village for some of them to get more knowledge, to make more profit in their country. So it's reduced the value of the culture in the eyes of the young people who doesn't want anymore to follow the rules.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Simone Pierre, a Bwiti master you heard from in episode three, shares Yan's concern. He agrees that what is at risk goes beyond access to the plant itself. It's a system of knowledge that helps hold communities together. As a reminder, Simone is speaking in French, so the voice you'll hear is his translator. Simone, qu'est-ce qui se passe ici, en premier?

• 9:04Speaker 04

  La cohésion nationale, la solidarité. Ce savoir entraîne les étudiants sur des valeurs morales remarquables fantastiques. Par exemple, le respect des anciens, le respect de la nature, le respect de la communauté, des valeurs que nous avons besoin pour une société structurée, bien structurée.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Il est dit que ce savoir est le savoir que la communauté a reçu depuis des générations. Qu'est-ce qui va arriver et changer s'ils continuent à perdre accès? Qu'est-ce qui est trop mal compris par les médias occidentaux de ce qui se passe maintenant?

• 9:38Speaker 04

  C'est une très bonne question. Très bonne question. La première chose est que les gens en Occident croient qu'il suffit d'extraire la molécule d'ibogaine pour être la solution. Ce n'est pas suffisant. C'est une technologie globale qui utilise l'iboga, mais pas seulement.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  L'iboga n'a jamais existé en isolation au sein du Bwiti. C'est un composant d'un système plus large de enseignements, pratiques, musique, préparation et guidance.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  L'iboga est un reboot, un reset du système humain. Puis le reste du savoir, qui est autour de l'iboga, peut être considéré comme le logiciel de la technologie.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Dans l'analogie de Simone, l'iboga effectue le reset. Le savoir qui l'entoure est le logiciel. Et le N'Ganga, le guéreur extensivement entraîné et guide de cérémonie, est l'ingénieur qui comprend comment fonctionne le système.

• 10:31Speaker 04

  Le N'Ganga, qui est le prêtre Bwiti, deviendra l'ingénieur avec un méthodique très spécifique. Avec tout ça, l'iboga, le savoir et tout ça, d'une manière métodique, il va apporter ce que l'iboga et le Bwiti peuvent apporter aux gens. Le monde occidental comprend mal, il pense que seulement l'ibogaine peut être utile, bien que tout le processus, avec les méthodes, avec le savoir, le reste du savoir, c'est tout. Donc, l'iboga ou l'ibogaine est juste une partie du tout le savoir. Donc, c'est la chose principale que les gens ne comprennent pas en Occident.

• 11:05Ky Dickens?

  Le point de Simon est que l'iboga est seulement une partie d'un système beaucoup plus large de savoir qui a traditionnellement requise des années d'entraînement pour comprendre et pratiquer responsablement. Mais, comme l'intérêt dans la médecine augmente et que l'argent doit être fait, ce savoir est de plus en plus séparé de la plante, répackégé et vendu. Après la pause, nous entendrons ce qui peut arriver quand des praticiens inexpérimentés commencent à administrer l'une des substances psychoactives la plus puissantes du monde, et comment la commercialisation et la commodification du savoir sacré peut avoir des conséquences dévastantes pour les gens qui pensent que le guérence est aussi.

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• 12:32Ky Dickens?

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• 14:03Ky Dickens?

  Bienvenue à nouveau. Aujourd'hui, nous avons entendu comment la demande globale croissante de l'iboga affecte l'accès, la qualité et la pratique traditionnelle du Gabon. Mais les conséquences ne se terminent pas quand la médecine part de la forêt. Comme l'iboga devient plus visible et profitable, les gens avec une expérience limitée peuvent commencer à se présenter comme qualifiés pour l'administrer. Et avec une substance si puissante, les conséquences peuvent être profondes. Notre productrice Catherine a parlé avec Navea Wilder, qui a passé près d'un décennie travaillant autour de centres de rétroite d'iboga et a vu la force de guérison de la médecine et le risque d'une industrie qui expande plus vite que ses safeguards.

• 14:41Speaker 06

  Mon nom est Navea Wilder et j'ai trouvé l'iboga 10 ans plus tôt, vraiment pour ma propre aventure de guérison personnelle. J'avais perdu une sœur à un tumeur de cerveau. Dans ma quatrième aventure, ma sœur qui avait disparu était capable de venir à moi et de répondre à toutes mes questions sur la vie, ce qui était bien profond et un cadeau à recevoir de la médecine.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Après ses expériences avec l'iboga, elle a été employée par un centre de rétroite où ils administrent la médecine et avaient quelques expériences remarquables, mais aussi quelques qui la déstabilisent sur ce qui se passe dans l'industrie comme elle se déplace si rapidement.

• 15:15Speaker 06

  J'ai eu l'occasion de faire une call d'intégration deux ans plus tard pour le centre de santé de l'iboga. Et j'ai aidé les gens sur la call tant que ils m'ont appelé après et m'ont offert un emploi. J'ai eu l'occasion d'apprentir et de apprendre et d'avoir un approche très lente à beaucoup de choses belles que j'ai vues dans le espace de l'iboga et aussi beaucoup de choses qui étaient vraiment difficiles pour moi d'operer. Je pense qu'ils avaient des intentions de bien voulu pour soutenir et aider les gens, mais il y avait aussi une essence capitaliste, colonialiste sous le couvert de ce qui se passait. Et beaucoup de mes employés précédents, qui j'ai connu et aimé comme famille et qui ont grandi avec, j'ai vu qu'ils finissaient dans des situations qui leur coûtent beaucoup

• 15:59Speaker 06

  parce que le pouvoir, le argent, l'influence qui sont venus avec l'assistance de ces espaces. Je pense que juste le croître n'était pas durable pour la âme humaine, c'est pourquoi j'ai répétitivement repassé de ces expériences de cérémonie de groupe. C'était quelque chose que je ne voulais pas vraiment être une partie.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Navea dit que sur deux occasions, elle a suscité des inquiétudes à propos de certaines pratiques qu'elle croyait inérogables dans les centres de rétroite. Et ces inquiétudes ont été négligées. Enfin, les vies ont été perdues.

• 16:26Speaker 06

  Deux semaines plus tard, après toutes ces conversations que j'ai eu avec eux, il y avait des morts réels à ces deux centres et des vies humaines réelles ont été perdues.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  Nous n'étions pas capables de déterminer indépendamment si les inquiétudes de Navea étaient liées à ces morts. Mais sa histoire reflète une peur plus large partagée par beaucoup de gens dans ce domaine, que la médecine se propage plus vite que l'entraînement, l'responsabilité et l'expérience nécessaires pour l'administrer sûrement. Navea est revenue récemment de la part d'un praticien qui, elle dit, a commencé à offrir des cérémonies d'iboga coûteuses après avoir assis avec la médecine et voyager au Gabon, mais sans recevoir d'entraînement ou permission pour l'administrer de la communauté Bwiti qui l'a initié.

• 17:04Speaker 06

  Il a assis avec l'iboga une fois et puis est allé en Afrique pour s'initier avec le Bwiti et n'a pas d'entraînement ou d'expérience en réel servant la médecine. Je sais pour un fait, ayant été là avec lui, que nous n'avons reçu aucun entraînement pour réellement administrer cette médecine ou même la permission de servir le Bwiti. Nous avons en fait signé des contrats là-bas où nous ne ferons pas d'éléments sacrés de l'initiation pour n'importe quelle entreprise commerciale.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Navea dit que les cérémonies sont publicées pour 15 000$ par session à Hawaï.

• 17:38Speaker 06

  Il a réellement appelé notre même contact en Afrique il y a quelques mois pour demander permission de servir cette médecine sur le téléphone ou l'information et la sagesse de servir cette médecine sur le téléphone, à laquelle le Conseil a répondu "non", bien sûr. Et puis il a demandé combien, combien cela serait de recevoir cette information sur le téléphone, ce qui est, encore une fois, un disrespect de la façon dont ces lignes indigènes veulent se connecter au monde occidental entièrement. Pour eux, ce n'est pas à propos du argent ou du profit, c'est à propos de la relation et de la connexion à la nature et la forêt et la plante.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Mais le plus grand motif que Navea décrit échoe à ce que nous avons entendu des dirigeants Bwiti au Gabon, que l'apparence de consultation ou de lignée peut parfois être utilisée sans la profondeur de la relation, de consentement ou d'entraînement que ces communautés croient que le travail nécessite. Voici le maître Bwiti Simone Pierre encore. Comme rappel, vous entendez la voix de son traducteur.

• 18:31Speaker 04

  C'est le problème éternel dans les relations que nous avons avec le monde occidental. Le gros vide, c'est ce qui est dit et ce qui se passe sur le terrain.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Il y a un fort dialogue autour de la réciprocity, mais en vérité, les conversations que les peuples indigènes aimerait avoir ne semblent pas en fait se faire.

• 18:48Speaker 04

  Puisque cela, nous voyons des vidéos en ligne où nous voyons des gens qui vont visiter les gens locaux et c'est juste pour prétendre que nous demandons à ces gars ce qui est. Ce n'est pas vrai. C'est juste pour prétendre. Ce n'est pas arrivant. Mais je suis convaincu que nous pouvons toujours prendre les choses sur le coup si nous recommençons à partir du début. The problem is if the Western world is into an economical state of mind, that's a problem. It becomes a business.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  Plants like tobacco and willow bark have been taken from indigenous people, transformed into new formulas, allowing them to be legally patented and sold. And the result can be quite damaging. I asked Dr. Dindisi what the ramifications would be if we do turn iboga into a business too.

• 19:33Speaker 07

  As an academic, as a researcher, I think that without the participation and cooperation and collaboration of the traditional stewards of this medicine, that whatever the research results or whatever program comes out of this treatments for people is not going to be sustainable or good in the long run. We're talking, you know, generations here into the future, that this could have impacts for people, just like these other medicines that we've talked about. Tobacco, coca, poppy, these are all traditional medicines that are now the world's pharmaceuticals that can harm people and take lives, many lives. I think that these pilot programs definitely need to be

• 20:18Speaker 07

  having this conversation, even if it slows things down and takes time. I don't believe that creating these ibogaine treatment centers to cure veterans of their PTSD is the actual solution. It is a Band-Aid. The problem is not being addressed. As long as we continue to send people to war, we will still have issues. We are looking at the wrong thing here. Like, if we really are talking about the evolution of humanity, then let's move towards peace and not war. You cannot commodify a sacred medicine to fix the war machine.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Here's my conversation with Simone again. So what would be the ideal situation for the people in Gabon?

• 21:07Speaker 04

  The Gabonese government should take the hand on this field, which is not the case yet. And second, that our friends from the Western world start thinking into like an exchange state of mind instead of taking and only taking, you know? And that we don't find us in a situation some years ago about the tobacco in the USA. At the beginning, tobacco was a sacred plant and then it became a business to the detriment, of course, of the local knowledge about tobacco.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Simone also compares iboga to tobacco. This is not meant to suggest that iboga should never leave Gabon. It is a warning about the commodification that can happen when a sacred medicine is separated from the people, knowledge, and responsibilities that once surrounded it. For Jan, that separation also reveals a contradiction. Iboga is often described in the West as so dangerous that only modern medical systems can learn to administer it safely. But he says that framing overlooks generations of experience already present in Gabon.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  Now it's the United States decide what they're gonna do with that. And it looks like Columbus Syndrome, like they discovered it and they know how to do it the best way because, oh yeah, this medicine is very dangerous. So only US knows how to use it without any danger for people. I mean, in Gabon, there are thousands and thousands of people using it very often. I've been, me personally, to end dress of ceremonies with kids and with elders, some are 70, 80 years old, some are fat, some are sick. I've never seen once someone die eating medicine in Gabon. Never.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Jan's experience is anecdotal, and it does not mean iboga is without serious medical risk. As we've discussed throughout this series, iboga and ibogaine can be dangerous, particularly for people with certain heart conditions, medications, or underlying health issues. But his larger point is that safety knowledge does not begin and end with Western medicine. Gabonese practitioners have spent generations developing their own systems of screening, preparation, dosing, observation, ritual, and care.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  So if it was so dangerous, why Gabonese people are so healthy using the medicine? It's because they know how to manage the medicine, they know how to use it. I think that for the West, rather than spending billions or millions of dollars into researches on rats and dogs and I don't know who, into universities, they should find a way to make a study program in Gabon, link to US universities, and to look at the way things are done in Gabon.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Jan is not asking Western clinics to recreate a Bwiti ceremony inside a medical facility. He is asking whether modern science could approach Gabonese knowledge as something worth studying, respecting, and learning from, not merely extracting from.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  We don't ask to American people to make a fire in their clinics and to dance around, right? But to try to find what is valuable and what is very important and the way they can create something that is a mix of traditional and modern medicine and to share the profits, to share the benefits, to help those communities who conserve this medicine and this knowledge through colonialism, through evangelism, through slavery, through all these dramas for centuries, they kept those knowledges.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  Despite everything he has witnessed, Jan has not given up on the possibility of cooperation. He still believes iboga can become a bridge between Gabon and the rest of the world, but only if the people who protected it are treated as partners.

• 24:53Speaker 03

  So they are still very generous people, still very open-minded people. They still wish and work also for a better space where there would exist a real fair and sustainable cooperation between the modern science and Gabonese people. So we work on that. We work on that.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Over the course of this series, we set out to understand why ibogaine, a substance that remains illegal in the United States and largely unknown to the general public, has suddenly captured the attention of scientists, veterans, doctors, politicians, and people desperate for healing. We heard extraordinary accounts from people who say it interrupted years of addiction, relieved the symptoms of trauma, and gave them a renewed desire to live. We heard researchers describe a molecule unlike almost anything else they have studied, one that appears to act across multiple systems in the brain and body at once. But we also heard experiences that science cannot yet easily explain: life reviews, encounters with loved ones who

• 25:54Speaker 02

  have died, shared visions, telepathy, and the persistent feeling described by so many people that they were not simply under the influence of a substance but interacting with an intelligence. Those stories invite profound questions about the brain, the nature of healing, and consciousness itself. But iboga also asks us to confront some difficult questions. Who gets to decide what happens to a medicine after the rest of the world recognizes its value? Who benefits when sacred knowledge becomes intellectual property, a medical treatment, or a commercial industry? And what responsibility do we have to the people and places that protected that knowledge long before science had the

• 26:37Speaker 02

  language to even describe it? The people we spoke with in Gabon were not asking the rest of the world to turn away from iboga. They told us that the purpose of iboga is to heal and that they want others to experience that healing genuinely. But sharing is not the same as surrendering ownership. And collaboration is not the same as extraction. The people who practice Bwiti are asking to be recognized, not merely as the historical source of this medicine, but as living partners in its future. They're asking the scientific world to consider that iboga may not be fully understood by isolating a molecule from the forest, the music, the community, the preparation, and the generations of knowledge surrounding it.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Perhaps modern medicine and traditional knowledge do not have to compete. There is opportunity for beautiful collaboration, and a medicine intended to heal trauma should not create new trauma in the way that it is brought into the mainstream world. Throughout our shows, we explore the possibility that consciousness may be primary and more interconnected than our current scientific models allow. The story of iboga raises that same possibility, but it also reminds us that connection is not only something to study or experience, it is something we are responsible for practicing. As interest in ibogaine continues to grow, the decisions made now will determine much more than how this medicine is researched or administered. They will determine whether this next chapter becomes

• 28:03Speaker 02

  another story of extraction or the beginning of a more respectful relationship between different systems of knowledge. Jan believes we still have that choice. But he also believes the final outcome does not belong entirely to us.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  I had a clear vision about what would be the world if humanity start to disrespect iboga. I can tell you that iboga will win. It will win. But iboga's spirit will just destroy the world before the world destroy iboga.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  If you enjoyed this podcast, you'll find even more on the main Telepathy Tapes feed, where each week we explore consciousness, human potential, and the mysteries that challenge our understanding of reality.