S2E39: Ibogaine Inquiries Part I: Remember the Name

Why is everyone suddenly talking about ibogaine? After President Trump signed an executive order fast-tracking psychedelic research, a little-known plant medicine from Central Africa found itself at the center of a national conversation. Advocates call it a breakthrough for addiction, PTSD, and traumatic brain injury. Critics urge caution. But how did we get here? In the first episode of The Ibogaine Inquiries, Ky Dickens and Katherine Ellis trace ibogaine's unlikely path from sacred ceremonies in Gabon to veterans seeking healing in Mexico, and ultimately to the halls of American politics. Along the way, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, Admiral Jim Hancock, and physician Dr. Martín Polanco share the personal experiences that transformed them from skeptics into advocates. 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/ _______ Thank you to our sponsors! Ka'Chava https://kachava.com/ - Go to kachava.com https://kachava.com/ and use code TAPES for 15% off your first order. BiOptimizers https://bioptimizers.com/tapes - Make this the year you finally get your sleep, your energy, and yourself back. Get 15% off at bioptimizers.com/tapes https://bioptimizers.com/tapes when you use my code, TAPES. Shopify http://shopify.com/tapes - Start your business today with the industry’s best business partner, Shopify. Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at Shopify.com/tapes http://shopify.com/tapes. Zenni http://zenni.com/podcast - If your glasses are overdue for a refresh, go to Zenni.com/podcast http://zenni.com/podcast and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off your first order. Alloy http://myalloy.com/ - Try the original estrogen-powered M4 skincare from Alloy. Visit myalloy.com http://myalloy.com/ and use code TAPES for $20 off your first order! Luminara https://www.luminara.care/ - If you’re curious about energy healing and ready to experience it for yourself, Luminara is offering 20% off your first session for listeners of The Telepathy Tapes. Just go to luminara.care https://www.luminara.care/ and use code TAPES20. Quince https://www.quince.com/tapes - Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to Quince.com/tapes https://www.quince.com/tapes for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Dose https://dosedaily.co/ - Ready to give your liver the support it deserves? Head to dosedaily.co/TAPES http://dosedaily.co/TAPES or enter TAPES to get 35% off your first subscription. 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At Burn Apparel, we've been outfitting tradespeople since 1915. We believe in hard work, honesty, and taking care of our own. We make gear for the everyday worker. Our gear is built to last and priced so you can afford it. For over a century, we've had your back. Burn Apparel: durable, affordable, workwear since 1915.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:08Ky Dickens?

  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 episode is the beginning of a special five-part series that will be released every other weekday to this feed, concluding on July 31st. Ibogaine is a naturally occurring psychoactive compound derived from the root bark of a shrub native to Africa, where it has been used for centuries in spiritual healing and ceremonies. Over the last several decades, it has gained widespread attention due to reports that a single treatment can cure addiction, heal severe PTSD, and address core psychological trauma. To start, we're going back to the day that many of you heard about ibogaine for the first time.

• 1:54Speaker 03

  It's called ibogaine treatment. Ibogaine. Remember the name.

• 2:00Speaker 04

  President Trump now opening the door to more research, signing an executive order over the weekend to fast-track studies for ibogaine. Well, last year, we learned how psilocybin can help treat some mental health conditions, and now we're learning that ibogaine could as well. A powerful psychedelic that advocates say has shown promising results.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  There's more than 5 million people that are addicted to opiates right now in this country. With one dose of ibogaine, more than 80% of people are free of that addiction.

• 2:30Ky Dickens?

  But the hope and the story of ibogaine is far from simple. And to say it is a one-stop-shop cure is to ignore issues that widespread access could cause. In the West, ibogaine has been considered a psychedelic drug that many people haven't heard of until recently. But it's been getting a lot of attention due to Trump's recent executive order directing federal health agencies to fast-track research. The order allocates $50 million in federal funding to match state investments in psychedelic programs. Many are hopeful that ibogaine can be used for treating things like PTSD, addiction, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson's, MS, depression, and more. Some even call it a miracle. Those who have struggled with addiction for decades report losing their cravings after a single treatment. But there's other elements to the experience as well.

• 3:15Ky Dickens?

  Many who take it report having a life review, reliving core memories in vivid detail. Some report communicating with deceased loved ones, or being able to see through a blindfold, or even have a telepathic experience. Many say the medicine seems to be conscious, and they're able to receive very clear information from intelligences that they cannot explain. It feels like a truly exciting time for this area of study. But how did ibogaine find its way into the mainstream? Many of us have heard of mushrooms or ayahuasca, but why are we just hearing about ibogaine now? Well, to answer that, I think we first need to back up. Ibogaine is derived from a plant called iboga, and utilizing it as a sacred medicine goes back centuries, far outside the realm of Western medicine and the Oval Office.

• 3:58Ky Dickens?

  Communities within Gabon, Africa, have used it for thousands of years. In Africa, iboga is not seen as a drug, but as a teacher, a healer, a conscious living presence. And some researchers have begun asking the radical question: Does this plant possess a kind of intelligence of its own? In this series, we'll explore the promise, the risks, and the history of ibogaine. We'll trace its history from its indigenous roots to modern clinics, and pause to consider the very heavy repercussions to indigenous communities if we fast-track the sacred plant to the West too soon, without thoughtful conversation and engagement with the native people. We'll speak with physicians, politicians, indigenous leaders, and veterans whose lives have been forever changed by their experience with ibogaine.

• 4:43Ky Dickens?

  But to start, how did a sacred plant medicine from the forests of West Africa end up on the desk of President Trump, and supported by mainstream Republicans? To figure that out, we first spoke with former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who, by many standards, has done a complete 180 when it comes to advocating for something that can be seen as a psychedelic.

• 5:02Speaker 05

  I was just a big no. I mean, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just, don't talk to me about, you know, these drugs. I'm, they're bad. I don't want to have anything to do with them.

• 5:12Ky Dickens?

  Governor Perry is a seemingly unlikely figure to be at the forefront of a psychedelic push. But he's someone who personally underwent ibogaine treatment at a facility, and saw firsthand its healing power. But he certainly didn't always share this enthusiasm for drugs.

• 5:26Speaker 05

  I grew up in a very, very conservative, rural part of Texas in the 60s, when the hippies were on TV and the anti-war movement was going on. And I was very averse to all of that. I mean, I was, you know, I would have nothing to do with that philosophical position. I went off to college, to Texas A&M, in 1968. Very conservative. Texas A&M developed more officers for World War II than the military academies combined. So the idea that you would have anything to do with any drugs, illicit drugs, was just off the table. It was a non-starter.

• 6:11Ky Dickens?

  This sentiment was backed up when the war on drugs was introduced in 1971, deeming drugs "public enemy number one in the US", and then again in the 80s, under the Reagan administration.

• 6:22Speaker 05

  Fast forward for another 15 years and you go into the Reagan administration and Mrs. Reagan, who I dearly love Nancy Reagan, but her message was just say no to drugs. Here's your brain on drugs was another ad campaign. We were taught that anything that had to do with illicit illegal drugs was bad, bad, bad. I carried that into my political years. If someone were to come to me and said, hey, let's have a conversation about legalization. It's like, you know, get behind me Satan. What are you talking about?

• 6:55Ky Dickens?

  Rick's stance on the use of drugs has softened over the years, especially when it pertained to healing. During his time as Texas governor, he actually signed an order to legalize medical marijuana after meeting the mother of a child with epilepsy.

• 7:06Speaker 05

  The mother came to see me with a child. I want to say this child was probably 12 or 13 and they had tried everything for his epilepsy. The only thing that they had found that was functional, that addressed his epilepsy was medical marijuana. And I became curious and I became compassionate and Texas passed a medical marijuana bill in 2013 that I signed. And that was a pretty big step for me.

• 7:36Ky Dickens?

  So when it came to Governor Perry hearing about ibogaine, he was more open than before to a drug being a salve in a medical setting. In 2017, Governor Perry meets Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, author of the book Lone Survivor. We quickly want to acknowledge that the Luttrell brothers can be considered complicated figures. Marcus's Lone Survivor story has been publicly disputed and his brother Morgan's politics have been called extreme and even hurtful. But we bring them up here because their relationship to Rick was critical to his transformation around ibogaine. And that transformation has played a significant role in bringing this medicine to a much larger public conversation. When Governor Perry first met Marcus, he half-heartedly told him that if he was ever in Texas, to swing by the governor's mansion and say hi.

• 8:20Speaker 05

  He showed up and the detail called him and said, hey, there's a young man here who said, you told him if he was ever through Austin to come by and see you. And I chuckled and I said, I said, what's his name? And they told me and I said, I did tell that kid that last year. I said, send him in, we'll give him dinner. That was in May of 07. My wife's a nurse, of course, and she recognized his condition. He was addicted to opioids, masking it with alcohol. He was PTSD. He was a really sick young man, traumatic brain injury. And he lived with us for the next two and a half years until August of 2000.

• 8:56Ky Dickens?

  He lived with you? Wow.

• 8:58Speaker 05

  We had a extra room in the house we were living in. He really became like our son. I remember the first time I ever heard the word ibagaine.

• 9:07Ky Dickens?

  It was through Marcus's twin brother, Morgan.

• 9:09Speaker 05

  He was up working on a nascent program with the University of California, San Francisco. They were using Department of Energy supercomputers to map the brain of people who had had multiple concussions. And in a kind of a passing conversation, one day, we were talking about something and I heard him talking to someone about sending some of his friends, special operators, Navy SEALs in this case, down to Mexico to be treated for traumatic brain injury, PTSD, with this plant medicine called ibagaine. I'd never heard the word before.

• 9:52Ky Dickens?

  Still feeling skeptical on the matter, Rick warned him about his involvement.

• 9:55Speaker 05

  I said, you need to be really careful with that. I mean, I still had this aversion to anything that had the word psychedelic in it, but it flipped my curiosity switch again. I started talking to some of the veterans who'd been down and been treated. I started talking to some people at the Stanford University who were doing some early day studies on this. Fast forward to both Marcus, actually Morgan went down and was treated first for his PTSD.

• 10:31Speaker 05

  And then Marcus went down and was treated. And Marcus will tell you that it saved his life. Morgan will tell you it saved his marriage.

• 10:39Ky Dickens?

  Morgan and Marcus's lives were completely transformed by their experiences with ibogaine. But so many lives have been transformed by ibogaine. I'm going to pass this over to our producer, Katherine Ellis, who's talked to numerous indigenous leaders and physicians and veterans about their experience with this medicine.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  An estimated 3,000 veterans have undergone treatment in ibogaine facilities in the West, primarily in Mexico. And what's interesting is that so many of the veterans explain that the real solve wasn't necessarily processing the trauma that happened on the battlefield. Rather, the drug took them through a life review, back to childhood, where core wounds needed healing in order to really get to the root of their issues. I spoke with Admiral Jim Hancock, who actually underwent two treatments following a long career in the service.

• 11:25Speaker 04

  I always comment that people are running from or to something when they end up in the military. You were never the guy that, or gal, that absolutely had everything together. Otherwise, you'd have gone to college or you'd have gotten a trade and started your life a different way.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Jim started his career in the Navy at age 17 and 40 years later retired as an admiral. In his time, he took on many different roles, even earning his medical degree.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  I started out Navy Navy Power, got an engineering degree, got into medicine, did a family medicine residency, actually got to go through flight school and fly F-18s for five years, which was my first real exposure to combat.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  During the Kosovo War in 1999, in which the US deployed aircrafts in the Balkans, Jim was sent overseas and experienced active combat for the first time, which changed him.

• 12:13Speaker 04

  It was my first time really seeing, you know, what men can do to men and understanding the horrific aspects of that.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  But it was on a deployment in Afghanistan following 9/11 that Jim encountered an incredibly life-altering event while working as a doctor caring for injured service members.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  I was in a city called Sangin or a city called Nalzad. They called Nalzad the city of death. It was literally an everyday combat scenario, whether it was rockets, whether it was sniper fire, whether it was all-out objectives. It was a tough go. We had several hundred that were hurt, but we had 17 that died of their wounds. Despite my best efforts, all of the wounded went through my hands. You pay a price for that to be, you know. To begin with, as well as my other deployments.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  While caring for patients, Jim had to face man-to-man combat in a very rare scenario.

• 13:07Speaker 04

  I was attacked up close and personal and had to defend myself. And when I defended myself, I had to take somebody else's life in order to defend my patients. Really unusual, not something that happens. I didn't break any rules or any ethics. But as a physician, I did take an oath to do no harm. And so it puts you in a extraordinary position of having to make those decisions.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  On the same deployment, Jim suffered a traumatic brain injury.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  It was a daunting deployment, and that changed my life forever. My PTSD, PTS, I will call it, because I always say it's not a disorder, because my reaction to what I was subjected to is what I feel like is the normal human reaction.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  And he's right. Countless veterans face horribly difficult feelings following deployment. Post-traumatic stress can affect individuals in a multitude of ways that can last the rest of their lives. Upon returning home, many will turn to substances to self-medicate, becoming dependent on them to function. Jim turned to work as his escape.

• 14:10Speaker 04

  My drug was work. It was 20 hours a day, seven days a week. How hard can I go? How much can I accomplish? I volunteered for every deployment. But my family was paying a price. I was paying a price. My weight ballooned. I didn't take care of myself. I wasn't sleeping. My wife would tell you, which quite frankly is where the real story is, is in the wives and the children of folks.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  There are roughly 15 million spouses and dependents of veterans whose day-to-day lives are heavily impacted by trauma, relocation, and caregiver responsibilities of their loved ones.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  This came to a head in 2011, when my wife basically said, hey, listen, something's got to change.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  The military, to the best of its ability, attempted to help Jim. Medicines, psychiatrists, experts, many of these people provided temporary relief. But as Jim puts it,

• 15:03Speaker 04

  The gremlin still can't Colin every night.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  But then, by a good friend, Jim was introduced to a group doing research on schedule one drugs like psychedelics to treat PTSD.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  I didn't do drugs. I didn't grow up in drugs. I mean, I've been in the military since I was seventeen. I watched the Nancy Reagan commercials, you know, your brain being fried in the saucepan. I had not kept up with any literature that had to do with these drugs being used for PTSD or what they were.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  However, Jim's desperation for relief opened his mind to this form of treatment. Despite his concern about the consequences of how this might look, he underwent three rounds of MDMA treatment, which were fairly successful, until another unfortunate incident occurred.

• 15:46Speaker 04

  I was hunting with friends in South Dakota and unfortunately got shot in the face in a hunting accident. It put me into a really, really, really dark space. None of the medicines were working. I went back and tried all of the different modalities to try to get there. My world just kept getting darker and darker and darker with evil thoughts breaking in about, you know, hey, maybe this is easier not to live this way. I went back to nightly nightmares and I went back to no crowds. I had a little cancer scare. All kinds of things were, you know, it was like the wheels were coming off.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Luckily, Jim reached out for help.

• 16:30Speaker 04

  I went back to the guy that initially had introduced me with MDMA and said, hey, listen, I'm really struggling. And he said, well, I don't have anything here to offer you, but I can offer you to introduction to Mission Within and Martine down in Mexico. And I said, okay, well, what's that about? And he said, well, it's Iba gang.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself reaching for over and over again? Those are the pieces that earn a permanent place in your wardrobe. And that's exactly what Quince does so well. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton and premium stretch

• 17:14Ky Dickens?

  Denim. The designs are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. Their 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just $50, giving you the softness and quality you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag. And as the weather gets colder, Quince has everything you need to round out your wardrobe, from warm, responsibly sourced down jackets and cozy cashmere scarves and gloves, to beautiful 14 karat gold jewelry that adds the perfect finishing touch. I actually recently discovered their jewelry, and I love the 14 karat gold station bead choker. I wear it with everything. It can be dressed up, it can be dressed down, it can be layered with other necklaces. I love it. And you'll see it in a lot of our video podcasts. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com.

• 17:57Ky Dickens?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was the telepathy tapes. It's the best way to support our show.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  So Admiral Jim decided to give Ibegean a shot, desperate at this point for any solution.

• 18:19Speaker 04

  The first time I talked to the worker down at Mission Within, they said, "Well, the medicine knows what you need." Okay, no, I'm a physician. I know pathophysiologically what a medicine does. When I go to give it, I give it for a reason. I'm looking for an effect. And they're talking about this, "The medicine knows what you need." They talked in a vocabulary that I fully did not understand. "Well, the environment, you know, we're going to cleanse you with sage, and we're going to set up the environment, your intentions, and we're going to do all of these other, oh my God, Ramona things, right?" I don't

• 18:59Speaker 04

  have those bones in my body. That was not something I was prepared for. But MDMA had taught me that the environment was important. I didn't think it was as important as it was, but it truly is important that the medicine's given in an environment that makes sense. And the first time I did the Ibegean, I really did not have the preparation that now I would recommend, right? I was just like, okay, let's just go do this. And most of the SEALs I've talked to, the first time they did it, they said the exact same thing. Dude, I walked in, I'm like, "I'll do whatever, take the medicine and take the ride," right? And sure enough, that's what I did. And Martine and his folks were fantastic. I was monitored the whole

• 19:42Speaker 04

  Time, it was seeing my life through a lens that I had never seen. It was absolutely scary. I didn't fully understand. They talk about you see these visions, you see little tidbits of your life and they do. I mean, it's like a, you know, it's like the old reels from the sixties when you're watching the film.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  And for Jim, the visions were not what you'd expect. It wasn't really about his time in the service.

• 20:08Speaker 04

  The interesting thing, Catherine, they should be getting rid of their combat, right? When they go to the medicine and they, they visualize and they're in the third eye space and they're doing this, that you would think it would be about that god awful combat they saw. It's all about life experiences. It's all about childhood. It is all about your marriage, your kids, your, your everything. And now I know that I should pay attention to each one of those because each one of those are my lived experience that are causing me issues. I didn't put that together initially, right? That there was a reason I'm seeing that particular thing, even though it may be six months before I realized why I saw that.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  And here's Kai again.

• 20:50Ky Dickens?

  The founder of the mission within where Jim underwent Ibogaine therapy came to our studio to explain what these visions could be.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  My name is Martin Polanco. I am a physician from Mexico and I have been working with Ibogaine for 26 years. I'm here to chat about this amazing molecule that has so many benefits and helps calling to question some of the assumptions we have about reality and how these compounds work.

• 21:15Ky Dickens?

  So when Jim talks about having these visions, what are they? And, and does everyone experience them?

• 21:20Speaker 03

  So every Ibogaine experience is different and up to 30% of people don't have visions at all. And we call them visions, they're not, they're visual hallucinations, but they're autobiographical. So it's generally not just random fractals and material. It's contents of your memory being displayed in visual format. So for most people, the experience has three separate.

• 21:46Speaker 05

  Segments. So the first one starts about forty five minutes up to two hours after you ingest the medicine. It starts with, you know, a visual experience. The people that have this visual experience reported as almost like a movie screen opening up in the back of their eyelids and the contents of their memory being displayed. And these are like thirty second clips sometimes of events that were formative and that were traumatic for the individual. And most of the time it's childhood stuff that is displayed. This goes on anywhere from six to eight hours and then the visual experience stops and people go into this introspective phase where they're thinking about what they saw, they're processing, they're still feeling

• 22:31Speaker 05

  the effects of the medicine, like they're still in a bit of an altered state, but they're not like in this very intense visual experience. And then afterwards, there's a period of residual stimulation where people sometimes have trouble sleeping, but they don't feel tired. And they just feel at peace, their mind is quiet, they feel very calm. A lot of the weight has been lifted off their shoulders, like literally people tell us, like they feel they put a rucksack full of rocks down. And they have a deeper understanding of their own psyche and the things that affected them and also how they're affecting other people.

• 23:04Ky Dickens?

  How, how does it do that?

• 23:06Speaker 05

  Ibeging seems to occasion waking dream state where it surfaces memories, like repressed memories and unconscious information and allows the person to look at, at it from a different perspective. It's almost like an AI system that is like diagnosing its own code. You, you can see the different voices you have in your head and the different patterns and how you're replaying, you know, relationship dynamics. So in a way, it's almost like floating in the room, observing yourself from a distance in a very objective way and without being re-traumatized by the experience. Also, Ibeging is an experience that occurs with eyes closed. When you're open your eyes, you're back in the room. But when you close your eyes, it's like this fully formed 3D

• 23:51Speaker 05

  world that is a content of your memory, much like a dream. In a dream, it feels real and the Ibeging experience, it also feels real.

• 23:59Ky Dickens?

  Here's Jim with Catherine again on how it felt coming out of this experience. I woke up the next day and I'd kind of seen the world through all of everything bad I'd ever done.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  But not through my eyes, through the eyes of the person that I had done it to. So when I'd yelled at my son, I got to see it through his eyes. I got to see how he felt. I got to feel how he felt. And you know, when they said that you wake up the next day in the gray day and you your your ego is crushed. I'm like, man, they have met Jim Hancock.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  This feeling of being totally stripped of one's ego and identity is reported across the board.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  And I woke up the next day with absolutely zero ego. I mean, I've never felt so wiped out physically. And I've done some hard things in my life, but I was wiped out physically. But more importantly, my space and my feeling of, oh, my God, what have who am, what am I? Now, today, the way I would explain that to you is if you're a good candidate for I begane, your lived experience is a whiteboard. If you'll picture a whiteboard and it is so full of life experiences, bad and good, but so full that there's nowhere you can write anything. The red ink is filled up. It almost looks like a solid thing.

• 25:22Speaker 04

  And you do the Ibogaine and when you wake up the next morning, it's a whiteboard. And then you choose what you put back on that board.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  This malleable window, or what's known as the critical learning period for the brain, following an I begane experience, is what Martine refers to as an integration phase.

• 25:38Speaker 04

  Afterwards, there's a very intense integration phase, which if you do that right, you can maintain the benefits indefinitely. And what proper integration looks like and entails meditation, physical exercise, eating healthy, getting your sleep under control. And then for the veterans, and I think for most people in general, I think there's a lot of metabolic dysfunction nowadays where our diet is is causing us health issues. So addressing, from a functional medicine standpoint, some of these imbalances can be really beneficial.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  When Jim first experienced ibogaine, he felt he hadn't taken the necessary preparation. He decided to return to Mission Within for a second experience, and he came much more prepared this time. He mentions that if the first time was getting everything out into the open, the second time was really dealing with it. He approached the experience with way more intention and care.

• 26:47Speaker 03

  And I went back for ibogaine. Round two, what a very different experience. Absolutely prepped.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Jim says he was able to enter into what he refers to as a third eye space, where he was aligned with his intuition and able to clearly ask the medicine what he needed to do in order to heal.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  I got into the third eye space, and now I recognize it for what it was. Now, this is where I can actually do the, you know, when you talk to mental health people, they talk about doing the work. I got into this space to be able to do the work. And what does that look like? It's hard to explain to folks that have not been there, but what I will tell you is, in the medicine, in your mind, what you can do is ask questions, and you get answers.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  We'll dive deeper into this concept later in the series, but many people report that under the influence of ibogaine or iboga, they're able to ask the plant questions and receive a very clear, true, and intentional answer, something researchers agree is unexplainable by our current measures of science. What has happened in terms of your feelings of suicide and feelings of anxiety in public? How is that feeling now at this point?

• 27:58Speaker 03

  Night and day. Night and day. Yeah, no, there's, there's, there's no, there's no feelings are going away, there's no, it's not even a thought, it doesn't even enter my mind. Now you look at it and think, how the hell did you get there? Now, I will tell you that you have to be careful what you put back on the whiteboard. My first...

• 28:19Speaker 04

  First time I put a lot of shit back on the whiteboard that shouldn't have been put back on the whiteboard. And that's the reason I went back. I'm being very careful with my sleep, with what I do. I want to do the warning that the medicine, while it can be magic, quote unquote, it can be a cure. It doesn't cure the public health part of it, right? If you still don't have a job, if you still, you know, have a horrible marriage, you still have all kinds of medical issues. It's not going to erase that. So if, you know, if people have those things and they go right back and they put it on their whiteboard, they're going to end up in a bad place. So when we do this, we have to be all in. And that doesn't mean we're going to fix everything for everybody, but when we do it, just realize it's not going to cure those things. What it's going to cure is going to give them a chance.

• 29:02Speaker 04

  It's going to reset and say, here's a second chance at life.

• 29:06Ky Dickens?

  Martine, I wonder if you can just talk about, you know, the second chance at life that this molecule is giving people. What are the rates of recidivism and how often are people suffering from addiction truly, you know, relieved of their situation?

• 29:19Speaker 04

  So with opioid addiction, the benefits of Ibogaine are not just that it reduces cravings and helps with depression, but that it eliminates withdrawal. So we would take people that were actively using and over the course of three days, 90% of the withdrawal was gone, which again is unheard of. There's nothing in the West that does that. The best medications that we have are substitutions. So we can take someone that's using heroin, give them Suboxone or Methadone, but then they're addicted to that. Whereas Ibogaine, the withdrawal goes away and doesn't come back. So what that's telling us is it's changing something in the brain. It's, it's resetting the neurotransmitter systems to the way they were before the person started using. So in a sense, the person's no longer addicted.

• 30:03Speaker 04

  Obviously, the, you know, bio cycle, social aspects of addiction of somebody going back home again and the boyfriend using, or, you know, needles laying around or them having no job. All of these things play a role, so you do see relapses, but in

• 30:17Speaker 05

  That moment, they're no longer addicted.

• 30:19Ky Dickens?

  Because of these incredibly promising rates of addiction relief and recovery from things like PTSD and traumatic brain injury, Governor Perry believes it's time for ibogaine to be reclassified.

• 30:30Speaker 05

  Ibogaine, although, and ibogaine's actually not a psychedelic in the pure sense of the word, it's an onerogen that puts people in a dreamlike state. It should not be on Schedule I, shouldn't have, never been on Schedule I, but Nixon just swept up everything for political purposes, dumped it into Schedule I, and it happened to be one of those compounds that was swept up. Schedule I says, "There is no medical use for a compound, and it is highly addictive." Ibogaine is neither of those. It is not addictive, and there is clear medical use for this. I'd actually like to see it get rescheduled where it's a little easier for these states

• 31:15Speaker 05

  to be able to do the clinical trials. The good news is, if you have PTSD, if you have traumatic brain injury, if you have some of these conditions that are just making your life not worth living, that there are places you can go to get treatment. The bad news is, they're not in the United States.

• 31:36Ky Dickens?

  The clinic Martine runs, for example, is just south of the border in Tijuana and requires special transportation from San Diego to the clinic and back.

• 31:45Speaker 05

  And my goal is to educate the public to the point where they're comfortable that not only do these compounds work, particularly ibogaine, but they can be safely used.

• 31:59Ky Dickens?

  Governor Perry himself underwent treatment in Mexico. Prior to the experience, he had his brain scanned by a neurosurgeon, who was very skeptical about the treatment, but agreed to analyze RICS before and after brain scans.

• 32:12Speaker 05

  I was treated. I went through the protocol. One week after treatment scan, saw a 27% increase in the prefrontal cortex. That's your focus, that's your concentration, that's where your emotions lie. He looked at my scan when my six-month scan came off the machine, and we're driving back to the airport, and he said, "Governor, your brain looks like a 40-year-old brain. The atrophy is gone."

• 32:40Ky Dickens?

  Governor Perry is currently 76 years old.

• 32:43Speaker 05

  So, listen, I get it. One person does not a clinical trial make. But for me, not only is my mild insomnia and my mild anxiety gone that I managed for 40-plus years of being in the political world, that scan that showed that my brain has been healed from the atrium, and I don't have a better word for it. And that's, again, that's why I'm so passionate about these clinical trials going forward, is let's find out why.

• 33:20Ky Dickens?

  And politicians and medical providers from both sides of the aisle feel passionate about this medicine due to how it can give much-needed support to veterans and possibly curb the catastrophic opioid epidemic.

• 33:31Speaker 05

  We have been a failure in this country of dealing with our veterans for 20-plus years. As we've sent them into combat, they have come back with post-traumatic stress, with traumatic brain injury. We've seen them mask that with alcohol. We've given them massive amounts of opioids. And then sat back and said, why are there this many kids killing themselves every day?

• 33:56Ky Dickens?

  And as critical as it is to help our veterans and help others suffering from addiction and trauma, our show also took an interest in Ibogaine due to what it can reveal about consciousness and the themes that we've explored across our TTT media shows. And next week, we'll meet Talia, who runs Beyond, another clinic that administers Ibogaine in Mexico. And she says that people have visions way beyond the Life Review.

• 34:19Speaker 04

  Roughly 25% over the last few months are able to see the room with a blindfold on. And some of these people report that they can feel the nurse or somebody coming into the room before they come into the room. The first vision, that the first person sat

• 34:41Speaker 03

  And told us was the same exact vision I had just had. How does it do all the things that we're seeing? And it goes beyond just pharmacology.

• 34:51Ky Dickens?

  Doctors, hardcore military skeptics, politicians, and everyone in between are trying to understand both the promise and the mystery of this medicine. And this is where the story of Ibogaine begins to get more interesting. Because there's one version of the story that can be told through policy and clinical trials, veterans, addiction, and public health. But there's another story running underneath it, a stranger one. It's not just that people say Ibogaine helped them. They say it showed them something. It felt personal. It felt autobiographical. It directly speaks with them and provides clear directions. So the question becomes, is Ibogaine only a molecule? Or is this plant, as many indigenous traditions have long understood, something more like a teacher?

• 35:37Ky Dickens?

  A living being and a healer with a mind of its own? Next week, we go into the firsthand accounts that make those questions impossible to ignore. And we'll talk to the scientists on the front edge of understanding. Because if Ibogaine can heal trauma and addiction, that's already profound. But if it can also open a door into the nature of consciousness itself, then we may be looking at something far bigger than a promising treatment. We may be looking at a medicine that's not only changing minds, but challenging what the mind even is. That's next time on the Ibogaine Inquiries, a mini-series from TTT Media.