What is ibogaine, and why is it in the news?

A recent executive order issued by President Trump aims to fast-track research for psychedelics, including ibogaine. What is it?

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

• 0:02Flora Lichtman?

  Hey, it's Flora and you are listening to Science Friday. Psychedelic news from the Oval Office.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  If these turn out to be as good as people are saying, it's going to have a tremendous impact on this country and other countries, too.

• 0:17Flora Lichtman?

  This month, Joe Rogan and RFK Jr. stood behind President Trump as he announced his administration would set aside funding and loosen the bureaucratic process at the FDA to fast-track psychedelic therapy research. Joe Rogan name-checked one drug in particular: ibogaine. Rogan said he sent Trump information about ibogaine's potential promise for addiction, and Trump replied.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  The text message came back, "Sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let's do it." It was literally that quick.

• 0:51Flora Lichtman?

  So ibogaine comes from the root bark of the iboga plant found in Central Africa, and it has psychedelic properties. And besides its potential for curbing opioid addiction, veterans in the US have been advocates for this treatment because it's shown some promise for treating PTSD and other conditions. But it also can be risky to take, especially if you have heart issues. Now, if you have never heard of the drug ibogaine, you're not alone. Compared to other hallucinogenic drugs like psilocybin or ketamine, ibogaine has not made it to the medical mainstream yet. So what is the story with this drug? Here to tell us about its history is neuroscientist and pharmacologist, Dr. Deborah Mash, who's been studying ibogaine since the 90s,

• 1:35Flora Lichtman?

  maybe as long as any scientist in the US. For full transparency, she's also the founder and CEO of a company that's developing a therapeutic drug based off of ibogaine. And here to tell us how ibogaine fits in with this growing interest in medical psychedelics generally is Jane Who, journalist for the Microdose newsletter. Thank you both for being here and welcome to Science Friday.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:58Speaker 03

  Thanks so much for having me.

• 1:59Flora Lichtman?

  Jane, it feels like ibogaine has burst into public consciousness really recently. Is that just my perception, and if not, why now?

• 2:11Speaker 03

  No, it's definitely not just you. I mean, like you mentioned, there have been researchers who have been interested in this since the 1990s, like Deborah here. But I feel like in the last couple of years, it's definitely made a resurgence in the psychedelics world as a drug of interest. And a lot of this actually started with Brian Hubbard, who was also standing behind President Trump during that executive order signing. So Hubbard initially proposed in 2023, I believe, to spend $42 million of Kentucky's opioid abatement fund to study ibogaine. Now, that didn't end up going through, but over the

• 2:51Speaker 03

  last few years, Hubbard's really been on this kind of campaign to really increase the profile of ibogaine. And he was actually on Joe Rogan's show with Rick Perry, former governor of Texas, who has also been very into ibogaine over the last couple of years. And the two of them were like, hey, Joe, can you call up Trump and see if he might be interested in doing something on this? And that takes us to today.

• 3:22Flora Lichtman?

  Deborah, you're an ibogaine pioneer, and you've called the research into it a vast underground experiment. What do you mean by that?

• 3:30Speaker 04

  The vast underground experiment of ibogaine goes back to the 1990s, when in 1992, late 1992, I got on an airplane and flew with a medical doctor from my department at the University of Miami. And we went to Amsterdam to see addicts helping addicts. It was the International Coalition of Addict Self-Help and the Dutch Addict Self-Help Movement. And there, people were administering ibogaine in what was an unusual and certainly not a medically safe setting to people who were coming off, trying to detoxify off

• 4:10Speaker 04

  of hard drugs. And it was there that began my journey with ibogaine, because I saw three young men, two that were addicted to opioids, one that had been freebasing a lot of cocaine, take a single dose of ibogaine, and after a 24-hour period,

• 4:31Speaker 04

  Transformed, no withdrawals. But what was even more interesting to me as a scientist was the fact that their desire to go out and get high again was diminished. But then in the next days, because we were in residence with them over time, the cognition enhancement, the ability to think straight, how can I change my life? What's going to be different this time? Their narrative, their personal narrative was being rewritten. And that was Ibogaine. I couldn't do any research there because it literally was not, you know, it was not a medical setting. But what I did do is I asked them to sign a consent so that I could collect urine samples.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  Because I reasoned at that meeting, at that very first time, that there could be potentially an active metabolite that was part of the beneficial effects of Ibogaine. Because it was hard to imagine that all of this, you know, hard drug use could be reversed with only a single dose of the drug.

• 5:39Flora Lichtman?

  You know, we've seen states pushing forward psychedelic therapies. What has kept Ibogaine from going mainstream?

• 5:46Speaker 04

  A lot.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, for many years, and I think Deborah can speak to this more as well, some of the researchers that I spoke with said that they really didn't see it moving forward in FDA trials because there are heart risks associated with it. And there are, you know, other psychedelics, like we were just talking about, that have less of a risk profile in that sense. So they had a lot of questions about whether there would be enough buy-in from our federal agencies to actually even get them started in clinical trials.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  Well, and I can tell you straight away that, you know, I've been a NIH-funded investigator my entire adult life, and I've held uninterrupted NIH funding since over three decades. And every single grant application that I submitted for consideration regarding Ibogaine were just shut down. I mean, those doors slammed tight on me. However, the other thing is that while the NIH didn't want to discuss it,

• 6:56Speaker 04

  Didn't want to discuss tax dollars going for psychedelic research. The FDA, back in 1993, authorized clinical testing. The FDA acknowledged the potential and importance of testing the drug. So, yes, is Ibogaine very exciting and transformative? And maybe can help bring about behavioral change and make differences in patients' lives? Yes. Do we have all the facts on the table from good clinical practice? You know, the FDA gold standard, which is required to ultimately get to a label? No, we do not.

• 7:35Flora Lichtman?

  Deborah, why is it more dangerous than other psychedelics? Is it the mechanism of action? Or is it that you have to get the dosing exactly right? What is it?

• 7:43Speaker 04

  Both. So, there are what we call on-target effects. These are what mediate the beneficial effects. Blocking opiate withdrawals, helping to treat symptoms of PTSD, et cetera. The off-target effect is the Herg channel blocking effect. What is the Herg channel? Herg is potassium channel in the heart that regulates the refractory period of the heart. And if that gets prolonged, it means that your electrical signaling in the heart goes sideways. And that can predispose to a fatal arrhythmia. So, you have to know what you're doing. Also, Ibogaine has complex pharmacokinetics.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  What does that mean? It means that you're either genetically a fast, slow, or intermediate metabolizer. So, going back to what you said about the dose is very important. We need to very tightly monitor and know the target dose that's going to be safe in patients. Next, risk mitigation. You need to be able to screen patients. Some people are not going to be candidates for Ibogaine. And, you know, people who are going offshore to take Ibogaine, there's no package insert.

• 9:05Speaker 04

  All right, they're taking it with with people who may or may not be subject matter experts or knowledgeable about administering an investigational medicinal product. I would say most of them are not, and I have said that in peer reviewed literature, yeah. So desperate people will go into desperate settings for treatment. That's why, again, the ability to get Ibogaine through a completed, well-designed Phase 1 study into Phase 2 will open up patients' right to try. And this is something I have wanted to see for a very long time. And the patients are waiting.

• 9:44Flora Lichtman?

  So we can learn, right, Deborah? So we can learn, learn if they work?

• 9:48Speaker 04

  Again, I'm a scientist. I'm not an evangelical advocate for Ibogaine. That's not my role here. My role is to simply say either the drug works or it doesn't. But we in the, in the community, looking at the number of suicides, looking at the scourge of addiction, the failure of addiction meds to advance, need to turn every stone over. And now we have a champion in President Trump to, to put some wind in our sails, finally.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  So Deborah, I had a question for you, which is, I know that your company, Demorex, just got an investigational new drug application through, approved by the Trump administration very recently for, for noribogaine, which is a metabolite of Ibogaine. Does that have a different risk profile than Ibogaine?

• 10:46Speaker 04

  We received FDA authorization, safe to proceed, with clinical testing of noribogaine, the active metabolite of Ibogaine. Noribogaine and Ibogaine have very different profiles, not only safety. For one, noribogaine is not an oniric hallucinogen. So it doesn't have-

• 11:09Flora Lichtman?

  No trip? Is that, is that what that means?

• 11:11Speaker 04

  No, no trip. And so the question, you know, big question, Mark, is what? Do you need the trip to reach the destination? We'd like to, we, we will test that in Phase 2.

• 11:25Flora Lichtman?

  Speaking of the trip, what is it like for patients to take Ibogaine? We had a listener, Craig, from Eugene, Oregon, who tried it and told us about his experience.

• 11:35Speaker 05

  I went down to Mexico, Baja, in December and did an iboga ceremony. And, you know, people say it's the Mount Everest of psychedelics. It's very difficult. Yes, true, but also, you know, nothing's more difficult than living with trauma. And I, for five years now, six years maybe, have been working with different plant medicines and psychedelics, and I've kind of tried them all. And it's all chipped away at childhood abuse and trauma and neglect and abandonment. But nothing has really brought it all together, like my iboga ceremony.

• 12:19Speaker 05

  And, you know, I have a lot that I struggle with. And all of it was able to be kind of witnessed and dealt with in my iboga ceremony and session. I really think there's a ton of healing potential. But yeah, it was really life-changing for me.

• 12:40Flora Lichtman?

  It's really these kinds of stories that have made Ibogaine a drug of interest despite serious risks. We'll hear more about what an Ibogaine trip is like after the break, so don't go away.

• 12:57Speaker 06

  And from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, working to enhance public understanding of science, technology, and economics in the modern world.

• 13:11Flora Lichtman?

  Deborah, describe what Ibogaine therapy is like. What is the experience like for a patient?

• 13:18Speaker 04

  Well, first off, let me say I've never taken Ibogaine. So I can't tell you from a first person. But what the patients report is that Ibogaine comes on quite intense in about anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes after oral dose administration, depending on their genetics.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  The visionary phase of the drug, patients liken to a waking dream state. And for many of the patients, the insights that they gain from this, what they say, are, is important. It's important in helping them to see bad behavior. It's important for them to reconnect to their, to their higher power, to, to reconnect with their family, to see traumas that may have occurred at points in their life, whether childhood or adult, that they can now sort of figure out and make sense. So the Ibogaine, after the, when the nor Ibogaine comes up to what we call a maximal

• 14:24Speaker 04

  concentration in the blood, because it's metabolized, Ibogaine is, in oral dose, is metabolized through the liver. So you get the peak in the Ibogaine first, and then it's followed by nor Ibogaine, delayed by hours afterwards. When the nor Ibogaine reaches its peak, the visions abruptly stop. You would watch the patients sitting at the bedside, and all of a sudden, the eye shields would go up, the headphones would go off, and they'd look around the room. And I'd go, up, nor Ibogaine just came on. And so the, the nor Ibogaine phase was a deep phase of cognitive introspection. So, you know, there would be some heart, you know, opening, they would describe that,

• 15:05Speaker 04

  that they felt, you know, love for family and children and, you know, just God, whatever was, you know, in part of their journey. And that would continue on through the evening. And we would usually get them up to eat something, and then you could see they were still processing. So we put them back in the bed, and by the next morning, they were fine. But that's the journey.

• 15:29Flora Lichtman?

  How does Ibogaine complement the psychedelics that are already out there? Like, why would someone potentially opt for Ibogaine over psilocybin therapy?

• 15:39Speaker 04

  It's a great question. They're going to have different indications. All right? Right now, psilocybin has an indication for treatment-resistant depression. And there's also major depressive disorder, right? So patients who have been on, you know, SSRIs, Paxil and others.

• 16:01Speaker 04

  Will have an option if those are not working for them. If you're going through opioid withdrawals, psilocybin is not going to benefit you. So I think we need to, what we will see is that there will be indications for use that will have gold standard FDA review and data-driven evidence for how that label is written. Now, if people use them off-label, that's another story. Jane, do you have a comment?

• 16:33Speaker 03

  This is an empirical question, essentially, whether we think that there are specific indications that specific psychedelics are better at treating. And I think you're right, like, you know, there aren't a ton of psilocybin studies looking at addiction specifically, although I do believe there are a few. But I've talked to a lot of historians of science, and one thing that has really struck me in my conversations with them is how much our decisions about drugs and our use of drugs are very much social and cultural as well. And I think that part of the reason why a lot of folks with addiction issues or veterans with PTSD are really seeking out ibogaine as well is that there's a culture developing around it, especially there are all these, you know, veterans nonprofits groups that

• 17:17Speaker 03

  are connecting people with these ibogaine retreat centers in Mexico. And, you know, people hear about their buddies going down there and they want to go experience that themselves as well. So I think that there's a pipeline being created for that. And of course, you know, there's still empirical data that we need, whether ibogaine is really superior to other psychedelics in treating this. But regardless, I think that that social and cultural piece of things also gets tied up in how people have an experience as well. You know, in talking to researchers, I've talked to some who think that the, one of the biggest contributions of psychedelics to people's healing is the potential to provide

• 18:00Speaker 03

  hope that these are folks who have really tried so many different things and they haven't tried this, but they've heard that it's worked for others and that. Carrying that hope with them actually contributes to their healing in some way.

• 18:13Speaker 04

  This is something so dear to my heart. You know, I really, the patients are waiting and all we need the data. We need, as Jane says, we need the evidence that these drugs are safe. Who will benefit? Who's not a candidate for them? And let's bring them. The patients need to have access to better meds. And the mental health of our country, we want to make America healthy again. And we want our mental health to be right on the top of that list.

• 18:41Flora Lichtman?

  Dr. Deborah Mash is an emeritus professor of neurology at the University of Miami School of Medicine and Jane Hu is a journalist for The Microdose. Thank you both for taking the time to talk today. This was fascinating. This episode was produced by Dee Peterschmidt with a critical assist from John Dankowski. I'm Flora Lichtman. Thank you for listening.