S2E42: Ibogaine Inquiries Part IV: Who Owns a Sacred Medicine?

For centuries, the people of Gabon protected iboga as a sacred medicine. Then a gift intended to help others changed everything. In this episode, we trace Iboga's remarkable journey from colonial France to New York City, where a young man named Howard Lotsof discovered its potential to interrupt addiction and dedicated his life to bringing ibogaine into modern medicine. But as scientific interest grew, so did difficult questions about patents, ownership, and who should benefit from knowledge that had been safeguarded by Indigenous communities for generations. Featuring conservationist Yann Guignon, filmmaker Lucy Walker, and Indigenous scholar Dr. Christine Dindisi, this episode explores the history that shaped today's iboga renaissance, and asks whether scientific progress and Indigenous stewardship can move forward together. _______ 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. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 1:00Speaker 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.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  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 four. Last episode, we traveled to Gabon, Africa, where iboga isn't simply a medicine. It's part of a living tradition that has shaped communities for generations. We heard how ceremonies, music, ritual, and mentorship are all considered inseparable from the healing power of the plant itself. We heard how the people of Gabon are starting to feel about the westernization of the medicine. And today, we're going to explore how this powerful plant even started making its way across the ocean in the first place. How has it become the subject of patents, scientific research,

• 2:23Speaker 01

  and eventually, an executive order signed by the President of the United States? When did we first become aware of it? Well, French doctors have been studying it since the 1800s. It was even sold in pharmacies in France in the early 1900s. And we'll hear later on that it finally made its way into the hands of a teenager in New York City, changing its trajectory forever. But first, what happened in France?

• 2:45Speaker 02

  You need to understand that this plant is harvested from Gabon for two centuries now. So it's an extraction that started a long time ago. And the Sudis started a long time ago.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  That's Yan Ginyan again. You heard a lot from him last episode, describing his experience with iboga and his hope to preserve the medicine in Gabon. I was quite shocked to hear that the plant has been harvested and extracted in the West for centuries now, without the US knowing much about it. He said that iboga was sold in drugstores or drug offices dating back to 1901 in France, directly coinciding with the French colonization of Gabon. I'll let Yan and my producer Catherine take it from here.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  The science, the modern science, had a lot of benefits from these extractions, illegal extractions, a lot, you know?

• 3:34Speaker 01

  France's modern medicine deeply benefited from the illegal extraction of the plant, and it can be traced back to 1864, when a French doctor named Grifon Dubellet brought it back to France.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Grifon Dubellet was the first guy, yes. He was a French doctor who did bring back iboga. There was an event that French scientists used to have regularly in Paris about universal sciences, and some stuff from Africa used to be introduced and presented by French researchers. And Grifon Dubellet was a doctor. And it's him who brought iboga to France and introduced iboga to French scientists.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  There were strong relations between Gabon and France at the time, and there's a large Gabonese diaspora in France. So the incorporation of iboga became fairly normalized.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Iboga is known by France for a while. It was sold in drugstores in 1901. It has been very popular for a long time.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  In 1901, after the plant was introduced in France, scientists extracted the crystalline alkaloid from the plant and named it ibogaine. It was made into pill form and used for things like fatigue and physical or nervous depression. It was even made into a tonic and advertised as an athletic performance enhancer. It was quite popular in this form for a long time. However, supply was not large or consistent as it relied on local communities in Gabon. The most popular version of ibogaine, known as laburnae, was removed from the market in 1966, sourcing paralysis, respiratory arrest, or cardiac issues after excessive doses. Its use heavily died down.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  And then, in 2007, it was officially outlawed.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  So imagine that for 106 years, it was sold in France legally, right?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yet the US wasn't privy to it. That was until a 19-year-old in New York City got his hands on a dose of laburnae from France.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  It all stemmed back to one trip in 1962 in New York City with a man named Howard Lotsof, who at the time was 19 years old, a young psychonaut.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  That's Lucy Walker. She's a filmmaker who shared her experience taking iboga in episode two of this series. She's done a ton of research on how iboga found its way to the United States.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Howard had been having breakfast with a friend of his, who was a chemist. And this chemist was cleaning out his fridge. And he took out a vial that we can presume was probably from the French batch of laburnae that from the 1966, there had been this kind of microdose tonic in France known as laburnae. And he took out the fridge and said to Howard, "Oh, you might be interested in this."

• 6:25Speaker 01

  The 19-year-old Howard was struggling with a heroin addiction at the time. And as you'll hear, this is critical to his understanding of how powerful iboga's healing properties might be. But when his friend first gave him this vial, he wasn't initially interested in trying it.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  He heard, "Oh, it's like LSD, but it lasts 36 hours." But it sounded kind of exhausting and not very fun. And he said, "Well, that's nice." And he took the vial, but he thought, "Well, I'm not going to take that." And so he ran into another friend of his and gave it to that friend. And that friend took the drug and called up Howard in the middle of the night and said, "You've got to call Congress. This isn't a drug. It's a medicine." Howard was impressed enough by this midnight phone call that the next time he got a hold of some from his chemist friend, he thought, "Well, this time I'm going to take it."

• 7:18Speaker 01

  So Howard began a long psychedelic trip with iboga. Remember, he was doing this completely unguided.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  He didn't realize what was special about this medicine, except for that it was really exhausting, and he felt like he wanted to sleep for a week. But then a few hours later, he woke up and it felt completely refreshed. And he thought, "Well, that's weird, because I feel kind of fantastic, and I haven't slept for days." And then he was walking out in the city, and he realized he was not in heroin withdrawal, and he had not used heroin for days, and he should have been in acute withdrawal. He was astonished. I mean, what could possibly be happening? Because he hadn't taken any heroin. And he was so struck by that. And it's an absolutely classic scientific aha moment.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  This changed the trajectory of Howard's life. He and his wife Norma would eventually become key players in bringing iboga to the US and in advocating specifically for research into its potential usage for treating addiction. Howard was ultimately able to beat his heroin addiction by using ibogaine.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  He went to the scientific libraries and thought, "I'm just going to write a scientific paper about this." He was not a trained scientist, and he did not have those resources or that status that people would listen to him. So he had to just persist. And the kind of decades-long work that Howard and Norma put in diligently, reading papers, networking, attending conferences...

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Howard became a proselytizer of the powerful effects of iboga and ibogaine for addiction treatment. And then Howard took a big step. In 1985, he actually patented using ibogaine for narcotic dependency. And this, in some ways, is where the trouble for Gabon really begins. Up until this point, despite extractive methods being used in France for tinctures made of ibogaine, there hadn't been an overwhelming run on the root in Gabon. There had been some research done on the compounds found in iboga for years, but patenting this sacred substance was a very different thing. Two years later, in 1987, Howard put together a symposium in Paris about iboga, a symposium that Yan's adoptive father actually attended.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Yan's adoptive father was the Gabonese academic and researcher, Dr. Jean-Noël Gassita.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  He went to Paris to meet my adoptive father, Professor Gassita. And he asked him for help. So they went to Gabon and Professor Gassita helped Walasov to meet the president because he was his scientific advisor.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Howard was able to meet the president of Gabon, Omar Bongo, who himself practiced Bwiti and was a massive believer in what the plant could do for the world.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  And then they convinced the president to give 40 kilos of ibogaine to Walasov to keep going his researches without paying, you know, it was a gift from Gabon.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  In fact, it's documented that the president said, quote, "This will be Gabon's gift to the world."

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Walasov convinced the president of Gabon when he said that it could help Afro-American people who suffer from addiction, who maybe come from slavery, from the same area, from Congo and Gabon. That's what really made the decision of Omar Bongo and it's important stuff.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  This is a critical thing to understand here. Yan is saying Howard Lotsof asked the Gabonese president to give him a large amount of ibogaine using the narrative of intergenerational trauma from slavery. The prospect of healing for those who had been taken as slaves to the United States was very appealing to Omar Bongo.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Because saying that a lot of drug addicted in the US were Afro-American guys and some of them maybe were originate from slavery, from Congo and Gabon.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Howard essentially told the president that of the many drug addicted African-Americans in the US, some of them may have originated from the Congo and Gabon, and therefore he wanted to use ibogaine to help free them of this addiction.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  And it convinced Omar Bongo, it's wow, like, okay, we can maybe send this medicine to the United States to help. Our parents have been enslaved in the US. So Omar Bongo gave 40 kilos of ibogaine. It's a big quantity. And then Walasov and other guys, it's time to make patent on it. And there were no feedback for Gabon, nothing, absolutely nothing.

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• 13:54Speaker 01

  A gift from Gabon's president of 40 kilos, which is over 88 pounds of ibogaine, intended to help ameliorate the intergenerational trauma of slavery, ended up being patented and experimented with in the US without communication with the Gabonese who had gifted it. This was quite upsetting to the people of Gabon, and this story threatens to repeat itself at this point in history. In 1999, Dr. Gassita, Yan's adoptive father, went to an ibogaine conference in New York. And that's where the Gabonese started to understand the extent of what was underway in the US.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  So then in 1999, there was an ibogaine conference in New York and a Gabonese team went there, including Professor Gassita, and they started to understood that there was a patent, a lot of research that they were very far away.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  I was able to find some archival tape of this conference and watched Howard's talk at New York University.

• 14:54Speaker 05

  As our final speaker today, Howard Lotsof, who in many ways is the father of ibogaine treatment in the United States. Howard.

• 15:03Speaker 06

  Providing of ibogaine therapy is often associated with a sense of power that many drug users and others have not previously experienced in being able to positively, dramatically, significantly, and rapidly affect the lives of chemically dependent individuals. Resistance to ibogaine development is a readily understandable phenomenon. All new technologies are resisted, and ones that represent the paradigm shift even more so.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  One thing that really stood out to me in Howard's presentation were his mentions of, quote, "discovering ibogaine and its ability to treat addiction."

• 15:42Speaker 06

  Ibogaine's development in the practice of medicine may certainly be described as out of the ordinary, as its value to treat substance-related disorders was first observed by individuals using drugs for the purpose of altering consciousness. Time of this discovery was the early 1960s, an historical period.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Around this time, a focus group was established to study the effects of ibogaine on addiction, which is what Howard is referring to here.

• 16:11Speaker 06

  The media attention focused on psychedelics led directly to the establishment of the focus group in which ibogaine's utility to treat opiate, cocaine, and amphetamine dependence was discovered. The 1960s group wherein ibogaine's anti-addictive effects were discovered was homogeneous in age, education, and interest in the psychotherapeutic use of hallucinogens. There was also perceived resistance to the discovery being made by a person with no academic credentials, and then principally promoted by drug users equally lacking in academic credentials.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  In these three clips, you'll hear Howard referring to using ibogaine in the 1960s and discovering its potential to treat addiction, something those practicing Bwiti have been aware of for thousands of years. I watched the Q&A session at the end of the conference done with a panel of four speakers, including Howard, and there were two questioners who mentioned the Bwiti tradition.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Shouldn't we look, and in that sense, it's more a question to the whole panel, to a completely different conceptual framework to assess the value of a substance like ibogaine in the treatment between, quote unquote, for addiction, looking at the cultural environment in which ibogaine is used by the Bwiti, where it's used for individuals that want to reach a certain lifestyle change.

• 17:42Speaker 05

  We have to remember that this medicine is an indigenous medicine, has been used for hundreds of years, and if it's not good enough for the FDA, then, you know, the four-letter word, bye.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  But none of the panelists responded to either of those questions with any mention of Gabon, Bwiti, Africa, or its historical roots, which felt bizarre. The framing of ibogaine as being discovered during this conference felt a bit off. As we've learned over the course of this series, the benefits of ibogaine are widely documented within Gabonese and Bwiti culture. The president of Gabon shared the 88 pounds of ibogaine root with Howard Lotsof precisely because he knew of these healing powers and wanted to share them with others. What took place at the conference showed Dr. Gassita that perhaps Gabon had not only been taken advantage of, but also left behind.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  You know, they went very, very fast in the researches and business. So they came back to Gabon and said, hey, we have a problem.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Gabon responded by realizing that even though they believed in sharing this powerful medicine, they also needed to protect their sacred knowledge. For many of us today, the Trump administration's interest in testing this might feel new. However, Howard's crusade and this conference back in 1999 proved the project to get ibogaine into the mainstream has been underway for a while. Its popularity has just recently reignited.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  And that's where Gabon, in 2000, to classify ibogaine as a national cultural heritage and a strategic resource because of that, in reaction of that, in 2000.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  In November of 2000, the Gabonese government sent a letter to Howard saying that he had taken advantage of their kindness and had not kept them informed of his research progress. I got to see a copy of this letter and translated it from French to English. "We sincerely regret that after the warm welcome we extended to you during your visit to Gabon and the 40 kilograms of ibogaine samples you surreptitiously took with you, you did not have the courtesy to keep us informed of the progress of your work. Our supervisory ministries have no record of any correspondence from you or your group. We would like to inform you that the Council of Ministers, on June 6, 2000, declared ibogaine a national heritage of Gabon.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Consequently, no exploitation of this plant or its derivatives may take place without the prior consent of the Gabonese state. We suggest contacting the Office of the President of the Republic, head of state, as we have been informed of your patent applications concerning the exploitation of this synthetic alkaloid ibogaine. Any further action that persists in the current situation would lead us to take legal action to protect the interests of our national heritage."

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Despite the letter, in some ways, the damage was already done. This wasn't just a dispute over a patent. From Gabon's perspective, it was the story of a gift that had become something they no longer recognized. Today, Yan has made it part of his life mission to protect those who this is affecting in Africa.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  But you know Gabon is not going at the same speed as the West, at the United States, right? I start to study everything and to gather documents, 13,000 pages of documents worldwide on the subject. That's where we understood that there were a lack of rules and laws in Gabon and tools and information.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  In the 2000s, Yan and others in Gabon began to think about how this might be handled by international law. The United Nations had begun drafting legislation meant to prevent colonial-style exploitation from ever happening again, but it has turned out not to be so simple. More on that in a moment.

• 22:06Speaker 04

  You cannot plug a transformational, revolutionary, magic, spiritual medicine into a legal system that is built on capitalism and expression and exploitation and commodification. It just doesn't work, and that's where we're at.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  That's Dr. Christine Dindisi.

• 22:26Speaker 04

  Dindisi means Blue Jay. I'm Turtle Mountain Ojibwe, and I am Eagle Clan. I am currently the interim executive director for the Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund. I have a PhD in Indigenous Studies.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Dr. Dindisi lives in the US, but she has worked with Yan over the years, trying to prevent the kind of cultural and material extraction and exploitation that Gabon has been witnessing. She and Catherine discussed what kind of international legislation has been drafted, its limitations, and what needs to be done to protect Indigenous cultures all over the world. I'll let the two of them take it from here. When I spoke to Dr. Dindisi, I wanted to understand how and why what's happened in Gabon with iboga is cause for concern for every Indigenous community.

• 23:11Speaker 04

  To now see this whole wave of people trying to culturally appropriate and seek that sacred knowledge and some of the last sacred things that we have that allow us to connect with our way of life and our ancestors and our spiritual ways. So in that way, it's still very much a continuation of working towards social justice, although those words seem to fail to grasp the gravity of how large this is because it goes back into history as long as empire has existed among humanity and also will be affecting

• 23:56Speaker 04

  the future based on what we're doing right now with these sacred beings, these sacred medicines, and the laws and the things that are happening around them.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  She acknowledges there can of course be pure intentions and love behind wanting to access these sacred medicines or spread them to the world, but it must be done right.

• 24:14Speaker 04

  There's people genuinely seeking a different way of life and healing for humanity, and that is good and beautiful, but it cannot happen fully to uplift and evolve us as human beings if it's happening at the expense of anybody, especially the Indigenous peoples who have been historically oppressed because then it upholds and perpetuates those systems.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  The pursuit of wellness, healing, and connection to higher consciousness through Indigenous practices isn't really the problem here. In fact, there's a potential to teach the modern world something we have forgotten, but this can't be done through exploitation, through ignoring Indigenous knowledge, or by cutting Indigenous peoples out of the process of knowledge sharing.

• 25:04Speaker 04

  It's very much a pattern. We've seen this before. Indigenous peoples, and I know that that term can be ambiguous, but right now it is a term that applies to people at different points around the globe, and that is the unifying aspect, is that Indigenous peoples, people who have native ancestry to their territories, to their lands, who live a way of life that is earth-based. And those groups of people have historically have had things taken from them or been prohibited from living their way of life. So right now, what we have with several of the medicines that have been legislated

• 25:49Speaker 04

  in Colorado is impacts to those Indigenous peoples and to the medicines themselves.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  In 2023, Colorado became one of the first states to formally acknowledge that concern. Lawmakers recognized the risk of commercialization, erasing the Indigenous cultures and spiritual traditions these medicines come from, and emphasized the importance of involving tribal nations and Indigenous communities in shaping future policy. It was a huge and important step, but many Indigenous advocates believe those conversations should have happened before legalization, not afterward.

• 26:21Speaker 04

  It was a gesture, and it was an important acknowledgement, but it was after the legislation happened. Some people believe that these medicines are so sacred and living beings, autonomous entities, that they should remain in their homelands and that if you grow them elsewhere, they are basically being genetically modified. And so there's not agreement on that.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Dr. Dindisi is part of a group called the Colorado Tribal Working Group, who made suggestions to the government's Natural Medicine Advisory Board about how to move forward.

• 26:53Speaker 04

  For iboga in particular, they follow the Nagoya Protocol because the country of Gabon is a signer to the Nagoya Protocol under the United Nations Convention for Biological Diversity. That's where iboga comes from, and the Buiti and Pygmy tribes there are the Indigenous stewards and holders of this sacred medicine and knowledge that comes with it.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  The Nagoya Protocol is an agreement developed by the United Nations and signed by 141 countries that put rules and parameters around what it means to ethically share what are called genetic resources from Indigenous communities. It's basically international law meant to prevent the kinds of exploitation and extraction seen under colonial rule and throughout the 20th century. It took effect in 2014 and was years in the making. Yan actually had a hand in pushing for it in Gabon, which was the first country to sign it in 2011.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  So I start to gather everything. I start to travel to those ibogaine conferences, and I start to advocate to the West and say, hey, guys, look, the iboga you're looking at, research is on, come from Gabon, right? And it's exported illegally, and there's consequences of that.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  For Yan, the letter wasn't the end of the story. It was the beginning of a new mission, one that would take him from Gabon to conferences around the world, trying to convince researchers that the story of iboga wasn't complete without the people who had protected it for generations. But even as those conversations were beginning, something else was happening. Demand for iboga was accelerating, and the consequences back home were only just beginning to emerge. Over the last four episodes, we've heard story after story of people whose lives were transformed by iboga. Veterans, people struggling with addiction, researchers who have spent so much time trying to understand what makes this plant so extraordinary. But if a medicine has the potential to help millions of people, how do we share it without repeating the same patterns of extraction and exploitation that have shaped so much

• 28:53Speaker 01

  of human history? Can scientific progress and Indigenous stewardship coexist? Or does something essential get lost when sacred tradition becomes a commercial product? Next time, we'll explore what happens when a sacred medicine spreads faster than the wisdom surrounding it. From poaching and disappearing forests in Gabon to the very real risk of using one of the world's most powerful medicines without the traditions that have shaped its use for thousands of years. 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.