Before we begin a brief disclaimer, Ibogaine is a powerful psychoactive subst...
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 experience is 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. Hi everyone, this is Kite Dickens, and welcome to the Ibogaine Increase, a miniseries from TT 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 Ibogaine 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, and eventually an executive order signed by the present 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?
“You need to understand that this plant is arrested from Gabon for two centuries now, so it's”
an instruction that's not a long time ago, and the students start a long time ago. That's young King Yongean, you heard a lot from him last episode, describing his experience with Ibogaine 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 U.S. knowing much about it.
He said that Ibogaine was sold in drug stores or drug offices dating back to 1901 in France directly coinciding with the French colonization of Gabon. I'll let Yongean and I produce her Catherine take it from here. The science, the modern science, had a lot of benefits from these extractions, illegal disruptions, a lot, you know?
France's modern medicine deeply benefited from the illegal extraction of the plant, and it could be traced back to 1864 when a French doctor named Gryffand Ubele, brought it back to France.
Gryffand Ubele was the first guy, yes, he was a French doctor who did bring back Ibogaine.
There was an event that, for a French scientist, used to have regular repairs about universal sciences and some stuff from Africa used to be introduced and presented by French researchers. Gryffand Ubele was a doctor and he would bring back Ibogaine to France and introduce Ibogaine to French scientists. There were strong relations between Gabon and France at the time, and there's a large
Gabonice diaspora in France. So the incorporation of Ibogaine became fairly normalized. Ibogaine is known by France for a while. It was sold in drug office in 1901. It has been very popular for a long time.
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 Labyrinet, was removed from the market in 1966, sourcing paralysis, respiratory arrest, or cardiac issues after excessive doses. It's used heavily died down, and then in 2007, it was officially outlawed.
“So imagine that for one hundred and six years, it was sold in France legally, right?”
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 Labyrinet from France. It all stemmed back to one trip in 1962, in New York City, with a man named Howard Lothsoff who at the time was 19 years old, a young, psychonaut.
That's Lucy Walker. She's a filmmaker who shared her experience taking Ibogaine episode two of this series. She's done a ton of research on how Ibogaine found its way to the United States.
Howard had been having breakfast with a friend of his who was a chemist.
This chemist was clearly out his fridge, and he took out a vial that we can presume was
“probably from the French batch of Labyrinet, from the 36 to the 96 to the headbed.”
It's kind of mind-credits, tonic, in France, known as Labyrinet. He took out the fridge and said to Howard, "Oh, you might be interested in this." The 19-year-old Howard was struggling with a heroin addiction at the time.
As you'll hear, this is critical to his understanding of how powerful Ibogaine's healing
properties might be. But when his friend first gave him this vial, he wasn't initially interested in trying it. He heard, "Oh, it's like LSD, but at last 36 hours, I mean, it's had a kind of exhausting and not very fun."
I said, "Well, that's nice, and he took the vial, but he thought, "Well, I'm not going to take that." And so he read it with 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 a core converse, this isn't a drug, it's a medicine.
Howard was impressed enough by this midnight phone call, but the next time he got a hold of some from his camera's friend. He thought, "Well, I'm going to take it." So Howard began a long psychedelic trip with Ibogaine.
“Remember, he was doing this completely unguided.”
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 they actually woke up and felt completely refreshed. People were not scared, 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 with rural,
and he had not used heroin the days, and he should've been in a cute withdrawal. He was astonished. I mean, what could possibly be happening, because he hadn't taken the heroin. And he was so struck by that, and it's an absolutely classic scientific aha moment. This changed the trajectory of Howard's life.
He and his wife Norma would eventually become key players in bringing Ibogaine to the US, and an advocating specifically for research into its potential usage for treating addiction. Howard was ultimately able to beat his heroin addiction by using Ibogaine. He went to the scientific libraries, so 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 it diligently repapers networking, attending conferences.
Howard became a proselytizer of the powerful effects of 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 Gubbawn 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 route in Gubbawn.
There had been some research done on the compounds found in Iboga for years, but patented the sacred substance was a very different thing. Two years later, in 1987, Howard put together a symposium and Paris about Iboga, a symposium that Yann's adopted father actually attended. Once adopted father was the Gabanese academic and researcher, Dr. Jean Noel Gassita.
Howard was able to meet the president of Gubbawn, Omar Bongo, who himself practiced wheaty, and was a massive believer in what the plant could do for the world. And then, they come to the president to give 40 kills of Ibogaine to a wireless stuff to keep going the other researches without paying an old that was a gift from Gabbawn. In fact, it's documented that the president said, quote, "This will be Gabbawn's gift to
the world." "Oh, a wireless stuff convinced the president of Gabawn when he said that it could help African-American people to suffer from addiction who may become from slavery from the same
“area from Congo and Gabwn, that's what really made the decision of Cuma Bole.”
It's your bottom stuff."
This is a critical thing to understand here.
Yann is saying Howard Lotzoff asked the Gabanese president to give him a large amount of Iboga 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. So saying that a lot of drug addicts in the US were African-American guys and some of them
maybe were originates from slavery from Congo and Gabwn.
Howard essentially told the president that of the many drug addicted African-...
in the US, some of them may have originated from the Congo and Gaban, and therefore he wanted
“to use Iboga to help free them of this addiction.”
And it convinced Omar Bongo is like, "Okay, we can maybe send this message to the United States to help our parents have been enslaved in the US. So Omar Bongo gave 40 kilos of food back. It's a big quantity, and then a lot of stuff and other guys have started to make potent on edge, and there will no feedback for Gabwn, nothing, absolutely nothing."
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This was quite upsetting to the people who go on, and the story threatens to repeat itself at this point in history. In 1999, Dr. Gassita, John's adoptive father, went to an Ibegin conference in New York, and that's where the Gabonese started to understand the extent of what was underway in the US.
Then in 1999, it was an Ibegin conference in New York, and Gabonese team went there, including a professor Gassita, and he stopped to understood that there was a patent, lots of research that there were very far away. I was able to find some archival tape of this conference and watch Towers Talk at New York University.
As our final speaker today, Howard Lotzofu, in many ways, is the father of Ibegin treatment in the United States. Providing a Ibegin 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 Ibegin developments as readily as readily understandable phenomena. All new technologies are resisted and ones that represent the paradigm shift even more so. One thing that really stood out to me in Howard's presentation were his mentions of, quote, "discovering Ibegin and its ability to treat addiction."
How things develop meant in the practice of medicine, and they certainly be described as out of the ordinary.
As a devalued 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 and historical period. Around this time, a focus group was established to study the effects of Ibegin on addiction, which is what Howard is referring to here. In media attention, focused on psychedelics led directly to the establishment of the focus
group, in which Ibegin's utility to treat opiate cocaine and impediment dependence was discovered. In 1960's group, wherein Ibegin's anti-addictive effects were discovered, was homogeneous in age, education, and interest in the psychological therapeutic use of hallucinogenicity. There was also perceived resistance to this discovery being made by a person with no academic credentials, and then principally promoted by drug users equally lacking in academic credentials.
In these three clips, you'll hear Howard referring to using Ibegin in the 196...
its potential to treat addiction, something those practicing witty 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 witty tradition. "I 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 Ibegin in the
treatment between quote-unquote for addiction, looking at the cultural environment in which Ibegin is used by the wittest, where it used for individuals that want to reach a certain lifestyle change."
“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 full little work. Bye. None of the panelists responded to either of those questions with any mention of Gabon, witty, Africa, or its historical roots, which felt bizarre.
The framing of Ibegin as being discovered during this conference felt a bit off. As we've learned over the course of this series, the benefits of Ibeuga are widely documented within Gaboniz and witty culture. The President of Gabon shared the 88 pounds of Ibeuga root with Howard Lotzoff 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.”
"You know, they went very, very fast in the researches and business, but they came back to Gabon and said hey, we have a problem."
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 Ibegin into the mainstream has been underway for a while. Its popularity has just recently re-agnited.
In November of 2000, the Gaboniz 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 Ibeuga 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, de Clarity Boge a National Heritage of Gabon.
And consequently, no exploitation of this plant or its derivatives may take place without the prior consent of the Gaboniz 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 Ibegin.
Any further action that persists in the current situation would lead us to take legal action to protect the interests of our national heritage. 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, Jan has made a part of his life mission to protect those who this is affecting in Africa. In the 2000s, Jan 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 in that in a moment.
You cannot plug a transformational revolutionary magic spiritual medicine into a legal system
that is built on capitalism and an expression and exploitation and commodification.
Just doesn't work, and that's where we're at.
That's Dr. Christine Dindisi, and Dindisi means Bluget.
“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. Dr. Dindisi lives in the US, but she has worked with Jan over the years, trying to prevent the kind of cultural and material extraction and exploitation that Gabon has been witnessing. She and Katherine 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 Iboget is caused for concern for every Indigenous community. 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. 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, we'll be affecting 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. She acknowledges there can of course be pure intentions and love behind wanting to access the sacred medicines or spread them to the world, but it must be done right. 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. 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. It's very much a pattern. We've seen this before in 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's 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 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 in Colorado is impacts to those Indigenous peoples and to the medicines themselves.
In 2023, Colorado became one of the first states to formally acknowledge that concern.
lawmakers recognize the risk of commercialization erasing the Indigenous cultures and spiritual traditions these medicines come from and emphasize 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. 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.
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. For Ebola in particular, they follow the Nagoya Protocol, because the country of Gabbone is a signer to the Nagoya Protocol under the United Nations Convention for Biological Diversity. That's where Ebola comes from and the Buiti and Pigmi tribes there are the Indigenous
stewards and holders of this sacred medicine and knowledge that comes with it. 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 ar...
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. Yann actually had a hand in pushing
forward in Gabbone, which was the first country to sign it in 2011.
For Yann, the letter wasn't the end of the story. It was the beginning of a new mission.
“One that would take him from Gabbone to conferences around the world, trying to convince researchers”
that the story of Ebola 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 Ebola 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 Ebola. 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 of human history? Can scientific progress and Indigenous
“stewardship co-exist 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 Gabbone 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 are understanding of reality.
