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Curing of Bipolar Disorder
Tabernanthe iboga (Total Alkaloid extract & root bark)
Citation:   Daniel. "Curing of Bipolar Disorder: An Experience with Tabernanthe iboga (Total Alkaloid extract & root bark) (exp97396)". Erowid.org. Jan 21, 2013. erowid.org/exp/97396

 
DOSE:
6 g oral Tabernanthe iboga (powder / crystals)
  2 g oral Tabernanthe iboga (rootbark)
BODY WEIGHT: 70 kg
Hello! My name is Daniel and this is the story of my experience with Iboga and how it affected my life.

Before my Iboga treatment I was going through a very painful period in my life. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder which was getting worse and worse. I was abusing many different recreational psychoactive substances on a daily basis and chain-smoking about two packs a day. Almost every aspect of my life took the form of an out-of-control habit; sleeping, eating and playing computer games took up most of my time. Ridiculous amounts of my parent’s money were spent on different conventional treatments for my condition such as psychology and psychiatry but none seemed to help or even offer any hope, making my suffering even worse. I was growing more and more comfortable with the idea of killing myself. I was ticking.

I first found out about Iboga on the internet a few years ago. I read that it was like hitting the “reset” on your brain. I felt that this might be a possible solution for me and my “dysfunctional” inner computer- a last resort before actually throwing it all away with a suicide. I was ready. I found a therapist, an amazing man who beat a 20-year Heroin addiction with the help of Iboga. I contacted him right away. I carefully followed his instructions on how to prepare for the treatment by dieting and taking a medical check-up and finally arrived at his place ready for my session. He gave me a “flood” dose of Ibogaine and I swallowed it. What followed is a difficult to describe experience that completely changed my life. I will now do my best to summarize it;

The “come up” took about 1 - 2 hours from the moment of administration. It began with a sense of vertigo followed by a weird buzzing sound in my ears. Slowly I sank into a deep trance (the peak experience) which lasted about seven hours. This was a state between awake and asleep or maybe both awake and asleep at the same time. I lay in bed in a dark room as vivid dream-like visions filled my field of view. The visions came and went in a rapid succession and were completely immersive. They were somewhat similar to regular dreams but the loss of contact with the external reality and the paralysis that comes with regular sleep did not come and I could perceive both the inner and the outer world. The visions were not “realistic” like regular dreams but rather seemed to be animated in the most beautiful computed graphics I have ever seen- like the movie “Avatar” and the depth of detail I could perceive was much higher than in reality or in a dream.

Now, more than half a year after the experience I don't remember much of the content of the visions but what I do remember is that they were very diverse. The first thing that came into my field of view were a bunch of glowing green dots that seemed to fall like snowflakes slowly forming the face of a beautiful woman. Sometimes I was just flying through space or through a long tunnel. Sometimes I saw a movie or a play about my life that touched very deep memories in a symbolic way. Sometimes I was flying around fantastic worlds filled with life. Sometimes I saw a woman flying around me in the room and in my head and sometimes I just saw the room I was in through my closed eyelids as if they were open but in weird colors.

As the peak experience came to an end the lucidity of the visions gradually wore off and it became harder and harder to focus on them until I finally decided that it's time for me to get up from bed and move to the living room. Over the course of the next two days-or-so I could still faintly focus on the visions inside but it was too hard so I just sat with my eyes open as the “trip” wore off excruciatingly slowly.

This part of the experience was somewhat boring and hard but very meaningful. This was when I realised what it meant to hit the “reset” on the brain: my mind was completely blank. For most of that time I was relaxed and alert and the distortions in my perception were minimal if any. I could function normally: for example, I could go to the bathroom if I needed to and I was able to answer coherently when my therapist spoke to me but the blankness in my mind was overwhelming. There was no “drive” in me. There were no emotions. I would sit for hours without changing position just staring blankly because there was nothing within me that told me to move. In fact I would not move at all without a good reason (like wanting to pee). I felt every second creep by as if I was staring at a clock.

There was no escape from reality as I could not (or rather did not want to) daydream. Every time I attempted to think or daydream the thoughts felt too real. For example if I thought about someone dying it felt like someone really died and it was frightening. For a few hours (that felt like hundreds of thousands of individual seconds) I felt like I was going crazy... It wasn’t fun at all. My therapist tried to help distract me from these feelings by taking me to the country-club but it did not help much because my mind was still completely hollow. I swam and sat in a jacuzzi for some time but could not care less as it felt just like sitting in a chair or anything else... like nothing.

On the fourth day of the experience I was finally able to fall asleep. After the short and refreshing sleep I woke up with a sense of clarity. My emotions were back online! I finally felt good. I told my therapist that I felt good to go home. Actually I felt so good that I went straight to work. That turned out to be a mistake. I found that focusing on complicated tasks was impossible as I could not hold my attention for longer than a few minutes.

I took the next couple of days off and went hiking to slowly adjust to the new state of consciousness I was in. I felt sky high! I was a new Daniel! my mind was so clear and everything around me was so wonderful and beautiful. This feeling of high grew stronger and stronger and after a few days came to the point where It felt somewhat like MDMA. This was the beginning of the “Iboga glow”. Now it felt so easy to quit all my old habits because there was no emotional charge associated with my memories. They were all left behind by the Iboga reset. There were no cravings, no irrational fears and no automatic reactions. I was now able to re-think my attitude towards every aspect of my life from a clear point of view. My span of attention went back to normal and then grew much longer then it was before the treatment. The feeling of the intense MDMA-like high lasted for about 2 - 3 weeks during which I was able to completely transform my pattern of behaviour. The Bipolar Disorder wasn’t cured automatically- rather I understood how I was creating it in my life and I was able to just stop creating it so that now I finally let go of this destructive pattern of behaviour for good.

Several months have passed since I consulted this amazing medicine and the initial intense high is long gone but the clarity and the insights it gave me are still with me and they are here to stay.

I am free to grow.
Thank you dear brother D.L.
Thank you Iboga!
Thank you God!

Exp Year: 2012ExpID: 97396
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 28
Published: Jan 21, 2013Views: 12,504
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Tabernanthe iboga (200) : Unknown Context (20), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Glowing Experiences (4), First Times (2)

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