Introduction

Ibogaine, which is a naturally occurring plant-based medicine native to western Africa, is ”an alkaloid found in the root bark of the Apocynaceae family of plants, most notably the Tabernanthe iboga shrub”.  (drugscience.org.uk)

Psychedelics and propaganda: A personal anecdote

Attending school in the US in the 1970s and 1980s, I was exposed to the propaganda of the times: smoking marijuana would stunt or delay puberty; cocaine was just as addictive as the fatal heroin; and psychedelics would make you psychotic.  There were “school scare” films made in the 1960s, including two hosted by Sonny Bono. Anti-drug propaganda has been famously depicted in cautionary drugspoitation films from the 1930s, such as the immortal Reefer Madness (1936). So we see how the government and the media are less-than-reliable for any balanced representation of psychedelics, since marijuana for instance does not cause psychosis and actually has a medicinal effect..

Conditioned by these films, in addition to rock music and rock journalism which recounted the exploits of said musicians, I grew up in a generation that was generally cynical about what we had been told — by filmmakers, the government, and the schools. Writers and musicians extolled the effects of psychedelics like LSD, peyote, and magic mushrooms.  The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett, and Brian Wilson were just a handful of the influential people in music who “dropped acid”.  But what might be the real reason psychedelics are illegal?

Early Psychedelic Research

Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland is where researcher Albert Hoffman discovered the synthesis of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in the late 1930s, and his team discovered psilocybin. His objective was to develop a respiratory and circulatory stimulant that would not negatively affect the uterus. Hoffman was, himself, the first LSD subject in 1943, taking a measured amount on what psychedelic proponents call “Bicycle Day”, 4/19.  He used LSD a number of times throughout the rest of his life, and wrote about it as “sacred”, and “medicine for the soul” (Wiki).

British physician Humphrey Osmond was one of a small group of psychiatrists who pioneered the use of LSD as a treatment for alcoholism and various mental disorders in the early 1950s. He coined the term psychedelic, meaning ‘mind manifesting’, and a willing subject for the experimental use of mescaline was author Aldous Huxley. He and his research partner, John Smythies, believed schizophrenia was due to a chemical imbalance, and began using LSD on alcoholic volunteers in Saskatchewan up through the late 1960s (Costandi, 2014)

In 1952 Ronald Sandison, a British physician working in psychiatry and addiction, imported LSD directly from Sandoz for use in his work with alcoholics in the UK, and found the same rates of success as his Saskatchewan colleagues.

More recently, from 2008 to 2011 Swiss psychotherapist Peter Gasser researched and published positive results on the use of LSD for terminal cancer patients. (Wiki)

It’s unclear why the UK, Canadian, and US governments failed to support further research into the correlation between psychedelic effects of these substances and the manifestation of psychotic symptoms; Smythies and Osmond’s postulation of a neurological or biochemical defect in schizophrenics went ignored.

Psychedelics and the US Government

It has become common knowledge that after the war the US government took seriously the threat they perceived from the USSR and communism in general.  Scientific experiments were conducted on soldiers and prisoners using psychedelics to see if mind control were possible, either by NATO forces or by the USSR and China (NPR, 2019).  In The Manchurian Candidate (Signet, 1959), a novel by Richard Condon (later filmed in 1962 and remade in 2004), a platoon of US soldiers are captured during the Korean war and subjected to mind control, leading to one soldier becoming a sleeper cell, unconsciously prepared to commit a political assassination. 

It was in this environment that psychedelics were becoming more known to Americans, and when the US government was concerned about negative publicity and worldwide criticism. In 1962, the U.S. Congress passed new drug safety regulations, and the Food and Drug Administration designated LSD as an experimental drug and began to clamp down on research into its effects. By 1968 it was declared illegal (Costandi, 2014)

Ibogaine And The Law

Ibogaine is classified in the US as a Schedule 1 drug.  According to the National Library Of Medicine, such substances have a “high abuse potential with no accepted medical use; medications within this schedule may not be prescribed, dispensed, or administered”. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) To translate, this does not mean that Schedule 1 drugs actually have no accepted medical use, but rather that their medical use has either not been sufficiently researched, or is not accepted by the establishment.

Current research into the medicinal effects of Ibogaine are sparse without governmental sanction and corporate funding, although inroads have been made in recent years, beginning in the 1990s when mounting evidence about psychedelics and their positive effect on depression and anxiety can no longer be ignored.  However, according to a recent article from UC San Francisco, “[Ibogaine] has bad side effects, and it’s not approved for use in the U.S.” So says Brian Shoichet, PhD, reflecting the party line.  He has been collaborating with colleague Isha Singh, PhD to create synthetics that would more-or-less replicate the work of Ibogaine, and “Shoichet has submitted the structures of…new molecules [of a synthetic ibogaine] to Sigma Aldrich, the chemical manufacturing company…”. (Levi Gladye, 2023)  The synthetics created are passed on, ostensibly for further research, but ultimately to develop a patent.

Ibogaine, at least in the US, is not legalized because when used without medical supervision there are cardiac risks — but more to the point, Ibogaine is a plant medicine that cannot be patented, and therefore cannot be lucrative to distributors.  As a result, research is being done in order to develop synthetic, patent-friendly imitations of the medicine.

Conclusion

Ibogaine is, of course, still a Schedule 1 drug.  Its cousins Ketamine, psilocybin (aka “magic mushrooms”), LSD, peyote, and Ayahuasca enjoy varied measures of acceptance and non-prosecution. Some are being allowed experimentally, in research and test settings, others in Native American Indian rituals. People seeking relief and cure from addiction, anxiety, trauma, and depression are increasingly turning to Mexico, where top programs like New Path Specialized Center are applying the medicinal use of Ibogaine in a clinical setting with little to no risk