1y ago

Psychoactive drug ibogaine effectively treats traumatic brain injury in special ops military vets

med.stanford.edu

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I spoke with the researchers on this particular study a few months ago at a local conference. This study is interesting to me due to a few factors:
Ibogaine is almost never studied in the medical context because a small number of individuals experience an adverse reaction involving the heart which can result in death
The researchers theorized you could counter this rare but life threatening side effect by co-administering magnesium, suggesting that afib is behind the heart-related problems and that ibogaine may cause some kind of imbalance with Ca, K, and Na.
Ibogaine is a schedule 1 controlled drug in the US meaning that it cannot be studied for medical purposes. Unlike MDMA and psilocybin which have had the power of MAPS arguing for decades for the use in research and allowing medical research despite the scheduling status of the drugs, ibogaine has not received this special status, meaning that the researchers had to have a rather unique study design in which patients were recruited in one country and sent to another country for treatment. I've quite literally never seen a study do this, let alone one which is working with a population that is federal in nature (veterans) and is a fantastically creative way of ensuring medical research can continue amongst draconian law.
Also, here's a direct link to the article in nature
- MAPS is doing great work!
  
  To be clear, MAPS was actually not involved in this study, although it is fair to say their advocacy is absolutely pinnacle to the field of psychedelic sciences. But I do agree, MAPS rules
It's been pretty well established data that many psychedelics promote neuritogenesis. If drugs weren't illegal so we could study all of them and figure out why, we would have such a better understanding of medicine for the brain. Combined with brain scanning. Instead, we spend billions every year to have GP ask "how you feelin today?" then throw whatever ssri they've been told work for that type of not happy works. And if that one doesn't work try this other one.
The entire system is so fucked that I know it won't get fixed in my lifetime.
Hunter S. Thompson was right all along...
The stuff about ibogaine in "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" was in a rare category where I genuinely couldn't tell if he was being serious or making up nonsense. Maybe it was real.
- Ibogaine has been used in alternative medicine to help people break addiction for quite some time. It just happens to be a psychedelic treated with extreme respect, perhaps due to the nonzero chance that it could kill you. Interestingly enough, this study seems to suggest that co-administration with magnesium may completely or at least significantly offset that chance.
  
  I watched a documentary on it at one point, and it's not a pleasant experience, at least from an outside perspective.
  Pretty much every orifice is gonna have something coming out of it, often simultaneously.
  I'm curious about it's use in treating addiction, what with sharing a house with an alcoholic relative.

7 comments