I have experienced depression and anxiety for approximately 40 years, since my childhood. This has varied year on year between mild, to debilitating enough to keep me locked in my house for months on end not wanting to, not able to face the outside world, just barely existing. As each year passed with no career, no relationship, and absolutely nothing to show for my worthless existence, I felt my life wasting away, but I was unable to change my mind, unable to take joy in living.
But it’s never too late to change, to reset and begin living again. Iboga isn’t a one stop shop, take and forget, but it does change your negative mindset, and prep you to really make the changes in your life so you can experience contentment, happiness and joy. I strongly recommend that after taking Iboga, you have a follow up plan that includes counselling of some kind appropriate to the issues that have brought you to Iboga. I am studying Buddhism as this philosophy speaks sense to my heart and mind.
Until someone very close to me told me about the near miraculous cure called Ibogaine or Iboga, I had never heard of this hallucinogenic plant. And if I hadn’t had completely trusted my friend who herself had taken the Iboga route to deal with her issues, I certainly wouldn’t have tried this, having heard since my teens about the dangers of drugs like LSD. But I really needn’t have feared anything because the whole experience was no worse than a trip to the dentist for a filling. OK, maybe it doesn’t usually take 18 hours to recover from the wobbles with a general anaesthetic but its close.
Bilal and Cathy are very warm, kind people and quickly put you at ease as they show you your room for the duration and answer any questions you have about the procedure. As I had not eaten since late afternoon before my arrival, I started on my Iboga dose the following morning, instead of spending a whole day preparing, but most people will follow the usual routine of a day of fast and magnesium flush. Trust me, it reduces the chance of vomiting later.
Having researched Iboga quite a bit beforehand I did have preconceptions about how my experience would go. But as Bilal had explained previously, everyone is different and often you don’t get what you expect. I walked around a while after taking the test dose, it was only after the second capsule did, I start to feel the ataxia coming on and decided it was time to lay down on my bed. I was quartered in the new wooden hut. This is very pleasant, I enjoyed listening to the cicadas at night, and been able to sky watch too. It didn’t affect my iboga experience at all, I imagine that been in a hospital bed with the hum of monitors and the distant calls for staff would be disruptive though. But I chose Cathy and Bilal as my providers precisely because I wanted the friendly family approach, not a clinical setting.
After a short while I had another capsule, and that was when the affects started in earnest. I heard this cacophony of sound starting with a buzzing and ending with an assortment of noises. And the visions started, a mixture of scenes and random shapes. Bilal had mentioned before about how some people can direct their dream sequences, so I tried a bit of control. I was able to make the images move away or towards me and rotate at will. I didn’t see any childhood flashbacks though, even though this was a hope of mine. My visions etc lasted a few hours then I became calm and empty of intrusive thoughts. This was the amazing bit for me. For the first time in decades I could just be. I could look at flowers, the sky, the scenery, I could listen to Cathy and Bilal’s children playing, watch their dog chase the cat, or just look at nothing in particular, and do so with no negative thoughts, no disturbing thoughts. Nothing at all, unless I chose to think. I’ve tried meditation retreats before, but never managed to stop the monkey talk for more than a few seconds at a time.
It’s been a couple of weeks now since my Iboga experience, and I am still free of negative self-talk. After depression and anxiety since early childhood, I can’t tell you how good it feels to be free of the critical self, the demeaning self, the negative self. My life still has problems such as my ‘employer’ hasn’t paid me for the last three months and now I have a big credit card bill to deal with. Before Iboga, I would be quite literally suicidal at this point, but I’m not now. S@#T happens to everyone, but I’m calm and dealing with it instead of curling up in abject fear and contemplating the ultimate solution. Iboga has freed me from my prison.
Thank you, Cathy and Bilal, for your help.
I wish you all well for the future.
