Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

[liminalOyster]

I may have some questions about the earlier origins of Iboga in the treatment of opiate addictions (both on the Veteran's Administration and NY Yippie sides)

Can you say more? Are you just referring to the material in the Staten Island book? I just noticed recently (when searching my laptop for the term *ibogaine*) that it appears more than once in some1950s Project ARTICHOKE docs, btw.

[American Dream]

My memory is a bit rusty but yeah, earlier interest by ARTICHOKE/MKSEARCH type forces, then beatnik doctor Howard Lotsof picked up the torch for the Veteran's Administration.

NYC YIP/High Times helped develop the therapeutic underground in the 70's but I wonder how easy it is to include both self-declared revolutionaries and drug wholesalers but avoid the hammer coming down hard, without some big protection somewhere...

None of this should be taken to suggest I know that any particular person is dirty but these things are at least grounds for further research.

I may have some questions about the earlier origins of Iboga in the treatment of opiate addictions (both on the Veteran's Administration and NY Yippie sides)

Can you say more? Are you just referring to the material in the Staten Island book? I just noticed recently (when searching my laptop for the term *ibogaine*) that it appears more than once in some1950s Project ARTICHOKE docs, btw.

[PufPuf93]

The very first internet community where I participated was a (or "the" as there were many members still active in the PKD realm in 2017) Philip K Dick email list (and may have mentioned this prior at RI) back in the mid to late 1990s.

Dana Beal the co-author of the book about the Staten Island Ibogaine project was a member of that PKD email list and the only member I can recall ever banned.

My impression was that the ban occurred because he was somewhat obsessed and mentioned Ibogaine too often.

I read what interested me and ignored the rest and bought a book direct from Beal and that was where I first learned of Ibogaine.

I understand that Beal had some IIRC drug trafficking legal issues later.

There are a number of references to PKD in the Staten Island book and Beal appeared a sincere PKD aficionado.

[liminalOyster]

[American Dream]

I really don't mean to impugn the motivations of dana beale or any other particular person with NYC YIP. What I said was more in the realm of paranoid speculation, focused especially on the history from the early 70's. In their book on ibogaine therapy from back then, they quoted uncritically from spooky brain scientists also, but ignorance of the history would be understandable.

[dada]

I used to have discussions with an ibogaine administrator friend. I would say to him that he's running a detox vacation center for rich kids. He would laugh.

Ibogaine changes the immediate symptoms of withdrawal from opiates. It takes the edge off of the worst symptoms. Instead of the usual protracted sickness lasting three to seven days or more, there is a period of intense vomiting and dizziness lasting a day or two. During that time there can be hallucinations. This is similar to Burroughs description of the Apomorphine treatment.

Sure, it can be an opportunity for "inner-work." What isn't? Psychoactive drug or not. Sweep the fucking floor, it can be an opportunity for inner work. But claims of lasting benefits, a life-changing "experience," this is where things get religious. I'm not very familiar with all of the literature, and I've never experienced an ibogaine detox. These are only my opinions.

I had another friend, a healthy, "whole" individual, sound in mind and body. He had no need for treatments, he broke his addictions through sheer willpower. He's the only person I've ever met that I would say was truly "cured."

One time he tried the iboga bark, just out of curiosity. He spent twenty-four hours on the floor of his music studio. Every time he sat up, he threw up. When the trip was over, he couldn't describe any of it, other than to say he "saw all of his ancestors and all that shit." I asked him, "what was it like?" He just looked at me. I said, "oh."

When I told my ibogaine administrator friend about this guy's wordless experience, he said, "Yeah. He's doing it right." I don't think many people are doing it right.

[American Dream]

I'm agnostic, but I do think there was a lot of undue hype around Timothy Leary's alcoholism "cure", so there is a precedent.

[liminalOyster]

I do think there was a lot of undue hype around Timothy Leary's alcoholism "cure", so there is a precedent.

I'm confused. Are you saying there is a precedent for sham promotion of psychedelic addiction treatment?

Also, my experience of Iboga servers is limited but greater than most and, luxurious Mexican facilities aside, mostly they seem to be doing a passion project and their clientele is anything but wealthy. There's little doubt that Ibo is a legitimate and effective addition interruptor, as per the medical/scientific research. The plethora of docs about it tend to take on an effusive messianic tone but I'm not going to hold that against the plant itself...

[American Dream]

Oh, I meant the question about whether Iboga effects more of an alteration of physical withdrawal symptoms or a life-changing personal insight which stops self-destructive behaviors for good. I have no personal experience of Iboga, so I won't say, but I do think that Leary's claims of life-changing insights from LSD that ended alcoholism were probably overstated. He himself had a rep as being a bit of a lush but was such an acidhead that seeking out a means of tamping down on the trip is also understandable.

[liminalOyster]

Oh, I meant the question about whether Iboga effects more of an alteration of physical withdrawal symptoms or a life-changing personal insight which stops self-destructive behaviors for good.

Gotcha, thanks. Though I'm not sure where the line can effectively be drawn. Gabor Mate is good on this - suggesting that linkages in the autonomic nervous system really blur this kind of distinction.

I do think that Leary's claims of life-changing insights from LSD that ended alcoholism were probably overstated. He himself had a rep as being a bit of a lush but was such an acidhead that seeking out a means of tamping down on the trip is also understandable.

I think everything Leary said, bar none-to-little, was overstated. But I think he is now emerging as something of an important and interesting figure given that he has become the negative avatar against which sanitized clinical psychedelic medicine has recently built itself - he's frequently used as an example of excess and/or irresponsibility that is all too often coupled with an implicit suggestion that psychedelics are OK in so far as they are carefully controlled and don't enter the political/social sphere.

In my own experience of significant addiction, psychedelics are almost innately anti-addictive.

[American Dream]

Leary had some good and some bad points, but definitely did learn a bunch from Marshall McLuhan, as well as really, really believing in his cause. Interesting his demonization in the era of respectability politics for entheogenic research. I mostly agree about psychedelics being anti-addictive but I do recall some account of somebody living in a San Francisco flophouse saying how they were taking liquid L every several hours and I do feel/imagine like that could have been some random person I met, long, long ago, in the spirit of Tommy Hall of the 13th Floor Elevators.

Oh, I meant the question about whether Iboga effects more of an alteration of physical withdrawal symptoms or a life-changing personal insight which stops self-destructive behaviors for good.

Gotcha, thanks. Though I'm not sure where the line can effectively be drawn. Gabor Mate is good on this - suggesting that linkages in the autonomic nervous system really blur this kind of distinction.

I do think that Leary's claims of life-changing insights from LSD that ended alcoholism were probably overstated. He himself had a rep as being a bit of a lush but was such an acidhead that seeking out a means of tamping down on the trip is also understandable.

I think everything Leary said, bar none-to-little, was overstated. But I think he is now emerging as something of an important and interesting figure given that he has become the negative avatar against which sanitized clinical psychedelic medicine has recently built itself - he's frequently used as an example of excess and/or irresponsibility that is all too often coupled with an implicit suggestion that psychedelics are OK in so far as they are carefully controlled and don't enter the political/social sphere.

In my own experience of significant addiction, psychedelics are almost innately anti-addictive.

[PufPuf93]

I'm agnostic, but I do think there was a lot of undue hype around Timothy Leary's alcoholism "cure", so there is a precedent.

Bill W. of AA was a proponent of lsd.

I had a close woman friend / semi-mother figure from the late 1980s until she passed away about ten years ago. I met "Mary" when I had a brief relationship with a woman where "Mary" was her AA support person.

Mary lived her life in California but had gone through lsd alcoholic therapy at a clinic in Canada in the late 1950s and never drank again but spent the rest of her life involved with AA. Mary "missed" the 60s in California as a participant. Her husband during the 60s and her alcoholism was a math professor from Stanford. She was neutral on pot but considered an intoxicant-free lifestyle as best. However, she did smoke tobacco and drink coffee and the smoking led to emphysema and her death in her early 80s.

Mary considered the lsd therapy the cure to her alcoholism but for obvious reasons did not mix her solution (and that of Bill W. of AA) with her service to a "mature" AA.

From: http://www.dosenation.com/listing.php?smlid=4189

AA, Bill Wilson and LSD

Many of you probably know already that Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was an avid supporter of the use of LSD to treat alcoholism. I found this biographical article online (in Modern Drunkard magazine, "Standing Up For Your Right to Get Falling Down Drunk Since 1996", which I have never heard of before now but which seems quite relevant itself) which is brief, catchy and fascinating. It reminds me of several interesting and widely applicable points, not the least of which is that the popularity and longevity of any movement, whether a cult, a philosophy, or a therapeutic technique, ultimately depends as much on the charisma of the initial promoters as it does on any qualities of the core idea. Just think what the world of addiction treatment would be like today if Bill Wilson hadn't been such a character!
This is my favorite part of the article:

One of his therapeutic journeys lead him to Trabuco College in California, and the friendship of the college’s founder, Aldous Huxley. The author of Brave New World and The Doors of Perception introduced Wilson to LSD-25. The drug rocked Wilson’s world. He thought of it as something of a miracle substance and continued taking it well into the ‘60s. As he approached his 70th birthday, he developed a plan to have LSD distributed at all AA meetings nationwide. The plan was eventually quashed by more rational voices, and a few years later the Federal government made the point moot by making the drug illegal. (That Wilson’s plan was shot down is probably fortunate. LSD is a beautiful thing, but nothing sounds more horrifying to me than a roomful of chain-smoking, frightened, needy drunks tripping their heads off in the basement of the local Y.)

[American Dream]

I think the ultimate supplier of the acid Bill W. took was Al Hubbard, which does not invalidate the experience. I try not to be too negative towards A.A. as I am close with people who found it to be a lifesaver, but I also think of Bill W's famous spiritual experience, in a hospital. Besides any DT's I believe it was aided by scopolamine and other such alkaloids provided by the doctor. When the patient is in the fall throes of the drug experience, then the hard sell for a total religious conversion begins. It would frighten me if LSD was used for such purposes.

[PufPuf93]

I think the ultimate supplier of the acid Bill W. took was Al Hubbard, which does not invalidate the experience. I try not to be too negative towards A.A. as I am close with people who found it to be a lifesaver, but I also think of Bill W's famous spiritual experience, in a hospital. Besides any DT's I believe it was aided by scopolamine and other such alkaloids provided by the doctor. When the patient is in the fall throes of the drug experience, then the hard sell for a total religious conversion begins. It would frighten me if LSD was used for such purposes.

I was clueless about AA until I met "Mary" and my general opinion of AA is negative except for a minority of participants.

LSD is a tightly controlled clinical setting with whatever additional treatment is deemed wise is of a different nature than distributing LSD at AA meetings. Now that would be a nightmare!

I am wishy-washy about the use of an entheogen to insert a false but powerful narrative in a therapeutic regime to change a life trajectory. Part of me says if the method works, it is OK.

[American Dream]

I do agree. I consider AA cultish sometimes- depends on the place and time a lot- but if the alternative is out of control free base fiending and/or drinking yourself to death, then I can make allowances.

I think the ultimate supplier of the acid Bill W. took was Al Hubbard, which does not invalidate the experience. I try not to be too negative towards A.A. as I am close with people who found it to be a lifesaver, but I also think of Bill W's famous spiritual experience, in a hospital. Besides any DT's I believe it was aided by scopolamine and other such alkaloids provided by the doctor. When the patient is in the fall throes of the drug experience, then the hard sell for a total religious conversion begins. It would frighten me if LSD was used for such purposes.

I was clueless about AA until I met "Mary" and my general opinion of AA is negative except for a minority of participants.

LSD is a tightly controlled clinical setting with whatever additional treatment is deemed wise is of a different nature than distributing LSD at AA meetings. Now that would be a nightmare!

I am wishy-washy about the use of an entheogen to insert a false but powerful narrative in a therapeutic regime to change a life trajectory. Part of me says if the method works, it is OK.