Ibogaine: Questions and Answers III

Copyright © 2002, Patrick K. Kroupa
All Rights Reserved

Original Publication: Heroin Times

Will ibogaine REALLY detox me from heroin? I’ve heard horror stories about people who’ve dosed with it and just wound up extremely sick while tripping out.

This is a question that’s landed in my mail quite a bit over the past coupla months. So to answer it as simply and honestly as I can: what I write here is based upon my personal experience, and my observations interacting with people who have actually used ibogaine to detox.

Taking a brief reality check, the single greatest source of information about ibogaine right now is the internet. People love to vent on the internet. If there are hundreds — or thousands — of disgruntled individuals who paid a lot of money to kick with ibogaine, and feel they were ripped off… Then where are they?

You can easily find a mountain of ranting, raving and venting, all pertaining to why UROD is garbage — an assertion I absolutely agree with, having undertaken the procedure twice. But with regards to ibogaine there are random blips here and there, and one or two very vocal individuals who retell the same tale over, and over, and over again, anywhere they can.

To reiterate what I’ve said before: I dunno. I have no way of telling who dosed with what, where. To make a very simple analogy, this is like saying, “I copped some dope, it was beat, therefore heroin doesn’t work.”

To take the same analogy a step further, people respond to drugs in different ways. That’s like a guy who just snorted half a bag, watching me slam 8 in the vein, and trying to understand what’s up…

“How can you do that? This shit is awful. All it does is make me throw up and feel nauseated. Who would ever want to do heroin, it sucks…” Yeah, well, maybe for you.

Anything is possible. It is entirely within the spectrum of possibility that there are people who will not respond to ibogaine – I just haven’t met any of them personally. This does not mean they don’t exist.

I’ve shown my addictionologist/doctor some of the ibogaine material. He said that this can’t possibly work.

Okay, that’s fine. I’m sure he or she is an expert pharmacologist who holds all of life’s answers. Ask them what it is they’re selling, and buy that instead. Best of luck with all that.

How do YOU stay clean? I’ve seen you talk about ibogaine and I’m wondering, where are YOU going to be 5 years from now… You don’t do the 12-steps, you don’t encourage people to go to rehab, what works in the long-run?

What works is not bangin’ up, snorting, or smoking heroin. This has a 100% success rate. Everything you do other than that, is just an attempt to put yourself into a headspace where you actually believe that you can stay off dope. Because that really is all there is to it: if you believe, then you make it so.

That’s a highly simplified and glib answer; if I get real there are a variety of things that prevent me from bangin’ up, depending on my mood, whether I’m in a manic or depressive phase, time of day, day of the week, phase of the moon… I mean, I do not coast along on warm fuzzy happiness, love, light, and good vibes — well sometimes I do, but if I counted on that to keep me clean, I’d be shooting dope within a day at best.

When I’m in a negative space… Part of holding things together is just getting real and knowing yourself. I am an arrogant, egotistical, narcissistic person… Okay, however… I am also an arrogant, egotistical, narcissistic person with a lifelong history of chronic drug addiction, who has pretty much outlasted every single sub-normal, low-IQ idiot who ever got in my face while I was disintegrating, and worked very hard in their attempt to invalidate my truth, and ram the one true answer to everything down my throat — the “one true answer to everything, as it pertains to recovery” varied from idiot to idiot, but the simple bottom line is: every day I’m clean, is another day I give a great big FUCK YOU to every asshole who ever attempted to convince me that I cannot do what I’m doing: staying clean my way, on my terms, living within my truth.

While I do not do the 12-steps, I have absolutely no problem with ’em. They appear to work for a whole lotta people. What I have a problem with are individuals who are not working the steps – but rather, selling the steps, as the one and only, absolute answer to addiction; and if you don’t do it our way, you will die. And that… That’s just not true.

The one thing I can unequivocally state is: there are a whole lotta people out there, who are completely unaccounted for, who do not fill our surveys and questionnaires, participate in studies, or write about themselves, who have managed to kick drugs in a large variety of ways, but basically; on their own. According to statistics and other lies, these people simply do not exist. And I’m sorry but… That just ain’t true either.

As for me personally… How long will I stay off heroin. I dunno, if you have the answer to that one, please lemme know. While I do not do this “one day at a time” bullshit; I make choices. My choices change as time goes by. When I am once again in a financial position that there really aren’t any further consequences… In short, where nobody can stop me…

Well, then it’ll be time to make another series of choices, and decide what I want to do next. I believe I will choose to make a new series of mistakes which I haven’t experienced before, but I mean, saying I like heroin is an understatement. For me heroin is love, the dark side… It creates some problems, but solves a whole lotta others. If it didn’t, then people wouldn’t be doing it.

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