Ibogaine List Archives – 2003-06

From: jon freedlander <jfreed1@umbc.edu>
Subject: RE: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
Date: June 30, 2003 at 5:31:34 PM EDT
To: ibogaine <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

===== Original Message From Nick Labus <goosebumpz2002@yahoo.com> =====
but its illegal to sell it to us people so they strip it and sell it to us
people and in canadas the good shit that they sell to the ibogaine docs!

Ethnogarden will not ship iboga or ibogaine to the US; only to countries where
it’s legal..

From: “Faye, Shawn” <Shawn.Faye@NorthSafety.com>
Subject: RE: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
Date: June 30, 2003 at 1:58:04 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Any other ideas on where to buy the real deal?
—–Original Message—–
From: JC [mailto:whitehaze@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2003 10:18 AM
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?

Greetings,

Thanks for the polite comments. We had a problem with the consistency of the rootbark as you can have with all plants the alkaloids change from season to season, plant to plant ect. We will replace any product which is not what it should be and not of decent quality. We pride ourselves on ensuring all products we carry are nothing but the highest quality and if this is not the case we will replace it with no problem.

Please contact us via e-mail as we are currently away on business and no one who can answer your questions is available via telephone.

Thanks!
We’ll ensure your compensated for the product!

Ethnogarden Botanicals Corp.
www.ethnogarden.com
info@ethnogarden.com
Tel: (01)705-735-0540
Fax: (01)705-735-4332
—– Original Message —–
From: Nick Labus
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Sent: Saturday, June 28, 2003 3:13 PM
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?

Thank  you very much ad astra i would like to note that i hjave had quite a few bad experience with internet sites it sounds as if ethnogarden has bunk iboga i dont know and i dont want to know if you live n usa but some companys in the us or sending the us strip a plant of its oils or alkaloids that are deemed illegal by lawmakers so you may ave bought ibogaine root they didnt tell you the did something to it to destroy the actual alkaloid that makes you have desired effects they do it to amanitas alot they strip all the muscimal and ibotenic acid out of them then sell the amanita muscaria and there real and everything but they cant get arrested for selling a pplant that has a psycoactive substance or there s option 3 what i thinks going on they keep thre first two things then they use the ibogaine and alkaloids  to ana;ly fuck themselves whiule keeping warm by a fire kindeled by hundred doller bills and byingn yau! ght s while good  people  who simpl;e would  like to enhance their lives are getting screwed so thank you veryvery much ethnogarden  SUCKKKKKKKSSSSSSSSSSSSSSASSSS! your not the first to report bunk product !

ad astra <metagrrl@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi,

I don’t know how to reach them, but I have had
experience, or perhaps I should say non-experience,
with their products.

I took 25 grams of ethnogarden iboga root bark about a
year ago, but had no discernable effect. At the time
I attributed it to possible absorption problems caused
by mixing it with milk and honey, and also the fact
that I only kept it down for about 2 hours before
puking it up.

A week ago I took 4 grams of ethnogarden extract on an
empty stomach (after fasting for about 15 hours), did
not puke, felt only mild nausea (though I had taken an
OTC anti-nausea medication), and had no noticeable
psychoactive effects. However I did feel physically
rather ill for a couple of days afterward. 4 grams of
the extract, according to the website, should be about
1 gram of ibogaine; proportional to my b! ody weight it
would be around 11-12 mg/kg ibogaine.

This could be just me…I could be immune to iboga’s
effects. I should also mention, though, that I spoke
a few days ago to someone who recently ingested 20
grams of root bark powder from ethnogarden and kept it
down for about 2 hours before throwing up. He
described the effects as being “very mild, maybe even
placebo effects.”

For what it’s worth, I’ve heard indirect accounts of
people getting some effect from around 5 grams of root
bark powder from ethnogarden.

— Will wrote:
> Does anyone know how to reach the folks at
> ethnogarden (the canadian place, not
> ethnobotanicals)? I’ve tried emailing
> info@ethnogarden.com but no response, and I’ve tried
> calling at various times in the day and evening, but
> no one answers the phone there either. If the
> proprietors are on this list, please reply and let> me know how to reach you with questions.
>
> Does anyone else have experience with this company?
> Are they reliable, is their product good?
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Will
>
>
>
>

__________________________________
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From: “Faye, Shawn” <Shawn.Faye@NorthSafety.com>
Subject: RE: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
Date: June 30, 2003 at 1:55:39 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

If I have to come to Canada (or can it be purchased in Mexico over the counter at pharmacy-if so what is the name?)
do you have access to a list of locations in both companies which sell Ibogaine?

Thanks
—–Original Message—–
From: Ethnogarden Botanicals Corp. [mailto:info@ethnogarden.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2003 9:37 PM
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?

Nick you are very misinformed.

WE DO NOT SHIP ANY IBOGA PRODUCTS TO THE US. NOT STRIPPED OR THE LIKE. WE WILL  NOT MAKE ANY EXCEPTIONS.  It’s simple if you are a US citizen and wish to purchase our Iboga or Peyote products you come to Canada and purchase them from one of the shops we deal with in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal or Windsor.

Also your facts are off on ibotinic acid and muscimol. They are not illegal. The Amanita mushroom and all its contents are legal in all of the world. Please research before mis-informing people!
Ethnogarden Botanicals Corp.
www.ethnogarden.com
info@ethnogarden.com
Tel: (01)705-735-0540
Fax: (01)705-735-4332
—– Original Message —–
From: Nick Labus
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2003 12:03 AM
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?

but its illegal to sell it to us people so they strip it and sell it to us people and in canadas the good shit that they sell to the ibogaine docs!

ad astra <metagrrl@yahoo.com> wrote:
Ethnogarden is a Canadian company, iboga and ibogaine
are legal here – so I doubt they are deliberately
selling bunk. I believe they are dealing in good
faith and *IF* they are selling product with low
ibogaine content it is unintentional.

— Nick Labus wrote:
> Thank you very much ad astra i would like to note
> that i hjave had quite a few bad experience with
> internet sites it sounds as if ethnogarden has bunk
> iboga i dont know and i dont want to know if you
> live n usa but some companys in the us or sending

__________________________________
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From: “JC” <whitehaze@sympatico.ca>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
Date: June 29, 2003 at 1:18:10 PM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Greetings,

Thanks for the polite comments. We had a problem with the consistency of the rootbark as you can have with all plants the alkaloids change from season to season, plant to plant ect. We will replace any product which is not what it should be and not of decent quality. We pride ourselves on ensuring all products we carry are nothing but the highest quality and if this is not the case we will replace it with no problem.

Please contact us via e-mail as we are currently away on business and no one who can answer your questions is available via telephone.

Thanks!
We’ll ensure your compensated for the product!

Ethnogarden Botanicals Corp.
www.ethnogarden.com
info@ethnogarden.com
Tel: (01)705-735-0540
Fax: (01)705-735-4332
—– Original Message —–
From: Nick Labus
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Sent: Saturday, June 28, 2003 3:13 PM
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?

Thank  you very much ad astra i would like to note that i hjave had quite a few bad experience with internet sites it sounds as if ethnogarden has bunk iboga i dont know and i dont want to know if you live n usa but some companys in the us or sending the us strip a plant of its oils or alkaloids that are deemed illegal by lawmakers so you may ave bought ibogaine root they didnt tell you the did something to it to destroy the actual alkaloid that makes you have desired effects they do it to amanitas alot they strip all the muscimal and ibotenic acid out of them then sell the amanita muscaria and there real and everything but they cant get arrested for selling a pplant that has a psycoactive substance or there s option 3 what i thinks going on they keep thre first two things then they use the ibogaine and alkaloids  to ana;ly fuck themselves whiule keeping warm by a fire kindeled by hundred doller bills and byingn yau! ght s while good  people  who simpl;e would  like to enhance their lives are getting screwed so thank you veryvery much ethnogarden  SUCKKKKKKKSSSSSSSSSSSSSSASSSS! your not the first to report bunk product !

ad astra <metagrrl@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi,

I don’t know how to reach them, but I have had
experience, or perhaps I should say non-experience,
with their products.

I took 25 grams of ethnogarden iboga root bark about a
year ago, but had no discernable effect. At the time
I attributed it to possible absorption problems caused
by mixing it with milk and honey, and also the fact
that I only kept it down for about 2 hours before
puking it up.

A week ago I took 4 grams of ethnogarden extract on an
empty stomach (after fasting for about 15 hours), did
not puke, felt only mild nausea (though I had taken an
OTC anti-nausea medication), and had no noticeable
psychoactive effects. However I did feel physically
rather ill for a couple of days afterward. 4 grams of
the extract, according to the website, should be about
1 gram of ibogaine; proportional to my b! ody weight it
would be around 11-12 mg/kg ibogaine.

This could be just me…I could be immune to iboga’s
effects. I should also mention, though, that I spoke
a few days ago to someone who recently ingested 20
grams of root bark powder from ethnogarden and kept it
down for about 2 hours before throwing up. He
described the effects as being “very mild, maybe even
placebo effects.”

For what it’s worth, I’ve heard indirect accounts of
people getting some effect from around 5 grams of root
bark powder from ethnogarden.

— Will wrote:
> Does anyone know how to reach the folks at
> ethnogarden (the canadian place, not
> ethnobotanicals)? I’ve tried emailing
> info@ethnogarden.com but no response, and I’ve tried
> calling at various times in the day and evening, but
> no one answers the phone there either. If the
> proprietors are on this list, please reply and let> me know how to reach you with questions.
>
> Does anyone else have experience with this company?
> Are they reliable, is their product good?
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Will
>
>
>
>

__________________________________
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From: “Ethnogarden Botanicals Corp.” <info@ethnogarden.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
Date: June 30, 2003 at 12:36:31 AM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Nick you are very misinformed.

WE DO NOT SHIP ANY IBOGA PRODUCTS TO THE US. NOT STRIPPED OR THE LIKE. WE WILL  NOT MAKE ANY EXCEPTIONS.  It’s simple if you are a US citizen and wish to purchase our Iboga or Peyote products you come to Canada and purchase them from one of the shops we deal with in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal or Windsor.

Also your facts are off on ibotinic acid and muscimol. They are not illegal. The Amanita mushroom and all its contents are legal in all of the world. Please research before mis-informing people!
Ethnogarden Botanicals Corp.
www.ethnogarden.com
info@ethnogarden.com
Tel: (01)705-735-0540
Fax: (01)705-735-4332
—– Original Message —–
From: Nick Labus
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2003 12:03 AM
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?

but its illegal to sell it to us people so they strip it and sell it to us people and in canadas the good shit that they sell to the ibogaine docs!

ad astra <metagrrl@yahoo.com> wrote:
Ethnogarden is a Canadian company, iboga and ibogaine
are legal here – so I doubt they are deliberately
selling bunk. I believe they are dealing in good
faith and *IF* they are selling product with low
ibogaine content it is unintentional.

— Nick Labus wrote:
> Thank you very much ad astra i would like to note
> that i hjave had quite a few bad experience with
> internet sites it sounds as if ethnogarden has bunk
> iboga i dont know and i dont want to know if you
> live n usa but some companys in the us or sending

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

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From: “paul jackamo” <pauljackamo@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Re: AMON
Date: June 29, 2003 at 9:05:50 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

I just checked out amon’s site and i urge everyone to do the same and leave a thought in his guestbook.  i dont know why his death has affected me – especially as people dying was part of my  junky landscape for so long – i guess, its the “there but for the grace of god, go I” feeling…i remember his posts and he seemed like someone  i would have liked to get to know..another timetrack perhaps…

its a reminder that we are dealing with real life & death issues here (on so many levels, as iboga itself seems to take you to the death realms)

i would like to thank his mum for sharing her time with us here on mindvox and my thoughts are with her.

take care everyone

paul.

From: “AMON” <amon@wetnightmare.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
CC: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Re: AMON
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 08:09:06 -0700 (PDT)

THANKyou to Allison and Curtis for expressing
condolences re.death of my son Chris. He worked for
Register.com , a povider of domanin names, and the
company generously agreed to keep his website,
amonworld.com in operation for the next ten years. A
friend of Chris’s and colleague at Register will be
admininstering the site and provided me access to his
email account a couple of weeks ago. By then there were
over 350 postings and e-mails to sort through. I hope
that members of this list will check out his website,
which eventually will be updated with pictures of him,
his eulogy, stories, etc.
One of the saddest messages was from Daniel Pinchbeck.
Chris refers to his book on the website and it was from
reading the book Breaking OPEN THE HEAD, that convinced
him ibogaine was the way for him to go. Thus, he wrote
to Pinchbeck and on May 28, a month after Chris’s
death, a reply inviting him to participate in a
film/documentary being produced in Mexico re. ibogaine
treatment- aftercare to be provided on a ranch in
California- all expenses paid-
Chris would have been thrilled at the opportunity- but
bad timing always seemed to be part of his life!
Anyway, a memorial fund has been established in his
name and it is my desire to use the money in a way that
would honor Chris and pay tribute to his memory. I
think somehow he is leading me to this whole ibogaine
experience, and perhaps there is a way I could help
someone in need of treatment. Chris was looking into
going to Vancouver to the iboga therapy house, in fact
was arranging for an Ekg. I won’t continue with this
topic, but I too am very excited about all I have read
at ibogaine.org and sincerely want to further the cause
in any way I can.
thanks for providing this forum, his website can also
be accessed through wetnightmare. com- check it out and
sign the guestbook which has been added since his
death.   mother SueOn Tue, 24 Jun 2003 00:12:27 +1200,
“Allison Senepart” wrote:

> Message-Id:
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> List-Help: <mailto:ibogaine-help@mindvox.com>
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<mailto:ibogaine-unsubscribe@mindvox.com>
> From: “Allison Senepart” <aa.senepart@xtra.co.nz>
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2003 05:13:59 -0700
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> by smtp.inbound.c001.snv.cp.net (209.228.32.109)
with SMTP; 23 Jun 2003 05:13:59 -0700
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by ezmlm
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> charset=”iso-8859-1″
> Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Re: AMON
> X-Received: 23 Jun 2003 12:13:59 GMT
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> References:
<20030622160449.23270.h004.c001.wm@mail.wetnightmare.com.criticalpath.net>
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>
> I just wanted to offer condolences to Amons Mum.  I
saw
> his messages here
> but had no idea he had died.  I don’t know that any of
> this will make his
> Mum feel better but a lot of addicts don’t set out
> intentionally to die.  I
> have a number of friends now that have overdosed or
> died accidentely while
> using drugs which is an incentive   that helps my
> partner and I try to fight
> to keep clean.  Its not easy and the temptation is
> always just around the
> corner but so far we are staying good for longer than
> we have done at any
> other time.  We have tried and failed so many times,
> had arguments, given
> up, been sick and everything else that goes with it.
> My daughter is now 22
> and is very anti hard drugs after having to live with
> my partner and I and I
> am certainly not proud to have introduced her to
things
> she should never
> have seen or been aware of.  All I can say is that its
> like one part of your
> mind is saying one thing and then another half is
> talking you into the
> opposite.  At times I was so determined not to do any
> more morphine, poppies
> etc. and then my partner would arrive home with
> something and I would start
> cramping in the stomach just anticipating it.  My
> parents were horribly
> upset when they figured out what I was doing.  I
> managed to hide it for a
> while but eventually everything feel to bits.  I would
> turn up to visit and
> nod off in the middle of a conversation and I guess it
> was all too obvious.
> They wanted to help me but I wouldn’t let them.  My
> answer was to keep
> telling them everything was under control cos I didn’t
> want them to be
> disappointed in me and also didn’twant to admit how
> desperate and sick I was
> when I needed a fix to get to work and function for
the
> day.
> I wish Amons mum all the best and hope that she will
> find some understanding
> from people on this list.
> Regards Allison.   PS  It all sounds so inadequate but
> my thoughts are there
> even if though the words are hard to write.
> —– Original Message —–
> From: “AMON” <amon@wetnightmare.com>
> To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
> Cc: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
> Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 11:04 AM
> Subject: [ibogaine] Re: AMON
>
>
> > On Sun, 22 Jun 2003 13:04:35 -0400, “preston peet”
> > wrote:
> > I”m not sure how to send a  message to this group-
but
> > I would like anybody who might have communicated
with
> > Amon to know that on April 26, he died suddenly. The
> > cause of death is still being investigated, but he
was
> > in the company of drug dealers at the time. I am his
> > mother and would appreciate hearing from anyone who
> has
> > insights or previous messages from him, as I mourn
his
> > death and try to understand his pain. I know he was
> > trying desperately in his last two months to find
help
> > for his addiction. My agony is that I was not able
to
> > help him in time. If anyone out there can help me
with
> > understanding, I would be so grateful. thank you.
> >
> > > Message-Id:
> > <003801c338e0$5be3ee80$7d60c118@nyc.rr.com>
> > > List-Help: <mailto:ibogaine-help@mindvox.com>
> > > List-Unsubscribe:
> > <mailto:ibogaine-unsubscribe@mindvox.com>
> > > From: “preston peet” <ptpeet@nyc.rr.com>
> > > X-Priority: 3
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> > > Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
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> > V6.00.2600.0000
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Jun
> > 2003 10:05:14 -0700
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> serenity.mindvox.com)
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Jun
> > 2003 16:56:11 -0000
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run
> > by ezmlm
> > > X-Msmail-Priority: Normal
> > > Content-Type: text/plain;
> > > charset=”iso-8859-1″
> > > Subject: [ibogaine] (OT, but interesting) Fw:
> > [drugwar] Savant for a Day
> > > X-Received: 22 Jun 2003 17:05:14 GMT
> > > List-Post: <mailto:ibogaine@mindvox.com>
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> > <mailto:ibogaine-subscribe@mindvox.com>
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> >
>
<ibogaine-return-4688-nodoff=wetnightmare.com@mindvox.com>
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> > > To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
> > >
> > >
> > > —– Original Message —–
> > > From: Tim Meehan
> > > To: drugwar@mindvox.com
> > > Cc: mapster@coollist.com
> > > Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2003 10:28 AM
> > > Subject: [drugwar] Savant for a Day
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>

> > >
> > >
> > > June 22, 2003
> > > Savant for a Day
> > > By LAWRENCE OSBORNE
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > n a concrete basement at the University of
Sydney, I
> > > sat in a chair waiting
> > > to
> > > have my brain altered by an electromagnetic pulse.
> My
> > > forehead was
> > > connected, by
> > > a series of electrodes, to a machine that looked
> > > something like an
> > > old-fashioned
> > > beauty-salon hair dryer and was sunnily described
to
> > me
> > > as a ”Danish-made
> > > transcranial magnetic stimulator.” This was not
> just
> > > any old Danish-made
> > > transcranial magnetic stimulator, however; this
was
> > the
> > > Medtronic Mag Pro,
> > > and
> > > it was being operated by Allan Snyder, one of the
> > > world’s most remarkable
> > > scientists of human cognition.
> > >
> > > Nonetheless, the anticipation of electricity being
> > > beamed into my frontal
> > > lobes
> > > (and the consent form I had just signed) made me a
> bit
> > > nervous. Snyder found
> > > that amusing. ”Oh, relax now!” he said in the
> thick
> > > local accent he has
> > > acquired since moving here from America. ”I’ve
done
> > it
> > > on myself a hundred
> > > times. This is Australia. Legally, it’s far more
> > > difficult to damage people
> > > in
> > > Australia than it is in the United States.”
> > >
> > > ”Damage?” I groaned.
> > >
> > > ”You’re not going to be damaged,” he said.
> ”You’re
> > > going to be
> > > enhanced.”
> > >
> > > The Medtronic was originally developed as a tool
for
> > > brain surgery: by
> > > stimulating or slowing down specific regions of
the
> > > brain, it allowed
> > > doctors to
> > > monitor the effects of surgery in real time. But
it
> > > also produced, they
> > > noted,
> > > strange and unexpected effects on patients’ mental
> > > functions: one minute
> > > they
> > > would lose the ability to speak, another minute
they
> > > would speak easily but
> > > would make odd linguistic errors and so on. A
number
> > of
> > > researchers started
> > > to
> > > look into the possibilities, but one in particular
> > > intrigued Snyder: that
> > > people
> > > undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, or
> TMS,
> > > could suddenly exhibit
> > > savant intelligence — those isolated pockets of
> > > geniuslike mental ability
> > > that
> > > most often appear in autistic people.
> > >
> > > Snyder is an impish presence, the very opposite
of a
> > > venerable professor,
> > > let
> > > alone an internationally acclaimed scientist.
There
> is
> > > a whiff of Woody
> > > Allen
> > > about him. Did I really want him, I couldn’t help
> > > thinking, rewiring my hard
> > > drive? ”We’re not changing your brain
physically,”
> > he
> > > assured me. ”You’ll
> > > only experience differences in your thought
> processes
> > > while you’re actually
> > > on
> > > the machine.” His assistant made a few final
> > > adjustments to the electrodes,
> > > and
> > > then, as everyone stood back, Snyder flicked the
> > switch.
> > >
> > > A series of electromagnetic pulses were being
> directed
> > > into my frontal
> > > lobes,
> > > but I felt nothing. Snyder instructed me to draw
> > > something. ”What would you
> > > like to draw?” he said merrily. ”A cat? You like
> > > drawing cats? Cats it
> > > is.”
> > >
> > > I’ve seen a million cats in my life, so when I
close
> > my
> > > eyes, I have no
> > > trouble
> > > picturing them. But what does a cat really look
> like,
> > > and how do you put it
> > > down
> > > on paper? I gave it a try but came up with some
sort
> > of
> > > stick figure,
> > > perhaps an
> > > insect.
> > >
> > > While I drew, Snyder continued his lecture. ”You
> > could
> > > call this a
> > > creativity-amplifying machine. It’s a way of
> altering
> > > our states of mind
> > > without
> > > taking drugs like mescaline. You can make people
see
> > > the raw data of the
> > > world
> > > as it is. As it is actually represented in the
> > > unconscious mind of all of
> > > us.”
> > >
> > > Two minutes after I started the first drawing, I
was
> > > instructed to try
> > > again.
> > > After another two minutes, I tried a third cat,
and
> > > then in due course a
> > > fourth.
> > > Then the experiment was over, and the electrodes
> were
> > > removed. I looked down
> > > at
> > > my work. The first felines were boxy and stiffly
> > > unconvincing. But after I
> > > had
> > > been subjected to about 10 minutes of transcranial
> > > magnetic stimulation,
> > > their
> > > tails had grown more vibrant, more nervous; their
> > faces
> > > were personable and
> > > convincing. They were even beginning to wear
clever
> > > expressions.
> > >
> > > I could hardly recognize them as my own drawings,
> > > though I had watched
> > > myself
> > > render each one, in all its loving detail. Somehow
> > over
> > > the course of a very
> > > few
> > > minutes, and with no additional instruction, I had
> > gone
> > > from an incompetent
> > > draftsman to a very impressive artist of the
feline
> > > form.
> > >
> > > Snyder looked over my shoulder. ”Well, how about
> > that?
> > > Leonardo would be
> > > envious.” Or turning in his grave, I thought.
> > >
> > >
> > > As remarkable as the cat-drawing lesson was, it
was
> > > just a hint of Snyder’s
> > > work
> > > and its implications for the study of cognition.
He
> > has
> > > used TMS dozens of
> > > times
> > > on university students, measuring its effect on
> their
> > > ability to draw, to
> > > proofread and to perform difficult mathematical
> > > functions like identifying
> > > prime
> > > numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40
> percent
> > > of test subjects
> > > exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental
> skills.
> > > That Snyder was able
> > > to
> > > induce these remarkable feats in a controlled,
> > > repeatable experiment is more
> > > than just a great party trick; it’s a breakthrough
> > that
> > > may lead to a
> > > revolution
> > > in the way we understand the limits of our own
> > > intelligence — and the
> > > functioning of the human brain in general.
> > >
> > > Snyder’s work began with a curiosity about autism.
> > > Though there is little
> > > consensus about what causes this baffling — and
> > > increasingly common —
> > > disorder, it seems safe to say that autistic
people
> > > share certain qualities:
> > > they tend to be rigid, mechanical and emotionally
> > > dissociated. They manifest
> > > what autism’s great ”discoverer,” Leo Kanner,
> called
> > > ”an anxiously
> > > obsessive
> > > desire for the preservation of sameness.” And
they
> > > tend to interpret
> > > information in a hyperliteral way, using ”a kind
of
> > > language which does not
> > > seem intended to serve interpersonal
> communication.”
> > >
> > > For example, Snyder says, when autistic test
> subjects
> > > came to see him at the
> > > university, they would often get lost in the main
> > quad.
> > > They might have been
> > > there 10 times before, but each time the shadows
> were
> > > in slightly different
> > > positions, and the difference overwhelmed their
> sense
> > > of place. ”They can’t
> > > grasp a general concept equivalent to the word
> > > ‘quad,”’ he explains. ”If
> > > it
> > > changes appearance even slightly, then they have
to
> > > start all over again.”
> > >
> > > Despite these limitations, a small subset of
> > autistics,
> > > known as savants,
> > > can
> > > also perform superspecialized mental feats.
Perhaps
> > the
> > > most famous savant
> > > was
> > > Dustin Hoffman’s character in ”Rain Man,” who
> could
> > > count hundreds of
> > > matchsticks at a glance. But the truth has often
> been
> > > even stranger: one
> > > celebrated savant in turn-of-the-century Vienna
> could
> > > calculate the day of
> > > the
> > > week for every date since the birth of Christ.
Other
> > > savants can speak
> > > dozens of
> > > languages without formally studying any of them or
> can
> > > reproduce music at
> > > the
> > > piano after only a single hearing. A savant
studied
> by
> > > the English doctor J.
> > > Langdon Down in 1887 had memorized every page of
> > > Gibbon’s ”Decline and Fall
> > > of
> > > the Roman Empire.” At the beginning of the 19th
> > > century, the splendidly
> > > named
> > > Gottfried Mind became famous all over Europe for
the
> > > amazing pictures he
> > > drew of
> > > cats.
> > >
> > > The conventional wisdom has long been that
> autistics’
> > > hyperliteral thought
> > > processes were completely separate from the more
> > > contextual, nuanced, social
> > > way
> > > that most adults think, a different mental
function
> > > altogether. And so, by
> > > extension, the extraordinary skills of autistic
> > savants
> > > have been regarded
> > > as
> > > flukes, almost inhuman feats that average minds
> could
> > > never achieve.
> > >
> > > Snyder argues that all those assumptions — about
> > > everything from the way
> > > autistic savants behave down to the basic brain
> > > functions that cause them to
> > > do
> > > so — are mistaken. Autistic thought isn’t wholly
> > > incompatible with ordinary
> > > thought, he says; it’s just a variation on it, a
> more
> > > extreme example.
> > >
> > > He first got the idea after reading ”The Man Who
> > > Mistook His Wife for a
> > > Hat,”
> > > in which Oliver Sacks explores the link between
> autism
> > > and a very specific
> > > kind
> > > of brain damage. If neurological impairment is the
> > > cause of the autistic’s
> > > disabilities, Snyder wondered, could it be the
cause
> > of
> > > their geniuslike
> > > abilities, too? By shutting down certain mental
> > > functions — the capacity to
> > > think conceptually, categorically, contextually —
> did
> > > this impairment allow
> > > other mental functions to flourish? Could brain
> > damage,
> > > in short, actually
> > > make
> > > you brilliant?
> > >
> > > In a 1999 paper called ”Is Integer Arithmetic
> > > Fundamental to Mental
> > > Processing?
> > > The Mind’s Secret Arithmetic,” Snyder and D. John
> > > Mitchell considered the
> > > example of an autistic infant, whose mind ”is not
> > > concept driven. . . . In
> > > our
> > > view such a mind can tap into lower level details
> not
> > > readily available to
> > > introspection by normal individuals.” These
> children,
> > > they wrote, seem ”to
> > > be
> > > aware of information in some raw or interim state
> > prior
> > > to it being formed
> > > into
> > > the ‘ultimate picture.”’ Most astonishing, they
> went
> > > on, ”the mental
> > > machinery
> > > for performing lightning fast integer arithmetic
> > > calculations could be
> > > within us
> > > all.”
> > >
> > > And so Snyder turned to TMS, in an attempt, as he
> > says,
> > > ”to enhance the
> > > brain
> > > by shutting off certain parts of it.”
> > >
> > > ”In a way, savants are the great enigma of
today’s
> > > neurology,” says Prof.
> > > Joy
> > > Hirsch, director of the Functional M.R.I. Research
> > > Center at Columbia
> > > University. ”They exist in all cultures and are a
> > > distinct type. Why? How?
> > > We
> > > don’t know. Yet understanding the savant will help
> > > provide insight into the
> > > whole neurophysiological underpinning of human
> > > behavior. That’s why Snyder’s
> > > ideas are so exciting — he’s asking a really
> > > fundamental question, which no
> > > one
> > > has yet answered.”
> > >
> > > If Snyder’s suspicions are correct, in fact, and
> > > savants have not more
> > > brainpower than the rest of us, but less, then
it’s
> > > even possible that
> > > everybody
> > > starts out life as a savant. Look, for example, at
> the
> > > ease with which
> > > children
> > > master complex languages — a mysterious skill
that
> > > seems to shut off
> > > automatically around the age of 12. ”What we’re
> doing
> > > is
> > > counterintuitive,”
> > > Snyder tells me. ”We’re saying that all these
> genius
> > > skills are easy,
> > > they’re
> > > natural. Our brain does them naturally. Like
> walking.
> > > Do you know how
> > > difficult
> > > walking is? It’s much more difficult than
drawing!”
> > >
> > > To prove his point, he hooks me up to the
Medtronic
> > Mag
> > > Pro again and asks
> > > me to
> > > read the following lines:
> > >
> > >
> > > A bird in the hand
> > > is worth two in the
> > > the bush
> > >
> > > ”A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” I
> > say.
> > >
> > > ”Again,” Snyder says, and smiles.
> > >
> > > So once more: ”A bird in the hand is worth two in
> the
> > > bush.” He makes me
> > > repeat it five or six times, slowing me down until
> he
> > > has me reading each
> > > word
> > > with aching slowness.
> > >
> > > Then he switches on the machine. He is trying to
> > > suppress those parts of my
> > > brain responsible for thinking contextually, for
> > making
> > > connections. Without
> > > them, I will be able to see things more as an
> autistic
> > > might.
> > >
> > > After five minutes of electric pulses, I read the
> card
> > > again. Only then do I
> > > see
> > > — instantly — that the card contains an extra
> > ”the.”
> > >
> > > On my own, I had been looking for patterns, trying
> to
> > > coax the words on the
> > > page
> > > into a coherent, familiar whole. But ”on the
> > > machine,” he says, ”you
> > > start
> > > seeing what’s actually there, not what you think
is
> > > there.”
> > >
> > > Snyder’s theories are bolstered by the documented
> > cases
> > > in which sudden
> > > brain
> > > damage has produced savant abilities almost
> overnight.
> > > He cites the case of
> > > Orlando Serrell, a 10-year-old street kid who was
> hit
> > > on the head and
> > > immediately began doing calendrical calculations
of
> > > baffling complexity.
> > > Snyder
> > > argues that we all have Serrell’s powers. ”We
> > remember
> > > virtually
> > > everything,
> > > but we recall very little,” Snyder explains.
”Now
> > > isn’t that strange?
> > > Everything is in there” — he taps the side of
his
> > > head. ”Buried deep in
> > > all
> > > our brains are phenomenal abilities, which we lose
> for
> > > some reason as we
> > > develop
> > > into ‘normal’ conceptual creatures. But what if we
> > > could reawaken them?”
> > >
> > >
> > > Not all of Snyder’s colleagues agree with his
> > theories.
> > > Michael Howe, an
> > > eminent
> > > psychologist at the University of Exeter in
Britain
> > who
> > > died last year,
> > > argued
> > > that savantism (and genius itself) was largely a
> > result
> > > of incessant
> > > practice
> > > and specialization. ”The main difference between
> > > experts and savants,” he
> > > once
> > > told New Scientist magazine, ”is that savants do
> > > things which most of us
> > > couldn’t be bothered to get good at.”
> > >
> > > Robert Hendren, executive director of the M.I.N.D.
> > > Institute at the
> > > University
> > > of California at Davis, brought that concept down
to
> > my
> > > level: ”If you drew
> > > 20
> > > cats one after the other, they’d probably get
better
> > > anyway.” Like most
> > > neuroscientists, he doubts that an electromagnetic
> > > pulse can stimulate the
> > > brain
> > > into creativity: ”I’m not sure I see how TMS can
> > > actually alter the way
> > > your
> > > brain works. There’s a chance that Snyder is
right.
> > But
> > > it’s still very
> > > experimental.”
> > >
> > > Tomas Paus, an associate professor of neuroscience
> at
> > > McGill University, who
> > > has
> > > done extensive TMS research, is even more dubious.
> ”I
> > > don’t believe TMS can
> > > ever elicit complex behavior,” he says.
> > >
> > > But even skeptics like Hendren and Paus concede
that
> > by
> > > intensifying the
> > > neural
> > > activity of one part of the brain while slowing or
> > > shutting down others, TMS
> > > can
> > > have remarkable effects. One of its most
successful
> > > applications has been in
> > > the
> > > realm of psychiatry, where it is now used to
dispel
> > the
> > > ”inner voices” of
> > > schizophrenics, or to combat clinical depression
> > > without the damaging side
> > > effects of electroshock therapy. (NeuroNetics, an
> > > Atlanta company, is
> > > developing
> > > a TMS machine designed for just this purpose,
which
> > > will probably be
> > > released in
> > > 2006, pending F.D.A. approval.)
> > >
> > > Meanwhile, researchers at the National Institute
of
> > > Neurological Disorders
> > > and
> > > Stroke found that TMS applied to the prefrontal
> cortex
> > > enabled subjects to
> > > solve
> > > geometric puzzles much more rapidly. Alvaro
> > > Pascual-Leone, associate
> > > professor
> > > of neurology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
> > > Center in Boston (who,
> > > through
> > > his work at the Laboratory for Magnetic Brain
> > > Stimulation, has been one of
> > > the
> > > American visionaries of TMS), has even suggested
> that
> > > TMS could be used to
> > > ”prep” students’ minds before lessons.
> > >
> > > None of this has gone unnoticed by canny
> entrepreneurs
> > > and visionary
> > > scientists.
> > > Last year, the Brain Stimulation Laboratory at the
> > > Medical University of
> > > South
> > > Carolina received a $2 million government grant to
> > > develop a smaller TMS
> > > device
> > > that sleep-deprived soldiers could wear to keep
them
> > > alert. ”It’s not ‘Star
> > > Trek’ at all,” says Ziad Nahas, the laboratory’s
> > > medical director. ”We’ve
> > > done
> > > a lot of the science on reversing cognitive
> > > deficiencies in people with
> > > insomnia
> > > and sleep deficiencies. It works.” If so, it
could
> be
> > > a small leap to the
> > > day
> > > it boosts soldiers’ cognitive functioning under
> normal
> > > circumstances.
> > >
> > > And from there, how long before Americans are
> walking
> > > around with humming
> > > antidepression helmets and math-enhancing ”hair
> > > dryers” on their heads?
> > > Will
> > > commercially available TMS machines be used to
turn
> > > prosaic bank managers
> > > into
> > > amateur Rembrandts? Snyder has even contemplated
> video
> > > games that harness
> > > specialized parts of the brain that are otherwise
> > > inaccessible.
> > >
> > > ”Anything is possible,” says Prof. Vilayanur
> > > Ramachandran, director of the
> > > Center for Brain and Cognition at the University
of
> > > California at San Diego
> > > and
> > > the noted author of ”Phantoms in the Brain.”
> > Snyder’s
> > > theories have not
> > > been
> > > proved, he allows, but they are brilliantly
> > suggestive:
> > > ”We’re at the same
> > > stage in brain research that biology was in the
19th
> > > century. We know almost
> > > nothing about the mind. Snyder’s theories may
sound
> > > like ‘The X-Files,’ but
> > > what
> > > he’s saying is completely plausible. Up to a point
> the
> > > brain is open,
> > > malleable
> > > and constantly changing. We might well be able to
> make
> > > it run in new ways.”
> > > Of
> > > those who dismiss Snyder’s theories out of hand,
he
> > > shrugs: ”People are
> > > often
> > > blind to new ideas. Especially scientists.”
> > >
> > >
> > > Bruce L. Miller, the A.W. and Mary Margaret
Claussen
> > > distinguished professor
> > > in
> > > neurology at the University of California at San
> > > Francisco, is intrigued by
> > > Snyder’s experiments and his attempts to
understand
> > the
> > > physiological basis
> > > of
> > > cognition. But he points out that certain profound
> > > questions about
> > > artificially
> > > altered intelligence have not yet been answered.
> ”Do
> > > we really want these
> > > abilities?” he asks. ”Wouldn’t it change my idea
> of
> > > myself if I could
> > > suddenly
> > > paint amazing pictures?”
> > >
> > > It probably would change people’s ideas of
> themselves,
> > > to say nothing of
> > > their
> > > ideas of artistic talent. And though that prospect
> > > might discomfort Miller,
> > > there are no doubt others whom it would thrill.
But
> > > could anyone really
> > > guess,
> > > in advance, how their lives might be affected by
> > > instant creativity, instant
> > > intelligence, instant happiness? Or by their
> > > disappearance, just as
> > > instantly,
> > > once the TMS is switched off?
> > >
> > > As he walked me out of the university — a place
so
> > > Gothic that it could be
> > > Oxford, but for the intensely flowering jacaranda
in
> > > one corner and the
> > > strange
> > > Southern Hemisphere birds flitting about — and
> toward
> > > the freeway back to
> > > downtown Sydney, Snyder for his part radiated the
> most
> > > convincingly
> > > ebullient
> > > optimism. ”Remember that old saw which says that
we
> > > only use a small part
> > > our
> > > brain? Well, it might just be true. Except that
now
> we
> > > can actually prove it
> > > physically and experimentally. That has to be
> > > significant. I mean, it has to
> > > be,
> > > doesn’t it?”
> > >
> > > We stopped for a moment by the side of the roaring
> > > traffic and looked up at
> > > a
> > > haze in the sky. Snyder’s eyes contracted
> > inquisitively
> > > as he pieced
> > > together
> > > the unfamiliar facts (brown smoke, just outside
> > Sydney)
> > > and eased them into
> > > a
> > > familiar narrative framework (the forest fires
that
> > had
> > > been raging all
> > > week).
> > > It was an effortless little bit of deductive,
> > > nonliteral thinking — the
> > > sort of
> > > thing that human beings, unaided by TMS, do a
> thousand
> > > times a day. Then, in
> > > an
> > > instant, he switched back to our conversation and
> > > picked up his train of
> > > thought. ”More important than that, we can change
> our
> > > own intelligence in
> > > unexpected ways. Why would we not want to explore
> > > that?”
> > >
> > >
> > > Lawrence Osborne is a frequent contributor to the
> > > magazine.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>
<]=———————————————————————–=[
> > > >
> > >   [           Moderated by: Preston Peet |
> > > .drugwar.com           ]
> > >   |          -=/[ To Subscribe:
> > > drugwar-subscribe@mindvox.com ]/=-
> > > |
> > >   |             To Unsubscribe:
> > > drugwar-unsubscribe@mindvox.com
> > > |
> > >   [   DrugWar List in Digest Format:
> > > ugwar-digest-subscribe@mindvox.com   ]
> > >
> > >
> >
>
<]=———————————————————————–=[
> > > >
> >
> >
> >

_________________________________________________________________
Find a cheaper internet access deal – choose one to suit you. http://www.msn.co.uk/internetaccess

From: “ccadden” <elgrekkko@carolina.rr.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Re: AMON
Date: June 29, 2003 at 6:33:07 PM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

He worked for
Register.com , a povider of domanin names, and the
company generously agreed to keep his website,
amonworld.com in operation for the next ten years.

He has a great sense of humor. I’m really enjoying his website.

chris

From: “ccadden” <elgrekkko@carolina.rr.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] Fw: [elite_sociopath] Fw: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
Date: June 29, 2003 at 6:07:25 PM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

—– Original Message —–
From: Steve White
To: elite_sociopath@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2003 1:00 AM
Subject: Re: [elite_sociopath] Fw: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?

ADVERTISEMENT

My Groups | elite_sociopath Main Page

ccadden wrote:

Steve, he’s talking about Ibogaine. Not Marijauna. Do you know what Ibogaine is? There’s a vast history to this plant, but there are not a lot of people who know about it.

chris
No, I was aware he wasn’t speaking of marijuana, and I only know as much as one can read on the web in half an hour about ibogaine. Marijuana was simply an example; a plant that has been scheduled and declared illegal is illegal, no matter what you may do to it (i.e., removing the active components) because the law addresses the plant, not the chemical or the affect.  I’m not arguing about the effects of ibogaine, or even about the existence of some group that may or may not remove the effective chemicals from such a plant. I am, however, specifically, saying that:
some companys in the us or sending the us strip a plant of its oils or alkaloids that are deemed illegal by lawmakers so you may ave bought ibogaine root they didnt tell you the did something to it to destroy the actual alkaloid that makes you have desired effects they do it to amanitas alot they strip all the muscimal and ibotenic acid out of them then sell the amanita muscaria and there real and everything but they cant get arrested for selling a pplant that has a psycoactive substance
(emphasis mine) This statement is absolutely false. If they can be arrested for selling a plant, then they can be arrested for selling it *even if they remove the ‘active’ substance*. See what I mean? I’m not challenging ibogain’s usefulness (I have insufficient information for that) or the relative accuracy of the assertion that some companies strip it of its useful chemicals (again insufficient information) but *am* challenging the idea that one may strip a controlled botanical of its effective chemical and sell it with impunity.

peace, light. love

J. Steve

 

From: MARC <marc420emery@shaw.ca>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Re: AMON
Date: June 29, 2003 at 5:35:43 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Sandra & I were saddened to hear of Amon’s overdose, he had applied for
treatment here at Iboga House in late April and our location was changing so
we couldn’t help him until June we had to tell him.

Did we feel bad about that when we heard he had died.

Marc Emery
Iboga House, Vancouver

—– Original Message —–
From: “AMON” <amon@wetnightmare.com>
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Cc: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2003 8:09 AM
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Re: AMON

THANKyou to Allison and Curtis for expressing
condolences re.death of my son Chris. He worked for
Register.com , a povider of domanin names, and the
company generously agreed to keep his website,
amonworld.com in operation for the next ten years. A
friend of Chris’s and colleague at Register will be
admininstering the site and provided me access to his
email account a couple of weeks ago. By then there were
over 350 postings and e-mails to sort through. I hope
that members of this list will check out his website,
which eventually will be updated with pictures of him,
his eulogy, stories, etc.
One of the saddest messages was from Daniel Pinchbeck.
Chris refers to his book on the website and it was from
reading the book Breaking OPEN THE HEAD, that convinced
him ibogaine was the way for him to go. Thus, he wrote
to Pinchbeck and on May 28, a month after Chris’s
death, a reply inviting him to participate in a
film/documentary being produced in Mexico re. ibogaine
treatment- aftercare to be provided on a ranch in
California- all expenses paid-
Chris would have been thrilled at the opportunity- but
bad timing always seemed to be part of his life!
Anyway, a memorial fund has been established in his
name and it is my desire to use the money in a way that
would honor Chris and pay tribute to his memory. I
think somehow he is leading me to this whole ibogaine
experience, and perhaps there is a way I could help
someone in need of treatment. Chris was looking into
going to Vancouver to the iboga therapy house, in fact
was arranging for an Ekg. I won’t continue with this
topic, but I too am very excited about all I have read
at ibogaine.org and sincerely want to further the cause
in any way I can.
thanks for providing this forum, his website can also
be accessed through wetnightmare. com- check it out and
sign the guestbook which has been added since his
death.   mother SueOn Tue, 24 Jun 2003 00:12:27 +1200,
“Allison Senepart” wrote:

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From: “Allison Senepart” <aa.senepart@xtra.co.nz>
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I just wanted to offer condolences to Amons Mum.  I
saw
his messages here
but had no idea he had died.  I don’t know that any of
this will make his
Mum feel better but a lot of addicts don’t set out
intentionally to die.  I
have a number of friends now that have overdosed or
died accidentely while
using drugs which is an incentive   that helps my
partner and I try to fight
to keep clean.  Its not easy and the temptation is
always just around the
corner but so far we are staying good for longer than
we have done at any
other time.  We have tried and failed so many times,
had arguments, given
up, been sick and everything else that goes with it.
My daughter is now 22
and is very anti hard drugs after having to live with
my partner and I and I
am certainly not proud to have introduced her to
things
she should never
have seen or been aware of.  All I can say is that its
like one part of your
mind is saying one thing and then another half is
talking you into the
opposite.  At times I was so determined not to do any
more morphine, poppies
etc. and then my partner would arrive home with
something and I would start
cramping in the stomach just anticipating it.  My
parents were horribly
upset when they figured out what I was doing.  I
managed to hide it for a
while but eventually everything feel to bits.  I would
turn up to visit and
nod off in the middle of a conversation and I guess it
was all too obvious.
They wanted to help me but I wouldn’t let them.  My
answer was to keep
telling them everything was under control cos I didn’t
want them to be
disappointed in me and also didn’twant to admit how
desperate and sick I was
when I needed a fix to get to work and function for
the
day.
I wish Amons mum all the best and hope that she will
find some understanding
from people on this list.
Regards Allison.   PS  It all sounds so inadequate but
my thoughts are there
even if though the words are hard to write.
—– Original Message —–
From: “AMON” <amon@wetnightmare.com>
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Cc: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 11:04 AM
Subject: [ibogaine] Re: AMON

On Sun, 22 Jun 2003 13:04:35 -0400, “preston peet”
wrote:
I”m not sure how to send a  message to this group-
but
I would like anybody who might have communicated
with
Amon to know that on April 26, he died suddenly. The
cause of death is still being investigated, but he
was
in the company of drug dealers at the time. I am his
mother and would appreciate hearing from anyone who
has
insights or previous messages from him, as I mourn
his
death and try to understand his pain. I know he was
trying desperately in his last two months to find
help
for his addiction. My agony is that I was not able
to
help him in time. If anyone out there can help me
with
understanding, I would be so grateful. thank you.

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Subject: [ibogaine] (OT, but interesting) Fw:
[drugwar] Savant for a Day
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—– Original Message —–
From: Tim Meehan
To: drugwar@mindvox.com
Cc: mapster@coollist.com
Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2003 10:28 AM
Subject: [drugwar] Savant for a Day

June 22, 2003
Savant for a Day
By LAWRENCE OSBORNE

n a concrete basement at the University of
Sydney, I
sat in a chair waiting
to
have my brain altered by an electromagnetic pulse.
My
forehead was
connected, by
a series of electrodes, to a machine that looked
something like an
old-fashioned
beauty-salon hair dryer and was sunnily described
to
me
as a ”Danish-made
transcranial magnetic stimulator.” This was not
just
any old Danish-made
transcranial magnetic stimulator, however; this
was
the
Medtronic Mag Pro,
and
it was being operated by Allan Snyder, one of the
world’s most remarkable
scientists of human cognition.

Nonetheless, the anticipation of electricity being
beamed into my frontal
lobes
(and the consent form I had just signed) made me a
bit
nervous. Snyder found
that amusing. ”Oh, relax now!” he said in the
thick
local accent he has
acquired since moving here from America. ”I’ve
done
it
on myself a hundred
times. This is Australia. Legally, it’s far more
difficult to damage people
in
Australia than it is in the United States.”

”Damage?” I groaned.

”You’re not going to be damaged,” he said.
”You’re
going to be
enhanced.”

The Medtronic was originally developed as a tool
for
brain surgery: by
stimulating or slowing down specific regions of
the
brain, it allowed
doctors to
monitor the effects of surgery in real time. But
it
also produced, they
noted,
strange and unexpected effects on patients’ mental
functions: one minute
they
would lose the ability to speak, another minute
they
would speak easily but
would make odd linguistic errors and so on. A
number
of
researchers started
to
look into the possibilities, but one in particular
intrigued Snyder: that
people
undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, or
TMS,
could suddenly exhibit
savant intelligence — those isolated pockets of
geniuslike mental ability
that
most often appear in autistic people.

Snyder is an impish presence, the very opposite
of a
venerable professor,
let
alone an internationally acclaimed scientist.
There
is
a whiff of Woody
Allen
about him. Did I really want him, I couldn’t help
thinking, rewiring my hard
drive? ”We’re not changing your brain
physically,”
he
assured me. ”You’ll
only experience differences in your thought
processes
while you’re actually
on
the machine.” His assistant made a few final
adjustments to the electrodes,
and
then, as everyone stood back, Snyder flicked the
switch.

A series of electromagnetic pulses were being
directed
into my frontal
lobes,
but I felt nothing. Snyder instructed me to draw
something. ”What would you
like to draw?” he said merrily. ”A cat? You like
drawing cats? Cats it
is.”

I’ve seen a million cats in my life, so when I
close
my
eyes, I have no
trouble
picturing them. But what does a cat really look
like,
and how do you put it
down
on paper? I gave it a try but came up with some
sort
of
stick figure,
perhaps an
insect.

While I drew, Snyder continued his lecture. ”You
could
call this a
creativity-amplifying machine. It’s a way of
altering
our states of mind
without
taking drugs like mescaline. You can make people
see
the raw data of the
world
as it is. As it is actually represented in the
unconscious mind of all of
us.”

Two minutes after I started the first drawing, I
was
instructed to try
again.
After another two minutes, I tried a third cat,
and
then in due course a
fourth.
Then the experiment was over, and the electrodes
were
removed. I looked down
at
my work. The first felines were boxy and stiffly
unconvincing. But after I
had
been subjected to about 10 minutes of transcranial
magnetic stimulation,
their
tails had grown more vibrant, more nervous; their
faces
were personable and
convincing. They were even beginning to wear
clever
expressions.

I could hardly recognize them as my own drawings,
though I had watched
myself
render each one, in all its loving detail. Somehow
over
the course of a very
few
minutes, and with no additional instruction, I had
gone
from an incompetent
draftsman to a very impressive artist of the
feline
form.

Snyder looked over my shoulder. ”Well, how about
that?
Leonardo would be
envious.” Or turning in his grave, I thought.

As remarkable as the cat-drawing lesson was, it
was
just a hint of Snyder’s
work
and its implications for the study of cognition.
He
has
used TMS dozens of
times
on university students, measuring its effect on
their
ability to draw, to
proofread and to perform difficult mathematical
functions like identifying
prime
numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40
percent
of test subjects
exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental
skills.
That Snyder was able
to
induce these remarkable feats in a controlled,
repeatable experiment is more
than just a great party trick; it’s a breakthrough
that
may lead to a
revolution
in the way we understand the limits of our own
intelligence — and the
functioning of the human brain in general.

Snyder’s work began with a curiosity about autism.
Though there is little
consensus about what causes this baffling — and
increasingly common —
disorder, it seems safe to say that autistic
people
share certain qualities:
they tend to be rigid, mechanical and emotionally
dissociated. They manifest
what autism’s great ”discoverer,” Leo Kanner,
called
”an anxiously
obsessive
desire for the preservation of sameness.” And
they
tend to interpret
information in a hyperliteral way, using ”a kind
of
language which does not
seem intended to serve interpersonal
communication.”

For example, Snyder says, when autistic test
subjects
came to see him at the
university, they would often get lost in the main
quad.
They might have been
there 10 times before, but each time the shadows
were
in slightly different
positions, and the difference overwhelmed their
sense
of place. ”They can’t
grasp a general concept equivalent to the word
‘quad,”’ he explains. ”If
it
changes appearance even slightly, then they have
to
start all over again.”

Despite these limitations, a small subset of
autistics,
known as savants,
can
also perform superspecialized mental feats.
Perhaps
the
most famous savant
was
Dustin Hoffman’s character in ”Rain Man,” who
could
count hundreds of
matchsticks at a glance. But the truth has often
been
even stranger: one
celebrated savant in turn-of-the-century Vienna
could
calculate the day of
the
week for every date since the birth of Christ.
Other
savants can speak
dozens of
languages without formally studying any of them or
can
reproduce music at
the
piano after only a single hearing. A savant
studied
by
the English doctor J.
Langdon Down in 1887 had memorized every page of
Gibbon’s ”Decline and Fall
of
the Roman Empire.” At the beginning of the 19th
century, the splendidly
named
Gottfried Mind became famous all over Europe for
the
amazing pictures he
drew of
cats.

The conventional wisdom has long been that
autistics’
hyperliteral thought
processes were completely separate from the more
contextual, nuanced, social
way
that most adults think, a different mental
function
altogether. And so, by
extension, the extraordinary skills of autistic
savants
have been regarded
as
flukes, almost inhuman feats that average minds
could
never achieve.

Snyder argues that all those assumptions — about
everything from the way
autistic savants behave down to the basic brain
functions that cause them to
do
so — are mistaken. Autistic thought isn’t wholly
incompatible with ordinary
thought, he says; it’s just a variation on it, a
more
extreme example.

He first got the idea after reading ”The Man Who
Mistook His Wife for a
Hat,”
in which Oliver Sacks explores the link between
autism
and a very specific
kind
of brain damage. If neurological impairment is the
cause of the autistic’s
disabilities, Snyder wondered, could it be the
cause
of
their geniuslike
abilities, too? By shutting down certain mental
functions — the capacity to
think conceptually, categorically, contextually —
did
this impairment allow
other mental functions to flourish? Could brain
damage,
in short, actually
make
you brilliant?

In a 1999 paper called ”Is Integer Arithmetic
Fundamental to Mental
Processing?
The Mind’s Secret Arithmetic,” Snyder and D. John
Mitchell considered the
example of an autistic infant, whose mind ”is not
concept driven. . . . In
our
view such a mind can tap into lower level details
not
readily available to
introspection by normal individuals.” These
children,
they wrote, seem ”to
be
aware of information in some raw or interim state
prior
to it being formed
into
the ‘ultimate picture.”’ Most astonishing, they
went
on, ”the mental
machinery
for performing lightning fast integer arithmetic
calculations could be
within us
all.”

And so Snyder turned to TMS, in an attempt, as he
says,
”to enhance the
brain
by shutting off certain parts of it.”

”In a way, savants are the great enigma of
today’s
neurology,” says Prof.
Joy
Hirsch, director of the Functional M.R.I. Research
Center at Columbia
University. ”They exist in all cultures and are a
distinct type. Why? How?
We
don’t know. Yet understanding the savant will help
provide insight into the
whole neurophysiological underpinning of human
behavior. That’s why Snyder’s
ideas are so exciting — he’s asking a really
fundamental question, which no
one
has yet answered.”

If Snyder’s suspicions are correct, in fact, and
savants have not more
brainpower than the rest of us, but less, then
it’s
even possible that
everybody
starts out life as a savant. Look, for example, at
the
ease with which
children
master complex languages — a mysterious skill
that
seems to shut off
automatically around the age of 12. ”What we’re
doing
is
counterintuitive,”
Snyder tells me. ”We’re saying that all these
genius
skills are easy,
they’re
natural. Our brain does them naturally. Like
walking.
Do you know how
difficult
walking is? It’s much more difficult than
drawing!”

To prove his point, he hooks me up to the
Medtronic
Mag
Pro again and asks
me to
read the following lines:

A bird in the hand
is worth two in the
the bush

”A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” I
say.

”Again,” Snyder says, and smiles.

So once more: ”A bird in the hand is worth two in
the
bush.” He makes me
repeat it five or six times, slowing me down until
he
has me reading each
word
with aching slowness.

Then he switches on the machine. He is trying to
suppress those parts of my
brain responsible for thinking contextually, for
making
connections. Without
them, I will be able to see things more as an
autistic
might.

After five minutes of electric pulses, I read the
card
again. Only then do I
see
— instantly — that the card contains an extra
”the.”

On my own, I had been looking for patterns, trying
to
coax the words on the
page
into a coherent, familiar whole. But ”on the
machine,” he says, ”you
start
seeing what’s actually there, not what you think
is
there.”

Snyder’s theories are bolstered by the documented
cases
in which sudden
brain
damage has produced savant abilities almost
overnight.
He cites the case of
Orlando Serrell, a 10-year-old street kid who was
hit
on the head and
immediately began doing calendrical calculations
of
baffling complexity.
Snyder
argues that we all have Serrell’s powers. ”We
remember
virtually
everything,
but we recall very little,” Snyder explains.
”Now
isn’t that strange?
Everything is in there” — he taps the side of
his
head. ”Buried deep in
all
our brains are phenomenal abilities, which we lose
for
some reason as we
develop
into ‘normal’ conceptual creatures. But what if we
could reawaken them?”

Not all of Snyder’s colleagues agree with his
theories.
Michael Howe, an
eminent
psychologist at the University of Exeter in
Britain
who
died last year,
argued
that savantism (and genius itself) was largely a
result
of incessant
practice
and specialization. ”The main difference between
experts and savants,” he
once
told New Scientist magazine, ”is that savants do
things which most of us
couldn’t be bothered to get good at.”

Robert Hendren, executive director of the M.I.N.D.
Institute at the
University
of California at Davis, brought that concept down
to
my
level: ”If you drew
20
cats one after the other, they’d probably get
better
anyway.” Like most
neuroscientists, he doubts that an electromagnetic
pulse can stimulate the
brain
into creativity: ”I’m not sure I see how TMS can
actually alter the way
your
brain works. There’s a chance that Snyder is
right.
But
it’s still very
experimental.”

Tomas Paus, an associate professor of neuroscience
at
McGill University, who
has
done extensive TMS research, is even more dubious.
”I
don’t believe TMS can
ever elicit complex behavior,” he says.

But even skeptics like Hendren and Paus concede
that
by
intensifying the
neural
activity of one part of the brain while slowing or
shutting down others, TMS
can
have remarkable effects. One of its most
successful
applications has been in
the
realm of psychiatry, where it is now used to
dispel
the
”inner voices” of
schizophrenics, or to combat clinical depression
without the damaging side
effects of electroshock therapy. (NeuroNetics, an
Atlanta company, is
developing
a TMS machine designed for just this purpose,
which
will probably be
released in
2006, pending F.D.A. approval.)

Meanwhile, researchers at the National Institute
of
Neurological Disorders
and
Stroke found that TMS applied to the prefrontal
cortex
enabled subjects to
solve
geometric puzzles much more rapidly. Alvaro
Pascual-Leone, associate
professor
of neurology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center in Boston (who,
through
his work at the Laboratory for Magnetic Brain
Stimulation, has been one of
the
American visionaries of TMS), has even suggested
that
TMS could be used to
”prep” students’ minds before lessons.

None of this has gone unnoticed by canny
entrepreneurs
and visionary
scientists.
Last year, the Brain Stimulation Laboratory at the
Medical University of
South
Carolina received a $2 million government grant to
develop a smaller TMS
device
that sleep-deprived soldiers could wear to keep
them
alert. ”It’s not ‘Star
Trek’ at all,” says Ziad Nahas, the laboratory’s
medical director. ”We’ve
done
a lot of the science on reversing cognitive
deficiencies in people with
insomnia
and sleep deficiencies. It works.” If so, it
could
be
a small leap to the
day
it boosts soldiers’ cognitive functioning under
normal
circumstances.

And from there, how long before Americans are
walking
around with humming
antidepression helmets and math-enhancing ”hair
dryers” on their heads?
Will
commercially available TMS machines be used to
turn
prosaic bank managers
into
amateur Rembrandts? Snyder has even contemplated
video
games that harness
specialized parts of the brain that are otherwise
inaccessible.

”Anything is possible,” says Prof. Vilayanur
Ramachandran, director of the
Center for Brain and Cognition at the University
of
California at San Diego
and
the noted author of ”Phantoms in the Brain.”
Snyder’s
theories have not
been
proved, he allows, but they are brilliantly
suggestive:
”We’re at the same
stage in brain research that biology was in the
19th
century. We know almost
nothing about the mind. Snyder’s theories may
sound
like ‘The X-Files,’ but
what
he’s saying is completely plausible. Up to a point
the
brain is open,
malleable
and constantly changing. We might well be able to
make
it run in new ways.”
Of
those who dismiss Snyder’s theories out of hand,
he
shrugs: ”People are
often
blind to new ideas. Especially scientists.”

Bruce L. Miller, the A.W. and Mary Margaret
Claussen
distinguished professor
in
neurology at the University of California at San
Francisco, is intrigued by
Snyder’s experiments and his attempts to
understand
the
physiological basis
of
cognition. But he points out that certain profound
questions about
artificially
altered intelligence have not yet been answered.
”Do
we really want these
abilities?” he asks. ”Wouldn’t it change my idea
of
myself if I could
suddenly
paint amazing pictures?”

It probably would change people’s ideas of
themselves,
to say nothing of
their
ideas of artistic talent. And though that prospect
might discomfort Miller,
there are no doubt others whom it would thrill.
But
could anyone really
guess,
in advance, how their lives might be affected by
instant creativity, instant
intelligence, instant happiness? Or by their
disappearance, just as
instantly,
once the TMS is switched off?

As he walked me out of the university — a place
so
Gothic that it could be
Oxford, but for the intensely flowering jacaranda
in
one corner and the
strange
Southern Hemisphere birds flitting about — and
toward
the freeway back to
downtown Sydney, Snyder for his part radiated the
most
convincingly
ebullient
optimism. ”Remember that old saw which says that
we
only use a small part
our
brain? Well, it might just be true. Except that
now
we
can actually prove it
physically and experimentally. That has to be
significant. I mean, it has to
be,
doesn’t it?”

We stopped for a moment by the side of the roaring
traffic and looked up at
a
haze in the sky. Snyder’s eyes contracted
inquisitively
as he pieced
together
the unfamiliar facts (brown smoke, just outside
Sydney)
and eased them into
a
familiar narrative framework (the forest fires
that
had
been raging all
week).
It was an effortless little bit of deductive,
nonliteral thinking — the
sort of
thing that human beings, unaided by TMS, do a
thousand
times a day. Then, in
an
instant, he switched back to our conversation and
picked up his train of
thought. ”More important than that, we can change
our
own intelligence in
unexpected ways. Why would we not want to explore
that?”

Lawrence Osborne is a frequent contributor to the
magazine.

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From: Brett Calabrese <bcalabrese@yahoo.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] Opioid treatment for pain update.
Date: June 29, 2003 at 2:01:09 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com, ibogaine@ibogaine.org
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Brief update.

There could be more to it than just ibogaine
treatment, age is a factor, that I no longer play
around with drugs (aside from pain meds) the way I use
to and I as I put less junk in me I seem to be more
sensitive. But, it seems that post ibo treatment I am
much more sensitive to morphine and oxycodone, this
was also noted with hydrocodone and codeine
previously. Note that I have not exceeded the
prescription but have broken a few to see what works,
taking any amount of oxy that amounts to a BUZZ or
just because of more pain proves uncomfortable, rather
odd from my past experiences using and abusing
oxycodone (yeah, with lots of other stuff tossed
in…).

Please excuse my posting the results of this
experiement. When I was on morphine, basically I was
in pain, not eating, staying up for days and getting
pretty much like this fellow I use to know, minus the
cocaine psychosis. What happens when someone is
severely sleep deprived with some drugs in them is
they get a bit strange, talk to themselves (actually
go between sleep and awake, back and forth during
conversations…), I went to the refrigerator in the
middle of the night and guess I fell asleep standing
there (reminded me of way back when…). Anyway, I
discontinued the morphine the next day. Oxycontin is a
dream compared to the other medications, I am just not
use to it and still has some problems with insomnia.
There is also some slight PUSH to take more, either
when I am in pain or after several days after taking
an opiate, I never do. It might be on the level of say
35 years ago when I was first introduced to drugs,
like that is nice I want to do more or do it again…
cept I don’t any longer. I do seem to get hit with
more of a hangover than I use to pre-ibo, again, I am
sure age and other factors are involved.

The other thing the ibo seems to do is to have
detached most old feelings associated with the pain
meds/drugs, they are mostly just gone, like there is
no drug history, no cascade of chemicals going on in
my brain cause I see a drug… nada and oddly so
because it is so gone.

Anyway, I am back to somewhat sane, putting weight
back on and getting energy/focus back. I was well into
the 130#’s, starting to look like Preston (minus the
eye liner) and have not been so sickly in years.

And just when you thought you hit bottom, the tax
folks from New York come up with a $2,400.00 bill that
they say I owe them (from ’87) and they are going to
take it from my IRA, NOW. All I have to do is prove I
paid and they will forget the whole thing, I neither
remember or have records from 1987 and am pretty sure
I would have paid like every other year. That would be
from my IRA, so I also get a 10% penalty and taxes…
thank you NY, I will be sure to do business in your
state/city again so we can do this again some day. I
have no problem paying a bill, I have a problem with
fairness, this is not fair.

Later

Brett

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

From: Brett Calabrese <bcalabrese@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
Date: June 29, 2003 at 1:12:36 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Nick,

You are incorrect.

Brett.

— Nick Labus <goosebumpz2002@yahoo.com> wrote:
but its illegal to sell it to us people so they
strip it and sell it to us people and in canadas the
good shit that they sell to the ibogaine docs!

ad astra <metagrrl@yahoo.com> wrote:Ethnogarden is a
Canadian company, iboga and ibogaine
are legal here – so I doubt they are deliberately
selling bunk. I believe they are dealing in good
faith and *IF* they are selling product with low
ibogaine content it is unintentional.

— Nick Labus wrote:
Thank you very much ad astra i would like to note
that i hjave had quite a few bad experience with
internet sites it sounds as if ethnogarden has
bunk
iboga i dont know and i dont want to know if you
live n usa but some companys in the us or sending

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

———————————
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

From: Bhoward288@aol.com
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Re: AMON
Date: June 29, 2003 at 12:30:38 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

dear sir  can you help me? I need to buy some Iborgaine but the company won’t kship the package to the usa. I’m looking for someone who understands my need to get clean of drugs and will let me have the package shipped to them and then send it on to me. Caqn you help me?
From: “AMON” <amon@wetnightmare.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Re: AMON
Date: June 29, 2003 at 11:09:06 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Cc: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

THANKyou to Allison and Curtis for expressing
condolences re.death of my son Chris. He worked for
Register.com , a povider of domanin names, and the
company generously agreed to keep his website,
amonworld.com in operation for the next ten years. A
friend of Chris’s and colleague at Register will be
admininstering the site and provided me access to his
email account a couple of weeks ago. By then there were
over 350 postings and e-mails to sort through. I hope
that members of this list will check out his website,
which eventually will be updated with pictures of him,
his eulogy, stories, etc.
One of the saddest messages was from Daniel Pinchbeck.
Chris refers to his book on the website and it was from
reading the book Breaking OPEN THE HEAD, that convinced
him ibogaine was the way for him to go. Thus, he wrote
to Pinchbeck and on May 28, a month after Chris’s
death, a reply inviting him to participate in a
film/documentary being produced in Mexico re. ibogaine
treatment- aftercare to be provided on a ranch in
California- all expenses paid-
Chris would have been thrilled at the opportunity- but
bad timing always seemed to be part of his life!
Anyway, a memorial fund has been established in his
name and it is my desire to use the money in a way that
would honor Chris and pay tribute to his memory. I
think somehow he is leading me to this whole ibogaine
experience, and perhaps there is a way I could help
someone in need of treatment. Chris was looking into
going to Vancouver to the iboga therapy house, in fact
was arranging for an Ekg. I won’t continue with this
topic, but I too am very excited about all I have read
at ibogaine.org and sincerely want to further the cause
in any way I can.
thanks for providing this forum, his website can also
be accessed through wetnightmare. com- check it out and
sign the guestbook which has been added since his
death.   mother SueOn Tue, 24 Jun 2003 00:12:27 +1200,
“Allison Senepart” wrote:

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I just wanted to offer condolences to Amons Mum.  I
saw
his messages here
but had no idea he had died.  I don’t know that any of
this will make his
Mum feel better but a lot of addicts don’t set out
intentionally to die.  I
have a number of friends now that have overdosed or
died accidentely while
using drugs which is an incentive   that helps my
partner and I try to fight
to keep clean.  Its not easy and the temptation is
always just around the
corner but so far we are staying good for longer than
we have done at any
other time.  We have tried and failed so many times,
had arguments, given
up, been sick and everything else that goes with it.
My daughter is now 22
and is very anti hard drugs after having to live with
my partner and I and I
am certainly not proud to have introduced her to
things
she should never
have seen or been aware of.  All I can say is that its
like one part of your
mind is saying one thing and then another half is
talking you into the
opposite.  At times I was so determined not to do any
more morphine, poppies
etc. and then my partner would arrive home with
something and I would start
cramping in the stomach just anticipating it.  My
parents were horribly
upset when they figured out what I was doing.  I
managed to hide it for a
while but eventually everything feel to bits.  I would
turn up to visit and
nod off in the middle of a conversation and I guess it
was all too obvious.
They wanted to help me but I wouldn’t let them.  My
answer was to keep
telling them everything was under control cos I didn’t
want them to be
disappointed in me and also didn’twant to admit how
desperate and sick I was
when I needed a fix to get to work and function for
the
day.
I wish Amons mum all the best and hope that she will
find some understanding
from people on this list.
Regards Allison.   PS  It all sounds so inadequate but
my thoughts are there
even if though the words are hard to write.
—– Original Message —–
From: “AMON” <amon@wetnightmare.com>
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Cc: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 11:04 AM
Subject: [ibogaine] Re: AMON

On Sun, 22 Jun 2003 13:04:35 -0400, “preston peet”
wrote:
I”m not sure how to send a  message to this group-
but
I would like anybody who might have communicated
with
Amon to know that on April 26, he died suddenly. The
cause of death is still being investigated, but he
was
in the company of drug dealers at the time. I am his
mother and would appreciate hearing from anyone who
has
insights or previous messages from him, as I mourn
his
death and try to understand his pain. I know he was
trying desperately in his last two months to find
help
for his addiction. My agony is that I was not able
to
help him in time. If anyone out there can help me
with
understanding, I would be so grateful. thank you.

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Subject: [ibogaine] (OT, but interesting) Fw:
[drugwar] Savant for a Day
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—– Original Message —–
From: Tim Meehan
To: drugwar@mindvox.com
Cc: mapster@coollist.com
Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2003 10:28 AM
Subject: [drugwar] Savant for a Day

June 22, 2003
Savant for a Day
By LAWRENCE OSBORNE

n a concrete basement at the University of
Sydney, I
sat in a chair waiting
to
have my brain altered by an electromagnetic pulse.
My
forehead was
connected, by
a series of electrodes, to a machine that looked
something like an
old-fashioned
beauty-salon hair dryer and was sunnily described
to
me
as a ”Danish-made
transcranial magnetic stimulator.” This was not
just
any old Danish-made
transcranial magnetic stimulator, however; this
was
the
Medtronic Mag Pro,
and
it was being operated by Allan Snyder, one of the
world’s most remarkable
scientists of human cognition.

Nonetheless, the anticipation of electricity being
beamed into my frontal
lobes
(and the consent form I had just signed) made me a
bit
nervous. Snyder found
that amusing. ”Oh, relax now!” he said in the
thick
local accent he has
acquired since moving here from America. ”I’ve
done
it
on myself a hundred
times. This is Australia. Legally, it’s far more
difficult to damage people
in
Australia than it is in the United States.”

”Damage?” I groaned.

”You’re not going to be damaged,” he said.
”You’re
going to be
enhanced.”

The Medtronic was originally developed as a tool
for
brain surgery: by
stimulating or slowing down specific regions of
the
brain, it allowed
doctors to
monitor the effects of surgery in real time. But
it
also produced, they
noted,
strange and unexpected effects on patients’ mental
functions: one minute
they
would lose the ability to speak, another minute
they
would speak easily but
would make odd linguistic errors and so on. A
number
of
researchers started
to
look into the possibilities, but one in particular
intrigued Snyder: that
people
undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, or
TMS,
could suddenly exhibit
savant intelligence — those isolated pockets of
geniuslike mental ability
that
most often appear in autistic people.

Snyder is an impish presence, the very opposite
of a
venerable professor,
let
alone an internationally acclaimed scientist.
There
is
a whiff of Woody
Allen
about him. Did I really want him, I couldn’t help
thinking, rewiring my hard
drive? ”We’re not changing your brain
physically,”
he
assured me. ”You’ll
only experience differences in your thought
processes
while you’re actually
on
the machine.” His assistant made a few final
adjustments to the electrodes,
and
then, as everyone stood back, Snyder flicked the
switch.

A series of electromagnetic pulses were being
directed
into my frontal
lobes,
but I felt nothing. Snyder instructed me to draw
something. ”What would you
like to draw?” he said merrily. ”A cat? You like
drawing cats? Cats it
is.”

I’ve seen a million cats in my life, so when I
close
my
eyes, I have no
trouble
picturing them. But what does a cat really look
like,
and how do you put it
down
on paper? I gave it a try but came up with some
sort
of
stick figure,
perhaps an
insect.

While I drew, Snyder continued his lecture. ”You
could
call this a
creativity-amplifying machine. It’s a way of
altering
our states of mind
without
taking drugs like mescaline. You can make people
see
the raw data of the
world
as it is. As it is actually represented in the
unconscious mind of all of
us.”

Two minutes after I started the first drawing, I
was
instructed to try
again.
After another two minutes, I tried a third cat,
and
then in due course a
fourth.
Then the experiment was over, and the electrodes
were
removed. I looked down
at
my work. The first felines were boxy and stiffly
unconvincing. But after I
had
been subjected to about 10 minutes of transcranial
magnetic stimulation,
their
tails had grown more vibrant, more nervous; their
faces
were personable and
convincing. They were even beginning to wear
clever
expressions.

I could hardly recognize them as my own drawings,
though I had watched
myself
render each one, in all its loving detail. Somehow
over
the course of a very
few
minutes, and with no additional instruction, I had
gone
from an incompetent
draftsman to a very impressive artist of the
feline
form.

Snyder looked over my shoulder. ”Well, how about
that?
Leonardo would be
envious.” Or turning in his grave, I thought.

As remarkable as the cat-drawing lesson was, it
was
just a hint of Snyder’s
work
and its implications for the study of cognition.
He
has
used TMS dozens of
times
on university students, measuring its effect on
their
ability to draw, to
proofread and to perform difficult mathematical
functions like identifying
prime
numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40
percent
of test subjects
exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental
skills.
That Snyder was able
to
induce these remarkable feats in a controlled,
repeatable experiment is more
than just a great party trick; it’s a breakthrough
that
may lead to a
revolution
in the way we understand the limits of our own
intelligence — and the
functioning of the human brain in general.

Snyder’s work began with a curiosity about autism.
Though there is little
consensus about what causes this baffling — and
increasingly common —
disorder, it seems safe to say that autistic
people
share certain qualities:
they tend to be rigid, mechanical and emotionally
dissociated. They manifest
what autism’s great ”discoverer,” Leo Kanner,
called
”an anxiously
obsessive
desire for the preservation of sameness.” And
they
tend to interpret
information in a hyperliteral way, using ”a kind
of
language which does not
seem intended to serve interpersonal
communication.”

For example, Snyder says, when autistic test
subjects
came to see him at the
university, they would often get lost in the main
quad.
They might have been
there 10 times before, but each time the shadows
were
in slightly different
positions, and the difference overwhelmed their
sense
of place. ”They can’t
grasp a general concept equivalent to the word
‘quad,”’ he explains. ”If
it
changes appearance even slightly, then they have
to
start all over again.”

Despite these limitations, a small subset of
autistics,
known as savants,
can
also perform superspecialized mental feats.
Perhaps
the
most famous savant
was
Dustin Hoffman’s character in ”Rain Man,” who
could
count hundreds of
matchsticks at a glance. But the truth has often
been
even stranger: one
celebrated savant in turn-of-the-century Vienna
could
calculate the day of
the
week for every date since the birth of Christ.
Other
savants can speak
dozens of
languages without formally studying any of them or
can
reproduce music at
the
piano after only a single hearing. A savant
studied
by
the English doctor J.
Langdon Down in 1887 had memorized every page of
Gibbon’s ”Decline and Fall
of
the Roman Empire.” At the beginning of the 19th
century, the splendidly
named
Gottfried Mind became famous all over Europe for
the
amazing pictures he
drew of
cats.

The conventional wisdom has long been that
autistics’
hyperliteral thought
processes were completely separate from the more
contextual, nuanced, social
way
that most adults think, a different mental
function
altogether. And so, by
extension, the extraordinary skills of autistic
savants
have been regarded
as
flukes, almost inhuman feats that average minds
could
never achieve.

Snyder argues that all those assumptions — about
everything from the way
autistic savants behave down to the basic brain
functions that cause them to
do
so — are mistaken. Autistic thought isn’t wholly
incompatible with ordinary
thought, he says; it’s just a variation on it, a
more
extreme example.

He first got the idea after reading ”The Man Who
Mistook His Wife for a
Hat,”
in which Oliver Sacks explores the link between
autism
and a very specific
kind
of brain damage. If neurological impairment is the
cause of the autistic’s
disabilities, Snyder wondered, could it be the
cause
of
their geniuslike
abilities, too? By shutting down certain mental
functions — the capacity to
think conceptually, categorically, contextually —
did
this impairment allow
other mental functions to flourish? Could brain
damage,
in short, actually
make
you brilliant?

In a 1999 paper called ”Is Integer Arithmetic
Fundamental to Mental
Processing?
The Mind’s Secret Arithmetic,” Snyder and D. John
Mitchell considered the
example of an autistic infant, whose mind ”is not
concept driven. . . . In
our
view such a mind can tap into lower level details
not
readily available to
introspection by normal individuals.” These
children,
they wrote, seem ”to
be
aware of information in some raw or interim state
prior
to it being formed
into
the ‘ultimate picture.”’ Most astonishing, they
went
on, ”the mental
machinery
for performing lightning fast integer arithmetic
calculations could be
within us
all.”

And so Snyder turned to TMS, in an attempt, as he
says,
”to enhance the
brain
by shutting off certain parts of it.”

”In a way, savants are the great enigma of
today’s
neurology,” says Prof.
Joy
Hirsch, director of the Functional M.R.I. Research
Center at Columbia
University. ”They exist in all cultures and are a
distinct type. Why? How?
We
don’t know. Yet understanding the savant will help
provide insight into the
whole neurophysiological underpinning of human
behavior. That’s why Snyder’s
ideas are so exciting — he’s asking a really
fundamental question, which no
one
has yet answered.”

If Snyder’s suspicions are correct, in fact, and
savants have not more
brainpower than the rest of us, but less, then
it’s
even possible that
everybody
starts out life as a savant. Look, for example, at
the
ease with which
children
master complex languages — a mysterious skill
that
seems to shut off
automatically around the age of 12. ”What we’re
doing
is
counterintuitive,”
Snyder tells me. ”We’re saying that all these
genius
skills are easy,
they’re
natural. Our brain does them naturally. Like
walking.
Do you know how
difficult
walking is? It’s much more difficult than
drawing!”

To prove his point, he hooks me up to the
Medtronic
Mag
Pro again and asks
me to
read the following lines:

A bird in the hand
is worth two in the
the bush

”A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” I
say.

”Again,” Snyder says, and smiles.

So once more: ”A bird in the hand is worth two in
the
bush.” He makes me
repeat it five or six times, slowing me down until
he
has me reading each
word
with aching slowness.

Then he switches on the machine. He is trying to
suppress those parts of my
brain responsible for thinking contextually, for
making
connections. Without
them, I will be able to see things more as an
autistic
might.

After five minutes of electric pulses, I read the
card
again. Only then do I
see
— instantly — that the card contains an extra
”the.”

On my own, I had been looking for patterns, trying
to
coax the words on the
page
into a coherent, familiar whole. But ”on the
machine,” he says, ”you
start
seeing what’s actually there, not what you think
is
there.”

Snyder’s theories are bolstered by the documented
cases
in which sudden
brain
damage has produced savant abilities almost
overnight.
He cites the case of
Orlando Serrell, a 10-year-old street kid who was
hit
on the head and
immediately began doing calendrical calculations
of
baffling complexity.
Snyder
argues that we all have Serrell’s powers. ”We
remember
virtually
everything,
but we recall very little,” Snyder explains.
”Now
isn’t that strange?
Everything is in there” — he taps the side of
his
head. ”Buried deep in
all
our brains are phenomenal abilities, which we lose
for
some reason as we
develop
into ‘normal’ conceptual creatures. But what if we
could reawaken them?”

Not all of Snyder’s colleagues agree with his
theories.
Michael Howe, an
eminent
psychologist at the University of Exeter in
Britain
who
died last year,
argued
that savantism (and genius itself) was largely a
result
of incessant
practice
and specialization. ”The main difference between
experts and savants,” he
once
told New Scientist magazine, ”is that savants do
things which most of us
couldn’t be bothered to get good at.”

Robert Hendren, executive director of the M.I.N.D.
Institute at the
University
of California at Davis, brought that concept down
to
my
level: ”If you drew
20
cats one after the other, they’d probably get
better
anyway.” Like most
neuroscientists, he doubts that an electromagnetic
pulse can stimulate the
brain
into creativity: ”I’m not sure I see how TMS can
actually alter the way
your
brain works. There’s a chance that Snyder is
right.
But
it’s still very
experimental.”

Tomas Paus, an associate professor of neuroscience
at
McGill University, who
has
done extensive TMS research, is even more dubious.
”I
don’t believe TMS can
ever elicit complex behavior,” he says.

But even skeptics like Hendren and Paus concede
that
by
intensifying the
neural
activity of one part of the brain while slowing or
shutting down others, TMS
can
have remarkable effects. One of its most
successful
applications has been in
the
realm of psychiatry, where it is now used to
dispel
the
”inner voices” of
schizophrenics, or to combat clinical depression
without the damaging side
effects of electroshock therapy. (NeuroNetics, an
Atlanta company, is
developing
a TMS machine designed for just this purpose,
which
will probably be
released in
2006, pending F.D.A. approval.)

Meanwhile, researchers at the National Institute
of
Neurological Disorders
and
Stroke found that TMS applied to the prefrontal
cortex
enabled subjects to
solve
geometric puzzles much more rapidly. Alvaro
Pascual-Leone, associate
professor
of neurology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center in Boston (who,
through
his work at the Laboratory for Magnetic Brain
Stimulation, has been one of
the
American visionaries of TMS), has even suggested
that
TMS could be used to
”prep” students’ minds before lessons.

None of this has gone unnoticed by canny
entrepreneurs
and visionary
scientists.
Last year, the Brain Stimulation Laboratory at the
Medical University of
South
Carolina received a $2 million government grant to
develop a smaller TMS
device
that sleep-deprived soldiers could wear to keep
them
alert. ”It’s not ‘Star
Trek’ at all,” says Ziad Nahas, the laboratory’s
medical director. ”We’ve
done
a lot of the science on reversing cognitive
deficiencies in people with
insomnia
and sleep deficiencies. It works.” If so, it
could
be
a small leap to the
day
it boosts soldiers’ cognitive functioning under
normal
circumstances.

And from there, how long before Americans are
walking
around with humming
antidepression helmets and math-enhancing ”hair
dryers” on their heads?
Will
commercially available TMS machines be used to
turn
prosaic bank managers
into
amateur Rembrandts? Snyder has even contemplated
video
games that harness
specialized parts of the brain that are otherwise
inaccessible.

”Anything is possible,” says Prof. Vilayanur
Ramachandran, director of the
Center for Brain and Cognition at the University
of
California at San Diego
and
the noted author of ”Phantoms in the Brain.”
Snyder’s
theories have not
been
proved, he allows, but they are brilliantly
suggestive:
”We’re at the same
stage in brain research that biology was in the
19th
century. We know almost
nothing about the mind. Snyder’s theories may
sound
like ‘The X-Files,’ but
what
he’s saying is completely plausible. Up to a point
the
brain is open,
malleable
and constantly changing. We might well be able to
make
it run in new ways.”
Of
those who dismiss Snyder’s theories out of hand,
he
shrugs: ”People are
often
blind to new ideas. Especially scientists.”

Bruce L. Miller, the A.W. and Mary Margaret
Claussen
distinguished professor
in
neurology at the University of California at San
Francisco, is intrigued by
Snyder’s experiments and his attempts to
understand
the
physiological basis
of
cognition. But he points out that certain profound
questions about
artificially
altered intelligence have not yet been answered.
”Do
we really want these
abilities?” he asks. ”Wouldn’t it change my idea
of
myself if I could
suddenly
paint amazing pictures?”

It probably would change people’s ideas of
themselves,
to say nothing of
their
ideas of artistic talent. And though that prospect
might discomfort Miller,
there are no doubt others whom it would thrill.
But
could anyone really
guess,
in advance, how their lives might be affected by
instant creativity, instant
intelligence, instant happiness? Or by their
disappearance, just as
instantly,
once the TMS is switched off?

As he walked me out of the university — a place
so
Gothic that it could be
Oxford, but for the intensely flowering jacaranda
in
one corner and the
strange
Southern Hemisphere birds flitting about — and
toward
the freeway back to
downtown Sydney, Snyder for his part radiated the
most
convincingly
ebullient
optimism. ”Remember that old saw which says that
we
only use a small part
our
brain? Well, it might just be true. Except that
now
we
can actually prove it
physically and experimentally. That has to be
significant. I mean, it has to
be,
doesn’t it?”

We stopped for a moment by the side of the roaring
traffic and looked up at
a
haze in the sky. Snyder’s eyes contracted
inquisitively
as he pieced
together
the unfamiliar facts (brown smoke, just outside
Sydney)
and eased them into
a
familiar narrative framework (the forest fires
that
had
been raging all
week).
It was an effortless little bit of deductive,
nonliteral thinking — the
sort of
thing that human beings, unaided by TMS, do a
thousand
times a day. Then, in
an
instant, he switched back to our conversation and
picked up his train of
thought. ”More important than that, we can change
our
own intelligence in
unexpected ways. Why would we not want to explore
that?”

Lawrence Osborne is a frequent contributor to the
magazine.

<]=———————————————————————–=[

[           Moderated by: Preston Peet |
.drugwar.com           ]
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From: “sandra .” <windforme@graffiti.net>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
Date: June 29, 2003 at 5:38:10 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

…check the website, it says they discontinued the iboga root because of unknown alkaloid levels or something to that effect.

—– Original Message —–
From: Nick Labus 
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 21:03:18 -0700 (PDT)
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
but its illegal to sell it to us people so they strip it and sell it to us people and in canadas the good shit that they sell to the ibogaine docs!

ad astra wrote:
Ethnogarden is a Canadian company, iboga and ibogaine
are legal here – so I doubt they are deliberately
selling bunk. I believe they are dealing in good
faith and *IF* they are selling product with low
ibogaine content it is unintentional.

— Nick Labus wrote:
> Thank you very much ad astra i would like to note
> that i hjave had quite a few bad experience with
> internet sites it sounds as if ethnogarden has bunk
> iboga i dont know and i dont want to know if you
> live n usa but some companys in the us or sending

__________________________________
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From: Nick Labus <goosebumpz2002@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
Date: June 29, 2003 at 12:03:18 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

but its illegal to sell it to us people so they strip it and sell it to us people and in canadas the good shit that they sell to the ibogaine docs!

ad astra <metagrrl@yahoo.com> wrote:
Ethnogarden is a Canadian company, iboga and ibogaine
are legal here – so I doubt they are deliberately
selling bunk. I believe they are dealing in good
faith and *IF* they are selling product with low
ibogaine content it is unintentional.

— Nick Labus wrote:
> Thank you very much ad astra i would like to note
> that i hjave had quite a few bad experience with
> internet sites it sounds as if ethnogarden has bunk
> iboga i dont know and i dont want to know if you
> live n usa but some companys in the us or sending

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
From: ad astra <metagrrl@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
Date: June 28, 2003 at 8:11:54 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Ethnogarden is a Canadian company, iboga and ibogaine
are legal here – so I doubt they are deliberately
selling bunk.  I believe they are dealing in good
faith and *IF* they are selling product with low
ibogaine content it is unintentional.

— Nick Labus <goosebumpz2002@yahoo.com> wrote:
Thank  you very much ad astra i would like to note
that i hjave had quite a few bad experience with
internet sites it sounds as if ethnogarden has bunk
iboga i dont know and i dont want to know if you
live n usa but some companys in the us or sending

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
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From: Nick Labus <goosebumpz2002@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
Date: June 28, 2003 at 3:13:26 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Thank  you very much ad astra i would like to note that i hjave had quite a few bad experience with internet sites it sounds as if ethnogarden has bunk iboga i dont know and i dont want to know if you live n usa but some companys in the us or sending the us strip a plant of its oils or alkaloids that are deemed illegal by lawmakers so you may ave bought ibogaine root they didnt tell you the did something to it to destroy the actual alkaloid that makes you have desired effects they do it to amanitas alot they strip all the muscimal and ibotenic acid out of them then sell the amanita muscaria and there real and everything but they cant get arrested for selling a pplant that has a psycoactive substance or there s option 3 what i thinks going on they keep thre first two things then they use the ibogaine and alkaloids  to ana;ly fuck themselves whiule keeping warm by a fire kindeled by hundred doller bills and byingn yaught s while good  people  who simpl;e would  like to enhance their lives are getting screwed so thank you veryvery much ethnogarden  SUCKKKKKKKSSSSSSSSSSSSSSASSSS! your not the first to report bunk product !

ad astra <metagrrl@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi,

I don’t know how to reach them, but I have had
experience, or perhaps I should say non-experience,
with their products.

I took 25 grams of ethnogarden iboga root bark about a
year ago, but had no discernable effect. At the time
I attributed it to possible absorption problems caused
by mixing it with milk and honey, and also the fact
that I only kept it down for about 2 hours before
puking it up.

A week ago I took 4 grams of ethnogarden extract on an
empty stomach (after fasting for about 15 hours), did
not puke, felt only mild nausea (though I had taken an
OTC anti-nausea medication), and had no noticeable
psychoactive effects. However I did feel physically
rather ill for a couple of days afterward. 4 grams of
the extract, according to the website, should be about
1 gram of ibogaine; proportional to my body weight it
would be around 11-12 mg/kg ibogaine.

This could be just me…I could be immune to iboga’s
effects. I should also mention, though, that I spoke
a few days ago to someone who recently ingested 20
grams of root bark powder from ethnogarden and kept it
down for about 2 hours before throwing up. He
described the effects as being “very mild, maybe even
placebo effects.”

For what it’s worth, I’ve heard indirect accounts of
people getting some effect from around 5 grams of root
bark powder from ethnogarden.

— Will wrote:
> Does anyone know how to reach the folks at
> ethnogarden (the canadian place, not
> ethnobotanicals)? I’ve tried emailing
> info@ethnogarden.com but no response, and I’ve tried
> calling at various times in the day and evening, but
> no one answers the phone there either. If the
> proprietors are on this list, please reply and let
> me know how to reach you with questions.
>
> Does anyone else have experience with this company?
> Are they reliable, is their product good?
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Will
>
>
>
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

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SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
From: “sandra .” <windforme@graffiti.net>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
Date: June 27, 2003 at 12:44:28 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Ethnogarden Botanicals:

email: ethnogarden@sympatico.ca
web: www.ethnogarden.com

—– Original Message —–
From: “Will” <willewonka@burntmail.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 18:41:23 +0000
To: ibogaine@lists.calyx.nl, ibogaine@mindvox.com
Subject: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?

Does anyone know how to reach the folks at ethnogarden (the canadian place, not ethnobotanicals)? I’ve tried emailing info@ethnogarden.com but no response, and I’ve tried calling at various times in the day and evening, but no one answers the phone there either. If the proprietors are on this list, please reply and let me know how to reach you with questions.

Does anyone else have experience with this company? Are they reliable, is their product good?

Thanks,

Will


_______________________________________________
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From: ad astra <metagrrl@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
Date: June 26, 2003 at 11:21:29 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Hi,

I don’t know how to reach them, but I have had
experience, or perhaps I should say non-experience,
with their products.

I took 25 grams of ethnogarden iboga root bark about a
year ago, but had no discernable effect.  At the time
I attributed it to possible absorption problems caused
by mixing it with milk and honey, and also the fact
that I only kept it down for about 2 hours before
puking it up.

A week ago I took 4 grams of ethnogarden extract on an
empty stomach (after fasting for about 15 hours), did
not puke, felt only mild nausea (though I had taken an
OTC anti-nausea medication),  and had no noticeable
psychoactive effects.  However I did feel physically
rather ill for a couple of days afterward.  4 grams of
the extract, according to the website, should be about
1 gram of ibogaine; proportional to my body weight it
would be around 11-12 mg/kg ibogaine.

This could be just me…I could be immune to iboga’s
effects.  I should also mention, though, that I spoke
a few days ago to someone who recently ingested 20
grams of root bark powder from ethnogarden and kept it
down for about 2 hours before throwing up.  He
described the effects as being “very mild, maybe even
placebo effects.”

For what it’s worth, I’ve heard indirect accounts of
people getting some effect from around 5 grams of root
bark powder from ethnogarden.

— Will <willewonka@burntmail.com> wrote:
Does anyone know how to reach the folks at
ethnogarden (the canadian place, not
ethnobotanicals)? I’ve tried emailing
info@ethnogarden.com but no response, and I’ve tried
calling at various times in the day and evening, but
no one answers the phone there either. If the
proprietors are on this list, please reply and let
me know how to reach you with questions.

Does anyone else have experience with this company?
Are they reliable, is their product good?

Thanks,

Will

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

From: “Will” <willewonka@burntmail.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] who’s minding the store at ethnogarden?
Date: June 26, 2003 at 2:41:23 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@lists.calyx.nl, ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Does anyone know how to reach the folks at ethnogarden (the canadian place, not ethnobotanicals)? I’ve tried emailing info@ethnogarden.com but no response, and I’ve tried calling at various times in the day and evening, but no one answers the phone there either. If the proprietors are on this list, please reply and let me know how to reach you with questions.

Does anyone else have experience with this company? Are they reliable, is their product good?

Thanks,

Will

From: jon freedlander <jfreed1@umbc.edu>
Subject: RE: [ibogaine] new Jane’s Addiction
Date: June 24, 2003 at 12:18:40 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

===== Original Message From “preston peet” <ptpeet@nyc.rr.com> =====
HI all,
For the music lovers out there, who enjoy hearing proof that some
musicians make good music, even if they are druggies.;-))
I got the pleasure of smoking out Steve Perkin’s the last time Jane’s
Addiction came through, when they played Madison Square Gardens. They had an
aftershow party at the club where my girlfriend works, so I made sure to
introduce myself to Perkins, telling him that some of the people at HT said
hello, to which he replied, “cool, how are the guys over there,” which gave
me the opening to offer a bowl, to him and the bass player of Fema Kuti.
I also did some film work recently, a few months ago now, with Jane’s
guitarist Dave Navarro and the singer from Suger Ray, (who I couldn’t even
name one song by). That was interesting, though he was featured and I was
merely background.;-))
Anyway, for those interested in music, here’s Jane’s Addiction’s newest
release.

http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/595/janes_addiction.html

Wow.  I had no idea jane’s addiction was still together.. i thought they broke
up years ago…eheh

From: “Rick Venglarcik” <RickV@hnncsb.org>
Subject: [ibogaine] HAARPing about the future
Date: June 24, 2003 at 12:01:20 PM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

If you think the current techniques for mind control are spooky, the
future looks even worse…HAARP.
http://www.earthpulse.com/haarp/vandalism.html

_____________________________________
Rick Venglarcik, MA, CSAC
Hampton Roads Clinic
2236 W. Queen St., Suite C
Hampton,  VA  23666

Office:  (757) 827-8430 x144
Fax:  (757) 826-2772
Cell: (757) 270-9839
_____________________________________

Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message, including attachments, is for
the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and
privleged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, or
distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please
contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original
message.

From: “sara” <sara119@xs4all.nl>
Subject: [ibogaine] Christina Kester
Date: June 24, 2003 at 8:42:46 PM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Christina, do you still want to know why the mushrooms I gave you helped you sleep so well after the Iboga treatment?

Please write.

Sara

From: “preston peet” <ptpeet@nyc.rr.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] new Jane’s Addiction
Date: June 24, 2003 at 8:08:17 AM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>, <drugwar@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

HI all,
For the music lovers out there, who enjoy hearing proof that some
musicians make good music, even if they are druggies.;-))
I got the pleasure of smoking out Steve Perkin’s the last time Jane’s
Addiction came through, when they played Madison Square Gardens. They had an
aftershow party at the club where my girlfriend works, so I made sure to
introduce myself to Perkins, telling him that some of the people at HT said
hello, to which he replied, “cool, how are the guys over there,” which gave
me the opening to offer a bowl, to him and the bass player of Fema Kuti.
I also did some film work recently, a few months ago now, with Jane’s
guitarist Dave Navarro and the singer from Suger Ray, (who I couldn’t even
name one song by). That was interesting, though he was featured and I was
merely background.;-))
Anyway, for those interested in music, here’s Jane’s Addiction’s newest
release.

http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/595/janes_addiction.html

For those who haven’t read the following, I repost it. Those who have read
this, please excuse repost-

A Simple Experiment Goes Well
http://www.drugwar.com/pshroomshows.shtm

Peace,
Preston

From: MARC <marc420emery@shaw.ca>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Cannabis Campaigner To Take Own Life
Date: June 24, 2003 at 4:48:59 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Hello Howard,

I got your phone message. I just got back from a conference in Toronto
called IDEACITY 2003. (website:
http://www.ideacityonline.com/2003presenters.asp ).

I spoke about the Iboga Project thus dar and the fascinating things you
observe working with 23 patients for a total of 37 treatments.

The Iboga House is operating and we have treated two individuals in the two
weeks previous to my trip to Toronto (where I also led a successful
demonstration in front of the Metro Toronto Police HQ smoking marijuana for
two hours without interference from police, proving my contention that
marijuana has been made completely legal by Ontario courts.). We are booking
up quite quickly for the next few months.

I am so happy with the results. Everyone is improved because of their iboga
experience, including some very deep in squalor junkies. Even those the odds
are very stacked against do better, I think, by far.

Almost everyone has a deep childhood trauma relating to the missing male
biological parent. Very remarkable. I bring this up when I talk about what I
see.

Hope all is well with you. You are welcome to visit here for a few days if
like. Be glad to buy you a ticket, and put you up in a nice hotel for a few
days. As you know, giving iboga is pretty straightforward, so theres not
much drama treating people, but you still might want to come up and check
out our work with an arriving patient. They will all be treated within 24
hours of arrival. And we can talk about anything. I am involved in a great
deal of the changes going on in Canada.

My presentation was before a luminous crowd (Wade Davies particularly went
out of his way to say how much he liked our work), and a Canadian General
(Romeo Dallaire) said he admired my work in both fields. At least 4
scientists were there, plus many of the famous people who attended previous
years (If you present, IDEACITY gives you a free pass to show up the
following year. I am one of three presenters who have presented twice in the
three years – 01 & 03).

Very exciting times.

Marc

From: “Allison Senepart” <aa.senepart@xtra.co.nz>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Re: AMON
Date: June 23, 2003 at 8:12:27 AM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

I just wanted to offer condolences to Amons Mum.  I saw his messages here
but had no idea he had died.  I don’t know that any of this will make his
Mum feel better but a lot of addicts don’t set out intentionally to die.  I
have a number of friends now that have overdosed or died accidentely while
using drugs which is an incentive   that helps my partner and I try to fight
to keep clean.  Its not easy and the temptation is always just around the
corner but so far we are staying good for longer than we have done at any
other time.  We have tried and failed so many times, had arguments, given
up, been sick and everything else that goes with it.  My daughter is now 22
and is very anti hard drugs after having to live with my partner and I and I
am certainly not proud to have introduced her to things she should never
have seen or been aware of.  All I can say is that its like one part of your
mind is saying one thing and then another half is talking you into the
opposite.  At times I was so determined not to do any more morphine, poppies
etc. and then my partner would arrive home with something and I would start
cramping in the stomach just anticipating it.  My parents were horribly
upset when they figured out what I was doing.  I managed to hide it for a
while but eventually everything feel to bits.  I would turn up to visit and
nod off in the middle of a conversation and I guess it was all too obvious.
They wanted to help me but I wouldn’t let them.  My answer was to keep
telling them everything was under control cos I didn’t want them to be
disappointed in me and also didn’twant to admit how desperate and sick I was
when I needed a fix to get to work and function for the day.
I wish Amons mum all the best and hope that she will find some understanding
from people on this list.
Regards Allison.   PS  It all sounds so inadequate but my thoughts are there
even if though the words are hard to write.
—– Original Message —–
From: “AMON” <amon@wetnightmare.com>
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Cc: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 11:04 AM
Subject: [ibogaine] Re: AMON

On Sun, 22 Jun 2003 13:04:35 -0400, “preston peet”
wrote:
I”m not sure how to send a  message to this group- but
I would like anybody who might have communicated with
Amon to know that on April 26, he died suddenly. The
cause of death is still being investigated, but he was
in the company of drug dealers at the time. I am his
mother and would appreciate hearing from anyone who has
insights or previous messages from him, as I mourn his
death and try to understand his pain. I know he was
trying desperately in his last two months to find help
for his addiction. My agony is that I was not able to
help him in time. If anyone out there can help me with
understanding, I would be so grateful. thank you.

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—– Original Message —–
From: Tim Meehan
To: drugwar@mindvox.com
Cc: mapster@coollist.com
Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2003 10:28 AM
Subject: [drugwar] Savant for a Day

June 22, 2003
Savant for a Day
By LAWRENCE OSBORNE

n a concrete basement at the University of Sydney, I
sat in a chair waiting
to
have my brain altered by an electromagnetic pulse. My
forehead was
connected, by
a series of electrodes, to a machine that looked
something like an
old-fashioned
beauty-salon hair dryer and was sunnily described to
me
as a ”Danish-made
transcranial magnetic stimulator.” This was not just
any old Danish-made
transcranial magnetic stimulator, however; this was
the
Medtronic Mag Pro,
and
it was being operated by Allan Snyder, one of the
world’s most remarkable
scientists of human cognition.

Nonetheless, the anticipation of electricity being
beamed into my frontal
lobes
(and the consent form I had just signed) made me a bit
nervous. Snyder found
that amusing. ”Oh, relax now!” he said in the thick
local accent he has
acquired since moving here from America. ”I’ve done
it
on myself a hundred
times. This is Australia. Legally, it’s far more
difficult to damage people
in
Australia than it is in the United States.”

”Damage?” I groaned.

”You’re not going to be damaged,” he said. ”You’re
going to be
enhanced.”

The Medtronic was originally developed as a tool for
brain surgery: by
stimulating or slowing down specific regions of the
brain, it allowed
doctors to
monitor the effects of surgery in real time. But it
also produced, they
noted,
strange and unexpected effects on patients’ mental
functions: one minute
they
would lose the ability to speak, another minute they
would speak easily but
would make odd linguistic errors and so on. A number
of
researchers started
to
look into the possibilities, but one in particular
intrigued Snyder: that
people
undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS,
could suddenly exhibit
savant intelligence — those isolated pockets of
geniuslike mental ability
that
most often appear in autistic people.

Snyder is an impish presence, the very opposite of a
venerable professor,
let
alone an internationally acclaimed scientist. There is
a whiff of Woody
Allen
about him. Did I really want him, I couldn’t help
thinking, rewiring my hard
drive? ”We’re not changing your brain physically,”
he
assured me. ”You’ll
only experience differences in your thought processes
while you’re actually
on
the machine.” His assistant made a few final
adjustments to the electrodes,
and
then, as everyone stood back, Snyder flicked the
switch.

A series of electromagnetic pulses were being directed
into my frontal
lobes,
but I felt nothing. Snyder instructed me to draw
something. ”What would you
like to draw?” he said merrily. ”A cat? You like
drawing cats? Cats it
is.”

I’ve seen a million cats in my life, so when I close
my
eyes, I have no
trouble
picturing them. But what does a cat really look like,
and how do you put it
down
on paper? I gave it a try but came up with some sort
of
stick figure,
perhaps an
insect.

While I drew, Snyder continued his lecture. ”You
could
call this a
creativity-amplifying machine. It’s a way of altering
our states of mind
without
taking drugs like mescaline. You can make people see
the raw data of the
world
as it is. As it is actually represented in the
unconscious mind of all of
us.”

Two minutes after I started the first drawing, I was
instructed to try
again.
After another two minutes, I tried a third cat, and
then in due course a
fourth.
Then the experiment was over, and the electrodes were
removed. I looked down
at
my work. The first felines were boxy and stiffly
unconvincing. But after I
had
been subjected to about 10 minutes of transcranial
magnetic stimulation,
their
tails had grown more vibrant, more nervous; their
faces
were personable and
convincing. They were even beginning to wear clever
expressions.

I could hardly recognize them as my own drawings,
though I had watched
myself
render each one, in all its loving detail. Somehow
over
the course of a very
few
minutes, and with no additional instruction, I had
gone
from an incompetent
draftsman to a very impressive artist of the feline
form.

Snyder looked over my shoulder. ”Well, how about
that?
Leonardo would be
envious.” Or turning in his grave, I thought.

As remarkable as the cat-drawing lesson was, it was
just a hint of Snyder’s
work
and its implications for the study of cognition. He
has
used TMS dozens of
times
on university students, measuring its effect on their
ability to draw, to
proofread and to perform difficult mathematical
functions like identifying
prime
numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent
of test subjects
exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills.
That Snyder was able
to
induce these remarkable feats in a controlled,
repeatable experiment is more
than just a great party trick; it’s a breakthrough
that
may lead to a
revolution
in the way we understand the limits of our own
intelligence — and the
functioning of the human brain in general.

Snyder’s work began with a curiosity about autism.
Though there is little
consensus about what causes this baffling — and
increasingly common —
disorder, it seems safe to say that autistic people
share certain qualities:
they tend to be rigid, mechanical and emotionally
dissociated. They manifest
what autism’s great ”discoverer,” Leo Kanner, called
”an anxiously
obsessive
desire for the preservation of sameness.” And they
tend to interpret
information in a hyperliteral way, using ”a kind of
language which does not
seem intended to serve interpersonal communication.”

For example, Snyder says, when autistic test subjects
came to see him at the
university, they would often get lost in the main
quad.
They might have been
there 10 times before, but each time the shadows were
in slightly different
positions, and the difference overwhelmed their sense
of place. ”They can’t
grasp a general concept equivalent to the word
‘quad,”’ he explains. ”If
it
changes appearance even slightly, then they have to
start all over again.”

Despite these limitations, a small subset of
autistics,
known as savants,
can
also perform superspecialized mental feats. Perhaps
the
most famous savant
was
Dustin Hoffman’s character in ”Rain Man,” who could
count hundreds of
matchsticks at a glance. But the truth has often been
even stranger: one
celebrated savant in turn-of-the-century Vienna could
calculate the day of
the
week for every date since the birth of Christ. Other
savants can speak
dozens of
languages without formally studying any of them or can
reproduce music at
the
piano after only a single hearing. A savant studied by
the English doctor J.
Langdon Down in 1887 had memorized every page of
Gibbon’s ”Decline and Fall
of
the Roman Empire.” At the beginning of the 19th
century, the splendidly
named
Gottfried Mind became famous all over Europe for the
amazing pictures he
drew of
cats.

The conventional wisdom has long been that autistics’
hyperliteral thought
processes were completely separate from the more
contextual, nuanced, social
way
that most adults think, a different mental function
altogether. And so, by
extension, the extraordinary skills of autistic
savants
have been regarded
as
flukes, almost inhuman feats that average minds could
never achieve.

Snyder argues that all those assumptions — about
everything from the way
autistic savants behave down to the basic brain
functions that cause them to
do
so — are mistaken. Autistic thought isn’t wholly
incompatible with ordinary
thought, he says; it’s just a variation on it, a more
extreme example.

He first got the idea after reading ”The Man Who
Mistook His Wife for a
Hat,”
in which Oliver Sacks explores the link between autism
and a very specific
kind
of brain damage. If neurological impairment is the
cause of the autistic’s
disabilities, Snyder wondered, could it be the cause
of
their geniuslike
abilities, too? By shutting down certain mental
functions — the capacity to
think conceptually, categorically, contextually — did
this impairment allow
other mental functions to flourish? Could brain
damage,
in short, actually
make
you brilliant?

In a 1999 paper called ”Is Integer Arithmetic
Fundamental to Mental
Processing?
The Mind’s Secret Arithmetic,” Snyder and D. John
Mitchell considered the
example of an autistic infant, whose mind ”is not
concept driven. . . . In
our
view such a mind can tap into lower level details not
readily available to
introspection by normal individuals.” These children,
they wrote, seem ”to
be
aware of information in some raw or interim state
prior
to it being formed
into
the ‘ultimate picture.”’ Most astonishing, they went
on, ”the mental
machinery
for performing lightning fast integer arithmetic
calculations could be
within us
all.”

And so Snyder turned to TMS, in an attempt, as he
says,
”to enhance the
brain
by shutting off certain parts of it.”

”In a way, savants are the great enigma of today’s
neurology,” says Prof.
Joy
Hirsch, director of the Functional M.R.I. Research
Center at Columbia
University. ”They exist in all cultures and are a
distinct type. Why? How?
We
don’t know. Yet understanding the savant will help
provide insight into the
whole neurophysiological underpinning of human
behavior. That’s why Snyder’s
ideas are so exciting — he’s asking a really
fundamental question, which no
one
has yet answered.”

If Snyder’s suspicions are correct, in fact, and
savants have not more
brainpower than the rest of us, but less, then it’s
even possible that
everybody
starts out life as a savant. Look, for example, at the
ease with which
children
master complex languages — a mysterious skill that
seems to shut off
automatically around the age of 12. ”What we’re doing
is
counterintuitive,”
Snyder tells me. ”We’re saying that all these genius
skills are easy,
they’re
natural. Our brain does them naturally. Like walking.
Do you know how
difficult
walking is? It’s much more difficult than drawing!”

To prove his point, he hooks me up to the Medtronic
Mag
Pro again and asks
me to
read the following lines:

A bird in the hand
is worth two in the
the bush

”A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” I
say.

”Again,” Snyder says, and smiles.

So once more: ”A bird in the hand is worth two in the
bush.” He makes me
repeat it five or six times, slowing me down until he
has me reading each
word
with aching slowness.

Then he switches on the machine. He is trying to
suppress those parts of my
brain responsible for thinking contextually, for
making
connections. Without
them, I will be able to see things more as an autistic
might.

After five minutes of electric pulses, I read the card
again. Only then do I
see
— instantly — that the card contains an extra
”the.”

On my own, I had been looking for patterns, trying to
coax the words on the
page
into a coherent, familiar whole. But ”on the
machine,” he says, ”you
start
seeing what’s actually there, not what you think is
there.”

Snyder’s theories are bolstered by the documented
cases
in which sudden
brain
damage has produced savant abilities almost overnight.
He cites the case of
Orlando Serrell, a 10-year-old street kid who was hit
on the head and
immediately began doing calendrical calculations of
baffling complexity.
Snyder
argues that we all have Serrell’s powers. ”We
remember
virtually
everything,
but we recall very little,” Snyder explains. ”Now
isn’t that strange?
Everything is in there” — he taps the side of his
head. ”Buried deep in
all
our brains are phenomenal abilities, which we lose for
some reason as we
develop
into ‘normal’ conceptual creatures. But what if we
could reawaken them?”

Not all of Snyder’s colleagues agree with his
theories.
Michael Howe, an
eminent
psychologist at the University of Exeter in Britain
who
died last year,
argued
that savantism (and genius itself) was largely a
result
of incessant
practice
and specialization. ”The main difference between
experts and savants,” he
once
told New Scientist magazine, ”is that savants do
things which most of us
couldn’t be bothered to get good at.”

Robert Hendren, executive director of the M.I.N.D.
Institute at the
University
of California at Davis, brought that concept down to
my
level: ”If you drew
20
cats one after the other, they’d probably get better
anyway.” Like most
neuroscientists, he doubts that an electromagnetic
pulse can stimulate the
brain
into creativity: ”I’m not sure I see how TMS can
actually alter the way
your
brain works. There’s a chance that Snyder is right.
But
it’s still very
experimental.”

Tomas Paus, an associate professor of neuroscience at
McGill University, who
has
done extensive TMS research, is even more dubious. ”I
don’t believe TMS can
ever elicit complex behavior,” he says.

But even skeptics like Hendren and Paus concede that
by
intensifying the
neural
activity of one part of the brain while slowing or
shutting down others, TMS
can
have remarkable effects. One of its most successful
applications has been in
the
realm of psychiatry, where it is now used to dispel
the
”inner voices” of
schizophrenics, or to combat clinical depression
without the damaging side
effects of electroshock therapy. (NeuroNetics, an
Atlanta company, is
developing
a TMS machine designed for just this purpose, which
will probably be
released in
2006, pending F.D.A. approval.)

Meanwhile, researchers at the National Institute of
Neurological Disorders
and
Stroke found that TMS applied to the prefrontal cortex
enabled subjects to
solve
geometric puzzles much more rapidly. Alvaro
Pascual-Leone, associate
professor
of neurology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center in Boston (who,
through
his work at the Laboratory for Magnetic Brain
Stimulation, has been one of
the
American visionaries of TMS), has even suggested that
TMS could be used to
”prep” students’ minds before lessons.

None of this has gone unnoticed by canny entrepreneurs
and visionary
scientists.
Last year, the Brain Stimulation Laboratory at the
Medical University of
South
Carolina received a $2 million government grant to
develop a smaller TMS
device
that sleep-deprived soldiers could wear to keep them
alert. ”It’s not ‘Star
Trek’ at all,” says Ziad Nahas, the laboratory’s
medical director. ”We’ve
done
a lot of the science on reversing cognitive
deficiencies in people with
insomnia
and sleep deficiencies. It works.” If so, it could be
a small leap to the
day
it boosts soldiers’ cognitive functioning under normal
circumstances.

And from there, how long before Americans are walking
around with humming
antidepression helmets and math-enhancing ”hair
dryers” on their heads?
Will
commercially available TMS machines be used to turn
prosaic bank managers
into
amateur Rembrandts? Snyder has even contemplated video
games that harness
specialized parts of the brain that are otherwise
inaccessible.

”Anything is possible,” says Prof. Vilayanur
Ramachandran, director of the
Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of
California at San Diego
and
the noted author of ”Phantoms in the Brain.”
Snyder’s
theories have not
been
proved, he allows, but they are brilliantly
suggestive:
”We’re at the same
stage in brain research that biology was in the 19th
century. We know almost
nothing about the mind. Snyder’s theories may sound
like ‘The X-Files,’ but
what
he’s saying is completely plausible. Up to a point the
brain is open,
malleable
and constantly changing. We might well be able to make
it run in new ways.”
Of
those who dismiss Snyder’s theories out of hand, he
shrugs: ”People are
often
blind to new ideas. Especially scientists.”

Bruce L. Miller, the A.W. and Mary Margaret Claussen
distinguished professor
in
neurology at the University of California at San
Francisco, is intrigued by
Snyder’s experiments and his attempts to understand
the
physiological basis
of
cognition. But he points out that certain profound
questions about
artificially
altered intelligence have not yet been answered. ”Do
we really want these
abilities?” he asks. ”Wouldn’t it change my idea of
myself if I could
suddenly
paint amazing pictures?”

It probably would change people’s ideas of themselves,
to say nothing of
their
ideas of artistic talent. And though that prospect
might discomfort Miller,
there are no doubt others whom it would thrill. But
could anyone really
guess,
in advance, how their lives might be affected by
instant creativity, instant
intelligence, instant happiness? Or by their
disappearance, just as
instantly,
once the TMS is switched off?

As he walked me out of the university — a place so
Gothic that it could be
Oxford, but for the intensely flowering jacaranda in
one corner and the
strange
Southern Hemisphere birds flitting about — and toward
the freeway back to
downtown Sydney, Snyder for his part radiated the most
convincingly
ebullient
optimism. ”Remember that old saw which says that we
only use a small part
our
brain? Well, it might just be true. Except that now we
can actually prove it
physically and experimentally. That has to be
significant. I mean, it has to
be,
doesn’t it?”

We stopped for a moment by the side of the roaring
traffic and looked up at
a
haze in the sky. Snyder’s eyes contracted
inquisitively
as he pieced
together
the unfamiliar facts (brown smoke, just outside
Sydney)
and eased them into
a
familiar narrative framework (the forest fires that
had
been raging all
week).
It was an effortless little bit of deductive,
nonliteral thinking — the
sort of
thing that human beings, unaided by TMS, do a thousand
times a day. Then, in
an
instant, he switched back to our conversation and
picked up his train of
thought. ”More important than that, we can change our
own intelligence in
unexpected ways. Why would we not want to explore
that?”

Lawrence Osborne is a frequent contributor to the
magazine.

<]=———————————————————————–=[

[           Moderated by: Preston Peet |
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From: <crownofthorns@hushmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] morphine vs oxycodone vs methadone
Date: June 22, 2003 at 10:37:31 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Preston you sound good bro 🙂 I’m happy things are working out for you.
Brett are you alive bro? How are you doing out there? If all the fine
tuning which pill you’re taking does not work out a full blown head cleansing
with ibo might be a good way to get back to thinking things through more
🙂

Peace out,
Curtis

On Thu, 19 Jun 2003 00:13:45 -0700 preston peet <ptpeet@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
Carla asked how things went at my visit, so here’s a brief run-down:

Though he made a point to inform me that many people when looking
at me
first off might naturally suspect that I am “into drugs” and would
therefore
hesitate to prescribe me narcotic pain relievers, the pain specialist
I
wound up seeing today after yet another silly teeny bit of drama
along the “how the
heck am I paying for this again?” lines, he went ahead and increased
the
dose of my normal pain script to the level I’ve found works best
even though
it was just over double the dose being prescribed until today (and
I wrote
the true amount of what I’ve been taking, and when he remarked on
it while
looking over the info I told him point blank it was more than prescribed,

to which he
responded with, “is that why your doctor sent you here,” completely
understanding the “DEA causes unneeded stress and strain, to much
to justify
its existence damn it” way of things.;-))
So, the point of this is that I feel like a huge weight has
been lifted
from my mind, not to mention all the hurting areas. He not only
increased my
dose, but prescribed a couple of other things that should do me
a world of
good, allowing me to finally once again sit here for hours upon
hours typing
and phoning and scribbling and the rest of the stuff I do when writing
one
screed or the other, instead of the very brief spurts I’ve only
been able to
manage as of late.

And now as I reach the beginning of a new day, I can say that yes
indeed, I’ve been helped remarkably well, and my pain has for now
receded into the background. This guy was a blessing. I’m almost
feeling as though I dreamed him or something.;-))
Peace,
Preston

—– Original Message —–
From: Carla Barnes
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to get
FREE encrypted email: https://www.hushmail.com/?l=2

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From: <crownofthorns@hushmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Re: AMON
Date: June 22, 2003 at 10:35:31 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

You just did. Send a message to the group that is.

I am very sorry to hear that. Looking in my mail the last time your son
wrote to this group was the day before he died. I don’t know what anyone
can say that makes it any eaisier to deal with what you are going through.
Drug addiction is a really harsh thing and it’s hard to ever get out
of it.

I think there are very few people who ever get out of it and are so centered
that they can say they are through with it. Very few, maybe 3 on this
list, less?

Most people get better, get worse, try to get better again. I do not
have all these answers I just know it’s very hard and there is always
this list of things you could have done different when you look back
at it but really would any of them have made a difference is hard to
say.

However you look at what addiction is or how to get out, none of it is
ever very easy and there isn’t anyone to blame.

I am very sorry for your loss.

Peace out,
Curtis

On Sun, 22 Jun 2003 16:04:43 -0700 AMON <amon@wetnightmare.com> wrote:
On Sun, 22 Jun 2003 13:04:35 -0400, “preston peet”
wrote:
I”m not sure how to send a  message to this group- but
I would like anybody who might have communicated with
Amon to know that on April 26, he died suddenly. The
cause of death is still being investigated, but he was
in the company of drug dealers at the time. I am his
mother and would appreciate hearing from anyone who has
insights or previous messages from him, as I mourn his
death and try to understand his pain. I know he was
trying desperately in his last two months to find help
for his addiction. My agony is that I was not able to
help him in time. If anyone out there can help me with
understanding, I would be so grateful. thank you.

Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to get
FREE encrypted email: https://www.hushmail.com/?l=2

Free, ultra-private instant messaging with Hush Messenger
https://www.hushmail.com/services.php?subloc=messenger&l=434

Big $$$ to be made with the HushMail Affiliate Program:
https://www.hushmail.com/about.php?subloc=affiliate&l=427

From: “AMON” <amon@wetnightmare.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] Re: AMON
Date: June 22, 2003 at 7:04:43 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Cc: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

On Sun, 22 Jun 2003 13:04:35 -0400, “preston peet”
wrote:
I”m not sure how to send a  message to this group- but
I would like anybody who might have communicated with
Amon to know that on April 26, he died suddenly. The
cause of death is still being investigated, but he was
in the company of drug dealers at the time. I am his
mother and would appreciate hearing from anyone who has
insights or previous messages from him, as I mourn his
death and try to understand his pain. I know he was
trying desperately in his last two months to find help
for his addiction. My agony is that I was not able to
help him in time. If anyone out there can help me with
understanding, I would be so grateful. thank you.

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—– Original Message —–
From: Tim Meehan
To: drugwar@mindvox.com
Cc: mapster@coollist.com
Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2003 10:28 AM
Subject: [drugwar] Savant for a Day

June 22, 2003
Savant for a Day
By LAWRENCE OSBORNE

n a concrete basement at the University of Sydney, I
sat in a chair waiting
to
have my brain altered by an electromagnetic pulse. My
forehead was
connected, by
a series of electrodes, to a machine that looked
something like an
old-fashioned
beauty-salon hair dryer and was sunnily described to
me
as a ”Danish-made
transcranial magnetic stimulator.” This was not just
any old Danish-made
transcranial magnetic stimulator, however; this was
the
Medtronic Mag Pro,
and
it was being operated by Allan Snyder, one of the
world’s most remarkable
scientists of human cognition.

Nonetheless, the anticipation of electricity being
beamed into my frontal
lobes
(and the consent form I had just signed) made me a bit
nervous. Snyder found
that amusing. ”Oh, relax now!” he said in the thick
local accent he has
acquired since moving here from America. ”I’ve done
it
on myself a hundred
times. This is Australia. Legally, it’s far more
difficult to damage people
in
Australia than it is in the United States.”

”Damage?” I groaned.

”You’re not going to be damaged,” he said. ”You’re
going to be
enhanced.”

The Medtronic was originally developed as a tool for
brain surgery: by
stimulating or slowing down specific regions of the
brain, it allowed
doctors to
monitor the effects of surgery in real time. But it
also produced, they
noted,
strange and unexpected effects on patients’ mental
functions: one minute
they
would lose the ability to speak, another minute they
would speak easily but
would make odd linguistic errors and so on. A number
of
researchers started
to
look into the possibilities, but one in particular
intrigued Snyder: that
people
undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS,
could suddenly exhibit
savant intelligence — those isolated pockets of
geniuslike mental ability
that
most often appear in autistic people.

Snyder is an impish presence, the very opposite of a
venerable professor,
let
alone an internationally acclaimed scientist. There is
a whiff of Woody
Allen
about him. Did I really want him, I couldn’t help
thinking, rewiring my hard
drive? ”We’re not changing your brain physically,”
he
assured me. ”You’ll
only experience differences in your thought processes
while you’re actually
on
the machine.” His assistant made a few final
adjustments to the electrodes,
and
then, as everyone stood back, Snyder flicked the
switch.

A series of electromagnetic pulses were being directed
into my frontal
lobes,
but I felt nothing. Snyder instructed me to draw
something. ”What would you
like to draw?” he said merrily. ”A cat? You like
drawing cats? Cats it
is.”

I’ve seen a million cats in my life, so when I close
my
eyes, I have no
trouble
picturing them. But what does a cat really look like,
and how do you put it
down
on paper? I gave it a try but came up with some sort
of
stick figure,
perhaps an
insect.

While I drew, Snyder continued his lecture. ”You
could
call this a
creativity-amplifying machine. It’s a way of altering
our states of mind
without
taking drugs like mescaline. You can make people see
the raw data of the
world
as it is. As it is actually represented in the
unconscious mind of all of
us.”

Two minutes after I started the first drawing, I was
instructed to try
again.
After another two minutes, I tried a third cat, and
then in due course a
fourth.
Then the experiment was over, and the electrodes were
removed. I looked down
at
my work. The first felines were boxy and stiffly
unconvincing. But after I
had
been subjected to about 10 minutes of transcranial
magnetic stimulation,
their
tails had grown more vibrant, more nervous; their
faces
were personable and
convincing. They were even beginning to wear clever
expressions.

I could hardly recognize them as my own drawings,
though I had watched
myself
render each one, in all its loving detail. Somehow
over
the course of a very
few
minutes, and with no additional instruction, I had
gone
from an incompetent
draftsman to a very impressive artist of the feline
form.

Snyder looked over my shoulder. ”Well, how about
that?
Leonardo would be
envious.” Or turning in his grave, I thought.

As remarkable as the cat-drawing lesson was, it was
just a hint of Snyder’s
work
and its implications for the study of cognition. He
has
used TMS dozens of
times
on university students, measuring its effect on their
ability to draw, to
proofread and to perform difficult mathematical
functions like identifying
prime
numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent
of test subjects
exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills.
That Snyder was able
to
induce these remarkable feats in a controlled,
repeatable experiment is more
than just a great party trick; it’s a breakthrough
that
may lead to a
revolution
in the way we understand the limits of our own
intelligence — and the
functioning of the human brain in general.

Snyder’s work began with a curiosity about autism.
Though there is little
consensus about what causes this baffling — and
increasingly common —
disorder, it seems safe to say that autistic people
share certain qualities:
they tend to be rigid, mechanical and emotionally
dissociated. They manifest
what autism’s great ”discoverer,” Leo Kanner, called
”an anxiously
obsessive
desire for the preservation of sameness.” And they
tend to interpret
information in a hyperliteral way, using ”a kind of
language which does not
seem intended to serve interpersonal communication.”

For example, Snyder says, when autistic test subjects
came to see him at the
university, they would often get lost in the main
quad.
They might have been
there 10 times before, but each time the shadows were
in slightly different
positions, and the difference overwhelmed their sense
of place. ”They can’t
grasp a general concept equivalent to the word
‘quad,”’ he explains. ”If
it
changes appearance even slightly, then they have to
start all over again.”

Despite these limitations, a small subset of
autistics,
known as savants,
can
also perform superspecialized mental feats. Perhaps
the
most famous savant
was
Dustin Hoffman’s character in ”Rain Man,” who could
count hundreds of
matchsticks at a glance. But the truth has often been
even stranger: one
celebrated savant in turn-of-the-century Vienna could
calculate the day of
the
week for every date since the birth of Christ. Other
savants can speak
dozens of
languages without formally studying any of them or can
reproduce music at
the
piano after only a single hearing. A savant studied by
the English doctor J.
Langdon Down in 1887 had memorized every page of
Gibbon’s ”Decline and Fall
of
the Roman Empire.” At the beginning of the 19th
century, the splendidly
named
Gottfried Mind became famous all over Europe for the
amazing pictures he
drew of
cats.

The conventional wisdom has long been that autistics’
hyperliteral thought
processes were completely separate from the more
contextual, nuanced, social
way
that most adults think, a different mental function
altogether. And so, by
extension, the extraordinary skills of autistic
savants
have been regarded
as
flukes, almost inhuman feats that average minds could
never achieve.

Snyder argues that all those assumptions — about
everything from the way
autistic savants behave down to the basic brain
functions that cause them to
do
so — are mistaken. Autistic thought isn’t wholly
incompatible with ordinary
thought, he says; it’s just a variation on it, a more
extreme example.

He first got the idea after reading ”The Man Who
Mistook His Wife for a
Hat,”
in which Oliver Sacks explores the link between autism
and a very specific
kind
of brain damage. If neurological impairment is the
cause of the autistic’s
disabilities, Snyder wondered, could it be the cause
of
their geniuslike
abilities, too? By shutting down certain mental
functions — the capacity to
think conceptually, categorically, contextually — did
this impairment allow
other mental functions to flourish? Could brain
damage,
in short, actually
make
you brilliant?

In a 1999 paper called ”Is Integer Arithmetic
Fundamental to Mental
Processing?
The Mind’s Secret Arithmetic,” Snyder and D. John
Mitchell considered the
example of an autistic infant, whose mind ”is not
concept driven. . . . In
our
view such a mind can tap into lower level details not
readily available to
introspection by normal individuals.” These children,
they wrote, seem ”to
be
aware of information in some raw or interim state
prior
to it being formed
into
the ‘ultimate picture.”’ Most astonishing, they went
on, ”the mental
machinery
for performing lightning fast integer arithmetic
calculations could be
within us
all.”

And so Snyder turned to TMS, in an attempt, as he
says,
”to enhance the
brain
by shutting off certain parts of it.”

”In a way, savants are the great enigma of today’s
neurology,” says Prof.
Joy
Hirsch, director of the Functional M.R.I. Research
Center at Columbia
University. ”They exist in all cultures and are a
distinct type. Why? How?
We
don’t know. Yet understanding the savant will help
provide insight into the
whole neurophysiological underpinning of human
behavior. That’s why Snyder’s
ideas are so exciting — he’s asking a really
fundamental question, which no
one
has yet answered.”

If Snyder’s suspicions are correct, in fact, and
savants have not more
brainpower than the rest of us, but less, then it’s
even possible that
everybody
starts out life as a savant. Look, for example, at the
ease with which
children
master complex languages — a mysterious skill that
seems to shut off
automatically around the age of 12. ”What we’re doing
is
counterintuitive,”
Snyder tells me. ”We’re saying that all these genius
skills are easy,
they’re
natural. Our brain does them naturally. Like walking.
Do you know how
difficult
walking is? It’s much more difficult than drawing!”

To prove his point, he hooks me up to the Medtronic
Mag
Pro again and asks
me to
read the following lines:

A bird in the hand
is worth two in the
the bush

”A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” I
say.

”Again,” Snyder says, and smiles.

So once more: ”A bird in the hand is worth two in the
bush.” He makes me
repeat it five or six times, slowing me down until he
has me reading each
word
with aching slowness.

Then he switches on the machine. He is trying to
suppress those parts of my
brain responsible for thinking contextually, for
making
connections. Without
them, I will be able to see things more as an autistic
might.

After five minutes of electric pulses, I read the card
again. Only then do I
see
— instantly — that the card contains an extra
”the.”

On my own, I had been looking for patterns, trying to
coax the words on the
page
into a coherent, familiar whole. But ”on the
machine,” he says, ”you
start
seeing what’s actually there, not what you think is
there.”

Snyder’s theories are bolstered by the documented
cases
in which sudden
brain
damage has produced savant abilities almost overnight.
He cites the case of
Orlando Serrell, a 10-year-old street kid who was hit
on the head and
immediately began doing calendrical calculations of
baffling complexity.
Snyder
argues that we all have Serrell’s powers. ”We
remember
virtually
everything,
but we recall very little,” Snyder explains. ”Now
isn’t that strange?
Everything is in there” — he taps the side of his
head. ”Buried deep in
all
our brains are phenomenal abilities, which we lose for
some reason as we
develop
into ‘normal’ conceptual creatures. But what if we
could reawaken them?”

Not all of Snyder’s colleagues agree with his
theories.
Michael Howe, an
eminent
psychologist at the University of Exeter in Britain
who
died last year,
argued
that savantism (and genius itself) was largely a
result
of incessant
practice
and specialization. ”The main difference between
experts and savants,” he
once
told New Scientist magazine, ”is that savants do
things which most of us
couldn’t be bothered to get good at.”

Robert Hendren, executive director of the M.I.N.D.
Institute at the
University
of California at Davis, brought that concept down to
my
level: ”If you drew
20
cats one after the other, they’d probably get better
anyway.” Like most
neuroscientists, he doubts that an electromagnetic
pulse can stimulate the
brain
into creativity: ”I’m not sure I see how TMS can
actually alter the way
your
brain works. There’s a chance that Snyder is right.
But
it’s still very
experimental.”

Tomas Paus, an associate professor of neuroscience at
McGill University, who
has
done extensive TMS research, is even more dubious. ”I
don’t believe TMS can
ever elicit complex behavior,” he says.

But even skeptics like Hendren and Paus concede that
by
intensifying the
neural
activity of one part of the brain while slowing or
shutting down others, TMS
can
have remarkable effects. One of its most successful
applications has been in
the
realm of psychiatry, where it is now used to dispel
the
”inner voices” of
schizophrenics, or to combat clinical depression
without the damaging side
effects of electroshock therapy. (NeuroNetics, an
Atlanta company, is
developing
a TMS machine designed for just this purpose, which
will probably be
released in
2006, pending F.D.A. approval.)

Meanwhile, researchers at the National Institute of
Neurological Disorders
and
Stroke found that TMS applied to the prefrontal cortex
enabled subjects to
solve
geometric puzzles much more rapidly. Alvaro
Pascual-Leone, associate
professor
of neurology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center in Boston (who,
through
his work at the Laboratory for Magnetic Brain
Stimulation, has been one of
the
American visionaries of TMS), has even suggested that
TMS could be used to
”prep” students’ minds before lessons.

None of this has gone unnoticed by canny entrepreneurs
and visionary
scientists.
Last year, the Brain Stimulation Laboratory at the
Medical University of
South
Carolina received a $2 million government grant to
develop a smaller TMS
device
that sleep-deprived soldiers could wear to keep them
alert. ”It’s not ‘Star
Trek’ at all,” says Ziad Nahas, the laboratory’s
medical director. ”We’ve
done
a lot of the science on reversing cognitive
deficiencies in people with
insomnia
and sleep deficiencies. It works.” If so, it could be
a small leap to the
day
it boosts soldiers’ cognitive functioning under normal
circumstances.

And from there, how long before Americans are walking
around with humming
antidepression helmets and math-enhancing ”hair
dryers” on their heads?
Will
commercially available TMS machines be used to turn
prosaic bank managers
into
amateur Rembrandts? Snyder has even contemplated video
games that harness
specialized parts of the brain that are otherwise
inaccessible.

”Anything is possible,” says Prof. Vilayanur
Ramachandran, director of the
Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of
California at San Diego
and
the noted author of ”Phantoms in the Brain.”
Snyder’s
theories have not
been
proved, he allows, but they are brilliantly
suggestive:
”We’re at the same
stage in brain research that biology was in the 19th
century. We know almost
nothing about the mind. Snyder’s theories may sound
like ‘The X-Files,’ but
what
he’s saying is completely plausible. Up to a point the
brain is open,
malleable
and constantly changing. We might well be able to make
it run in new ways.”
Of
those who dismiss Snyder’s theories out of hand, he
shrugs: ”People are
often
blind to new ideas. Especially scientists.”

Bruce L. Miller, the A.W. and Mary Margaret Claussen
distinguished professor
in
neurology at the University of California at San
Francisco, is intrigued by
Snyder’s experiments and his attempts to understand
the
physiological basis
of
cognition. But he points out that certain profound
questions about
artificially
altered intelligence have not yet been answered. ”Do
we really want these
abilities?” he asks. ”Wouldn’t it change my idea of
myself if I could
suddenly
paint amazing pictures?”

It probably would change people’s ideas of themselves,
to say nothing of
their
ideas of artistic talent. And though that prospect
might discomfort Miller,
there are no doubt others whom it would thrill. But
could anyone really
guess,
in advance, how their lives might be affected by
instant creativity, instant
intelligence, instant happiness? Or by their
disappearance, just as
instantly,
once the TMS is switched off?

As he walked me out of the university — a place so
Gothic that it could be
Oxford, but for the intensely flowering jacaranda in
one corner and the
strange
Southern Hemisphere birds flitting about — and toward
the freeway back to
downtown Sydney, Snyder for his part radiated the most
convincingly
ebullient
optimism. ”Remember that old saw which says that we
only use a small part
our
brain? Well, it might just be true. Except that now we
can actually prove it
physically and experimentally. That has to be
significant. I mean, it has to
be,
doesn’t it?”

We stopped for a moment by the side of the roaring
traffic and looked up at
a
haze in the sky. Snyder’s eyes contracted
inquisitively
as he pieced
together
the unfamiliar facts (brown smoke, just outside
Sydney)
and eased them into
a
familiar narrative framework (the forest fires that
had
been raging all
week).
It was an effortless little bit of deductive,
nonliteral thinking — the
sort of
thing that human beings, unaided by TMS, do a thousand
times a day. Then, in
an
instant, he switched back to our conversation and
picked up his train of
thought. ”More important than that, we can change our
own intelligence in
unexpected ways. Why would we not want to explore
that?”

Lawrence Osborne is a frequent contributor to the
magazine.

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From: “preston peet” <ptpeet@nyc.rr.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] (OT, but interesting) Fw: [drugwar] Savant for a Day
Date: June 22, 2003 at 1:04:35 PM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

—– Original Message —–
From: Tim Meehan
To: drugwar@mindvox.com
Cc: mapster@coollist.com
Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2003 10:28 AM
Subject: [drugwar] Savant for a Day

June 22, 2003
Savant for a Day
By LAWRENCE OSBORNE

n a concrete basement at the University of Sydney, I sat in a chair waiting
to
have my brain altered by an electromagnetic pulse. My forehead was
connected, by
a series of electrodes, to a machine that looked something like an
old-fashioned
beauty-salon hair dryer and was sunnily described to me as a ”Danish-made
transcranial magnetic stimulator.” This was not just any old Danish-made
transcranial magnetic stimulator, however; this was the Medtronic Mag Pro,
and
it was being operated by Allan Snyder, one of the world’s most remarkable
scientists of human cognition.

Nonetheless, the anticipation of electricity being beamed into my frontal
lobes
(and the consent form I had just signed) made me a bit nervous. Snyder found
that amusing. ”Oh, relax now!” he said in the thick local accent he has
acquired since moving here from America. ”I’ve done it on myself a hundred
times. This is Australia. Legally, it’s far more difficult to damage people
in
Australia than it is in the United States.”

”Damage?” I groaned.

”You’re not going to be damaged,” he said. ”You’re going to be
enhanced.”

The Medtronic was originally developed as a tool for brain surgery: by
stimulating or slowing down specific regions of the brain, it allowed
doctors to
monitor the effects of surgery in real time. But it also produced, they
noted,
strange and unexpected effects on patients’ mental functions: one minute
they
would lose the ability to speak, another minute they would speak easily but
would make odd linguistic errors and so on. A number of researchers started
to
look into the possibilities, but one in particular intrigued Snyder: that
people
undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, could suddenly exhibit
savant intelligence — those isolated pockets of geniuslike mental ability
that
most often appear in autistic people.

Snyder is an impish presence, the very opposite of a venerable professor,
let
alone an internationally acclaimed scientist. There is a whiff of Woody
Allen
about him. Did I really want him, I couldn’t help thinking, rewiring my hard
drive? ”We’re not changing your brain physically,” he assured me. ”You’ll
only experience differences in your thought processes while you’re actually
on
the machine.” His assistant made a few final adjustments to the electrodes,
and
then, as everyone stood back, Snyder flicked the switch.

A series of electromagnetic pulses were being directed into my frontal
lobes,
but I felt nothing. Snyder instructed me to draw something. ”What would you
like to draw?” he said merrily. ”A cat? You like drawing cats? Cats it
is.”

I’ve seen a million cats in my life, so when I close my eyes, I have no
trouble
picturing them. But what does a cat really look like, and how do you put it
down
on paper? I gave it a try but came up with some sort of stick figure,
perhaps an
insect.

While I drew, Snyder continued his lecture. ”You could call this a
creativity-amplifying machine. It’s a way of altering our states of mind
without
taking drugs like mescaline. You can make people see the raw data of the
world
as it is. As it is actually represented in the unconscious mind of all of
us.”

Two minutes after I started the first drawing, I was instructed to try
again.
After another two minutes, I tried a third cat, and then in due course a
fourth.
Then the experiment was over, and the electrodes were removed. I looked down
at
my work. The first felines were boxy and stiffly unconvincing. But after I
had
been subjected to about 10 minutes of transcranial magnetic stimulation,
their
tails had grown more vibrant, more nervous; their faces were personable and
convincing. They were even beginning to wear clever expressions.

I could hardly recognize them as my own drawings, though I had watched
myself
render each one, in all its loving detail. Somehow over the course of a very
few
minutes, and with no additional instruction, I had gone from an incompetent
draftsman to a very impressive artist of the feline form.

Snyder looked over my shoulder. ”Well, how about that? Leonardo would be
envious.” Or turning in his grave, I thought.

As remarkable as the cat-drawing lesson was, it was just a hint of Snyder’s
work
and its implications for the study of cognition. He has used TMS dozens of
times
on university students, measuring its effect on their ability to draw, to
proofread and to perform difficult mathematical functions like identifying
prime
numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects
exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills. That Snyder was able
to
induce these remarkable feats in a controlled, repeatable experiment is more
than just a great party trick; it’s a breakthrough that may lead to a
revolution
in the way we understand the limits of our own intelligence — and the
functioning of the human brain in general.

Snyder’s work began with a curiosity about autism. Though there is little
consensus about what causes this baffling — and increasingly common —
disorder, it seems safe to say that autistic people share certain qualities:
they tend to be rigid, mechanical and emotionally dissociated. They manifest
what autism’s great ”discoverer,” Leo Kanner, called ”an anxiously
obsessive
desire for the preservation of sameness.” And they tend to interpret
information in a hyperliteral way, using ”a kind of language which does not
seem intended to serve interpersonal communication.”

For example, Snyder says, when autistic test subjects came to see him at the
university, they would often get lost in the main quad. They might have been
there 10 times before, but each time the shadows were in slightly different
positions, and the difference overwhelmed their sense of place. ”They can’t
grasp a general concept equivalent to the word ‘quad,”’ he explains. ”If
it
changes appearance even slightly, then they have to start all over again.”

Despite these limitations, a small subset of autistics, known as savants,
can
also perform superspecialized mental feats. Perhaps the most famous savant
was
Dustin Hoffman’s character in ”Rain Man,” who could count hundreds of
matchsticks at a glance. But the truth has often been even stranger: one
celebrated savant in turn-of-the-century Vienna could calculate the day of
the
week for every date since the birth of Christ. Other savants can speak
dozens of
languages without formally studying any of them or can reproduce music at
the
piano after only a single hearing. A savant studied by the English doctor J.
Langdon Down in 1887 had memorized every page of Gibbon’s ”Decline and Fall
of
the Roman Empire.” At the beginning of the 19th century, the splendidly
named
Gottfried Mind became famous all over Europe for the amazing pictures he
drew of
cats.

The conventional wisdom has long been that autistics’ hyperliteral thought
processes were completely separate from the more contextual, nuanced, social
way
that most adults think, a different mental function altogether. And so, by
extension, the extraordinary skills of autistic savants have been regarded
as
flukes, almost inhuman feats that average minds could never achieve.

Snyder argues that all those assumptions — about everything from the way
autistic savants behave down to the basic brain functions that cause them to
do
so — are mistaken. Autistic thought isn’t wholly incompatible with ordinary
thought, he says; it’s just a variation on it, a more extreme example.

He first got the idea after reading ”The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a
Hat,”
in which Oliver Sacks explores the link between autism and a very specific
kind
of brain damage. If neurological impairment is the cause of the autistic’s
disabilities, Snyder wondered, could it be the cause of their geniuslike
abilities, too? By shutting down certain mental functions — the capacity to
think conceptually, categorically, contextually — did this impairment allow
other mental functions to flourish? Could brain damage, in short, actually
make
you brilliant?

In a 1999 paper called ”Is Integer Arithmetic Fundamental to Mental
Processing?
The Mind’s Secret Arithmetic,” Snyder and D. John Mitchell considered the
example of an autistic infant, whose mind ”is not concept driven. . . . In
our
view such a mind can tap into lower level details not readily available to
introspection by normal individuals.” These children, they wrote, seem ”to
be
aware of information in some raw or interim state prior to it being formed
into
the ‘ultimate picture.”’ Most astonishing, they went on, ”the mental
machinery
for performing lightning fast integer arithmetic calculations could be
within us
all.”

And so Snyder turned to TMS, in an attempt, as he says, ”to enhance the
brain
by shutting off certain parts of it.”

”In a way, savants are the great enigma of today’s neurology,” says Prof.
Joy
Hirsch, director of the Functional M.R.I. Research Center at Columbia
University. ”They exist in all cultures and are a distinct type. Why? How?
We
don’t know. Yet understanding the savant will help provide insight into the
whole neurophysiological underpinning of human behavior. That’s why Snyder’s
ideas are so exciting — he’s asking a really fundamental question, which no
one
has yet answered.”

If Snyder’s suspicions are correct, in fact, and savants have not more
brainpower than the rest of us, but less, then it’s even possible that
everybody
starts out life as a savant. Look, for example, at the ease with which
children
master complex languages — a mysterious skill that seems to shut off
automatically around the age of 12. ”What we’re doing is
counterintuitive,”
Snyder tells me. ”We’re saying that all these genius skills are easy,
they’re
natural. Our brain does them naturally. Like walking. Do you know how
difficult
walking is? It’s much more difficult than drawing!”

To prove his point, he hooks me up to the Medtronic Mag Pro again and asks
me to
read the following lines:

A bird in the hand
is worth two in the
the bush

”A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” I say.

”Again,” Snyder says, and smiles.

So once more: ”A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” He makes me
repeat it five or six times, slowing me down until he has me reading each
word
with aching slowness.

Then he switches on the machine. He is trying to suppress those parts of my
brain responsible for thinking contextually, for making connections. Without
them, I will be able to see things more as an autistic might.

After five minutes of electric pulses, I read the card again. Only then do I
see
— instantly — that the card contains an extra ”the.”

On my own, I had been looking for patterns, trying to coax the words on the
page
into a coherent, familiar whole. But ”on the machine,” he says, ”you
start
seeing what’s actually there, not what you think is there.”

Snyder’s theories are bolstered by the documented cases in which sudden
brain
damage has produced savant abilities almost overnight. He cites the case of
Orlando Serrell, a 10-year-old street kid who was hit on the head and
immediately began doing calendrical calculations of baffling complexity.
Snyder
argues that we all have Serrell’s powers. ”We remember virtually
everything,
but we recall very little,” Snyder explains. ”Now isn’t that strange?
Everything is in there” — he taps the side of his head. ”Buried deep in
all
our brains are phenomenal abilities, which we lose for some reason as we
develop
into ‘normal’ conceptual creatures. But what if we could reawaken them?”

Not all of Snyder’s colleagues agree with his theories. Michael Howe, an
eminent
psychologist at the University of Exeter in Britain who died last year,
argued
that savantism (and genius itself) was largely a result of incessant
practice
and specialization. ”The main difference between experts and savants,” he
once
told New Scientist magazine, ”is that savants do things which most of us
couldn’t be bothered to get good at.”

Robert Hendren, executive director of the M.I.N.D. Institute at the
University
of California at Davis, brought that concept down to my level: ”If you drew
20
cats one after the other, they’d probably get better anyway.” Like most
neuroscientists, he doubts that an electromagnetic pulse can stimulate the
brain
into creativity: ”I’m not sure I see how TMS can actually alter the way
your
brain works. There’s a chance that Snyder is right. But it’s still very
experimental.”

Tomas Paus, an associate professor of neuroscience at McGill University, who
has
done extensive TMS research, is even more dubious. ”I don’t believe TMS can
ever elicit complex behavior,” he says.

But even skeptics like Hendren and Paus concede that by intensifying the
neural
activity of one part of the brain while slowing or shutting down others, TMS
can
have remarkable effects. One of its most successful applications has been in
the
realm of psychiatry, where it is now used to dispel the ”inner voices” of
schizophrenics, or to combat clinical depression without the damaging side
effects of electroshock therapy. (NeuroNetics, an Atlanta company, is
developing
a TMS machine designed for just this purpose, which will probably be
released in
2006, pending F.D.A. approval.)

Meanwhile, researchers at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders
and
Stroke found that TMS applied to the prefrontal cortex enabled subjects to
solve
geometric puzzles much more rapidly. Alvaro Pascual-Leone, associate
professor
of neurology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston (who,
through
his work at the Laboratory for Magnetic Brain Stimulation, has been one of
the
American visionaries of TMS), has even suggested that TMS could be used to
”prep” students’ minds before lessons.

None of this has gone unnoticed by canny entrepreneurs and visionary
scientists.
Last year, the Brain Stimulation Laboratory at the Medical University of
South
Carolina received a $2 million government grant to develop a smaller TMS
device
that sleep-deprived soldiers could wear to keep them alert. ”It’s not ‘Star
Trek’ at all,” says Ziad Nahas, the laboratory’s medical director. ”We’ve
done
a lot of the science on reversing cognitive deficiencies in people with
insomnia
and sleep deficiencies. It works.” If so, it could be a small leap to the
day
it boosts soldiers’ cognitive functioning under normal circumstances.

And from there, how long before Americans are walking around with humming
antidepression helmets and math-enhancing ”hair dryers” on their heads?
Will
commercially available TMS machines be used to turn prosaic bank managers
into
amateur Rembrandts? Snyder has even contemplated video games that harness
specialized parts of the brain that are otherwise inaccessible.

”Anything is possible,” says Prof. Vilayanur Ramachandran, director of the
Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California at San Diego
and
the noted author of ”Phantoms in the Brain.” Snyder’s theories have not
been
proved, he allows, but they are brilliantly suggestive: ”We’re at the same
stage in brain research that biology was in the 19th century. We know almost
nothing about the mind. Snyder’s theories may sound like ‘The X-Files,’ but
what
he’s saying is completely plausible. Up to a point the brain is open,
malleable
and constantly changing. We might well be able to make it run in new ways.”
Of
those who dismiss Snyder’s theories out of hand, he shrugs: ”People are
often
blind to new ideas. Especially scientists.”

Bruce L. Miller, the A.W. and Mary Margaret Claussen distinguished professor
in
neurology at the University of California at San Francisco, is intrigued by
Snyder’s experiments and his attempts to understand the physiological basis
of
cognition. But he points out that certain profound questions about
artificially
altered intelligence have not yet been answered. ”Do we really want these
abilities?” he asks. ”Wouldn’t it change my idea of myself if I could
suddenly
paint amazing pictures?”

It probably would change people’s ideas of themselves, to say nothing of
their
ideas of artistic talent. And though that prospect might discomfort Miller,
there are no doubt others whom it would thrill. But could anyone really
guess,
in advance, how their lives might be affected by instant creativity, instant
intelligence, instant happiness? Or by their disappearance, just as
instantly,
once the TMS is switched off?

As he walked me out of the university — a place so Gothic that it could be
Oxford, but for the intensely flowering jacaranda in one corner and the
strange
Southern Hemisphere birds flitting about — and toward the freeway back to
downtown Sydney, Snyder for his part radiated the most convincingly
ebullient
optimism. ”Remember that old saw which says that we only use a small part
our
brain? Well, it might just be true. Except that now we can actually prove it
physically and experimentally. That has to be significant. I mean, it has to
be,
doesn’t it?”

We stopped for a moment by the side of the roaring traffic and looked up at
a
haze in the sky. Snyder’s eyes contracted inquisitively as he pieced
together
the unfamiliar facts (brown smoke, just outside Sydney) and eased them into
a
familiar narrative framework (the forest fires that had been raging all
week).
It was an effortless little bit of deductive, nonliteral thinking — the
sort of
thing that human beings, unaided by TMS, do a thousand times a day. Then, in
an
instant, he switched back to our conversation and picked up his train of
thought. ”More important than that, we can change our own intelligence in
unexpected ways. Why would we not want to explore that?”

Lawrence Osborne is a frequent contributor to the magazine.

<]=———————————————————————–=[

[           Moderated by: Preston Peet |
.drugwar.com           ]
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From: HSLotsof@aol.com
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] postcard explains it All
Date: June 21, 2003 at 4:06:01 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

In a message dated 6/21/03 9:31:14 AM, ptpeet@nyc.rr.com writes:

It really does go a long way toward explaining life, the universe and
everything.
Peace,
Preston

http://www.drugwar.com/index.shtm

That is a good one Preston.

Howard

From: “preston peet” <ptpeet@nyc.rr.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] postcard explains it All
Date: June 21, 2003 at 9:30:43 AM EDT
To: <drugwar@mindvox.com>, <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Hey all,
It is yet another rainy murky day here in the Apple, so in an attempt to
lighten things up a wee bit, I thought I’d share with you all this postcard
my lovely V found a few blocks away from our pad.
It really does go a long way toward explaining life, the universe and
everything.
Peace,
Preston

http://www.drugwar.com/index.shtm

From: “preston peet” <ptpeet@nyc.rr.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] morphine vs oxycodone vs methadone
Date: June 19, 2003 at 3:13:45 AM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Carla asked how things went at my visit, so here’s a brief run-down:

Though he made a point to inform me that many people when looking at me
first off might naturally suspect that I am “into drugs” and would therefore
hesitate to prescribe me narcotic pain relievers, the pain specialist I
wound up seeing today after yet another silly teeny bit of drama along the “how the
heck am I paying for this again?” lines, he went ahead and increased the
dose of my normal pain script to the level I’ve found works best even though
it was just over double the dose being prescribed until today (and I wrote
the true amount of what I’ve been taking, and when he remarked on it while
looking over the info I told him point blank it was more than prescribed, to which he
responded with, “is that why your doctor sent you here,” completely
understanding the “DEA causes unneeded stress and strain, to much to justify
its existence damn it” way of things.;-))
So, the point of this is that I feel like a huge weight has been lifted
from my mind, not to mention all the hurting areas. He not only increased my
dose, but prescribed a couple of other things that should do me a world of
good, allowing me to finally once again sit here for hours upon hours typing
and phoning and scribbling and the rest of the stuff I do when writing one
screed or the other, instead of the very brief spurts I’ve only been able to
manage as of late.

And now as I reach the beginning of a new day, I can say that yes indeed, I’ve been helped remarkably well, and my pain has for now receded into the background. This guy was a blessing. I’m almost feeling as though I dreamed him or something.;-))
Peace,
Preston
—– Original Message —–
From: Carla Barnes
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 10:29 PM
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] morphine vs oxycodone vs methadone

Brett I wanted to ask how you’re doing? You too
Preston. What happened when you went in?

Both of you hang in there!

Carla B

— crownofthorns@hushmail.com wrote:
>
> Bro this is probably none of my business but you are
> posting all of this
> to the ibogaine list so maybe you want some input on
> it?
>
> You’ve been here ever since I got here and that’s
> almost 2 years I think.
> You always give good advice and the occasional rant
> about treatment pimps
> or addiction docs 😉 Which I agree with most of the
> time.
>
> I think you’ve mentioned that you are on pain meds
> some of the time before
> like vicodan. But bro, what you’re posting here is a
> what sounds like
> a whopping dose of opiates. What is wrong with you
> that you need to take
> all of this? And have you tried sticking with the
> vicodan and using cannabis?
>
> You may want to do what Howard mentioned a take a
> full blown dose of
> ibo at some point to clear your head. What are you
> doing now low dosing
> ibo with all of that at once?
>
> Peace out,
> Curtis
>
>
> On Mon, 16 Jun 2003 12:51:31 -0700 Brett Calabrese
> <bcalabrese@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >Just got back from the doctor.
> >
> >Basically yes he is licensed to prescribe methadone
> to
> >a pain patient BUT some RED FLAG goes off at the
> DEA
> >and they come crawl up his ass if he does. So, it
> >comes down to “it is not a fight I am willing to
> take
> >on” – meaning him vs the DEA.
> >
> >So, in a nutshell I got a script for 60 oxycontin
> >($175.00 – and that is just to see if it works and
> on
> >top of the other meds), a highly desirable drug on
> the
> >street – which is just fine and dandy BUT can’t get
> a
> >prescription for methadone (cost about $12 for the
> >month) because I might be a drug addict going to an
> >orthopedic surgeon to score nethadone (????? as in
> >what the F????). That makes so much sense that only
> >someone working for the DEA that is absoulutely
> >clueless about drug abuse could come up with it.
> >
> >Any suggestions, I am not above seeking out the
> local
> >methadone clinic BUT think that is more problems
> than
> >it is worth – and I am not going to do some daily
> run
> >to the clinic and wait to score… Humm, maybe that
> is
> >an idea, I could hand out IBOGAINE literature, that
> >will go over great!
> >
> >venting over, humph!
> >
> >I will likely wait and clean out before starting
> the
> >oxy. Doing stuff like that is good for the former
> >addict not to become a current addict… If nothing
> >else, I am in control, not the drug. And I like
> being
> >me, these last 10 days having to take that pill in
> the
> >morning (the morphine) sucked. I would wake up ME
> and
> >then get this coating over me from the drug, not
> HIGH
> >and nothing fun even if I would let it (and I
> >wouldn’t). That is not what I worked so hard for.
> >There has to be some balance between being drugged
> and
> >being non-functional due to pain and they sure make
> it
> >a pain in the ass to find out what it might be…
> >
> >Brett
> >
> >
>
>
>
> Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to
> get
> FREE encrypted email: https://www.hushmail.com/?l=2
>
> Free, ultra-private instant messaging with Hush
> Messenger
>
https://www.hushmail.com/services.php?subloc=messenger&l=434
>
> Big $$$ to be made with the HushMail Affiliate
> Program:
>
https://www.hushmail.com/about.php?subloc=affiliate&l=427
>
>

__________________________________
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From: Nick Labus <goosebumpz2002@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] many questions
Date: June 18, 2003 at 11:18:06 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Right on

Carla Barnes <carlambarnes@yahoo.com> wrote:
I don’t know what to say. He does write like Nick. 9
or 10 books worth of it. I never heard of him before
but the movie Last Exit to Brooklyn was very
disgusting. I didn’t know he wrote the book. Yuck.

Carla B

— “Patrick K. Kroupa” wrote:
> On [Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 08:57:47AM -0700], [Nick
> Labus] wrote:
>
> | and yor life apart i am wrighting this to kill
> sometime before im off
> | to the met clinic and i dont know about your alls
> clinics but mine has
> | a built in drug market attached on all blockjs
> people constantly walking
> | around not wispering not talking but yelling
> “xanax,bottle,valium,blows
> | and the like” so how can you even just stay on
> methadone when every
> | other and for awhile every day goo ther eand go
> through the guantlet of
> | drug dealers and pill pushers huh Well i am going
> to canada to do some
>
> Yeah, no doubt. I always found that highly annoying
> when I was on
> methadone maintenance. “Cop and go. Cop and go.
> Cop and go. Drink
> da fuckin’ met a done and Get out of this
> neighborhood.”
>
> Look occifer. I am NOT loitering. I was attempting
> to purchase my Xanax,
> but you are scaring all the dealers away from me.
> So, just, like, leave,
> and I’ll be gone 3 minutes later meng.
>
> | Ibo. HCL. i have hep c and you know what i hope
> this ibo helps me see
> | wh i dont give a fuck peace out from the beutiful
> clean city of DETROIT!
>
> Nick, I just wanted to mention that I really enjoy
> reading your thoughts.
> While this particular missive doesn’t quite rank up
> there with your
> suicide in hyperspace while tripping on Salvia rant;
> I just thought I’d
> mention that you should read this:
>
>

>
> It’s a good book. Selby wrote the entire novel
> exactly the way you write
> your messages.
>
> You just use more punctuation than he does.
>
> laters,
>
> Patrick
>
>
>
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
From: Carla Barnes <carlambarnes@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] many questions
Date: June 18, 2003 at 10:30:42 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

I don’t know what to say. He does write like Nick. 9
or 10 books worth of it. I never heard of him before
but the movie Last Exit to Brooklyn was very
disgusting. I didn’t know he wrote the book. Yuck.

Carla B

— “Patrick K. Kroupa” <digital@phantom.com> wrote:
On [Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 08:57:47AM -0700], [Nick
Labus] wrote:

| and  yor life apart i am wrighting this to kill
sometime before im off
| to the met clinic and i dont know about your alls
clinics but mine has
| a built in drug market attached on all blockjs
people constantly walking
| around not wispering not talking but yelling
“xanax,bottle,valium,blows
| and the like” so how can you even just stay on
methadone when every
| other and for awhile every day goo ther eand go
through the guantlet of
| drug dealers and pill pushers huh Well i am going
to canada to do some

Yeah, no doubt.  I always found that highly annoying
when I was on
methadone maintenance.  “Cop and go.  Cop and go.
Cop and go.  Drink
da fuckin’ met a done and Get out of this
neighborhood.”

Look occifer.  I am NOT loitering.  I was attempting
to purchase my Xanax,
but you are scaring all the dealers away from me.
So, just, like, leave,
and I’ll be gone 3 minutes later meng.

| Ibo. HCL. i have hep c  and you know what i hope
this ibo helps me see
| wh i dont give a fuck peace out from the beutiful
clean city of DETROIT!

Nick, I just wanted to mention that I really enjoy
reading your thoughts.
While this particular missive doesn’t quite rank up
there with your
suicide in hyperspace while tripping on Salvia rant;
I just thought I’d
mention that you should read this:

It’s a good book.  Selby wrote the entire novel
exactly the way you write
your messages.

You just use more punctuation than he does.

laters,

Patrick

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

From: Carla Barnes <carlambarnes@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] morphine vs oxycodone vs methadone
Date: June 18, 2003 at 10:29:10 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Brett I wanted to ask how you’re doing? You too
Preston. What happened when you went in?

Both of you hang in there!

Carla B

— crownofthorns@hushmail.com wrote:

Bro this is probably none of my business but you are
posting all of this
to the ibogaine list so maybe you want some input on
it?

You’ve been here ever since I got here and that’s
almost 2 years I think.
You always give good advice and the occasional rant
about treatment pimps
or addiction docs 😉 Which I agree with most of the
time.

I think you’ve mentioned that you are on pain meds
some of the time before
like vicodan. But bro, what you’re posting here is a
what sounds like
a whopping dose of opiates. What is wrong with you
that you need to take
all of this? And have you tried sticking with the
vicodan and using cannabis?

You may want to do what Howard mentioned a take a
full blown dose of
ibo at some point to clear your head. What are you
doing now low dosing
ibo with all of that at once?

Peace out,
Curtis

On Mon, 16 Jun 2003 12:51:31 -0700 Brett Calabrese
<bcalabrese@yahoo.com>
wrote:
Just got back from the doctor.

Basically yes he is licensed to prescribe methadone
to
a pain patient BUT some RED FLAG goes off at the
DEA
and they come crawl up his ass if he does. So, it
comes down to “it is not a fight I am willing to
take
on” – meaning him vs the DEA.

So, in a nutshell I got a script for 60 oxycontin
($175.00 – and that is just to see if it works and
on
top of the other meds), a highly desirable drug on
the
street – which is just fine and dandy BUT can’t get
a
prescription for methadone (cost about $12 for the
month) because I might be a drug addict going to an
orthopedic surgeon to score nethadone (????? as in
what the F????). That makes so much sense that only
someone working for the DEA that is absoulutely
clueless about drug abuse could come up with it.

Any suggestions, I am not above seeking out the
local
methadone clinic BUT think that is more problems
than
it is worth – and I am not going to do some daily
run
to the clinic and wait to score… Humm, maybe that
is
an idea, I could hand out IBOGAINE literature, that
will go over great!

venting over, humph!

I will likely wait and clean out before starting
the
oxy. Doing stuff like that is good for the former
addict not to become a current addict… If nothing
else, I am in control, not the drug. And I like
being
me, these last 10 days having to take that pill in
the
morning (the morphine) sucked. I would wake up ME
and
then get this coating over me from the drug, not
HIGH
and nothing fun even if I would let it (and I
wouldn’t). That is not what I worked so hard for.
There has to be some balance between being drugged
and
being non-functional due to pain and they sure make
it
a pain in the ass to find out what it might be…

Brett

Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to
get
FREE encrypted email: https://www.hushmail.com/?l=2

Free, ultra-private instant messaging with Hush
Messenger

https://www.hushmail.com/services.php?subloc=messenger&l=434

Big $$$ to be made with the HushMail Affiliate
Program:

https://www.hushmail.com/about.php?subloc=affiliate&l=427

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

From: “Patrick K. Kroupa” <digital@phantom.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] many questions
Date: June 18, 2003 at 1:28:03 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

On [Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 08:57:47AM -0700], [Nick Labus] wrote:

| and  yor life apart i am wrighting this to kill sometime before im off
| to the met clinic and i dont know about your alls clinics but mine has
| a built in drug market attached on all blockjs people constantly walking
| around not wispering not talking but yelling  “xanax,bottle,valium,blows
| and the like” so how can you even just stay on methadone when every
| other and for awhile every day goo ther eand go through the guantlet of
| drug dealers and pill pushers huh Well i am going to canada to do some

Yeah, no doubt.  I always found that highly annoying when I was on
methadone maintenance.  “Cop and go.  Cop and go.  Cop and go.  Drink
da fuckin’ met a done and Get out of this neighborhood.”

Look occifer.  I am NOT loitering.  I was attempting to purchase my Xanax,
but you are scaring all the dealers away from me.  So, just, like, leave,
and I’ll be gone 3 minutes later meng.

| Ibo. HCL. i have hep c  and you know what i hope this ibo helps me see
| wh i dont give a fuck peace out from the beutiful clean city of DETROIT!

Nick, I just wanted to mention that I really enjoy reading your thoughts.
While this particular missive doesn’t quite rank up there with your
suicide in hyperspace while tripping on Salvia rant; I just thought I’d
mention that you should read this:

It’s a good book.  Selby wrote the entire novel exactly the way you write
your messages.

You just use more punctuation than he does.

laters,

Patrick

From: Nick Labus <goosebumpz2002@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] many questions
Date: June 18, 2003 at 11:57:47 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

god yet another advocate i bet you theres atleast 100 people thinking of doing the ibogaine and getting off the scag but sare scared shittless i am and ill admit it im funkijn scared!i love dope i just rips yuor soul and  yor life apart i am wrighting this to kill sometime before im off to the met clinic and i dont know about your alls clinics but mine has  a built in drug market attached on all blockjs people constantly walking around not wispering not talking but yelling  “xanax,bottle,valium,blows and the like” so how can you even just stay on methadone when every other and for awhile every day goo ther eand go through the guantlet of drug dealers and pill pushers huh Well i am going to canada to do some Ibo. HCL. i have hep c  and you know what i hope this ibo helps me see wh i dont give a fuck peace out from the beutiful clean city of DETROIT!
Eaquinet@aol.com wrote:
Hi, this is in response to “Otter” who wrote w/many questions.  I was treated w/ibogaine in March after being on methadone 120 mg./day for over 6 years.  I am also an R.N. with alot of experience in psychiatric care.  I also have suffered chronically from depression and severe anxiety.  So, here goes.:
** Ibogaine works; though I was only treated once I have been clean now for almost 3 months.  I do plan to be treated again sometime soon, though, and would advise anyone using methadone to plan on being treated at least twice in a short time period (days to a week or so) and then to maybe plan on either being treated again a few months later and/or taking “maintenance” doses of ibo daily for awhile afterwards.  I think that doing these things might have prevented the depression and anxiety I fell back into after returning home.
** I have found it necessary to continue my antidepressant and anti-anxiety  medication (Prozac now–was Wellbutrin–and Buspar) in order to stay stable; however, many other aspects of “help” have helped just as much or maybe more.  I have increased my participation and commitment in Buddhist study and practices—there is nothing, IMO, as helpful as Buddhist philosophy in countering chronic depression and anxiety.  It is like  powerful cognitive therapy combined with the existential meaning of a spiritual path.  It is SO therapeutic…..another book I’d highly recommend for anxious type people is “The Power of Now” by Eckhardt Tolle…I keep this book w/me everywhere for “instant relief” as needed.
** As for the methadone clinic, they can go to hell!!!!  Well, that’s the way I used to think when I went to a clinic that required me to come in almost every day, even after 5 years of being the “best little patient” and treated me like the scum of the earth.  I transferred, almost a year before the ibo treatment, to a clinic in a nearby state…yes, I had to drive 2 hrs. but only once a month.  Yes, in ONE DAY of transferring the paperwork, I went from having to come in three times/week to coming in once a month.  So much for medical judgement on these things!!!??? It’s SOOOOO arbitrary & so dependent on what state you’re in.  And the staff at the new clinic were so professional and therapeutic..treated me as a medical patient, not a parolee.  I think that the clinics w/such restrictive rules get to wield so much power over their clients’ lives that it completely goes to their heads (souls, too) and they become mean and cruel.   So, I’d recommend determining what type of clinic she’s in (good or not)…if it’s not, it’s really not much to lose….REALLY…..if it’s good, just tell them about ibogaine..give them some literature (you can get a pack of lit from Cures Not Wars), and ask them for a “medical leave of absence”…that you’ll stay in touch w/them (or, your dtr will) and let them know asap if she needs to return.  But, PLAN ON NOT RETURNING!!!!!!!  I understand wanting to keep that little “ace in the hole” just in case, cause believe me I know, nothing’s more horrible than contemplating methadone cold turkey on your own (I would kill myself first or rather I would NOT allow it to happen), but ASAP after the ibo…once she sees that it REALLY DID WORK….sever that clinic connection as fast as you can.  You don’t want to have the option of going back.  OK, if it’s a bad clinic, still don'[t plan on going back…cause she deserves better than that and better is out there.  Investigate ahead of time what an alternative might be (clinic in another city, state, etc.).  No matter what, take this opportunity to get out of a bad clinic before they destroy whatever self esteem she has left.
** And, have a plan for after the ibo treatment.  I had to return to work within the next week so didn’t feel I really had a choice, BUT, if I could do it over, I’d arrange to be able to go somewhere therapeutic and structured for at least a couple weeks-month afterwards.  And not some judgemental, punitive 12-step place, but a real holistic, therapeutic environment.  There are some around.  Even going on a low-stress vacation to some beautiful place with people she loves would be better than nothing.  Just plan for something because for a few wks. after it’s real hard to sleep and you’ve got alot of energy….it can drive you nuts if you don’t do something productive and positive w/it.

Hope this helps.  Let me/us know if you’ve got any other concerns.  Eliana
ps:  you can see parts of my ibo treatment if you go to Marc’s POT-TV website and click on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC) show on ibogaine.

Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
From: “sara” <sara119@xs4all.nl>
Subject: [ibogaine] take a moment to read ,
Date: June 18, 2003 at 6:40:45 AM EDT
To: <ibogaine@ibogaine.org>, <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

http://www.petitiononline.com/endwar/

From: “preston peet” <ptpeet@nyc.rr.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] morphine vs oxycodone vs methadone
Date: June 17, 2003 at 3:20:24 PM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

For what it’s worth…coming from a methadone pimp…this DEA RED FLAG
thing with doctors is a bunch of nonsense (at least at this time…but
that will change over the next year or two). The DEA hasn’t been doing
much of anything to doctors who are prescribing methadone…at least in
this area. <

Don’t know about methadone, but my own doctor is voicing concern about
getting flagged for prescribing pain killers, in that while trying to get
her to change my meds to something longer lasting, (something along the
lines of Brett’s sustained release morphine is how I think he described it)
that the DEA is “flagging doctors for prescribing pain meds.” Personally I
think it’s a crock of merde, but then I’m not the doc and don’t really know
how the DEA has been treating them.
She insisted that I have to shell out more money to see a pain
specialist this week which I’ll be doing tomorrow morning.
My doc also told me this week that I need to apply for disability, (and
I don’t actually disagree with her as I’m nearly incapacitated by pain in
many ways lately) so I had a phone interview Friday and am waiting for
paperwork to sign to go to the next step, and yet, today, coincidentally, I
got my SS statement which tells me in no uncertain terms that I have not
earned 20 credits of work. Well, I have, but not in the last 10 years
straight, which means I am NOT eligible apparently, which makes absolutely
no sense to me whatsoever in that I’ve been paying SS since 1981 out of
every fucking paycheck and have been struggling with injuries and pain
nearly that whole time but they are trying to tell me I’m not eligible? What
the fuck is going on in this country? We have enough money to bomb the shit
out of Afghanistan and Iraq and god only knows where else, but we don’t have
enough to pay our own citizens’ health care and disability when they’re
actually disabled? What fuckers. (If anyone is bothered by emphatic lingo,
please excuse. But I’m not sorry really, just being polite.) I have to shell
out yet more money to go to this specialist because my own doc is afraid to
prescribe even more pain meds, alleviating my endless fucking pain, but I
make too much to qualify for medicaid, not enough to really pay for all the
medical bills I’m wracking up, haven’t made enough to qualify for
disability, and can’t buy insurance even if I did have the money because of
pre-existing conditions.
Can anyone tell I’m more than a bit pissed off about this? As a matter
of fact, I’m way, way fucking pissed off about all this.
And Brett, I’m glad to hear that you at least seem to be finding what
works best for you with apparently little trouble. I myself wouldn’t
necessarily recommend methadone for pain, but I hear it is used by some for
just that purpose, so use your own best judgement, as I’m sure you would
with or without my input.
Peace,
Preston

—– Original Message —–
From: Reynaldo Gonzalez
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 2:36 PM
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] morphine vs oxycodone vs methadone

Rick Venglarcik <RickV@hnncsb.org> wrote:
For what it’s worth…coming from a methadone pimp…this DEA RED FLAG
thing with doctors is a bunch of nonsense (at least at this time…but
that will change over the next year or two). The DEA hasn’t been doing
much of anything to doctors who are prescribing methadone…at least in
this area. Our clinic has taken a major hit from all the people
dropping out of MMTP to go with a private doctor. Doctors are not being
popped, despite regular complaints from clinic directors in the area to
the DEA re: this issue.

So if you think methadone is the way to go, I would just keep
looking…or ask around at the meth. clinics. There are plenty of docs
out there who will prescribe.

Personally, I think the issue is a calculated strategy to drive down
methadone clinic censuses in order to reduce federal funding…driving
many public clinics out of busine! ss so private clinics can rush in after
the DEA finally cracks down on prescribing doctors.

_____________________________________
Rick Venglarcik, MA, CSAC
Hampton Roads Clinic
2236 W. Queen St., Suite C
Hampton, VA 23666

Office: (757) 827-8430 x144
Fax: (757) 826-2772
Cell: (757) 270-9839
_____________________________________

bcalabrese@yahoo.com 06/16/03 03:51PM >>>
Just got back from the doctor.

Basically yes he is licensed to prescribe methadone to
a pain patient BUT some RED FLAG goes off at the DEA
and they come crawl up his ass if he does. So, it
comes down to “it is not a fight I am willing to take
on” – meaning him vs the DEA.

So, in a nutshell I got a script for 60 oxycontin
($175.00 – and that is just to see if it works and on
top of the other meds), a highly desirable drug on the
street – which is just fine and dandy BUT can’t get a
prescription for methadon! e (cost about $12 for the
month) because I might be a drug addict going to an
orthopedic surgeon to score nethadone (????? as in
what the F????). That makes so much sense that only
someone working for the DEA that is absoulutely
clueless about drug abuse could come up with it.

Any suggestions, I am not above seeking out the local
methadone clinic BUT think that is more problems than
it is worth – and I am not going to do some daily run
to the clinic and wait to score… Humm, maybe that is
an idea, I could hand out IBOGAINE literature, that
will go over great!

venting over, humph!

I will likely wait and clean out before starting the
oxy. Doing stuff like that is good for the former
addict not to become a current addict… If nothing
else, I am in control, not the drug. And I like being
me, these last 10 days having to take that pill in the
morning (the morphine) sucked. I would wake up ME and
then get this coatin! g over me from the drug, not HIGH
and nothing fun even if I would let it (and I
wouldn’t). That is not what I worked so hard for.
There has to be some balance between being drugged and
being non-functional due to pain and they sure make it
a pain in the ass to find out what it might be…

Brett

__________________________________
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the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and
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From: Reynaldo Gonzalez <pacopaco44@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] morphine vs oxycodone vs methadone
Date: June 17, 2003 at 2:36:14 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Rick Venglarcik <RickV@hnncsb.org> wrote:
For what it’s worth…coming from a methadone pimp…this DEA RED FLAG
thing with doctors is a bunch of nonsense (at least at this time…but
that will change over the next year or two). The DEA hasn’t been doing
much of anything to doctors who are prescribing methadone…at least in
this area. Our clinic has taken a major hit from all the people
dropping out of MMTP to go with a private doctor. Doctors are not being
popped, despite regular complaints from clinic directors in the area to
the DEA re: this issue.

So if you think methadone is the way to go, I would just keep
looking…or ask around at the meth. clinics. There are plenty of docs
out there who will prescribe.

Personally, I think the issue is a calculated strategy to drive down
methadone clinic censuses in order to reduce federal funding…driving
many public clinics out of business so private clinics can rush in after
the DEA finally cracks down on prescribing doctors.

_____________________________________
Rick Venglarcik, MA, CSAC
Hampton Roads Clinic
2236 W. Queen St., Suite C
Hampton, VA 23666

Office: (757) 827-8430 x144
Fax: (757) 826-2772
Cell: (757) 270-9839
_____________________________________

>>> bcalabrese@yahoo.com 06/16/03 03:51PM >>>
Just got back from the doctor.

Basically yes he is licensed to prescribe methadone to
a pain patient BUT some RED FLAG goes off at the DEA
and they come crawl up his ass if he does. So, it
comes down to “it is not a fight I am willing to take
on” – meaning him vs the DEA.

So, in a nutshell I got a script for 60 oxycontin
($175.00 – and that is just to see if it works and on
top of the other meds), a highly desirable drug on the
street – which is just fine and dandy BUT can’t get a
prescription for methadone (cost about $12 for the
month) because I might be a drug addict going to an
orthopedic surgeon to score nethadone (????? as in
what the F????). That makes so much sense that only
someone working for the DEA that is absoulutely
clueless about drug abuse could come up with it.

Any suggestions, I am not above seeking out the local
methadone clinic BUT think that is more problems than
it is worth – and I am not going to do some daily run
to the clinic and wait to score… Humm, maybe that is
an idea, I could hand out IBOGAINE literature, that
will go over great!

venting over, humph!

I will likely wait and clean out before starting the
oxy. Doing stuff like that is good for the former
addict not to become a current addict… If nothing
else, I am in control, not the drug. And I like being
me, these last 10 days having to take that pill in the
morning (the morphine) sucked. I would wake up ME and
then get this coating over me from the drug, not HIGH
and nothing fun even if I would let it (and I
wouldn’t). That is not what I worked so hard for.
There has to be some balance between being drugged and
being non-functional due to pain and they sure make it
a pain in the ass to find out what it might be…

Brett

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message, including attachments, is for
the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and
privleged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, or
distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please
contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original
message.

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From: Eaquinet@aol.com
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] many questions
Date: June 17, 2003 at 1:07:40 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Hi, this is in response to “Otter” who wrote w/many questions.  I was treated w/ibogaine in March after being on methadone 120 mg./day for over 6 years.  I am also an R.N. with alot of experience in psychiatric care.  I also have suffered chronically from depression and severe anxiety.  So, here goes.:
** Ibogaine works; though I was only treated once I have been clean now for almost 3 months.  I do plan to be treated again sometime soon, though, and would advise anyone using methadone to plan on being treated at least twice in a short time period (days to a week or so) and then to maybe plan on either being treated again a few months later and/or taking “maintenance” doses of ibo daily for awhile afterwards.  I think that doing these things might have prevented the depression and anxiety I fell back into after returning home.
** I have found it necessary to continue my antidepressant and anti-anxiety  medication (Prozac now–was Wellbutrin–and Buspar) in order to stay stable; however, many other aspects of “help” have helped just as much or maybe more.  I have increased my participation and commitment in Buddhist study and practices—there is nothing, IMO, as helpful as Buddhist philosophy in countering chronic depression and anxiety.  It is like  powerful cognitive therapy combined with the existential meaning of a spiritual path.  It is SO therapeutic…..another book I’d highly recommend for anxious type people is “The Power of Now” by Eckhardt Tolle…I keep this book w/me everywhere for “instant relief” as needed.
** As for the methadone clinic, they can go to hell!!!!  Well, that’s the way I used to think when I went to a clinic that required me to come in almost every day, even after 5 years of being the “best little patient” and treated me like the scum of the earth.  I transferred, almost a year before the ibo treatment, to a clinic in a nearby state…yes, I had to drive 2 hrs. but only once a month.  Yes, in ONE DAY of transferring the paperwork, I went from having to come in three times/week to coming in once a month.  So much for medical judgement on these things!!!??? It’s SOOOOO arbitrary & so dependent on what state you’re in.  And the staff at the new clinic were so professional and therapeutic..treated me as a medical patient, not a parolee.  I think that the clinics w/such restrictive rules get to wield so much power over their clients’ lives that it completely goes to their heads (souls, too) and they become mean and cruel.   So, I’d recommend determining what type of clinic she’s in (good or not)…if it’s not, it’s really not much to lose….REALLY…..if it’s good, just tell them about ibogaine..give them some literature (you can get a pack of lit from Cures Not Wars), and ask them for a “medical leave of absence”…that you’ll stay in touch w/them (or, your dtr will) and let them know asap if she needs to return.  But, PLAN ON NOT RETURNING!!!!!!!  I understand wanting to keep that little “ace in the hole” just in case, cause believe me I know, nothing’s more horrible than contemplating methadone cold turkey on your own (I would kill myself first or rather I would NOT allow it to happen), but ASAP after the ibo…once she sees that it REALLY DID WORK….sever that clinic connection as fast as you can.  You don’t want to have the option of going back.  OK, if it’s a bad clinic, still don'[t plan on going back…cause she deserves better than that and better is out there.  Investigate ahead of time what an alternative might be (clinic in another city, state, etc.).  No matter what, take this opportunity to get out of a bad clinic before they destroy whatever self esteem she has left.
** And, have a plan for after the ibo treatment.  I had to return to work within the next week so didn’t feel I really had a choice, BUT, if I could do it over, I’d arrange to be able to go somewhere therapeutic and structured for at least a couple weeks-month afterwards.  And not some judgemental, punitive 12-step place, but a real holistic, therapeutic environment.  There are some around.  Even going on a low-stress vacation to some beautiful place with people she loves would be better than nothing.  Just plan for something because for a few wks. after it’s real hard to sleep and you’ve got alot of energy….it can drive you nuts if you don’t do something productive and positive w/it.

Hope this helps.  Let me/us know if you’ve got any other concerns.  Eliana
ps:  you can see parts of my ibo treatment if you go to Marc’s POT-TV website and click on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC) show on ibogaine.
From: “preston peet” <ptpeet@nyc.rr.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] Fw: [drugwar] Xenova Says Its Vaccine Cuts Cocaine Buzz
Date: June 17, 2003 at 9:30:39 AM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

yikes.
Peace,
Preston

—– Original Message —–
From: Jules Siegel
To: drugwar@mindvox.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 8:37 AM
Subject: [drugwar] Xenova Says Its Vaccine Cuts Cocaine Buzz

Xenova Says Its Vaccine Cuts Cocaine Buzz

<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&ncid=585&e=2&u=/nm/2003
0617/sc_nm/health_xenova_dc>

LONDON (Reuters) – British biotech firm Xenova Group Plc said Tuesday its
experimental vaccine for cocaine addiction had shown signs of reducing the
euphoric effect associated with taking the drug, boosting its shares.
Xenova, struggling to recover from the failure of its lead cancer drug
Tariquidar, said 14 of the 16 patients in two Phase IIa clinical studies had
reported a drop in the enjoyment from taking cocaine after taking the
vaccine, code-named TA-CD.


JULES SIEGEL http://www.cafecancun.com/bookarts/jsiegel.htm
Apdo 1764 77501-Cancun Q. Roo Mexico 1[52-998]883-3629

Newsroom-l, the news and issues discussion list
for journalists <http://www.newsroom-l.net>

<]=———————————————————————–=[

[           Moderated by: Preston Peet |
.drugwar.com           ]
|          -=/[ To Subscribe: drugwar-subscribe@mindvox.com ]/=-
|
|             To Unsubscribe: drugwar-unsubscribe@mindvox.com
|
[   DrugWar List in Digest Format:
ugwar-digest-subscribe@mindvox.com   ]

<]=———————————————————————–=[

From: “Rick Venglarcik” <RickV@hnncsb.org>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] morphine vs oxycodone vs methadone
Date: June 17, 2003 at 8:58:19 AM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

For what it’s worth…coming from a methadone pimp…this DEA RED FLAG
thing with doctors is a bunch of nonsense (at least at this time…but
that will change over the next year or two).  The DEA hasn’t been doing
much of anything to doctors who are prescribing methadone…at least in
this area.  Our clinic has taken a major hit from all the people
dropping out of MMTP to go with a private doctor.  Doctors are not being
popped, despite regular complaints from clinic directors in the area to
the DEA re: this issue.

So if you think methadone is the way to go, I would just keep
looking…or ask around at the meth. clinics.  There are plenty of docs
out there who will prescribe.

Personally, I think the issue is a calculated strategy to drive down
methadone clinic censuses in order to reduce federal funding…driving
many public clinics out of business so private clinics can rush in after
the DEA finally cracks down on prescribing doctors.

_____________________________________
Rick Venglarcik, MA, CSAC
Hampton Roads Clinic
2236 W. Queen St., Suite C
Hampton,  VA  23666

Office:  (757) 827-8430 x144
Fax:  (757) 826-2772
Cell: (757) 270-9839
_____________________________________

bcalabrese@yahoo.com 06/16/03 03:51PM >>>
Just got back from the doctor.

Basically yes he is licensed to prescribe methadone to
a pain patient BUT some RED FLAG goes off at the DEA
and they come crawl up his ass if he does. So, it
comes down to “it is not a fight I am willing to take
on” – meaning him vs the DEA.

So, in a nutshell I got a script for 60 oxycontin
($175.00 – and that is just to see if it works and on
top of the other meds), a highly desirable drug on the
street – which is just fine and dandy BUT can’t get a
prescription for methadone (cost about $12 for the
month) because I might be a drug addict going to an
orthopedic surgeon to score nethadone (????? as in
what the F????). That makes so much sense that only
someone working for the DEA that is absoulutely
clueless about drug abuse could come up with it.

Any suggestions, I am not above seeking out the local
methadone clinic BUT think that is more problems than
it is worth – and I am not going to do some daily run
to the clinic and wait to score… Humm, maybe that is
an idea, I could hand out IBOGAINE literature, that
will go over great!

venting over, humph!

I will likely wait and clean out before starting the
oxy. Doing stuff like that is good for the former
addict not to become a current addict… If nothing
else, I am in control, not the drug. And I like being
me, these last 10 days having to take that pill in the
morning (the morphine) sucked. I would wake up ME and
then get this coating over me from the drug, not HIGH
and nothing fun even if I would let it (and I
wouldn’t). That is not what I worked so hard for.
There has to be some balance between being drugged and
being non-functional due to pain and they sure make it
a pain in the ass to find out what it might be…

Brett

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message, including attachments, is for
the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and
privleged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, or
distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please
contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original
message.

From: jon ludlam <seraphina@compuserve.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] Fleeced by Anti-Drug Ads
Date: June 17, 2003 at 2:31:03 AM EDT
To: “INTERNET:ibogaine@mindvox.com” <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

I wonder how many citizens could get well with $2 BILLION worth of
Ibogaine.
Jon

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1253

Fleeced by Anti-Drug Ads

by Paul Armentano

[Posted June 16, 2003]

It’s often said that Congress has never met an anti-drug program it didn’t
like. The White House’s “National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign” is no
exception. To date, the campaign has spent some $2 billion in taxpayer
dollars and matching funds since 1998 to produce print, television, and
radio advertisements urging “America’s youth to reject illegal drugs,”
specifically marijuana.

Nevertheless, a series of federally funded evaluations of the program have
consistently shown that the ads fail to discourage viewers from trying pot
or other drugs, and in some cases actually foster “pro-drug” beliefs among
teens.

These evaluations include:

a.. A May 2002 review by the research firm Westat Inc. and the Annenberg
Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania that found “no
statistically significant decline in marijuana use or improvement in
beliefs
and attitudes about marijuana use” attributable to the ad campaign. Authors
also acknowledged that there was “no tendency for those reporting more
exposure to Campaign messages to hold more desirable beliefs” about the
dangers of illicit drugs.
b.. A January 2003 Westat and Annenberg evaluation reaffirming that there
is “little evidence of direct favorable Campaign effects on youth.”
Moreover, the authors conceded that “contrarily, there are some unfavorable
trends in youth anti-marijuana beliefs” attributable to the ad campaign.
(Following this critique, the White House abruptly severed its $35 million
contract with Westat and Annenberg to conduct biannual reviews of the Media
Campaign.)
c.. A February 2003 performance assessment by the White House Office of
Management and Budget criticizing the Media Campaign for failing to achieve
any tangible goals or objectives. There exists  “no evidence that paid
media
messages have a direct effect on youth drug-related behavior,” the report
concluded. As a result, its authors recommended Congress restrict funding
for the campaign pending further evaluation.
d.. A Spring 2003 study published in the Journal of Health Communication
examining the impact of a series of federal anti-marijuana advertisements
on
youth attitudes and behavior. The researchers reported “no clear persuasion
or priming effects … for any of the ad sequences” among a sample of 418
middle and high school students assigned to view the ads. Authors further
warned that the ads’ message could potentially have a “boomerang” effect on
its target audience.
It should come as no surprise to researchers or lawmakers that the Media
Campaign is having the opposite effect on America’s teens than the one
intended. Teenagers know the difference between factual information and
government propaganda, and the fed’s ad campaign clearly falls into the
latter category. For example, take the White House’s ad spot linking
recreational drug use and international terrorism. “Where do terrorists get
their money?” asks the ad, which debuted during the 2002 Super Bowl
broadcast at a cost of some $3.4 million. “If you buy drugs, some of it
might come from you.”

Please!  While a small portion of black market profits may theoretically
fund certain terrorist groups around the globe, this outcome is not the
result of drugs per se, but the result of federal drug policies that keep
them illegal–thus inflating their prices and relegating their production
and trade exclusively to criminal entrepreneurs. Therefore, if the federal
government legitimately sought to break the alleged link between illicit
drugs and terrorism, it would amend its policies to permit the legalization
and regulation of such drugs in a manner similar to those already in place
for other intoxicating substances such as tobacco and alcohol.

Of course, anyone waiting for such a policy change–or, in this case, truth
in advertising–shouldn’t hold their breath. In Washington, the drug war
continues unabated regardless of the outcome. As such, despite the Media
Campaign’s consistently poor performance (only a preliminary review by the
Partnership for a Drug Free American [a partner in the Media Campaign]
reports any positive correlation between the ads and teens’ decisions on
drugs), lawmakers are nonetheless set to refund the ad program with a new
five-year appropriation, which includes a $90 million funding boost!
Nevertheless, it’s painfully apparent that the public isn’t buying what the
government is selling. Sadly, were just the ones footing the bill.

——-

Paul Armentano is a senior policy analyst for The NORML Foundation
(www.norml.org) in Washington, DC, a think-tank which lobbies for the
liberalization of marijuana laws. See his Daily Article Archive. He may be
contacted via e-mail at: paularmentano@aol.com

[Print Friendly Page]

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From: jon ludlam <seraphina@compuserve.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] Morphine
Date: June 16, 2003 at 10:24:39 PM EDT
To: “INTERNET:ibogaine@mindvox.com” <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Dear Brett,
I forewarded your post to Maria, and she replied similarly to Sara, only
different. Her reply is as follows:

My question is this… why does he need oxycontin
for headaches ? Has he tried Imitrex ?
Web Page fror Imitrex is below.

Your Friend and FAN,

Jon Ludlam
http://www.migrainehelp.com/

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From: “paul jackamo” <pauljackamo@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Morphine
Date: June 16, 2003 at 8:31:54 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

hey brett >

thanks for putting up your postings – the universe can be a strange & twisted place sometimes….u kick coke, alcohol & nicotine & have to deal with old opium jones –
IMVHO – u just dont seem to have the “calling” for opiates/opioids – and whether that is genetic/environmental/adaptive is kinda irrelevant – the sense of “home at last” just does not seem to be part of your paradigm and that is a very good thing.

sorry, this is short – at work at the moment – u really helped me out when i needed advice,etc & just wanted to let u know – my thoughts are with you

stay free

paul.

From: Brett Calabrese <bcalabrese@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
To: ibogaine@ibogiane.org, ibogaine@mindvox.com
Subject: [ibogaine] Morphine
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 09:09:22 -0700 (PDT)

I am going off the morphine, YUCK, nasty shit.
Basically I can’t sleep, my skin is dry, nose sore
from scratching, still itching (I know, that is a
plus), am cranky, I “wake up” in the middle of a
conversation continuing where the dream left off…
before they lock me up. Last night I got up went into
the kitchen to the fridge and Vivian found me standing
there in the dark 10 minutes later (standing and
sleeping I guess)… Ya know I gave up doing that shit
for “fun” so I will skip the strangeness at this stage
of my life. It was not great for (this particular)
pain and morphine gives me a little bit of a headache
anyway, somewhat different than the headaches I
normally get so I can tell them apart, with morphine
my head hurts when I shake it, normally it does not.

Meanwhile while I was on it, I could feel myself being
pulled closer, my body wanted more than it really
needed or than I wanted. Somehow more seemed like a
real good idea (I don’t even like it!) – of course we
have been through this game a few times (lol) so we
know very well the rules of that game. Anyways, I
watched/observed myself going through it, detached
instead of hooked by it (or getting hooked), of course
I want to watch and see, most do not. Open your eyes,
it is right there in front of you… ha!

Now, I guess methadone (cheap as dirt) or oxy (very
expensive but very popular…) is next. Methadone
being so cheap will be my request, it is harder to
work with than oxy,  something like start on 5mg or 10
and then up it 5mg at a time once a week (to maybe
20-30mg likely). It would also raise less eyebrows
carrying it around with me, oxy these days is like
carrying around a couple bags of dope, and that is
even with a prescription!  So, one more time for the
record (in case there is confusion). I am taking this
shit for pain and do not/will not enjoy it even if I
did. I found out many years ago that if I don’t do the
first act of playing around with pain meds, I don’t do
the umpteen thousand between that one and the last one
I did before going into treatment (again)… works for
me.

Feels nice to be here without the 90mg of morphine
before breakfast… I didn’t get “high” but got coated
with it. The peace had something sitting there beside
it, bothering it… nice to be here, no drugs, no
nicotine, no caffine, nothing. ahhhhhh, good.

OH, and I was getting this  a scotch should have been
in one hand and a cigarette in the other, that is how
it felt after being on the morphine for a while, not
cravings but that it felt more normal that I had other
drugs/substances in me with the morphine.

Something learned.

Brett

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From: <crownofthorns@hushmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] morphine vs oxycodone vs methadone
Date: June 16, 2003 at 6:49:00 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Bro this is probably none of my business but you are posting all of this
to the ibogaine list so maybe you want some input on it?

You’ve been here ever since I got here and that’s almost 2 years I think.
You always give good advice and the occasional rant about treatment pimps
or addiction docs 😉 Which I agree with most of the time.

I think you’ve mentioned that you are on pain meds some of the time before
like vicodan. But bro, what you’re posting here is a what sounds like
a whopping dose of opiates. What is wrong with you that you need to take
all of this? And have you tried sticking with the vicodan and using cannabis?

You may want to do what Howard mentioned a take a full blown dose of
ibo at some point to clear your head. What are you doing now low dosing
ibo with all of that at once?

Peace out,
Curtis

On Mon, 16 Jun 2003 12:51:31 -0700 Brett Calabrese <bcalabrese@yahoo.com>
wrote:
Just got back from the doctor.

Basically yes he is licensed to prescribe methadone to
a pain patient BUT some RED FLAG goes off at the DEA
and they come crawl up his ass if he does. So, it
comes down to “it is not a fight I am willing to take
on” – meaning him vs the DEA.

So, in a nutshell I got a script for 60 oxycontin
($175.00 – and that is just to see if it works and on
top of the other meds), a highly desirable drug on the
street – which is just fine and dandy BUT can’t get a
prescription for methadone (cost about $12 for the
month) because I might be a drug addict going to an
orthopedic surgeon to score nethadone (????? as in
what the F????). That makes so much sense that only
someone working for the DEA that is absoulutely
clueless about drug abuse could come up with it.

Any suggestions, I am not above seeking out the local
methadone clinic BUT think that is more problems than
it is worth – and I am not going to do some daily run
to the clinic and wait to score… Humm, maybe that is
an idea, I could hand out IBOGAINE literature, that
will go over great!

venting over, humph!

I will likely wait and clean out before starting the
oxy. Doing stuff like that is good for the former
addict not to become a current addict… If nothing
else, I am in control, not the drug. And I like being
me, these last 10 days having to take that pill in the
morning (the morphine) sucked. I would wake up ME and
then get this coating over me from the drug, not HIGH
and nothing fun even if I would let it (and I
wouldn’t). That is not what I worked so hard for.
There has to be some balance between being drugged and
being non-functional due to pain and they sure make it
a pain in the ass to find out what it might be…

Brett

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From: Brett Calabrese <bcalabrese@yahoo.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] morphine vs oxycodone vs methadone
Date: June 16, 2003 at 3:51:31 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@ibogaine.org, ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Just got back from the doctor.

Basically yes he is licensed to prescribe methadone to
a pain patient BUT some RED FLAG goes off at the DEA
and they come crawl up his ass if he does. So, it
comes down to “it is not a fight I am willing to take
on” – meaning him vs the DEA.

So, in a nutshell I got a script for 60 oxycontin
($175.00 – and that is just to see if it works and on
top of the other meds), a highly desirable drug on the
street – which is just fine and dandy BUT can’t get a
prescription for methadone (cost about $12 for the
month) because I might be a drug addict going to an
orthopedic surgeon to score nethadone (????? as in
what the F????). That makes so much sense that only
someone working for the DEA that is absoulutely
clueless about drug abuse could come up with it.

Any suggestions, I am not above seeking out the local
methadone clinic BUT think that is more problems than
it is worth – and I am not going to do some daily run
to the clinic and wait to score… Humm, maybe that is
an idea, I could hand out IBOGAINE literature, that
will go over great!

venting over, humph!

I will likely wait and clean out before starting the
oxy. Doing stuff like that is good for the former
addict not to become a current addict… If nothing
else, I am in control, not the drug. And I like being
me, these last 10 days having to take that pill in the
morning (the morphine) sucked. I would wake up ME and
then get this coating over me from the drug, not HIGH
and nothing fun even if I would let it (and I
wouldn’t). That is not what I worked so hard for.
There has to be some balance between being drugged and
being non-functional due to pain and they sure make it
a pain in the ass to find out what it might be…

Brett

__________________________________
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SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
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From: “sara” <sara119@xs4all.nl>
Subject: RE: [ibogaine] Re: morphine
Date: June 17, 2003 at 12:25:28 AM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Brett,

With one full dose you get it over a done with.

What about asking you Doctor for Cannabis as a pain medication?

That can be a better alternative to Methadone or oxi. I think.

All the best,

Sara

—–Original Message—–
From: HSLotsof@aol.com [mailto:HSLotsof@aol.com]
Sent: maandag 16 juni 2003 12:05
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Re: morphine

In a message dated 6/16/03 1:54:02 PM, bcalabrese@yahoo.com writes:

I think I said it wrong (bass-ackwards), I don’t think
I will use a full dose for ibo for withdrawal (on
myself) unless it is for methadone. But, I ain’t there
yet.  I would rather use ibo on my own terms than have
to take it for addition (in a full dose). I don’t mind
taking the edge off with low doses of ibo, but it just
does not fee right to me to detox with it – and I
doubt I would need to – maybe that is the reason, I
don’t need to.  Funny stuff…

Brett,

You may want to take a full dose of ibogaine for clarity on the
addiction/dependence issues with a concurrent benefit of modification of
withdrawal signs.
In my opinion it is virtually impossible to tease out the withdrawal and

anxiety related withdrawal signs.  The issues you raise are important as
numbers
of patients who were treated with ibogaine for substance-related
disorders find
themselves being treated as pain patients.

Howard

From: HSLotsof@aol.com
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Re: morphine
Date: June 16, 2003 at 3:05:23 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

In a message dated 6/16/03 1:54:02 PM, bcalabrese@yahoo.com writes:

I think I said it wrong (bass-ackwards), I don’t think
I will use a full dose for ibo for withdrawal (on
myself) unless it is for methadone. But, I ain’t there
yet.  I would rather use ibo on my own terms than have
to take it for addition (in a full dose). I don’t mind
taking the edge off with low doses of ibo, but it just
does not fee right to me to detox with it – and I
doubt I would need to – maybe that is the reason, I
don’t need to.  Funny stuff…

Brett,

You may want to take a full dose of ibogaine for clarity on the
addiction/dependence issues with a concurrent benefit of modification of withdrawal signs.
In my opinion it is virtually impossible to tease out the withdrawal and
anxiety related withdrawal signs.  The issues you raise are important as numbers
of patients who were treated with ibogaine for substance-related disorders find
themselves being treated as pain patients.

Howard

From: Brett Calabrese <bcalabrese@yahoo.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] Re: morphine
Date: June 16, 2003 at 1:53:13 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@ibogaine.org, ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

QUick update.

I was surprised by a (very) mild withdrawal, some
cramps and diarrhea, today  a bit weak and sweats
mostly, no big deal. I took 1/4th of a vicodin es last
night, cleared it up, took nothing today, if it
bothers me I will, if it don’t, I won’t. There is a
total lack of any cravings due to my being a pain
patient. As a matter of exercise, I distain any
cravings and will not take any meds when I WANT a
drug. Generally I have to be in a lot of pain before
taking a med, at that point there is no “high”, only
somewhat less pain.  The current plan is to go on
maintenance of some sort. Off to the doctor (1/2
hour), see what he says about methadone (not that I
will give him much choice <g>). The other option would
be oxycodone but that is very expensive for me and it
is one of the drugs that has “possibilities”… What
will not happen is a “problem”.

I think I said it wrong (bass-ackwards), I don’t think
I will use a full dose for ibo for withdrawal (on
myself) unless it is for methadone. But, I ain’t there
yet.  I would rather use ibo on my own terms than have
to take it for addition (in a full dose). I don’t mind
taking the edge off with low doses of ibo, but it just
does not fee right to me to detox with it – and I
doubt I would need to – maybe that is the reason, I
don’t need to.  Funny stuff…

Brett

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
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From: Brett Calabrese <bcalabrese@yahoo.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] Morphine
Date: June 15, 2003 at 12:09:22 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@ibogiane.org, ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

I am going off the morphine, YUCK, nasty shit.
Basically I can’t sleep, my skin is dry, nose sore
from scratching, still itching (I know, that is a
plus), am cranky, I “wake up” in the middle of a
conversation continuing where the dream left off…
before they lock me up. Last night I got up went into
the kitchen to the fridge and Vivian found me standing
there in the dark 10 minutes later (standing and
sleeping I guess)… Ya know I gave up doing that shit
for “fun” so I will skip the strangeness at this stage
of my life. It was not great for (this particular)
pain and morphine gives me a little bit of a headache
anyway, somewhat different than the headaches I
normally get so I can tell them apart, with morphine
my head hurts when I shake it, normally it does not.

Meanwhile while I was on it, I could feel myself being
pulled closer, my body wanted more than it really
needed or than I wanted. Somehow more seemed like a
real good idea (I don’t even like it!) – of course we
have been through this game a few times (lol) so we
know very well the rules of that game. Anyways, I
watched/observed myself going through it, detached
instead of hooked by it (or getting hooked), of course
I want to watch and see, most do not. Open your eyes,
it is right there in front of you… ha!

Now, I guess methadone (cheap as dirt) or oxy (very
expensive but very popular…) is next. Methadone
being so cheap will be my request, it is harder to
work with than oxy,  something like start on 5mg or 10
and then up it 5mg at a time once a week (to maybe
20-30mg likely). It would also raise less eyebrows
carrying it around with me, oxy these days is like
carrying around a couple bags of dope, and that is
even with a prescription!  So, one more time for the
record (in case there is confusion). I am taking this
shit for pain and do not/will not enjoy it even if I
did. I found out many years ago that if I don’t do the
first act of playing around with pain meds, I don’t do
the umpteen thousand between that one and the last one
I did before going into treatment (again)… works for
me.

Feels nice to be here without the 90mg of morphine
before breakfast… I didn’t get “high” but got coated
with it. The peace had something sitting there beside
it, bothering it… nice to be here, no drugs, no
nicotine, no caffine, nothing. ahhhhhh, good.

OH, and I was getting this  a scotch should have been
in one hand and a cigarette in the other, that is how
it felt after being on the morphine for a while, not
cravings but that it felt more normal that I had other
drugs/substances in me with the morphine.

Something learned.

Brett

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL – Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com

From: HSLotsof@aol.com
Subject: [ibogaine] Cannabis Campaigner To Take Own Life
Date: June 14, 2003 at 1:06:01 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Cannabis Campaigner To Take Own Life
Posted by CN Staff on June 13, 2003 at 11:50:06 PT
By John Ross
Source: Scotsman UK

A wheelchair-bound cannabis campaigner plans to take her own life with an
overdose of paracetamol and champagne after putting her case to legalise the
drug at a court case next week.

Biz Ivol, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, is already planning her own
funeral and has had a cardboard coffin delivered to her home in Orkney. She
says she desperately wants to end her life because of the crippling pain
from the illness which makes her feel like a prisoner in her own body.

However, she has pledged that she will first of all fight her charges of
possessing and supplying cannabis, which she claims alleviates her
suffering.

Yesterday, her MP said the case highlights the plight of MS sufferers and
hopes this will be the last prosecution of its kind in the UK.

Mrs Ivol, 56, from South Ronaldsay, a long-time supporter of legalising
cannabis for medicinal purposes, was charged following a police raid at her
home in August 2001.

Her trial, which has been postponed several times, is now due to he heard
next Wednesday at a sports centre in Kirkwall, which has better wheelchair
access than the sheriff court.

She has pleaded not guilty to three charges of possessing cannabis,
producing two cannabis plants and being concerned in the supply of the drug
to others. The charges relate to cannabis-laced chocolates which she is
accused of making and distributing to fellow sufferers across the UK.

Yesterday, as a friend assembled the eco-friendly coffin, which arrived in a
flat pack, she said: “I’m going to use it as soon as the court case is over.
I’m too tired now to fight on.

“I feel no-one is doing anything to make things better for people with MS
and that I no longer have any quality of life. I can’t do my garden. I can’t
knit and I can’t sew because my hands are dying. I can’t read because my
eyes are going – there’s nothing worth staying for anymore on this earth.”

She added: “I’m not frightened about what might happen to me. They can’t put
me in jail because of the condition I’m in. They can’t fine me anything
because I haven’t got any money. And I’m already a prisoner, trapped inside
a body that’s full of pain and doesn’t work anymore.”

Mrs Ivol, who says her pain is like barbed wire being dragged through her
spine, began a campaign six years ago for the legalisation of the drug for
medicinal use by people with MS and other conditions. It followed an earlier
court case, when she was admonished after police found cannabis plants
growing at her home.

She said: “I’ve lost count of the number of phone calls I’ve had from people
telling me not to give up the fight. But the court case will be my last
stand. I’m fed up with fighting now. It’s taken them two years to take me to
court. It’s been niggling away at the back of my mind – once it’s over, I
know I can’t go on any longer.”

Her neighbour, Bobby McCutcheon, said friends are devastated by Mrs Ivol’s
decision, but understand her desperation.

“It’s just so sad to see the coffin waiting for her in the house. She really
has lost all hope, she has no interest whatsoever in being alive,” he said.

Last year, David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, relaxed the law on cannabis
possession, downgrading the drug from Class B to Class C.

At the time, Mrs Ivol told The Scotsman the decision made the position “as
clear as mud” and said she was determined to debate the merits of cannabis
use at her trial. Her plight has won backing from Alistair Carmichael, the
Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland, and the Legalise Cannabis
Alliance (LCA).

Mr Carmichael said: “This is a tragic case. Biz is just wrung out with a
combination of the disease and the campaign. Hopefully, this will be the
last of these prosecutions. If it were, it would be quite fitting and give
her some sort of comfort and satisfaction. I have told Tony Blair [the Prime
Minister] that it is ridiculous that we make a criminal of someone simply
trying to get relief from pain which is not available in any other way.”

Source: Scotsman (UK)
Author: John Ross
Published: Friday, June 13, 2003
Copyright: The Scotsman Publications Ltd 2003
Contact: Letters_ts@scotsman.com
Website: http://www.scotsman.com/

From: “paul jackamo” <pauljackamo@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] many questions
Date: June 12, 2003 at 8:36:33 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Curtis wrote:

85mg of methadone is very low. It might not be very low, very low, to
the rest of the world. But I’ve been as high as 120, some on this list
have been on 200, 300mg or more. 85mg. is not a big deal.

I agree Curtis, in the context of ibogaine treatment for methadone dependence, then high dosage ranges seem treatable as both Marc and Sara in Holland have documented, especially when indra/hcl is given as a multiple administration, over a short time.
In any other context, 85mg is a high dose (especially over here in England where the average range is 40-60mg).
Ive come off much lower doses without using ibogaine (40mg) and it nearly killed me or at least it felt like that at the time.

I still think decreasing your methadone dose and/or switching to a shorter acting opiate before undergoing ibogaine treatment is a good idea IMO – but equally, an inability to do so, should not preclude a person from seeking ibo treatment

paul.

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From: <crownofthorns@hushmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Pain, ibogaine, drugs, recovery and little old me.
Date: June 12, 2003 at 8:06:09 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Brett, I hope you are doing ok. You do sound miserable and pissed off.
I understand that I’d be too.

If I ever need meds for any reason I never go to any addiction docs,
always a regular doc and I never mention the word addiction. I want a
script not a lecture while some guy explains everything he doesn’t know
about addiction.

I haven’t faced any of those problems in about 2 years now, so it’s more
of a bad memory then anything else. I do hope you do ok bro.

Peace out,
Curtis

On Wed, 11 Jun 2003 04:24:21 -0700 Allison Senepart <aa.senepart@xtra.co.nz>
wrote:
You sound so miserable and pissed off.  I hope what you are doing
will work
and things will get better.  What are you taking pain medication
for???  or
you can tell me to mind my own business.  Whatever best of luck.
PS  I found most doctors etc. don’t like you knowing too much.
Sort of
stuffs up their whole self image or whatever.   Allison
—– Original Message —–
From: “Brett Calabrese” <bcalabrese@yahoo.com>
To: <ibogaine@ibogaine.org>; <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 8:42 AM
Subject: [ibogaine] Pain, ibogaine, drugs, recovery and little old
me.

For informational purposes.

I have started opioid treatment for pain, starting on
with Morphine, 90mg sustained release once a day. In
the interest of ibogaine I share this experience,
otherwise I would rather not. Normally I am a pretty
tough nut (ok, you knew the nut part… ha ha) with
pain and medication but this has broken me, literally.
I have not, do not intend to, have no desire (…) to
“use” though in the middle of a severe attack various
ways of turning it off do cross my mind. My Internist
has been fired, he was trying to treat a depressed
addict, not a pain patient – this can prove dangerous
to the pain patient/ex-addict. I have not abused pain
meds in 17 years and in the last 3 have been using
hydrocodone, codeine, oxycodone in very small amounts
(30, 60 and just a few a year, respectively).
Basically I would take a pill when I can’t stand it,
after a few days of meds, no matter what I would stop
for a few days. I do know all the tricks about “how to
live with it”, have had numerous alternative (to
opiates) treatments, none of which really work, many
of which have horrible side effects (I get side
effects to everything). Which brings me here.

I started  4 days ago on 90 Avinza (morphine) because
the VA might pick up the medication, they will not do
an oxycodone based product. These new time released
opiates are very expensive so I will ask the Doc about
methadone (dirt cheap, 20 bucks for 100 10mg pills vs
2-300 a month of a time-release opioid). What a turn,
all those years playing with drugs and never got
addicted to heroin or methadone and now I might get
that experience. Now to convince the doc that I
actually enjoy a good opiate withdrawal now and then
without raising any eyebrows.

Trying to get help is a bitch out there. Try to ask a
pharmacist about meds and mention schedule II drugs
and it is like their faces go blank. They KNOW BIG
BROTHER IS WATCHING and no they cannot discuss
anything with me till I come back with a prescription
when I was trying to get drug/price information to go
discuss different treatment options WITH MY DOCTOR.
The pharmacists didn’t want to hear it and what info I
got was untrue (ie methadone is not used for pain). I
even went to some AA meetings, thought, you know, it
would be a good idea, I am starting narcotics… bad
move. That is all I need, those idiots trying to sew
doubt of the need or outcome of this.

So this should be an interesting ibogaine experiment.
I don’t think I would have any “problems” with the
opiates, pain is pain, pain meds are just that (to
me). Even looking back on the last 3 years it amazes
even me how good I have been with pain meds, and of
course no drinking, quit smoking a year ago and no
drugs either (save herbal home remedies). There will
be no problem (famous drug addict last words) but it
is nice to have ibo – and how do you explain that?.
Also note that twice I was habituated to prescription
narcotics and de-habituated quite easily without ibo.

Will keep you informed of any experiments. My thoughts
are I will do a full dose ibogaine to detox from an
opiate except for methadone. I also would like to go
off meds and clean out for the winter when I am in
less pain and don’t usually do any “meds”.

Note on how the morphine “feels”

It sucks – I don’t like morphine for one thing and
won’t relax into the drug, kind of grit my teeth the
first day. I itch at night, my mouth is dry, I can’t
sleep, it does NOT block all the pain (screams still
come through), I am real cranky (wanna fight mother
fucker!) and nasty. IN fact I saw my old sponsor at an
AA meeting, told him to “KISS MY ASS” when he tried to
play 12 steps and 20 questions he didn’t want the
answers to. The first 90mg was a bit too much side
effects so I cut it in 1/2 the next (they are beads
inside a capsule, it is OK) day which was 45mg, day
after 60, today 75 (tad more I was a bit off) and
tomorrow the full 90. There is nothing to “like”, it
feels about the same as morphine always felt to me,
maybe a little worse. Right this second I would like a
lot more of something else but won’t.

Today was the first day I felt the pull of the drug
settling into my body. I love my FREEDOM and hate
having to do this… I will be OK, no doubt, it just
sucks.

Brett

__________________________________
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From: <crownofthorns@hushmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] many questions
Date: June 12, 2003 at 8:03:37 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

I understand you are worried about your daughter. But I don’t think anyone
can give you assurances for the long list of questions you’ve asked.

Marc and Howard gave good answers. As far as depression goes it has for
sure helped me a lot in that direction. Overall I can think of nobody
who has taken ibogaine and then afterwards their life got worse because
of it. I do know people freak out sometimes while they are tripping or
a little after, but nobody I know has ever had a psychotic break from
it.

85mg of methadone is very low. It might not be very low, very low, to
the rest of the world. But I’ve been as high as 120, some on this list
have been on 200, 300mg or more. 85mg. is not a big deal.

I would get her some. If it doesn’t work the first time try again 😉

Peace out,
Curtis

On Wed, 11 Jun 2003 05:47:03 -0700 HSLotsof@aol.com wrote:

In a message dated 6/11/03 7:50:04 AM, Otter60@aol.com writes:

I wrote before asking about ibogaine for which my 26 year old daughter
on MMT is considering treatment.  She and I have many quesions,
and since she
doesn’t have internet access, I am trying to seek answers.  If
anyone can
help, please reply.

__How does a person with chronic major depression and anxiety react
to
ibogaine treatment?  Are they not a candidate?

What exactly do you mean by chronic major depression and anxiety?
While I
would say there may be improvement.  It is also not uncommon that
prior
medications for these disorders may have to be taken again.  Three
is always the
possibility of an adverse effect in whatever form that may take.
However, the more
you have to intercede on behalf of your daughter, internet or not,
the less
benefits I see for her.  And, I would certainly stipulate you should
not
involve yourself in her actual treatment, though some providers
would differ with me
on that.

—How is the treatment and success different for heroin and methadone
users? Is there sometimes still a residual addiction (she is on
85 mg. of
methadone).

Treatment is not principally dissimilar for both drugs though there
may be
dose and regimen modifications.  What do you mean by success?  Under
any
circumstances multiple treatment with ibogaine over time (variable)
appear to be
required to accomplish any long term change for most patients.

—What are possible negative results?  Can they be permanent?
What is
meant by  the term “psychotic break” and what is the prognosis?

Throw the dice and find out.  Who uses the term “psychotic break”?

Fatalities have been known to occur.

If it doesn’t work, she will be kicked off of the Methadone clinic
for
missing doses.  What chance is there of that?

If your daughter informs the clinic she is going to opt for ibogaine
therapy
and if it does not work will wish to return to the methadone clinic
they may
agree in advance to that.  But, please be very clear that many patients
require
multiple treatment of ibogaine.  Talk to the people who will be
providing
your daughter’s therapy.

Howard

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From: MARC <marc420emery@shaw.ca>
Subject: [ibogaine] Many questions, My Answers
Date: June 11, 2003 at 4:01:33 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

I put my thoughts to your questions: indicated like this +++++

Marc Emery
Iboga Therapy House

—– Original Message —–
From: <Otter60@aol.com>
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 4:49 AM
Subject: [ibogaine] many questions

I wrote before asking about ibogaine for which my 26 year old daughter on
MMT
is considering treatment.  She and I have many quesions, and since she
doesn’t have internet access, I am trying to seek answers.  If anyone can
help,
please reply.

__How does a person with chronic major depression and anxiety react to
ibogaine treatment?  Are they not a candidate?

+++++ When opiates are cleared from your system with ibogaine, I notice
people with anxiety and depression problems get anxious and somewhat
depressed. They don’t show much happiness of being addiction freed, they
worry about all their problems, real and imagined, and spend the moments
WORRYING rather than rational planning about changes.  However, Prozac or
Wellbutrin might be helpful here, with fewer side-effects than
self-medicating these anxieties with opiates. These will stabilize the
patient and then they get productive.

—How is the treatment and success different for heroin and methadone
users?
Is there sometimes still a residual addiction (she is on 85 mg. of
methadone).

++++ Heroin treatment with ibogaine takes less time and effort than clearing
someone of methadone. 85 mg. of methadone is something ibogaine can clear in
one treatment, but if this person has anxieties not related to addiction,
they will be anxious, and they will be highly probable to relapse. Two
treatments 7 – 20 days apart would be a good idea.

—What are possible negative results?  Can they be permanent?  What is
meant
by  the term “psychotic break” and what is the prognosis?

+++++ No one I have treated if worse off from being treated with iboga (22
patients at this time). I do not have any familiarity with the term
‘psychotic break’.

If it doesn’t work, she will be kicked off of the Methadone clinic for
missing doses.  What chance is there of that?

++++++ Can’t answer this. My job is to clear you of a drug dependency at
your request. Help you realize things about your past and about your life
that lead to this dependency. Give you a chance to move forward without this
dependency. If you get counselling planned for the after period, and your
family/close loved one are fully behind your attempt to undue the
methadone/opiates and are supportive,  you have a good chance. You need to
be fully committed for success, and you have to endure stress, learn to
channel it, rather than give in to submission to opiates to deal with your
challenges.

Any feedback would be helpful.

From: HSLotsof@aol.com
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] many questions
Date: June 11, 2003 at 8:47:03 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

In a message dated 6/11/03 7:50:04 AM, Otter60@aol.com writes:

I wrote before asking about ibogaine for which my 26 year old daughter
on MMT is considering treatment.  She and I have many quesions, and since she
doesn’t have internet access, I am trying to seek answers.  If anyone can
help, please reply.

__How does a person with chronic major depression and anxiety react to
ibogaine treatment?  Are they not a candidate?

What exactly do you mean by chronic major depression and anxiety?  While I
would say there may be improvement.  It is also not uncommon that prior
medications for these disorders may have to be taken again.  Three is always the
possibility of an adverse effect in whatever form that may take.  However, the more
you have to intercede on behalf of your daughter, internet or not, the less
benefits I see for her.  And, I would certainly stipulate you should not
involve yourself in her actual treatment, though some providers would differ with me
on that.

—How is the treatment and success different for heroin and methadone
users? Is there sometimes still a residual addiction (she is on 85 mg. of
methadone).

Treatment is not principally dissimilar for both drugs though there may be
dose and regimen modifications.  What do you mean by success?  Under any
circumstances multiple treatment with ibogaine over time (variable) appear to be
required to accomplish any long term change for most patients.

—What are possible negative results?  Can they be permanent?  What is
meant by  the term “psychotic break” and what is the prognosis?

Throw the dice and find out.  Who uses the term “psychotic break”?

Fatalities have been known to occur.

If it doesn’t work, she will be kicked off of the Methadone clinic for
missing doses.  What chance is there of that?

If your daughter informs the clinic she is going to opt for ibogaine therapy
and if it does not work will wish to return to the methadone clinic they may
agree in advance to that.  But, please be very clear that many patients require
multiple treatment of ibogaine.  Talk to the people who will be providing
your daughter’s therapy.

Howard

From: “Allison Senepart” <aa.senepart@xtra.co.nz>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] Pain, ibogaine, drugs, recovery and little old me.
Date: June 11, 2003 at 7:24:21 AM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

You sound so miserable and pissed off.  I hope what you are doing will work
and things will get better.  What are you taking pain medication for???  or
you can tell me to mind my own business.  Whatever best of luck.
PS  I found most doctors etc. don’t like you knowing too much.  Sort of
stuffs up their whole self image or whatever.   Allison
—– Original Message —–
From: “Brett Calabrese” <bcalabrese@yahoo.com>
To: <ibogaine@ibogaine.org>; <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 8:42 AM
Subject: [ibogaine] Pain, ibogaine, drugs, recovery and little old me.

For informational purposes.

I have started opioid treatment for pain, starting on
with Morphine, 90mg sustained release once a day. In
the interest of ibogaine I share this experience,
otherwise I would rather not. Normally I am a pretty
tough nut (ok, you knew the nut part… ha ha) with
pain and medication but this has broken me, literally.
I have not, do not intend to, have no desire (…) to
“use” though in the middle of a severe attack various
ways of turning it off do cross my mind. My Internist
has been fired, he was trying to treat a depressed
addict, not a pain patient – this can prove dangerous
to the pain patient/ex-addict. I have not abused pain
meds in 17 years and in the last 3 have been using
hydrocodone, codeine, oxycodone in very small amounts
(30, 60 and just a few a year, respectively).
Basically I would take a pill when I can’t stand it,
after a few days of meds, no matter what I would stop
for a few days. I do know all the tricks about “how to
live with it”, have had numerous alternative (to
opiates) treatments, none of which really work, many
of which have horrible side effects (I get side
effects to everything). Which brings me here.

I started  4 days ago on 90 Avinza (morphine) because
the VA might pick up the medication, they will not do
an oxycodone based product. These new time released
opiates are very expensive so I will ask the Doc about
methadone (dirt cheap, 20 bucks for 100 10mg pills vs
2-300 a month of a time-release opioid). What a turn,
all those years playing with drugs and never got
addicted to heroin or methadone and now I might get
that experience. Now to convince the doc that I
actually enjoy a good opiate withdrawal now and then
without raising any eyebrows.

Trying to get help is a bitch out there. Try to ask a
pharmacist about meds and mention schedule II drugs
and it is like their faces go blank. They KNOW BIG
BROTHER IS WATCHING and no they cannot discuss
anything with me till I come back with a prescription
when I was trying to get drug/price information to go
discuss different treatment options WITH MY DOCTOR.
The pharmacists didn’t want to hear it and what info I
got was untrue (ie methadone is not used for pain). I
even went to some AA meetings, thought, you know, it
would be a good idea, I am starting narcotics… bad
move. That is all I need, those idiots trying to sew
doubt of the need or outcome of this.

So this should be an interesting ibogaine experiment.
I don’t think I would have any “problems” with the
opiates, pain is pain, pain meds are just that (to
me). Even looking back on the last 3 years it amazes
even me how good I have been with pain meds, and of
course no drinking, quit smoking a year ago and no
drugs either (save herbal home remedies). There will
be no problem (famous drug addict last words) but it
is nice to have ibo – and how do you explain that?.
Also note that twice I was habituated to prescription
narcotics and de-habituated quite easily without ibo.

Will keep you informed of any experiments. My thoughts
are I will do a full dose ibogaine to detox from an
opiate except for methadone. I also would like to go
off meds and clean out for the winter when I am in
less pain and don’t usually do any “meds”.

Note on how the morphine “feels”

It sucks – I don’t like morphine for one thing and
won’t relax into the drug, kind of grit my teeth the
first day. I itch at night, my mouth is dry, I can’t
sleep, it does NOT block all the pain (screams still
come through), I am real cranky (wanna fight mother
fucker!) and nasty. IN fact I saw my old sponsor at an
AA meeting, told him to “KISS MY ASS” when he tried to
play 12 steps and 20 questions he didn’t want the
answers to. The first 90mg was a bit too much side
effects so I cut it in 1/2 the next (they are beads
inside a capsule, it is OK) day which was 45mg, day
after 60, today 75 (tad more I was a bit off) and
tomorrow the full 90. There is nothing to “like”, it
feels about the same as morphine always felt to me,
maybe a little worse. Right this second I would like a
lot more of something else but won’t.

Today was the first day I felt the pull of the drug
settling into my body. I love my FREEDOM and hate
having to do this… I will be OK, no doubt, it just
sucks.

Brett

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar – Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com

From: Otter60@aol.com
Subject: [ibogaine] many questions
Date: June 11, 2003 at 7:49:01 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

I wrote before asking about ibogaine for which my 26 year old daughter on MMT
is considering treatment.  She and I have many quesions, and since she
doesn’t have internet access, I am trying to seek answers.  If anyone can help,
please reply.

__How does a person with chronic major depression and anxiety react to
ibogaine treatment?  Are they not a candidate?

—How is the treatment and success different for heroin and methadone users?
Is there sometimes still a residual addiction (she is on 85 mg. of
methadone).

—What are possible negative results?  Can they be permanent?  What is meant
by  the term “psychotic break” and what is the prognosis?

If it doesn’t work, she will be kicked off of the Methadone clinic for
missing doses.  What chance is there of that?

Any feedback would be helpful.

From: Vector Vector <vector620022002@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] cures-not-wars.org down too? Re: [ibogaine] ibogaine.org down
Date: June 10, 2003 at 8:54:33 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

I think it’s almost all of calyx, which is the internet server hosting
all of these sites. They’re all down.

.:vector:.

— Joshua Tinnin <krinklyfig@pacbell.net> wrote:
Thanks for the heads up. On that note, I was updating bookmarks today
and
weeding out the ones that are down or don’t exist anymore, and
noticed that
http://www.cures-not-wars.org/ wasn’t responding, even to a ping. Is
this
just a temporary glitch? Dana’s still on the list, right?

– jt

—– Original Message —–
From: <HSLotsof@aol.com>

Dear list,

Ibogaine.org is down for the moment.  Anyone wanting to access the
Ibogaine
Dossier should use our sister site http://www.ibogaine.desk.nl

Thanks on that.

Howard

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar – Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com

From: Brett Calabrese <bcalabrese@yahoo.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] Pain, ibogaine, drugs, recovery and little old me.
Date: June 10, 2003 at 4:42:04 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@ibogaine.org, ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

For informational purposes.

I have started opioid treatment for pain, starting on
with Morphine, 90mg sustained release once a day. In
the interest of ibogaine I share this experience,
otherwise I would rather not. Normally I am a pretty
tough nut (ok, you knew the nut part… ha ha) with
pain and medication but this has broken me, literally.
I have not, do not intend to, have no desire (…) to
“use” though in the middle of a severe attack various
ways of turning it off do cross my mind. My Internist
has been fired, he was trying to treat a depressed
addict, not a pain patient – this can prove dangerous
to the pain patient/ex-addict. I have not abused pain
meds in 17 years and in the last 3 have been using
hydrocodone, codeine, oxycodone in very small amounts
(30, 60 and just a few a year, respectively).
Basically I would take a pill when I can’t stand it,
after a few days of meds, no matter what I would stop
for a few days. I do know all the tricks about “how to
live with it”, have had numerous alternative (to
opiates) treatments, none of which really work, many
of which have horrible side effects (I get side
effects to everything). Which brings me here.

I started  4 days ago on 90 Avinza (morphine) because
the VA might pick up the medication, they will not do
an oxycodone based product. These new time released
opiates are very expensive so I will ask the Doc about
methadone (dirt cheap, 20 bucks for 100 10mg pills vs
2-300 a month of a time-release opioid). What a turn,
all those years playing with drugs and never got
addicted to heroin or methadone and now I might get
that experience. Now to convince the doc that I
actually enjoy a good opiate withdrawal now and then
without raising any eyebrows.

Trying to get help is a bitch out there. Try to ask a
pharmacist about meds and mention schedule II drugs
and it is like their faces go blank. They KNOW BIG
BROTHER IS WATCHING and no they cannot discuss
anything with me till I come back with a prescription
when I was trying to get drug/price information to go
discuss different treatment options WITH MY DOCTOR.
The pharmacists didn’t want to hear it and what info I
got was untrue (ie methadone is not used for pain). I
even went to some AA meetings, thought, you know, it
would be a good idea, I am starting narcotics… bad
move. That is all I need, those idiots trying to sew
doubt of the need or outcome of this.

So this should be an interesting ibogaine experiment.
I don’t think I would have any “problems” with the
opiates, pain is pain, pain meds are just that (to
me). Even looking back on the last 3 years it amazes
even me how good I have been with pain meds, and of
course no drinking, quit smoking a year ago and no
drugs either (save herbal home remedies). There will
be no problem (famous drug addict last words) but it
is nice to have ibo – and how do you explain that?.
Also note that twice I was habituated to prescription
narcotics and de-habituated quite easily without ibo.

Will keep you informed of any experiments. My thoughts
are I will do a full dose ibogaine to detox from an
opiate except for methadone. I also would like to go
off meds and clean out for the winter when I am in
less pain and don’t usually do any “meds”.

Note on how the morphine “feels”

It sucks – I don’t like morphine for one thing and
won’t relax into the drug, kind of grit my teeth the
first day. I itch at night, my mouth is dry, I can’t
sleep, it does NOT block all the pain (screams still
come through), I am real cranky (wanna fight mother
fucker!) and nasty. IN fact I saw my old sponsor at an
AA meeting, told him to “KISS MY ASS” when he tried to
play 12 steps and 20 questions he didn’t want the
answers to. The first 90mg was a bit too much side
effects so I cut it in 1/2 the next (they are beads
inside a capsule, it is OK) day which was 45mg, day
after 60, today 75 (tad more I was a bit off) and
tomorrow the full 90. There is nothing to “like”, it
feels about the same as morphine always felt to me,
maybe a little worse. Right this second I would like a
lot more of something else but won’t.

Today was the first day I felt the pull of the drug
settling into my body. I love my FREEDOM and hate
having to do this… I will be OK, no doubt, it just
sucks.

Brett

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar – Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com

From: “Joshua Tinnin” <krinklyfig@pacbell.net>
Subject: [ibogaine] cures-not-wars.org down too? Re: [ibogaine] ibogaine.org down
Date: June 9, 2003 at 9:32:55 PM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Thanks for the heads up. On that note, I was updating bookmarks today and
weeding out the ones that are down or don’t exist anymore, and noticed that
http://www.cures-not-wars.org/ wasn’t responding, even to a ping. Is this
just a temporary glitch? Dana’s still on the list, right?

– jt

—– Original Message —–
From: <HSLotsof@aol.com>

Dear list,

Ibogaine.org is down for the moment.  Anyone wanting to access the Ibogaine
Dossier should use our sister site http://www.ibogaine.desk.nl

Thanks on that.

Howard

From: “paul jackamo” <pauljackamo@hotmail.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] query regarding dosage of rootback for heroin dependency
Date: June 9, 2003 at 8:16:26 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Hi All

A query in relation to dried rootbark.
I was having a discussion with a guy who was treated for heroin
dependency over here in England. I presumed it was either with the
indra extract or HCL. I discovered that the provider had in fact given
him 12 grams of dried rootbark that he ingested ground down in capsule
form.
According to him, the provider was very experienced, so I wonder if I
am missing something here…..
Looking through the data, my impression was that a gram of dried root
bark had a content of 2-3% ibogaine and related alkoloids.
This would mean that 12 grams of dried root bark was wholly inadequate for
treating heroin dependency, to say the least.
Can anyone confirm the average ammount of ibogaine in a gram of
dried root bark and extrapolate from this its equivalant to a gram of
HCL?
The person in question has returned to heroin/methadone dependency
and of course this can happen even if he had a full therapuetic dose of
HCL/Indra. I dont want to tell him that the dose he received was
completely inadequate in case i am missing something fundemental.
Unfortunately, he cannot get in touch with the provider in question at
the moment, otherwise, I would ask the person concerned direct.

best wishes everyone

paul.

ps> for everyone who didnt attend the NYC conference and has not
checked out the powerpoint presentations given on the day that have
been put up at ibogaine.org, I would urge you to do so. They are all
really excellent and very informative/innovative.

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From: HSLotsof@aol.com
Subject: [ibogaine] ibogaine.org down
Date: June 9, 2003 at 11:57:30 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Dear list,

Ibogaine.org is down for the moment.  Anyone wanting to access the Ibogaine
Dossier should use our sister site http://www.ibogaine.desk.nl

Thanks on that.

Howard

From: “preston peet” <ptpeet@nyc.rr.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] striking fall in addicts’ crime
Date: June 9, 2003 at 11:35:44 AM EDT
To: <drugwar@mindvox.com>, <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

So,
Does this mean that the drugs don’t actually cause the crimes, that
addicts are not automatically criminally minded once addicted? Gee, imagine
that.
How long is it going to take us in the US to get to this point, where
police, politicians and most importantly voters, get the freakin’ picture,
that we can reduce the harms, all the harms, that can derive from drug abuse
by taking the same tact as so many in Europe right now, like Switzerland as
noted in this article?
Peace,
Preston

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,2763,495226,00.html

Striking fall in addicts’ crime

Nick Davies
Friday May 23, 2003
The Guardian

Switzerland is now leading the way out of prohibition. In 1994, it started
prescribing free heroin to long-term addicts who had failed to respond to
law enforcement or any other treatment. In 1998, a Lausanne criminologist,
Martin Kilias, found that the users’ involvement in burglary, mugging and
robbery had fallen by 98%; in shoplifting, theft and handling by 88%; in
selling soft drugs by 70%; in selling hard drugs by 91%. As a group, their
contacts with police had plunged to less than a quarter of the previous
level. The Dutch and the Germans have had similar results with the same
strategy.
All of them report that, apart from these striking benefits in crime
prevention, the users are also demonstrably healthier (because clean heroin
properly used is a benign drug) and that they are more stable with clear
improvements in housing, employment and relationships.
The Dutch report that only 7.7% of their soft drug users are also using hard
drugs. In Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK for which comparable
figures are available, 46.7% of soft drug users are also hard users. For
those trying to tackle crack, the Swiss heroin programme shows dramatic
falls in the use of all illicit drugs. The Swiss are now even reporting
that, having stabilised their lives, 22% of one group of users have opted to
abstain from all illicit drugs.
By contrast, the US, which has led the prohibition strategy, is stumbling
deeper into failure. President Bush, in his report on drug strategy last
year, was forced to acknowledge that “in recent years we have lost ground”
in reducing illegal use.
snip-

There are a lot of other articles by Nick Davies archived here. I highly
recommend the following from 2001: (Armed and dangerous: the police with
their fingers on the trigger –
http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,2763,495226,00.html)

From: “paul jackamo” <pauljackamo@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] zooming through the brain
Date: June 7, 2003 at 7:54:22 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Thanks for the link Bill –

Its exactly the kind of data that make being here on mindvox so worthwhile.

It made me think: Has anyone proposed doing a magnetic resonance imaging scan of the ibogabrain in full flow ? – The results i imagine would be interesting, to say the least.

Whilst it may be “intrusive” on one level. I think for those individuals that have done ibogaine more than once, the experience would be tolerable – Or has it been done/proposed already, I wonder ?
One distinct advantage I can think of, is having your head immobilized, avoiding the neccesity of remembering not to move it a milimeter ;-)……”oh fuck,too late” is always the phrase that springs to mind as the vomiting begins…….

Anyone checked out the early recording by the aphex twin, entitled : “didgeridoo” yet ?  (imo -an excellent aural map that seems to reproduce the sounds generated by ibogaine more than anything else i have heard apart from the twisted dub of african head charge – though it was one of my favourite trax when i used to play it at free parties back in the early 90’s, way before i took ibo for the first time, so maybe i am biased – still, it would be cool to get some feedback)

I havent heard the tool album yet – but i am looking forward to giving it a listen – even if, like the aphex twin, they have never done/heard of iboga – it doesnt mean that their musical antenna’s are not tuned into iboga broadcasts from the universe next door.

take care everyone.

paul.

From: Bill Ross <ross@cgl.ucsf.edu>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
To: ibogaine@Mindvox.com
Subject: [ibogaine] zooming through the brain
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 17:57:20 -0700 (PDT)

Apropos of nothing, here is an image that folks who like Mindvox
graphics might enjoy – it took the 1.6Mbyte animated gif several
minutes to download on a high-bandwidth connection, and you need
to see it animate at speed after full download to enjoy:

http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/analysis/overview/

Bill Ross

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From: “Randy Hencken” <randyhencken@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] zooming through the brain
Date: June 6, 2003 at 11:52:44 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Carla,

Tool and ibogaine was only my speculation.  Since I posted that to this list I have been in contact with people from the Tool Camp and they had no idea what ibogaine was.  I didn’t speak with Maynard or any of the band members, but I presume if the folks near by didn’t know about ibo then maynard & co. haven’t used ibo .  You’re right though, something happened between undertow and lateralus that caused the music to spiral out and become more positive.  Tool was definately hanging around with Alex Grey, maybe they spent a lot of time in the Amazon drinking Yage. Maybe.  Well that is the beauty of music.  Each of us can hear the same song and apply it to our own lives in any different way.  Even with my bubble having been burst, finding out that tool didn’t write the music after an ibo experience, I still hear the god of iboga in thier music.  Be careful with that album Carla, it is infectious.  At first you may not like it or find it it “hard to listen to”, but then one day you’ll wake up and find that Lateralus hasn’t come out of your CD player in weeks.

Where did you find the interviews that you mention?  I would like to read them.

Peace,
Randy

From: Carla Barnes <carlambarnes@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] zooming through the brain
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 18:19:40 -0700 (PDT)

Thanks Bill that is really cool 🙂

Also appropros of nothing or of looking at the brain
graphic it reminds me of two questions I have which I
think go to Patrick and Randy.

Patrick the Mindvox navigation bar, for some reason I
seem to remember that it is actually a brain?? Is it
or why do I think that. Did we have that conversation
a long time ago on the list or off it?

Randy my question is about Tool. I have finally got a
copy of Lateralus and I still find it hard to listen
to. It’s not so much my style of music but I’ve heard
Opiate and Undertow and interviews with Meynard. And
it is a hugggggge distance from those cd’s to
Lateralus. Very huge. Meynard has talked a lot about
his LSD use in interviews but as far as I know and can
tell by searching, he has never mentioned ibogaine.

Did you ever hear him actually say that, or do you
just think that? I understand completely why you think
that because whatever he did he did something and he
did a lot of it. Undertow is one of the most
depressing cds I’ve ever heard, its Nine Inch Nails
kind of music and Lateralus is something completely
different. I am just very curious if he detoxed with
ibogaine or if he did something else and then followed
it with LSD. He is very open about his LSD use but the
only place I’ve heard ibogaine linked to Tool is from
you I think? Sorry if I have it wrong but I’m very
curious!

Carla B

— Bill Ross <ross@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
> Apropos of nothing, here is an image that folks who
> like Mindvox
> graphics might enjoy – it took the 1.6Mbyte animated
> gif several
> minutes to download on a high-bandwidth connection,
> and you need
> to see it animate at speed after full download to
> enjoy:
>
>    http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/analysis/overview/
>
> Bill Ross
>
>

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From: Carla Barnes <carlambarnes@yahoo.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] More Ed Rosenthal
Date: June 5, 2003 at 9:38:27 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

This is interesting. It’s from a poll on Alexa where I
was looking things up right now. What makes it
interesting is that Alexa isn’t a alternative site or
some counter culture place. It’s a very normal, boring
mainstream site ranking portal.

Their current poll is about Ed Rosenthal. It has
interesting results. Wow. There is hope!

Carla B

This is from http://www.alexa.com

Should Ed Rosenthal have received a stiffer sentence
than one day for his medical marijuana growing in
California?

Current Results:

Yes. It’s illegal to grow marijuana.

29%

No. Justice has at last been served.

12%

Not even one day–key evidence was kept from jurors at
his trial.

58%

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From: Carla Barnes <carlambarnes@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] zooming through the brain
Date: June 5, 2003 at 9:19:40 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Thanks Bill that is really cool 🙂

Also appropros of nothing or of looking at the brain
graphic it reminds me of two questions I have which I
think go to Patrick and Randy.

Patrick the Mindvox navigation bar, for some reason I
seem to remember that it is actually a brain?? Is it
or why do I think that. Did we have that conversation
a long time ago on the list or off it?

Randy my question is about Tool. I have finally got a
copy of Lateralus and I still find it hard to listen
to. It’s not so much my style of music but I’ve heard
Opiate and Undertow and interviews with Meynard. And
it is a hugggggge distance from those cd’s to
Lateralus. Very huge. Meynard has talked a lot about
his LSD use in interviews but as far as I know and can
tell by searching, he has never mentioned ibogaine.

Did you ever hear him actually say that, or do you
just think that? I understand completely why you think
that because whatever he did he did something and he
did a lot of it. Undertow is one of the most
depressing cds I’ve ever heard, its Nine Inch Nails
kind of music and Lateralus is something completely
different. I am just very curious if he detoxed with
ibogaine or if he did something else and then followed
it with LSD. He is very open about his LSD use but the
only place I’ve heard ibogaine linked to Tool is from
you I think? Sorry if I have it wrong but I’m very
curious!

Carla B

— Bill Ross <ross@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
Apropos of nothing, here is an image that folks who
like Mindvox
graphics might enjoy – it took the 1.6Mbyte animated
gif several
minutes to download on a high-bandwidth connection,
and you need
to see it animate at speed after full download to
enjoy:

http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/analysis/overview/

Bill Ross

__________________________________
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From: Bill Ross <ross@cgl.ucsf.edu>
Subject: [ibogaine] zooming through the brain
Date: June 5, 2003 at 8:57:20 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@Mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Apropos of nothing, here is an image that folks who like Mindvox
graphics might enjoy – it took the 1.6Mbyte animated gif several
minutes to download on a high-bandwidth connection, and you need
to see it animate at speed after full download to enjoy:

http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/analysis/overview/

Bill Ross

From: Vector Vector <vector620022002@yahoo.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] Ed Rosenthal walks 🙂
Date: June 4, 2003 at 11:04:00 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2003/06/04/rosenthal.DTL

Pot grower spared prison time
Medical marijuana advocates claim victory in pivotal Rosenthal
sentencing

In a dramatic blow to the federal government’s campaign against medical
marijuana, a federal judge spared pot advocate Ed Rosenthal from a
prison sentence Wednesday for his conviction on cultivation charges,
saying Rosenthal reasonably believed he was acting legally.

Rosenthal, 58, a prominent author, columnist and authority on marijuana
growing, faced at least five years in prison under federal law for his
conviction of growing more than 100 plants for the Harm Reduction
Center, a San Francisco dispensary operating under California’s medical
marijuana law. A federal prosecutor asked for a 6-year sentence.

But U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the “extraordinary, unique
circumstances of this case,” were not covered by the usual sentencing
law and imposed the lightest term possible — a day in jail, which
Rosenthal served after his February 2002 arrest. He also fined
Rosenthal $1,300 and put him on supervised release for three years,
with orders not to violate any criminal laws and to submit to searches.

“This is day one in the crusade to bring down the marijuana laws, all
the marijuana laws,” Rosenthal — whose latest book is called “Why
Marijuana Should Be Legal” — proclaimed after the hearing to about 100
jubilant supporters.

Some carried huge puppet figures showing President Bush and Attorney
General John Ashcroft in jailhouse garb and depicting Rosenthal and
other medical marijuana defendants with angels’ wings. San Francisco
District Attorney Terence Hallinan was also in the gathering and
praised the judge’s decision.

Rosenthal, who had denounced Breyer as biased during the trial, spoke
respectfully to the judge before sentencing, saying he took
responsibility for his actions and adding, “My conscience led me to
help people who were suffering.” But he was in no mood to praise Breyer
afterward.

“He did me no favors” in sentencing, Rosenthal said. “He made me a
felon because he would not allow the jury to hear the whole story. He
had an agenda. I call on Judge Breyer to resign.”

Rosenthal plans to appeal his conviction, based on Breyer’s rulings
that kept virtually the entire defense case from the jury —
Rosenthal’s medical motives, his claim that the city of Oakland had
designated him as an officer to supply marijuana to a city-endorsed
dispensary, and his reliance on Proposition 215, the 1996 California
initiative that allowed seriously ill patients to obtain marijuana with
a doctor’s recommendation.

Prosecutors could also appeal Breyer’s decision to reduce the sentence
below the standard federal guidelines. No decision has been made on an
appeal, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Jacobs, spokesman for the
office.

But advocacy groups declared victory.

“Today marks the beginning of the end of the federal war on medical
marijuana patients,” said Robert Kampia, executive director of the
nonprofit Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C.

“It sends a very strong message to the Bush administration that they
had better focus their law enforcement resources on serious and violent
crime, especially terrorism, and stop arresting patients and caregivers
in the nine states that have legalized medical marijuana,” said Keith
Stroup, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform
of Marijuana Laws.

Also celebrating were some of the jurors who disavowed their guilty
verdict after learning about the evidence that had been excluded. Seven
of the 12 jurors signed a letter urging Breyer not to sentence
Rosenthal to prison, and four attended Wednesday’s hearing. State
Attorney General Bill Lockyer also called for a lenient sentence.

“Today has put my faith back into our judicial system,” said juror
Pamela Klarkowski, a registered nurse from Petaluma.

The prosecution of a noted activist on his home turf was only one of a
series of federal enforcement actions since California voters approved
Prop. 215. A civil suit initially filed by the Clinton administration
resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that shut down the Oakland
marijuana coopeative — though more than 30 others are still operating
in the state — and both the Clinton and Bush administrations have
sought, unsuccessfully so far, to punish doctors who recommend
marijuana.

The Bush administration has also raided pot farms and dispensaries and
filed numerous criminal charges, winning prison sentences against at
least four medical marijuana growers, with a dozen more cases pending,
according to advocates.

Rosenthal’s case was unique because of his relationship with the city
of Oakland. Trying to shield its Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative from the
federal crackdown, the City Council declared the organization an
official city agency in 1998 and allowed its leaders to designate
suppliers — including Rosenthal — as city officers.

Breyer refused to allow evidence of those events at the trial, ruling
that Rosenthal did not qualify as a narcotics law enforcement officer,
which would have immunized him from prosecution. But he cited the same
evidence Wednesday in his sentencing decision.

Rosenthal “believed that he was not violating federal law,” the judge
said. “His belief, while erroneous, was reasonable.”

Because his ruling served notice that a local agency can’t provide
protection from federal charges, Breyer said, leniency for Rosenthal
won’t encourage lawbreaking by others. “This case should not and could
not happen again,” he said.

Rosenthal disagreed, predicting to reporters that higher courts would
find Breyer “dead wrong” on the immunity issue. Defense lawyer Dennis
Riordan added that Breyer’s comments should make an appellate court
wonder why jurors weren’t allowed to hear the same evidence.

Assistant U.S. Attorney George Bevan, whose prosecution of Rosenthal as
an ordinary drug criminal was aided by Breyer’s earlier rulings, argued
in vain for similar treatment at sentencing.

“There is nothing exceptional about this case,” Bevan told the judge.
He said Rosenthal “may have had a motive to sick people” but ran his
operation as a “cash cow” and “used the City Council in an effort to
put an umbrella around his illegal cultivation.”

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From: jon freedlander <jfreed1@umbc.edu>
Subject: RE: [ibogaine] cracking gibson’s agrippa
Date: June 4, 2003 at 11:02:05 AM EDT
To: ibogaine <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

http://www.mith2.umd.edu/products/lightbox/index.html

ahshas. that isn’t .umd.edu as in university of maryland, is it?

—————————————————————————
“Everything is true. Nothing is certain.”

— Hassan i Sabbah

From: Vector Vector <vector620022002@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] cracking gibson’s agrippa
Date: June 4, 2003 at 2:43:39 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Dear Matt,

I see you’re sending personal email into the ibogaine list. Probably
you did this because Patrick didn’t reply to your email. I wouldn’t
worry, I don’t think it has ever taken him longer then 2 years to reply
to my letters.

Acting as Patrick’s secretery agrippa was cracked using a chisel and a
large hammer. If Patrick says anything different its because he was on
a lot of drugs in 1992 and doesn’t remember.

I want to welcome you to ibogaine. Looking you up online you will be
right at home here. Someone who is sending questions about cracking
online art books that self destruct in 1992 to a ibogaine list and
trying to find Umberto Eco’s lost notes should have no trouble
following the conversations.

I like your Umerto Eco quote, if he didn’t do ibogaine then he did a
lot of other drugs “The Paradox of porta Ludovica… the native lives
in a “magic space” where the directions font, back, left, and right are
not valid and consequently all orientation is impossible.”

The questions I have for you are how did you get Irvin Kershner to talk
on your panel about “Supersizing my Freedom Fries” instead of Star
Wars?

And what is this? It looks interesting but what is it supposed to do?

http://www.mith2.umd.edu/products/lightbox/index.html

I’m signing up for your courses when I go to college this year.

.:vector:.

— Matt Kirschenbaum <mk235@umail.umd.edu> wrote:
Dear Patrick,

I’m working on a book for the MIT Press on electronic literature, and
have some questions about the cracking of Gibson’s Agrippa and its
subsequent release to the internet in late 1992. There’s a lot of
misleading/contradictory information that floats around and I’m
committed to getting the facts straight. Would you be willing to
correspond on this subject?
Best, Matt

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum_____________________________
_______________________http://www.otal.umd.edu/~mgk/

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From: Matt Kirschenbaum <mk235@umail.umd.edu>
Subject: [ibogaine] cracking gibson’s agrippa
Date: June 3, 2003 at 5:57:07 PM EDT
To: digital@phantom.com, digital@mindvox.com, ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Dear Patrick,

I’m working on a book for the MIT Press on electronic literature, and
have some questions about the cracking of Gibson’s Agrippa and its
subsequent release to the internet in late 1992. There’s a lot of
misleading/contradictory information that floats around and I’m
committed to getting the facts straight. Would you be willing to
correspond on this subject?
Best, Matt

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum_____________________________
_______________________http://www.otal.umd.edu/~mgk/

From: Carla Barnes <carlambarnes@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] unbiased ibogaine research? how?
Date: June 4, 2003 at 1:52:46 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Hi Patrick and thanks 😉 LMAO reading this. LSD
having a conversation with the DEA. The most awful
thing is what you made fun of is exactly true. All of
their information on entheogens is just like that.
That’s sad.

Hi to everyone else on here I haven’t talked to in a
while either!

Carla B

— “Patrick K. Kroupa” <digital@phantom.com> wrote:

The bottom line is, LSD has been schedule I the
entire time I have been
alive.  But, this really hasn’t stopped it from
“working.”  I don’t think
anybody has ever pulled it aside and explained The
Situation to LSD.

– – – – – – – – –

Uhm, you’re schedule I.  So … cut it out.  Stop
“working.”  It clearly
states that you don’t do anything helpful.

LSD: Huh?

You’re a dangerous highly addictive drug with
absolutely no medical value.

LSD: <GigglE!>

Look, you’re not paying attention, go over to the
DEA website, the FACTS
speak for themselves.  As you can plainly see, we
have assembled a large
collection of data, which looks like it was written
by a small child with
crayons, attempting to describe a bad experience.
Scary Monsters,
Super-Freaks, MadNeSs, 1ns4n!ty, Drain Bamage, Glow
in the Dark
chromosomes, MuTants! (go see the X-Men for
Conclusive Fully Documented
Proof!)  Pay attention now.

LSD:  PreTty c0lorZ, l1ghTs, eYes, reintegration,
Wo000 HoooO!  <bouncey>
<BounceY> <Bouncey!>  Happy!  .G0dh34D.

That’s it, I can’t talk to you anymore.  You’re
crazy.

– – – – – – – – –

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From: “Rick Venglarcik” <RickV@hnncsb.org>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] unbiased ibogaine research? how?
Date: June 3, 2003 at 8:01:45 AM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

This is sad, but true.  Most counselors that I know are decent,
well-meaning people.  As you know, however, working with opiate addicted
folks isn’t all that easy.  As such, there is often a rather predictable
life-cycle for (perhaps) the majority of such counselors.
1.  Decent, well-meaning folks get burnt out, angry, hostile and quit.
2.  Decent, well-meaning folks get burnt out, angry, hostile, then
become hard and control-oriented…often excelling as rigid
“bean-counter” sorts, and rising to a position of greater control, thus
creating even larger and more miserable systems of control.
3.  Decent, well-meaning folks get burnt out, angry, hostile, and
remain…but learn over time to separate their feelings from their work,
and not to personalize all the lies, nonsense, deceit, etc., and simply
find enjoyment in working with the individuals they are there to serve.
This is the great minority.

As with all systems of control (cops and robbers; boss and worker
drones; etc.), it isn’t person #3 that typically rises to a position of
authority.  Because they have learned to rid themselves of the more
harmful, rigid concepts of control, they have a better understanding of
how to more effectively work with addicted persons. Folks in position
#2, because they think they know how it should all work (despite never
taking a hard look at how effective their draconian measures are), come
to view those who are compassionate (and thus challenge the outmoded
constructs of control) as “taking their side;”  they view the world as
one of dichotomous conflict…just as they have been “programmed” to do.
Thus, systems of control, and rigid individuals who function well
within such constructs, tend to increase in power and size, creating
misery for all.

That’s my perspective on the inside, anyway.  But hey, I’m just a grunt
whose fate draweth nigh.
If I were opiate addicted, I’d find a real good aftercare sort of
assistance and do ibogaine as much as I had to in order to get myself
“unsprung.”

_____________________________________
Rick Venglarcik, MA, CSAC
Hampton Roads Clinic
2236 W. Queen St., Suite C
Hampton,  VA  23666

Office:  (757) 827-8430 x144
Fax:  (757) 826-2772
Cell: (757) 270-9839
_____________________________________

aa.senepart@xtra.co.nz 06/03/03 07:21AM >>>
Nothing wrong with profit if there are good reasons or intentions
behind it.
As far as I can see most govts don’t want the hassle of recognizing
ibogaine.  It costs them votes cost addicts are a minority group and
my
understanding of supplying Methadone is that is cheap shit that costs
them
as little as possible and apparently keeps crime down cos it keeps
addicts
happy and out of trouble.  They are seen to go through all the motions
of
therapy etc. while not spending too much money or time and think they
can
shove the whole problem under the carpet sort of thing.
Mostly its all crap.  The originial idea of the Methadone programe was
to
drop dosage and get people off which hardly ever happens to my
knowledge.
Most people I know end up increasing not dropping.  Most of the so
called
people who are supposed to provide help don’t even know what they are
talking about and are very uninformed about their job in general but
still
get paid for repeating text book phrases.  I probably sound cynical but
they
give my a guts ache.  Thats why I won’t go through all the crap to go
on the
programme. I’d rather stay at home and deal with myself than those
wankers.
It would be great to see some progress on ibogaine or even open minds
to
other treatments but it seems like banging your head against a brick
wall at
times.  I know there are people who are passionate out there but the
majority are just muddling along in some passive state worrying about
whats
in their own back yard.
PS  Sorry for ranting.  Must be in one of those moods.  Allison
—– Original Message —–
From: “Sara” <sara119@xs4all.nl>
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2003 8:26 PM
Subject: RE: [ibogaine] unbiased ibogaine research? how?

What is wrong with making profit ? even the water company makes
profit .
People who do research for the farmacutical industry make a fortune
,
why would they change to a non profit research ?
I don’t know Dr. Mash in person but I don’t think that she makes
huge
profits,she could make more money doing something else.

Ibogaine will not go anywhere ,just because the farmacutical
industry
Doesn’t want it to,It is all about personal interest, that’s the
drive
Of our materialistic selfish time we live in.

S

—–Original Message—–
From: marcus75@ziplip.com [mailto:marcus75@ziplip.com]
Sent: dinsdag 3 juni 2003 3:32
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Subject: [ibogaine] unbiased ibogaine research? how?

I write this message with respect to everyone and hope to receive
the
same.  This means you Patrick, it is not necessary to go off on me, I
am
not blindly attacking anyone or making unfounded accusations. I am
writing only on facts as they have been shown over course of years
of
time.

I would think that somewhere between Marc’s attitude of ibogaine
being
very safe and Mash’s hysteria of ibogaine will kill everybody unless
she
is the one giving it to you, is the middle of some level of what is
real..

What I’d like to know is what the real facts are about ibogaine’s
safety
or danger. I think that with the present situation none of these
will
ever be known by anyone because the only researcher with human data
on
giving ibogaine to drug addicts is Mash. Mash is biased, has vested
personal interest in ibogaine and second generation ibogaine drugs
(nor-ibogaine) and Mash lies.

If she doesn’t lie then she changes her mind a lot as with the
constantly closing but never really closed Healing Visions.

Ibogaine is never going anywhere in the united states if it depends
on
Mash for anything. If she ever submits data to anyone, it’s not going
to
be anything that says ibogaine is safe. There is never even a need
to
interview Mash, everyone already knows what she will say which is
ibogaine is extremely dangerous and kills everyone unless she sells
it
to you.

I think ibogaine in united states is dead, Mash has helped turn it
into
same thing as lsd. I don’t know how agencies accept data or what
they
need for it to qualify but I’m not sure anyone would even accept
data
from person who is biased and has so much personal interest in that
outcome. That’s not science it is unfair business practice. I am sure
no
data will ever show that ibogaine is safe while all data show that
nor-ibogaine is very safe.

There is a real need for an unbiased group of scientists without
personal profit potential who really are investigating what ibogaine
does and what the science is, to have access to patients undergoing
ibogaine treatment. So far there are only ego maniacs with interest
in
themselves not in science.

A open question to the list is what can be done to bring scientists
who
want to do research instead of make a profit or increase their
market
share for a over priced detox, in contact with patients undergoing
ibogaine treatment in Mexico, Canada or elsewhere in the world.

I see ibogaine treatment moving forward but legal access and
scientific
research isn’t going anywhere. It hasn’t moved in years, with any of
it
depending on Mash it will never move.

Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message, including attachments, is for
the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and
privleged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, or
distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please
contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original
message.

From: “Allison Senepart” <aa.senepart@xtra.co.nz>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] unbiased ibogaine research? how?
Date: June 3, 2003 at 7:21:12 AM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Nothing wrong with profit if there are good reasons or intentions behind it.
As far as I can see most govts don’t want the hassle of recognizing
ibogaine.  It costs them votes cost addicts are a minority group and my
understanding of supplying Methadone is that is cheap shit that costs them
as little as possible and apparently keeps crime down cos it keeps addicts
happy and out of trouble.  They are seen to go through all the motions of
therapy etc. while not spending too much money or time and think they can
shove the whole problem under the carpet sort of thing.
Mostly its all crap.  The originial idea of the Methadone programe was to
drop dosage and get people off which hardly ever happens to my knowledge.
Most people I know end up increasing not dropping.  Most of the so called
people who are supposed to provide help don’t even know what they are
talking about and are very uninformed about their job in general but still
get paid for repeating text book phrases.  I probably sound cynical but they
give my a guts ache.  Thats why I won’t go through all the crap to go on the
programme. I’d rather stay at home and deal with myself than those wankers.
It would be great to see some progress on ibogaine or even open minds to
other treatments but it seems like banging your head against a brick wall at
times.  I know there are people who are passionate out there but the
majority are just muddling along in some passive state worrying about whats
in their own back yard.
PS  Sorry for ranting.  Must be in one of those moods.  Allison
—– Original Message —–
From: “Sara” <sara119@xs4all.nl>
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2003 8:26 PM
Subject: RE: [ibogaine] unbiased ibogaine research? how?

What is wrong with making profit ? even the water company makes profit .
People who do research for the farmacutical industry make a fortune ,
why would they change to a non profit research ?
I don’t know Dr. Mash in person but I don’t think that she makes huge
profits,she could make more money doing something else.

Ibogaine will not go anywhere ,just because the farmacutical industry
Doesn’t want it to,It is all about personal interest, that’s the drive
Of our materialistic selfish time we live in.

S

—–Original Message—–
From: marcus75@ziplip.com [mailto:marcus75@ziplip.com]
Sent: dinsdag 3 juni 2003 3:32
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Subject: [ibogaine] unbiased ibogaine research? how?

I write this message with respect to everyone and hope to receive the
same.  This means you Patrick, it is not necessary to go off on me, I am
not blindly attacking anyone or making unfounded accusations. I am
writing only on facts as they have been shown over course of years of
time.

I would think that somewhere between Marc’s attitude of ibogaine being
very safe and Mash’s hysteria of ibogaine will kill everybody unless she
is the one giving it to you, is the middle of some level of what is
real..

What I’d like to know is what the real facts are about ibogaine’s safety
or danger. I think that with the present situation none of these will
ever be known by anyone because the only researcher with human data on
giving ibogaine to drug addicts is Mash. Mash is biased, has vested
personal interest in ibogaine and second generation ibogaine drugs
(nor-ibogaine) and Mash lies.

If she doesn’t lie then she changes her mind a lot as with the
constantly closing but never really closed Healing Visions.

Ibogaine is never going anywhere in the united states if it depends on
Mash for anything. If she ever submits data to anyone, it’s not going to
be anything that says ibogaine is safe. There is never even a need to
interview Mash, everyone already knows what she will say which is
ibogaine is extremely dangerous and kills everyone unless she sells it
to you.

I think ibogaine in united states is dead, Mash has helped turn it into
same thing as lsd. I don’t know how agencies accept data or what they
need for it to qualify but I’m not sure anyone would even accept data
from person who is biased and has so much personal interest in that
outcome. That’s not science it is unfair business practice. I am sure no
data will ever show that ibogaine is safe while all data show that
nor-ibogaine is very safe.

There is a real need for an unbiased group of scientists without
personal profit potential who really are investigating what ibogaine
does and what the science is, to have access to patients undergoing
ibogaine treatment. So far there are only ego maniacs with interest in
themselves not in science.

A open question to the list is what can be done to bring scientists who
want to do research instead of make a profit or increase their market
share for a over priced detox, in contact with patients undergoing
ibogaine treatment in Mexico, Canada or elsewhere in the world.

I see ibogaine treatment moving forward but legal access and scientific
research isn’t going anywhere. It hasn’t moved in years, with any of it
depending on Mash it will never move.

From: “Sara” <sara119@xs4all.nl>
Subject: RE: [ibogaine] unbiased ibogaine research? how?
Date: June 3, 2003 at 4:26:41 AM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

What is wrong with making profit ? even the water company makes profit .
People who do research for the farmacutical industry make a fortune ,
why would they change to a non profit research ?
I don’t know Dr. Mash in person but I don’t think that she makes huge
profits,she could make more money doing something else.

Ibogaine will not go anywhere ,just because the farmacutical industry
Doesn’t want it to,It is all about personal interest, that’s the drive
Of our materialistic selfish time we live in.

S

—–Original Message—–
From: marcus75@ziplip.com [mailto:marcus75@ziplip.com]
Sent: dinsdag 3 juni 2003 3:32
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Subject: [ibogaine] unbiased ibogaine research? how?

I write this message with respect to everyone and hope to receive the
same.  This means you Patrick, it is not necessary to go off on me, I am
not blindly attacking anyone or making unfounded accusations. I am
writing only on facts as they have been shown over course of years of
time.

I would think that somewhere between Marc’s attitude of ibogaine being
very safe and Mash’s hysteria of ibogaine will kill everybody unless she
is the one giving it to you, is the middle of some level of what is
real..

What I’d like to know is what the real facts are about ibogaine’s safety
or danger. I think that with the present situation none of these will
ever be known by anyone because the only researcher with human data on
giving ibogaine to drug addicts is Mash. Mash is biased, has vested
personal interest in ibogaine and second generation ibogaine drugs
(nor-ibogaine) and Mash lies.

If she doesn’t lie then she changes her mind a lot as with the
constantly closing but never really closed Healing Visions.

Ibogaine is never going anywhere in the united states if it depends on
Mash for anything. If she ever submits data to anyone, it’s not going to
be anything that says ibogaine is safe. There is never even a need to
interview Mash, everyone already knows what she will say which is
ibogaine is extremely dangerous and kills everyone unless she sells it
to you.

I think ibogaine in united states is dead, Mash has helped turn it into
same thing as lsd. I don’t know how agencies accept data or what they
need for it to qualify but I’m not sure anyone would even accept data
from person who is biased and has so much personal interest in that
outcome. That’s not science it is unfair business practice. I am sure no
data will ever show that ibogaine is safe while all data show that
nor-ibogaine is very safe.

There is a real need for an unbiased group of scientists without
personal profit potential who really are investigating what ibogaine
does and what the science is, to have access to patients undergoing
ibogaine treatment. So far there are only ego maniacs with interest in
themselves not in science.

A open question to the list is what can be done to bring scientists who
want to do research instead of make a profit or increase their market
share for a over priced detox, in contact with patients undergoing
ibogaine treatment in Mexico, Canada or elsewhere in the world.

I see ibogaine treatment moving forward but legal access and scientific
research isn’t going anywhere. It hasn’t moved in years, with any of it
depending on Mash it will never move.

From: <crownofthorns@hushmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] unbiased ibogaine research? how?
Date: June 2, 2003 at 11:34:55 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Good answer bro, good answer 🙂 and hello 🙂 Missed your input, visit
your own list more often, you haven’t said anything in 2 months 🙂 I
know I know, you’re busy.

Peace out,
Curtis

On Mon, 02 Jun 2003 20:10:52 -0700 “Patrick K. Kroupa” <digital@phantom.com>
wrote:
On [Mon, Jun 02, 2003 at 06:31:50PM -0700], [marcus75@ziplip.com]
wrote:

| I write this message with respect to everyone and hope to receive
the
| same.

Otay, why not.

I think that people who talk much, do little, and have no actual
awareness
of anything even vaguely approaching the facts of a given situation;
spend
a lotta time talking bullshit.

On the flipside, that’s okay.  I think it’s the nature of being
human to
bitch about things while doing nothing to effect change.

Unlike people who sit n’ spin and talk bullshit, Deborah has spent
years
of her time working on ibogaine.  She has never received compensation
for
this, very few people have ever said “thanks,” and it certainly
hasn’t
helped her career much.  What it has generated are mountains of
hate-mail,
bullshit, and vilification by people who know absolutely nothing
’bout
her, what’s going on, or what hurdles need to be crossed to get
from Point
<A> to Point <Z>.

Anybody who wants to work with entheogenic substances in present-
day
America has some problems.  The field does not tend to attract the
best
and the brightest; it mostly calls out to wackjobs.  “Lessee, okay,
well,
work with psychedelic drugs and set fire to my career, or… go
find
something else to do with my time.  Gosh, thanks for the offer,
but I’m
gonna take a great big pass on all that!  Seeya.”

If the current situation, results, and legal status of ibogaine
are not to
your liking.  Oh well.  Bummer do0d.  Best of luck finding someone
who
wants to align their life, career, and output, with your whims.

I, personally, don’t think ibogaine is ever exiting schedule I.
I don’t
think LSD25 is ever gonna be vacating that spot either; and I have
Big
Doubts that MDMA is gonna break loose and run away over to schedule
II or
III.  There are a variety of people who think and hope otherwise,
and
actually do their best to make change occur, which is pretty cool.

The bottom line is, LSD has been schedule I the entire time I have
been
alive.  But, this really hasn’t stopped it from “working.”  I don’t
think
anybody has ever pulled it aside and explained The Situation to
LSD.

– – – – – – – – –

Uhm, you’re schedule I.  So … cut it out.  Stop “working.”  It
clearly
states that you don’t do anything helpful.

LSD: Huh?

You’re a dangerous highly addictive drug with absolutely no medical
value.

LSD: <GigglE!>

Look, you’re not paying attention, go over to the DEA website, the
FACTS
speak for themselves.  As you can plainly see, we have assembled
a large
collection of data, which looks like it was written by a small child
with
crayons, attempting to describe a bad experience.  Scary Monsters,

Super-Freaks, MadNeSs, 1ns4n!ty, Drain Bamage, Glow in the Dark
chromosomes, MuTants! (go see the X-Men for Conclusive Fully Documented
Proof!)  Pay attention now.

LSD:  PreTty c0lorZ, l1ghTs, eYes, reintegration,  Wo000 HoooO!
<bouncey>
<BounceY> <Bouncey!>  Happy!  .G0dh34D.

That’s it, I can’t talk to you anymore.  You’re crazy.

– – – – – – – – –

Anywaze, getting back to ibogaine.  For me the truth is pretty simple.
Ibogaine “works.”  Everything else is just noise.  By works, I mean
to say
it hits a reset and gets you unsprung.  For people who are able
to cop a
certain headspace and maintain it, that’s pretty much it.  You can
use it
to step out of drug dependence.  thE End.  For others, it’s the
first step
on their journey through other paradigms.  But ya know, at least
they’re
fucking moving — as opposed to sinking.

Whatever the fallout happens to be, it’s quite likely that ibogaine
will
continue to work.

Having said all that, it’s highly different from LSD in the respect
that
it can keel you ded mahn.  LSD ain’t gonna do that.  Of course LSD
also
isn’t going to unspring you.

I have profound respect for ibogaine.  I think that’s a pretty good
headspace to maintain while dealing with it.  If you start to get
cocky,
blase’, and think you know what to expect … odds are it’s gonna
turn
around and bite you in the ass REALLY hard, when you least expect
it.  The
universe just sorta seems to work that way.

To conclude, I really don’t have any problems with anybody who is
involved
with ibogaine.  I think that most people mean well, and are motivated

at least in part — by the genuine desire to help others.

What really annoys me is what passes for “drug treatment” in present-

day
society, and that whole entire “War on Drugs” thing.

Having spent nearly my entire life at the receiving end of both;
I have a
lotta unresolved issues to work out.  By which I mean to say I will
NEVER
shut up about what a fucking pathetic joke these paradigms are.

Laters,

Patrick

p.s., Here are the results of my unbiased ibogaine research: yo,
it workx!

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From: “Patrick K. Kroupa” <digital@phantom.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] unbiased ibogaine research? how?
Date: June 2, 2003 at 11:10:52 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

On [Mon, Jun 02, 2003 at 06:31:50PM -0700], [marcus75@ziplip.com] wrote:

| I write this message with respect to everyone and hope to receive the
| same.

Otay, why not.

I think that people who talk much, do little, and have no actual awareness
of anything even vaguely approaching the facts of a given situation; spend
a lotta time talking bullshit.

On the flipside, that’s okay.  I think it’s the nature of being human to
bitch about things while doing nothing to effect change.

Unlike people who sit n’ spin and talk bullshit, Deborah has spent years
of her time working on ibogaine.  She has never received compensation for
this, very few people have ever said “thanks,” and it certainly hasn’t
helped her career much.  What it has generated are mountains of hate-mail,
bullshit, and vilification by people who know absolutely nothing ’bout
her, what’s going on, or what hurdles need to be crossed to get from Point
<A> to Point <Z>.

Anybody who wants to work with entheogenic substances in present-day
America has some problems.  The field does not tend to attract the best
and the brightest; it mostly calls out to wackjobs.  “Lessee, okay, well,
work with psychedelic drugs and set fire to my career, or… go find
something else to do with my time.  Gosh, thanks for the offer, but I’m
gonna take a great big pass on all that!  Seeya.”

If the current situation, results, and legal status of ibogaine are not to
your liking.  Oh well.  Bummer do0d.  Best of luck finding someone who
wants to align their life, career, and output, with your whims.

I, personally, don’t think ibogaine is ever exiting schedule I.  I don’t
think LSD25 is ever gonna be vacating that spot either; and I have Big
Doubts that MDMA is gonna break loose and run away over to schedule II or
III.  There are a variety of people who think and hope otherwise, and
actually do their best to make change occur, which is pretty cool.

The bottom line is, LSD has been schedule I the entire time I have been
alive.  But, this really hasn’t stopped it from “working.”  I don’t think
anybody has ever pulled it aside and explained The Situation to LSD.

– – – – – – – – –

Uhm, you’re schedule I.  So … cut it out.  Stop “working.”  It clearly
states that you don’t do anything helpful.

LSD: Huh?

You’re a dangerous highly addictive drug with absolutely no medical value.

LSD: <GigglE!>

Look, you’re not paying attention, go over to the DEA website, the FACTS
speak for themselves.  As you can plainly see, we have assembled a large
collection of data, which looks like it was written by a small child with
crayons, attempting to describe a bad experience.  Scary Monsters,
Super-Freaks, MadNeSs, 1ns4n!ty, Drain Bamage, Glow in the Dark
chromosomes, MuTants! (go see the X-Men for Conclusive Fully Documented
Proof!)  Pay attention now.

LSD:  PreTty c0lorZ, l1ghTs, eYes, reintegration,  Wo000 HoooO!  <bouncey>
<BounceY> <Bouncey!>  Happy!  .G0dh34D.

That’s it, I can’t talk to you anymore.  You’re crazy.

– – – – – – – – –

Anywaze, getting back to ibogaine.  For me the truth is pretty simple.
Ibogaine “works.”  Everything else is just noise.  By works, I mean to say
it hits a reset and gets you unsprung.  For people who are able to cop a
certain headspace and maintain it, that’s pretty much it.  You can use it
to step out of drug dependence.  thE End.  For others, it’s the first step
on their journey through other paradigms.  But ya know, at least they’re
fucking moving — as opposed to sinking.

Whatever the fallout happens to be, it’s quite likely that ibogaine will
continue to work.

Having said all that, it’s highly different from LSD in the respect that
it can keel you ded mahn.  LSD ain’t gonna do that.  Of course LSD also
isn’t going to unspring you.

I have profound respect for ibogaine.  I think that’s a pretty good
headspace to maintain while dealing with it.  If you start to get cocky,
blase’, and think you know what to expect … odds are it’s gonna turn
around and bite you in the ass REALLY hard, when you least expect it.  The
universe just sorta seems to work that way.

To conclude, I really don’t have any problems with anybody who is involved
with ibogaine.  I think that most people mean well, and are motivated —
at least in part — by the genuine desire to help others.

What really annoys me is what passes for “drug treatment” in present-day
society, and that whole entire “War on Drugs” thing.

Having spent nearly my entire life at the receiving end of both; I have a
lotta unresolved issues to work out.  By which I mean to say I will NEVER
shut up about what a fucking pathetic joke these paradigms are.

Laters,

Patrick

p.s., Here are the results of my unbiased ibogaine research: yo, it workx!

From: “Patrick K. Kroupa” <digital@phantom.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] unbiased ibogaine research? how?
Date: June 2, 2003 at 11:08:00 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

On [Mon, Jun 02, 2003 at 06:31:50PM -0700], [marcus75@ziplip.com] wrote:

| I write this message with respect to everyone and hope to receive the
| same.

Otay, why not.

I think that people who talk much, do little, and have no actual awareness
of anything even vaguely approaching the facts of a given situation; spend
a lotta time talking bullshit.

On the flipside, that’s okay.  I think it’s the nature of being human to
bitch about things while doing nothing to effect change.

Unlike people who sit n’ spin and talk bullshit, Deborah has spent years
of her time working on ibogaine.  She has never received compensation for
this, very few people have ever said “thanks,” and it certainly hasn’t
helped her career much.  What it has generated are mountains of hate-mail,
bullshit, and vilification by people who know absolutely nothing ’bout
her, what’s going on, or what hurdles need to be crossed to get from Point
<A> to Point <Z>.

Anybody who wants to work with entheogenic substances in present-day
America has some problems.  The field does not tend to attract the best
and the brightest; it mostly calls out to wackjobs.  “Lessee, okay, well,
work with psychedelic drugs and set fire to my career, or… go find
something else to do with my time.  Gosh, thanks for the offer, but I’m
gonna take a great big pass on all that!  Seeya.”

If the current situation, results, and legal status of ibogaine are not to
your liking.  Oh well.  Bummer do0d.  Best of luck finding someone who
wants to align their life, career, and output, with your whims.

I, personally, don’t think ibogaine is ever exiting schedule I.  I don’t
think LSD25 is ever gonna be vacating that spot either; and I have Big
Doubts that MDMA is gonna break loose and run away over to schedule II or
III.  There are a variety of people who think and hope otherwise, and
actually do their best to make change occur, which is pretty cool.

The bottom line is, LSD has been schedule I the entire time I have been
alive.  But, this really hasn’t stopped it from “working.”  I don’t think
anybody has ever pulled it aside and explained The Situation to LSD.

– – – – – – – – –

Uhm, you’re schedule I.  So … cut it out.  Stop “working.”  It clearly
states that you don’t do anything helpful.

LSD: Huh?

You’re a dangerous highly addictive drug with absolutely no medical value.

LSD: <GigglE!>

Look, you’re not paying attention, go over to the DEA website, the FACTS
speak for themselves.  As you can plainly see, we have assembled a large
collection of data, which looks like it was written by a small child with
crayons, attempting to describe a bad experience.  Scary Monsters,
Super-Freaks, MadNeSs, 1ns4n!ty, Drain Bamage, Glow in the Dark
chromosomes, MuTants! (go see the X-Men for Conclusive Fully Documented
Proof!)  Pay attention now.

LSD:  PreTty c0lorZ, l1ghTs, eYes, reintegration,  Wo000 HoooO!  <bouncey>
<BounceY> <Bouncey!>  Happy!  .G0dh34D.

That’s it, I can’t talk to you anymore.  You’re crazy.

– – – – – – – – –

Anywaze, getting back to ibogaine.  For me the truth is pretty simple.
Ibogaine “works.”  Everything else is just noise.  By works, I mean to say
it hits a reset and gets you unsprung.  For people who are able to cop a
certain headspace and maintain it, that’s pretty much it.  You can use it
to step out of drug dependence.  thE End.  For others, it’s the first step
on their journey through other paradigms.  But ya know, at least they’re
fucking moving — as opposed to sinking.

Whatever the fallout happens to be, it’s quite likely that ibogaine will
continue to work.

Having said all that, it’s highly different from LSD in the respect that
it can keel you ded mahn.  LSD ain’t gonna do that.  Of course LSD also
isn’t going to unspring you.

I have profound respect for ibogaine.  I think that’s a pretty good
headspace to maintain while dealing with it.  If you start to get cocky,
blase’, and think you know what to expect … odds are it’s gonna turn
around and bite you in the ass REALLY hard, when you least expect it.  The
universe just sorta seems to work that way.

To conclude, I really don’t have any problems with anybody who is involved
with ibogaine.  I think that most people mean well, and are motivated —
at least in part — by the genuine desire to help others.

What really annoys me is what passes for “drug treatment” in present-day
society, and that whole entire “War on Drugs” thing.

Having spent nearly my entire life at the receiving end of both; I have a
lotta unresolved issues to work out.  By which I mean to say I will NEVER
shut up about what a fucking sick joke these paradigms are.  Hah.  So
there.

Laters,

Patrick

p.s., Here are the results of my unbiased ibogaine research: yo, it workx!

From: “marcus75@ziplip.com” <marcus75@ziplip.com>
Subject: [ibogaine] unbiased ibogaine research? how?
Date: June 2, 2003 at 9:31:50 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

I write this message with respect to everyone and hope to receive the same.  This means you Patrick, it is not necessary to go off on me, I am not blindly attacking anyone or making unfounded accusations. I am writing only on facts as they have been shown over course of years of time.

I would think that somewhere between Marc’s attitude of ibogaine being very safe and Mash’s hysteria of ibogaine will kill everybody unless she is the one giving it to you, is the middle of some level of what is real..

What I’d like to know is what the real facts are about ibogaine’s safety or danger. I think that with the present situation none of these will ever be known by anyone because the only researcher with human data on giving ibogaine to drug addicts is Mash. Mash is biased, has vested personal interest in ibogaine and second generation ibogaine drugs (nor-ibogaine) and Mash lies.

If she doesn’t lie then she changes her mind a lot as with the constantly closing but never really closed Healing Visions.

Ibogaine is never going anywhere in the united states if it depends on Mash for anything. If she ever submits data to anyone, it’s not going to be anything that says ibogaine is safe. There is never even a need to interview Mash, everyone already knows what she will say which is ibogaine is extremely dangerous and kills everyone unless she sells it to you.

I think ibogaine in united states is dead, Mash has helped turn it into same thing as lsd. I don’t know how agencies accept data or what they need for it to qualify but I’m not sure anyone would even accept data from person who is biased and has so much personal interest in that outcome. That’s not science it is unfair business practice. I am sure no data will ever show that ibogaine is safe while all data show that nor-ibogaine is very safe.

There is a real need for an unbiased group of scientists without personal profit potential who really are investigating what ibogaine does and what the science is, to have access to patients undergoing ibogaine treatment. So far there are only ego maniacs with interest in themselves not in science.

A open question to the list is what can be done to bring scientists who want to do research instead of make a profit or increase their market share for a over priced detox, in contact with patients undergoing ibogaine treatment in Mexico, Canada or elsewhere in the world.

I see ibogaine treatment moving forward but legal access and scientific research isn’t going anywhere. It hasn’t moved in years, with any of it depending on Mash it will never move.

From: “tgoodson7” <tgoodson7@cox.net>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] In a clinical setting, you’re chances are greater…
Date: June 2, 2003 at 3:06:48 PM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Marc:  No offense intended!!  I have read some very good reviews about your
clinic.  And we had the adminstration of the therapy at my daughters home.
Certainly no clinical setting.  I
was not intending to cast aspersions at you or
anyine of similar set-up.  Please, I am a pacifist!!
I am chastised!!

Tommy G.
—– Original Message —–
From: “MARC” <marc420emery@shaw.ca>
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2003 10:03 PM
Subject: [ibogaine] In a clinical setting, you’re chances are greater…

I want to take issue with this assertion:

In a clinical
setting your prospects are much improved and the safety
factor is greater.<<<<

I disagree.

I have seen no evidence that a suitable dose of Ibogaine HCI or Indra
Extract (20%) administered to a person who has had a heart scan and a
blood
test (incl. ALT) and is otherwise even reasonably healthy is at ANY RISK
AT
ALL. Most of my patients have HEP C, and other damage, so we’re still
talking relatively healthy.

Oh, I am aware of the 7 or so known deaths since 1965. Virtually all can
be
explained, and even then, 7 fatalities in 40 years speaks to its
remarkable
safety, considering the modern day user of ibogaine is by virtue of drug
addiction in a very high risk group.

I have treated 21 patients thirty-five times in the most recent 7 months,
some once, others twice, though none were addicts any longer at the time
of
the second treatment (though some had lapsed and used on a single
occasion).

The best safety you can insure is that your monitor/facillitator/etc. be
prepared to take you to hospital if you fall unconscious or if any vital
signs (heartbeat, temperature) create serious concern. Observe MAO
inhibitor
protocols in the diet period prior to iboga administration,

A good friend, a medically minded person, iboga from a reliable source, a
heart scan and blood test (and understanding the information in the scan &
blood test) and I believe you have all the things necessary to organize
your
own treatment. I really don’t think people need to go to a clinic if they
know someone who can organize treatment properly.

What I find is that 48 hours after the iboga experience, all the patients
want to flee into the arms of someone they love and trust, get some
stability, and then they want to exploit the energy and optimism (and
being
drug free) and keep moving. They don’t really want to stay any longer than
necessary no matter how great the view, art supplies, good food, etc. you
have in your environment (as we have had). All the can think about is
‘their
life’ now that they are no longer drug addicted. Really, they are so
caught
up in thinking about ‘their life’ NOW that they only really remember to
thank you later on for unspringing them.

There is no magic a clinic/hospital can offer. Even there, a doctor is on
call, there is no doctor at your bedside 24 hours a day. A nurse comes in
a
measures your vital signs. Thats what we do. If theres a crisis, the nurse
gets a doctor, thats what we do.

Surprisingly, the task that is most challenging is getting the patient to
drink fluid (Gatorade is best because it has electrolytes that make the
water most useful) and then to eat food. And helping them figure out what
they are going to do with all that extra time since they only need 2 hours
sleep each night for about 2 – 3 weeks.

All 21 patients I have treated are all greatly improved in their lives.
Their destructive drug taking is gone or remarkably reduced. No one has
returned to full bore drug addiction, though some have lapsed and used
their
drug on isolated occasions. Many are in school now (all ages) or working
again. Most regard iboga extract (thats what we give them) as one of the
best things ever to happen to them.

Since I didn’t charge anyone any money whatsoever, I have no proprietary
interest in iboga. I receive no income at any point in any way from iboga.
I
think with proper planning, anyone can have themselves treated, and a bit
of
to do list needs to be written up for those that could and can and should
do
a dose of iboga.

Marc Emery
Iboga Therapy House

—– Original Message —–
From: “tgoodson7” <tgoodson7@cox.net>
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2003 6:23 PM
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] dosing ibogaine

In an up-to-date modern facility they probably will give you a complete
protocal which will
lay out the period of most risk following the first week of treatment
for
an
indefinite period after that.
I had it adminstered to my grandson;  and it took 6 days for the
treatment

for a doss of 2 grams of
Ibogaine.  With no after treatment protocal immediately planned he
relapsed.
He had been addicted since he was 12; he is 25 years old now.  He began
on
Marijuana and after 2 or 3 years he switched to hard drugs and tried
about
everything except Heroin.  He says he feels Ibogaine probably saved his
life, anyway.

In spite of his relapse he swears by Ibogaine.    He is serving 5 years
in
prison now for transgressions commited prior his treatment.  In a
clinical
setting your prospects are much improved and the safety
factor is greater.  However, many Addicts are receiving treatment from a
few
very experienced practitioners with apparently amazing success.

It has been more then 2 years since my grandson took the “cure” and he
still
touts Ibogaine and plans to resume post treatment therapy with whatever
follow-up therapy is recommended by experienced providers when he is
released.

I strongly urge you to follow through and get the complete recommended
Ibogaine Protocal.

GOOD LUCK

TOMMY   G.

—– Original Message —–
From: “Captain Black” <jericho02000@yahoo.co.uk>
To: <ibogaine@Mindvox.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2003 11:03 PM
Subject: [ibogaine] dosing ibogaine

I will be doing ibogaine next week. I have read the
ibogaine series in Heroin Times and have most of the
info from online some of the sites. The question I
have is how long can I expect the trip to last? I am
using purified ibogaine. Is it a day or will it go on
for more then a day?

I have been using heroin for 4 years only, how many
times should I expect to need ibogaine and is there
any best idea for what to do after. I am not
interested in the 12 step rehab but open to most other
ideas.

Thank you
cb

__________________________________________________
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http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/yplus/yoffer.html

From: Pete <onthecheese@earthlink.net>
Subject: [ibogaine] Maybe Mat Damon can fund further ibogaine research
Date: June 2, 2003 at 8:01:42 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Hi All,

So i was a little bored one weekday and mindless tv watching seemed appropriate, and then a movie i had seen years ago came on called Good Will Hunting, about a genius delinquent getting it together.

Anyway, he is chatting up this girl, and wants to take her out that day but she is busy ‘cos she has to write the formula for ‘ibogamine’. When i heard this, i wasnt sure if i misheard this, but i was now more awake and aware of my surroundings, and tuned in more to the film, as i watch Mat Damon go outside into the park, scribble down something on a piece of paper, go back into the room where his potential love interest is trying to find this formula, and out he pulls the formula for ibogaine…well it was very quick but it definitely had an indole ring and looked like ibogaine in that flash and he did repeat what sounded like ‘ibogamine’…..

okay so he is a genius and all, but he is also , young, hip?filthy rich and KNOWS about ibogaine, which is a rare thing, and so maybe hitting someone like this, or there must be someone with the means and knowhow or connections to contact him, maybe he can transform the world (being a genius)into one where ibogaine treatment is maintstream.

I mean, how did ibogaine get into this hollywood movie, and noone noticed

lots

pete

From: MARC <marc420emery@shaw.ca>
Subject: [ibogaine] In a clinical setting, you’re chances are greater…
Date: June 1, 2003 at 11:03:12 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

I want to take issue with this assertion:

In a clinical
setting your prospects are much improved and the safety
factor is greater.<<<<

I disagree.

I have seen no evidence that a suitable dose of Ibogaine HCI or Indra
Extract (20%) administered to a person who has had a heart scan and a blood
test (incl. ALT) and is otherwise even reasonably healthy is at ANY RISK AT
ALL. Most of my patients have HEP C, and other damage, so we’re still
talking relatively healthy.

Oh, I am aware of the 7 or so known deaths since 1965. Virtually all can be
explained, and even then, 7 fatalities in 40 years speaks to its remarkable
safety, considering the modern day user of ibogaine is by virtue of drug
addiction in a very high risk group.

I have treated 21 patients thirty-five times in the most recent 7 months,
some once, others twice, though none were addicts any longer at the time of
the second treatment (though some had lapsed and used on a single occasion).

The best safety you can insure is that your monitor/facillitator/etc. be
prepared to take you to hospital if you fall unconscious or if any vital
signs (heartbeat, temperature) create serious concern. Observe MAO inhibitor
protocols in the diet period prior to iboga administration,

A good friend, a medically minded person, iboga from a reliable source, a
heart scan and blood test (and understanding the information in the scan &
blood test) and I believe you have all the things necessary to organize your
own treatment. I really don’t think people need to go to a clinic if they
know someone who can organize treatment properly.

What I find is that 48 hours after the iboga experience, all the patients
want to flee into the arms of someone they love and trust, get some
stability, and then they want to exploit the energy and optimism (and being
drug free) and keep moving. They don’t really want to stay any longer than
necessary no matter how great the view, art supplies, good food, etc. you
have in your environment (as we have had). All the can think about is ‘their
life’ now that they are no longer drug addicted. Really, they are so caught
up in thinking about ‘their life’ NOW that they only really remember to
thank you later on for unspringing them.

There is no magic a clinic/hospital can offer. Even there, a doctor is on
call, there is no doctor at your bedside 24 hours a day. A nurse comes in a
measures your vital signs. Thats what we do. If theres a crisis, the nurse
gets a doctor, thats what we do.

Surprisingly, the task that is most challenging is getting the patient to
drink fluid (Gatorade is best because it has electrolytes that make the
water most useful) and then to eat food. And helping them figure out what
they are going to do with all that extra time since they only need 2 hours
sleep each night for about 2 – 3 weeks.

All 21 patients I have treated are all greatly improved in their lives.
Their destructive drug taking is gone or remarkably reduced. No one has
returned to full bore drug addiction, though some have lapsed and used their
drug on isolated occasions. Many are in school now (all ages) or working
again. Most regard iboga extract (thats what we give them) as one of the
best things ever to happen to them.

Since I didn’t charge anyone any money whatsoever, I have no proprietary
interest in iboga. I receive no income at any point in any way from iboga. I
think with proper planning, anyone can have themselves treated, and a bit of
to do list needs to be written up for those that could and can and should do
a dose of iboga.

Marc Emery
Iboga Therapy House

—– Original Message —–
From: “tgoodson7” <tgoodson7@cox.net>
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2003 6:23 PM
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] dosing ibogaine

In an up-to-date modern facility they probably will give you a complete
protocal which will
lay out the period of most risk following the first week of treatment for
an
indefinite period after that.
I had it adminstered to my grandson;  and it took 6 days for the treatment

for a doss of 2 grams of
Ibogaine.  With no after treatment protocal immediately planned he
relapsed.
He had been addicted since he was 12; he is 25 years old now.  He began on
Marijuana and after 2 or 3 years he switched to hard drugs and tried about
everything except Heroin.  He says he feels Ibogaine probably saved his
life, anyway.

In spite of his relapse he swears by Ibogaine.    He is serving 5 years in
prison now for transgressions commited prior his treatment.  In a clinical
setting your prospects are much improved and the safety
factor is greater.  However, many Addicts are receiving treatment from a
few
very experienced practitioners with apparently amazing success.

It has been more then 2 years since my grandson took the “cure” and he
still
touts Ibogaine and plans to resume post treatment therapy with whatever
follow-up therapy is recommended by experienced providers when he is
released.

I strongly urge you to follow through and get the complete recommended
Ibogaine Protocal.

GOOD LUCK

TOMMY   G.

—– Original Message —–
From: “Captain Black” <jericho02000@yahoo.co.uk>
To: <ibogaine@Mindvox.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2003 11:03 PM
Subject: [ibogaine] dosing ibogaine

I will be doing ibogaine next week. I have read the
ibogaine series in Heroin Times and have most of the
info from online some of the sites. The question I
have is how long can I expect the trip to last? I am
using purified ibogaine. Is it a day or will it go on
for more then a day?

I have been using heroin for 4 years only, how many
times should I expect to need ibogaine and is there
any best idea for what to do after. I am not
interested in the 12 step rehab but open to most other
ideas.

Thank you
cb

__________________________________________________
Yahoo! Plus – For a better Internet experience
http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/yplus/yoffer.html

From: <crownofthorns@hushmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] dosing ibogaine
Date: June 1, 2003 at 10:21:09 PM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Bro I don’t think there is any one thing anyone has ever agreed on to
do after ibogaine except that you need to do something. None of the 12
step philosophy ever worked for me either, it only kept me in this mindset
of I’m sick and addicted and can’t make changes so I have to go sit in
these rooms and I might as well get high because to quote Patrick 😉
if the choice is being on drugs or being in those rooms, then I pick
lesser of two evils and stick with the drugs.

That’s the big lie, it isn’t a choice between that, there are all kinds
of choices. For me I never got better until I got away from the Treatment
Pimps and addiction people. I have nearly 3 years clean now and was already
clean before I did ibogaine the first time.

I don’t know where exactly you live but I would look up what other groups
are in your area where you could get support by meeting with people who
have the same kinds of problems but are not going to try and sell you
some disease that doesn’t exist.

I’ve done ibogaine 3 times now and will probably do it more. I didn’t
‘need’ to do it even once, since I was not addicted to drugs when I first
did it but it has done wonders for helping my head. I was struggling
a lot before doing it, it helped me to get into a place where I am more
at peace with myself and the whole world.

Try it and let us know how it goes. There are a lot of good people here,
even the crazy and angry ones 🙂

Peace out,
Curtis

On Sat, 31 May 2003 21:03:47 -0700 =?iso-8859-1?q?Captain=20Black?= <jericho02000@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
I will be doing ibogaine next week. I have read the
ibogaine series in Heroin Times and have most of the
info from online some of the sites. The question I
have is how long can I expect the trip to last? I am
using purified ibogaine. Is it a day or will it go on
for more then a day?

I have been using heroin for 4 years only, how many
times should I expect to need ibogaine and is there
any best idea for what to do after. I am not
interested in the 12 step rehab but open to most other
ideas.

Thank you
cb

__________________________________________________
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From: “tgoodson7” <tgoodson7@cox.net>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] dosing ibogaine
Date: June 1, 2003 at 9:23:47 PM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

In an up-to-date modern facility they probably will give you a complete
protocal which will
lay out the period of most risk following the first week of treatment for an
indefinite period after that.
I had it adminstered to my grandson;  and it took 6 days for the treatment
for a doss of 2 grams of
Ibogaine.  With no after treatment protocal immediately planned he relapsed.
He had been addicted since he was 12; he is 25 years old now.  He began on
Marijuana and after 2 or 3 years he switched to hard drugs and tried about
everything except Heroin.  He says he feels Ibogaine probably saved his
life, anyway.

In spite of his relapse he swears by Ibogaine.    He is serving 5 years in
prison now for transgressions commited prior his treatment.  In a clinical
setting your prospects are much improved and the safety
factor is greater.  However, many Addicts are receiving treatment from a few
very experienced practitioners with apparently amazing success.

It has been more then 2 years since my grandson took the “cure” and he still
touts Ibogaine and plans to resume post treatment therapy with whatever
follow-up therapy is recommended by experienced providers when he is
released.

I strongly urge you to follow through and get the complete recommended
Ibogaine Protocal.

GOOD LUCK

TOMMY   G.

—– Original Message —–
From: “Captain Black” <jericho02000@yahoo.co.uk>
To: <ibogaine@Mindvox.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2003 11:03 PM
Subject: [ibogaine] dosing ibogaine

I will be doing ibogaine next week. I have read the
ibogaine series in Heroin Times and have most of the
info from online some of the sites. The question I
have is how long can I expect the trip to last? I am
using purified ibogaine. Is it a day or will it go on
for more then a day?

I have been using heroin for 4 years only, how many
times should I expect to need ibogaine and is there
any best idea for what to do after. I am not
interested in the 12 step rehab but open to most other
ideas.

Thank you
cb

__________________________________________________
Yahoo! Plus – For a better Internet experience
http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/yplus/yoffer.html

From: HSLotsof@aol.com
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] dosing ibogaine
Date: June 1, 2003 at 10:18:00 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

In a message dated 6/1/03 12:10:10 AM, jericho02000@yahoo.co.uk writes:

I will be doing ibogaine next week. I have read the
ibogaine series in Heroin Times and have most of the
info from online some of the sites. The question I
have is how long can I expect the trip to last? I am
using purified ibogaine. Is it a day or will it go on
for more then a day?

Yes, in different parts that are different in effect.
Read <http://www.ibogaine.org/clin-perspectives.html>

I have been using heroin for 4 years only, how many
times should I expect to need ibogaine and is there
any best idea for what to do after. I am not
interested in the 12 step rehab but open to most other
ideas.

You will probably need ibogaine more than once but, not necessarily so.  All
patients exhibit different needs.  The best thing for you to do after, is find
something that is satisfying enough to replace your heroin/time.  I am
talking of picking up your life rather than a specific form of post ibogaine
therapy.  The most extensive review of post ibogaine therapy can be found at <
http://www.ibogaine.org/manual.html#post> and at <
http://www.ibogaine.org/manual.html#dispost>

There are more extensive documents that are linked to these two sections of
the Manual for Ibogaine Therapy that have been written by different providers.

Howard

From: “Allison Senepart” <aa.senepart@xtra.co.nz>
Subject: Re: [ibogaine] test
Date: June 1, 2003 at 8:21:43 AM EDT
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Yes.  You must be on the list cos I just read your message but am sorry I
can’t answer the question of time for you.  There should be someone who can
tell you all the info on that.  A lot of people on this list know far more
than I do but I just thought I’d let you know that your mail did come
through….. Allison
—– Original Message —–
From: “Captain Black” <jericho02000@yahoo.co.uk>
To: <ibogaine@mindvox.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2003 4:00 PM
Subject: [ibogaine] test

Am I on this list. hello
cb

__________________________________________________
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From: Captain Black <jericho02000@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: [ibogaine] dosing ibogaine
Date: June 1, 2003 at 12:03:47 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@Mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

I will be doing ibogaine next week. I have read the
ibogaine series in Heroin Times and have most of the
info from online some of the sites. The question I
have is how long can I expect the trip to last? I am
using purified ibogaine. Is it a day or will it go on
for more then a day?

I have been using heroin for 4 years only, how many
times should I expect to need ibogaine and is there
any best idea for what to do after. I am not
interested in the 12 step rehab but open to most other
ideas.

Thank you
cb

__________________________________________________
Yahoo! Plus – For a better Internet experience
http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/yplus/yoffer.html

From: Captain Black <jericho02000@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: [ibogaine] test
Date: June 1, 2003 at 12:00:33 AM EDT
To: ibogaine@mindvox.com
Reply-To: ibogaine@mindvox.com

Am I on this list. hello
cb

__________________________________________________
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