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 rug
addiction is in the news all the time, and I comment about it on this blog
pretty often as well. Most of the time those mentions wind up on various
celebrity pages, or the drug humor page, but once
in a while I talk about the issue from a more adult perspective, and in those
cases the entries are archived on this page.
More recent blog
entries on this subject are added on top.
February
23, 2004
Interesting
article about what might be a miracle treatment for drug addiction.
However, when it comes
to curing addiction, a reputable scientist believes ibogaine is nothing
short of a miracle. "I didn't believe it when I first heard about
ibogaine. I thought it was something that needed to be debunked,"
admits Dr. Deborah Mash, professor of Neurology and Molecular and
Cellular Pharmacology at University of Miami.
Dr. Mash is one of the
few scientists in the world to study ibogaine, a mild hallucinogen that
comes from the root of a shrub found in West Africa and was rumored to
have the amazing ability to help drug addicts kick their addiction.
How about a testimonial?
Patrick Kroupa was a
heroin addict for 16 of his 35 years. "It was a very high level of
desperation. I had been pretty successful in my life, I had accomplished
a lot of things I wanted to do, and then repeatedly I just watched
everything burst into flames and disintegrate because I could not stay
off heroin," confesses Patrick. "It gets very tiring living
like a slave because you keep chasing this and it's like you're not
getting high, it's just 'I must do this every single day just to get
normal so I can function.'"
Like most addicts,
Patrick tried to quit. But treatment for addiction is notoriously
ineffective. Only one in ten addicts manages to return to a drug-free
life. Most stay dependent on illegal drugs or their legal substitutes,
like methadone.
"And I was a
spectacular failure at every possible treatment modality, every
paradigm, every detox, every therapy, nothing ever worked," admits
Patrick.
Within 45 minutes of
taking ibogaine, he actually felt his addiction leaving him. "That
moment is the first time in about 10 years that I had actually been
clean. Not just detoxed, but clean. That was it. That was the first
time. That was like a miracle," says Patrick
That was four years
ago. Patrick Kroupa has not touched drugs since. "I'm saying this
having been on heroin for my entire adult life. I mean, 14 to 30 is a
long time," he says.
The full article is
interesting, as it talks about ibogaine's effects and its almost magical
function. It's a mild hallucinogen, and puts people into a sort of
lucid dream that lasts for several hours, and during that dream their
desire for drugs just slowly vanishes. Of course the pessimists
among us you will say, "Oh great, so now they're
just addicted to ibogaine instead of smack, and pretty soon all the
Columbians will be flying over to Africa to take over the ibogaine
trade."
However, apparently
ibogaine even blocks itself from becoming physically addictive, so it
shouldn't be a problem. Psychological addiction is another story,
but hey, no matter what it does to people, how could it be worse than coke
or heroin or the other shit we've got now?
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