A Mexican Veteran in the Army: Study of a psychedelic medicine for treating post-traumatic stress disorder and depression with ibogaine
Joe went to Iraq, Afghanistan and South America when he was with the Army Special Forces, and he returned to his hometown in 2011.
He was quickly diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He tried talk therapy and a range of medications, but they didn’t help. He attempted suicide twice in 2012. He says that he was fighting a war. He retired after 20 years in the Army.
Eventually, he learned about Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions, a Texas-based organization helping service members access psychedelic treatments in countries where such drugs are legal or unregulated. He was paid by the group to go to Mexico in two years to be part of a study on a drug called ibogaine.
In Central Africa’s Pygmy tribes, ibogaine has been used for centuries as a spiritual and healing tool. It is not legal in the US.
MDMA, also known as ecstasy, and a hallucinogenic compound called psilocybin, have promised to change the way psychiatrists use drugs. Now, a small trial in military veterans suggests that a lesser-known, potent psychedelic drug called ibogaine could be used to treat traumatic brain injury (TBI). Post-traumatic stress disorder and depression have been reported to have decreased by 80% after one month of treatment with ibogaine.
Combat experience and physical trauma to the head, such as from blasts, can compound the risk of developing a mental illness in a veteran. Antidepressants and antianxiety medications are commonly prescribed, but they don’t address the underlying brain injury.
Nolan Williams, MD, and Gl Dölen of the Stanford University Neuroscientist: Psychedelic Ibogaine Can Reveal a Window of Time for the Nervous System
“The drug seems to have a broad, dramatic and consistent effect,” says Nolan Williams, a neuroscientist at Stanford University in California and a co-author of the study. The results of the trial, which did not include a control group, are published today in Nature Medicine.
Researchers did not take part in the administration of the drug. The magnesium supplement was given to decrease the risk of cardiac side effects.
One month after they started treatment, participants had an average reduction in their symptoms of 81%. The survey assessed the participants’ mobility and other functions and found that on average participants had mild to moderate disability before treatment and no disability one month after treatment.
The research in mice by Gl Dlen of the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that ibogaine may temporarily re-open a window of time for the nervous system. Dölen and her colleagues tested ibogaine and four other psychedelics in mice, and found that ibogaine was the “rockstar of the group”, keeping the critical period open for at least four weeks, compared with up to two weeks for psilocybin, she says.