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FLASHBACK: Addressing Addiction with Ibogaine w/ Jeremy Weate
192 Plays2 years ago
Today’s guest is Jeremy Weate, former CEO of Universal Ibogaine.
Ibogaine is a the extract from the Iboga plant, which grows in West Africa places like Gabon, and is a sacrament in the Bwiti tradition. Ibogaine has tremendous potential to treat addictions and as someone who has seen first hand what addictions can do to people, families, and larger social groups, this is a cause very near and dear to me and I will support it anyway I can.
That’s why I was delighted to when Jeremy agreed to come on the show. As you may know the opioid addiction crisis in North America affects many millions of people, heroin is just a tiny percentage of with prescription drugs being the real devastating agent.
Of course Europe and Asia are steadily following suit and that’s just opiates. Let’s not forget stimulants like crack and cocaine, and of course the ubiquitous alcohol which is ravaging places like Ireland and the UK.
Jeremy's Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremyweate
Universal Ibogaine: https://www.ibogaineinc.com/
Topics discussed on this episode:
- Jeremy’s background and how he discovered iboga.
- His initiation into Bwiti in Gabon.
- The iboga experience and effect on the body.
- Microdosing iboga - considerations and effects.
- The ibogaine treatment process for addictions. The differences in approach between opiate vs stimulant addiction treatment.
- The rationale behind using ibogaine HCL extract vs iboga root bark.
- The iboga/ibogaine integration process.
- The preparation process for patients and the risks of ibogaine vs opioids.
- The scale of the opioid crisis, beyond heroin, with opioid-based painkillers as a major contributor.
- Universal Ibogaine’s direction and plans for the future.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Purpose of Connecting Minds
00:00:10
Speaker
Connecting Minds is a space dedicated to honoring the amazing authors, researchers, clinicians, artists, and entrepreneurs who are contributing to our collective evolution or simply making the world a better place. These thought-provoking conversations are intended to expand our horizons, so come with an open mind and let us grow together. Here is your host, Christian Yordanov.
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Connecting Minds podcast. My name is Christian Jourdanoff, your host, and I'm very glad you're here with me today.
Exploring Iboga and Addiction Treatment
00:00:48
Speaker
Today on the show, we have Dr. Jeremy Wheat, who is the CEO of Universal Ibogaine. And the topic of our discussion will be Iboga and Ibogaine and Addictions. So in case you didn't know, Ibogaine is the extract from the Iboga plant, which grows in West Africa in places like Gabon. And it's a sacrament in the Bwiti tradition there.
00:01:13
Speaker
And basically Ibogaine has tremendous potential to treat addictions and as someone who has seen first hand what addictions can do to people, families, larger social groups, this is a cause very near and dear to my heart. So I will support it any way I can. And that is why I was delighted when Jeremy agreed to come on
Global Opiate Addiction Crisis
00:01:36
Speaker
the show.
00:01:36
Speaker
As you may already know, the opiate addiction crisis in North America affects many millions of people. Heroin is just a tiny percentage of that. It's prescription drugs really being the real devastating agent there. And of course, generally what happens in North America steadily spreads to the rest of the world. So Europe and Asia, they will follow suit.
00:02:04
Speaker
it is already an issue in the uk for example and of course let's not forget other addictions like for to stimulants crack cocaine of course the ubiquitous alcohol. Which is ravaging places like uk ireland and then of course other addiction so tremendous potential for for the psychoactive substance.
Universal Ibogaine's Mission and Jeremy Wheat's Journey
00:02:24
Speaker
A lot of research that still must be done to really understand how it can best be used, what the best protocols are, and of course we'll talk about universal Ibogaine's plans to do such clinical trials.
00:02:41
Speaker
So this was a great conversation with Jeremy, flowed really well, he's really knowledgeable on the topic, and just you can see the passion he has for Ebola, Ibogaine, and really helping to bring this sacraments, gifts to the world, which I love. A little bit about our guest Jeremy Wheat, Dr. Jeremy Wheat,
00:03:06
Speaker
has over 70 near-strategic advisory experience, focused on minister-level guidance on the mining sector across 50 projects in over 30 countries in Europe, Africa, Central Asia, and South Pacific. Jeremy also has a decade-long interest in the medicalization of Ibogaine in a holistic treatment setting. He visited Gabon in 2016 and was initiated into Buiti,
00:03:31
Speaker
In 2018, he helped set up Tabula Rasa retreat in Portugal, now one of the leading Ibogaine treatment facilities globally. He has organized Ibogaine conferences in Vienna, Porto and London. He has a PhD in European philosophy from the University of Warwick, UK.
Personal Experiences with Iboga and Bwiti Traditions
00:03:53
Speaker
So yeah, really glad, was very excited to publish this episode. Really, really important topic.
00:04:00
Speaker
As always, show notes on christianjordanov.com. For this particular episode, all you have to do is go to christianjordanov.com forward slash 06 and the page will come up. And that's about it. I want to thank you for spending the time to listen to the Connecting Minds podcast. And without further ado, here is our guest, Jeremy Wheat.
00:04:23
Speaker
Okay, today on the Connecting Minds podcast, we have Jeremy Wheat from Universal Ibogaine Inc. Jeremy, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let's just do some kind of background stuff. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you discovered Iboga and Ibogaine?
00:04:47
Speaker
Oh, yeah. So I have a PhD in philosophy from 22 years ago. Then I fell into consulting, got involved in the dot com era. Everybody needed a website around about 2000. And the idea was if you don't have a corporate website, your business will die. Then I moved to Nigeria and spent 12 years living in Nigeria and got very interested in different forms of
00:05:14
Speaker
culture and spiritual practice there. And then one day when I was back in London on a London bus with a mate of mine, and we were talking about psychedelics, this was about at least 10 years ago,
00:05:26
Speaker
He said, have you heard of Iboga? And I said, no, what's that? And he told me a little bit. And then I was hooked. I did some research. And just the idea of there being a spiritual tradition that's maybe thousands of years old and has this psychedelic sacrament, I just was really, really intrigued. And I did research, and I met one person, and they introduced me to another person. Eventually, I ended up going to Gabon for an initiation into Buiti and taking Gaboga a sacrament.
00:05:55
Speaker
Yeah, and I was just doing a lot of voluntary work around Ibogaine and becoming more and more interested.
Medicalization and Potential of Ibogaine
00:06:00
Speaker
And I had the opportunity earlier this year to join the board of an Ibogaine company and actually, you know, sort of starting to merge onto being something I do in the daytime rather than sort of evenings and weekends.
00:06:13
Speaker
became CEO in June and absolutely gratified and passionate about Ibogaine medicalization. It's an incredible molecule. It's very different from other psychedelics that we hear about a lot. It has multiple target sites of action in the brain, which do very different things.
00:06:33
Speaker
to the classic serotonin 5-HT2A interactions. I'm passionate about it becoming medicalized, safely available to as many people as possible, primarily for addiction treatment, but also it has potential other applications in terms of neurogenesis for Parkinson's and so on. It's very exciting times for us in the Ibogaine community.
00:07:00
Speaker
Yeah. So do you feel comfortable talking a little bit about your experience with Iboga, Ibogaine, your actual experiences? And I know I've listened to other folks talk about their beauty initiation. I know they're not really allowed to divulge that many details, but would you feel comfortable divulging what you can divulge about what it is like? Yeah, sure.
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah, I have no issues talking about it. I mean, the first thing to say is, you know, you go to Gabon for a few weeks, you're going to scratch the surface of the surface. Buiti, you know, the traditions around Ebola, rituals in Gabon are, you know, centuries old at least, and via the pygmies, you know, millennia old. So you go there as Johnny Foreigner, you're going to, yeah, you're going to pick up bits and pieces.
00:07:58
Speaker
It's you know give all these thoughts of all the booty is sort of as you know the tibet of africa and it's a bit like going to a you know tibetan monastery like for a few weeks you gonna pick up that there's. Absolutely i don't use the word lightly but there is an awesome body of knowledge you know so many thousand people going back so far in time and yeah there's an architecture of the spiritual experience that's evolved there.
00:08:27
Speaker
And it's a gift to the rest of humanity you know it's just incredible specifically for me going there i went to a bando which is where a lot of people go is a french guy who's been in cabon for many decades. And it's a nice entree because you know it's not like you're going to the village or whatever and you just don't know what's going on.
00:08:50
Speaker
And what I appreciated just as much as the Ebola experience was just the different, each day you're doing a different preparation. You know, you're doing, you know, you're drinking this foul thing, which is making you vomit. You're being smoked, so you have the sort of canvas thing, and you're sitting on top of this flame and the smoke seeping out. You're going to the forest for baptism in cold water, and you're taking your first initial Ebola.
00:09:17
Speaker
So every day was just thinking about it now and it's coming back to me every day was incredible so it wasn't just and this is a really important point i think. It wasn't just about the boga it was about you know slow immersion in a culture which which is very deep very old and very wise.
00:09:38
Speaker
And then the exposure experience itself, sort of, you know, a week in was incredibly intense. And again, it wasn't just the debugger, it was the the beauty music is absolutely incredible. You know, the beauty harp. And oh, yeah, I know it. Yeah, the sounds of the sound of music sort of trans figurative of consciousness alone. So yeah, I'm
00:10:02
Speaker
I don't know, since that experience, you do something like that and you open yourself up to it, you have a tie with Gabon for the rest of your life, basically. So whatever I do with Ibogaine, it has to always look backwards and forwards to support to Gabon, whether or not the Ibogaine is sourced in any way from Gabonese, Tabernan, Theoboga, is irrelevant, it's the
00:10:24
Speaker
It's the source culture of Ibogaine. It's an absolutely incredible experience, specifically the trip itself. For me, it always feels ancestral. It feels like you're connecting to lineages that you don't even know about. When I was in Gabon, I had a very full visual of a samurai warrior.
Cultural and Spiritual Dimensions of Iboga
00:10:52
Speaker
I have no links with Japan genetically or otherwise, but there was a samurai warrior kneeling and smiling at me. And oftentimes for me, I mean, everybody's experience is different. I see in very visual quality people I assume to be from the past.
00:11:11
Speaker
And they're smiling it's like you've come hi welcome welcome welcome to this frequency. The very first time i took a burger was in the uk and i just it was like sort of seeing a stack of photographs and faces like that speed of faces going past i have no idea who these people are but again i just got the sense that these are souls from some ancestral realm.
00:11:41
Speaker
Wow. And what is the receptivity of the folks there in Gabon to us foreigners going there and kind of initiate me, please? What's their attitude to us?
00:11:59
Speaker
I think very, very benign, very positive. You know, it needs all the support, Buiti needs all the support it can get. You know, there's internal opponents of Buiti within Gabon, you know, people of a, you know, Christian evangelical bend who just see this as like, you know, stuff from the past that should be banned. But at the same time, they're a powerful
00:12:25
Speaker
advocates for booty in politics. But yeah, in general, my experience was it's, it's, it's profound. It's like you're, you're being initiated into something really deep, and it's really serious. And yeah, so people are welcoming, but also very serious about what you're doing, you know, you're not, you're not going for some crazy experience or, you know,
00:12:51
Speaker
It's a spiritual practice and a spiritual technology that you're being welcomed into, but you have to be very serious about your preparations and your intentions and motivations. I've been reading a lot on various boards and listening to podcasts about
00:13:12
Speaker
the actual experience of Ibogaine. It's definitely, it doesn't seem like it's a very pleasurable experience, though long-term it's a rewarding experience. So it definitely takes, it's not for the pleasure seeker. Would I be correct in assuming that this experience?
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah, you know, you know, if I think about that personally, would I like to take Ibogaine again? Well, you know, I'd have to spend a year getting ready for it now because I know what a big deal it is. So yeah, it's it's a
00:13:45
Speaker
Physiologically, it's a heavy thing. You have ataxia, so you can't really move your body. You have almost body paralysis. And if you need to get up for the bathroom, you open your eyes, and everything's spinning, and there's fire lights. It's a bit like the light from a fire that just goes out of the grate, these orange, yellow, and they're just swirling, and you don't know which way is up, and you're crawling to the bathroom.
00:14:12
Speaker
You just want to lie down again. It really hits the body in a much more powerful way than classical psychedelics. It is not a recreational fun experience. It's a complete reset of your central nervous system. It's ego death. It's going into the ancestral realm.
00:14:36
Speaker
But yeah you come out of it and you're you know because of the strong you know physiologically and in terms of the brain because you're getting a increased neuroplasticity because basically i became the molecule. Once it interacts with the brain it stimulates the production of gd and f glial cell derived neurotrophic factor.
00:14:56
Speaker
which is sort of like the brain's support system. If there's damage, then these helper cells just go into hyperdrive. So the production of new neurons, dopamine neurons, it just goes off the scale. Anyway, the end result experientially is that you feel like you've got a new brain. You've got a brain of an adolescent where you're just so much more receptive to new information.
00:15:24
Speaker
And that stays with you because what happens with ibogaine is when you consume it, it metabolizes into noribogaine. And noribogaine stays in the fatty tissues for months, up to three months. So you've got this almost like internal or endogenous microdosing system. And the noribogaine itself is producing GDNF. So it's like, yeah, you've got this internal microdosing system which is increasing your neuroplasticity.
00:15:51
Speaker
Such really good period after i began to not go home not go back to the family into the work situation but if. If you can really organize your life that you spend a month or two months months after i began this is if you're coming from an addiction background if you can spend a month or two months.
00:16:08
Speaker
in an aftercare facility or somewhere in nature and just retuning yourself, you know, like looking at the dew drops on the leaves and the, you know, the sunrise and just appreciating being there in the world and getting back into having a body and sensing, you know, the realm of the senses and the delights of sensuous experience. So you're really recalibrating what it is to have senses and perceive and be in the world.
00:16:36
Speaker
And then just to play, you know, so many people who've suffered from addiction, as we know very well now from the work of Gabor Matei and others, you know, they suffer, they've suffered through repeat childhood trauma. And, you know, the childish, playful, you know, curious part of them got splintered off through this, through this experience. And it's about reintegrating play and enjoyment into your world. So it's really important
00:17:04
Speaker
Not to do serious stuff and serious work like earning money and whatever and dealing with the things that used to trigger you before immediately after your I began experience and unfortunately people that do I began and then just go back to work and go back home.
00:17:20
Speaker
You know, they can relapse because the neurophysiological reset lasts for a few months and then you're back to how you were, basically. And, you know, there is an aspect of the Ibogaine community where people just take Ibogaine every year or, you know, every six months. And in a way, that's a bit disappointing and a sort of misuse of the molecule.
00:17:40
Speaker
you should do Ibogaine maybe once or maybe twice and really, you know, work in a therapeutic setting to restore yourself back to the pre-addicted state and for that to be, you know, your setting for the rest of your life, basically. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll get into, you know, talking a little bit about the addiction stuff and the treatment process. But before that, it was interesting that you talk about this GDNF, promoting neurogenesis.
00:18:09
Speaker
What do you think of, I think it's a relative new trend of folks microdosing with either the root bark or ibogaine or something, the total alkaloid extract. What do you think, do you think there's any benefits and could there be any benefits outside of addiction, for example?
00:18:35
Speaker
I was just looking, I've got my little bottle of Iboga here, which I microdose from where it's gone now. I think you have to be careful. Precisely because Iboga tincture, which I do have somewhere here, it stays in your system. I don't think it's similar to microdosing psilocybin or LSD or anything. I think you have to be careful with it. I do microdose.
00:19:05
Speaker
but I'll do it for a week and then leave it for a few months. And it's just because it does stay on board. So you don't need to yeah, I don't think it's going to ultimately be a long term protocol personally. There have been anecdotal research with microdosing Iboga for Parkinson's disease, which has been
Ibogaine in Treating Various Addictions
00:19:28
Speaker
effective in the sense that if you combine Ebola tincture with the traditional conventional Parkinson's medicine, which is called cinnamet, basically what happens is if you have Parkinson's and you take cinnamet effectively, to my understanding, stops working and being effective after a while.
00:19:47
Speaker
But somehow and we don't understand the interactions but the bogeh sort of re catalyzes and reactivates the cinema. So maybe in the case of you know you're a neuro damage in one way or another. Microdosing may have a better application but i would worry about long term.
00:20:07
Speaker
uh, micro dosing of a burger, just in terms of potential damage to the liver or whatnot. Um, so I'd be, I'd be careful with it. I'm not against it. I do it myself, but I do it sparingly. And what, what, what are some of the qualitative effects that if, if any, that you can perceive from it?
00:20:28
Speaker
Well, don't forget that microdosing, and people do forget this, but Ibogaine was first isolated in France, 115 or so years ago. And from the 30s onwards, there was a little tincture called Lamborghini, which was basically available in France, and people took it as a muscle stimulant.
00:20:52
Speaker
And I think that's the area where you find Ebola microdosing useful is an increase in energy levels, because I don't understand the deep science of this, but it does increase the production of ATP in the mitochondrial cell system.
00:21:11
Speaker
So definitely more energy. Also increased sex drive, I would say it's sort of like an aphrodisiac in, you know, low dose or micro dose. So, you know, if you're feeling a bit sluggish physically or if your libido is down, I think that's another application of Ibogaine micro dosing or Iboga micro dosing.
00:21:36
Speaker
All right, so I think the most important part, let's talk a little bit about the treatment process. What does the treatment process entail for, let's say, someone addicted to opioids, heroin, maybe alcohol?
00:21:54
Speaker
Um, cocaine, what does, what preparations would they go through? Uh, what is the treatment process like, let's say for a week or two at a clinic? And then what is the integration and after aftercare like?
00:22:12
Speaker
That's a good question. Thank you, Christian. I'm a very strong believer in Ibogaine assisted psychotherapy. Very similar in a way to what MAPS has done with MDMA. It's having Ibogaine in the context of going through pre-treatment therapy and post-treatment integration. As a very good friend of mine who's one of the leading Ibogaine pre-treatment therapists and us,
00:22:40
Speaker
And yeah, it's basically lining someone up, cracking them open, getting them getting them ready, you know, accessing deeper levels of intentionality, realizing the seriousness of purpose. You know, I went back to this, you know, in terms of talking about the booty, but realizing that you're on your knees and you need to be on your knees like I'm ready. You know, I'm desperate. I'm hoping, you know, like
00:23:04
Speaker
This isn't a quick fix, this is a deep fix. So yeah, I would say optimally six, one hour pretreatment therapy sessions where you're cracking open your relationship to your addiction. You're realizing that you're not defined by your addiction. This is where I think Ibogaine therapy for addiction is sort of like the opposite or the antithesis of 12 step.
00:23:31
Speaker
You know, in classic 12 step, it's like, you know, my name is X and I'm an addict and you go through the steps and I'm not knocking 12 steps. It's just that it doesn't work for most people. It works for, you know, maybe five or 10 percent of the people. But with Ibogaine therapy, it's, you know, my name is X and I'm not defined by my addiction. My addiction is a history that happened to me.
00:23:55
Speaker
thanks to childhood trauma, and it's something I'm going to walk away from. So you go through these, you know, sequence of like, opening yourself up, cracking yourself open, then you go and do, you know, the Ibogaine, there's some, there's a lot of medical details, I don't need to go into too much detail, but you know,
00:24:14
Speaker
Pre-treatment screening making sure your heart is in good working order, you know, your liver, liver system, your metabolism is functional, psychologically, it's not for everyone. So there's quite a rigorous, you know, in the best case, there's quite a rigorous pre screening, physiological and psychological
00:24:37
Speaker
age ceiling if there is one. What is the oldest you could be? There's a good question. I would say rather than being an old age ceiling, there's a young age ceiling. So people in their 20s can often just not be mature enough for it. It's almost like there's the minimum age is if you're 21, 22, and you're a few years into your addiction.
00:25:05
Speaker
you might not be ready for it, you might be wasting the opportunity, or you may well have to come back a few. And this is the experience, I think, of Ibogaine providers. It's just you're not really on top of or got to the bottom of your addiction in your 20s.
Tailored Post-Care and Relapse
00:25:22
Speaker
So I would say anyone younger than late 20s, they're probably not going to get the most from that experience. And they're probably going to relapse and come back. In terms of old age, as long as your ticker, your heart is in good condition, you're relatively fit. You can be in your 70s or maybe even older. You would adapt the protocol based on your state of health and your age.
00:25:50
Speaker
Some Ibogaine providers are pretty much low dose over 10 days, 50 EMGs a day, which is not threatening to any age, I would argue. Anyway, you go through your Ibogaine treatment. Now, there's a big difference, Christian. If you're an opioid addict,
00:26:08
Speaker
compared to if you're a stimulant addict. So if you've been on heroin the last 20 years, you go through your Ibogaine, you're like, oh my God, I'm not having withdrawal symptoms, which is amazing for someone who's had an opiate addiction problem. It's like, I don't have withdrawal. I didn't think that was possible. This is incredible. Oh my God. It's like a religious experience. It's very common for people to be absolutely amazed that they're free. But then two or three days later,
00:26:36
Speaker
the sheen of Ibogaine wears off and it's like, oh, I'm feeling pain, I'm achy, or they have what's called restless legs. And so people who've had a long-term opioid addiction or opiate addiction, getting used to being without opiates is getting used to the normal aches and pains that non-addicted humans have, and they're not used to it, and they find it really uncomfortable. And it's like a psychological thing more than a physiological thing,
00:27:06
Speaker
So that's the point where you want to start getting people into their bodies, you know, Kundalini yoga, breath work, meditation, you know, energetic type healings are more important at that stage than kind of verbal narrative stuff.
00:27:20
Speaker
Meanwhile, if you're a stimulant-based addict, you know, cocaine, crack, whatever, it's like even I've seen, you know, even during the treatment, it's like, I'm ready. I'm good. I can go home. I want to go play sport. You know, it's like because their cellular energy level is, you know, and alcoholism is a little bit like heroin. It's like you've got very low cellular energy.
00:27:44
Speaker
It's hard to get out of bed, but with your stimulant addiction, the opposite problem is just slow down, stay in bed, just go for a walk this afternoon. The post treatment depends on what your addiction is and also the specifics of who you are and your personality.
00:28:07
Speaker
And ideally, you want to have someone for a month afterwards so that they're just slowly returning out of the cave to the daylight of normal everyday existence. And I think universal Ibogaine, the protocol we want to develop is encouraging and incentivizing people to be able to spend a few weeks out of life post the Ibogaine treatment.
00:28:31
Speaker
And then, you know, the ideal is a little bit like 12 step. The ideal, once you've left, is to have a fellowship, you know, like people you can have a Skype with or whatever once a week for the rest of your life, you know, tune in and, you know, yeah, that aspect of the fellowship aspect of 12 step, I think is pretty good, but non judgmental. And
00:28:56
Speaker
you know people fall off the wagon and that's fine there's no shame there's no shame in relapsing it's great it's like okay you relapse yeah what can you learn from that experience yeah okay let's let's have another go around you know probably have to do ibogaine again but what lessons have we learned
00:29:12
Speaker
So even relapse, you can take it as just a wonderful opportunity, not shameful or I failed or oh God, you know, I'm destined to go back to this. It's just like a really good therapist will get you to see it as a glowing glistening opportunity to do things better next time.
00:29:30
Speaker
That's amazing. It's so kind of refreshing to hear you say that because a lot of folks that struggle with addiction, there's that shame aspect and that's one of the biggest impediments to really overcoming it, isn't it?
00:29:47
Speaker
Just a quick side question. Is the actual journey on Ibogaine music assisted? Do you use the Buiti music or any map style playlists? My personal preference is to do Ibogaine with Buiti just because I came through originally with the experience in Gabon.
00:30:13
Speaker
It's a really good question. We haven't figured it out yet. And I think my current view on it is it's up to the patient. If they've got their favorite music that they want to play that's really personal to them, that's inspiring, then we would play that. Some people just want to put the eye mask on and get on with it in silence. So I would say there isn't like a sound protocol that's the same for everybody because
00:30:38
Speaker
it's just such a deeply personal experience. And I wouldn't want to, you know, some people absolutely hate beauty music. They find it weird and jarring and disruptive and not calming. Yeah. I love the beauty music. I actually have a couple of Spotify playlists that sometimes when I'm working out, I have it in the background. I love that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's like being in outer space. Yeah, it's, um,
00:31:06
Speaker
because I come from a techno background. I used to listen to a lot of techno in my 20s and it almost has techno elements to it. But let me ask you, Jeremy, so maybe for the listeners, I've been reading a little bit about this.
Ibogaine Forms and Therapeutic Use
00:31:21
Speaker
Can you tell us, so we know that the root bark in the traditional Buiti ceremonies
00:31:28
Speaker
they eat copious amounts of the root bark and many of the clinics use isolated ibogaine, HCL, and then there is the total alkaloid extract. Can you give folks an idea of some of the rationale why the extract is used and what are the advantages to using the extract as opposed to the total alkaloid or the root bark for the treatment?
00:32:00
Speaker
That's a really good question. No, I'm happy to address that. So to begin with my experience in Gabon, I don't know, I've got a sensitive digestive system. So there's only so much handfuls of this kind of ammonia tasting sawdust that I can put into myself. At some point, they go around in a circle when you're doing it in Gabon.
00:32:21
Speaker
When it's your turn again, you kind of get spooned it and then they hold you up by your arms and they're kind of bouncing you up and down just to make sure it goes down. But yeah, I threw up massively. And so it's not, even though the ritual and the music and the rhythms and the dancing is amazing, it's not a particularly efficient delivery system for the actual molecules, right?
00:32:46
Speaker
however many alkaloids there are in Tabernan theobogra. I'm not sure if we're actually sure. It's certainly more than 12 and it might be different alkaloids for different species of the plant. So anyway, it makes sense if you want to have a more efficient delivery system to do some first level of synthesis. So you end up with total alkaloids, which is just like the refined suite of alkaloids, but in a much reduced powder form, maybe you take a teaspoon or two,
00:33:13
Speaker
Unfortunately i haven't had that experience i think if if i do do i do go through a burger experience again i probably do the total alkaloid because it's just something mysterious about the entourage effect you know somebody described it sort of like a court versus playing one string of guitar it's like a squad.
00:33:34
Speaker
that kind of harmonics of all the different alkaloids, you know, like ibogamine, ibogaline, you know, tabananthine, all of these do something magical. And so you're much more likely to have a spiritual, profound, spiritual, visionary experience with the total alkaloids.
00:33:52
Speaker
As you go to the next level of synthesis, you're with purified total alkaloid, which is ibogaine, ibogamine, and ibogaline. Some people find that very pukey. In other words, you may throw up on other people. It's just like a train hitting you. It's like a real powerful...
00:34:13
Speaker
It can be visionary but it's more just like a full on proper reset. And then many providers like pta because it is very effective in terms of addicting interrupting addiction.
00:34:28
Speaker
But yeah the ultimate end stage is Ibogaine hydrochloride which is the addiction interrupter in its purest form, less visionary, less hallucinations if you want to call them hallucinations.
00:34:45
Speaker
And I think, in a way, an optimum protocol in the future might be I began just to I began HCL to knock out the addiction. And then maybe a week later, you have the experience of the total alkaloid because
00:35:00
Speaker
You know what people are like? They take something like Ibogaine, and they have two things or two expectations in their mind. One is, I don't want to be an addict anymore. And two, I want to have the visions. I want to have that psychedelic experience. So I think a week later, having the total alkaloid will more than likely give you the return.
00:35:25
Speaker
to the childhood trauma and the allowing for it to come up and be released or going to the ancestral realm or you know whatever it is and then that's a pretty satisfying you know that that meets those two expectations that people can often have.
00:35:42
Speaker
I also think just more generally that we're at the very beginnings of thinking through what an advanced protocol would be. There's been an underground scene for Ibogaine for the last 20 years. There's been a lot of experimentation. There's a lot of wisdom out there. So the idea of Ibogaine hydrochloride for the reset and then maybe at the end of your stay, you do 5-MeO DMT or you do psilocybin.
00:36:10
Speaker
I'm a little bit, I wouldn't like to say to someone who suffered from a substance use disorder, oh, you do Ibogaine. And then there's all these other psychedelics. And just the danger with that is you give persons who've come from a substance use disorder background the idea that the only way they can get well is by imbibing substances. And you've got to do the work yourself, you know, you got to do the
00:36:37
Speaker
You don't need substances all the time to heal, in other words. And there is a bit of a risk that that narrative is sort of cropping up. For me personally, psychedelics are incredibly precious, and I don't take them very often at all because I just take them so seriously. It's not like, oh, this week I'm this. No, no, no, no, no, no. Meditate, do the work, reflect, and every few years. But if you're coming from a substance use background,
00:37:08
Speaker
which I'm not, there is the risk of you falling back into habitual patterns. So there is more of a requirement of different forms of sacrament of one kind or another. But yeah, hopefully that gives you a clear idea of the root from a relatively inefficient delivery system of root bark, total alkaloid, PTA, and then Ibogaine hydrochloride.
00:37:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good overview, Jeremy. Thank you. Actually, I've heard people say,
00:37:41
Speaker
the plants, these plant teachers, they have the spirit of the plant. So the more of the natural form that you can ingest, the more you get the actual spirit of the plant. So some say like the coca leaf, you know, it has the cocaine, people have heart attacks and health problems because they're
00:38:03
Speaker
disrespecting the spirit of the plant. So maybe like for psycho-spiritual purposes, maybe you write the total alkaloid kind of moving the direction of more alkaloids, more of the plant. Maybe that's kind of going to be a, you know, a more effective way to get those spiritual experiences for people.
00:38:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. You know, there is going to be a move to, you know, producing Ibogaine HCL in the lab from, you know, a chemical precursor. And on the one hand, you know, as CEO of Universal Ibogaine, you know, from a business perspective, I see, okay, optimize supply chain, you know, reducing risks and all the rest of it. But if I take my business hat off, and I think psychotherapeutically, I think,
00:38:53
Speaker
Okay, yeah, I guess it's not the best, but it may be the way we have to go forwards as a kind of widely available medicine. But yeah, I do have a bias in favor of plant-based medicines, psychedelic medicines, definitely.
00:39:09
Speaker
So I'm going to try and get some folks to specifically talk about childhood traumas and how they can lead to various issues like addiction. But could you...
00:39:25
Speaker
expand a little bit because I listened to someone else talk about Ibogaine that some 60% of the people that come to him, the root of their addiction seem to be a feeling of abandonment from the same sex parent. Could you maybe expand a little bit? What childhood traumas can kind of lead to addiction? What do we know?
Healing Trauma and Long-Term Effects of Ibogaine
00:39:57
Speaker
You know, I mean, obviously, there's the obvious traumas of, you know, physical abuse, neglect, sexual abuse and so on, but
00:40:10
Speaker
I wouldn't like to be like either or about trauma. I think we all experience trauma. You know, the birth event is a traumatic event that we all go through. And people can be traumatized by incredibly subtle things that happen when they're, you know, toddler or whatever. And, you know, nothing, nothing like dramatic, like being beaten or something or being sexually abused. So,
00:40:37
Speaker
And I think we all have it. I think it's not like there's a group of people who are addicted and who went through childhood trauma, and then there's the rest of us. I think we're all on a continuum of we all need to heal in different ways. I also think there is clearly epigenetic trauma. There's genetically lineage passed through the genes. That's been proven in studies on Jewish populations.
00:41:04
Speaker
But all of us have our ancestors who suffered. And as soon as you go into the past, the 19th century, and prior to that, life was tough for people. And so we have the epigenetic lineage trauma. Then we may have other forms of trauma that we don't even understand. So I would say that I don't make a strong distinction between people that do psychedelics for
00:41:34
Speaker
Psycho-spiritual work and people that do it of healing from trauma. We're all somewhere in that kind of bubble and we're all going towards it for healing purposes. We all, you know, we all get triggered. We are all predisposed to snapping back into a reflex, which is not the best version of ourselves and so on.
00:41:58
Speaker
But to your point about same-sex trauma and whatnot, I'm not an expert. I wouldn't be able to speak to that.
00:42:12
Speaker
We kind of touched on this, but from what I've read users of Ibogaine or Iboga, their integration process could be months, sometimes years. Why is the integration process so long with Ibogaine or Iboga, comparable to other psychedelics?
00:42:38
Speaker
Yeah. Well, firstly, it's just the physiological aspect of having noreib again on board for a few months. You know, if you take psilocybin or LSD or, you know, whatever else, ketamine, you know, it's the molecule is in metabolized and out of your system within hours where it's in your system as noreib again for weeks, if not months. So you're feeling
00:43:03
Speaker
You're feeling slightly different and perceiving slightly differently and your brain is highly more neuroplastic than previously. It's got a long-lasting physiological effect due to its unique metabolic characteristics.
00:43:22
Speaker
But then there is just another level where it's just mysterious that you've touched this vibration you've connected in a certain way. I think about my experience with the Gabon and it's like you are changed fundamentally.
00:43:37
Speaker
Maybe it's similar mentally in a way to psychedelics. I'm contradicting myself a little bit because, for instance, if you do psilocybin and you have a sense of the divine that you didn't imagine could exist, that lightness of being that's ineffable, you can't even really talk about it without ruining what it was at the time.
00:43:59
Speaker
So, yeah, in a way, ultimately, when I think about it, I think the long term is probably not that different to other psychedelics. If you're going into that psychedelic experience, to quote my friend Anders with the respect and reverence for the sacrament.
00:44:16
Speaker
So, you know, if you're going into a psilocybin experience or an ayahuasca experience and you're preparing yourself with the dia and you're reflecting on your intention and da, da, da, da, da, it can stay with you just as long as a boga experience or as an hyper gain experience, ultimately. The only difference is this metabolic aspect where you are physiologically and in terms of your central nervous system, you are
00:44:44
Speaker
activated by the nori began for months afterwards. You did say it's like a nervous system reset. Am I correct in saying it decreases or reduces your dopamine levels to kind of pre addiction levels? What does that actually mean?
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah, so what happens is, going back to the glial cell derived neurotrophic factor, it targets an area of the brain, and let me get this right. I can never fully remember the ventral tegmental area. Anyway, it's the VTA, which is near the cerebellum.
00:45:26
Speaker
And then so that's the kind of engine room of the production of these growth factor cells and then what they do is they express dopamine so it's like a sort of input to dopamine production if you like and then those dopamine neurons.
00:45:42
Speaker
get expressed out throughout the rest of the brain structure so basically just imagine like visually you've got an engine room of dopamine neuron production and then they get distributed from that core area of the brain out through into the frontal cortex and whatnot and so yeah you do have new dopamine neurons basically
00:46:03
Speaker
And yeah, that sounds great and amazing. You have a central nervous system driven by a brain which has got pre-addicted levels of dopamine receptivity to external stimulus. Fantastic, wonderful. Smell the plants after the rain and the feeling of your feet on the sand and all of that. And having a strong sense of well-being. But it's a big risk because
00:46:30
Speaker
If you then get triggered and you go back to your old poison you don't have the same tolerance to whatever it was in your real risk of overdose so that's again where. There's a practical guidance like you know be really careful if you are at risk of relapse be really careful because.
00:46:50
Speaker
you're not going to be able to take as much fentanyl or heroin as you previously did because your neurocircuitry has been reset.
00:47:02
Speaker
And you did say, like the ayahuasca, there's this dietary preparation, so respecting the medicine. And with ayahuasca, it's a very bland diet of pretty much just a bit of animal protein and kind of grains, rice, oats, this kind of stuff. What do patients or clients of the clinics, what kind of dietary restrictions would be recommended to them to prepare?
00:47:29
Speaker
Well, there's certain things which you really shouldn't be taking. Coffee, definitely stimulant based food stuff, some beverages, grapefruit juices, you really shouldn't have that. It interacts badly with Ibogaine. I would say that there isn't, to my knowledge, I could be wrong, but there isn't.
00:47:50
Speaker
similar tradition in Buiti of diatas, as you find in South America and the rainforests in the Amazon. But at the same time, yeah, just general advice, eat good, healthy, balanced food, low on the stimulants, no alcohol. If you can avoid cigarettes, then no cigarettes and all the rest of it. And then do you eat on the day of the treatment or do you try to keep an empty stomach?
00:48:22
Speaker
You've got to keep an empty stomach, otherwise it's going to come back up. I'm trying to remember what happened to me. I didn't eat for hours and hours before when I was in Gabon. The day of the treatment, definitely no foodstuffs.
00:48:40
Speaker
Yeah, they say, um, I think that's why they say, you know, eat well to get to build up strength rather than fasting and, and kind of limiting foods. No, please.
00:48:53
Speaker
Well, I was just going to say, in a medical setting, like we're putting forwards with universal hypergain, you do need full medical
Safety and Challenges of Ibogaine Treatment
00:49:03
Speaker
equipment. You need a defibrillator in case of cardiac issues. You need oxygen. You need to be measuring the oxygen levels in the blood via a pulse ox.
00:49:15
Speaker
You need to have IVs on tap. If there's any issues with electrolytes, you need to be able to pump in electrolytes, potassium to restore balance and so on. You need to be on a 12-lead ECG machine, measuring the heart. There needs to be eyes on the ECG machine all the time for the first 48 hours.
00:49:36
Speaker
You know, to make sure that it's safe, 100% safe, that like no one ever dies, then it's an emergency room procedure for the first 24 to 36 hours. You know, at Universal, I began a fellow board member, Dr. Alberto Sola runs clear sky recovery Cancun. He's had 3,700 patients and nobody's died. And that's because he comes from an ER background and knows what to do if something goes wrong. So yeah, you know,
00:50:05
Speaker
There's just this kind of perception, negative perception about Ibogaine out there, which is, you know, it's cardiotoxic or it's neurotoxic, you know, or people die. Actually, the reality is people on methadone die far more frequently than on Ibogaine. The death rates for methadone are appalling, you know, 1 in 300, I think, something like that.
00:50:27
Speaker
So many people have miserable lives on opioid maintenance. It's just like low sex drive, no pleasure. It's just a gray monotonous existence. So for me, when people come with a negative perception of Ibogaine, especially from traditional addiction backgrounds, where people have a vested interest in 12-step and traditional rehab and all the rest of it, it's like, fine. Ibogaine's coming. It's extremely powerful tool which
00:50:56
Speaker
should be enthusiastic about because it can be perfectly safe in a medical setting yet you know it will be a very valuable tool to the work you do and i think that's what's gonna happen with i began in the next few years.
00:51:10
Speaker
traditional rehabs, facilities. Once it's medicalised in places like Canada, which is where we're focused on, they will just build it in as a tool and have to adapt all to the good. I began to find itself inserted into different medical settings and be good for people with addiction in general. For me, I view it as a kind of unstoppable force now.
00:51:34
Speaker
I began through clinical trials with the FDA in the 90s and for one reason or another that got blocked politically. Now it's not going to get blocked because we have this terrible opioid epidemic in North America, addiction problems and pandemics, epidemics around the world, crystal meth in Australia.
Opioid Addiction and Global Treatment Variations
00:51:55
Speaker
What's it called? Yeah bar in Southeast Asia and all around the world. You'll see different, you know in the UK where I'm from, you know, we basically have an alcohol problem Which has been that decades island, you know, so it's like around there's different forms of addiction and we have stages of addiction treatments which are completely ineffective for the most part and I began
00:52:16
Speaker
It's not going to change the world, but it will be a very powerful tool to be inserted into different addiction treatment settings, which will be of benefit to people that go to those places. Yeah, I've lived in Ireland 14 years and I know what the drinking culture is like there. And it's very similar in the UK. But this is actually a question that I meant to ask you at the beginning of the show.
00:52:43
Speaker
And I apologize for forgetting, but when we're talking about addiction, I'm glad you kind of touched on this topic. When we say opiate or opioid addiction, we're not just talking about heroin, which is actually a relatively small part of the overall opioid crisis. Can you give folks, and I'll probably insert the details of this into the introduction when I give you the introduction, because this is actually a much bigger problem
00:53:13
Speaker
that guys like you and Ibogaine Universal or Universal Ibogaine are addressing. What is the scale of this opioid crisis actually?
00:53:24
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's massive in North America, Canada, where we're focused. You know, our company, Universal Fibergains, headquartered in Vancouver. There's an infamous part of the city centre called the Downtown Eastside. I was there in February just before COVID hit. And yeah, it's like the film Taxi Driver. It's just people strung out on the street. It's very dramatically visual. And it's very tragic. But that's, that's a kind of skewed image of a
00:53:51
Speaker
addiction, say in Canada or in the US, it's, you know, moms and dads, it's, you know, it's just anybody. One particular form of addiction which is hidden from view is sports addiction. So in Canada, you know, people play ice hockey or, you know, in America, basketball,
00:54:13
Speaker
You know high performance athletes when they have injuries they can be prescribed oxycontin you know opiate based opioid based painkillers and then they get addicted so yes a completely different image of addiction which is which is below the surface but some.
00:54:30
Speaker
It can be a classic story will be somebody's doing some suburban neighborhoods doing some work on their roof and they fall off the ladder and then they have a back injury and then they go to the doctor and they get a prescribed pain killer, opioid pain killers. Then the insurance policy runs out and they're addicted.
00:54:51
Speaker
They flipped to heroin and you know the heroines got fence nearly like it always does have these days and then you know their tolerance threshold so fence now goes up and.
00:55:01
Speaker
Then it spirals out of control and multiply that by hundreds of thousands across North America. It's coming to Europe as well. The UK, for instance, there aren't enough warnings around opioid-based painkiller distribution from GPs. It's not the same level as the states or North America, but it's at least 500,000 people who are addicted to opioid from one memory.
00:55:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's something like five and half a million plus are addicted to opioid-based painkillers in the UK alone. Don't have the statistics for across Europe, but it may well be similar because, yeah, just the pharmaceutical lobbying has been effective. Actually, one thing I heard three weeks ago was we kind of think, ah, the era of OxyContin and Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family, you know, they've been hit by these trillion dollar lawsuits, you know, class actions.
00:55:58
Speaker
And thank God it's finished, we're over. At least in terms of the pharmaceutical drive to distribute opioid-based painkillers like OxyContin, somebody told me that all they've done is shifted base to Mexico. And so there's been a legal change which previously to
00:56:19
Speaker
prescribe opioid-based painkillers. It was only anesthetists in Mexico, but now GPs can basically prescribe them. And they've just moved. It's a bit like the tobacco companies, right? You know, they got hit by lawsuits and whatnot years ago, and then they just shifted to the third world or the developing world, you know, Africa and whatnot.
00:56:40
Speaker
It seems like the same is happening, so they're just shifting base to more weekly regulated jurisdictions to carry on with the playbook, basically. To answer your question, it's all walks of life. There is no one image of addiction, which is the image. Street-based addiction is one thing, but it's suburban, it's rural, it's everywhere. In North America, it's the
00:57:08
Speaker
It's the epicenter of it, but it's rippling outwards and getting distributed around the world. If you take, you know, I spent some time working in Southeast Asia in Myanmar and whatnot, and the Chinese-speaking corner of Myanmar where they produce the yaba, which are these little pills of basically crystal meth, and they lace them with vanilla so that it tastes nice for kids.
00:57:34
Speaker
And it's just insane, you know, like 12, 13 year olds and it's like less than a dollar for a pill and it's crystal meth. And yeah, and they they churn this stuff out by the millions of tablets for the whole of Southeast Asia. So they have a very particular and it is now reached Australia and Japan. So they have a particularly evil form of crystal meth addiction distributed throughout, you know, Asia Pacific, essentially. So
00:58:02
Speaker
Yeah, you know, we, I don't know, humans, we've reached, you know, on a macro level, we've reached the end of the game of a certain way of existing on this planet. And we're all suffering because we're out of balance with the planet, you know, and on that level, it's going to take more than Ibogaine, far more than Ibogaine for us to collectively reset our species and live in balance with the planet, you know, so that we don't have this, you know, adaptive response of addiction.
00:58:29
Speaker
Yeah, I was just going to add that if trauma is the root cause of addiction, we need to figure out how are we traumatizing ourselves or our kids and either reduce or address those traumas earlier in life.
Clinical Trials and Investment in Psychedelics
00:58:47
Speaker
And unfortunately, we seem to more perpetuate them than reduce them or alleviate them.
00:58:54
Speaker
But you know, that's a topic for for another Podcast another person you you're doing your part of the the what we can do is address very serious addictions Which I you know, it's I love I love seeing folks like you out there doing this kind of stuff which kind of leads us to What is
00:59:15
Speaker
So what's on your plan now for universal Ibogaine? I know you're thinking of, I believe, doing some clinical trials and maybe even going public with the company. Tell the folks listening what you're up to. Yeah, so it's very exciting times actually. Obviously with the Compass Pathways IPO on NASDAQ, capitalism, the markets are really perked up. Compass Pathways is now valued at whatever 1.3 billion in the last week or so of being listed on NASDAQ. What is Compass Pathways?
00:59:46
Speaker
Compass Pathways is the main company working with psilocybin medicalization.
00:59:53
Speaker
a major stakeholder or shareholder in Compass Pathways is a tie. So yeah, they're plowing a path in terms of being able to raise money and sort of like the prestige, like overcoming this kind of slightly negative view. It began with MindMed in Canada. They were the first psychedelics company to list on a stock exchange, in this case, the Toronto Stock Exchange. So that was kind of a milestone months ago. And then
01:00:20
Speaker
a couple of weeks ago, Compass listing on NASDAQ, a big American technology exchange. So it's sort of like corporate capitalism, re-perceiving psychedelics and seeing that this is the new thing. It's going to be much bigger than cannabis was a few years ago. It's going to be like the internet in a way. It's just going to be a major driver for investment and a completely new sector of the economy.
01:00:44
Speaker
So universal Ibogaine in our own way, we are very, very focused on Ibogaine medicalization. We're not looking at any other psychedelics. We're focused on Canada because Health Canada on the one hand, it's a high quality regulator. The data from clinical trials in Canada is trusted around the world. If you finish phase two, you can then hopefully as we plan to take the phase two data and then
01:01:10
Speaker
start phase three trials in different countries so you're fast tracking the clinical trial process elsewhere but it's cheaper than america doing clinical trials in canada is much cheaper than america so you end up getting a drug medicalized at an affordable cost rather than you know to put a novel drug through clinical trials in america is at least half a billion dollars.
01:01:34
Speaker
Yeah we'll be spending a fraction of that yeah there's a real inertia against novel drug development you know most of the drugs that we deal with when we're sick like decades old basically because of this.
01:01:47
Speaker
So yeah, to run Ibogaine assisted psychotherapy through phase two, phase three clinical trials in Canada. Once we get the phase two data approved by Health Canada, then we take that to run phase three clinical trials in other countries. We're planning Australia, New Zealand, potentially Portugal as well.
01:02:07
Speaker
And on the back, once you get the phase three data approved by these different regulators, then you can basically set up legal Ibogaine-assisted psychotherapy clinics in those countries. We are going to be... Just briefly, what will your clinical trials target? Will it be opiate or other addictions or mixed bag?
01:02:29
Speaker
IV injecting opioid addiction. Yes, intravenous opioid addiction. You have to be pretty narrow about that. And so is that kind of the plan for if you were to expand to other countries like New Zealand, Australia, also that? Yeah, I mean, there's a ton of work to be done. Obviously, Ibogaine has application much wider to other different substance abuse addictions, but
01:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, clinical trials, you have to go very narrow to be successful effectively. So there's a ton more research and development needed in the future years. This is just like the way in the kind of thin edge at the end of the wedge. But I began for alcoholism, for crystal meth. These are all clinical trials that will also need to take place. But the major addiction pandemic in North America is opioid-based. So it's a good place to start.
01:03:27
Speaker
Yeah, I agree, I agree. And so let's say that goes well. Hopefully, please God, everything goes well. What's kind of the plan for the next, let's say? So you expect to get into phase two, phase three in the next, what, two, three years? Is that a realistic target or is it a little bit ambitious?
01:03:47
Speaker
It's very realistic for us to complete phase two by mid 2022. It's very realistic. We would start
01:04:00
Speaker
In the start of Q2, we would begin enrolling for phase two, Q2 2021. And 11, 12 months later, you have a protocol where you basically have two people a month going through and you have 20 people. So it would take about 10 or 11 months. So by mid 2022, we should hopefully, best case scenario, have approved phase two data and be looking at planning for phase three.
01:04:25
Speaker
You know, COVID, post-COVID, clinical trials are becoming much more adaptive, a lot more use of data science and real world data. So we're really hoping that we can have a fast track phase three. And by the end of 2024, I think it would be achievable that we get phase three data at least archived and going through regulatory review and approval.
01:04:53
Speaker
It's exciting, you know, clinical trials, there's a rabbit hole, there's a lot more involved than you can imagine from the outside as we're finding out.
01:05:02
Speaker
But I would say it's feasible that by 2025, in three countries, we're rolling out legal Ibogaine assisted psychotherapy clinics. We're starting to look at franchising so that we can scale the model. And I would say by the end of the decade, maybe 10 countries and hundreds and hundreds of Ibogaine clinics around the world in different ages, in Europe, in North America, and so on. And that's feasible. That's definitely feasible.
01:05:30
Speaker
What would be the size of a bare bones, Ibogaine clinic? How many, let's say clinicians, like how many, maybe one MD, what other staff and clinicians would that require?
01:05:46
Speaker
So we're going to be opening an Ibogaine clinic, the first one, early next year, because Ibogaine is legal in the Bahamas.
Legal and Operational Aspects of Ibogaine Clinics
01:05:54
Speaker
It's been approved by a national ethics board under the Ministry of Health. So we'll be opening Clear Sky Recovery, NSO, in hopefully January 2021.
01:06:04
Speaker
And for example, that will be 15 bed. There'll be like a senior psychiatrist who's a prominent Bahamian guy. Um, there'll be someone that like, uh, is sort of like the MD of the clinic. If you like, they'll be a senior doctor and they'll probably be a junior doctor. And then there'll be more or less a ratio of a nurse per patient. Um, so are you back for a sec? Sorry. I lost for a sec.
01:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think probably me. Yeah, so to rewind, we're going to be opening our first Ibogaine clinic in early next year. Ibogaine is actually legal in the Bahamas. It's been approved by a national ethics committee. So we'll be setting up clear sky recovery in Nassau.
01:06:54
Speaker
That will have a someone to operationally run the place it will have a senior doctor or a junior doctor something like a nurse qualified nurse patient type ratio and then all the sort of operational team like a chef and you know cleaners and whatnot but yeah.
01:07:14
Speaker
In terms of optimal clinic size, I would say between 10 and 15 patients or beds. Anything bigger than that, it's just getting too chaotic and in the era of COVID and post-COVID, it's just too difficult to manage in terms of getting people in and having their COVID test results and so on.
01:07:32
Speaker
So yeah, I think that would be the model for us. Clear Sky Recovery, NASA 15 beds would be optimum in terms of from a business perspective, it makes sense. But also from a kind of customer client perspective, it's not too big and chaotic and too much going on. And yeah, like outside of the medical team, there will be all kinds of therapists, holistic therapists, you know, masses, breath experts and all the rest of it, you know, also traditional addiction counseling, you know, there's a role for that. So
01:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's sort of like it will. And then, you know, as we develop, we'll be developing our aftercare proposition as well. So whether you stay in the same place or you go somewhere else on the island to be determined, the place we're thinking of buying, they actually the owners currently own a tiny little island off the coast of Nassau. So
01:08:23
Speaker
an aftercare facility which is just like on its own and it's kind of island off the coast of nasa might be really nice somewhere where you're just beach and just like you know enjoying good food and walking on the sand in the evening something like i said going back to the beginning where you're just enjoying being in your body and in nature again and going for a swim and stuff like that it's all good stuff for aftercare.
01:08:45
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds really awesome. Very, very exciting. I will certainly be trying to be keeping abreast of the development in the clinical research. And I was kind of happy to see it in Portugal. Obviously, they've decriminalized pretty much everything.
01:09:03
Speaker
except some of these new research chemicals, but Ibogaine has been decriminalized. So I suppose one final question before you can let the folks know where to find you and Universal Ibogaine, but what do you think are the prospects for more of these centers in Portugal? I know there's at least one or two near me here.
01:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, so I help set up Tabula Raza Retreat, which is in the Alentejo in Portugal. The owner, Alvaro Franti, is a good mate of mine. He's doing amazing work there. I would love Universal Ibogaine to partner or form some kind of alliance with Tabula Raza, because I just respect the work he does so much.
01:09:49
Speaker
And, you know, in terms of phase three trials, a dream of mine would be that we take the phase two health Canada data and we go ahead and we engage with the authority, the medical regulator in Portugal and we do phase three trials in Portugal. You know, Alvaro really did a lot of work four years ago and planning for clinical trials in Portugal and then he realized, oh my God, it costs so much.
01:10:14
Speaker
hopefully there's enough money in the system now to push it forward so it will be fantastic for portugal to be the first place that you know has legal I began in the next few years so let's see let's see what we can do yeah
01:10:28
Speaker
All right, Jeremy, thank you for spending some time and educating us on this very important compound. This is such a huge problem we have that I love seeing guys like you pushing really on the leading edge of this. Tell folks where they can find more information about Universal. I began where they can find you to follow you on social media, please.
01:10:56
Speaker
Yeah, thank you, Christian. It's Ibogaine Inc, I-N-C, not I-N-K, ibogaineinc.com. That's the universal Ibogaine website. Clear Sky Recovery will be the name of our ClinX brand that most people will know. We haven't set the branding up for that. We're working on that at the moment. Twitter, I'm on Jeremy Wheat, my handle, W-E-A-T-E. And I interact a lot about psychedelics there. But yeah, if any of your listeners are
01:11:24
Speaker
interested in taking Ibogaine now, just get in touch with us through Universal Ibogaine. All right, I'll have those links in the show notes, of course. And once again, Jeremy, thank you so much for spending some time with us. Thank you, Christian. I really enjoyed it.
01:11:53
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Connecting Minds. We hope you enjoyed this conversation and found it interesting, illuminating, or inspiring. For episode show notes, links, and further information on our guests, please visit christianjordanov.com. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with someone who might also enjoy it. Thank you for being here.