DOSE:

oral

Ibogaine

(capsule)

I recently participated in an ibogaine ceremony. My intentions were to heal some sensed but undefined trauma, open emotional and energetic channels, get insight into the nature of craving, explore my psyche, and to follow my curiosity.

I was inspired to write this trip report to share the visions I saw, hoping to connect with others whose Iboga(ine) journeys led them to similar places of healing and wonder. I also wanted to memorialize and honor the experience, the medicine, and the people who made it possible. The process of writing this has been an important part of recalling and integrating the insights into my life.

In summary, working with ibogaine helped me better understand and accept myself. I felt compassion for children in early developmental stages, and a calling to make the world safer for them. I saw a vision of humanity without conflict, where people cooperate, love, create, and are connected to nature. I saw how the earth participates and contributes to the greater universe. I saw aspects of how the mind work - how thoughts generate, and the role of awareness. Lastly, I interacted with what seemed to be a higher intelligence through a game of riddles.

Arrival and Fire Ceremony

The retreat was held at a comfortable, spacious house with scenic views. There were six participants, with ages ranging from late thirties to early fifties. The staff included three facilitators, a cook, and medical personnel. We arrived on a Friday afternoon, with the ibogaine ceremony scheduled that night.

Upon arrival, we unpacked, explored the house, and started to get to know each other. The house had multiple levels with big rooms, comfortable furniture, and engaging art. There was a library room stocked with interesting titles, and several balconies overlooking natural scenery.

After settling in, a facilitator invited us to gather in a group circle and explained how this was an opportunity for transformation and connection. Each of us took a turn introducing ourselves and explained what brought us there, our struggles, aspirations and intentions. There were moments of vulnerability, stories of personal challenges, and an overall sense of being heard and supported.

She invited us to create a series of drawings - the first two represented what we wanted to let go of, the third was what we aspire towards. I drew two abstract pictures representing blocked energy, and a future state picture symbolizing radiant, flowing energy. Others drew pictures representing transformation in important personal relationships.

Later we went outside for what was called the fire ceremony. The sun had just set. We circled around a small fire, and one of the facilitators guided the group in an indigenous style prayer to the six directions. We were invited to cast our first two drawings into the fire, making a symbolic break with the past. We were given capsules of ibogaine, a piece of hematite crystal, and a candle. After some time for reflection, we took the ibogaine, and walked up to the ceremony room, where the journey began.

Just before the ceremony, a nurse had taken our vitals and weighed us to calculate the ibogaine dosage. We received IVs for hydration and electrolytes. Now, as we laid down on our mattresses, she hooked us up to EKG machines. Ibogaine can present heart risks for certain people, and the medical staff wanted to monitor us for safety through the night.

The Journey

The ceremony room glowed with candles surrounding the perimeter. Music played - ambient, spiritual, and world beats, with minimal vocals. The door was open to a cool, dark night outside. It was an impressive ambiance.

I looked around the room as my fellow travelers put their eye masks on and got comfortable on their mattresses. I’ve worked with a variety of plant medicines in the past, but didn’t know what to expect with ibogaine. I was told the journey could last 12-36 hours. I’d heard stories about long, intense trips, but I’d also heard about the entheogen’s power to heal.

I brought my intentions to mind. I’d picked four words to help guide and ground me, and journaled about them leading up to the retreat - Acceptance, Presence, Love and Abundance. In that moment, acceptance resonated most. I’d signed up for this months before, journaled about my intentions, traveled far, and the moment was finally here. I had some trepidation at knowing I was in for a journey to the unknown, but I felt safe with the staff and environment. It was time to lay back, focus on my breath, and be present with whatever came up.

Onset and Effects

I first perceived ibogaine through bodily sensations. It came on perhaps 30 or 40 minutes after I took the capsules. A light wooziness passed through my body, not unlike the initial, subtle shifts I’ve felt with the onset of other plant medicines. Shortly after, I sensed an unfamiliar buzzing sound in my ears. It wasn’t pleasant or unpleasant, but it was pronounced and unfamiliar, interesting. In my imagination, I saw a white line against a dark surface etching back and forth, similar to the pattern of the letter Z. The journey was underway. Throughout the experience, I was conscious, could direct my thoughts, and move my body.

Physically, I felt a sense of oscillation, as though awareness had weight and swept back and forth across my body, heavier on one side and lighter on the other, scanning side to side. My normal sense of stability was altered. When walking to the bathroom later, the staff had to physically support me with an arm. Some experience physical purging, but I never felt the urge.

Mentally, I felt awake all night, but my awareness relaxed into an inner world of intuition, visions, felt sense, and imagination. The visions I describe appeared in the way I see things in a dream, except I was fully conscious. My eyes were closed and I wore an eye mask. Typical mental chatter was suspended. I was alert and present. I could hear the music and occasionally one of the other participants, but it was mostly quiet and introspective.

The rest of this report is an attempt to describe the visions and insights that came up during the journey. The entheogen seemed to identify the most important issues in my psyche, guided my attention to those areas, and helped me reframe my understanding for the better. My attempt to put this into words is inadequate compared to the experience. It was incredible.

Healing the Past and Self Acceptance

When reflecting in the weeks leading up to the ceremony, I couldn’t point to any particular life event that I’d call traumatic, but I sensed that there was some underlying stress from my past that was inhibiting me. Ibogaine prioritized this and took me directly to the root of what it was. Keeping the description general, it related to very early childhood development and had to do with safety, generational patterns, and freedom of expression.

This part of the journey was lengthy and deep. I saw myself, others and my environment in those earliest years of my life, and for the first time recognized how they shaped who I am. I’d never intentionally thought about or integrated my early life with who I’ve become as an adult. I’ve lived much of my life influenced by ideas about self determinism - while acknowledging that genetics and nurturing have some role, I focused on trying to shape myself into what I thought I should be without much attention on what I’d already become.

Initially, it was unsettling to realize there are aspects of myself that are more or less fixed from very early on. It felt limiting to realize that we humans don’t get to choose the foundational ingredients in the recipe that forms us. Gradually, I came to see that this is the way of nature, and is therefore something to accept. With that acceptance came relief, knowing that I don’t have to apologize for who I am, hide, or try to reengineer myself. To reconcile the past with the present was very healing.

Next I saw images of my current self, physically and energetically. Maybe they represented how I perceive myself, or how I imagine others perceive me. It wasn’t flattering. Later that night, when I was in the bathroom and happened to look in the mirror, I felt relief. I saw that I wasn’t the distorted images I’d fabricated about myself. I saw myself as upright, capable, and worthy of acceptance.

Children and Development

The journey transitioned into the next phase, which was less visual and more contemplative. The insights about the significance of childhood development generalized beyond my own situation. These are not topics I normally think about or study, so while I imagine these are mundane insights for many, they were revelatory for me.

I saw that how we’re nurtured shapes important aspects of the fabric of our personality - our disposition towards feeling safe, feeling heard, feeling free to express. We carry this early imprinting through our lives. It impacts our capacity for harmony with ourselves and others, and therefore the extent to which we suffer and find joy in this life.

In those early stages of life, I saw a natural cycle where babies depend on their mothers for safety and love, and where mothers in turn depend on their partners and community for safety and love so they can focus on nurturing.

A mother’s disposition towards rewarding and punishing a child’s behavior is influenced by how she was raised. A father’s willingness to provide support to the mother and child is largely a function of how he was raised. I got the impression that everyone was doing their best with what they had, doing what they thought was right. I thought of people I know, how their childhoods shaped them, and felt compassion and joy.
I began to extrapolate, realizing that our world is made up of billions of people shaped by the first few years of life. Humanity’s capacity to cooperate is largely a function of how each individual was raised - how much love and attention they received, how they were encouraged to express themselves, and the values they learned from watching their parents or guardians. What issue could be more important than getting childhood development right?

I felt a call to action, but wondered how I could help. As someone who doesn’t have kids, it occurred to me that the most direct thing I could do was to find a partner, have our own child or children, and dedicate myself to their wellbeing. I recognized and accepted that this may or may not happen. If it didn’t happen, that was okay - I could find a path that leads to making the world safer for children. Mister Rogers came to mind. If it did happen, for the first time in my life I felt comfortable with the idea of being a father.

Humanity

Next, the entheogen seemed to recognize the weight of certain existential questions in me, and led me to some insights. From a young age, I’ve been struck by a sense of wonder about what we’re doing here. What’s behind the power of a thunderstorm? What’s the significance of my life, when there are so many people on this planet? What are any of us doing here, in a world that seems could be peaceful but often isn’t? Where do we come from, and where do we go?

This part of the journey was again more contemplative. I realized that humanity has a natural tendency to evolve towards greater cooperation with each new generation. Parents learn from how they were nurtured; wanting the best for their children, they’re inclined improve on that experience. In individual cases, this might not always play out well, but in the grand scheme, generations naturally tend towards better nurturing over time, leading to greater harmony among people.

This insight transitioned into a macro, dreamlike vision of humanity through a zoomed out image of the earth. It was a joyful place, alive with humans creating, cooperating, living happily, breathing, loving. The earth was vibrant, bumping and thriving. I didn’t see individual people, but had a sense of unification and harmony. People were connected with each other, and with the earth. There were no wars or divisions. Buddhism appeared in the dream as an abstract, guiding symbol of a brown cloth on earth, a blending of imagery and concepts. The whole planet, humans, plants and animals, flourished. I felt these images as I saw them, emotionally and physically.

The joyful vision was balanced with insights about some of the things that divide people today - poverty, racial discrimination, misunderstandings from language, the narrow way women are portrayed in porn. I didn’t choose to pick these issues, they came to me and I felt sadness. I reflected on the consequences of poverty on households and children. I saw that fixating on differences between people, skin color came to mind, unnecessarily inhibits our ability to connect at a personal level.

On language, it occurred to me that conflict often arises from misunderstandings between different languages, and from imprecision within any single language. How can all humans communicate with each other, regardless of which part of the world we’re from? How can we more fully and clearly express what we feel? I didn’t get immediate answers during the journey, but language has come up in other plant medicine ceremonies, and it felt like another call to action.

Interlude

Writing about the journey hardly captures the essence of it. I was experiencing dream like visions along with embodied emotions that accompanied them. I was seeing life through a new perspective, things were being reframed. In retrospect, it was as though I was being guided by one of those spirits from The Christmas Carol on a journey through my psyche. There were moments to pause and reflect on the visions, often leading to insights.

Throughout, I was on my mattress with my eye shades on. I’d get up occasionally to have a sip of water, or gently stagger to the bathroom with the help of one of the staff. I didn’t have a precise sense of time. I knew it was the middle of the night. Sometimes I’d hear one of the other participants, but it was mostly quiet apart from the music, which was supportive and reassuring (Lila, by Benjy Wertheimer, was on the playlist and brings me back to the experience). I was in awe of the journey, fully engaged with it and wanting to continue.

As it progressed, the visions zoomed out in scale and became more abstract. It started with my own situation, broadened out to all people, and now it moved into the scale of earth and the cosmos. The next lesson was a continuation of the existential questions theme, and showed me that humanity and the earth have a role to play with the greater universe.

The Great Gig in the Sky

I had a perception of looking at space. It was like the inner space sometimes perceived in the stillness of meditation. The space was featureless, except for the content of the visions.

I saw an image of the earth in the context of the overall universe. I realized, or received a message, that the earth performs some kind of composting or recycling function. There is a featureless conveyor that connects the earth to the universe. Each human’s breathing and love somehow exchanges with this system. Plants, animals and the rest of life play a role in the theater of the greater cosmos. The imagery was abstract, without details, but the implication felt significant. Earth isn’t just an arbitrary rock spinning in space that happens to have humans on it. We’re part of a bigger system that we don’t directly perceive, and each person is contributing just through being alive, breathing and participating.

Next I saw a platform in space that generated one colorful shape after the next at a high but effortless volume and velocity. I saw it from a slight bottom angle. It didn’t seem to be an entity or have a personality. I was astonished at how it created without pause, without thought or editing. The created stuff flowed constantly. There was no hesitation about what to create or why. It just created. It was always creating, and it always would create, infinitely. It was inspiring. I thought about my personal inclinations to plan and edit, which can get in the way of just creating.

I wish I could describe more about these two visions. They were breathtaking. I felt like I caught a brief glimpse behind the curtain. I’ve speculated on what they might mean, but to honor the insights as they came to me, I’ll leave this description with the open sense of wonder that I left with.

The Mind

Looking again into an otherwise empty space, an image appeared - a post it note pad with pages whirring off, one after the next. Each note contained random ideas. It symbolized the part of the mind that generates thoughts - the thought generator, or meme generator, was the name that came to me. Watching it, I realized that I don’t have immediate control over which thought arises next, an idea that I’ve read about but was now visualizing.

I realized that the thought generator is informed by what goes into the mind - the people, environment, ideas, entertainment, sensory information. The thought generator pulls from that content, and presents it to conscious awareness. I thought about the significance of what we put and let into our minds, and how we become like the people we spend time with.

While watching the thoughts fly off the thought generator pad, I realized that I am distinct from my thoughts. I’ve had some sense of this before from meditating, but this was a more visceral perspective. I perceived a delineation between the chatter of my thoughts and the more relaxed, open awareness that observes them. If the thought generator was in the front of my mind, awareness was in the back - nonjudgmental, observing. While I don’t always (or ever?) have a choice about what thought comes up next, I do have the ability to observe it and not get caught up in it. I saw that I can practice just being aware of the thought generator, zooming back and quietly watching it.

I sometimes identify with thoughts about myself - perhaps a memory or self perception - as though they are me. I realized that really they’re really just incomplete aspects of me, from a particular frame of time. This meant I could let go of judgements or emotional reactions to spontaneous thoughts about myself by remembering that they’re not me. I practiced doing this in the moment.

Thoughts about identity transitioned into thoughts about what, if anything, persists after death. Perhaps dying involves letting go of the sense of self I create and cling to from all the fragments of memories and thoughts. Maybe I merge into that quiet space of awareness. I felt some trepidation about the idea of letting go of my sense of self, but also some hope at the prospect of continuing on in another form.

I perceived a source of light or energy in the back of my head. It can brighten my perspective, and it’s the place where smiles originate. It’s always there to help me, I just have to be aware of it.

Riddles

In the last chapter of the journey, I interacted with something that felt like a higher intelligence. It presented me with a game of riddles. We went through multiple rounds. My recollection of details even immediately after the journey was blurry. I was presented with a riddle, tried reason through it, and couldn’t. It occurred to me that I could ask for help. I felt some emotional resistance to this, but eventually just did it. Asking for help led to solving the riddle, or was the solution to the riddle. I was rewarded with celebration visuals and sounds, and feeling as though I was being launched up to a higher level.

After several iterations, I reached a point where I was presented with two cards that seemed to ask if I’m ready to accept death. I felt fear. It didn’t occur to me to ask for help. As I resisted and disengaged from the game, it felt as though the spirit of the ibogaine began leaving me. It was as if someone flipped a switch and power was gradually dimming down.

In my final vision, I looked up into the darkness at the two cards. The content of these messages is a mystery, since I don’t recall specifics, but I saw that my initial assumptions about the cards, about death, were not accurate. There are more possibilities than I realize. My fear was misplaced. I felt relief, curiosity. I was ready for the journey to continue, but sensed it was over. I had seen what I needed to see. It began with the wonder infancy, and ended with the mystery of death.

Winding Down

By this time, it was early Saturday morning. I laid there until mid to late Saturday afternoon, awake, exhausted, exhilarated and processing everything that happened. I replayed the visions and insights, knowing I’d record them later.
The range, depth and significance of what I’d seen and contemplated was profound. I didn’t want the journey to end. There was so much still to explore. But I also recognized that I had a new sense of purpose in life, and knew that I have a role to play back in normal reality.

When I finally got up, I walked downstairs and sat on a balcony overlooking the ocean. I shared my experience with one of the facilitators, a skillful listener, and began writing down what I’d seen. As I looked out at the world I felt sensitive, emotionally open, and innocent like I was as a child.

Afterward

In documenting this, I’ve tried to be true to the experience and insights as they came to me during the journey. I’m writing about interpretations elsewhere. Some of the visions were incomplete, like the earth’s recycling or composting role in the universe, the architecture of the mind, and the content of the riddles. In retrospect, it seems like I was being shown just enough to walk away with a sense of meaning and appreciation.

Returning home and reengaging with my career, hobbies and relationships, I have a new curiosity about why I’m doing the things I do. What purpose does this or that activity serve. I want to make the best use of my time in this life. It seems more precious. I still get impatient in traffic, but have a bit more equanimity about it. I have more compassion for people, recognizing that our behavior is largely shaped by how we were raised, and by the people, content and environments that inform our minds.

I recognize that my perception and understanding of reality is limited. I express gratitude for life and ask for help in living it. I feel more purpose in practicing meditation and yoga. The vision of humanity cooperating on earth comes to me regularly, and I stay open to the possibility that there’s something I can do to nurture that harmony. For now, that means being a little more open and generous to others, and accepting life as it is in this moment.

Thank you, reader, for your valuable attention.

Exp Year: 2023	ExpID: 117301
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 14, 2024	Views: Not Supported
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Ibogaine (28) : Group Ceremony (21), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Guides / Sitters (39), Entities / Beings (37), Mystical Experiences (9), First Times (2), General (1)