Why is ibogaine so expensive

Ibogaine also has something of an image problem, says Glick. By the time everybody became aware of it there was already scepticism because this was not something that came from a drug development programme.

After failing to get funding, Mash opened a private clinical research centre on the island of St Kitts in the Caribbean in There she collected data on addicts detoxed through ibogaine. The clinic's first two patients are still drug-free 16 years later.

Good luck. We did it, we were able to break out intractable addicts. Determined to bring the treatment to more people, Mash is now working with the private sector to create a version of the drug that will be more attractive to pharmaceutical companies.

She is working to isolate noribogaine, a substance created by ibogaine in the liver, which she believes is responsible for inhibiting cravings, taking away the hallucinogenic effect. But she continues to push for research into the whole drug. Glick doesn't believe noribogaine will ever be approved in the US. He is developing an alternative but he regrets that significant testing into ibogaine has never been done. According to a psychiatrist and addiction specialist, Dr Ben Sessa, the timing for this research could finally be right.

The past two years have seen the first scientific study published into the use of MDMA on trauma victims and psilocybin for psychotherapy, and a similar study into LSD is expected this year.

What is needed, he says, is a single blind study in which one group of addicts takes a standardised dose of the drug and another group takes a placebo, both followed by a full step detox treatment plan. Clinicians like Jeewa would like to see the drug licensed but says people need to understand its limits.

First broadcast at Listen to the programme here. Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami. Ibogaine is used by the Bwiti tribe in Gabon. Thillen Naidoo and his wife were desperate and willing to try anything to ease his addiction. After several medical tests he was given the pill.

Ibogaine is derived from the bark of the root of the iboga tree. The next 12 to 18 hours were a blur, but he recalled a nurse administering more pills — eight in total. And every time I closed my eyes I started thinking and dreaming. Even a cup of tea with sugar tastes horrible.

Just ahead of his flight home he began having palpitations, and once he was back in England was rushed into hospital and diagnosed with a congenital heart problem — something he said could have been exacerbated by taking ibogaine. Jeewa, who insisted his protocol is safe, said he usually asks patients to arrive at his clinic a day early and that he now has an in-house doctor in the clinic and is installing ECG monitors in each room.

I spoke to another man who, like Jay, had researched ibogaine treatment on the internet before settling for one in Europe. His brother, who is in his early 30s, flew there with their mother.

When he arrived at the clinic he was given a cup of magnesium and told it would clear his stomach out. In his mind he kept seeing our uncle, who had taken his own life, and it was freaking him out.

So they started giving him THC oil [the active ingredient in cannabis that produces a high]. It was a really unprofessional, bodged-up place. Aden said his brother, who had trouble breathing, was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease COPD or lung disease and a stomach ulcer on the verge of perforating.

He said opiates are essentially painkillers so you may not feel the symptoms of those stomach ulcers or other conditions , but that once you stop taking them — and then take ibogaine to treat the addiction — those ulcers can flare up.

In the UK the situation is a more complicated. According to the Home Office, if ibogaine is administered for its psychoactive effects, a supplier can be prosecuted with a maximum sentence of seven years under the Psychoactive Substances Act. Emotional memories force me to deal with some of the deep subconscious guilt I have repressed for years. This powerful state persisted for over 12 hours. After remaining at the clinic for a week I was allowed to return home and over the next six months felt almost no cravings whatsoever.

And the lack of controlled human trials has prevented anyone finding out more. What is known is that the drug affects multiple receptors in the brain.

Its ability to lessen cravings may be the result of its blocking of NMDA receptors. Drug-induced craving is linked to increased activity of these receptors and blocking them can inhibit cravings in animals.

The long-term relief from withdrawal symptoms probably comes from the fact that ibogaine is sequestered in fat tissue and slowly released into the bloodstream for up to six months. For the next year, principal investigator Thomas Brown of the University of California, San Diego, and his team kept track of all of us with telephone interviews and regular addiction severity tests, as well as quality-of-life assessments and drug tests.

Brain scans were not taken since the dose was assumed safe based on prior human and animal studies. There has been a decrease in the severity of withdrawal symptoms in all 30 trial participants, he says. When asked to rate the importance of their treatment on quality of life, both the subjects themselves and their partners stated that it had helped to greatly change their lives. People working with addicts are interested. Steven Scanlan, a physician at Palm Beach Outpatient Detox in Boca Raton, Florida, says there are limitations to existing methods of treating addiction.

He uses suboxone, a daily medication for opiate detoxification.