The University News recently posted an article exploring the use of psychedelics such as ibogaine in treating mental illness. From the experience of the author; iboga provider Levi Barker “in cases of severe PTSD, OCD & addictions there is no other treatment method that has consistent results based improvements in the lives of the people seeking help for these ailments.”

Let’s hope that more information such as this article continues to educate the public on the benefits of psychedelic medicine and the proper ways to work with them. In the case of iboga & ibogaine we have the clinical approach, the traditional approach (Bwiti), & some techniques that are somewhere in between. All of them can work well for the treatment of mental illness it really depends on what a person responds too. Here at https://iboga.io we favor the Bwiti approach with some medical supervision just to make sure everything is safe, but we are very open that there are many ways to make ibogaine work for those in need. See below for a snippet from the article.

Using psychedelics to treat mental illness

Click here for original source www.unewsonline.com
Depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder: these diseases are among the most debilitating maladies known to man. You may think that everything that could be done to curb the effects of these diseases has been tried, but not quite. The most radical treatments are the ones that the federal government have deemed too harmful and without any justified medical use. What if the feds got it wrong?

That’s what many outspoken researchers in psychiatry ask. In fact, there are whole organizations dedicated to the radical new studies of psychedelics in therapy. Te Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, is perhaps the largest. MAPS conducts research in MDMA and LSD-assisted psychotherapies. They also conduct research using two psychedelics you have likely never heard of before: Ibogaine and Ayahuasca. Studies like these can only serve to help us better understand the effects of these drugs.

Arguably the most dangerous part of psychedelics is our lack of understanding. Most of what we can publicly access are stories of Erowid (a popular online illicit drug forum) users. Right now, there is no clinically accepted procedure in treating patients experiencing a “bad trip.” As a whole, the medical community lacks knowledge about how the effects of psychedelics manifest. There currently exists no indicators relating demographics to effects of psychedelics. And this is problematic, especially for psychotherapists who can’t gauge a patient’s likely reaction to a psychedelic substance. Pharmacological knowledge—that is, how drugs work chemically—is also lacking in comparison to mainstream prescription drugs and most illicit substances.

Ingesting psilocybin is said to be a “transformative” and “religious” experience. Many describe the experience as creating more connections in their mind, and this description mirrors the activity that is actually occurring in the brain. In brain scans conducted while individuals are “tripping,” there is a significantly higher desegregation of brain activity than normal.

In research conducted at Johns Hopkins University, psilocybin exposure resulting in “mystical experiences” was correlated with a reduction in addiction to tobacco. The results are similar for alcoholism, depression and anxiety as well. Of 51 cancer patients suffering from end-of-life depression, 80 percent reported feeling less afraid of death after exposure to psilocybin. There have also been significant results in early testing of other psychedelics as novel antidepressants, cures for obsessive-compulsive disorder, cures for post-traumatic stress disorder and even as a cure for cocaine dependency. Even crazier is the research that suggests people feel they have more meaning and spiritual purpose in their life after only a single moderate dose of psilocybin. This pairs well with the research that found psychedelic use to be associated with lower rates of suicidality. For all of these reasons, parts of the medical community are calling psychedelic drugs a “paradigm shift” in the way we treat mental illness.