The Completely Other Side of AIDS: Ibogaine and the Cult of Bwiti

Of all the ironies associated with the international AIDS machine, none has struck me more profoundly than the following:

It is widely believed that "HIV/AIDS" originated in Africa, a belief that found almost instant acceptance in the still essentially racist, and ignorant of Africa West. The evidence that the African origin of AIDS (as well as a sexually transmitted epidemic of immunodeficiency) is stuff and nonsense is abundant, and easily available – through the links on the AIDS Wiki homepage for example.

What is ironic is that instead of being the source, Africa in reality holds the potential for curing the underlying cause of non-iatrogenic AIDS in the industrialized West. In the equatorial belt of West Africa grows a shrub called in Latin Tabernanthe iboga, and from which is extracted a possibly unique in its properties psychomimetic indole alkaloid called ibogaine. Among these properties is one of immense therapeutic promise for societies plagued by illicit drug abuse.

In Gabon, the bark of the root of this sacred plant has been used for centuries as the sacrament of the major indigenous religion called "Bwiti" because the state of u2018intoxicated concentration' it produces permits the initiate to partake of an internal dialog (sometimes for 18 hours) in which his life is revealed much as though he were watching a theatrical performance and could question the director of the play as it unfolded. Ultimately the initiate encounters Bwiti itself (the ancestor of all the ancestors) and in their conversation the "god" reveals the meaning and purpose of his life.

When purified ibogaine is ingested by heroin or cocaine addicts, the results are that the addict awakens from his trance free of withdrawal symptoms if a heroin abuser, and more importantly free of the need to consume whatever addictive drug had been the preferred poison. Whether these, by now, heavily documented results (see the ibogaine link above) are due to changes in specific brain biochemistry related to the action and metabolism of the drug, or whether they are the result of some larger scale neurological deprogramming, or some mixture is an area of active (although sadly under-funded) investigation at the moment.

Predictably, the NIH and the FDA have been extremely reluctant to pursue this avenue of addiction intervention, preferring their own brands of narcotics like methadone. Equally predictably, when an idea is that good, private enterprise in one form or another will discover it, as can anyone by typing "ibogaine treatments" in an internet search engine.

You do not have to agree with Peter Duesberg that "recreational and pharmaceutical drug use" are the real causes of the immunodeficiency related and unrelated diseases from which AIDS patients suffer to agree that heroin and cocaine abuse are problems in the United States and other western countries of a magnitude that makes HIV/AIDS pale in comparison.

I have the dream that one day Africa will be seen as the source of the cure of America's worst "disease" rather than the source of its cause.

May 12, 2006

The Best of Harvey Bialy, Ph.D.