Humito's First Ibogaine Experince

I'll begin with telling in short about my first experience with morphinesulfate.I used 80 mg a day for over 6 months. When the pain suddenly went away I was as happy as a child, but now I had to stop the morphine as soon as possible. Also because I was in the possession of some Ayahuasca for some time allready and I wanted really hard to try this, but it is not safe to use the Syrian Rue seeds, one of the components of Ayahuasca, together with the morphinesulfate. So I tried to cut down the morphine as fast as possible. Just a little to fast, which had as a consequence that I became very sick, all signs of withdrawl were there. Even before I could ingest pills I started vomiting and sweating. I almost stayed in the bathroom all day, vomiting and suffering from diarrhoea. Because I couldn't keep anything in, I could not take my morphine to stop this, so I decided to stop the morphine all at once. Two days later I still was very sick and I had to vomit about 4 times a day. The following two weeks were hell. Anyone who has ever experienced this knows what I mean. Try to stop smoking and within a few hours your thoughts will be influenced by several chemical reactions in the brain. Seconds become days and minutes seem to last for years and thoughts like: " why am I doing this "? are crossing your mind. This experience of time, that turns hours into years, is one of the worst things I think. It all seems very endless and you get convinced it will never stop, except when you just take a pill. Also very overwhelming is the thought that it all doesn't matter anymore. A rising depression makes you feel and think that it's an impossible task. The pains in your bones and muscles make you desperate, the nausea won't go away and the stomach-cramps get worse and worse. But again, I think the distorted experience of time is the worst, because it makes it all last forever. You get convinced of the fact that it will never pass and the relaxed state of mind, just feeling normal, will never come back. Relaxing is just possible with morphine.

After about 2 weeks I slowly started to feel like a normal person again. Anyone will understand that now I have started with morphine again, I was not looking forward to another period of withdrawl, which was inevedably coming again because the pain in my back was gone. This time I was going to do it completely different. I am in the possession of some Tabernanthe Iboga root-bark which I bought a while ago for spiritual purposes.I really didn't want to use a large dose in this state. I'd rather do that when I'm completely clean and then I'll use it only for spiritual exploration. Because of this situation I was able to try something new. Something that has not been tried a lot or even at all. I decided to try small doses over a longer period of time, hoping that the metabolite nor-ibogaine will build up to a level which is normal when you take a large dose at once and do it's healing work. I have to say that this experiment became very exciting, because many strange things happened to me. Things that reminded me of Carlos Castaneda's Journey to Ixtlan. I'll start by telling what happened to me the last couple of weeks.

This is what I used at the moment I started the experiment: 3 times a day 2 tablets morphinesulfate of 10 mg each. Besides that I smoke a couple of waterpipes with marihuana every day. To me marihuana is a sacred herb, a gift from God, which helps me to live more spiritual. It gives me the excitement, the sensation and peace of mind to think about the energy that contains everything and of which I'm a small part. A small part that plays it's tiny but still very important role.

When I started I tried to take, not 3 times, but twice a day, 20 mg morphinesulfate. This went well for the first day, but the second day I had a relaps. I became very nervous and had some kind of hyperreaction. I took my first 20 mg at 13.00 hours and by the time it was 17.00 hours my legs were shaking and I was feeling sick. When I took an extra 10 mg my body became at ease again. The next day I would have to do something different.

28-9-1998 at 10.00 hours I took my first T.iboga root-bark. Right after I had it in my mouth I felt a cocaine-like tingling and sedation in my tongue. This numbing effect did not become very strong and it disappeared after an hour. Now I felt the T. iboga in my stomach and it burned a little bit, although it was not very disturbing. It has a very bitter taste. Some people find it unbearable bitter. Immediatly I had to think about Pihkal from Alexander & Ann Shulgin, in which they write about the bitterness of amphetamines and phenethylamines. Alexander speaks with some respect about the taste and doesn't dislike it. He tastes the soul of this substance. It is said that if you eat a peyotl cactus, which also tastes very bitter, you taste your own bad things and by eating the peyotl several times, you purify yourself. Than the taste will become better also. This also happens in f.e. ayahuasca rituals. I found the taste of the iboga very overwhelming, but I didn't dislike it. Ofcourse I understand that I was taking 300mg now and that if I would take the full dose of 10 to 30 grams, the taste would be much stronger. Slowly I increased the dose up to +- 0.5 grams a day and later up till 0.7 grams. But this is the highest dose I have taken. After taking the Iboga, I felt the energy rising in my body. This energy felt spiritual and didn't feel like anything I have ever used. It was a pleasant feeling, although I understood that with a larger dose this could give an enormous push. And it won't be as easy to manipulate. After a couple of days of using the Iboga I slowly cutted down the morphine. Slowly, so I wouldn't get sick. But I didn't become sick and after a few days, I only used 2 tablets a day. One in the morning and one at night.

Now gradually strange things started to happen. On some places in the city( I live in Rotterdam), I felt an energy that I have to describe as the energy that Don Juan shows to Carlos Castaneda in the book The Lessons Of Don Juan. I mean the ally he meets when he uses Humito, wich is called in the Dutch version, "little smoke" ( a mixture of plants with the main ingredient, entheogen mushrooms). A few years ago I stole (or loaned or borrowed if you like) my name Humito from that. After meeting this entity a couple of times, Carlos even meets it after only using a small dose of this mushroom mixture. His describtion of the ally is exactly what I felt, when I went f.e. to the grocery store. It's always on the same place, as soon as I arrive there I could feel the presence of the Bwiti( the entity the people in Gabon meet when they use the Iboga) or something like that. I couldn't see it, but I felt it's energy in and behind every object I looked at. There was sweat on my face and my body felt as if it was on fire. The streets, the stores and the people changed and I was looking at all of this in some strange psychedelic state. It was incredibly exciting, the fear is unbearable, but still I felt it was good. I was absolutely not afraid, it was more excitement. I realized I had to pay attention, because I had the feeling that everything I saw or felt were some kind of lessons. The fear I had was some kind of fear of dying. Any moment the the struggle with the ally could begin and with that the yourney to Ixtlan( which means that nothing will ever be the same again). Behind every ray of light I expected the Bwiti or any other entity. It seemed that the ally had to get used to me and at the same time it let me get used to it. It appeared as soon as it was satisfied. At that moment it tested me and if I wouldn't try to tame it, I wasn't worthy of it and it wouldn't bother me again( that's how it felt anyway). For the ally this is an indication that I was ready to die spiritually and to create a new ego, a new me without morphinesulfate. Also something else was very strange about these events, they were all flashbacks of dreams I had a few days before. One of the strangest and strongest flashback I had was; I was riding my bike in the city, near the Oude Binnenweg, when it happened for the first time. From one moment to the next, I was riding into my dream. I was overwhelmed by a fear that something or somebody is chasing me. It was clear to me that this dream stood for the reality that I was running for my morphine addiction. I really wanted to get rid of it. This dream was so obviously symbolic, I had to notice it right away. Although I was sweating of fear, I knew this was good and that this had to happen. I walked into a dreamstate similar to LSD, psylocibine or mescaline, but different though. Maybe it was only different because I knew it would only take a short time. I had no hallucinations. The only thing that changed in my perception was the intension everything got through to me. Like the colours that were more intense and sounds that became more meaningfull. In the past I have taken LSD over 200 times and when I feel like it I grow my own Stropharia Cubensis. These mushrooms I have used many times in different doses. From 0.2 grams up to 8 or 9 grams. Only during a few of these trips I had hallucinations. Usually my insights get much deeper, the colours more intense, just like music, and the perspective is not quite right. Everything radiates energy, which makes everything beautiful and ugly at the same time. Though the conception of beautiful and ugly is not the same anymore. That's why I call it "marvellously" ugly, because the wonder of it is really overwhelming. This is also what I experience during my flashbacks. From one moment to the other I walked into this special world, with it's, in my opinion, unknown possibilaties, healing visions, sounds and thoughts. In this state of conciousness everything is magical. Illnesses are are some kind of disturbing energies. These energies are made by ourselfs or we attract them. These energies can be purified. I think these energies are always pure, but we use them often in a wrong way, which concludes in wrong things happening to us. During these flashbacks, which, I think, are made possible by the T. Iboga, I could feel energy getting reorganized. Sometimes I could clearly feel myself dying to reincarnate back into my own body, but just a little different. In other words, during these moments I could feel myself spiritually dying to come back immediatly but then without certain ill-making energies. I can use a great metaphore, which has been used before in relation to Ibogaine. Everytime I died and returned, it was nothing more than a computer-reset. A reset of my whole beeing. This is not only possible with Ibogaine, there are hundreds of yoga-techniques that cause the same things. I think Carlos Castaneda's "Yourney to Ixtlan" is a similar experience. I used to experience things like that during LSD trips or with simple meditation exercises. When I was about 8 years old, my favourite uncle became very mad at me. And this happened so drastically that from that moment on I really hated that uncle. This was always a disturbing factor in the further relationship with my family. Later, during a very intense LSD trip I relived the moment my uncle became very mad at me. I saw myself riding my small bike on a dangerous, bumpy dirtpath. Next to me is the glass greenhouse for tomatoes from my uncle. If I would have fallen through the glass wall from 2 meters high, it could have killed me. I saw the fear on my uncle's face while he grabbed me and became very mad. Now I understand why he was so angry, he was just afraid for my life. At that moment I feel sweat poring out of me and I also feel a kind of "setting still". I feel myself dying and immediatly returning, but now without the illmaking energy, caused by a wrong reaction to my uncle's action. From that moment an enormous burden falls from my shoulders, everybody can understand that this is a very illmaking energy( the hate against my uncle). In a split second I knew he was not trying to humiliate me, but he was saving me from a very dangerous situation. Since I had this revelation in my LSD trip, I can be much more normal to my uncles( there were 2 uncles running the greenhouses), something I hadn't been able to do for years. There was always that thought that they didn't acknowledge me for who I am. Now this made place for understanding.

Everyday there is a moment I step in a dream. The use of T.Iboga has a strong interaction with my dreams. But what is even more interesting is that I have predicting dreams. There not spectacular but I do have many dreams that happen later. In one of those dreams I am walking on the market in Rotterdam. At the petshop I stop and I'm feeling that something is chasing me again. What that is I don't know. Then I enter the petshop where I have never been before. 2 days later we become a new cat. Not unexpected, we allready knew for 2 weeks that he was coming. Later that day we made our usual route to the ecological healthfood stores where we buy most of our food. all of a sudden my girlfriend says she wants to go to petshop near the market to by a comb for the cat. As soon as the market comes in sight it starts again. All the things I have mentioned before are there again, and as I step in the shop I really have a deja-vu feeling. It is very strange to do something you have allready done. But also this time I can feel energies streaming through my body and go through some kind of sieve and again, when it's all over I feel that some energies are no longer there.

10-11-98, I am allready 10 days without morphine and it has been 8 days since I took my last half gram of Iboga. It's almost miraculous how easy I stopped with the morphine this time. The last 10 days I haven't been sick, I feel fine. The extra energy the Iboga gave has diminished and so also the flashbacks. Everything begins to normalize again. I do have to mention that I smoke marihuana everyday. To me this is absolutely no problem, because marihuana is also some kind of ally for me. Everyday, when I smoke a chilm or waterpipe, I ask Shiva, the god from India and also the protector from the marihuana users, to help me use these, to me, sacred plants in a right way. I ask Buddha and Shiva at the same time, to give me insights in myself and the energies that surround me. Also I ask them and all other enlightened spirits to help me use the smoke to destroy my bad qualities. Luckely I live in Holland, where most people don't understand me, but let me go my own way. Here you can buy, without any problems, 5 grams of marihuana, in special coffeeshops and the Stropharia Cubensis mushroom can be purchased legaly. I even grow them for my own use and that also doesn't give any problems with the authorities. And what is also very important is that the T.Iboga is legal here. I didn't drink any alcohol for 9 years allready, I liked that to much. Together with my girlfriend, after a hangover of 3 days, we stopped. For 6 months we said, but that has been 9 years now and we still like it. A popular slogan in Holland is: Drinking destroys more than you would like. That's true, it destoys the body, many people get very agressive and so on. It's an ally that takes you over, makes you addicted and exhausts you. There are not many people who can tame the alcohol-ally.

Eventually I am now only using the drugs I want to use with my free will. Even for Dutch standards, I smoke big amounts of marihuana and sometimes strong, self-made hashish. I think this made me, up to this moment, a better person( and I still have a lot to do in this field). Also I don't drink coffee, but usually herb-tea. My caffein source is guarana( this is powder from the seeds from the Paulinia cupana plant). I take it almost everyday, about 2 grams. Ordinairy coffee makes me feel very nervous, but guarana doesn't do that to me. When I stay at home for a day, I don't take guarana and sometimes we run out and it takes a few days before we buy it again. Still we don't miss it, because we both don't use it as a wake-up drink. Usually we are awake for a long time before we take guarana, just for that extra energy. Then there are the psilocybe mushrooms which I also use. I don't want to get into that to deep now, but my use varies a lot. I never take high doses more than a few times a year, but small doses about twice a month. But again, this varies and especially the larger doses don't occur that often.

T.Iboga has given me some more insights in myself and my environment. One of the clearest insight that was enhanced in me, was that I really saw that all the ugly, scary or beautiful things I see are a reflection of my own inner self. It's not that everything I see comes from me, but all the energies I observe are, before my conciousness registrates them, coloured by myself. It's not that I give it colours, but I give it an extra dimension, my own interpretation, which is formed by my aquired insights and my lack of insight. In other words, I observe everything through a filter of my emotions. When I'm depressed, everything looks much more gloomy than when I'm happy. Ofcourse I allready knew that, as many people with me, but normally we don't realize the full extent of the consequenses. To quote Don Juan again: I can think of it, but I'm still to stupid to really understand it. I could think of it, but I don't get it yet. Only when you realize the full extent of the insight, you can admit to yourself, that all the unpleasant feelings are reflected by ourselfs on everything. So it is necessary to acknowledge these feelings and find out where they are coming from. Only then you can make peace with yourself and examine the disturbing energies in yourself. Many fears and strange feelings I have lived through this month are explained for myself and I feel very good because of that. This was my T.Iboga adventure, as soon as I have taken a high dose I will write a report on that. The T.Iboga I still have is more than enough, maybe 40 or50 grams. So I wait for the right moment. When that will be I don't know, but it probably won't take long.