We have been seeing so many repeated threads on the Ibogaine + 5-MeO-DMT combination that I thought it would be worth sharing this comment from a recent workshop DoubleBlind hosted with Joel Brierre and Victoria Wueschner of Tandava Retreats — a center in Tepoztlán, Mexico devoted to 5-MeO-DMT — and co-founders of F.I.V.E, a harm-reduction and education platform for the medicine.
QUESTION:
There’s growing alarm around what’s being offered at ibogaine retreat centers.
5-MeO-DMT is routinely offered after ibogaine sessions, and it seems to be causing harm to some people. What are the risks of taking 5-MeO after ibogaine, and what should people understand heading into a retreat?
Joel Brierre: This is a nuanced question, and it deserves a nuanced response. The combination of 5-MeO and ibogaine being used within the same container was pioneered by some amazing colleagues of ours many years ago, and this was for addiction interruption when fentanyl was on the rise. Ibogaine used to have, what was it, a 99% success rate of interrupting opiate addiction. That dropped down very quickly with the rise of fentanyl. So people who were also very familiar and very experienced with 5-MeO began doing the two within a container and started seeing some success.
This combination was then later picked up by other practitioners and other centers — unfortunately, without an understanding of 5-MeO. Many centers now are offering this combination, and many people are being harmed. Over the past year, our integration specialists, our platforms, and a lot of our colleagues have been reached out to by a lot of people who are going into less than a week-long retreat and doing two very powerful substances, where 5-MeO is getting treated like an add-on at the end, and they’re told it’s a neural reset. 5-MeO is a stronger and more potent experience.
I’ll give you an example. One young man went to a very well-known clinic, one of the big ones, and had a very successful experience with ibogaine. He was working into addiction with several substances and pretty significant CPTSD, but a really significant process with ibogaine. Then he was given 5-MeO at the end — no prep around it, no real understanding — and it just scattered everything for him. He started getting reactivations all the time. He went into acute anxiety, and it smeared his whole process. Unfortunately, a lot of these centers don’t have staff who are well-trained with 5-MeO, and 5-MeO is just being relied on to give people the feeling that they got the bang for their buck if they don’t have time to do more than one ibogaine session in their retreat. Either ibogaine or 5-MeO can be very sufficient, and we can get a lot done.
Our question with mixing medicines is always: is it really a need, or are we relying on the profundity of the experience to replace skill sets that the integration specialists and therapists should have?
Mark Nicolas
Keep in mind that this form of rhetoric draws both attention and sales.
The science on their claims is not conclusive and there are thousands upon thousands of case examples which oppose their claims.
They do great work. But, in this case, the negativity is mostly a marketing tactic. They put a lot of effort into marketing.
That being said. I think separating the medicines more in education would be a good thing.
Kathleen Benson
This was a really good webcast that answered many questions and imparted very real warnings about this medicine.
Michael McKay
My 5meo experience completely overshadowed the ibogaine experience. Part of me wishes I hadn’t done it
Lisa Robison
This space currently seems like the wild west… lots of people desperate for help and lots of money to be made…. ripe for fraud and fakes. There needs to be some regulation and certification.
Michael Amos
I just joined this group recently in an attempt to get a sense of the one teacher I havent met, and i was a little surprised that certain retreats were treating with multiple teachers in the same span… before and after Ibogaine.
Jenn Clemente
I’d lean on the benefits of their harm reduction message first. Consider that Tandava even benefits from people who got obliterated at a clinic and have sought out their integration services to repair the damage.
Scottie Oceano
There’s really no way to prepare for the 5-MEO-DMT experience other than conveying to people that it has the high potential of having a death experience. It’s something that cannot be explained to someone who’s never done it before and something that can absolutely overshadow other medicines due to the powerfully extreme nature of a breakthrough dose.
People who have experience with high doses of psilocybin, Ayahuasca, iboga, DMT, LSD, or any other psychedelics think that they have an idea or can handle the experience, but that is not the case with a breakthrough dose. It is so far beyond these other experiences that adding Bufo at the end , even with proper preparation and integration can easily disrupt the experience of the others. It’s powerful. Beyond powerful, and so much different than all the others.
I run a retreat center and anytime we offer Bufo, it is done first, prior to other medicines (we primarily work with higher dose psilocybin, but also Ayahuasca and some others I won’t mention here), then there is a full day integration and rest before moving on to other medicines.
What I found is that introducing 5-MeO-DMT first opens people up… In a very forceful way. If integration is done properly, transitioning to another medicine can be very effective to fully feel its effects and affects. However, this not offered to every client we see, as not everyone is ready for 5-MeO-DMT, and we use extreme discernment and factor in numerous things before considering offering it.
