Ibogaine for Alcohol Dependence

Unlike opioid withdrawal, which is agonizing but rarely fatal, alcohol withdrawal can kill: seizures and delirium tremens are medical emergencies. Ibogaine does not treat alcohol withdrawal, and a session during active withdrawal is dangerous.

That means a supervised medical detox of several days — with us or at a facility near you — before the ibogaine session. During screening we establish how much you drink, for how long, and whether you have ever had a withdrawal seizure. If you have, your detox needs a hospital setting first.

The same applies, with more caution, to benzodiazepines (Valium, Xanax, Klonopin). They require a slow, planned taper that cannot be improvised in a week.

What the clinical reports describe for alcohol is less about physical withdrawal and more about the two things that drive relapse:

• Craving and compulsion — the automatic pull toward the next drink
• The underlying material — trauma, grief and anxiety that drinking has been managing

The session tends to be experienced as a long, lucid review of one's own history. That is useful raw material, but only if it is processed afterwards, which is what the integration days and the aftercare plan are for.

Years of heavy drinking damage the liver, and ibogaine is metabolized by the liver. Our pre-treatment panel includes liver enzymes and function markers. Significant liver impairment is a contraindication: the drug clears too slowly and cardiac exposure rises.

This is why the full blood panel is not a formality. In practice, part of our screening work is telling some people that they need months of medical stabilization before ibogaine is even a question.