Why addicts desperate to kick the habit are turning to this risky treatment

After suffering from anxiety and depression, freelance writer Stefanie Cohen sought help at an ibogaine clinic similar to the one where banking heir Matthew Mellon had received treatment and was about to check into again before his death last week. Cohen found the results so effective, she worked for a time for the Ibogaine Institute, writing web copy for the center. Here, she tells what it’s like taking the drug and why so many people are turning to it for help…

I’ve been running through a gauntlet of people for the past four hours, answering questions, laughing at jokes, getting spit on and hit on and molested. At every turn there’s another person who wants something from me. Some shout. Some whisper so quietly I can barely hear them. And their faces and bodies keep morphing, too — they get fat and thin and tall and short all within a matter of seconds. My parents are there, somewhere, and my sisters, too, but I can’t find them right now because a giant man with six faces is coming right for me.

None of these visions are real. I’m actually lying on my back with a heart monitor taped to my chest in an ibogaine clinic in Rosarito, Mexico. Earlier in the night I swallowed three pills of ibogaine — an alkaloid derived from the African Tabernanthe iboga plant — and I’m in the middle of what feels like the most demented fever dream my mind could possibly imagine. Which is exactly what it is.

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