FOUNDER JOURNEY IBOGAINE > IBOGA

There was a time in my life where everything started to close in on itself. Not all at once, but slowly. The same streets, the same people and the same conversations that never really went anywhere. County jails that started to feel familiar. Hospital rooms where you wake up just enough to know you're still in it. Car crashes that should have ended things differently, but didn't. It wasn't dramatic in the way people think. It was repetitive. And it wore me down.

By the end of that stretch, I wasn't chasing anything. Not a high, not meaning, not even relief in the way that I used to think about it. I was trying to outrun something that was already inside of me. Addiction had moved past being a habit. It was structured-–it was how I woke up, how I thought, how my body functioned. There wasn't really a clear line between me and it anymore.

By this time, I had already exhausted almost every Western modality available to me. I had been through in-patient rehabs, out-patients, detoxes, sober living environments, replacement medications, and opiate-blocking injections. I had gone through enough cycles of stabilization and relapse to know that nothing was actually shifting at the root. I wasn’t searching for a new idea at that point, just something that could interrupt what was happening.

By the time ibogaine came into my life it didn't feel like a question, it felt like an answer. The way it was presented was certain. Come down, 24 hours, no withdrawals, no cravings, you will be free. And when you're that deep in it, that kind of promise lands like oxygen when you’re struggling to breathe. You don't really question it.

Looking back I can see how vulnerable I was. Not naive, just out of options. I went.

The experience itself had a different language. There’s nothing soft about the way ibogaine meets you. It doesn’t guide; it takes hold. Time stretches into something unrecognizable. The body becomes a place you’re locked inside of, aware of every inch of it, with nowhere to go. There’s a stillness to it, but not a peaceful one. For me, it was more like being held in place while everything you’ve been avoiding comes forward. 

And then your life starts speaking, and not in the way you remember it—but how it actually happened. Not symbolically, not in metaphors you can reinterpret later. It is direct, precise, almost procedural in the way it moves. Every decision, every omission, every moment you stepped away from yourself is laid out behind your eyelids without commentary. It is just shown. And then, at some point, it moved forward.

That is where something in me gave way.

It wasn’t a vague vision, it was startlingly clear. I was watching my life continue in real time without being able to change anything. I could see myself a few months out—still using, more isolated, my body worse, and the people around me were gone. And then it moved further down the line, everything was tighter, more desperate, smaller. It kept going. There was a point where it just ended. Not dramatic, just empty. Alone. And I knew without any doubt that if nothing changed, that was where I was headed. There was a finality to it that didn’t feel negotiable.

When the experience ended, I expected something to lift. It didn’t. My body was still deep in withdrawal. The same restlessness, the same agitation, the same inability to land anywhere inside myself. Whatever had opened psychologically hadn’t translated to the physical reality I was in. 

If anything, it made it more pronounced. My body had been keeping the score and it didn't care what I had seen or understood. It was just there, holding the line, letting me feel it all the way through. 

I remember sitting there afterward, completely exposed, begging them not to let me leave. Not because I felt fixed, as they had promised. I pleaded with them because I didn’t. Something had been stripped away. Maybe it was the buffer. Maybe it was everything I had been trying to avoid. The distance I had been keeping from my own life. Without that, everything felt closer. Too close. Like I had been shown something I couldn’t unsee, and had no idea how to live with it yet.

I was told that things would change when I was home. I disregarded my knowing, and made my way across the border anyway. 

The relapse that followed carried a different weight. There’s a kind of ignorance in addiction that lets you keep going—a not knowing that protects you just enough, or maybe an absence of feeling that leaves you less exposed. That part of me was gone. Every choice came with a memory attached to it. Every movement forward felt like stepping into something I had already seen play out. It didn’t stop me right away, but it changed the ground beneath me.

I went back to ibogaine a second time not long after. There wasn’t much hope in that decision. Just a quiet recognition that I hadn’t reached the end of what was being asked. The second experience was less abrupt, but in some ways more demanding. There was less resistance in me, which meant there was less distance from what was coming up. The same material surfaced, but it stayed longer. I stayed with it longer.

Ibogaine gave me something real, a true interruption. I finally experienced a break in a pattern that had been running my life without pause. Ibogaine created space where there hadn’t been any. That space mattered more than I understood at the time. But it was still just space. Quiet, and unfamiliar, almost disorienting. There was no noise, no urgency but a felt gap where something used to be.

Sometime after, I found myself sitting with iboga, the full spectrum root. Different place, different pace, a different conversation entirely. There was no rush to get anywhere. No urgency to fix anything. Just time…before, during and after. Like finding yourself in a place where nothing is happening fast, but everything is happening. 

The medicine moved differently. It didn’t take me out of my life, it brought me back into it. Very slowly—with a kind of patience I wasn’t used to. My life unfolded again, but this time it held together. Not fragments, not scenes, a continuity. I could see how things connected. Where I had stepped away. Where I had choices I didn’t take. Where I still had responsibility. There was less force, but more depth.

At certain points, it stopped feeling like I was being shown something and started to feel like I was in relationship with it. With my life, with my patterns, with the parts of myself I had been avoiding. 

The patterns I had been fighting against started to make sense. Not in a way that excused them, but in a way that revealed their function. They had been doing something for me, regulating, protecting, holding things I didn’t know how to hold on my own. Seeing that didn’t remove them, it changed how I related to them.

The work became quieter after that. Less about stopping something, more about building something that could actually take its place. I allowed my system to learn a different rhythm. I made choices that didn’t feel natural at first, but started to hold over time. It wasn’t dramatic and  it didn't happen all at once. But it stayed.

Looking back, both experiences are part of the same line for me. Ibogaine showed me where I was headed in a way I could not ignore. It was sharp, unforgiving, and at times overwhelming, but it was honest. Iboga gave me a way to stay with that honesty. To let it organize into something I could actually live inside of.

There’s a lot being said right now about these medicines. A lot of certainty, and a lot of promises. I understand where that comes from. When you’ve lived in that world of uncertainty, you want something that works. Something that cuts through everything and gives you your life back. But nothing that reaches that depth comes without complexity.

What I can say is that something in me stopped running. Not all at once, not perfectly, but enough. Enough to change direction and enough to build from. And that line I was shown, the one I couldn’t unsee…it’s still there.

It’s just further behind me now.