I smoked cocaine for ten plus years, I was a functional addict (sub contractor). My house caught fire early one morning while sleeping. I could not get out due to bars on windows and a keyed deadbolt on the door. Long story short I awoke forty-five days later due to a Ketamine induced coma. When released about three weeks later I had no intentions, needs, or cravings of any kind. Also I could no longer enjoy cigarettes after a forty year habit. Tried to smoke but never finished the one cigarette my sister gave me in two days, never picked another one up. It has been six years and I couldn’t even begin to imagine taking any mood altering drug for pleasures sake. Expensive though: over 20% 3rd degree burns & close to $800,000.
In case anyone wants to restart the subject, making detox easier is fine and all, but detox isn’t the cure for addiction. Addicts can and will detox over and over again, but that doesn’t stop going back to the using. The unpleasant physical sensations caused by drug withdrawal aren’t fun, but they’re not the reason people keep using.
Detox is easy. We already have plenty of treatments to make detox somewhat less unpleasant. Even better treatments to make detox even easier are fine, but they won’t do a thing to solve the real problem addiction.
If I’m not mistaken, drugs like cocaine aren’t physically addictive. So what good would traditional or rapid detox even do for such addicts?
In Australia the Chelmsford Private Hospital ran a deep-sleep therapy clinic that claimed to treat, among other things, addiction in the 1960s-70s.
Others may help me understand whether this is more than superficially the same as a coma-based approach, but the operation of the hospital, and the enduring damage done to those who underwent treatment, and were comprehensively failed by the doctor in charge and the regulatory health system generally became a national scandal.
Write ups -
Wikipedia - Deep sleep therapy
A student project blog [i think] with lots of additional material
In the decade since this thread was fresh has there been any more developments on the ibogaine front?
Not really. There’s been an explosion of treatment centers ranging from luxury to fly-by-night, and the ibogaine has become more scarce and expensive due to demand for botanical raw material. Meanwhile, there is more widespread use of less culturally freighted treatments such as suboxone and naltrexone.
I expect the next development we’ll hear from the ibogaine front is successful human trials of 18-methoxycoronaridine. 18-MC is a derivative of ibogaine that is supposed to have multi-substance anti-addictive potential, but without the risk of cardiac arrhythmia, respiratory disruption, or totally tripping your balls off.
18-MC is not yet even in the FDA approval stage, so check this thread for updates again in another 10 years or so.
My nephew successfully detoxed from meth this way–he wasn’t put into a “coma” but was put in twilight sleep for several days (maybe it was a week?) while his body withdrew from dependence on the drug. I can’t remember the cost, but recall it was very expensive since he (obviously) had to be inpatient and closely monitored. He stayed in inpatient rehab for an entire month to get over the psychological addiction, then did outpatient rehab for a year or so.
I’ve had an interest in ibogaine ( as well as other “plant medicines”)for a while and frankly, it’s kind of scary stuff. There’s some good forums out there if you want to learn more - they contain lots of personal testimonies. Some of them are kind of hidden so expand your search to contain the alternate term “eboka”.
Some things I’ve learned :
People relapse just like they do with regular detoxes and many people have done multiple flood treatments. There is a saying on one forum that " the fourth time’s the charm". It does seem to buy a little more time between relapses, this is probably due to the chemical action of ibogsine - it metabolizes into a chemical that has some opiate receptor affinity and that chemical is stored in the fat cells where it is released slowly.
But some people lack an enzyme that promotes this reaction so that always doesn’t happen.
The experience itself is very intense and frequently unpleasant. Judging by the experience reports I’ve read, about a quarter of the people that try it at home end up hospitalized. Some of them die, usually of cardiac problems. One regular on one of the sites went into a coma, suffered oxygen deprivation and survived with permanent mental disabilities. This happened during his fourth or fifth experience with the drug. Others who were enthused at first and reported success came back later to report that they felt the drug had permanently and drastically diminished their mental functioning.
So it’s not really the miracle it’s cracked up to be, so be careful.
I am so not surprised.
I’ve seen so many ‘cures’ for opioid addiction come and go. All have failed their early hype. At best, they’re another tool in the toolkit, a crutch to help an addict remain abstinent while they make the personal changes they need to do in order to find lasting recovery. At worst, they substitute one addiction for another, or have physiologic effects that are even worse than the opioids’ effects.
There are no shortcuts to sustained recovery from chemical dependence, it seems. Not yet, anyway.
I forgot to mention -and this should not be surprising - some people cite the availability of Ibogaine as a factor in their relapses. The thinking is… life is getting rough, so I’ll just go back to the pills ( or whatever) for a while, then when this blows over and life is good again I’ll just do another Ibogaine detox, no problem.
I guarantee you that no one treats the idea of a traditional sweat and vomit detox so lightly, it’s a profound deterrent.
While educational, withdrawal is not that profound of a deterrent. I know many opioid addicts who’ve subjected themselves to it repeatedly. And personally, having experienced it myself did not prevent my further relapses. That took personal change.
This is what people can’t seem to understand. Fear of an unpleasant detox is not the reason addicts keep using.