What are iboga and Ibogaine?
Excerpt from MAPS Psychedelic Science 2025 Panel - "Iboga and Ibogaine: From Roots to Modern Practice and Future Horizons" - with Jonathan Dickinson, Dr. Martin Polanco, and Tricia Eastman - moderated by Hadas Alterman
Tabernanthe iboga is a perennial rainforest shrub native to Central West Africa (Gabon, Cameroon, Congo), grows 5–6.5 feet tall, in rare cases up to 30 feet. Its small orange fruits and bitter root bark contain potent alkaloids. The roots develop a robust alkaloid profile after 5–7 years, with older plants yielding richer concentrations. Iboga supports rainforest biodiversity by attracting pollinators such as bees to its 5 pedaled star-like flowers and dispersing its seeds through forest animals, such as elephants.
Traditional preparation involves carefully scraping the root bark, where the medicinal properties reside in the middle layer. As in many traditional medicinal practices, greater bitterness is associated with higher medicinal properties. And the bitterness often produces a gag reflex when ingested. Indigenous groups, including the Babongo, Baka, and Bantu groups, have revered iboga for centuries, perhaps millennia, and helped shape the Bwiti tradition. The Tsogo etymology of “iboga,” means “to care for” or “to heal,” and Iboga is also known as the sacred wood and the proverbial tree of knowledge. Oral tradition and certain hieroglyphs suggest its use in Pharaonic times in ancient Egypt.
In initiation rites, iboga is believed to facilitate communion with deceased ancestors through a psycho-spiritual death and rebirth process, which typically occurs over the course of several weeks and involves extensive rituals involving purification baths, fire ceremony, ceremonial dance, prayers, and songs. Bwiti temples, architecturally designed through experience with the sacrament iboga, are constructed to reflect spiritual and cosmological principles, incorporating the soul’s archetypal journey, bridging the seen and unseen worlds, and the solar/masculine and lunar/feminine balance. In 2000, Gabon declared iboga a “national treasure” and “cultural heritage strategic reserve,” banning its export to protect cultural and ecological integrity, partly in response to U.S. researcher Howard Lotsof’s attempt to patent its medical uses.
Iboga contains numerous alkaloids, with ibogaine being the most prominent, similar to THC in cannabis, suggesting a potential entourage effect that requires further study. Isolated in the early 1900s, ibogaine was historically extracted from iboga but is now sustainably sourced from Voacanga africana (via voacangine) or produced through yeast cultures and chemical precursors. Most clinics use ibogaine, synthesized from voacanga. Dosing depends on body weight and various factors, varying for patients with opioid addiction, mental health issues, or neurological conditions.
Classified as a dissociative psychedelic and oneirophrenic agent, the ibogaine experience induces a 12–24-hour waking dream state, or 24–48 hours for iboga root bark. Often called “The Mount Everest of Psychedelics,” it is marked by its long duration, challenging physical effects, and ability to surface difficult psychological material. Recipients often report vivid closed-eye visuals, ranging from biographical to cosmic to chaotic imagery. Unlike classical psychedelics, ibogaine preserves some ego awareness, allowing for interaction, such as guided therapeutic inquiry, at a certain depth. Physically, it causes nausea, vomiting, ataxia, ear buzzing, and a heavy sensation. Its cardiac risks include the potential to prolong the QT interval and cause fatal arrhythmias, which necessitate rigorous cardiac screening and monitoring, intravenous electrolytes, and emergency-trained medical professionals in clinical settings.
Ibogaine uniquely detoxifies individuals from short-acting opioids like heroin. However, for those on long-acting opioid replacement therapies like suboxone or methadone, pre-treatment with short-acting opioids, such as morphine, is required. Ibogaine also shows anti-addictive effects for alcohol, amphetamines, cocaine, and other substances. Emerging research highlights iboga’s potential for traumatic brain injury and neurodegenerative diseases. It remains the most pharmacologically complex psychedelic compound. With millennia of ancestral use and traditional knowledge, many “scientific discoveries” about iboga’s healing properties are not novel.
This underscores a legal and ethical need to protect against biopiracy and include traditional practitioners as central stakeholders. Iboga and ibogaine serve as bridges between ancient wisdom and modern medicine, warranting reverence for its cultural and ecological roots as we respectfully co-create its future use.