AIR

Name change.  SITAR is now AIR.  

In 2005 I proposed this group - Addiction Interruption Resources - to the Ibogaine community active then on the Mindvix list. 

We will be assembling funding resources to help regular and needy patients obtain safe, medical treatment outside of the U.S.

Tx cost like 10K.  That's not a lot of money for rehab. But it's still a princely sum for many.

Let's give them a hand up. If they are medically qualified. And if they are sincerely motivated. 

Unsprungness is such a gift. Please help if you can.

Oneiric Rainforest Medicine for Spiritual and Medical Use

What is Iboga?  What is ibogaine?  Besides a "plant teacher" from the equatorial western Africa rainforests of Gabon, Cameroon, and parts of some other republics and nation-states.

Dr. Hip says its a psychedelic. Howard Lotsof told me it wasn't really. Dana Beal says its a REM-mimetic neurotrophigen, i.e. an oneiric under which the patient experiences a dream-like state that stimulates some brain chemistry mechanisms that are unknown but do express GDNF.  

I like oneiric -- dream-like -- because I care most about safety.  It's a dream you might not wake up from if you aren't really careful.

But there is a serpent I saw ...

Up to 1/3 of those who take it do not experience visualizations.  So maybe its NOT a true psychedelic.

But reportedly 1 in 300 (or fewer) will potentially need medical intervention to ingest it safely in a Western context.  Ibogaine is not really a DIY substance.  

I dunno. I've never eaten the Freedom Root. (But then again, I've never taken cocaine or dope or meth either. So what do I know about any of all this addiction treatment anyway...)

But there is a serpent I saw...

It was patterned in undulating yellow and red, strong and supple, emanating from the opening light that is the Holy Mother energy of Shakti. 

And I did not eat the Root. But simply sat in a room and prayed with a beloved who was flooding... 

It was some sort of gargantuan python like creature. 

And it was about to bite my head off until I opened my eyes.

Now *that* is powerful Medicine. 

Spirits were flying around... our bed vibrated... Healing happened. 

I was part of it. So were a few others. But somehow I'm not supposed to saaaaay that publicly?  Or write a grant proposal that expresses my dream?

Spiritual use. Medical use. Little potential for abuse. Great potential for helping addiction interruptions and neurological illnesses. 

Get it off Schedule 1 in the U.S.

A REM-mimetic that expresses GDNF (e.g. a neurotrophigen).  

I wonder what it might have done for my great friend, Kate Struby, and her ALS...

Parkinson's low dose clinicals going on now! 

What could it do for neurological disease more generally?

Freedom Root Presents

PS:  My crazy uncle Dana says:  "For anyone who wishes to know more about ibogaine, there is an excellent free documentary online"
Ibogaine: Rite of Passage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPDIH9WODnk

Therapeutic Uses of Iboga/ine and It's Outdated U.S. Legal Status

Iboga/ine has proven therapeutic use.

For example, studies of opiate detoxification assisted by dosing with it show the African rainforest root blunts withdrawal symptoms and cravings

It should not be Schedule 1!

The Americans' conservative criteria for this scheduling under the anachronstic Controlled Substances Act reads as follows in 21 USC Section 812(b)(1):

Title 21 United States Code (USC) Controlled Substances Act

SUBCHAPTER I — CONTROL AND ENFORCEMENT

Part B — Authority to Control; Standards and Schedules

§812. Schedules of controlled substances

(b) Placement on schedules; findings required

Except where control is required by United States obligations under an international treaty, convention, or protocol, in effect on October 27, 1970, and except in the case of an immediate precursor, a drug or other substance may not be placed in any schedule unless the findings required for such schedule are made with respect to such drug or other substance. The findings required for each of the schedules are as follows:

(1) Schedule I.—

(A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.

(B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.

(C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision. 

Potential for abuse is up for debate.  Sacred use and medical use are more like it.  But items (B) and (C) are decidedly wrong!

Join the SITAR benefit, IBOGAINE FOR THE WORLD, to help spread this message.  We are holding an educational panel, with a reception, fundraising auction, recovery meeting, and then rock concert.  Several medical doctors with unique experiences and clinical expertise to share are scheduled to speak and take questions.  And other special guests are expected to join them.

We need to put up a deposit to throw this exciting event.  It will be held just north of San Francisco, California on Saturday December 12, 2015.

Funds raised will be directed toward the Safety First! message, and go to support an important international conference coming up in March 2016, sponsored by the Global Ibogaine Therapy Alliance (GITA).

To book the prospective venue and musical talent, we urgently need to show some movement on our crowd-funding effort, http://bit.ly/1JWnPfO.  $150 gets you an early bird VIP ticket to the panel, reception, and rock show!  Please help us crystallize this effort!

If you can not contribute by PayPal or Credit Card, or choose to contribute in some other way (media, art and visionary culture items to auction off for the benefit of GITA 2016 conference needs?), feel free to email the organizer at freedomroot@gmail.com for a U.S. mailing address.

We anticipate having a Post Office box by September 1st.

You can also follow us, and see more media links, on our Facebook Causes page.

Thanks. And Love All Ways.  Free the Root!

Safety First! Why I am Starting SITAR Now... as of August 2015

Somehow I've migrated off of Facebook, a micro-world of 1008 friends, most of them except a handful actually friends -- family, schoolmates, colleagues, and my music community -- from the world of fleshy, breathing, messy humanity.  And my friends there, and my friends from Tribe.net, say they like me to use my own voice.

So here it is.  The voice.  But back in freedomroot mode.

What will Affinity Resources do for the Safe Ibogaine Treatment movement?

I have been committed to "the" Ibogaine movement, if it can even still be called such a thing, since the summer of 2004.

After the COSM (Alex Grey's then in NYC Chapel of Sacred Mirrors gallery) Ibogaine conference in February 2005, Howard Lotsof mentored me in my policy studies of the scheduling of Iboga/ine under the U.S. narcotics control act.

Sometime in the Fall of 2006 I promised him -- he who patented the use of ibogaine for opiate withdrawal and cravings blunting -- that I would dedicate an hour of my days to doing work for drug addiction interruption treatment.

And then someone in my family had a relapse.  And everything shifted...

This loved one -- I am from the friends-and-family wing of the program -- took Iboga/ine, the oneiric neurotrophogen. Not once, not twice, but four times in total, plus boosters and a lot of nutriceutical work and change in lifestyle, before he got "clean." Now it's been about two and a half years.  I'm really proud of him.

Then in October 2014 tragedy struck.  A truly close friend of like 100+ of my friends, Ted, died from an ibogaine ingestion gone wrong.  It was horrifying and traumatic for his fiancee and roommate, who were with him in Colorado at the time.  It was devastating for his family and friends.  We mourned him intensely.

Sami has been pouring her grief into an incredible blog (that deserves to be a book), and describes the night he had a bad reaction on it in an entry called "Victim."  It was written less than three weeks after her beloved left us prematurely.

She wrote every day... for a long time.  And we all read, and wept with her, and tried to give her support.  It was horrible.  And heart-wrenching.

I braved myself, and reached out to her by email through her blog.  We spoke on the phone once. She told me she honestly had no idea what the physiological risks were in him taking it.

That broke my heart.  I was stricken.  How could she not know?

Maybe he didn't want to worry her, so didn't tell her.

Maybe he was young, and healthy, and overconfident -- a risk-taker.

Maybe maybe maybe.  For what that's worth.  Point is:  I don't really get it.  This was a person who had the resources to get a medically supervised treatment.  Why had he not?  Could the safety message become diluted in the efficacy message?

My gut shivered talking to Sami.  I had turned down a full-time lecturer appointment at my University around the time when my significant other was planning to take his ibogaine detox treatment.  

I was too anxious, and got all worked up... like whipped cream... about the detox potentially taking his life.  We knew it had a side effects profile.  We had studied the risks, and talked them over deeply with our sponsors in the medical subculture before seeking treatment.  We had a kid in college and so couldn't afford anything extra to travel off-shore for legal medical treatment.  He opted for an underground treatment... and I'll stop there.

One because it's not really my story to tell.

And two, because I've already retailed it once, and I haven't re-read that "diary" lately to be factual about it.

Now, ten years later, a young woman was wracked with heartache and loss, a family bereft, and a community of musicians and music fans almost just as overwhelmed.

Why?  Because of the medicine I believe could actually rescue this country from a major dimension of its drug abuse and over-prescription problems.  Potentially because Ted didn't quite recognize the seriousness of the risk he was taking.  The message about strength and efficacy didn't come with an equally strong warning label about physiological changes and the necessity of medical oversight.

I made a report to the people I know in the Movement who follow these things.  Their organization is working on releasing a set of safety protocols and guidelines for minimal standards of care in an Iboga/ine process.

And because they care so much about safety, I have been impressed enough to take on a fundraising effort on their behalf.

I am beginning a nonprofit as part of this fundraising, in order to create an ongoing resource pool for providing affinity support to (medically prescreened) people in need of medically supervised ibogaine detoxification.

Our first benefit starts with helping support an incredible event.  Experts around the world who give iboga/ine treatments will be gathering with the Global Ibogaine Therapy Alliance for a wonderful and important conference in mid-March 2016.

Please consider joining the Safe Ibogaine Treatment movement, or support our efforts to improve access to this very special neurologically-active rainforest root medicine.  Help make Ibogaine for the World happen!

We will be holding a special benefit in the San Francisco Bay Area on December 12th.  We could use your help.  You can find more links about the campaign tweeting from @Hippystorian.

Safety first!!!

Please allow me to introduce myself.

Among other things, Eye is the former wife of a former drug addict whose recovery process has included this sacred root of the Central African rainforest shrub, T. Iboga.

She has never tried cocaine or heroin. She has not ingested ibogaine. She has experienced visions related to her husband's journeys in the dream territory of the jungle. (More on that mystic another time and place.)

She is a contributing poet to the way the Freedom Root collective has named its mission. But be advised: her opinions and other ego-drivel are the sole articulation of her soul, and in no way should be construed as representative of the self-help harm reduction activists collective bearing the same moniker.

She sometimes has a crush on Dana Beal. But try not to hold that against her.

She has a grown stepson who lost his mother to drugs when he was only seven years old. As a result of this tragedy, she morally objects to policies and practices that block access to one of the more effective medical supports addicts like his parents might have benefited from earlier in the trajectory of their diseases.

This blogic diary will reflect activities and contemplations related to that stance.

By trade, she is an historian, a social scientist, and a sometimes-professora of gender and ethnic studies. Her teaching fields include Modern U.S., American Women, the History of Sexuality, and Native North America. She took her outside field of study in the History of Africa.