Ibogaine For The World -- Saturday 12/12, 5:30 pm -- Mill Valley California

Freedom Root Presents

Saturday December 12th
5:30 pm - 11:30 pm
Sweetwater Music Hall
19 Corte Madera Ave
Mill Valley CA 94941

Benefit reception, $52.
Panel discussion and Q&A, $22
Concert with Mark Karan and Friends, $32
Full VIP Package, $102
Tickets available at:
http://www.sweetwatermusichall.com/event/991907-ibogaine-for-world-benefit-mill-valley/

Speakers include:
Amy Emerson, MAPS
Christopher Laurance, Iboga Root Home
Dana Beal, Cures Not Wars
Eugene Schoenfeld, M.D., Dr. HIPpocrates

Update:
At the panel, we will also be discussing low-dose ibogaine treatment for Parkinson's disease. Speakers include "Patient D" who gets help from https://www.genesisibogainecenter.com/, and neuroscientist Dr. Vicka Corey, who will share on designing experimental research into this rainforest plant alkaloid.  See her C.V. at http://www.brainexplained.com/cv.html

Net proceeds to benefit international iboga/ine projects such as the 2016 Global Ibogaine Conference, Blessings of the Forest, and new addiction interruption efforts in Nepal and Afghanistan.

Public invited.  Doors at 5:00 p.m. for  the VIP reception (hors d'oeuvres with a cash bar).  Panel presentations and Q&A discussion 6:45 - 8:45.  Auction to benefit the IFW causes between panel and concert,  Celebration concert with Mark Karan and Friends begins at 9:30 p.m.

#FreedomRootPresents
#IFW
#IbogaineForTheWorld
#A.i.R.Fundraiser
#AddictionInterruption

DISCLAIMER:  At this time A.i.R. does not have the infrastructure to do direct aid to patients.   But because the regulatory situation in the U.S. (Schedule 1) makes it difficult for people in need to procure regular medical treatments except in places like Mexico and Costa Rica, A.i.R.'s mission will include a plan for supporting patients around these travels.  Please see the Ibogaine Alliance's new (September 2015) Clinical Guidelines for good information about the medical administration of iboga/ine at http://www.ibogainealliance.org/guidelines/

12-12-15 Benefit for the 2016 Global IBO conference

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.

Stopping Addiction, one piece of P.R. at a time

{edited and updated August 3, 2015}

In February of 2005, CBS News in San Francisco screened this piece, The Addiction Stopper, about the possibilities of using Iboga/ine as a medical addiction interrupter. The problem is:  ibogaine and its relatives are scheduled under the United States narcotics laws as the first priority for regulation: for allegedly having no medical utility, and being likely to be abused.

But why is this "freedom root," Tabernathe Iboga, really illegal in the U.S.?

Because of a "psychedelic backlash" to the so-called sixties.

And because a person who could have testified as to the medical value of ibogaine during legislative hearing was incarcerated at the time.  Never forget, whatever else you do for the root work and the recovery movement, that the first person prosecuted under new Federal drug laws against L.S.D. was Howard Lotsof.  And in 1962, it was Lotsof who discovered the addiction interruption properties of the African rainforest shrub.  Experimenting in psychedelics, like other artists of the time, he woke up the next morning after ingesting ibogaine without a drug habit.

Now Ibogaine is not exactly a psychedelic.  Nor even a true hallucinogen.  Some argue its a sacrament or an entheogen.  Neurologically however, the best description falls under another taxonomy.  It's oneiric.  Dream-like.  And about 1/3 of the human subjects who have undergone its arduous journey do not even experience these dreamy visualizations.

It is precisely this consciousness lubrication that may be beneficial, explains leading researcher, Dr. Deborah Mash, at the University of Miami medical school.  If these visions, she preaches, help an addict grab their demons by their tails and work closely with a connected therapist, "who cares if its hallucinogenic!"

Our point in addition to Dr. Mash's exclamatory opinion, will be that it's an oneiric.  Not a hallucinogen.  And definitely not to be conflated with the conservative backlash to all thinks countercultural in the Vietnam Era.  Especially all things psychedelic.

It is not known if this R.E.M.-mimetic state of the oneiric is what helps the brain cells express GDNF.  But it is starting to be known that GDNF can help Parkinson's, and maybe other devastating neurological illnesses.  This is a significant scientific development.  The public really needs to get on board with the potentialities here!

As I just wrote in a different context, what we need is to continue to walk back the damage Dr. Timothy Leary did to psychedelic studies with his impact in the mid-to-late 1960s.

And we will.  If we work together.  Collaboratively.  Inclusively.  Kindly.  Thoughtfully.  And yes, academically.

For this inspiration, I am indebted especially to Nese Devenot and the community she gathered at the University of Pennsylvania during September 2012.

Her amazing conference, PSYCHEDEMIA, marked an important breakthrough in the New Psychedelic Studies movement.  I know it reinvigorated me and my commitment to the policy implications of my research interests, ambitious though they may be.

End ego drivel of the day.  Love you all.

Liberating the Whole Earth Psychic Traditions

Find the cost

of freedom

buried in the ground.

Mother Earth

will carry you

lay your body down.

Sam Stone: Who will you come home to?

Sam Stone
by John Prine

Sam Stone came home,
To the wife and family
After serving in the conflict overseas.
And the time that he served,
Had shattered all his nerves,
And left a little shrapnel in his knees.
But the morhpine eased the pain,
And the grass grew round his brain,
And gave him all the confidence he lacked,
With a purple heart and a monkey on his back.

There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes,
Jesus Christ died for nothin I suppose.
Little pitchers have big ears,
Don't stop to count the years,
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios.

Sam Stone's welcome home
Didn't last too long.
He went to work when he'd spent his last dime
And soon he took to stealing
When he got that empty feeling
For a hundred dollar habit without overtime.
And the gold roared through his veins
Like a thousand railroad trains,
And eased his mind in the hours that he chose,
While the kids ran around wearin' other peoples' clothes...

There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes,
Jesus Christ died for nothin I suppose.
Little pitchers have big ears,
Don't stop to count the years,
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios.

Sam Stone was alone
When he popped his last balloon,
Climbing walls while sitting in a chair.
Well, he played his last request,
While the room smelled just like death,
With an overdose hovering in the air.
But life had lost it's fun,
There was nothing to be done,
But trade his house that he bought on the GI bill,
For a flag-draped casket on a local hero's hill.

There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes,
Jesus Christ died for nothin I suppose.
Little pitchers have big ears,
Don't stop to count the years,
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios.

Like a Settin' Sun

Neil Young... plucking that guitar...

I caught you knockin at my cellar door
I love you, baby, can I have some more
Ooh, ooh, the damage done.

I hit the city and I lost my band
I watched the needle take another man
Gone, gone, the damage done.

I sing the song because I love the man
I know that some of you dont understand
Milk-blood to keep from running out.

Ive seen the needle and the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every junkies like a settin sun.

Do NO harm? Or do Minimal Harm?

"Harm reduction," he said, " Is not about getting off of or stopping using drugs. It is
about minimizing the health consequences of using drugs."

Why are drugs policies so inhumane?

And who from the Movement "will be covering" the Harm Reduction Therapy Conference coming up in Philadelphia the first weekend in November?

Among the speakers scheduled is Andrew Tatarsky, PhD Co-Director, Harm Reduction Psychotherapy and Training Associates. As his bio explains:

Dr. Tatarsky has presented widely in the area of substance use and harm reduction. He is a founding member and president-elect of the Addiction Division of the New York State Psychological Association and chair of the board of Moderation Management.Dr. Tatarsky is the author / editor of Harm Reduction Psychotherapy: A New Treatment for Drug and Alcohol Problems.

Maybe that slogan one of my college clubs had -- Nihil in Moderato -- explains why so many of its alums have "problems" with moderation.

Just maybe...

Poppy Cock-a-Mania

The New York Times reported the other day that the old Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia has been faithfully eradicating opium poppy cultivation.

Most of the world's heroin is now produced in the Golden Crescent, including Pakistan & Afghanistan. According to another report, its another bumper year for the Afghan Opium Crop

"Opium cultivation in Afghanistan grew by 17 percent in 2007, reaching record levels for the second straight year, according to a United Nations report released Monday. Despite a $600 million American counter narcotics effort and an increase in the number of poppy-free provinces to 13 from 6, the report found that the amount of land in Afghanistan used for opium production is now larger than amount of land used for coca cultivation in all of Latin America."

It makes you wonder about why modern wars are fought where they are. At least it makes me wonder... a little bit.

Perhaps someone was right when he prophesized, "Evil does not die of its own self because it imagines it speaks for god." Or something like that.