July 1999
Subject: Ibogaine session
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 12:01:48 EDT
From: Nick Sandberg
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: Multiple recipients of list
I recently did 750mg of near-pure ibogaine HCl, but have been so busy haven’t yet had a chance to post anything about it to the list. Here goes:
Monday 7.30am – took 750g ibogaine HCl in capsules.
8.00am – could feel drug coming on, hearing becomes more acute, heart is beating faster and strange pulsing sensations in the body.
8.30 – ataxia, drug definitely taking a hold.
8.30-13.00 – no hallucinating, but a lot of weird sensations and rememberances, snippets of playground conversations long forgotten, stuff to do with childhood, powerful feelings of release both physical and emotional. Found it easy to make myself cry, which is good for initiating release of emotional blockages.
13.00-Tues 10am – brain cogitating merrily all night. More crying, emotional release, nothing especially memorable. Generally feel a little depressed.
Q – Emotionally depressed or physically depressed (exhausted)?
A – Emotionally. Physically I feel weak.
Tues 11am – get up and wash. Attempt to walk the mile or so into work. Very wobbly, people think I’m drunk, takes about 2 hours with a lot of lying down in parks on the way. Still feeling slightly depressed, but it’s no big deal.
Q – Once again, emotionally depressed as in depression or physically exhausted?
A – Emotionally.
13.00-18.00 – Have to wait around for female h addict who wants to try ibogaine treatment. Can’t be bothered doing any work. Spend most of the afternoon lying on office floor or in the park nearby.
18.30 – Walk home. No problem moving around now. Watch a little TV. Starting to feel quite high and extremely relaxed. It strikes me I haven’t felt this physically relaxed for at least 10 years. Eat a little.
Q – When you say, “feel quite high”, do you mean intoxicated or ecstatic? Or, what exactly do you mean. Sorry to be such a bother.
A – No bother. The feeling’s best described as ecstatic. I have now realised the true function of negativity, (emotional, physical, mental, whatever), and could laugh out loud at the utter foolishness of much of my life, a lot of which I have spent hiding from negative thoughts.
22.00 – Go to bed.
Weds 4.00 – Wake up. Can’t sleep any more.
6.00 – Get up. Feeling very high now. Eat breakfast. Walk to Regents Park Conference Centre along the canal. Whilst walking have clear vision that physical world is going to end mid-August, just after the eclipse, when the Cassini probe accidentally re-enters the world’s atmosphere causing 72.3 lbs of radioactive plutonium to be dispersed around the world. This represents the end of suffering and so is a very good thing to happen, with people returning to the Divine domain. Feeling quite unbelievably high now. Very connected with everything. Very much in the flow of life.
Q – Once again, when you say feeling low are you talking emotional or physical? Please explain in detail.
A – As before. Only more so. I now understand that negative thoughts are the “base metal” of spiritual alchemy. Without acceptance of negativity, no personal evolution is possible. Hiding from negativity ensures nothing more than a lifetime of dissatisfaction. There is no evil in the universe. The whole thing is a simply misconception
I feel pretty up for the next few days, then slowly return to nearer normal. Notice that a lot more stuff is coming out of me on the toilet than going in. Can’t wait to do full-on initiation in the Cameroon, assuming I can sort visa out. Even feel like doing about 40g of rootbark, as extract, with another 750mg ibogaine HCl beforehand. Decided Cassini scenario would be unlikely to kill everyone immediately and also felt a little sorry at imminent demise of Physical domain. Managed to convince myself it probably wouldn’t happen anyway.
I’ve previously taken an extract of about 20g of high-quality rootbark and, ataxia + increased hearing accuity aside, would have thought them to be entirely different drugs. I felt very high for almost all the T. iboga extract treatment, but notably depressed for the first 36 hours of ibogaine session.
Q – I know the rootbark come on more slowly and lasts a lot longer. Can you provide the exact time sequence of the comparison of the affects of the root bark and the purified ibogaine? How did you take the rootbark?
A – I took the rootbark as an extract. The overall time scale was roughly the same. Physically, there was a lot more nausea with the rootbark. [Solution not strained properly, this isn’t normal – Nick]. Both came on pretty much the same and the “visionary phase”, or whatever, lasted about 4-5 hours in each case. With iboga I was up after 30 hours. With ibogaine about 27.
That aside the drugs appeared vastly different. Iboga was intensely spiritual. I encountered my immortal self. The effect of doing so is more liberating than I can describe. I realised that the nature of our universe is vastly different from what I’d been bought up to believe in science class. That, essentially, God created scientists to transform the physical world and, of course, to amuse himself by listening to their highly entertaining attempts to understand the nature of our existence.
The HCl was much more physical, and emotionally quite gruelling. I could feel twisted emotions and desires being almost beaten out of me, as dust is beaten out of an old carpet hung on a line. There was a necessary period of physical tiredness and emotional depression, which lifts leaving one very intensely relaxed and high.
The ibogaine session seemed to me like someone taking my emotional body* and beating it with a carpet beater – helping get rid all the shit things that had ever happened to me out of my life, and leaving it all shiny and new afterward.
* holistic scientists believe we have 3 mortal bodies, the physical, (lowest), etheric, (middle) and emotional, (aka astral and highest). Healing on an emotional level is usually regarded as causing permanent improvements on the lower levels.
Happy to answer any q’s anyone might have.
Nick
Q – PS How much do you weigh?
A – I’m 5’8″ and 140 lbs.