As a result, only a very small number of practitioners are will to directly offer ibogaine therapy in the UK. One individual operating in northern England, providing treatments by word of mouth, toldthat they did not want to be interviewed because they feared arrest. Unsurprisingly, the countries where ibogaine treatments are offered – such as Portugal, Mexico, Brazil and the Netherlands – are places where the drug is either legal or unclassified.
He added that a key issue in Britain is a treatment system that emphasises transition for addicts to long-acting heroin substitutes such as methadone. Ibogaine works far more effectively with addicts who are using a quick-acting opiate like morphine, but GPs are extremely reluctant to write such prescriptions, not least because of the risk of overdose.
Certainly, ibogaine is a substance which is to be used with considerable caution, not least because its status as a stimulant means it increases heart rate and poses a risk of cardiac arrest. Complications are claimed to be rare but they do happen. In January, prosecutors in Colorado announced they had charged a 49-year-old man with distributing ibogaine which had resulted in the death of an unnamed individual in 2021.
The Gabonese government last month authorised the first export of iboga root to produce pharmaceutical-grade ibogaine under a new United Nations-sponsored system designed to return a portion of the earnings from natural products to their original communities to promote sustainable harvesting.