I believe that iboga could be an effective and powerfull antidepressant. And since depression is (becoming) such a huge social problem, having an effective and powerfull medicine to fight it is a good thing in itself and maybe it could also emancipate psychedelic substances in the wake of it.

Now, in order to get iboga recognized as an effective and powerfull medicine, extensive testing would need to be done, wich is expensive and the results would need to be published in established medical magazines and such, wich is all way beyond my reach.

But the idea of iboga as an accepted, widely used drug against terrible diseases doesn't have to end here.

My idea is this: there should be a website and people who feel depressed and who are willing to experiment with iboga as medication for this could just fill in two checklists on a regular basis. One checklist for symptoms of depression and another for (possible) side-effects of iboga. The website registers when the checklists are being filled and it could be done anonymously. People could just get a number or an invented name like here.
There should be someone with a medical degree who's willing to monitor the site. It would only need to be checked once every few days or so, to tell people with serious side-effects to stop with the iboga treatment or to give some feedback.
The thing is: it should cost as little as possible and would after a while contain a lot of data on how people with depressive symptoms respond to a certain amount of iboga, taken on a daily basis.

I think a few organisations who're involved in iboga could maybe automatically link to it. Organisations that sell iboga. Organisations such as MAPS could also be involved in some way, because they have a network within the scientific community and they probably know how to do these kind of things.

It should all be as low-budget and simple as possible, but nevertheless gradually gather data that can be realy valuable.

One of the things is that the dose of iboga people should experiment with should be probably lower than the doses currently used, because you don't want iboga side-effects to interfere with the depression checklist. for instance: insomnia is a symptom of depressive dissorders and so is lack of mental focus/ foggyness, so doses should be low enough to not have these kind of symptoms interfering with the data on how the depression devellops.

There wouldn't have to be a control group, because there's already plenty of data available on how placebo effects can help aleviate depressive symptoms. Every antidepressant on the market is testet against a controll group, so to get a decent indication of iboga's effectiveness, another controll group wouldn't be needed.

Once the data starts sipping into the medical community, there will automatically come a moment that some more thorough research with all the correct procedures and such, will be done by a well established research facility and group of researcers.

I like the idea as its a good effort to find low cost ways to get these substances recognized more and studied better.

But the adequacy of the data will not be recognized much by serious researchers. Due to numerous methodological issues. For example you have no way of knowing if someone is making things up or what dose of the substance they are really taking or placebo effect. These aren't my concerns as I think anecdotes are a good way to get started even if the data is not conclusive. But they will be brought up by doctors and clinicians or simply the data will be ignored.

The real problem getting drugs like Iboga or any botanical substance recognized by medical community is the cost of doing clinical trials. Since the financial gains of getting such a drug approved by a drug approval agency (like FDA) are low no company is willing to invest because its a large investment. Public funding agencies are just as reluctant.

Regardless I do think its a good idea to collect information in as a clear a manner as possible from individuals who report positive benefit from the drug. You could at least generate interest in using it to treat depression if it indeed works. My own personal concern is that Iboga might be a bit too toxic? But I guess the doses you are talking about are low?

I don't mean to be discouraging but this is an issue I think a lot about. I've done work with botanical based medicines and how to get them into mainstream medicine and conduct effective clinical trials. Its possible but its tough and you need to get funding at some point.

Yeah, i agree. But it's a matter of small steps. I look at it like other botanical products like ginseng or gingko biloba. Those plants have been seriously researched with double blind tests, etc. But it took a while before the scientific community got interested in them.

I think iboga is much more promising than gingko or ginseng. The only problem is that it could backfire in the sense that, once iboga would get recognized as a powerfull drug, it could become a prescription drug and strictly prohibited.

On the other hand it could become much more easily available to people who realy need it and maybe pharmaceutical companies would even start develloping chemical analogue's of iboga that are improved versions of it, specialised for addiction, OCD, depression, etc.

The whole point is that iboga should get more attention. At this moment there are very few people who've ever heard of it in the first place. Even among psychiatrists and psychologists who work with drug adicts, iboga is relatively unknown. And those who do know the substance, often don't know that micro-dosing is an option as well, so they're often scared away from the substance because they think any use of it is by definition as risky and intense as a 48 hour debilitating and paralising flood dose.

We need to slowly get the attention of the medical establishment, and at this moment i see no better way than collecting data through bioassays,sinceother ways of collecting data requires so much money and recources that you only gonna get it done with substances that already have the attention of the scientific community.

^^Good points. Maybe a good first step would be to collect relavent literature? Has anyone written a good review on the topic?

Iboga fascinates me and I am a big supporter even though I've never tasted it myself.

I hear lots of people mention ibogas toxicity. The only study I've seen of that is here:

http://toxsci.oxfordjour...nt/57/1/95.full.pdf+html

which bases the neurotoxicity claims on IP administration of huge doses to mice (100mg/kg as opposed to ~30mg/kg for large human doses, taken orally). Mice in the study that received 25mg/kg IP had no adverse cerebral side effects. I see other people quote studies that say ibogaine promotes regenerative brain hormones also, similar to many other apocynaceae. If the long lasting metabolites are unhealthy in large amounts frequent use could be problematic. I suspect the toxicity hype is blown out of proportion since it is a poorly known and "exotic" drug. Remember there is a long history of human use of this substance, which imo is far more convincing in many regards than clinical trials.

as far as financial motives in the industrial drug world, there is actually incentive to impede the progress of iboga research. How much money do you think methadone manufacturers rake in every year?

oh yeah, here are some links if you want a good starting place for research...

http://www.puzzlepiece.o.../literature/iborefs.html

http://www.ibogaine.desk.nl/ch09.pdf

EDIT: I forgot to adress the OP! sorry if sometimes I spew relevant info without relating it to the topic. I agree with burnt that the proposed test wouldn't carry a lot of weight in academic circles because there are too many unknowns and opportunities for dishonesty. There are quite a few countries where iboga bark is legal so perhaps a clusterbuster type site for iboga and depression could bring some positive attention. One of the biggest problems with iboga root in those countries is the huge cost though... even a small dose comes out to be 30-100 USD I think.