Just thought I'd share this with ya'll here. This happened over 2 months ago now, and I have since used Iboga several times at sub-flood dose levels. My flood ended up being at about 15mg/kg, and my boosters are usually around 4-6mg/kg.
This is copied from my original post on the Eboka forum. Since I first posted this I found out that the TA extract I was using was actually 70% active, as opposed to the original 30% that I thought. So I ended up getting approx 700mg's of active Iboga alkaloids. Anyway, here's the text:
Where to start.. I've been anxiously awaiting the moment that felt right to finally sit down and type this out, as I'm very much looking forward to getting feedback and insight into this experience.
Friday, at about 2 PM my sitter and I checked into our hotel. I had two adjoining rooms booked.. It wasn't too expensive, but it was nice and clean, and I'm very happy now that the beds were VERY comfortable... I'm gonna do my best to put it all into words.. but I'm sure you all understand how hard that can be.
2:20 PM: Room is set up.. Some trinkets from home scattered about. Prayer beads, candles, etc. About to take my test dose of approx 1 gram TA when Tia returns my phone call. Perfect timing Tia, thanks again for everything! We chat briefly. I'm very nervous, she's very reassuring.
2:30 PM: I take my test dose, which I had to eyeball, but I couldn't have been off by more than 100mg worth of powder, so I'm relatively sure I hit very close to 1 gram TA, capped up in 6 gel-caps. After taking the gel-caps I decide to take a quick shower in the hotel, my equivalent of the bwiti's ritual cleansing. In the shower I kneel and say a prayer, asking for courage, strength, guidance, and "whatever the plant spirit feels I need at this moment".
2:40 PM: Get out of the shower, go into my sitters adjoined room and sit on her bed with her, talking lightly as I wait for threshhold effects. Tia had told me that with some people on the TA it can take an hour to an hour and a half for any effects to be felt, so I'm expecting a slow waiting period.
2:45 PM (T+ 15 minutes!): Effects begin.. Lightly at first.. Everything sounds different. Very metallic. Like I'm inside a tin can. And I can start to hear a slight oscillating effect on the fan in the room. My body feels slightly heavy, and I get a feeling like I'm sinking into the bed. Very comfortable at first. I get a goofy grin on my face. Lights are slightly brighter. I tell all this to my sitter and she suggests I go to my room and get on my bed while I still can. At the time I'm thinking "well I only took my test dose, I don't think it will be that extreme with this small dose", but I don't say it out loud, and get up to goto my room. It's at this point that I feel dizzy for the first time. Walking is somewhat difficult. She helps me to my bed where I get comfortable.
2:50 PM: I'm on my bed.. and everything begins. Very, very quickly. The sinking feeling gets much stronger, almost uncomfortable now. And this is the point where one of the most noticable and lasting effects of the ibogaine takes hold... The spinning. It was so strong. It felt very similiar to just being dizzy. Like when you're young and you spin in circles, then stop and everything keeps spinning for a time. Except this was so strong. The oscillating sound gets my stronger, and it seems linked to the spinning. In my minds eye I could see this glowing orb either right inside my head, or right outside it, and it was orbitting my head. Getting faster, or slower.. changing directions sometimes. The oscillating sound was directly linked to this spinning in my head as well. And this orb I visualized spinning around my head seemed to exert some gravity over my head. As it spun I could feel it pulled me in it's direction. I started to feel very, VERY dizzy.. Which for me has always been an unpleasant feeling. I decide to close my eyes to see if it helps, and regret it almost instantly.. As soon as I close my eyes the sinking feeling turns into falling.. Falling very very fast. And the spinning speeds up in a way I can't comprehend. Strangely though it doesn't make me feel sicker, just scared. I quickly open my eyes again out of fear.. the spinning all but stops, but I feel sicker.. This ends up sticking with me throughout the whole experience... With my eyes open I feel sick to my stomach to the point of vomitting.. But with eyes closed I get scared of how intense things are.. How fast I'm falling and spinning.. At some points I actually see myself falling into a black hole.
2:55PM: Yes.. that's right, 2:55 PM.. It's only been 25 minutes since I took my dose, and I'm already experiencing all this.. Another fear arises.. Did I take too much? Did I mix up the TA and the HCL? The answer is no, but it's a hard thought to get out of my head.. I wasn't expecting such a strong and sudden transition. When I open my eyes I'm right back there in the room. But when I close them I'm immediately sucked into another world... The nausea is very strong, and I can already feel my stomach turning.. I'm thinking "I know I'm going to throw up very soon.. I hope I can keep this medicine down.." And I'm wondering how in the world I'm going to get another dose down.
From here on out time is very hard for me to distinguish. My sitter helped me with the timeline. Seconds felt like hours. But for the sake of this report making sense.. I will simply report that the rest of the intense part takes place from 3 PM until it slowly starts to subside around 7 PM.
It all came in waves.. I would know when it was starting again because the oscillating would speed up again.. and I would literally think "oh boy... here we go again." Sometimes I would try to keep my eyes open by would get too sick and have to close them.. whereupon I would immediately spin at what felt like the speed of light, and fall forever into this black hole.. I won't lie, I was terrified.. I felt like screaming or crying out, but didn't because any movement made me sick.. Especially moving my head.. Now I fully understand why people say do NOT move your head.
I didn't understand why at the time, but the experience had a very sinister feel to me at the time. The visuals were intense.. both open and closed eye. Eyes open I saw objects in the room morph, move, and transform right in front of me. At one point I ever saw my sitter come in to check on me, and sit next to me.. When I tried to move my hand toward hers, I realized she wasn't really there. The closed eye visuals were equally intense.. Lots of kaleidoscoping (however you spell that), geometric patterns, and dreamlike visions rushing toward me. I saw many visions of my family.. the specifics of most of those I don't remember now though. I do remember the pain though..
When I closed my eyes the pain got almost unbearable. This is where most of my fear came from. I felt like I had been ripped inside out. I felt like... well.. what I really am I guess.. I saw myself as a big jumbled lump of flesh and organs, somehow held together, receiving randoms blurbs of sensory input, trying to make sense of it all.. It was painfully shattering. Good lord it just... hurt.. It hurt so bad.
At about 3:30 PM, only one hour after ingestion, my sitter came in with my flood dose of 1 gram HCL.. As soon as she opened the door to my room, I vomited for the first time.. It didn't feel like vomiting.. it felt like purging, if that makes sense.. It came and came and just kept coming.. Now I had ate light the day before, and only had a banana and water the day of.. So I only really vomited anything up the first time, but I dry heaved many many times after that. Now this is one thing that was at first disappointing to me... I ended up only really taking my test dose! Every time my sitter would ask if I wanted to try to take more, I would immediately start heaving.. Just at the mention of taking more.. At the time I was thinking it could have been for the best though, because of the fear I still felt.. but also, I knew deep down that I NEED to achieve flood levels..
At one point, near 4 or 4:30 PM, I am able to swallow two of the 6 capsules of HCL.. But I only keep them down for about 2 minutes before I heave them back up... When I heave them back up I feel the open capsules pass my tounge, so I guess that I might have absorbed a LITTLE bit of the HCL.. but not much if any.
For the next few hours I'm in and out of this black hole.. When my sitter comes to check on me and I open my eyes I'm coherent and lucid, though it's hard to speak. I'm just riding these waves.. In between the waves I'm trying to catch my breath and prepare for the next ride. At one point I distinctly remember a feeling of deep understanding.. I can feel the plant showing me life and it's meaning.. I can't put it into words at all, and I knew that after this state had worn off it wouldn't make much sense, but at the time I understood completely. It showed me life, and what it really was.. I was told that it never really ends. It is eternal. There are only transitions. I laugh because I know this.. I laugh because what I'm seeing and feeling is so profound it borders on ridiculous.
I'm starting to draw a blank now on how to describe the rest of the visions and experience.. but will probably post more about it later as it comes back to me.. So anyway, finally this oscillation that keeps ripping me out of my body starts to slow.. And I spend the rest of the time in the hotel in my bed, tossing and turning.. trying to make sense of what just happened. Check out time is at 11 AM the next day, and my sitter and my ride home have to help me down to the car, I'm still very dizzy and unsteady on my feet. Which also amazing me on what I thought was such a low dose. I'm driven to a friends house where I can rest peacefully for the day.. Sleep isn't even on my mind at all. But a curious thing starts to happen..
Throughout the day after.. the fear starts to subside.. I'm left with a profound sense of peace, and calm. I get a silly smile stuck on my face. I'm happy. Colors are brighter. Music sounds so fresh.. My taste buds are... well, weird still.. All I want is organic vegan food. Anything else tastes funny. Vegetables are AMAZING, fruit as well. As the ataxia starts to wear off I ask the person helping take care of me that day if we can head out to the woods.. She takes me. I'm very tired still and walking is hard.. but everything is SO BEAUTIFUL! It's incredible.. I feeling wells up in my stomach so strong I feel like crying.. Though throughout the whole experience I never actually did cry, which I found surprising.. because I usually do during experiences like this.. Not that this was like anything I've ever felt before, but on other psychedelics I mean.
I spend the rest of the day laughing at things and enjoying my glow. I start to make sense of the experience... Not so much in a tangible way that I can describe with language.. it's more of a feeling.. Like the iboga took my brain/spirit and blew it up, scattering it around the universe, and I was slowly starting to put the pieces back together, having a feeling of revelation every time I found a piece and put it back where it was supposed to go, which wasn't necessarily where it was to begin with. I head home around 9 PM.. Colors are still so bright, I'm wearing sunglasses in the house. I have some light conversation with my family about things.. but mostly I just want to relax. I sit down at our piano and play piano for an hour.. It feels incredible, and I'm improvising in ways I never have before.. The music is just flowing out of my fingertips. It felt incredible. Finally at about 10:30 PM I take some lorazepam to help me sleep, watch the Comedy Central Roast of David Hasselhoff with my dad (hilarious), and go lay down around midnight and fall peacefully to sleep.
I wake up the next day, now Sunday.. Still glowing! Colors still bright.. everything. I spend a nice day with family. Some light exercise. The woods again. Tennis with my sister. Everything is wonderful. Last night I fell asleep at about 10 PM and today I woke up around 7 but stayed in bed until 9:30.. not so much because I wanted to, but things are noisy and hectic in my house in the morning and I wanted to avoid it while I could.
Today, 3 days later, I still feel amazing.. However since the experience I have had a few fleeting cravings.. they didn't last very long.. and for the most part.. it's not that I don't have cravings.. it's just that the part of my brain where thoughts about drugs used to occupy seems empty.. There's nothing there anymore.. I have room in my head. It feels wonderful. Yesterday it was hard to think sometimes.. hard to make decisions.. but not really in a bad way.. It was like meditating and actually eliminating the thoughts from my head for awhile... so relaxing.
So now I'm back to my regular life.. Trying to get my appetite back up, planning on getting back in the gym in a day or two.. Looking for a new job and apartment. Dealing with my angry ex-girlfriend, trying to get to see my daughter.. But I'm calm about it. I'm going to be patient and let things come to me. Trying to reinforce these new habits, which isn't too hard because I had started making better decisions before the treatment.
I do however have a gut feeling I need to try again to achieve a flood dose. I mean, if I still feel great and amazing like this in a month then maybe not.. At the time of the experience, before the pain left and was filled with the glow, I was thinking "i NEVER want to do this again".. but now I think I have much to learn from this plant teacher.. I think my body rejected a bigger dose because I was not ready for it yet, or did not need it at this time. But yeah, I am already thinking about a future flood dose.. Trying to decide how long to wait, though I'm sure I'll just "know" when it's time. Also trying to figure out how to keep it down! I'm wondering if it's ok to just take the flood dose all at once? Now that I know I can handle the medicine.. Or if it would still be safest to start with a test dose and work up... No big deal though, I have plenty of time to figure these things out.. And I'm very grateful I have a good amount of medicine left..
I am so grateful for this experience. I'm bursting at the seams right now.. and I'm sure I'll have much more to say.. but alas, words elude me now, and I'm looking forward to sharing this with others and getting feedback.
Also, thanks so much to everyone for your prayers and encouragement. It's so helpful to know I'm not alone on the path.
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Embrace this moment, remember: We are eternal. All this pain is an illusion.