It had been a while since my last flood and I felt like it was time. I’m 30 this year, am off to Africa soon for three months and it was likely the last free weekend I would have for this experience for the rest of the year, and would be my last experience with iboga for a very long time, particularly given its conservation status. The source for it shipped iboga seeds with his orders and was supporting an iboga grow in Costa Rica so I was satisfied it was as ethically sourced as I could hope for. My opportunities and my desire for dabbling with psychedelics and related substances like iboga is restricted to quite sporadic and rare occasions these days, although I’m content with this and am increasingly exploring non substance means of consciousness exploration. This would be a change from preparing my own TA from root bark, which I had found to produce inconsistent results for my last few floods.
I flooded on a Friday evening, so I would have the weekend to recover. I had a smoothie for breakfast, then some fruit and nuts for a late mid afternoon lunch, and I drank water throughout the day. A few hours prior to dosing I stopped drinking. I put the iboga TA extract and the ibogaine in empty ‘00’ capsules, and would be ingesting 2.5g f the former, 1g of the latter, all in all a good dose, around 28mg/Kg for my body weight (when considering ibogaine only as oppose to the other alkaloids). This would be my strongest flood experience, of the six I have had, bar my first time. This experience came nowhere near that in terms of visions, I do think there is something special about one’s first time with iboga, at least in a visionary sense.
I found pure ibogaine alone to be quite a quick and shallow experience with very little afterglow to speak of, but my theory was it would synergise nicely with all the other alkaloids in the TA which have an important part to play, and definitely markedly extend the afterglow and deepen the visionary aspects of the experience, at least in my experience. I MUCH prefer the extracted alkaloids to ingesting the root bark as is...this is just a personal preference. But the wood seems to be much physically harder on one’s system and the dizziness and ataxia were much greater for me when I experienced it. The healing and afterglow were still deep and prolonged though, far superior to the ibogaine. But in this respect, with the TA extract, you get the best of both worlds.
This time, compared to previous times, I ingested the dose in one go as oppose to staggering it, based on discussions with a few experienced people. My very dramatic entry into the iboga realm I had experienced on my first time had been markedly lacking in the flood experiences following this. So down the hatch the caps went, with a little water but not too much, and I made sure to taste some of the TA powder to experience that essence of the plant, felt more earthy that way.
I got into bed, turned lights, phone and computer and everything else off, lit a few candles, put on a playlist of Bwiti M’Congo mouth harp music, and put some eye shades on. For a little while not much happened, and I was in a light hypnagogic state, and then things began to shift. The space behind closed eye lids began to deepen, and I began to hear this high pitched whining noise...this noise was coming from my own brain as it began to shift into iboga FM. This didn’t last long but was quite distinct and a sign of my consciousness changing. Behind closed eye lids, a figure materialised reaching out towards me. I was in the iboga realm. My third eye seemed to open again and my room very clearly seem to come into focus. Only I’m not sure it was my room at all, but a projected double, but a very impressive illusion all the same. I did however wave my arms in front of my blond folded eyes and I could clearly see them moving again like I could during my flood, just not as vividly. There were mad patterns on my duvet cover (it is plain). As I was staring at it, I noticed there was a beam of green light projecting right out of my head between my eye brows, right where one would claim the third eye would be, and as it shone on the duvet it actually lit up a small circular area like a mini green spot light. This was so cool that it brought me out of the trance I was in and I lost it! I purged at some point, and had a bucket to hand. It was a good release and a deep purge, my stomach didn’t let me go easily and wanted every trace of iboga out of there. I made the mistake of drinking a sip of water after washing my mouth out and it came right back up...my stomach did not want anything in it at all. This is why it is important to hydrate prior to iboga and make sure you’ve ingested electrolytes. Stopping drinking a few hours prior will aid in alkaloid absorption and may save you a trip to the toilet too soon when you are largely incapacitated. Things were starting to move forward quickly now and I couldn’t remain focused on any thoughts for long. While this can be frustrating at times, this is why I would find it hard to experience much in the way of terror or fear with iboga. Even if thoughts can be unpleasant, they move forward so quickly during the visionary phase that you will likely forget anything troubling before it even has time to get to you. I find it hard to recall much of the visions.
For the visionary phase, I was much of a passive spectator, as oppose to an active participant. The therapy came later. Sometime around dawn I turned the Bwiti music off. It was raining, and the pitter patter of raindrops sounded exactly like the Bwiti music, I experienced the same thing on my first flood. The Saturday day time, dawn till dusk was one of the longest days I have ever experienced. I was never bored though. This is where the therapy came. Much of it was looking at current life issues and personality traits, and some issues with regard to my focus and concentration with regard to my current work. Iboga made some observations about my recent performance that were both harrowing and amusing at the same time. The lessons from the iboga seemed to follow on very well from the lessons and the arse kicking I received partaking of the ayahuasca ceremonies with the Kaxinawa shamans in July. It also brought up some other life issues and things that need attention. It didn’t shove these things down my float, just brought them gently to my awareness.
When darkness fell on Saturday eve, I managed to miscalculate the time for a sec, for some reason I thought I was 36 hours in, when in fact it had only been 24 hours...I had another 12 hours before iboga would release me! As night fell the visions seem to awaken to some degree. I had lots of dream like visions. I had been reading about history of the Middle Ages and English kings of old, and there was lots of this type of imagery in the visions, centred on the brutality of life back then. Many of the visions were quite dark, but I can’t say this bothered me at all, I felt detached. At some point later on in the night I decided to do some bioenergy work, just to experiment and started to perform the IAC’s VELO technique. Very quickly I could feel very tangible waves of energy going up and down my body, it was amazing and definitely my strongest experience of this, it was like my energy awareness had been elevated to master Jedi levels. Having done this just for a little while, it felt like my astral arm was starting to detach from my physical body, and so then I packed it in. While I’m pretty fascinated by OBE’s at the moment I wasn’t sure about having one with iboga running through my system, I wanted to achieve one from a clear and sober head first. With previous floods, in the day after I could read, but on this dose it was futile, I could only think and ponder. I had incredible tracers from the noribogaine flooding my system.
Some 40 hours later, I managed to get some kind of sleep. I don’t recall actually falling asleep, but my mind was refreshed and I could get up and walk about without nausea or ataxia, and sleep is needed for the brain to reset itself. After a smoothie and a shower, I felt pretty good. I went for a walk in a local park to get some fresh air and nature and felt very content and at peace, and grounded feeling of calm. I felt like I got a lot of work done over the weekend and am glad I took the plunge. I noticed on waking, for almost the week afterwards, I would experience visual flashing and trailing from the noribogaine, and I experienced it in the eves a few times. This did not interfere with life in any way and knew it would pass. A quite amazing and significant change I have noticed since this flood experience that is still with me over a week later is that I need noticeably less sleep. My sleeping seems to be more condensed and of good quality. This is a very welcome change and I hope it stays for a while. My hypnagogic state prior to sleep also seems deeper in some way, and I am intrigued to experiment more with OBE techniques and meditation with this in mind.