Some say this psychedelic could change the opioid crisis. But its health risks hinder testing

Rocky Dhillon wasn’t afraid when he swallowed the capsule in a Mexican clinic last November.

He was hoping it would be the last “trip” he would ever go on, one that would do something two courses of traditional detox couldn’t — cure him of his addiction to cocaine, alcohol and Percocet, an opioid-based pain reliever.

“Within half an hour I was, like, I was gone … into a different dimension,” recalls Dhillon, a 43-year-old Cree and East Indian man from Winnipeg.

His life flashed before his eyes.

“I was crying, I was mad, I was sad, I was going through so much, so much. It took me to really dark, dark traumas that I buried inside me.”

images expandRocky Dhillon underwent ibogaine treatment, a controversial procedure, at a clinic in Mexico last year.

Dhillon confronted what he describes as “dark evil,” which started hitting him, over and over and over.

Then he saw a devil pointing to stairs descending to hell.

“And I got scared.”

Psychedelic treatment has potential and peril

Dhillon was on an ibogaine trip. It’s a psychedelic drug from the bark of the iboga tree, a shrub native to Central Africa that is used in traditional healing ceremonies and initiation rituals.

It’s controversial, a bit fringe even, but there are people who insist ibogaine is a game-changer because they say it forces users to face the underlying causes of addiction. Proponents say it resets the brain to its pre-addictive state and takes away symptoms of detox, withdrawal and cravings.

And, they say, it may be a solution to the opioid crisis.

The need has never been greater. Health Canada estimates more than 50,000 Canadians have died of opioid toxicity since 2016 — more than the number who died fighting for Canada in the Second World War.

However, ibogaine has serious and well-documented health risks.

It can have adverse interactions with other prescription drugs and psychedelic agents, especially if combined with opioids. It can strain the kidneys and liver.

But the most serious risks involve the heart. Because it’s a stimulant, it can accelerate the heart rate while narrowing the heart’s channels, leading to cardiac arrest.

Those risks are one reason ibogaine is illegal in the United States, where it is classed as a Schedule 1 drug, a category that includes substances like heroin, cannabis and peyote, which are considered having no medical benefits and a high chance of misuse.

In Canada, ibogaine is on the prescription drug list, but without clinical trial evidence, it can’t be prescribed as a medication. Health Canada has not authorized the use or sale of ibogaine or any clinical trials using it. 

It means U.S. and Canadian researchers have to go to countries such as Mexico (where ibogaine is unregulated) and New Zealand (where it’s legal) to study its effects on people.

A 2024 Stanford University study found military veterans who had ibogaine treatment at a clinic in Mexico experienced relief from symptoms such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

However, some researchers are torn about studying ibogaine on people, including University of Kentucky professor Bill Stoops. 

WATCH | Karen Paul’s investigation into ibogaine on CBC’s The National:

“We don’t know enough about ibogaine for me to say, ‘Yes, absolutely we should make ibogaine available to everybody to save all of these lives,’ because we don’t know that it actually does that,” says Stoops, who has expertise in evaluating behavioral and pharmacological factors that contribute to drug use disorders.  

He would like to see double-blinded clinical trials approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Health Canada, but he’s worried the health risk “makes it even harder to do this work in a safe way.”

Stoops and other researchers say anyone seeking an ibogaine treatment should be vetted to ensure they aren’t taking drugs that could interact with it, and be disqualified if they have cardiovascular disease. 

The race is on

One Canadian life sciences company, Universal Ibogaine, is trying to tap into the growing interest for a radical new approach to addictions treatment.

The company has started the long slog of chasing regulatory approval through clinical trials “to prove the safety and the efficacy and the tolerability,” says Ken Cranwill, a Winnipeg businessman who owns two addictions treatment centres and also sits on Universal Ibogaine’s board of directors.

Universal Ibogaine is currently putting together a clinical trial application using observational data from an affiliated clinic in Mexico, which Cranwill says has done nearly 4,000 treatments with no deaths or serious complications.

“I don’t want to misinform anybody that ibogaine is the magic bullet but it’s definitely a tool in the toolbox and it’s a great tool to have,” he says. “You got to weigh the risk with the reward.”

Cranwill has been lobbying “every level of government” for public research funding. He says he thinks that ibogaine could be more successful and less expensive than traditional detox and rehab programs, and the potential deserves to be explored.

There’s money to be made.

And it means some pharmaceutical companies are working to develop ibogaine — or synthetic drugs that act like it, providing the same benefits with fewer risks.

‘Ibogaine has to come out of the grey zone’

Deborah Mash, a retired professor of neurology and of molecular and cellular pharmacology at the University of Miami, first heard about ibogaine in the early 1990s. She has been studying it ever since and is considered a pioneer in the field. 

Her clinical stage drug development company, DemeRx, is working to take a version of ibogaine to clinical trials in the U.S. later this year, with the goal of creating an FDA-approved drug. Mash says noribogaine acts like ibogaine but it’s not hallucinogenic and is less damaging to the heart.

WATCH | Ibogaine research and development in Saint Kitts:

Footage from the Healing Visions Institute for Addiction Recovery, a clinical treatment centre for research and development of ibogaine, in Saint Kitts, an island in the West Indies. Deborah Mash ran clinical trials there in the 1990s. (DemeRx)

She believes the health risks can and should be managed.

“Ibogaine has to come out of the grey zone,” she says. “The cost to society is too great to leave this stone unturned.”

“For patients who suffer and families who have suffered loss, it will give them hope. And it’ll give them an opportunity. It’s not a magic bullet. It’s not a cure, but it is a powerful addiction interrupter. We knew this in 1993. We know it today.”

Cautionary tale

But, there are still many cautionary tales of people desperate enough to try ibogaine in parts of the world where it’s unregulated.

Take the story of 26-year-old Milos Martinovic. He is a Canadian whose family owned property in Toronto before moving to Cannes, France.

He was suffering from depression, stress and anxiety after watching his mom die of cancer in August 2017.

His doctor prescribed OxyContin and Xanax.

“He was addicted to both of those. One is the benzodiazepine and the other one’s an opioid,” says Marius Booysen, a private investigator in Durban, South Africa.

That’s where Martinovic went, after doing some research online and finding a clinic that used ibogaine to treat addictions.

The clinic was run by Anwar Jeewa, a dentist, but Booysen says Martinovic didn’t know that, noting that “Jeewa paraded on the internet as a medical doctor and a guru of ibogaine.”

Jeewa claims to have treated 3,500 people successfully since 2006. He says he agreed to take Martinovic as a patient despite misgivings about how many benzodiazepines he was taking and how withdrawal might impact on his ibogaine treatment.

LISTEN | The potential — and perils — of ibogaine on CBC’s The Current

“We told him to cut it down by half right up until a week before,” Jeewa told CBC News. “He promised me that he has done it.”

Jeewa admits he didn’t follow his own protocols and allowed Milos to take his benzos during the ibogaine treatment, which was captured on CCTV.

About six hours after his first dose, a nurse came to check on him, but couldn’t find a heartbeat or blood pressure.

An autopsy didn’t conclusively find a cause of death.

WATCH | CCTV of Milos Martinovic’s final hours (WARNING: Contains disturbing content)

Content warning: This footage from Anwar Jeewa’s clinic in Durban, South Africa, shows Milos Martinovic receiving ibogaine pills, then hours later being treated by first responders before being pronounced dead.

Jeewa was charged with murder but was convicted in August 2024 of a lesser charge of culpable homicide, and manufacturing and selling a scheduled medication in contravention of the South African Medicine Act.

He was fined, sentenced to house arrest except for his job and ordered to do volunteer dentistry work at the local prison for three years.

Jeewa says he will never provide another ibogaine treatment again, but he is working with a pharmaceutical company in India to manufacture it.

Hope in a ‘losing battle’

Some First Nations leaders are watching all of this, hoping ibogaine may be a solution to the opioid crisis in their communities.

“Our people in the north, especially our young people, are dying because they’re ingesting fentanyl, different kinds of drugs,” says Garrison Settee, the Grand Chief of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, an advocacy organization representing 26 northern First Nations.

Many of them have declared states of emergency.

“It seems that we’re fighting a losing battle.”

Settee says one of the reasons he’s interested in ibogaine is because it’s plant-based, “the way we have been treating our people historically, culturally, that we’ve been using our medicines from the land.”

Approximately 25 per cent of drugs approved by the FDA and European Medical Agency are plant-based, including Paclitaxel and morphine.

His group has written a letter of support for Universal Ibogaine. They’d like to see more research and clinical trials so “we can figure out those things that could cause potential risks and work through them.”

‘I don’t crave it’

As for Rocky Dhillon, he’s a believer.

“By the time I woke up, I was just smiling and happy and just a weight lifted off my shoulders. … And I think that’s part of the rewiring of the brain,” he says.

In the months since his November 2024 treatment, Dhillon says he’s had no withdrawal symptoms or cravings. He hasn’t used any alcohol or drugs, even his prescription medication.

“I don’t crave it. I don’t want it. It’s so crazy.”

Dhillon would like to see ibogaine legally available in Canada so it can help others.

“I just know that it’s not available here and it needs to be. Like why not? Why not? What is there to lose?”

“What’s more likely to kill me? Ibogaine or cocaine or alcohol?”

With files from Perry-Anne Lupyrypa and Sophie Hansen.

Copy editor: Therese Kehler | Digital producer: Althea Manasan | Senior digital producer: Brandie Weikle | Audio documentary: Karen Pauls and Joan Webber | Header video: International Center for Ethnobotanical Education Research and Service