Psychedelic ibogaine creates significant improvements in veterans’ chronic brain injury symptoms
By Zoe Heart. This article was initially published in the 1/9/25 edition of our Concussion Update newsletter; please consider subscribing.
A recent New York Times article has brought greater attention to the use of ibogaine, a psychedelic derived from the bark of iboga trees, as a growing treatment for US veterans suffering from symptoms of brain injury and PTSD. Despite its illegal status in the US, ibogaine (supplemented by a psychedelic called 5-MeO-DMT) has started to be used by thousands of American veterans a year through a clinic in Mexico. The treatment has consistently yielded effective results across a wide range of physical and emotional chronic brain injury symptoms, gaining a reputation among veterans struggling with brain injury symptoms. One SEAL officer told Times journalist Dave Phillips, "Guys want to get well, and they see this working."
According to New York Times reporter Dave Phillips, ibogaine is administered to veterans through an oral pill at a clinic in Tijuana, Mexico. The drug is known to cause harrowing psychedelic trips with side effects of vomiting, physical illness, and possible heart arrhythmia. For this reason, the clinic administers an intravenous magnesium solution to regulate patients' heartbeat, and a cardiologist monitors them during treatment. After their ibogaine treatment, patients receive 5-MeO-DMT, a powerful short-acting psychedelic nicknamed "the God molecule." Patients receive psychotherapy after their psychedelic treatments, but generally no additional substances. Veterans interviewed in the article reported dramatic improvement after just one ibogaine/5-MeO-DMT session. The NYT article references an animal study indicating that ibogaine "can spur the release of natural proteins in the brain that repair and reconfigure neural networks. That leads some researchers to consider it a potential treatment for traumatic brain injury."
The article emphasizes that veterans are seeking this treatment after finding the treatments available through the US healthcare system are ineffective. One green beret explains: "It does sound a little extreme, but I've tried everything else, and it didn't work." It also mentions the wide range of chronic brain injury symptoms the treatment has been found to alleviate, including struggles with sleep, concentration, depression, substance abuse, emotional control, and memory. Lastly, it points out that the growing use of psychedelics by veterans has led the Department of Veterans Affairs to fund psychedelic therapy research for the first time in over 50 years.
See our blog post on the landmark study on ibogaine published in Nature Medicine, which found that "participants experienced average reductions of 88% in PTSD symptoms, 87% in depression symptoms, and 81% in anxiety symptoms at one month after treatment." Standford University and the nonprofit Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions supported the costs of travel and treatment for the veterans participating in the study.
