presenting at a psychedelic medicine symposium at Stanford. We had dinner together after this talk… utterly fascinating.
Just when you thought psychedelic medicine could not get any better…
We heard the latest results from a number of Stanford research projects yesterday, but let me start with the most mind-blowing… One treatment session with ibogaine led to 83-90% remission rates for PTSD, depression, anxiety, alcoholism AND opiate use disorder in 30 Navy Seals diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injury. The benefits persisted through the 1 month follow up. Cognitive function improved across the board, and their self-reported disability… well, it disappeared. See below
These results have not been published yet, but should be.
Important caveat: this was an open label trial with no placebo arm. That work is to come; this study was to explore the reports of “miracle cures” from several hundred U.S. veterans who have gone to Mexico to do a day of treatment for their opiate addiction and PTSD and emerged with reports of life-saving healing. Ibogaine is a long-acting, overwhelmingly strong psychedelic with QT-prolongation cardiac risk requiring medical supervision, making it tricky to study. It is not a “party drug” in any sense. And like all of the plant medicines that appear to be more efficacious than any currently FDA-approved therapies, it is a Schedule 1 illegal drug, a relic from Nixon’s duplicitous “war on drugs.” As a fellow donor summarized so poignantly, when it comes to opiates and psychedelics, what they called drugs were actually medicines, and what they called medicines were addictive drugs.
Full disclosure: we are donors to VETS (the non-profit that organizes the trips to Mexico for treatment) and early venture investors in atai, the public company taking several psychedelic medicines through clinical trails, including ibogaine for opiate use disorder: atai.life/programs/ibogaine/
This battery of tests is pretty interesting, as cognitive capabilities should not be subject to a placebo effect.
Everyone got better, from moderate disability to no diability across the board: 
I failed to get a photo of the opiate use dependence, but the effects were similar. This has been one of the main reasons vets have gone to Mexico for ibogaine treatment.
They can predict your age from an MRI alone. This may be the first treatment found that can reduce brain age. 
There’s more coming on the mechanisms of action, from the brain imaging work (but I was asked to keep that confidential for now).
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