The Current - Could this psychedelic drug help curb opioid addiction?

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Rocky Dhillon remembers being terrified while on the psychedelic drug ibogaine — but when the trip ended, he had no cravings for the drugs or alcohol he’d previously been addicted to. Proponents of ibogaine say it can help “reset” an addict’s brain and curb withdrawal and detox symptoms. But the psychedelic has its own set of health concerns, as Karen Pauls explains in her documentary, Ibogaine: The Last Trip?

It's on. A federal election is here and party leaders are racing around Canada to convince you to give them your vote. We're seeing a lot of spin, a lot of promises and a lot of accusations swirling around. And we are here to filter through the noise. I'm Catherine Cullen, host of The House. And every Saturday we want to slow you down and make sure you're getting the big picture and deep context and everything you need to make politics make sense. Because democracy is a conversation and we're here for it. This is a CBC podcast.

Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. Arguments over how to prevent deaths in this country from opioids have been fierce and for many people unsatisfying. There have been debates over harm reduction and involuntary treatment. And yet the crisis continues. It is why some people looking for fresh ideas are pointing to a little known drug, one that they argue might be able to elicit a trip to end all trips. And it's leading to questions about whether this could be a bold new therapy or just a deadly high. The CBC's Karen Pauls brings us this documentary,

Ibogaine, The Last Trip. So let me show you a little around here. This is the front entrance. It's November, 2024. Rocky Dillon is desperate. He's addicted to Percocets and cocaine and he's an alcoholic. Herbal tea they gave me. cocaine, and he's an alcoholic.

Herbal tea they gave me. It's why he's traveled from Winnipeg to Cancun, Mexico. He's documented his trip. Look at that. His cell phone video revealing a lush tropical setting. So nice. A mid-range resort along the Caribbean Sea, complete with palm trees and terracotta flooring.

But the medical equipment in his bedroom suggests a different purpose. Here is Mr. IV guy. Hola. He's hooked up to an IV and heart monitor and about to take a drug he's told will change his life. He's going to do the IV drip. He's here to undergo an experimental treatment, hoping to kick his addiction. Rocky says his addiction began in December 2023, after a fight at a Winnipeg bar. I tried to stop a fight.

He went to hospital with a broken jaw. And they gave me Percocets. Painkillers he's trying for the first time. I'm like, oh my God, this is amazing. He got hooked. It takes your soul. It takes your soul. Try to get off it and it's almost, it was impossible.

I wanted more. I wanted more. But then someone came to see him at work. And a friend of mine came by the dealership one day. And this guy has an idea. A drug he thinks Rocky should try. Not for a high, but a cure. He's saying, you gotta try this Ibogaine.

I said, what? What's Ibogaine? He goes, bro, you'll love it. Like it's something that's gonna rewire your brain. This Ibogaine he's suggesting, it's a plant-based psychedelic drug. It comes from the bark of the iboga tree, a rainforest shrub native to central Africa. It's used in traditional healing ceremonies and initiation rituals, creating hallucinations.

Some describe them as a waking dream state. It's a bit controversial, a bit fringe even, but there are people who insist ibogaine is a game changer, resetting the brain to its pre-addictive state, taking away symptoms of detox, withdrawal, and even cravings. And I heard the first time about ibogaine, a drug from Africa that could be used to break the cycle of addiction from a black gentleman who came up to me after one of my lectures. Deborah Mash is a neuroscientist and pharmacologist from the University of Miami. To be honest, I looked at him, shook my head and said, sir, I've never heard of this. I don't know what you're talking about.

But after that chance meeting, she kept hearing about it and finally went to the Netherlands to see firsthand what it did for opioid addicts. And I saw three men go through the treatment and I saw this amazing transformation of individuals who were hardcore users, who had failed the standard of care, tried to get clean multiple times. And with one dose of this drug, they would come 30 hours later, get up, shower, shave, be clean, sit down at the table, eat a meal. People in early opioid withdrawal don't eat. They're very sick. They can't even keep food down. I looked at this and I said, we have to study this.

Ibogaine is illegal in the US. It falls under Schedule I, a category that includes heroin, cannabis and peyote. It's seen as having no recognized medical benefits and a high risk of misuse. In 1995, after years of work, Deborah and her team got approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to do clinical trials on Ibogaine. And they gave us the full green light

to a dose that today would be in the range of what we believe would be an effective dose. She couldn't raise the millions of dollars from grants and private donors needed to actually do the research, so she went abroad to continue her work. In 2018, she published a paper based on treating 191 patients in St. Kitts. Then she did a phase one clinical trial of ibogaine treatment on healthy volunteers in the United Kingdom. She's founded her own company. A company called Demerex, which is a clinical stage stroke development company advancing two molecules for the treatment of addiction. Working to take a non-psychedelic metabolite called Nour Ibogaine to clinical trials in the U.S. with the goal of creating an FDA approved drug.

And the patients were waiting. As I sit here today, the patients are waiting. In most parts of the world, Ibogaine is not authorized for treatment. There are serious, well-documented health risks. The drug may block certain channels in the heart and slow down the heart rate, which can cause fatal cardiac arrhythmias. It's connected to low blood pressure, seizures, paralysis, and even death. Anyone with a heart condition should not be treated with Ibogaine. I think you could probably hear my ambivalence, right? It's why

regulators and researchers like Bill Stoops have reservations about it. 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. Stoops is a professor of behavioral science, psychiatry and psychology, and he's a faculty member of the Center for Drug and Alcohol Research at the University of Kentucky. And that's my real concern with testing Ibogaine. Is this specific safety issue? A lot of people with opioid use disorder

might have compromised heart health. That makes it even harder to do this work in a safe way. In Canada, Ibogaine is on the prescription drug list, but without clinical trial evidence, it can't be prescribed as a medication. Health Canada hasn't authorized the sale of any prescription drugs containing Ibogaine, but it's unregulated in Mexico.

There's EKG coming in. Very professional. Very clean. And that's why Rocky Dillon is at this Cancun clinic. He's going to do the IV drip. They got me settled in. They checked my heart rate. They did EKG, IV. Did they warn you about the health? Yes, of course. Did that ever make about the health? Yes, of course. Did that ever make you think twice? No, not at all.

People have described the Ibogaine experience as a terrifying trip going to dark places, facing the underlying causes of their addiction. It's literally not for the weak of heart. In negro, in the single, lower. So yeah, I was in a room like this. My mom was there. And I would lay down.

They put like a mask on me, right? Toward my eyes. They put headphones on me to listen to beautiful music. It was just angelic music. They had heart monitors, like hooked up. And within half an hour, I was like, I was gone. I was like, my body was there. I didn't know my body. I was gone into like a different dimensions.

I didn't know. I was gone into different dimensions. My life was flashing between my eyes. I was crying. I was mad. I was sad. It took me to really dark traumas. Here, this is your trauma. Face it." And that's not the only thing he faced. Rocky says he confronted… …evil. Like, I felt like at points they were hitting me. Boom, boom. And I got scared. There's no limit to how far criminals will go to cover their tracks.

But investigators will go even further to uncover the truth. I'm Nancy Hicks, a senior crime reporter for Global News. This season on Crime Beat, I'll take you from the crime scene to the courtroom, and inside some of Canada's most high-profile cases, and some you've likely never heard of before. Search for and listen to Crime Beat on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favourite podcasts. Milo Smartinovic was also feeling the darkness of addiction. At 26, the Canadian man was suffering from depression after his mum died of cancer in August 2017. Milos's doctor gave him medication

to help him deal with his grief. It was a mixture of Oxycontin and Xanax. So he was addicted to both of those. One has been the Zyacepine and the other one is opioid. Marius Boycen is a private investigator in Durban, South Africa. That's where Milos went after doing some research online. He found a clinic that used Ibogaine to treat addictions. The clinic was run by Anwar Jiwa. A doctor, Anwar Jiwa, and he paraded on the internet as a medical doctor and guru in Ibogaine.

But he's actually a dentist who claims to have given Ibogaine to 3,500 people successfully since 2016, even though it's a controlled substance in South Africa. There was a lot of interaction between us. Anwar agreed to treat Milošosh but says he was worried about how many benzodiazepines Milosh was taking and how withdrawal might impact on his ibogaine treatment. And we told him to cut it down by half and he promised me that he has done it. Anwar didn't follow his own protocols. He allowed Milosh to take his benzos during the ibogaine treatment.

His vital signs with the EKG machine, blood pressure, pulse oximeter was all normal. In fact, he even managed to go to the loo at that time. And that was when we gave him his last dose of ibogaine. According to Health Canada, about 50,000 Canadians have died of opioid addiction since 2016. There's an urgent need to find a solution. Hence, this new interest in Ibogaine. In January, podcaster Joe Rogan invited Rick Perry on his show. Perry is the former US Secretary of Energy under Donald Trump's first administration.

In that episode, he shared his opinion on Ibogaine with an audience of almost a million and a half people. I've become a complete believer in plant medicine, the compound Ibogaine, I-B-O-G-A-I-N-E, GAI and E that absolutely is showing stunning ability to bring people back to normalcy, to reset their brains, to literally give them their lives back. It's almost like too good to promise. I can feel like my brain just going... Rocky Dillon is convinced of that promise. And by the time I woke up, it was like I was just smiling and happy.

And just a weight lifted off my shoulders. And I think that's part of like the rewiring of the brain. But more importantly, he says he's had no withdrawal symptoms and no cravings since November. I don't want it. It's so crazy. It's stories like that that made Ken Cranwell a believer. We are at the Kelburn Recovery Center and it is about 10 minutes out of Winnipeg to the south. Ken is the friend who introduced Rocky to Ibogaine and that Mexican clinic.

He's a Winnipeg businessman who runs two addiction centers in Manitoba, including Calburn. Home to 12 people in recovery. And we're going to go inside, have a visit. Ken says he was asked to join the board of Universal Ibogaine. That's a Canadian life sciences company. It's working to get Health Canada approval for research on a synthetic derivative of ibogaine

as a treatment for addiction. The company wanted to tap into Ken's business expertise and his contacts and also use his treatment centres as clinical trial sites. At first, he said no. You first hear about ibogaine and your immediate reaction is, ah, it sounds a little too good to be true. But he changed his mind after seeing firsthand how it helped Rocky and another man he knows personally. I don't

want to misinform anybody that Ibogaine is the magic bullet, okay, but it's definitely a tool in the toolbox and it's a great tool to have. If, when, Ibogaine is approved as a treatment, the company's business plan also has potential. We try to patent the protocol so that we can use it in our recovery centre so our recovery centre can make money to be able to pay all the doctors and nurses and paramedics and all and then also to give an investment back to the shareholders and then we will franchise it out. One of his partners describes it like this. He said, Ken, I believe you're sitting on a gold mine.

I'll probably watch that video a hundred times. That's Marius Boycen again, the private investigator from South Africa. Miloš Martinović's Ibogaine treatment was captured on CCTV, all six hours of it. At one point we see him leaning on a nurse as she helps him get to the bathroom. Then he gets back into his bed. And you can see the movement in his hand, you can see the movement in his finger, you can see the movement in his leg. And it's just the twitches that shows. That is the last movement that you could see on that video, on camera.

Twenty minutes later, his nurse comes in to check on him. She takes his pulse. Suddenly, her actions become urgent. She only realized that something was wrong when there was no blood pressure and no heartbeat. You can see on the video she turns the light on. And what then commences was heartbreaking. She shakes him. She touches him, she shakes him violently. And Warjiwa remembers getting a panicked phone call from her.

We did CPR for about 45 minutes. And by the time the paramedics came in, I think they tried something and then eventually they passed on. Mirosh left Europe, arrived in South Africa on Sunday the 3rd of November, commenced his treatment on Monday evening the 6th of November and passed away on the early hours of 6th November, 2017.

At that moment, the only thing that we could have come to the conclusion was that it was related to benzodiazepine. Okay. Now, apparently- Well, I didn't actually die. Was it a heart attack? Well, that's the problem. was that it was related to benzodiazepine. Okay? Now apparently... Well, even if you actually die, was it a heart attack? Well, that's the problem. The medical results and the post-mortem results and even the blood results,

blood results came as inconclusive. Milos's father, brother and partner, Brooklyn Martinovich, flew to Durban the day after he died. They met Marius and went to the clinic. He covertly recorded that visit, including his observations and the conversations. This room went closed. When the curtains are drawn, it's very dark.

Only one of the three lights are working, which creates a very dark atmosphere. He says Brooklyn lay down on the bed that Milos, the father of their daughter, died in. You can hear her sobbing. Later, she challenged Anwar for misrepresenting himself as a medical doctor. You should have been more educated. You should have done your job properly. You should have searched. Later, she challenged Anwar for misrepresenting himself as a medical doctor.

She confronted him for not taking away Milos' benzodiazepines. life in your hands and you killed him. I did say ma'am I took responsibility, I'm taking responsibility. I've been saying that over and over again. I'm saying that over and over again. I take full responsibility. That recording was played in court. You can hear the raw emotions in her voice when she actually saw him and told him he was unqualified to treat her fiance. Anwar was charged with murder,

but he was convicted of a lesser charge of culpable homicide, as well as 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 voluntary dentistry work at the local prison for three years. Brooklyn wasn't in court for that. Marius had to call and tell her.

It actually broke my heart to have told them the relatively lenient sentence. It took a very severe toll on me. When I tracked down Anwar, he's still serving his sentence in South Africa. He tells me Milos's death haunts him. I'm an ex-addict. I only did this work to help people and to save lives. Anwar says he'll never do another Ibogaine treatment again. And my intention now is to try to take it to a next level so it doesn't happen to anybody else. But it has happened to dozens of others.

Desperate patients will do desperate things and people buy Ibogaine on the internet. They go into unsafe settings. They go into places where there are no medical staff. There's no safety nets. Debra Mash believes the risks can and should be managed. Ibogaine has a narrow therapeutic to toxic window. You can have a perfect storm and have an adverse event.

Anyone with a heart condition should be screened out. Too many deaths, the cost to society is too great to leave this stone unturned. That's why she's studying a version of Ibogaine that doesn't have that hallucinogenic effect, or she argues, the health risks. For patients who suffer and families who have suffered loss, it will give them hope and

it will 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. Our people in the north, especially our young people, are dying because they're ingesting fentanyl, different kinds of drugs. Some First Nations leaders are watching all of this with a lot of interest. We're fighting a losing battle.

Garrison Satie is the Grand Chief representing 26 Northern Manitoba First Nations. Many of them have declared states of emergency. We're not winning this war. He says one of the reasons Ibogein is of interest is because it's plant-based. It's familiar. And that has been the way we have been treating our people historically, culturally, that we've been using our medicines from the land. Ken Cranwell gave a presentation to the chiefs about his company, Universal Ibogaine.

They liked his plans, and so they wrote a letter of support. The Grand Chief says the traditional way of treating addictions isn't working, so it's time for a different approach. And of course there's got to be some research done, trials done, and we can make it safe and we can figure out those things that could cause potential risks and work through them. I personally feel that the clinical trials need to be done because there's a lot of unknown when it comes to Ibogaine. Anwar Jeewa says he's appealing his conviction, but in the meantime, he's teamed up with a pharmaceutical company in India to manufacture ibogaine.

And why are we doing that? Because we feel that the moment we can get that certified legal license medicine, a lot of people will be ready to do research. We've got one or two companies from America that have already sent us emails requesting and put orders down already. I asked him for details, but he says for now it's confidential. Anwar did connect me with one of his potential customers, someone affiliated with a US-based not-for-profit organization. That man confirmed his group is hoping to buy Ibogaine from Anwar maybe within the next six months as part of their FDA

application for clinical trials. What are we saying about the CRM? What do you have? The bank is willing to finance that? Hopefully, hopefully it does. These days Rocky Dillon is busy at work at his used car dealership. Okay, good. So we're gonna get that approved, that customer? Perfect. His alcohol drawer is empty except for some potato chips. He'd 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? Like why not? Like what is there to lose? He's not worried about the unknowns. What's more likely to kill me? Ibogaine or cocaine or alcohol? The documentary was produced by the CBC's Karen Pauls with help from Joan Weber at the CBC's Audio Documentary Unit.