The Telepathy Tapes - S2E43: Ibogaine Inquiries Part V: Before the Forest Is Gone

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

As global interest in ibogaine accelerates, the consequences are already being felt in Gabon.Wild Iboga is disappearing, prices are rising, and traditional practitioners are losing access to a plant that has shaped spiritual and communal life for generations. And beyond the forest, inexperienced providers are beginning to offer powerful ceremonies without the training, accountability, or relationships that Bwiti leaders believe the work requires.In the final episode of The Ibogaine Inquiries, we examine what can happen when a sacred medicine spreads faster than the wisdom surrounding it. Conservationist Yann Guignon, Bwiti master Simon Pierre, and Indigenous scholar Dr. Christine Dindisi explore the dangers of commodification, and the possibility of a different path forward._______A note to listeners: This series is intended to inform, not encourage the use of ibogaine. Ibogaine is a powerful psychoactive substance with serious medical risks and should never be used without thorough medical evaluation and appropriate supervision. As you'll hear throughout this series, increasing global demand has also had profound consequences for the Indigenous communities in Gabon who have safeguarded Iboga and its traditions for generations. We encourage you to listen to the full series before drawing conclusions or seeking out treatment._______To support the indigenous peoples of Gabon, Africa and help protect the sacred Iboga plant, please visit https://blessingsoftheforest.org/ where you can learn about those who use this medicine ceremoniously, have for thousands of years, and whose access is in grave danger._______Join The Telepathy Tapes Backstage Pass to get ad-free episodes, never-before-heard interviews, behind-the-scenes documentary footage, and access to our private Discord community.This is your invitation to come closer. To help shape what’s next. To be more than a listener… to be a co-creator of this paradigm shift. So if you’ve felt moved, if you’ve felt seen, if you’ve felt the call, subscribe today and join us: thetelepathytapes.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we begin, a brief disclaimer. Ibrahimagane is a powerful psychoactive substance. It is not legal in the United States. Can be dangerous when administered improperly and is not appropriate for everyone. This series is not intended as medical advice or an endorsement of treatment. The experiences described by guests reflect their personal accounts, and listeners should conduct extensive research and consult qualified medical professionals before making any decisions related to Ibegain or other psychedelic substances.

Hi, everyone. This is Kai Dickens, and welcome to the Ibegain Inquiries. a mini-series from TTT Media, exploring one of the most promising, controversial, and misunderstood substances in the world of mental health and addiction recovery. This is part five, the final episode of Ibegain Inquiries. Last episode, we explored how Iboga, a sacred medicine protected by the people of Gabon for generations, gradually made its way into Western science. We heard how decades of research, patents, and growing global interest left many in Gabon

feeling that their knowledge had been shared without their voices. We also introduced you to the Nagoya Protocol, an international agreement created to ensure that when indigenous knowledge and biological resources are used, the communities who have stewarded them are included in the process and share in the benefits. But even with these protections in place, people are finding their way around them to expedite the use of this sacred plant. Today, we turn back to Gabon, where conservationists and traditional britti practitioners say the consequences are very much happening already. What is happening in Gabon is in 50 years, we estimate that 85% to 90% of the Iboga from the wide area, from the public domain, dissipate, has been poached. That's Jan Gingian again. We heard from him throughout this series.

His mission involves protection for the boga plant and traditional knowledge that goes along with it. Jan says the amount of poaching they're seeing is largely restricting access to something very spiritually essential to local communities, who have traditionally had easy access in the wild. I'll let him and our producer, Catherine, take it from here. So it starts to be a big business, and Iboga starts to disappear into the wild. It starts to become a problem for traditional practitioners.

And now 80% of Gabonish people are living in the cities where you can't grow Iboga. So they depend on the public domain. I mean, the ones on Iboga, they go into the forest and to harvest Ibogah. But now it's become very complicated to find Iboga in Gabon. Today, roughly 80% of Gabon's population lives in cities. Traditionally, people could harvest the Ibogu they needed from the surrounding forest. But as wild plants disappear, that access is becoming much more difficult.

There's a huge traffic around Iboga to sail to the West. Because for two centuries, the West is looking for Hippoga. Gabon is a very little country. It's 2 million people. And 80% of people are in the cities. The countryside become empty. So there's nobody to check what's going on into the public demand. Additionally, with all the poaching, the quality of the plant is decreasing. The plant takes many years to fully mature.

And the younger it is when uprooted, the lower the quality of the medicine will be. The demand versus Gabon's ability to plant and give the shrub time to mature is not lining up. The quality is decreasing of Iboga because the biggest ancient tree are harvested. You know, in the U.S., when you talk about Iboga, you used to tell that it's a bush. a little tree. It's not true. If you let Iboga grow, I know some places in Gabon where there's some trees that are eight meters high, but all the big tree has been harvested because it provides more root bark, you know, that contains a medicine. So now the quality become low and low because Jung got a tree is, lower the quality he is, right? With limited oversight across such a large

forested region, professional poachers have been able to harvest Iboga from the wild and sell it into an increasingly lucrative international market. And also what's going on is that Iboga poachers prefer to sell to Westerners that pay more expensive the medicine than Gabonis themselves. They give the priority to the West that pay more expensive. The price become higher, including for Gabonese people, because the medicine is more hard to find. As wild Iboga becomes harder and more expensive to access, more people are relying on. on medicine sold in city markets.

Jan says some sellers mix the root bark with other plants to increase the volume, substitutes that can sometimes be toxic. So now he creates an accident because it's mixed with other plants that could be dangerous. Because of this strain, people who have been practicing witi, unable to find the shrub, are turning to alternative substances to practice the sacred ceremony of initiation, which has never been done before, and is negatively affecting not only their spiritual process and connection, but also their mental and physical health.

And also because the medicine is not easy to find and expensive now in Gabon, you can go to ceremonies where people do not have Iboga so much. It's very rare. There's some ceremonies who's only elders take some medicine. There are gatherings where only elders receive Iboga, or where there is not enough medicine for everyone. In some cases, participants have begun using alcohol or occasionally cannabis to approximate an altered state.

This can change the energy and meaning of the ceremony itself. So it corrupt the traditions because now people are on the influence of the alcohol during some ceremonies, sometimes more than on the influence of Iboga. It totally changed everything. I will not enter into the details, but it's not the same energy at all, right?

So that's the consequences on the Gabon side. But Jan says the damage may extend beyond the forest. Traditionally, becoming qualified to survey Bogga can require years or even decades of training. When younger Gabonese people see outsiders return home after a brief initiation, begin administering this medicine, and earn significant money doing it, the traditional path can begin to look unnecessary. In Jan's view, commercialization isn't only extracting the plant. It is gradually eroding the value of the knowledge surrounding it. So now it discouraged Gabonese young people to respect the rules of the hellers

because the sea of Westerners that do not respect it and there's no punishment, no penalty and they make a lot of money and then they come back to Magabon with a lot of money and they start to corrupt the village for some of them to get more knowledge, to demand more profit in their country. so it's reduced the value of the culture in the eyes of the young people who doesn't want anymore to follow the rules. Simone Pierre, a Buiti master you heard from in episode three, shares Jan's concern.

He agrees that what is at risk goes beyond access to the plant itself. It's a system of knowledge that helps hold communities together. As a reminder, Simone is speaking in French, so the voice you'll hear is his translator. Simone, what do you feel is at stake here above all else? First point is the national cohesion, like solidarity. This knowledge is training the students about fantastic, remarkable moral values. For example, the respect of the ancients, respect of nature, respect of the community,

values that we need for a structured society, well-structured. He says this is knowledge that the community has been receiving from the plant for generations. What will happen and change if they can. continue to lose access. What do you think gets misunderstood most often by the Western media of what's happening right now? Very good question. The first thing is that people believe in the West believe that it's enough to extract the molecule of Ibogain to be the solution. It's not enough. It's a global technology which uses the Iboga, but not only.

Iboga has never existed in isolation within Bwiti. It is one component of a larger system of teachings, practices, music, preparation, and guidance. Iboga is bringing a reboot or reset of the human system. Then the rest of the knowledge, which is around the Iboga, the software, can be considered the software of the technology. In Simone's analogy, Iboga performs the reset. The knowledge surrounding it is the software. And the Naganga, the extensively trained healer and ceremonial guide,

is the engineer who understands how the system. works. The Nanganga, who is the witty priest, will become the engineer who is a very specific method. So with all this, the boga, the knowledge and everything, in a methodic way, you will bring the boga and the bati can bring to the people. The Western world understand wrongly is that it thinks that only di Bogaan can be useful, although it's the whole process with the methods, with the knowledge, the rest of the knowledge, which is a whole. So Ibogah or Ibogaine is just a piece of the whole knowledge. So this is the main thing that people don't understand in the West.

Simon's point is that Iboga is only one part of a much larger system of knowledge that has traditionally required years of training to understand and practice responsibly. But as interest in the medicine grows and money is to be made, that knowledge is increasingly being separated from the plant, being repackaged and sold. After the break, we'll hear what can happen when inexperienced practitioners. Begin administering one of the world's most powerful psychoactive substances and how the commercialization and commodification of sacred knowledge can have devastating consequences for people seeking healing as well. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for because I want lighter fabrics, pieces that feel good the second you put them on, and things that can go from work to dinner without feeling overdone. That's why I love quince.

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leaves the forest. As a bogah becomes more visible and profitable, people with limited experience may begin presenting themselves as qualified to administer it. And with a substance this powerful, the consequences can be profound. Our producer Catherine spoke with Nevea Wilder, who spent nearly a decade working around Aboga retreat centers and has witnessed both the medicine's healing power and the risk of an industry expanding faster than its safeguards. My name is Nevea Wilder, and I found eboga 10 years ago really for my own personal healing journey. I had lost a sister to a brain tumor. In my fourth journey, my sister who had passed away was able to come to me and answer all my questions about life, which was beyond profound and such a gift to receive from the medicine.

After her experiences with eboga, she was hired by a retreat center where they were administering the medicine and had some remarkable experiences, but also some that disheartened her about what is happening in the industry as it moves so quickly. I happened to get on an integration call two years later for the Iboga Wellness Center, and I was helping the people on the call so much that they reached out to me afterwards and offered me a job. I got the opportunity to apprentice and learn and have a very slow approach to a lot of beautiful things that I saw in the Iboga space, and also a lot of things that were really, really difficult for me to operate within. I think they had well-meaning intentions to support and help people. But there was also an underlying capitalist,

essence underneath what was happening. And many of my previous employers who I knew and loved as family and grew with, I watched them end up in situations that cost them a lot because of the power, the money, the influence that came in with hosting these spaces, I think just growth that wasn't sustainable to the human soul, which is why I repeatedly stepped back from these group ceremony experiences. It was something that I just didn't really want to be a part of. Nevea says that on two occasions, she raised concerns about certain practices she believed to be unsafe at the retreat centers, and those concerns were disregarded. Ultimately, lives were lost. Two weeks later, after both of these conversations that I had with them, there were actual

deaths at both of these centers, and real human lives were lost. We were not able to independently determine whether the concerns Nevaea raised were connected to those deaths, but her account reflects a broader fear shared by many people in this space, that the medicine is spreading faster than the training, accountability, and experience required to administer it safely. Nevea recently became aware of a practitioner, who she says began offering expensive Iboga ceremonies after sitting with the medicine and traveling to Gabon, but without receiving training or permission to administer it from the Buiti community that initiated him. He sat with Iboga once and then went over to Africa to get initiated with the Buiti,

and has no training or experience in actually serving the medicine. I know for a fact, having gone over there with him, that we received no training to actually safely administer this medicine or permission even with Thibwee to serve it at all. We actually sign contracts going over there that we won't use any sacred elements of the initiation for any commercial enterprise. Nevea says the ceremonies are being advertised

for as much as $15,000 per session in Hawaii. He actually reached out to our same contact in Africa a few months ago asking for permission to serve this medicine over the phone or the information and the wisdom to serve this medicine over the phone to which the council responded, no, of course. And then he asked how much, how much it would be to get this information over the phone, which is, again, a disrespect of how these indigenous lineages are wanting to relate with the Western world altogether. For them, it's not about the money or the profit. it's about relationship and connection to nature and the forest and a plant. But the larger pattern Nevea describes echoes what we heard from Buiti leaders in Gabon, that the appearance of consultation or lineage can sometimes be used without the depth of relationship, consent, or training those communities believe the work requires.

Here's Buiti master Simon Pierre again. As a reminder, you're hearing the voice of his translator. It's the eternal problem in the relations that we have with the Western world. The big gap is what is said and what's happening on the field. There is strong dialogue around reciprocity, but in truth, the conversations the indigenous peoples would like to have don't seem to actually be taking place. Despite this, we see videos online

where we see people who go and visit local people, and it's just to pretend that we've asked these guys what it is about. It's not true. It's just to pretend. It's not happening. But I'm convinced that we can stay. still take things over if we start again from the start. The problem is if the Western world is into an economical state of mind, that's a problem. It becomes a business.

Plants like tobacco and willow bark have been taken from indigenous people, transformed into new formulas, allowing them to be legally patented and sold, and the result can be quite damaging. I asked Dr. Dendisi what the ramifications would be if we do turn Iboga into a business too. As an academic, as a researcher, I think that without the participation and cooperation and collaboration of the traditional stewards of this medicine, that whatever the research results or whatever program comes out of this treatments for people is not going to be sustainable or good in the long run. We're talking generations here into the future that this could have impacts for people. just like these other medicines that we've talked about, tobacco, coca, poppy, these are all traditional medicines that are now the world's pharmaceuticals that can harm people and take lives, many lives. I think that these pilot programs definitely need to be having this conversation, even if it slows things down and takes time.

I don't believe that creating these Ibegain treatment centers to cure veterans of their PTSD is, the actual solution, it is a band-aid. The problem is not being addressed. As long as we continue to send people to war, we will still have issues. We are looking at the wrong thing here. If we really are talking about the evolution of humanity, then let's move towards peace and not war. You cannot commodify a sacred medicine to fix the war machine. Here's my conversation with Simone again. So what would be the ideal situation for the people in Gabon? The Lebanese government should take the hand on this field, which is not the case yet.

And second, that our friends from the Western world start thinking into like an exchange, state of mind, instead of taking and only taking, you know, and that we don't find kindness in a situation some years ago about the tobacco in the USA. At the beginning, tobacco was a sacred plant and then it became a business to the detriment, of course, of the local knowledge about tobacco. Simone also compares Iboga to tobacco. This is not meant to suggest that Iboga should never leave Gabon. It is a warning about the commodification that can happen when a sacred medicine is separated from the people, knowledge, and responsibilities that once surrounded it. For Jan, that separation also reveals a contradiction.

Iboga is often described in the West as so dangerous that only modern medical systems can learn to administer it safely. But he says that framing overlooks generations of experience already present in Gabon. Now it's like the United States decide what they're going to do with that. It looks like the Columbus syndrome. Like they discovered it and they know how to do it the best way because, oh yeah, this medicine is very dangerous. So only U.S. knows how to use it without any danger for people. I mean in Gabon, there are thousands and thousands of people using it very often. I've been me personally to enddress of ceremonies with kids and with elders.

Some are 70, 80 years old, some are fat, some are sick. I've never seen once someone dying, eating medicine in Gabon. Never. Yon's experience is anecdotal, and it does not mean Iboga is without serious medical risk. As we've discussed throughout this series, Iboga and Ibogang can be dangerous, particularly for people with certain heart conditions, medications, or underlying health issues. But his larger point is that safety knowledge does not begin and end with Western medicine. Gabonese practitioners have spent generations developing their own systems of screening, preparation, duration, dosing, observation, ritual, and care.

So, if it was so dangerous, why Gabonese people are, so healthy using the medicine. It's because they know how to manage the medicine, the know how to use it. I think that for the West, rather than spending billions or millions of dollars into researches on rats and dogs and I don't know who into universities, they should find a way to make a study program in Gabon, live to US universities and to look at the way things are done in Gabon. is not asking Western clinics to recreate a Buiti ceremony inside a medical facility. He is asking whether modern science could approach Gabonese knowledge as something worth

studying, respecting, and learning from, not merely extracting from. We don't ask to American people to make a fire in their clinics and to dance around, right? But to try to find what is valuable and what is very important and the way they can create something that is a mix of traditional and moral medicine and to share the profits. to share the benefits, to help those communities who conserve his matins and his knowledge through colonialism, through evangelism, through slavery, through all these dramas for centuries, they kept those knowledgees. Despite everything he has witnessed, Jan has not given up on the possibility of cooperation.

He still believes Iboga can become a bridge between Gabon and the rest of the world, but only if the people who protected it are treated as partners. So they are still very generous people, still very open-minded people. They still wish and work also for a better space where there would exist a real fair and sustainable cooperation between the more than science and Gabonese people. So we work on that. We work on that. Over the course of this series, we set out to understand why Ibogaine,

a substance that remains illegal in the United States, largely unknown to the general public, has suddenly captured the attention of scientists, veterans, doctors, politicians, and people desperate for healing. We heard extraordinary accounts from people who say it interrupted years of addiction, relieved the symptoms of trauma, and gave them a renewed desire to live. We heard researchers describe a molecule unlike almost anything else they have studied, one that appears to act across multiple systems in the brain and body at once. But we also heard experiences that science cannot yet easily explain. Life reviews, encounters with loved ones who have died, shared visions, telepathy, and the persistent feeling described by so many people

that they were not simply under the influence of a substance, but interacting with an intelligence. Those stories invite profound questions about the brain, the nature of healing, and consciousness itself. But Iboga also asks us to confront some difficult questions. Who gets to decide what happens to a medicine after the rest of the world recognizes its value? Who benefits when sacred knowledge becomes intellectual property, a medical treatment, or a commercial industry? And what responsibility do we have to the people in places that protected that knowledge long before science had the language to even describe it? The people we spoke with in Gabon were not asking the rest of the world to turn away from Ebola. They told us that the purpose of Iboga is to heal and that they

want others to experience that healing genuinely. But sharing is not the same as surrendering ownership and collaboration is not the same as extraction. The people who practice Bui Ti are asking to be recognized, not merely as the historical source of this medicine, but as living partners in its future. They're asking the scientific world to consider that Iboga may not be fully understood by isolating a molecule from the forest, the music, the community, the preparation, and the generations of knowledge surrounding it. Perhaps modern medicine and traditional knowledge do not have to compete. There is opportunity for beautiful collaboration, and a medicine intended to heal trauma

should not create new trauma in the way that is brought into the mainstream world. Throughout our shows, we explore the possibility that consciousness may be primary and more interconnected than our current scientific models allow. The story of Iboga raises that same possibility, but it also reminds us that connection is not only something to study or experience. It is something we are responsible for practicing. As interest in Ibogaine continues to grow, the decisions made now will determine much more than how this medicine is researched or administered. They will determine whether this next chapter becomes another story of extraction or the beginning of a more respectful relationship between different systems of knowledge. Yan believes we still have that choice.

But he also believes the final outcome does not belong entirely to us. I had a clear vision about what would be the world if humanity starts to disrespect Iboga. I can tell you that Iboga will win. He will win. Iboga spirit will just destroy the world

before the world destroy Iboga. If you enjoyed this podcast, you'll find even more on the main telepathy tape's feed, where each week we explore consciousness, human potential, and the mysteries that challenge our understanding of reality.