Iboga

She's an accomplished author, educator, conference host, entrepreneur, and international researcher and speaker, and the host of Dr. Charnelle's TruTV on YouTube.

She's joining us again today to share with us her experience with iboga, which opened her up to an entirely new chapter of her life, ultimately leading her to writing the book, Grandfather Iboga, exploring the factory reset of trauma, addiction, grief, neuroplasticity, and the human experience through plant medicine.

Please welcome my friend, Dr. Sharnell.

Thank you so much, Dr. Sharnell.

Yeah.

So thank you for that.

And then also your newest book, The Grandfather Iboga.

Yes.

Yeah, of course.

So I am a journalist and I went to Gabon to investigate iboga.

And so iboga is a shrub native to Central Africa and its root bark contains psychoactive compounds.

um one of those alkaloids is ibogaine and so i think it's it's a pretty well-known substance now kind of making the news across america um but really it comes from this plant called iboga that's very important to the weedy traditions so the gabonese people who practice these these weedy traditions and i went to gabon to understand how many of these weedy people feel about the globalization and the commercialization of not only Ibogaine, but Iboga.

And that's what my investigation was.

And so much has happened through this journey.

It's very hard to get a visa.

It's very hard to build trust.

Well, and what I would add is not only pr- so a book preserves.

A farmer lives in living experience and process that lives in time, in bodies, in relationships, right? So not, so p- not only preserve but, um- Because preserve sort of implies put on a shelf where it's shelf stable.

And but, but, um, create contexts where life is doing the most possible livingness in real places, in real bodies, on real land, in the context of biophysical change, right? We're, we're heading into an unprecedented time of climate disruption, an unprecedented time of, um, shifts in hydrology, uh, ecology, uh, temperature.

So the, the goal wants to be something even more audacious than preservation, which is to create contexts where the contin- continuity of evolution in living in seeds, in soils, in hands, in hearts, in cultures is prot- protected and, um, kind of upheld as the very center of where our greatest hope lives for continuing to exist 10,000 years from now.

I, I, I couldn't agree more.

And so what I really love about this encounter is we're both, uh, I don't know, with one of our tentacles, right, and the many arms of the bodhisattva vow we, I reckon we both took, right? Um, um-

Yeah, I've been a seed farmer, a biodynamic seed farmer in, in Southern Oregon for two years.

And so, you know, I also speak from the experience of, of being a permaculturalist and a, a seed farmer and a biodynamic engagement, you know, person in, in living context, actually harvesting seeds, which is the full cycle of how do you-- You know, I, so I, I speak from a lot of understanding in this space.

This decision comes after a May decree acknowledged the indigenous knowledge related to iboga as part of the country's heritage.

mandating profit-sharing for any commercial exploitation, and establishing a sovereign fund partially supported by royalties and benefit-sharing deals.

Additionally, patent requests involving Iboga must reveal where the product originates.

The discussion is heating up as increasing US interest focuses on ibogaine, a substance derived from a plant that pharmaceutical firms view as a possible therapy for addiction.

On April 18, President Donald Trump issued an executive order identifying ibogaine compounds and instructing federal agencies to establish a treatment route for qualifying patients.

And these are then often, in the literature at least, slightly trivialized as being nothing more than examples of extreme brain chemistry.

So this week I wanted us to visit Eva Franush, who's a friend of mine who's been working with plant medicines for many years, and Eva has just come back from an experience of iboga, which is known as the queen of psychedelics.

And the episode begins with Eva explaining about that experience.

There's no sign-off at the end, so I hope you enjoy the episode and I'll see you next time.

That's what I've heard.

So it came, I came across it a few years ago.

It's called iboga, and it didn't resonate 'cause I thought it's only for people who are addicted to opioids.

Okay.

It's an attitude, not just something that is quote unquote natural, because everything comes from the natural world anyway.

So that's the first thing that Ibogaine taught me in my treatment, my experience with it is like, honey, sacredness is an attitude, isn't just monopolized by the natural world.

mindbend

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have you.

There's so much that we can talk about.

And before we started rolling, we kind of decided to spend some time with Ibogaine today for sure.

The clinic that you are a part of opened about a year ago and previously you were involved in one way and now you're involved in a new multiple ways.

So I picked up a book at one point by Daniel Pinchbeck, um, it was "Breaking Open the Head." At the time, it was a really, like, breakthrough story about, um The kinds of things that happened when you immersed yourself in the psychedelic experience, and his book starts in Gabon getting initiated into Bwiti Oh, wow.

Iboga.

So that's where I first heard about it.

Wow, that's, that's pretty, uh, forward-thinking, you know, at that-

And then have a bit of bedrock to stand on to then build a life of recovery around that.

Yeah.

And I would say even in cases where-- 'cause you should have the choice, right? And, you know, you go back home, the whole world around you didn't take Ibogaine.

It's the same world that you...

But it was really fun to hear him talk about Ibogamine and the Iboga plant and things they're doing with addiction down, I think he was just coming back from the, what was it, the clinic Crossroads? The Crossroads Clinic.

Yeah,

it's actually called Ibogaine, not Ibogamine, but yeah.

Oh, Ibogaine.

Okay.

And yeah, so tell us a little bit about your journey into all that, that whole world, because I think it's really important for people to know, like our audience, I don't think is really very well educated on this type of subject matter and just knowing there's these types of plant medicines that are out there.

So ayahuasca can be a really important tool in the healing modalities just depending on how it's used and depending on how the person integrates after the experience.

Yeah, totally.