Nerd Ed! Psychedeez for PTSDeez: Ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT pt 1

Veterans face more than PTSD post-duty.

Chronic pain and nerve damage can be complications, as we learned about in the Stellate Ganglion Block episodes.

So can traumatic brain injuries.

Veterans with PTSD and TBI have increased stress disorder, depression, anxiety, and and cognitive dysfunction, all together leading to an increased risk of suicidality.

But between unpleasant side effects and lifelong tethers to the drugs, treatments currently available for this gang of disorders leave sufferers wanting better options.

This is where psychedelics, psychedees as I call them, come on in.

The most commonly recently researched of them, of course, being LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA.

And they say, combat veterans with PTSD frequently demonstrate a complex spectrum of comorbid psychological and neuropsychiatric symptoms.

One of the signature injuries of the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan is traumatic brain injury, TBI.

This is largely attributed to exposure to improvised explosive devices and increased survival from life-threatening injuries.

Veterans who have sustained a TBI are more likely to have comorbid psychological and and neuropsychiatric issues, including PTSD, depression, anxiety, cognitive impairment, and suicidal behaviors.

Current pharmacotherapies also have limited efficacy for many individuals with PTSD, have unwanted side effects, and require long-term use.

Therefore, it's essential that novel and potentially curative treatment approaches are developed.

that can address the underlying etiology and spectrum of symptoms in the veteran population.

Psychedelic drugs demonstrate potential as transdiagnostic treatment approaches for the veteran population.

Psilocybin, lysergic acid, diethylamide, LSD.

and MDMA are the most widely researched psychedelic-assisted therapies.

The therapeutic efficacy of these substances is broadly hypothesized to occur in part through pharmacological action on serotonergic functioning, through stimulation of neurotrophic growth fractures and neuroplastic changes.

and through psychological mechanisms such as reprocessing of traumatic content, emotional breakthroughs, mystical-type experiences, and fostering adaptive changes in personality.

Ibogaine and 5-methoxy-NN-dimethyltryptamine, 5-MEO-DMT, are lesser-researched psychedelic substances which may be of particular relevance.

So at this point, we don't know how any of these substances help, but it is hypothesized that they affect serotonin cycles, neural growth, and reorganization.

And at the same time, they permit or enhance traumatic reprocessing characterized or catalyzed by emotional breakthroughs and mystical experiences, all of which are so deeply effective that they may even elicit personality changes.

Ibogaine, and 5-MeO-DMT are two of the lesser known of these potentially person-changing Psyche D substances.

They tell us Ibogaine is a psychoactive indole alkaloid which is extracted from the Tabernanthi iboga rainforest shrub and has been used for centuries in Central Africa for initiatory rituals.

Ibogaine was used in France for over 30 years as an antidepressant and a stimulant until the mid-1960s.