The Psychodynamics of Opiate Addiction

and Its Treatment with Ibogaine

A Multivalent Key to a Disorder of Multidimensional Human Beings

Introduction• I am a qualitative researcher

– Transparency is necessary to validation– I should make clear my values, assumptions and premises for your assessment

• I am a Fourth Wave psychologist– I inhabit an ensouled universe; everyone and everything is made of spirit– Being is conscious, but only some entities in Becoming are self-reflectively so– As human beings, higher realms of consciousness are available to us – Humans are bipartite beings; our psyche and soma are coextensive, so that… – Our consciousness affects the state and function of our bodies

• I was a heroin addict for 22 years and was on methadone for the last 6 years, also smoking tobacco for 30 years, so I have intimate knowledge of the characteristics of addiction– I undertook 14 standard treatment programs over 17 years, trying to escape

• I was saved by ibogaine (my 15th addiction “treatment”)– I was a research subject for Dr. Mash on island of St. Kitts, W.I., 1997 (SKM17)– Ibogaine: addiction interrupter par excelence: I escaped my opiate addiction– Returned for a second dose there in 1998 (SKM 31), when I stopped tobacco– Helped form and participated in iboganaut integration circles after St. Kitts– Met and spoke with dozens of other iboganauts from later clinical rounds

• My story can be found at http://adrianauler.tumblr.com/

Tonight I will NOT talk about:

• A review of Sri Aurobindo’s scheme of the stages of the involution of Source to explicate the fundamental nature of human beings;

• Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic fields as a lens for examining the energetic characteristics of human beings and our embedded relationship with Source, Nature, and other beings;

• A hermeneutic comparison of Fourth Wave psychological theories and perspectives;

• Medical anthropology’s comparison of the traditional practices of energy medicine: Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and the shamanic healing traditions;

• An anthropological discussion of culturally inherited factors that generate and maintain addictions;

• The sociological consequences of addiction: comparing addiction to other disruptive social phenomena that have received more extensive and effective attention; or

• The use of ibogaine in the Bwiti cult; or its research history in the West.

Wilber’s Four-Quadrant Model of Reality

Actions of Ibogaine on the Elements of Addiction in the 1st Quadrant

Personal (within)

•Detoxifying and healing the somatic;•Reviving and strengthening the will;•Softening and opening the heart; showing how to live with emotions and make use of them;•Psychological clarification, reorientation, and illumination; and•(Re)Connection with the sacred

Social (without—horizontal)

(Re)Connection with family, friends, tribe, nation, species, biosphere

Transpersonal (without—vertical)•(Re)Connection with place, soil, ancestors (whose bones are in the ground), Mother Earth/Gaia; and•(Re)Connection to star people; gods; God; and one’s place within the cosmos

A Multidimensional Human Being

The progressive disease of addiction ramifies like a cancer throughout the body’s energetic layers

Toroidal Assemblage Point & Human Energy Field

Aurobindo’s Scheme for the Descent/Involution of the Divine into Matter – Being into Becoming – the Elements of Psyche

Section Scheme• Introduction• Six perspectives on addiction• Thesis: addiction as a complex

– Definition from Jungian depth psychology – Jung/Stein – Existential perspective – Frankl; Laing– Anthropological perspective – Bateson– Psychodynamic energetics of the addictive complex – Jung/Stein– Transpersonal, COEX Perspective - Grof– Mythic perspective: the Amfortas Wound – Haule – Archetypal element – Schoen’s view – Archetypal element – my suggested alternative: Abandonment

• Entheogenic treatment of opiate addiction– Current misclassification of ibogaine by government– Description of the challenge faced by ibogaine in the addict – Revelec– The relevant abilities of ibogaine – Paicheler; Ravelec; Naranjo – My Experiences from St. Kitts

• Conclusion

Complexes in the Psyche

A Structured Complex

Exploded view of a carburetor as an analogue for the addictive complex

Elements of the Addictive SuperComplex

An Older Complex Having Grown in Size