CHAPTER 6: Bob Sisko
Before their falling out, Kleber did introduce Lotsof to Louis Harris,
a very prominent biochemist in the opiate field. Harris maintained colonies
of addicted animals at the Medical College of Virginia. He and Mario Aceto
started designing studies to t est Ibogaine on those animals. Harris told
Lotsof another person he should check with. Arthur Jacobson, at the National
Institute of Mental Health's Committee on Problems of Drug Dependency, was
willing to run and pay for additional studies on any potent ial for abuse
with Ibogaine.
One bit of information Howard did get from Pollin was that the Director
of the Addiction Research Center, Jerome Jaffee, was interested. Jaffee
was about to replace Pollin as head of NIDA. Howard called him, and he put
Howard in touch with Dr. Robert L ange. Lange introduced him to a chemical
company. He also put him in contact with a lab in Massachusetts competent
to do FDA work that agreed to design and budget studies. But he was still
$50,000 short of the money it would take to produce and refine t he Ibogaine.
In 1986, Lotsof formed NDA International and with a small band of friends,
lawyers and investors, secured the worldwide use patents for Ibogaine. The
patent (#4,587,243) for coke and amphetamine came through May 6th.
Howard's first important investor was Leo Zeff. One of the Grand Old Men
of Ibogaine, Dr. Zeff had given it to more than 500 of his psychiatric patients
when psychedelic research was still respectable. The famed Chilean psychiatrist
Claudio Naranjo, who is much better known because he published The Healing
Journey in the late '60's, was Zeff's protege. When Lotsof contacted
Zeff in Los Angeles, Zeff was transfixed by Howard's explanation of Ibogaine's
effect as an addiction interrupter. He immediately reviewed all his files,
and came up with only three who had substance abuse problems.
"They all quit drugs!" he said, when he got back to Howard, "but
there were only three who were drug abusers, so I never noticed. When it
worked, you see, the Ibogaine always transformed the patient completely."
"What do you mean?" asked Howard. "What were the effects?"
"With Ibogaine, we got the most wonderful effects." Zeff immediately
withdrew $25,000 from his life savings and invested it in the company. Howard
took the money and sponsored the first international Ibogaine symposium
in Paris in January, 1987. He br ought together the twelve foremost experts
in the world, including Zeff, Robert Goutarel, Otto Gollnhofer, H. Deportere,
and William Gladstone.
"The common denominator is Iboga," explained Professor Otto Gollnhofer
in his opening remarks, placing Lotsof's discovery in perspecitive: "If
we have cancer and AIDS against which we are struggling, another of the
evils of our era is 'drugs,' which may have more victims then any other.
The stakes are enormously high."
Lotsof addressed the conferees, giving a detailed account of Ibogaine effects
at the therapeutic dose before patients finally fall asleep. Upon awaking,
Lotsof explained, "patients...no longer possess the desire to use cocaine
and other drugs."
The experts, skeptical of this claim, begain to grill Lotsof, probing and
challenging. The onslaught began when Goutarel, honorary director of the
French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), asked, "If the
patient is cured, why do you have to repeat the treatment six months later?"
"The effects of the treatment are not permanent," Lotsof responded.
Goutarel fired back, "What is the status of the patient when he leaves
the hospital?"
"Completely drug free." Lotsof went on to explain that Ibogaine's
effects are only temporary, and the same drives and forces that lead patients
to use drugs in the first instance gradually return. Under fire, Lotsof
was cool and professional, displaying knowledge and exertise on a par with,
if not greater than, many of those present.
Professor Portier, Director of the Natural Substance Division of the CNRS,
quizzed Lotsof likea headmaster would a sophomore: "Can you define
what you mean by 'anxiety'?
"I define anxiety in these terms: an increased adrenergic activity
which begins to create a state of discomfort in the patient." As the
probing continued, Lotsof passed each test put to him, winning the respect
and acceptance of those present. As a peer, he had been through a sort of
scientific "rite of passage.' Acknowledged as an expert by the experts,
Lotsof sat down and shared his insights and experiences of 25 years with
Ibogaine.
The upshot was a call for an international research initiative. "We
must puit forth all of the information we have on the subject from every
field," said Professor Gollnhofer, calling for the creation of an interdisciplinary
team to conduct Iboga research.
Among the attendeess was Dr Peter Baumann, a Swiss paychiatrist from Zurich.
Baumann had been influencewd by Naranjo, and Naranjjo's whol approach to
Ibogaine gre out of his experience with harmaline, which is like a stripped-down
Iboga molecule. To get his patients to verbalize--they tended to withdraw
or even doze on harmaline--Naranjo customarily administered it with ampetamines,
a practice he extended to Ibogaine. Hence his descriptions of Ibogaine as
"engendering unique rage." [Quips Howard: "Patients on Ibogain
and speed, mand as Hell, because he was trying to distract them from their
visualizations in order to grill them about what they were seeing!"]
All of the other experts present blamed the "unique rage" phenomenon
on Naranjo's technique. And they were all being deferential to Zeff, who
had given Ibogaine to many more people than Baumann, who was somewhat in
the minority in feeling psychiatric intervention during the actual Ibogaine
was the key to successful therapy, as with LSD.
"That was not my experience," said Zeff. "Of everything we
tried, Ibogaine achieved the most profound personal transformation of the
patient--which after all is the goal and purpose of psychiatry. When it
worked, the therapist was just a bystander."
Baumann berated him. "What do you know, old man. I was Claudio Naranjo's
protege."
"Ah yes, Naranjo. He was a student of mine." Everyone present
was embarrassed by Baumann's attempt to humiliate the older man.
[Baumann, however, nursed a grudge, and in 1990 blamed Ibogaine for the
death of one of his clients at his villa in France during an i llicit (his
Swiss license was not valid there) group therapy ses-sion. It may well have
been caused by Baumann's intrusive badgering technique. The poor woman had
a weak heart; but death was inconsistent with Ibogaine over-dose-- it occured
not at onset but four hours after administration, when it should have begun
to wear off, and only 400 mg. were given. Baumann, however, was mostly interested
in "clearing" his drug of preference, MDMA, several doses of which
turned up missing in the ensuing investigation. Swiss regulatory authorities
recently determined the Ibogaine was not the cause of death. But Howard
had long since informed all of his collaborators, world wide, and established
a procedure for administration of an antidote.]
From Paris, Howard and Norma flew to Libreville, Gabon, accompanied by Bob
Sisko. The three of them met with President Omar Bongo and his science adviser
Dr. Jean-Noel Gassitta, who spent two weeks probing Howard's sincerity.
In Gabon,Tabernathe iboga , the plant of which Ibogaine is the main alkaloid,
is the sacrament of the national religion, Bwiti. Once in a lifetime, often
at puberty, the initiate is given enough of the bark of the plant's roots
to "split the head" and induce the four to five hours of visualizations
necessary to "meet their ancestors." Possibly they may "meet
the Bwiti," a kind of universal African ancestor "between man
and angel" equivalent in their religion to the Holy Spirit in Christianity.
Both Omar Bongo and his predecessor Leon M'ba, the father of Gabonese independence,
were Bwiti. Their sacrament was persecuted by colonial authorities. Gabonese
are extremely sensitive about being bamboozled by Western druggies and the
adverse international regulatory consequences that might ensue from bad
press. Export of the root to the outside world is embargoed.
And here was Howard, asking for supplies: "Your Excellency, America
and all the "advanced" countries are in the grip of a terrible
epidemic of addiction. Many of the victims in my country are African-Americans--kidnapped
perhaps from this very land. But we believe that the antidote exists, here
in the sheltering rain forest. We believe the anti-toxin for this terrible
plague is iboga, the plant which heals the spirit. We implore you to release
emergency medical research supplies of iboga, so that testing can begin
to demonstrate to our Food and Drug Administration that iboga is safe--"
"I know iboga is safe," replied President Bongo. "I have
eaten iboga."
Howard looked him in the eye and said: "I too have eaten iboga, and
I know it is safe."
President Bongo's jaw dropped. Howard was an initiate! The President agreed
to release forty kilos of root bark to NDA. He said: "This will be
Gabon's gift to America." He thought a minute and said: "This
will be Gabon's gift to the world."
He flew them in his private plane to Ombway, south of the Equator, where
they were personal guests of the Binkt Maktar and other parliamentary notables.
Dr. Jean-Noel Gassita took them into the densest forest, to see the giant
35-foot iboga trees, which no westerner had seen for sixty years. In the
village, they also saw it under cultivation, and were presented with seeds,
which did not, unfortuantely, germinate later when supplied to a botanical
garden.
Viewing the old videotape of the trip you can see that Howard and Norma's
travelling companion, Bob Sisko, is not his current roly-poly self. He's
almost skeletal. He was de facto the addict representative on the trip,
since he had a bad coke habit. H e would be the first person treated. He
would also be the next great architect of Ibogaine development. In the next
two to three years, in new human trials involving two dozen addicts, he
would reproduce and verify Howard Lotsof's original results, with f ar closer
measurements and greater understanding.
Bob Sisko returned to New York City from Woodstock in 1976 when he divorced
his wife Pauline. He moved in on the YIPPIE ground floor (literally, helping
rebuild the ground floor of #9). He did a stint in D.C. YIP, recruiting
Alice Torbush into the orga nization. Even when he left for a while, he'd
be back. He organized the eighteen months' resistance to the eviction of
Studio 10 and led CITIZENS AGAINST HEROIN in 1981. He did the RAR concerts
with Howard, and assisted somewhat during the Staten Island P roject phase.
But during the first half of the '80s, his pet project was the American
Clemency Committee. His celebrated postcard campaign forced New York's Governor
Cuomo to free Gary McGivern, a convict accused of killing a guard while
actually handcuffed in the back seat of a police car. After the Clemency
Committee went into hiatus, Dana asked him: "Why don't you do more
on Ibogaine?"
Sisko, whose new thing was a public relations company uptown in the mid-50s,
responded by putting together the first corporate package for NDA Interna-tional.
He wrote the first product information. He coined the name for the product:
"ENDABUSE."
His PR firm shared office space with law offices housing the defense committee
for the "New York 8," Black radicals who were successfully fighting
off a police frame-up on weapons charges. Later they organized with Al Sharpton.
They were never that k een on Ibogaine, despite its RAR pedigree. They associated
it with '62 YIPPIE! marijuana decrim. And its representative was Sisko.
While others on the scene were quitting coke after the 70s, Sisko continued
to do it every day. He was also doing in excess of a liter of vodka a day.
Sisko was accompanying Howard to Gabon because his Israeli contacts would
be important for extracting and purifying Ibogaine from the root. By the
time they made the trip, though, Sisko was free-basing an eighth of an ounce
of coke a day.
The first batch of root bark was bogus--low alkaloid concentrations. The
Gabonese had to be massaged into providing a second shipment--the real thing.
In the summer of 1987, Omar Bongo visited President Reagan. Unbeknownst
to the White House, Lotsof a nd Sisko also arranged to meet with Bongo during
his official stay in Washington, D.C. So circumspect was Bongo's security
detail in ushering the Ibogaine representatives upstairs, where Bongo received
them in shirtsleeves, that the Secret Service didn't even know they were
there. Sisko and Howard were almost detained on the way out by flustered
feds, until their status as Omar Bongo's honored guests was confirmed by
Gabonese security.
President Bongo arranged to have 40 kilos of primo grade iboga delivered
by diplomatic pouch to his embasssy in Ottawa, where it was not illegal,
and Howard Lotsof could take possession. From Canada the forty kilos of
root bark scrapings moved back to Europe, for extraction and reduction into
97% Ibogaine hydrochloride, and then to Israel, for an additional purification
process--to 99.7%--to boost absorbability. Then it was shipped, via Europe,
back to Canada.
Meanwhile, Sisko's business was falling apart.
"Everyone who knew him was afraid that one day we'd call Sisko,"
says Howard, "and no one would be alive to answer the phone. Or that
we'd get the call. And he'd be dead."
Finally, the Ibogaine was ready. Based on Howard's '60s experience, it was
de-cided not to bring it into the United States. Holland, due to its reputation
for having the most rational drug policy in Europe, became the site for
the first human experim ents with Ibogaine in twenty-five years. Bob Sisko
arrived in Holland a few days after a friendly U.S. physician, December
10, 1987.
"I was in the public relations business," he says, "and I
was surrounded by cocaine--my clients, the people I worked with. They either
wanted it, expected it, or they procured it and put it in front of me.
"What I'd do when I'd travel abroad, is I'd buy a couple of Afrin bottles,
you know, and I would empty the Afrin out, and pour the cocaine in. I would
fill it up with water, and I would shake it up. Being in the public relations
business, you have to be cool. But if you're in a meeting with a straight
client, you can always reach in your pocket and take out a bottle of Dristan.
And tilt your head back. And nobody knows.
"Before taking Ibogaine, I was sitting around waiting and drinking
a great deal, and doing this coke I had in the Afrin bottle, smoking a lot
of cigarettes. Finally, the doctor said, 'Yeah, we can do it in the morning,'
and then I realized I had only three cigarettes left, and I said, 'This
drug--I've been told--takes thirty-six to forty-eight hours. I'll be damned
if I'm going to sit here for thirty-six hours without cigarettes.'
"Somebody had to go out for me, in the middle of the night, to get
me a pack of Camels. And I took the Ibogaine. And the whole time I didn't
smoke. And then I looked up, and I saw the doctor take out a cigarette and
light it, and I saw him cough. I sa w his body violently react to it, with
a tremendous heave-ho. And I said to myself, 'How is it possible that this
brilliant man can continue to ingest small amounts of toxin--twenty, thirty
times a day--when he knows it to have a cumulative effect?'
"I haven't had a cigarette since that day."
Here was the first new discovery, one quite unexpected. Ibogaine can interrupt
cigarettes . A few years later C. Everette Koop got on TV and informed us
cigarettes and heroin share a common narcotic receptor. Since most addicts
smoke cigarettes, Sisk o and Howard soon realized this was a big bonus.
But there was more. In the time before and after their trip to Gabon, they
had immersed themselves in literatures about the African religious version
of the experience. Chapter 18 of James Fernandez's "BWITI--An Ethnography
of the Religious Imagination in Africa" became part of their orientation
package for addicts they were treating. Listen to Bob's account of his first
treatment:
"Within an hour of taking it, you start to get wobbly, and say, whoa,
I have to lay down. And then time passes, and all of a sudden you look up
and a movie screen appears ["Windows."]. You find a place, either
a wall or a ceiling--and what happens is your subconscious and all of your
repressed memories come forth, and you're able to view it in a totally impartial
manner. In the same way as if you were viewing a motion picture. It's just
like watching TV. And this is the stuff that might normally get released
fifteen-to-twenty-minutes-a-night while you're in REM sleep.
"Then what happens is you go through another stage where you ask questions
about what you've experienced, and you come up with answers. And then you
go through a third period. You gain access to the information stored in
your individual hereditary archive. You meet your ancestors. It was a very
spiritual 64experience for me.
"It is a wonder drug. It's like a re-set button, and it clears and
re-sets all the neurotransmitters to operate at maximum efficiency, so that
everything becomes crystal clear to you. It's a miracle."
And there was more, although like many who have the experience, Sisko was
wary of expressing it for a long time. He met Bwiti--very the avatar of
the African religion-- a very definite, highly energetic though discorporate
entity.
When he saw Howard, though, soon after he got back to New York, they had
their first big dispute. Sisko told him, "The Ibogaine really works!
I never experienced anything like it. We've got to start treating people--real,
live addicts--now."
"As president of a corporation engaged in legitimate pharmaceutical
development, I can't get NDA involved in anything that would run afoul of
the laws or regulations of the U.S. or any other country where we intend
to business," said Howard. "I really sympathize--and I'm interested
in sharing your findings. But I can't jeopardize our entire development
schedule just to treat a few individuals."
"Howard, people are dying," Sisko objected. "I know dozens
of people personally who need Ibogaine. It's not right to withhold it any
longer."
The argument raged all winter. By spring relations were icy. It took almost
a year, using connection he had established with the head of the Chemistry
Department of a large university in Western Africa, for Sisko to get his
own Ibogaine.
Among the first to be treated was Fred, a hardcore fiend known to Dana from
Studio 10 days. He'd been in and out of jails and Odyssey House since becoming
addicted to heroin in 1981. Fred was never a perfect success. But like the
patient who can keep his cancer under control with recurrent chemo-therapy,
his first treatment in April, 1989, produced such a visible improvement
in Fred that Dana completely startled, stopped paying attention to the parade
he was marshalling for ten whole minutes. This was long enough for a rival
faction to divert the entire back half of the parade to Central Park from
its original target, Congressman Charles Rangel's office at 125th Street
in Harlem.
Dana had started going to ACT UP meetings in early '88 because he thought
the whole Dutch harm reduction ("safe drugs") model was essential
to stop AIDS; now he got up and plugged Ibogaine at ACT UP meetings. The
change in Fred was so dramatic, Dana also decided the time had come for
the drug reform movement to give Ibogaine the same priority a s legalizing
pot or clean needles. He staked all his prestige as founder of the smoke-ins
on it, and split the pot movement for three years.
Ibogaine prevailed in the end.
Fred even moved into #9 Bleecker. With the re-treatments, he became the
most Ibogainized person in the world. And like a scientist puzzling over
moon rocks, with each treatment Dana gleaned more data.
"I met Bwiti the first time," said Fred. "All of a sudden
this 300-pound Black Buddha a lot like Fats Domino pops into the room and
says 'What are you waiting for? Let's go!' He took me on a journey to a
pyramid or a mountain of light, and on it were arranged a Star of David,
a cross, a star and crescent, all the symbols of the religions. But from
the top of the mountain, shining through all of them but superior to all
of them, was this blinding light. And I recognized it as the light Moses
saw through the burning bush."
Five months later, feeling strong pre-addictive anxiety, he contacted Howard
for a re-treatment. During it, Fred re-experienced the Holocaust through
the eyes of his mother, a survivor of the camps. Later he was able to describe
to his uncle, perfect ly, the faces of relatives who'd died in the Nazi
death camps, whom he had no way of knowing. His uncle started crying.
[How do you know if you're having a true religious experience, and not just
crazy? Philip Dick says that if you come into information you have no way
of knowing, and it later turns out to be true, then perhaps you have had
a genuine revelation (a "theophany," he calls it). The catch,
of course, is acting in time on it. And if it turns out to be true, the
initiate is transposed into realms of freedom--i.e, freedom to act on truth
previously unsuspected--realms that would not exist without Iboga.]
Now of everyone connected with the Project, Sisko's scene overlapped most
the the original YIPPIES; he is good friends with YIPPIE founder Bob Fass,
for instance. Bob lobbied heavily for the treatment of the wife of his friend
Joe the Gentle Giant, a 34-year-old woman named Linda T. He had to lobby,
because Lind didn't seem like a good candidate for treatment. "Not
only was I a drug addict," she said, "I was an unrepentant one."
"Everybody kep saying 'oh, you gotta quit drugs! you gotta quit drugs!
And I kept saying 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,' but I didn't really want to,
because--let's face it--I could afford it. I'd been doing heroin since I
was 14 years old. When I wasn't doing it I was taking pills of some sort.
"I didn't think Ibogaine was going to work. The reasoin why I got it
was because I was addicted to Dutch heroin."
Sisko wanted to respond to the Dutch doctors who argued that Ibogaine might
work on weak American smack, but not real Dutch quality stuff. But Linda
had a job that required her to commute to Holland, so she had learned to
smoke it there, in the Dutch manner, on tinfoil.
"From what I know," she continued, "the Ibogaine I took was
from the Gabon Republic. I looked like a big gelatine capsule. It had this
white-silvery powder in it that had been adjusted to my body weight. I just
put it in my mouth and took it. There were other people in the room, and
in the other room outside, but I preferred to be alone throughout the whole
thing. They kept asking me how I felt. My hands were still shaking four
day later.
"At seventy minutes, it started hitting me. Then I started getting
dizzy. And then I said I think I'm going to lay down... My eyes... my eyelids...
when I started closing them, turned into a TV screen. And I'm watching a
stage."
She met the Bwiti:
"I came before the Throne, and His face was a mask with which he gestured
'Yes' and 'No' very emphatically - and he had incredibly deep eyes, so deep
I kept thinking they must hurt. He spoke only simple words. He said, 'Go
Back!' At first I thought he meant go back to the beginning of Ibogaine,
which I wanted to do because I was resisting it, but then I understood what
he meant when I was jet-propelled back to the beginning of time. And I witnessed
the beginning of earth and how it was put together. I saw behind me and
past me. I saw from the beginning of time. I had my life handed back to
me, here... finish it.
"Immediately after the treatment, my heroin use stopped. It worked
immediately. With no heavy withdrawals. Just chils. It changed the way I
think - even my personality."
She found her Catholic religious convictions were strengthened; she never
again doubted the existence of an afterlife, for example.
"It totally changed my life. I [didn't] have a habit anymore. I experienced
chills, but not bad ones. And I was an experienced drugs addict, one that
had been through jonesing many times, not always of my own volition. I was
still on heroin before I took the Ibogaine. At first, I took the drug, and
I thought that I still wanted to get high, what's wrong? And then, you know,
as time went on, and the Ibogaine wore on, it took it out of me--the urge.
I had been a junkie for many years, so this, to me was something totally
new."
Linda provided dramatic confirmation of Lotsof's original '63 finding, that
Ibogaine can interrupt addiction even in people who neither particularly
want nor expect it to work: "I sort of took it to appease everyone,"
she said, "and the fucking drug worked. I couldn't believe it. It worked."
For the next six months she remained drug free, and used the money she saved
to invest and start a business manufacturing gaming equipment, which she
was soon shipping all over to new places that were opening up legal gambling.
After six months she notified Sisko she was beginning to feel the urge to
use heroin again, and needed re-treatment. She had, on three occasions during
the previous thirty days, taken quaaludes. But she'd remained junkfree.
Win a month, she was re-treated.
Now Linda was something of a social lion of the Manhattan Bohemian set.
She was good friends with the "Pople of Pot" Mickey Cesar, leader
of the breakaway a few months earlier from the Parade to Congressman Charles
Rangel's office. Linda actually appeared in two videos with Mickey around
this time while he was out of jail for a spell. So for anyone in the Pople's
retinue to pretend Ibogaine didn't work after that was really a matter of
focusing on the relapse and ignoring Linda's business sucess. She also happened
to be a card-playing buddy of Herbert Hunke, the man who turned William
Burroughs on to heroin. He was one of the folks who's just ashappy as can
be on his daily 100 mgs. of methadone. But according to Hunke, Ibogaine
is the closest thing yet to the cure Burroughs and beats were looking for
in the '50's: "Howard Lotsof found the first thing that actually helps
you to quit--if you want to."
In October, 1989, Bob Sisko treated the first Dutch addicts--Ron and Geerte
F. of the Dutch squatters movement. Geerte--back from Holland after opening
up Umbrella House squat on Avenue C asround the corner from Sisko's place
on East 3rd Street--had found out about Ibogaine in New York. She was anxious
to get a treatment for Ron, her multiply-addicted boyfriendl.
Both treatments were a success, even though Geerte tried to resist the Ibogaine's
effects. Bob went back to New York, leaving Geerte and Ron enough Ibogaine
to treat ten addi tional Dutch junkies. "At first," she says,
"Everyone was totally cynical. No one is more cynical than a junkie.
But by the end, they were banging on my door, saying, 'Treat us, treat us!'
and there wasn't enough Ibogaine." She adds: "Ibogaine is not
the solution in itself, although it takes away withdrawal completely. Ibogaine
helps you to realize that all power is available to cure yourself through
willpower."
What first convinced all her junkie friends Ibogaine was for real was that
Ron, her boyfriend, was selling his 65 milligram daily dose of methadone,
and spending the money, not on coke or smack, but on camping gear for their
upcoming trip to Nepal. The powerful purgative action of Ibogaine (prized
by the Africans) had flushed the methadone right out of his system.
Ibogaine interrupts methadone addiction. In thirty-six hours, just
like heroin. No more two to six months of excruciating withdrawal. This
was the second great unexpected finding of Sisko's paraclinical research.
It would reverberate powerfully back through the anti-methadone movement,
especially the ex-Black Panther accupuncturists.
When Sisko got back from Holland, he was heavily lobbied by Dana and Fred
on behalf of Jeff--a friend of Charles Kritsky, who'd known Howard and Sisko
since the day his wife Joan set type for YIPster Times, circa '77-'78. A
big fan of Spinrad and a New York survivor of Forcade's Chaoticist circle,
Charlie was a half-German, half-Puerto Rican from the Lower East Side. Most
of his childhood friend had become junkies except him and his friend Ric,
who just smoke pot and did coke. When they were teenagers, they took four
of their buddies up to the country for a detox. After sitting up for 48
hous without sleep trying to helpl four junkies kick cold turkey, they developed
a profound respect for addiction, but wer e no closer 6to gettting even
one of thier friends off junk. Once in the city, one by one, they relapsed.
Charles, a zealous student of the Ultimate Chaotic act, had consciously
followed the progress of Ibogaine since the late '70s. He was a font of
reassurance and support for the project amidst indifference; he tried to
use his connections on the club Scene to line up publicity and enforsements.
Charles needed a treatment for his friend Jeff, a tallented interior designer
who, in between being on the nod, did little carpentry jobs at the World,
a club on East Houston. Charles had a dream that if he could just get Jeff
off dope for a little while, they could turn the cinderblock front of his
carriage house on East 5th St. into a store for his rock 'n' roll accessories.
Jeff was an industrious addict, working long hard hours to maintain $80-$100
daily heroin and almost daily cocaine use. Charlie went along for the treatment.
But there was only about a gram of Ibogaine for Jeff, who was almost six
feet tall and needed more. "He kept laying there saying, 'Charlie it
isn't working'," Charles said later, "But I asked him--so how
come you don't get up and go cop?' He couldn't!" Ten hours after taking
Ibogaine, he requested a hot fudge sundae.
Following treatment, Jeff began to complain bitterly about his back. They
symptoms were not related to detox, but rather a back injury which the detox
had unmasked. A work-related injury had gone undiagnosed for sometime, with
Jeff in effect self-medicating for a slipped disk.
The difference Ibogaine mad in Jeff was electric--the "Xanadu effect."
Jeff was one of those junkies who is constantly knick-knacking, pulling
antique grill and window-frames out of dumpsters and bringing them home
only to have them pile up, unused. Now, in several weeks of feverish construction,
all the opium dreams stopped up in Jeff's head were actualized. When the
showroom was unveiled--a veritable pleasure dome--Sisko and Dana realized
this was their first of a subtle new class of effects: the "Ibogaine
artifact."
Perhaps as result of unmasking thge back injury, or perhaps as the result
of his age--41--Jeff's post-treatment was markedly longer than most. But
it was useful to find that a heroin habit could mask an underlying injury;
and Sisko also noted that the recovery period seemed notably shorter the
younger the individual. Jeff's alcohol consumption did decrease makedly
at first; personal appearance and hygiene improved. But Jeff's loyalties
were sufficiently tangled by by the contempt myany of his junkie friend
had for the whole YIP trip, that after two months he relapsed, ripping off
Charles in the Process. Still, a single Ibogaine treatment had put the store
over the hump, and Kritsky attired the stars, including Madonna, Billy Idol,
Hall & Oats, and Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam.
What would the effect be in the inner city, if all creative people currently
impaired on heroin and coke were unleashed, and started small businesses?
Among the last of nine initial treatms done by Sisko in Amsterdam were a
Greek theatrical couple--a director and his mate, a costume designer--who'd
read a reprint of the original Overthrow article in the journal of
the Greek YIPPIES. "M," the director, was addicted to both heroin
and methadone. He used 50 mg.-a-day of methadone, as well as 1/4 of a gram
of heroin, but rarely drank and had ceased once-frequent mushroom and LSD
use.
The treatment began with routine Ibogaine symptoms.After an hour, though,
"M" began vomiting. Despite the beginnings of the visionary stage,
he complained of physical discomfort.Two-and-a-half hours later he asked
for methadone. He was not indicating any signs of physical withdrawal, however.
Under the pretext of using the bathroom, he phoned his fiancee "A"
and insisted she bring him methadone at once.
When she arrived, she surrptitiously slipped the methadone to "M,"
who renewed his request to Sisko for methadone. Sisko refused. "M"
persuasively argued he was in great discomfort--that the therapy was not
working. Sisko debated the pros and cons of aborting treatment. "M"
was displaying high anxiety, but still no physical symptoms of withdrawal.
He continued to campaign to end the treatment. Sometime thereafter, "A"
returned and slipped him 25 mg. Halcion, which he took and promptly threw
up, before finally drifting off to sleep hours later.
Upon awakening, he again summoned "A" to his side and took an
additional 30 mg. of methadone.
Sisko, upon learing of this, decided to terminate the treatment. In the
next days, in conferences with both "M" and "A," "M"
came to see that what he had experienced was an anxiety reaction, not physical
withdrawal from narcotics. Sisko agreed to treat him again, but as soon
as he was done treating "A."
"A" had been living in Athens, sniffing one gram of smack a day
for months. She'd been using continually for three years. She had been able
to observe what Ibogaine was like in "M," and was most cooperative.
Her Ibogaine dose was given in two administrations, one-and-a-half hours
apart. At no time did she vomit or feel nauseous. Nor did she experience
any discomfort of withdrawal. She recovered quickly, and went home to join
"M," who had continued to shoot heroin and do methadone. For a
week she refrained from using heroin, despite being around "M's"
contined use. At the end of the week, she accompanied him for his second
treatment attempt, ten day after the first one.
Sisko had observed about half of his subjects become nauseaous, and half
of these vomit at some time during the treatment. Therefore, "M"
began by taking two dramamine. An hour later "M" ingested his
dose of Ibogaine, and within 35 minutes was beginning to feel the effects.
Seventy minutes after ingestion, he reeported the onset of nausea.
A booster dose of Ibogaine was administered, but "M" vomite immediately,
losing the booster and some Ibogaine ingested earlier. Sisko determined
that emergency measures were in order. By prior consent of "M,"
a rectal acqueous solution had been prepared. It was administered. Within
an hour "M" was experiencing the full Ibogaine effect, being characteristically
"overwhelmed." The balance of the treatment was uneventful. "M"
recovered within three days, declared the procedure an overwhelming success,
and moved with "A" to another city.
These treatments pin-pointed problems--such as coping with "enabling
behavior" in a couple where the one who isn't being treated is slipping
drugs to the one who is, as well as the urghent requirement for a better
anti-nausea medication--that would have to be overcome to perfect the procedure.
And there was another discovery here--Ibogaine might work, but only on the
second or third try--a result that would be confirmed in animals, as we
learn in the next chapter. There was one follow-up phone interview of this
coupld. "M" told Sisko that he'd used heroin on just two occasions;
"A" told him she had remained completely heroin-free.
All of these initial treatment episodes became the basis for Sisko's Interrupting
Drug Dependency: A Summary of Nine Case Histories. With the publication
of Nine Case Histories, Sisko set the stage for his next big idea--making
freedom from addiction a reality for those, specifically the Dutch Junkie-bond,
who'd initiated the struggle for addict rights.
Without Ibogaine, "Freedom from addiction" is just a slogan. But
Sisko knew that not using Ibogaine one he had it would mean acquiescence
in slavery and the perpetuation of slavery.
It was a challenge Sisko couldn't resist.
Once he was sure the interruption of addiction was real, Bob Sisko knew
that he had to form an organization to make freedom from addiction a reality
for addicts everywhere. The name he chose was the International Coalition
for Addict Self Help (ICASH). The first ICASH treatment was of the founder
of the Junkie-bond, Nico Adriaans.
Yet it was through the cases of Nico and his girlfriend that Sisko came
to know as well the limits of freedom--that Ibogaine is not the cure it
was first hoped to be, but a treatment. In time, both Nico and Josien relapsed
into addiction, and required re-treatment. On a tape made ten months after
his treatment, Nico gave a much clearer description than before to an American
junkie of the religious quality of his first experience [See Chapter 8:
Nico Adriaans --- where the Voice comes and says, "So if you know,
act like it." , ]; and Dana upon seeing this later, asked Sisko: "How
could some one relapse after such an experience?
Sisko thought about it a minute and said: "He forgot. On Ibogaine he
will remember again."
Josien Harms re-counted how she became re-addicted to heroin in another
tape made in February, '91, during that later round of treatments:
"The Ibogaine gives you a feeling that you want to use your brain.
You want to be occupied. You want to do things. After Ibogaine, it really
gives you a sense like Wow--what possibilities you have, and with heroin,
it's just not possible. It puts some grip on your brain, and you're not
able to use your brain fully. Maybe four months after I had taken the Ibogaine,
I tried it one time and I thought, "Oh yeah, now I remember why I"m
don't want to use any more." But somehow, I just tried it a few times,
and six months after I took the Ibogaine I was back on, using daily again.
I thought I had it under control, and that I could do that . Just take it
once in a while. And now, if I do the Ibogaine again, I don't want to play
around with it any more. I don't want to try, even try, if I can do that--to
use once in a while. I just want to stay away from it this time. It costs
too much mone y. And it's just not nice."
So even though it's not a perfect cure, through a kind of Ibogaine learning
curve the possibility of freedom exists for each individual. Because through
Ibogaine, unlike the ordinary addict, they have learned how to quit--later,
without Ibogaine.
What is more, information made availble during the experience may lay around,
and then, under the stimulus of a disinhibit ing situation, snap into focus
months afterward.
During the spring of 1991 an ex-Israeli Army medic who was working with
Sisko and Howard, named Boaz Wachtel, succeeded in wheedling a treament
for his cigarette addiction. The treatment worked; but on Ibogaine Boaz
experienced being present, 4,000 years earlier, at the offering of the Tablets,
and then wandering in the desert for 40 years.
In August of '91, when Bob Sisko re-treated himself because his drinking
had gotten too heavy again, Bwiti instructed him to go to a certain schul
on East First Street. There he met someone with contacts in Czechoslovakia
and access to an investment hous e with several million dollars to invest.
The clinic in Prague didn't work out; the new Czech government was too beholden
to Bush and James Baker to grant approval, but soon after the initial contact
in the schul, in the Lower East Side apartment of the Czech contact, Boaz
experienced one of those moments where everything seems to re-arrange --and
information made available to him months before, on the Ibogaine--snapped
into focus.
They were talking about a tank ditch on the Golan, between Israel and Syria,
when Boaz remembered a fragment from his visions: the greening of Israel,
Syria, Palestine, Jordan, even Saudi Arabia by bringing water down from
lakes in Eastern Turkey vi a a series acqueducts. A review of elevation
maps showed it was eminently feasible. Boaz credits Ibogaine for strengthening
his conviction to act on the vision, the sense that peace in that particular
corner of the world remains
somehow essential in the design of things. He went to work, and today his
water-for-peace plan forms one of the few really solid bases for peace negotiations.
The region has dangerously depleted its aquifers; everyone in the area needs
an agreement tha t will let them share in the potential water from the north,
if agreement with Syria can be reached.
One night not long after Boaz first
got his Great New Idea, after he was done explaining how he felt it related
to his Ibogaine experience, Sisko conceded that his own recent re-treatment
"really refreshed my memories of the first time I did it. The reality
of it. When you don't do it for awhile, you really forget what it's like.
Did you know that I traveled anywhere in the world in a blink of an eye?
It was like Astral Projection."
He went on to speculate that the effect may be somewhat dependent on place.
Sisko wants to take Ibogaine at MT. Sinai, to see if he might be able to
talk to Moishe Rebbineu. After another six months or so, he told
Dana about a story from Numbers, Chapter 12, Verses 1-16, about Moses
and Moses' sister, a story Jews are supposed to study once a year.
"It really supports the idea that dreaming was the usual medium
for religious experience and prophecies," said Sisko.
Moses was married to an Ethiopian -- a Black woman. And Miriam, his sister,
and Aaron started making a stink, saying "Hath the Lord indeed spoken
only with Moses? Hath He not spoke also with us?" -- Sisko paused for
dramatic effect -- "And the Lord heard it."
So God called Moses, Aaron, Miriam to the Meeting Tent, and descended on
a pillar of cloud and said, "If there be a prophet among you, I the
Lord do make myself knwn unto him in a vision, I do speak with in a dream.
"My servant Moses is not so; he is trusted in all My house; with him
I do speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and not in dark speeches; and
the similitude of the Lord doth he behold" -- in other words I talk
to this guy face to face, not in dreams at night like any run-of-the-mill
Prophet.
Then God said, in effect:"You have grievously hassled my Man, Moses.
You want White? I'll give you White."
Ande he turned Miriam into a leper. But because God is merciful, after a
week He turned her back.
"Jews don't talk about this story a lot," Sisko said, "because
it involves racism, even though Miriam's primary offense was to undermine
the Project, by dissing Moses."
"But the story seems to say God is against racism. That he views it
as spiritual leprosy."
Since his second treatment, Sisko religiously dons his skull-cap and marches
over to schul every Friday night. He is unavailable on Saturdays. He wants
to go take Ibogaine on Mt. Sinai. He wants to see if he can talk to Moishe
Rebbineu. But even with out that, his gadfly role, hassling the feds for
proceding so ponderously with Ibogaine development, is in the highest tradition
of confronting a complacent,Pharonic authority, and speaking truth to power.
He hasn't smoked a cigarette in five and a half years.
©1995 ~ Cures Not Wars
Last updated February 6, 1995
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