Before and After Iboga
A few years ago, before I’d taken Iboga, an average day would have looked very different than today. At first light, as soon as I opened my eyes, my mind would have flooded with varying anxieties about what lied ahead. Would I finally have the courage to end the long-term relationship I knew was wrong? Maybe, just maybe he would finally change. For years I had slowly carved away at every vital need, every part of myself that seemed to stand in the way of finally being loved the way I desperately longed to be. As I made coffee, I’d be ruminating about my job, feeling resentful and angry at always being at the service of other people’s creative projects, putting artists on stages I longed to be on myself. The burning desire to be a published author lived in my body as failures to publish a manuscript, several of them, my dream a painful heartbreak. While getting dressed, I’d admonish my ‘imperfect’ figure, feel hateful towards my body.
On they went my days of anxiety, inadequacy, rumination, frustration and the distinct sense that I could not break the cycles that haunted every corner of my existence. Wounds drove every thought, every decision. Of course I’d tried everything to relieve the pain. Alcohol, street drugs, affairs. Therapy, psychics, astrology. Finally, I’d landed on anti-anxiety meds and for years wanted to get off them while equally fearing the prospect of once again being engulfed by anxious waves, paranoia, and obsessive looping thoughts.
Iboga came to me in an ad for a documentary called Dosed. Perhaps not the kind of spiritual lightning bolt one imagines when they’re invited to change their life dramatically, but that’s how I learned about the medicine. As soon as I saw the ceremony depicted in the documentary, I wanted to do it. I’d never done any psychedelics and knew nothing about it, but I’d been called. Within weeks, I quit my job, left the abusive relationship, sold my condo in the city I’d lived in for 12 years, moved all my things back to my home province of Alberta, then got on a plane to the Baja to an Iboga ceremony.
In December 2023, sitting in front of the medicine facilitators, I called myself ‘love addicted’: someone who used romantic entanglements with chronically unavailable partners as drugs. It’s what I’d cycled in and out of my whole life and I desperately hoped the Iboga medicine would liberate me. During my first flood dose, I returned to my first memory, a traumatic incident where my father was chasing me and yelling, and my mother, yelling after him said, “Don’t yell at Carmen!”. The yelling chain, ancestral chain, rumination chain, self-hatred chain, abuse chain, admonishment chain, shame chain…was revealed. Maybe not yet broken but the medicine snapped the first link and offered me some simple phrases to forge ahead into life with: ‘don’t yell at Carmen’, ‘alcohol is poison’, ‘one step at a time’, and one of my most treasured messages, ‘I love writing’.
It’s been two and half years since my first dose and I am not the same person I was. I am not anxious as a rule though I have anxious thoughts which I can sift through and usually let go. I wrote and published a book called “Don’t Yell at Her!” which I launched on January 29th, my 46th birthday. I can identify and end unhealthy entanglements in hours or days, not years or months. I know where I fit and what spaces can hold me instead of trying to squeeze myself into places I don’t belong. I love my body and truly, I love and trust myself fully. Iboga is an inside job and with my own daily work and determination, my interior world has transformed.
It’s important I don’t portray the arduous journey to the Carmen of today as some kind of smooth ride. It’s been a lot of examination, a lot of self-love, discernment, relentless tests, repeated tries and falls, but ultimately, the medicine, and my soul—I see them as the same thing—are always with me. I am always held.
And I persevere.
Today, I woke with some light thoughts of an ex-lover who was not a good fit for me and noticed my brain wanted to sculpt him into someone he wasn’t. I let these thoughts drift by, and dissolve. As I took a long walk through the forest with my dog, I asked the trees to stay close to me, help me through a difficult workday. They did. I told my coworkers about my future plans and dreams, inviting them to my book launch, not worrying if I didn’t sound committed to my job. I sat down and wrote this blog for Medicine Spirit because I love writing, of course, but I also want to be the change I see in the world. This medicine work is vital to transcending our pain and I’m here to encourage more of us to sit with our great master teacher, Iboga.
I’ll be facilitating at future Medicine Spirit retreats in the beautiful Baja as well as Portugal. Please join us. It would be our honour to hold you while you experience this profound medicine.
