Detox 5, the 'wakeful detox' - Too good to be true?

A friend recently asked my thoughts about 'detox 5', the private, magical, five day (private) heroin detox. 

Detox 5, is a very successful business model, They charge £3200 for an ultra rapid opiate detox (UROD)

The idea being, you go in with a heroin/methadone/subutex/morphine/fentanyl habit and leave five days later clean!.. (note there's no difference between the opiates, they treat for any of them)

Sound too good to be true?!... Read on..

Using a combination of midazolam and naltrexone, you will be 'sedated' whilst precipitated withdrawal is induced using naltrexone. 

They recommend you opt for the (very expensive) naltrexone implant for at least 12 months after your treatment. This is if you even get that far.

I've known maybe half a dozen people that have subjected themselves to D5, all of them left (one halfway through) left treatment and relapsed. 

They have a great hook, I'll grant them that.. A 'comfortable, easy detox'  that you'll barely remember, what isn't so clear as you hand your money over is their version of sedation and yours are likely very different.

It would be too impractical to fully sedate patients. They would need to be fed and hydrated, catheterised both ends etc etc.. all requiring constant monitoring.

Fluids mean IV access, something that requires medical training and constant monitoring. 

Sounds expensive huh? All those doctors and nurses...

In reality you'll actually be medicated orally, given water to drink and food as required. 

Yeah, you're given benzos, but just enough so your still awake enough to talk, use the bathroom and take your meds. 

You'll most likely still piss and shit the bed, conscious but too out of it to get to the bathroom.

This is your five day detox;

On day one your settled in, given a medical and maybe a Valium. 

Day two your given you first dose of midazolam, a very useful benzo usually used for dental work and day patient hospital investigations. 

Your kept 'sedated for a couple of days to start the withdrawal process, if your coming off heroin you'll be at the peak of the detox, methadone? Barely scratching the surface, methadone withdrawal doesn't even really start to kick in for three days, subutex is similar.

As we all know naltrexone is an opiate antagonist. 

It's used to reverse heroin overdoses and is doing pretty much the same thing to you. 

Day three/four you'll get your 'challenge dose'

Your gonna go into precipitated withdrawals. The worst, most acute, painful thing you've ever experienced. Hopefully your sedated enough that you sort of dream your way through it!?

You'll ask to be sedated more, they'll refuse and tell you that you you've reached your maximum allowance.

What do you do? Well nothing, what can you do? Your bowels are liquidising and you feel like your dying but you aint going anywhere! 

Day five is much the same, they titrate your naltrexone up to 'throw' any remaining opiates out. 

Naltrexone has a very short half life do you'll be given a dose every couple of hours. 

You shit and snot your way through four days of hell, semi lucid, the odd five minutes of sleep if your lucky, begging for more sedation and being refused, until you reach day five. Hey, your clean my good sir! 

Yes, all those years of abuse magically washed away!

They stop giving you benzos and as you come around you realise you stink, your still in withdrawals and that the pretty nurse you fancy has spent the last three days wiping your ass. 

'Time to leave, we need the bed' you're told

One day turn around til the next lot on Monday. 

'The doctor needs his weekend off!'

So, I think you get the gist of it. 

It's an overpriced, painful and quite disturbing way to detox. 

If your new to opiates, maybe with only a year or two of using heroin then this may work out for you. 

Any long term junkie with a methadone or subutex habit doesn't stand a chance. 

Methadone takes weeks and months to detox from, not days. You'll be hitting the peak of the withdrawal as they're chucking you out the door...

One friend discharged himself on day three because he wasn't sedated enough and in agony. 

He got in the car and DROVE home! Obviously under the influence of some pretty heavy benzos still. He crashed the car into a lamppost and luckily didn't die. 

I did some digging into the actual company too. They have a pretty dubious history. Very profitable though!

On their own website they state a '97% completion' rate, this is printed in bold on every page, very, very misleading. 

Completion merely means patients that didn't discharge themselves and completed the five days. They're bandying it around like it's an abstinence at 12 months statistic

Dig a little deeper you come across a 70% rate. 

Sounds great doesn't it!?

What that actually equates to though is 70% of the 50% of patients who replied to the survey, attained abstinence for twelve months WITH a naltrexone implant. 

Anyone with an implant is literally unable to get high so yes, they would logically and by default be abstinent. 

50% of the people surveyed didn't respond so we can assume they relapsed. This means we're down to one in three.

These stats by the way, were removed from the site recently. They were well out of date, 2001 I believe.

As I said before, the only statistic they have on the site is the '97% success rate' one, after lots of googling I can't find much more than that, they don't back up this '97%' with any in depth analysis, I find this very telling but make your own conclusions.

They have, through the clever use of meta tags and SEO managed to get themselves onto the first three four pages of google results, most of the other information is from unhappy customers.

Long and short of it?

Unless you've only been using a year I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, let alone pay for the pleasure..!

Here's my alternative, get a load of Xanax, diazepam and some Imodium, get a mate to drop in and check on you ever day, knock yourself out with benzos for three days then go to your gp and ask for oral naltrexone!
Same thing, without the medical staff, rules and regs of a 'rehab' and the £3,200 price tag.. !

Next up I'll be giving you a rundown of 'Narcanon', a U.S based rehab based on the philoshies of Ron L Hubbard. Very interesting it will be too! Lot's of weird stuff goes down at the 'most succesful' rehabs in the states.. Scientology and recovering, detoxing drug addicts? Sounds highly questionable to me!

Ibogaine Treatment Centres & Sources

I'm writing this post in response to the enquires I get about seeking treatment and ibogaine.
I'll probably turn this into a page as opposed to a post to a blog post too

So, ibogaine treatment,

As ibogaine is illegal in countries such as the United States, most treatments are either carried out 'underground', there is a network of UG providers thougout the U.S, they usually operate by carrying out the treatment in hotels or their own homes.
This option is a bit hit and miss, there are some great, empathic, caring providers out there but there are also some horror stories about providers preying on desperate addicts, taking deposits and not following through with treatment, under dosing, over charging and a even few cases of sexual assault!

Legal treatments are carried out in Mexico and Canada, these are generally more expensive but if you can afford to then this is definitely the preferred option. As official clinics they usually follow guidelines, meaning medical staff on site, more staff, better organisation and accountability if things go wrong.

If you're serious about doing ibogaine then my biggest piece of advice is, research research research!

There is a huge amount of information online, reviews on clinics, support forums and medical papers. Go join Mindvox mailing list, join a Facebook ibogaine group and ask questions!

Any provider worth their salt will help out your mind at ease and answer any questions you have.

Elsewhere in the world, most countries have providers, I can help point you I the right direction if you want to message me or leave a comment.

From my experiences with it, if I could afford it, id pay for a proper treatment, DIY is difficult, dangerous and usually unsuccessful long term.
An experienced provider will help you from the first email through to long term abstinence strategies.

Some good forums worth joining:

Mindvox - The original ibogaine mailing list
Eboka forum - www.eboka.info

Ibogaine sources

IbogaWorld - trusted, reasonably priced, quality ibogaine HCL,TA and Root bark - www.ibogaworld.com

Simon Loxton - Simon is a provider and supplier based in Cape Town, South Africa, contact for more details
ibogaine.treatment@iboga.co.za

Cerebus Extract - Online ethnogen supplier, Ibogaine HCL along with ayahuasca, DMT etc...
http://cerberusextract.com/

There are other places to get Ibogaine from but I only have experience with these three

Ibogaine Providers:
UK Ibogaine info
Providers in Europe
Ed Conn, the guy who treated David in 'detox or die' doesn't work or live in the UK anymore.

I'll be updating this page with new providers and vendors as soon as I can verify their honesty and integrity.
The sources I list will always be respected, trusted sources/people.
The world of Ibogaine can me a bit of a minefield so I'll try to take the work out of it all for you!

Micro dosing and Using Different Types Of Ibogaine

Ibogaine is the root of Tabernathe Iboga, a shrub that grows mainly on the African continent.
Iboga is processed from the roots of mature plants, usually at least eight years old.
The Bwiti use pure root bark but some clever westerners worked out a way to process the root into Ibogaine HCL, this is around nine to ten times stronger so is better suited to medical use as less needs to be ingested.
Ibogaine HCL is sometimes synthesised from vocangine another shrub, vocangine, pure HCL is mainly Ibogaine, this is just one of the active alkaloids.

The other preparation used for detoxifying is 'TA' or Total Alkaloids, this is a purified form of root bark but includes all the active alkaloids, not just Ibogaine. TA, sometimes referred to as Indra, is usually around 8% Ibogaine the rest being many active alkaloids.
TA is preferred by many and used sometimes for opiate detoxification.
Some believe because it is the whole extract it gives more of a psychospiritual experience, it is often combined with HCL.

Ibogaine root bark is around ten times less powerful then Ibogaine HCL, it is rarely used for detoxification purely because so much would be needed its inpracticle.
The main use for root bark is for boosters post detox, root bark can be used in small doses as often as neccasary to help control cravings and Post Acute Withdrawal Symptoms like restless leg syndrome, goosebumps, chills, anxiety etc
A booster dose would usually be around 250-1000mg daily.

It's usually advised to take a decent booster seven days after flooding too

Micro-dosing For Reducing Opiate Tolerance & Potentiating

Microdosing with iboga is a bit of a grey area with little research and only anecdotal evidence.
It can be used in small doses alongside opiates to reduce tolerance although this can be risky.
Iboga potentates opiates so must be used carefully and sparingly.
Iboga's Potentiating effect is something most providers don't want to become common knowledge for this very reason!

That said, I have micro dosed with root bark quite successfully to reduce my tolerance.
Taking 500mg of root bark an hour before an opiate dose... it's worth experimenting but I found I could take 3/4 my usual dose and wasn't withdrawing.

It's also possible to use smaller amounts of HCL or TA for acute withdrawal.
I used doses of between 250mg and 500mg over five days to get through a heroin detox.
This could be an option for anyone scared of flooding or unable to flood for medical reasons.

Please understand that the above is not really a tried and tested method and you need to do your own research!

Dutch authorities: Stop the prosecution of ibogaine provider Sara Glatt

SIGN HERE

Sara Glatt has been working with ibogaine over 12 years. She has helped, and even saved many peoples lives, by caring for them, and making ibogaine available.
Sara Glatt has become one of the best-known ibogaine treatment providers for the Western world.

With a high percent of success rate, Sara Glatt was able to help hundreds of people by using the psychoactive substance called Iboga, which effects the complex interactions between multiple neurotransmitter systems and can restore the proper functioning of the brain's neurochemistry. The substance has shown incredible results in treating addiction. In many countries the substance is banned, in the Netherlands this is not the case.

Unfortunately one of the world's most well-known iboga treatment providers is currently facing legal troubles, after a fatal accident on the highroad A2 on the 18th of March 2011, where a man was hit by a truck. The man was suffering from alcohol dependency and soon after he received his treatment, he demanded to leave. The man quickly started getting aggressive towards Sara's youngest daughter, so having her hands tied, she took him out with the car, trying to talk him out of his idea of leaving so early after the treatment. He demanded to be left in a nearby hotel, where later during the same night, Sara had sent a volunteer to check on him.

During the visit, the man seemed well, but unfortunately on the following morning news about his accidental death on the highroad was reported back to Sara Glatt.

She has been arrested but has been let go under harsh conditions. She is now waiting for more legal actions from the Dutch authorities. Until the court Sara Glatt is not allowed to work with ibogaine, and has the police coming to and in her house, to check on her, different times a week. The intimidation from the authorities is very harsh on the family, and also many people are in need of her work.

What Sara Glatt did was trying to help, the same way she has been helping for over 12 years to people who were seeking her help.

A mother of five children, who was legally providing iboga treatments for people, who seek them, should not be held in such a position!

-- 13th july 2012 -- UPDATE: Sara is imprisoned for unknown time.

New Flood Date Set!

I'm excited!

Everything is coming together great!

My treatment is now planned for the 21st of August. I'll be going on film for part of David graham Scott's follow up documentary to 'detox or die' ... The film is called 'Iboga nights'

My first flood, which was over a year ago now! I did it all totally DIY, with information from the Internet. I didn't really listen when I was warned I'd need boosters, I couldn't really afford it either to be honest, this time I have two friends from my amazing support group on Facebook, 'Ibogaine survivors club' that have offered to come and help out, one is coming from Finland!

The admin of the group posted asking for donations for the iboga and incredibly I was given $400!
This has paid for nearly all the iboga I'm going to need, I was just about to cancel it too!

A couple of personal thank-you's are in order I think, so, Cat & Chris, Chris N, Jenifer B, Brandon I'm so grateful to you!

DGS, Elina and Anthony, thank you for caring enough to give up your time to come and help me!

By the way, we're still taking donations as its going to become a semi-permanent feature of the group, an iboga fund for people that can't afford it.
Please consider donating if you can, at least come and join the group!
We're a great bunch of people in all stages of recovery.
So far about half a dozen people have been helped out financially from the group.

The PayPal address for donations is Cat@parrotdogs.com

I'll be blogging all the way through as I have before, anyone interested will even be able to watch me on film! Lol...

Anyone interested in joining the group, send me your details and I'll add you, it's a closed group which means anything you post is private and won't be visible anywhere on your timeline.
This is the reason most people feel comfortable enough to post honestly and without judgment.
These people have been there for me and never judged and I'm very grateful I found them!

Precipitated Withdrawal's ... A Painful Reality Check

I learnt a valuable lesson last night.. 12 hours isn't long enough to wait before taking suboxone!

I've been really struggling recently, every week I run short of my MST, the 600mg daily im prescribed just isn't enough. The problem is, because I stabilized for a good couple of months at 600mg, my doctor now doesn't think I need more.

Obviously my heroin use on top has blown my tolerance through the roof. 

I've had to come up with stories about loosing my medication, over-using it because I have a cold and am mistaking the symptoms for WD's etc, but last night was the final straw.

I was 24 hours short again, I wasn't too worried because I had 4mg in total of suboxone stashed, I thought this would be enough to get me through, maybe not comfortably, but enough nether the less.

I had my last shot at 4pm Tuesday afternoon, so by midnight I was starting to feel it.. the sickness was in the post as sickboy would say.

After some quick research I concluded that 12 hours was pretty much the minimum time needed before taking the subs.. this was suboxone too by the way, not subutex.

3am came, and I was really starting to feel it, 11 hours post last hit. So i nibbled a quarter of a 2mg suboxone and waited 45 minutes,.. nothing.. so I had a half, 1mg.. and waited again.. 

An hour later I felt a slight lessening of symptoms so I just shoved the rest of the other 2mg down me neck.

Well... the rest is a bit of a blur.. within half an hour I had grey, cold clammy, sweating skin. My bowels had turned to water and the snot was pouring out my nose. 

I started to panic, im asthmatic, and with the sudden lack of opiates suppressing my cough reflex I felt like someone was sat on my chest.

I was tearing the flat apart, quietly, trying not to wake up my boyfriend, anything!, I must have something stashed somewhere!

By 5am I was freaking out and felt like  I was three days into a methadone withdrawal.

I decided my only option was to call an ambulance and go to the ER. Through the snot and tears I was apologizing for wasting theyre time with my self inflicted, non emergency call out.

They were all lovely though and took me up to the hospital. 

It didn't occur to me until this morning that it wasn't just normal withdrawal I was experiencing, but the dreaded 'precipitated withdrawal' that happens when buprenorphine and naltrexlone is taken when you still have opiates in your system!

When the paramedics handed me over to the triage nurse in ER, she actually looked me up and down and said 'so, sorry, what's the actual medical issue?' .. I looked at the paramedic and said  ' yeah, that's exactly why I shouldn't have come'  haha.. 

The nurse just couldn't understand why I was there, no injury or obvious complaint.

She told me to go sit down and wait... The doctor will see me but there's a three hour wait..!

THREE HOURS! .. That's the one thing I dont have!... TIME!

By this point I thought I was going to pass out, I was dizzy and couldn't sit still, honestly the last time I was that sick was at rehab doing a cold turkey from 90mls of methadone!

At some point the doctor saw me, I told him all I needed was some methadone but they don't have methadone in ER, he was worried about giving me anything as he didn't want to OD me, if only he knew what my tolerance is like! I can easily get through 3grams of heroin a day plus 600-1000mg MST IV.. I finally managed to get 60mg codeine phosphate and 10mg diazepam out of him and sort of slipped into an uncomfortable sweaty sleep....

9am the 'substance misuse' nurse came to see me, told me they weren't going to admit me and all she could do was take me over to the 'specialist addiction unit' at 10am when they open. Then she just disappeared

I took myself over to the SAU at 10am but all the doctors and key-workers were in the morning meeting, and my psych wasn't even on site.. Now im just so tired, sick and pissed off I didn't know what to do. 

Im stuck 5 miles from home and a possible H link up, they they tell me I won't be dealt with till after 1.30, and even then theres no guarantee of getting any medicine.

I get a cab home, borrow some cash and go score.. like a zombie.. sick, no sleep, crawling down the road to my link, i make it, then I have to get to the park toilets.. Finally, I make it, I cook up, im telling myself 3 minutes, 2 minutes... I get it in.. I stare at the mirror at my pupils like saucers waiting for the gear to hit and them to pin... im waiting.. I just shot near enough half a gram of decent heroin.. nothing!.. Nothing happens!

It dawns on me as I tear up that the subs are blocking my opiate receptors.. I only had 4mg! Im still sick...!

medicine

I manage to blag some MST and shoot 200mg three times in a row.. NOTHING..

Its taken my all day, and a ton of gear to feel normal again, I literally cannot believe what's just happened to me!

So guys and girls, what's the moral to the story!? DON'T take subutex/suboxone 11 hours after shooting gear when you have the tolerance and habit of an elephant!