Psychedelic Drug Reforms and the Opiate Crisis

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Transcript

Today I'm pleased to announce historic reforms to dramatically accelerate access to new medical research and treatments based on psychedelic drugs. I'm super excited about this, even if it did come about because... I want to tell everybody how this happened. I sent President Trump some information. We have a gigantic opiate problem in this country, obviously. In 2024, more than 80,000 people died of overdoses. It's a horrible number. And there's more than five, million people that are addicted to opiates right now in this country. With one dose of Ibogaine, more than 80% of people are free of that addiction. With two doses, it's more than 90%. I sent him that information. The text message came back, sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let's do it. It was literally that quick. I wish I could text Trump information about a lot of things. However, while I'm very happy at this whole outcome, Brokens got his numbers quite wrong. Ibogain is a powerful psychedelic made from the root of a central African shrub. He said that with one dose of ibogaine, 80% of people are free of addiction, and that with two doses it's over 90%. I think he got some wires crossed. For treating opiates, the closest data we have to that 80% number is this 2017 study, which 80% of participants indicated that ibogaine eliminated or drastically reduced withdrawal symptoms, i.e. in the 3-7-day detox period. Some study showed that only 25% of people experienced a reduction in cravings lasting three months or more. And 70% of the total sample experienced a relapse after treatment. That's not 80%. And another 2018 study showed that at one month post-treatment follow-up, 15 subjects, that's 50%, reported no opioid use during the previous 30 days. Good, but not 80%. And I couldn't find any study that even looked at two doses of IboGame. There are a few other studies showing strong effects for treating withdrawal symptoms, big difference between lowered withdrawal symptoms and free of addiction. Addiction is complicated. And look, I'm super hopeful that IboGain will turn out to be an amazing treatment for PTSD, depression, anxiety, and lots of other mental conditions. The one-month treatment numbers for this trial of PTSD, anxiety, and depression were over an 80% drop in a small study, but that's still amazing. But there are some cardiac risks involved, and for people to make appropriate decisions, we need to be accurate about the benefits versus drawbacks. stuff up, especially not with the implied authority of the United States president and FDA right there. What do you think?

Additional notes

Joe Rogan got the Ibogaine numbers wrong… and nobody’s talking about it. I covered the full executive order in my last video, but here I wanted to set the record straight about what the data actually say. The totality of evidence suggests that ibogaine has a real but still unproven therapeutic signal for opioid use disorder: animal studies, case series, and small observational human studies consistently report rapid reductions in opioid withdrawal symptoms and craving, with some patients showing reduced use or abstinence for weeks to months. But the human evidence is still mostly open-label, uncontrolled, self-reported, and heterogeneous, not the kind of large randomized trial evidence needed to justify claims like “80–90% cured.” The best summary is: ibogaine may be unusually powerful at interrupting acute opioid withdrawal and temporarily lowering craving, but it has not been proven to cure opioid addiction, and its potential benefit is inseparable from a major safety concern–especially QT prolongation, arrhythmias, and documented deaths—meaning any serious path forward would require standardized dosing, cardiac screening, ECG monitoring, electrolyte management, and controlled clinical trials. Psilocybin, on the other hand, has a fantastic safety profile :) Key Studies From this Video 2017 Study: 10.1556/2054.01.2017.009 2018 Study: 10.1080/00952990.2017.1320802 The “no study used multiple treatments” referred specifically to the context of opioid addiciton. There was a 2014 study that looked at a series of 75 patients of a clinic in Brazil who were being treated for non-opioid drug use, where when someone relapsed they sometimes treated them again. One patient was treated a total of 8 times. “Participants treated with ibogaine only once reported abstinence for a median of 5.5 months and those treated multiple times for a median of 8.4 months.” - DOI: 10.1177/0269881114552713 This 2026 scoping review is also worth checking out if you want a recent summary of Ibogaine and where the research stands: DOI: 10.3390/molecules31030545 #science #health #tiktoklearningcampaign #ibogaine #learnontiktok

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