The only psychedelic with strong opioid-addiction evidence — and serious cardiac risk. Covers the Texas $50M IMPACT trial and legal retreat options.
Ibogaine is an indole alkaloid extracted from the root bark of Tabernanthe iboga, a shrub native to Central West Africa. In traditional Bwiti practice it is used in initiatory and healing ceremonies at doses measured in grams. In modern clinical use it is typically administered as a single oral dose in the range of 10–20 mg/kg, producing a 24–36 hour experience with visionary content in the first ~8 hours followed by a prolonged reflective phase.
Mechanistically ibogaine is unusual: it interacts with NMDA, sigma-1, kappa-opioid, and serotonergic receptors, and increases expression of glial-cell-line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF). Its metabolite noribogaine has a long half-life (days) and is likely responsible for much of the post-dose anti-addictive effect.
The clinical case for ibogaine in OUD rests largely on observational data from the Mexican and Costa Rican clinic environments, and a small number of FDA-authorized trials.
The Stanford MISTIC study (Magnesium-Ibogaine: The Stanford Traumatic Injury to the CNS protocol) was the pivot point for mainstream scientific interest. Cherian et al., published in Nature Medicine in January 2024, evaluated 30 US special operations veterans with a history of traumatic brain injury and repeated blast exposure. Participants received oral ibogaine plus intravenous magnesium at a clinic in Mexico run by Ambio Life Sciences, with pre- and post-treatment assessments at Stanford.1
Key findings at one-month follow-up:
The magnesium co-administration is the key safety innovation — drawing on the Glick/Mash work that intravenous magnesium may buffer the QT-prolonging effect of ibogaine. The MISTIC protocol is being extended into larger trials.
Retired Navy SEAL DJ Shipley's ibogaine treatment, documented in the 2024 film "In Waves and War," is one of the individual accounts that lines up with this trial data — we break down what his story does and does not prove. The film's executive producer, Eliza Dushku, has her own career change into psychedelic-assisted therapy worth reading about too.
Responsible clinical practice today includes:
Participants are typically also screened for liver function, prior cardiac history, and medication interactions (particularly methadone, which itself prolongs QT and is typically converted to short-acting opioids well before dosing).
Ibogaine is Schedule I in the United States — no accepted medical use at the federal level. Research requires FDA IND authorization plus DEA Schedule I registration.
Texas appropriated $50 million in June 2025 via Senate Bill 2308, which Gov. Abbott signed at the Capitol on June 11. In December 2025, UTHealth Houston and UT Medical Branch at Galveston were announced as co-leads of the IMPACT (Ibogaine Medicine for PTSD, Addiction, and Cognitive Trauma) consortium, joining Baylor, UT Austin, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, and other institutions. The program will pursue FDA-authorized trials in opioid use disorder (UTHealth/UTMB), TBI (Baylor/UT Austin), and PTSD.2
Other state activity includes Arizona (HB 2871, $5M for ibogaine neuroscience research), Kentucky (2024 legislative interest ultimately not funded), and exploratory discussions in Colorado, Ohio, and West Virginia.
Internationally, ibogaine is unscheduled or permitted for medical use in several jurisdictions, including Mexico (unregulated but the most common treatment destination), Canada, New Zealand (prescription-only, regulated medicine since 2010), Brazil (decriminalized for therapeutic use in 2017 under ANVISA oversight), South Africa, and Portugal, where personal drug possession (including ibogaine) has been decriminalized since 2001. For the full country-by-country and state-by-state breakdown, see our dedicated Where Is Ibogaine Legal? guide.
No registry anywhere compiles outcomes across the overseas clinics where most people get ibogaine. A pattern of deaths at one facility can stay invisible to a patient researching another. Mexico, the most common destination, has no licensing rule specific to ibogaine administration, which means a clinic's cardiac-safety practices come down entirely to what that clinic chooses to do. The 33 ibogaine deaths documented in the literature above happened almost entirely at clinics like these, and nothing forces a new clinic to disclose whether it has had one.
Two different strategies are underway to close that gap, and they pull in opposite directions. The first keeps ibogaine itself and moves administration inside a monitored, FDA-authorized trial — the same model behind the Texas IMPACT program and Stanford's MISTIC extension above. In August 2026, the University of Miami transferred its original 1994 ibogaine Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), handing the government direct access to the FDA authorization that underpinned three decades of early ibogaine research. President Trump announced the transfer himself, calling it a "Historic Gift" that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had received. The filing is still three decades old. Handing it to a federal agency does not update it, and it does not substitute for the cardiac-screening protocols described above.
The second strategy sidesteps ibogaine's chemistry instead of regulating it more tightly. Equulus Therapeutics is developing EQL-101, a synthetic ibogaine analog. It is built to keep the anti-addictive mechanism while removing the QT-prolonging cardiac risk and the 24-to-36-hour hallucinogenic experience described above. If it works, a patient could get ibogaine's opioid-withdrawal effect without the ECG monitoring, the magnesium protocol, or the multi-day supervised session that responsible ibogaine treatment requires today. Equulus has said it is running IND-enabling studies toward first-in-human dosing in late 2026. Which approach reaches patients first, a better-monitored ibogaine trial or a redesigned molecule, will decide which option opens up next for someone with opioid use disorder and no clinical trial nearby.
Ibogaine's clinical evidence base is narrow, and it does not extend to several conditions people search for. There is no clinical evidence that ibogaine treats epilepsy or dementia, and neither is a studied indication at any of the programs above. Dementia in particular is a reason for added caution rather than treatment: older patients are more likely to have the cardiac risk factors (electrolyte imbalance, pre-existing QT prolongation, polypharmacy) that this guide's cardiac-safety section flags as the field's central danger. Ibogaine has no established pediatric use — no responsible program treats minors, for the same cardiac-safety reasons. Off-label use for depression or anxiety alone (without a primary opioid-use-disorder or TBI indication) is not supported by the trial data above, which was gathered in OUD and TBI/PTSD populations specifically.
On domestic access: none of this changes state-by-state, because ibogaine's Schedule I status is federal. A resident of Texas, Florida, Alabama, or New York has the same legal access today — an FDA-authorized clinical trial (see below) or travel abroad — regardless of state-level research funding like Texas SB 2308.
In April 2026, President Trump signed an executive order directing the FDA to fast-track review of psychedelic treatments for veterans, naming ibogaine specifically in both its purpose section and its right-to-try provisions, and ordering the FDA and DEA to build an access pathway for eligible patients to investigational ibogaine compounds that have met basic safety requirements.3 The order accelerates review; it does not itself legalize or reschedule ibogaine, so the access picture above still applies until a specific pathway is finalized.
Four conditions come up often in ibogaine searches that this guide's OUD and TBI/PTSD evidence above does not cover, and the evidence quality varies sharply between them.
Parkinson's disease has the newest data point: a single-patient case report published in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies in 2026 followed a 52-year-old woman through an 80-day course of gradually titrated low-dose ibogaine hydrochloride (up to 75 mg/day). Four of five validated symptom scales improved, including motor symptoms and mood, with no adverse events; her sleep-quality score got worse.7 That is one patient with no control group, not a clinical trial, and Ambio Life Sciences launched a small program in February 2026 applying the same low-dose protocol to Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative conditions. Neither constitutes proof the treatment works; both are the first organized attempts to study it.
Treatment-resistant depression has a mechanistic rationale, not a completed trial: ibogaine's GDNF-driven neuroplasticity window (the same mechanism behind its OUD effect, described above) is the theoretical basis researchers cite, but no dedicated ibogaine-for-depression trial has reported results as of 2026. The Stanford MISTIC data above measured PTSD and TBI outcomes, not depression as a primary endpoint.
Alcohol use disorder sits below opioid use disorder in evidence strength. Ibogaine's addiction research and the cardiac-safety protocols above were built around opioid withdrawal specifically; case reports describing ibogaine for alcohol dependence exist, but none of the trials in the Active Clinical Trials section below enroll for an alcohol-only indication.
ADHD has no ibogaine evidence at all, clinical or case-report. No program listed on this page studies it, and nothing in ibogaine's proposed mechanisms above targets the dopamine-reuptake pathway that ADHD medications address.
As of 2026 the main FDA-sanctioned programs are:
No licensed ibogaine treatment centers operate in the United States — ibogaine is Schedule I and cannot be administered in US clinical settings outside of authorized research. The ibogaine treatment centers most people encounter are located in Mexico, Canada, and the Netherlands, where ibogaine is either unscheduled or permitted for medical use.
When evaluating any ibogaine treatment center, the single most important question is cardiac safety. Ask specifically: Is a 12-lead ECG performed before dosing? Is intravenous magnesium used during the session? Is a physician on site with ACLS certification for the entire dosing period? A center that cannot answer all three clearly is not operating to the current standard of care.
Clinical trials in the US. Check ClinicalTrials.gov for Texas IMPACT sites as they come online, and for any open Stanford MISTIC arms. The clinical trial finder covers how to search and apply.
International clinics. The most-cited operators with medical infrastructure include Ambio Life Sciences (Mexico), Beond Ibogaine (Mexico), Clear Sky Recovery (Mexico), and Iboga Quest (Mexico). Cost typically ranges $6,000–$15,000+ per treatment. Verify in advance: pre-dose cardiac workup, on-site ACLS, magnesium protocol, medical staff credentials, and post-treatment integration.
Avoid categorically: any operator offering ibogaine without ECG screening, without on-site medical staff, with methadone-dependent patients not converted to short-acting opioids before dosing, or combining ibogaine with other psychedelics in a single session.
The post-ibogaine window — particularly the first 3–7 days after acute effects resolve — is characterized by low craving and unusual psychological openness, and is also when relapse risk re-emerges if structural supports are absent. Credible programs pair ibogaine with post-dose integration therapy and, for OUD patients, with transitions to longer-term treatment (naltrexone, peer support). See the integration therapy guide.
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