Six Months Post Iboga

Iboga is a powerful root bark that has been closely guarded by the Bwiti peoples in Gabón, Africa for thousands of years. Only recently have they revealed it to the world at large. It is potent medicine for healing trauma, addiction, and repairing one’s relationship with one’s self and soul.

I wrote an extensive piece on my actual experience with the medicine, which was incredibly profound. I’m feeling like I will release that soon, perhaps in parts.

If you are interested in Iboga, I would steer you towards the Missoko Bwiti Alliance. They will ensure you find a credible retreat center with providers of utmost integrity. To learn more, check out the Get To The Root Podcast.

Bardo by Alex Grey

Since doing Iboga six months ago….

I have been sober for seven months, the longest period of sobriety since I was fourteen, which is when ten year descent into the eating disorder began…

The noticing of self-sabotage has become sharper, and kinder. There is, at once, less tolerance of my own bullshit—that is, the victimization to the cycle of inner oppressor fed by the very rage at being oppressed—and more patience, surrender and acceptance with it when I’m caught up and can’t help myself and must simply await it’s own burnout. I do my best to disregard the meaning-making the mind insists on fondling, about my inadequacy, about my doomedness.

In the meantime, I watch myself closely, the way I am insisting on using my free will to choose to act in a way that is contrary to the freedom and well-being of my soul.

I want to know exactly how this hurts me, and how much, so that I may reach the critical mass in my consciousness which insists, against all odds, on freedom. I think this is how all addictions are slowly unwound.

In the meantime, I tend to the grief I feel for the rupture with my soul, this uncontrollably habitual pattern which stems from many years of acute rupture, learned as a survival tactic, which also is a loss I grieve.

But I grieve it more completely now, I metabolize it more efficiently. Not because grief isn’t welcome, but because I am not interested in overstaying my welcome with grief. The sticky way I allowed it to have with me, lingering with a shadow of shame, resentment, and somehow also proud loyalty, never moving completely through but clinging like a second skin. Like if I let it go somehow, I would be betraying some sense of self that had grown, festering, around it.

I remember the direct experience with Iboga, of knowing deeply in my cells. Knowing my own goodness, my own beauty, my own innocence, my own unique and earnest heart. I can forget it in moments, but it has carved its shape into my interior, and the breath of my soul rings that hollow like a wet finger on a crystal rim.

I remember the direct experience of timeless, mindless presence, fully embodied, rooted, connected to the entire web of life, the beating heart. The in between, the bardo, where there was peace in the absence of the incessant and dissonant narrative of the conceptually defined self.

These are referential contexts which now give me strength and faith. I have more spontaneous moments of feeling and expressing love for myself, when before I had barely any, and if I did, I’d quickly become so embarrassed it would ruin the moment. Now when I catch myself smiling at myself, dancing with myself in an embrace, meeting my gaze in the mirror with a flame of recognition, I feel proud and grateful.

I feel much less shame about my shadow. When it comes up, I am more and more able to sit with it with compassion, without judgement. That shift has occurred gradually but cannot be understated. I am more accepting of the difficulties which have been and continue to color my experience. They really are an inherent part of samsara, and not something that makes me or my life bad. With less resistance, they arrive and depart in my awareness with much less inertia and residue.

At the same time, I have much more openness towards the future being unexpectedly bright, but ultimately, unknown. Instead of see-sawing the duality of imagining either some ideal and unreachable goal shaped by the mind of who I think I should or want to be, or some depressing hovel of a future where I am utterly unfulfilled and thus avoiding disappointment. I have a trust in life that is unprecedented. I can let go of what is not flowing because I don’t need it’s rote security to define me.

I encounter my own body with reverence and gratitude, with curiosity and forgiveness. I hold it’s trauma, it’s pain, even its aging, not as failures or enemies, but as interesting and articulate archetypal companions, worthy of respect and love.

Slowly my ride or die pace is unwinding. I am learning about my deep-seated resistance to rest, to play, to take care of myself in the face of the task master which throttles me as if my life depends on it. It is losing steam, or at least, losing the power I give it by believing in it.

This is one of those things that I sometimes can’t control and just observe from a slightly out-of-body vantage point. Especially on the farm where I live, this is circumstantially very intense to override. Perhaps that is the gift. Grist for the mill.

My menstrual cycle seems much healthier. My blood looks brighter, more vibrant, less clotted, less inconsistent texture. I am still learning how to take it easy during those times in my cycle when my body needs the most rest—which is inconveniently often when the task-master takes over.

I can see how I used cannabis to sort of override the task master, or at least feel more at ease, in the short-term, whilst doing the tasks. It was either the only thing that helped me slow down, or the thing that allowed me to keep going while giving me the illusion of rest.

I have moments sometimes of angst about all the art I’m not doing enough of, but in reality I am creating. My mediums are evolving. I have become a gardener. I have recorded two and a half of the tens of songs I’ve written. I’ve published writing on Substack. I’ve painted a little, but the detailed approach I’m prone to is not great for my hands/arms/shoulders/neck. I did one quick clay sculpture, and hope to do more. That’s better for my body.

But I am easing, most of the time, into a relationship with myself as defined by my creation that is less urgent, less perfectionistic. Knowing that I create for the act of creation, not to prove myself or make things that are excessively precious. Loving my creations wholeheartedly, shamelessly, because they are a part of me—not because they are the best.

My digestion is still far from normal, and at times this still consumes me. My hands and neck still hurt so bad sometimes it frightens and saddens me. But again, my relationship with these challenges is less aggressive than it once was. I see them as neither permanent nor punishments, but a part of my karma which is complex and also sacred and beautiful. Not wrong or unworkable.

I notice my baseline emotionally has stabilized significantly. I am aware of becoming disregulated, and even if small steps toward regulation aren’t accessible in the immediate future, I don’t get so possessed by self-aggression while dissociated that I lash out destructively and prolong the disregulation for days or weeks, like I used to.

I feel more here. In my body. More of my essence, my chi. I feel it like a companion and fortification. A lifeline. I am more aware of the continuity and presence that is my self or soul which is unconditional, eternal and content with just being.