Empirical Addiction Resolution

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 This is an astonishing item. It is the first real hope for atherapeutic protocol that succeeds in resolving addictive behavior. Of course it is controversial but what we have here is specific anddramatic improvement and are relapses easily overcome.
What has been poorly understood is that modern empiricism isrevolutionizing the practice of medicine. By modern empiricism I meaninternet assisted empiricism that nicely dispenses with professionalscience and prods data to discover fresh data. That is much of whatwe now do here.
All empirical results now attract a community of interest that allowsa new participant to investigate and test it himself. Science itselfkicks in formally once a body of evidence supports that level ofinvestment.
One aspect of medicine is often forgotten at any point in time, agiven ailment has a finite number of victims. Severe addiction onits own has a small subculture that has been isolated generally. This allows it to be ignored.
What this means is that a successful resolution can be applieddirectly to this subculture and ninety percent of the real problemdisappears. The rest then lose opportunity and also use the sameexit as it becomes obvious they must. For them generally the realproblem is denial. AA's success comes from overcoming that problem.
Ancient traditionsget new life
Plant-based drugs winaccolades as treatments for substance abuse
BY IAN MULGREW,VANCOUVER SUN NOVEMBER 3, 2012
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/metro/Ancient+traditions+life/7494203/story.html
Cynthia Davidson stillglows at mere mention of ayahuasca, the Amazon plant known to theIndians as "the vine of the souls."
She says it gave herback her life. "The experience I had was literally like 10years of therapy in one night," enthused the 32-year-oldHaida woman, who has struggled with chronic addiction for more than adecade.
"I went fromcigarettes to drinking to marijuana to snorting cocaine to smokingrock cocaine, then starting to shoot cocaine and heroin. It all justescalated. But after I experienced the ayahuasca ...."
She is taken away by areverie of the two-night event.
"I was sexuallyabused as a child by numerous men and I knew that I always blockedout from the age of seven and under for a reason," sheexplained.
"Doingayahuasca, I tell you, the visions that I got were so traumatic thatI didn't want to believe them. But I was also able to deal with themand fill that void that I was always using drugs to try to fill. Thatone huge void was filled. I felt like I was on Cloud 9."
The tea brewed fromthe ayahuasca vine and the leaves of a jungle bush opened up herpsyche, Davidson said, and allowed her to deal with those lifelongsecrets that scarred her childhood and left her emotionally crippled.
"I had been inand out of AA meetings thinking that was the answer for 10 years,"she said. "I tried various detox and treatment - nothingworked."
Then her boyfriend andfellow addict Justin Burggraeve gave her a book - In Search of HungryGhosts, by Vancouver doctor Gabor Maté - which talked about aradical treatment program involving ayahuasca.
The result of herparticipation in that, Davidson said, was "phenomenal."
"Life is great: Iwork; I got my eldest (15-year-old) daughter back (from governmentcustody). From being right down in the gutter to where I am now isjust amazing."
Ayahuasca is justone of several ancient traditions now attracting attention as westernmedicine confronts epidemic-sized populations of people strugglingwith substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorders.
These widespreadailments cry out for novel approaches given the damage they are doingto families and communities everywhere.
Vancouver, withthousands of addicts and a strong counter-culture ethos, is a hub forexperimentation....Like Davidson, manypeople are discovering the benefit of plant-based psychedelicsubstances such as aya-huasca, psilocybin or ibogaine, aderivative of the bark of the West African iboga shrub.
These powerfulpsychotropics are used to uncover painful memories and, in aritualistic setting, spark a catharsis.
As a result of thatunburdening, some learn to understand and control their addictivebehaviours.
But these approachesare not without controversy and critics question whether suchsubstances can be incorporated into the western pharmacopoeia.
The criteria forclinical trials are next to impossible to apply to anything thatcan't be accurately measured, quantified and guaranteed to have thesame effects every time you swallow it.
As well, thesesubstances exist in a kind of grey area, where the active ingredientsare subject to criminal bans but the plants themselves can bepossessed under some circumstances.
A year ago, HealthCanada ordered Maté to stop using ayahuasca to help chronic drug andalcohol addicts such as Davidson, or face prosecution.
(A documentary on hiswork is available at: http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episode/jungle-prescription.html)
A leading thinker onaddiction who was the resident doctor at the Portland Hotel in theDowntown Eastside, Maté said he no longer does clinical work becausehe spends most of his time writing and on speaking tours.
An ibogaine conferencein Vancouver earlier this month was kept private to avoid contention- the residue of the bad taste left by the uncontrolled use ofpsychedelics in the '60s.
As a result of theclampdown that followed, scientific interest and potential wassquashed too.
The criminalprohibitions remain in place, research bans only slowly have beenovercome and a sane discussion about the benefits of psychotropicsremains nascent.
Neither Maté noranyone else who has worked with these substances holds them out aspanaceas, but say they belong in the basket of solutions needed tosalve some of the most intractable addiction and post-traumaticdisorders - particularly given the remarkable results that have beenreported.
French doctor JacquesMabit, for instance, runs a detox centre in the Amazon (Takiwasi or"The House That Sings") and claims very positive resultswith ayahuasca - quadruple the average recovery rate....At the University ofB.C. on the weekend, some two-dozen scholars, scientists and shamanswill speak at the second annual Spirit Plant Medicine Conference todiscuss the latest developments.
(Maté was the keynotespeaker last year, which drew about 250 people:www.spiritplantmedicine.com).
Andrew Rezmer, a52-year-old Polish-born engineer who runs www.consciousradio.org, organized what hehopes will be an annual gathering.
"Usually themedical establishment gets together and talks about differentproperties of different plants that could be utilized in treatingcertain diseases and conditions," Rezmer said.
"It's veryscientific, very expensive and designed mainly for people who areinterested in exploring new therapies - like ibogaine or ayahuasca,which have been proven up to 93-percent effective in treatinghard-drug addictions."
There is also asecond, "more new-agey," kind of conference involving theseplants, he said.
"These are peoplemore interested in the psychedelic properties of these plants andthey usually meet in some gathering outside of the city, in nature,"he explained.
"Each groupusually makes fun of the other. The new-agey people make fun of thedoctors for trying to put aya-huasca in a pill, and the doctors makefun of the new-agers who don't understand the crisis the medicalcommunity is trying to deal with. We're trying to bridge those twogroups."
He said the rise inscientific interest has been matched by increased cultural interestin aboriginal peoples and their traditions.
Iboga, for instance,is central to the African spiritual traditions of the native peoplein Gabon and Cameroon.
Similarly, ayahuascais key to the ceremonies of the Brazilian-based Santo Daime syncreticchurches.
"Our kind ofapproach is to show how those plants have been used in a ceremonial,intentional setting not the way, say, cannabis is being used rightnow, as recreational escapism," said Rezmer.
A presenter at theconference, Stephen Gray, the 63-year-old author of Returning to theSacred World (www.stephengrayvision.com),said interest in these substances is "expanding like wildfire."
"In terms ofiboga, there are something like three million adherents to the Bwitireligion," which celebrates iboga, he said.
The Native AmericanChurch, Gray continued, which uses peyote in some of its rituals, isgrowing and now has some 300,000 members. "Ayahuasca shamans aretravelling up and down the coast," Gray said. "I know of ahalf-dozen people doing ayahuasca ceremonies. I'm coordinating aniboga ceremony on the Sunshine Coast."
There are abouttwo-dozen ibogaine clinics operating under the official radar, too,he ventured.
"We'd like to seethese substances recognized for what they can do in a whole bunch ofways, narrowly in a therapeutic context and in a larger context ofbringing a genuine spiritual awakening to people," Gray said.
Jonathan Dickinson,another presenter and organizer of the recent academic ibogaineconference, said about 60 people from 14 countries attended the fivedays of meetings. "It was quite productive," the26-year-old advocate for drug-policy change added.
One doctor fromArgentina was doing cocaine-detox with impoverished addicted childrenbetween 10 and 13 years old in the country's slums.
"He wanted toknow how young can you give someone ibogaine? They weren't workingwith ibogaine yet, but they're dealing with this incredible problem,"Dickinson said. "There is only one clinic in Canada (usingibo-gaine) that I know of."
Dickinson insistedthat the setting and a guide, such as a shaman, are critical wheneveranyone has the draining physical, emotional and spiritual experiencethese substances trigger.
"It puts you inan altered state of awareness and you see things, but they usuallyhave very deep personal subconscious meaning, the way dreams do. Theyhave very much the quality of waking dreams."
...Davidson said thatafter reading Maté's book, she was sure ayahuasca would work forher. As an aboriginal Canadian, she said she identified with a nativerite from South America.
"My dad, beingthe addict that he was, became a very spiritual man," she said."He's been clean for 24 years now and he does everythingtraditionally - he's a ceremonial pipe carrier, he runs sweat lodges,he does vision quests."
Her boyfriendBurggraeve decided to take ayahuasca as well.
At 29 years old, hehad been an addict since he was 12.
Like Davidson,Burggraeve believed he used drugs to numb the pain of a torturedchildhood in London, Ont. He came to B.C. several years ago to escapehis past, met Davidson and the two were soon on the needle.
"We both ended uphomeless very shortly after that," Burggraeve said. "Webasically beat our brains in with drugs for another couple of years.It was a complete nightmare."
They tried to getsober. "Nothing worked," he said. "It didn't matterwhat we did."
The couple contactedMaté last year and he invited them on an ayahuasca retreat. Both hadto go on strict diets and come off methadone and other medications.
"It's a lonelyplace out there when you're an addict and being in a group setting onVancouver Island with a bunch of people who come from where you do ispretty special," Davidson said.
You don't drinkayahuasca until it starts to get dark, she explained.
For an hour or sobefore, you pray or meditate on "your intention" - what itis you are going to ask of Mother Ayahuasca, the spirit of the plant,to reveal. The bitter tea takes about 30 minutes to take effect.
"I saw thesecolours flying around me," Burggraeve said.
"We're talkingabout a rainbow of colours. I couldn't tell whether they were blue,yellow, red, white. They were colours I couldn't quite describebecause there isn't a name for them. They started pouring out of mychest, from where my heart was, and they would surround me and I feltlike I was being hugged by these colours .... All of sudden thislow-life, piece-of-garbage junkie, wasn't a piece of garbage at all;all of a sudden I'm caring, loving, compassionate, giving, just awonderful human being who just happened to have a spiritual hole."
Davidson said she wassimilarly overwhelmed but her images involved her abuse.
"The mosttraumatic experience of my life became one of the greatest things Iever could have done for myself," she said.
Both found theexperience transformative.
Davidson has repeatedthe experience twice and found it reinforcing. Unlike methadone,which is used as a replacement drug for addicts, aya-huasca is a kindof therapy aid used to achieve perspective and free ingrained thoughtprocesses. Burggraeve hasn't done it again.
Burggraeve has held ajob for most of the last year, he said, and couldn't get the timeoff.He, too, "had ahiccup" recently and relapsed briefly.
"But I get alittle better each day," he insisted. "It's about spiritualprogression not spiritual perfection. Ayahuasca may have been themost important thing I ever did in my life." Davidson, too,relapsed.
"But I was ableto pick myself up very quickly whereas before I did aya-huasca, if Itried to get clean, when I relapsed I would be out there for a coupleof years again. I've only used one time in 14 months."
Both felt thereneeded to be followup support; there wasn't.
Davidson hopes to oneday be reunited with all her children. Her 11-year-old daughter liveswith her grandparents by choice, Davidson said, because she doesn'tlike the city. Her two youngest (who are six and eight) are withtheir dad.
"I went fromliving in an SRO (single-room occupancy hotel) down on Hastings forthe last three years to having a one-bedroom apartment and my eldestdaughter back,"she said.
"You can'timagine what that means."