Flood of Fire – an Iboga Experience

Trigger Warning: Iboga is one of the most powerful psychedelics in the world. This trip was certainly one of the strongest experiences of my life and I have tripped many hundreds of times, more than a few of which have been devastatingly intense. This report contains a lot of violent and disturbing imagery. Ultimately, this darkness served a purpose and was integral to healing of some deep trauma, but if you are sensitive to images of violence or of intense and difficult religious themes like Hell, then strongly consider not proceeding. You have been warned.

-=1. Preface=-

I first tried iboga 9 years ago for psychospiritual development purposes. It was one of the most important experiences of my life. The master plant teacher instilled some profound lessons about the nature of rootedness, self, non-duality, and the art of life. I remember asking the spirit, “What do I do with my life?” The spirit seemed to contemplate the question for a moment before showing me a picture of the Buddha sitting in lotus position with his left hand cupped open in front of his navel and his right hand projected forward, a stylized ball of fire floating before it. The voice spoke, “Center yourself, and activate your spiritual fire.”

I became very passionate about iboga and ibogaine and eventually became involved with various projects in Mexico, West Africa, and elsewhere. I traveled to Ghana and established a small iboga farm and began synthesizing ibogaine for clinics around the world.

Over the years I tried iboga and ibogaine another handful of times but I never went as deep as I had gone the first time, even though each experience was very profound and meaningful to my development. Nonetheless, I knew that I had never really gone ‘all the way’ with iboga. I always intended to, but only if the situation was perfect.

Finally, just 4 days ago, on August 14, 2024, that moment arrived. It was one of the most earth-shattering, overwhelming, spectacular, terrifying, beautiful, healing, and necessary experiences of my life. The trip lasted for more than two days during which I interacted with hundreds of spirits and journeyed through many planes of existence, to the upper reaches of the Spirit World and the deepest depths of Hell, and many realms in between. I’m going to attempt to write down as many details as possible so this report will not be brief but I do hope that it’s appreciated by someone out there!

-=2. Preparation=-

Having recently gone through much emotional turmoil with the end of a three year romantic relationship and the recent untimely death of one of my best friends, the offer to do a full flood dose in Bali with an amazing team felt timely and appropriate. I hopped on a plane from San Francisco and was soon on the other side of the world. Like many, I quickly fell in love with this Indonesian island, reveling in the warmth of the people, the unique culture, the diverse and amazing cuisine, and the company of new friends who would eventually facilitate my flood dose.

I spent three weeks exploring the island. I visited the monkey sanctuary, swam in the ocean, and glided past temples and rice paddies on my rented scooter during early, peaceful mornings.

I knew that I wanted to go deeper than I’ve ever gone before. Because of my involvement with ibogaine synthesis in Ghana on behalf of clinics, it felt very important for me to have the full clinical perspective of a ceremony. The team in Bali was amazing and arranged many details leading up to the trip, including comprehensive medical evaluations and even a session with a Jungian psychologist to help refine my intentions for the journey.

I had full a blood panel done and got an EKG. When the test results came back there were some minor abnormalities, low white blood cell count and low blood pressure, and the team insisted I go speak with a cardiologist and have some additional tests done which showed everything to be within normal and acceptable ranges.

I spent days journaling in cafes and on the beach, analyzing my life, my traumas, my hopes for what I would learn from the medicine. During my most recent ibogaine experience a couple of years earlier, the trip was largely focused on the decline of biodiversity on the planet Earth, and humanity’s responsibility for that tragedy. It was a difficult experience, although valuable, yet it was so much bigger than me, almost past the point of relevance. This time I wanted to focus on personal development. I wanted to heal my relationship with women, to stop playing out a toxic cycle of romantic partners that I’d been in for years which I knew was likely related to an early-life mother-wound. I spoke with one of the facilitators, B, who helped me be honest with myself enough to recognize that I’ve been wearing a mask throughout my life. I know I’m a strong, capable person but something in me has kept that hidden from people. I come across as shy, and insecure, even though I know I have the heart of a warrior of peace and a lot to offer to the world. I wanted to give myself permission to stand tall and embody strength.

My list of intentions blossomed to 8 different points. When I spoke to the Jungian psychologist, she helped me realized that many of those separate points were really just symptoms to be addressed, and that they should resolve themselves by addressing the root cause. The list condensed itself down to just a couple of points which almost seemed too obvious. She helped me realize that I had already healed my relationship with my Mom when she was alive but that on an archetypal level, my relationship with the concept of ‘the Mother,’ and thus my relationship with women, was damaged.

I took a magnesium supplement at night for the week leading up to the ceremony and intentionally remained in a contemplative, meditative state of mind. I also ate light, simple foods, mostly fruit. The morning of the ceremony I ate a bowl of fruit and made a final journal entry:

Aug 14, 2024
Today is the day of my ibogaine journey. My final intentions are:
>To heal my relationship with the Divine Feminine, my Mom, my most recent relationship, and women.
>To embody my highest self and step into my highest timeline, personal development, self-mastery
Ultimately, I release expectations and trust in the medicine. I do pray for mercy. While I know the experience may be difficult, I pray for gentleness, peace, and God’s love.
GRATITUDE for this life, this SACRED MEDICINE. GRATITUDE, SURRENDER, OPEN HEART, OM MANI PADME HUM
I have FAITH

I drove to the ocean and went for a short walk on the beach, standing ankle deep in the surf and watched the waves crashing before me. I again asked the spirit for gentleness.

The team rented a small private villa with three rooms, a pool, and an open-air kitchen which was a perfect setting for what we were about to do. I was invited to remain in meditation and contemplation by the pool while the team carried in the heart monitoring equipment and other necessary items for the ceremony.

Dr. J then inserted an IV port into my right hand and I sat on the couch and received a full infusion of one gram of aqueous magnesium sulfate which helps reduce the risk of cardiac effects that ibogaine is capable of inducing.

I felt some fear but I knew my whole life had led up to this point.

It was time.

-=3. The Ceremony Begins=-

B had lit a small fire and I sat in meditation before it for at least half an hour. I sat in a simple meditative posture wearing comfortably fitting unbleached linens.

B had asked me to write down three lists on three separate sheets of paper, using a sharpie. One was a list of key words to remind me of my intentions later in the ceremony. The second was a list of questions to ask the iboga spirit. The third was a list of things to let go of.

B, Dr. J, K and I sat around the fire pit and shared a bit about ourselves, who we are, and who we hoped to become. I said I was an artist, a psychonaut, a healer and an explorer and that I wanted to become a wiser, stronger, more joyful version of myself. I then shared my list of things to let go of which, although fairly generic, were sincere to me, including: fear, doubt, insecurity, toxic cycles, laziness, etc. After sharing, I dropped the page into the fire and watched it burn away in seconds.

We then did a simple smudging ceremony of each of the people present using a torch that B had brought back from his Bwiti initiation ceremony in Gabon.

It was time to eat the medicine. To begin I ate about half a teaspoon of bark just to have some essence of the whole plant medicine. The rest of the dose would be in the form of Ibogaine HCl, synthesized from Voacanga Africana. We had settled on a target dose of 12mg/kg to begin with, spread over 4 doses within the first hour, then available booster doses in steps up to 20mg/kg. I did not end up going that high, thankfully.

I took the first capsule, 40% of the 12mg/kg dose, with a sip of water and hugged each of the facilitators. I sat back down at the fire to wait for the medicine to take hold. I felt very at peace. The heat of the fire was intense on my face. There were few thoughts.

Thirty minutes later I received my second capsule, another 20% of the initial dose. I continued to meditate by the fire. Fifteen minutes later I ate the third capsule, another 20%. I think it was about this time that I noticed the first visual. The blackness behind my eyelids seemed to swell from underneath like a sheet of black satin. I could feel complicated machinery, glowing with blue light, churning gears that were only faintly visible behind the stretching black fabric for just a second or two. Fifteen minutes later, I ate the final capsule to reach 100% of the first dosage level. My facilitator asked if I was ready to go to the room. I nodded and he helped me walk in. My coordination wasn’t affected yet but he wanted to make sure I could walk safely.

I entered the room where a mirror was set up before a cushion on the floor and I was invited to sit and look at my reflection for awhile and contemplate my intentions for the trip. Rhythmic Bwiti music was playing on the sound system which would accompany me for most of the experience. At first I didn’t notice much but after a few minutes my reflection began to warp slightly in difficult to define ways. I thought about my intention to embody the strength I knew I had and let my face rest in a grounded, confident expression. 

Soon I noticed my reflection beginning to fade slightly in the dim lighting of the room. I let my gaze gently rest and the effect continued, but then my eyes would refocus and my face would appear again. I spent fifteen or twenty minutes finding a gentle trance state, attempting to allow my reflection to disappear completely, which it finally did. I let my facilitator know it was time to lay down and he helped me to the bed where I was hooked up to the EKG machine via electrode pads stuck to various parts of my chest and stomach by Dr. J. Then she fitted a blood pressure monitoring cuff to my arm.

B asked me how I felt, and if I wanted another dose. I said I felt great, and accepted a booster dose of 3mg/kg, taking my dose to 15mg/kg.

I was given a comfortable, thickly padded eye-mask which completely blocked all light to help me more fully surrender to the experience.

-=4. The Spirits Arrive=-

My first vision was of a Bwiti elder tribesman, a tall African man dressed in simple ornamentation, who walked up to the side of the bed, nodded to me and smiled before walking past. Then came a Bwiti elder woman who also smiled to me. I smiled and nodded back to her, amazed and honored to be greeted by the Bwiti. Maybe another seven Bwiti elders walked by me, each smiling a simple greeting to me. I nodded and smiled to each of them although I was a bit shy. One tall warrior made eye-contact with me and I looked at him but then glanced away. I tried to reestablish eye-contact, not meaning to be rude, but heard a message that his name meant something like ‘One Look’ and that I would never have a chance to meet his eyes again. I was thankful for the lesson and strove to maintain the connection and be more fully present with each spirit that I would interact with for the rest of the night.

B asked me if I wanted any more medicine. I said yes and was about to accept the two capsules of 1.5mg/kg boosters, but something told me I had reached my limit. I took one of the two capsules, taking my final dose to 16.5mg/kg. This turned out to be plenty.

I recognized a particular quality of my visual field from earlier iboga experiences in which there was a sort of flow of energy to a point in the center of my vision. I associated this phenomenon with the presence of the iboga spirit. I greeted the spirit and it affirmed its presence.

Earlier I had been reading some iboga trip reports and I accidentally came across one that seemed very traumatizing to the person who wrote it. The person claimed that iboga was evil and the plant had taken him on a terrible dark carnival ride through Hell and basically ruined his life. The person said he ended up on anti-psychotic medication afterward. Reading that report was kind of triggering to me so I mentioned it to my old friend iboga. Iboga said something like, “Oh him! I remember that guy. He was kind of an asshole. He played the victim, blaming everyone else, but without taking any responsibility for himself. He said that his life was ruined but how can he know that? Maybe in another week after having the experience he would have understood and integrated it and been happier than he’d ever been. Regardless, it was his responsibility.”

As iboga spoke I heard the truth in what he said and it brought me peace. I felt so grateful to be in the presence of the wisdom of this medicine again. I then thought of my first intention which had to do with my relationship to women. I specifically thought of my ex who I had just gone through a somewhat messy breakup with after a three year relationship. She had been blaming me for everything that she had perceived as going wrong in her life. I asked iboga what he made of the situation and he said, “Same thing.” He meant that, like the man who had experienced the bad trip, my ex had a tendency to blame everyone else, but really her life was her responsibility. I laughed at the simplicity and finality of iboga’s approach.

I decided to ask it more about the nature of responsibility. “What is my responsibility?” I asked it. It asked me, “Why don’t you tell me?” I thought about it for a moment. “I guess my first responsibility is to myself. My body is my responsibility. I have responsibility to my community and to the world also.” Iboga seemed to agree and added, “But the universe is not your responsibility.” This phrase would return to me later in the trip.

-=5. Shard of Glass=-

Then a small man, about a foot tall floated and tumbled out of the sky. He looked over my body, looked into my brain. He gave me a quick smile and floated away into the sky like a bubble. This was extremely funny to me and I laughed out loud delightedly. More spirits appeared including three or four doctors, along with two angels, and they gathered around my body and scanned me, diagnosing me and discussing how to proceed with the treatment. They worked on my whole body together. I felt perfectly safe and in good hands. They were soon finished and the spirits left. One of the angels floated up and then passed close to my head. She leaned close to me and whispered, “Look within yourself for the answers you seek.”

At this point I had been able to see in the astral realm for some time. Despite the eye mask I could see the spirits standing next to the bed and I could even see my hands clearly in front of my face. I thought to myself, ‘Oh, I haven’t looked at my own body yet with this astral vision.’ I looked down toward my chest and could see my own heart glowing red. I noticed a tiny glint of light blue. I looked more closely and it appeared to be a shard of glass embedded into the front of my heart. Not sure if I would actually be able to interact with the hallucination, I slowly reached down and grasped the shard between my fingers and carefully pulled it from my heart. I turned it over in my hand amazed at how real it appeared to me, how consistent its shape was, and how I could move it around without it leaving visual tracers or lagging. I looked closely at it. It was close to two centimeters long, a flat, pointy shard of glass with a slightly frosty texture to it.

I became aware of the fact that this was the source of the undefinable pain I’ve carried for so long, something that had prevented me from ever experiencing full joy in life, and truly healthy relationships. My heart had always had a touch of glass to it. I held the shard in front of me and willed it to turn to dust which floated away on the astral wind.

This was one of the most profound healing moments of the entire journey and a memory that I will treasure for my entire life.

-=6. Heart Palpitations and a Bwiti Elder=-

I became aware that my heart was fluttering. It had to do with my own state of mind and, to an extent, the more I tried to tune out of it, the more I interacted with my nervous system in such a way that the palpitations continued. I knew I was going to be able to manage it and I wasn’t particularly worried but I was concerned about scaring the facilitators who were observing my EKG. I mentioned that my heart was acting a little strange and apologized to them because I knew I was causing it. We all laughed about this a bit later because of how polite I was about my own heart’s unusual behavior.

I controlled my breathing and was able to affect my heart’s rhythm but I was having trouble completely stabilizing it. A Bwiti elder walked up to my bed and indicated that I should look at him. He very slowly exhaled, then took a long, slow, comically large breath, inflating his chest to an impossible size and arching his back. I mimicked his actions and he nodded and walked away. I was later told that about this time my QTc was spiking, not quite to dangerous levels, but enough to be monitored closely. The facilitators were interested that I managed to bring it back down seemingly consciously without any intervention on their part. I could feel my heart stabilize and kept my breathing very carefully under control.

-=7. Into the Spirit World=-

I sat up in bed and looked around me. I was in the spirit world. I was in some sort of grassland area and there was a tall Bwiti hunter standing nearby me. He had been there for a long time, maybe thousands of years, and had reached a sort of equilibrium of mind of an eternal being. He said that his people carried on the traditions from Gabon in the spirit world in the presence of the Tree Spirit, Iboga, hunting and existing in the wilds of the astral realms. There were other beings too walking by, going their own ways. I would wave at them and sometimes get their attention and they would stop and interact with me, somewhat amused. I must have looked crazy to them, sitting in the middle of the grass, unable to walk, wearing EKG leads, a blood pressure cuff, and a padded eye mask, but they would give me the courtesy of a basic interaction. It seemed difficult to keep their attention, however. If I showed any hesitation, shyness, or even the slightest unintentional lack of respect, they would simply glide on or walk past without another word. I eventually came to realize that the astral realm existed in a higher frequency, and to them I was talking in slow motion, so that even pausing for a couple of seconds seemed like I had just stopped talking altogether. I must have seemed like a bit of a mess, not like the composed and regal eternal spirits of this realm. Most spirits, if I could even get their attention, would only interact with me for a few seconds.

At some point a young Caucasian man with a reddish beard walked by and I managed to get his attention. “A human?” he said with mild interest. I intuited that I could communicate best through a low whisper and said, “Yes, I’m on Earth. I’m astral projecting here right now. This is my first time in the spirit world!” He smiled and shook his head, “Wow, you can talk here? Most humans can’t do that.” He waved at me and floated on.

I spent more time interacting with spirits, waving at them to get their attention, awkwardly picking up little details about the way they interacted. Every spirit would present itself in the same way, gliding past me, then gliding in a different direction, then finally appearing before me. It was almost digital, like our spirits were going through a protocol to interface before we would have a chance to speak to each other. There were many kinds of people, all dressed in interesting ways. Sometimes they would transform in amusing ways before returning to their original form, a peculiar form of humor unique to that realm.

-=8. A New Cosmology=-

I interacted more with the iboga spirit who was still able to answer questions about the nature of the realm. It showed me a sort of three-dimensional diagram of the origin of the universe. It said that I was naive to consider the void to be the base state of the universe, when it was really the opposite of that: Infinite unending energy in all directions, an ocean of white-hot plasma stretching out across infinity. I was shown that there was a place where two fields of energy were pushed up against each other, one a sort of stable field depicted as white, and the other more like the energy of instability and chaos, depicted in dark gray, in perfect balance with each other.

At the boundary between these two infinite fields a being had somehow found itself wedged. This being would come to be called the God of our universe and was depicted as perfect white sphere. I saw that the sphere entity had instantly set to work moving up and down, carefully, meticulously expanding a tic tac shaped space which took some immense time, probably trillions of years. Eventually there was enough space to construct multiple planes of existence.

‘God’ rose to the top of this space, occupying maybe an eighth of the entire volume of the tic tac. Below that was a flat circular plane which was heaven. Light years below that was another plane of existence, the spirit world. And light years below that was the realm of Earth. In this vision, the Earth was flat and covered by a glass dome. The flat Earth was positioned like a manhole cover on top of a volcano, beneath which were the fiery realms of Hell. The higher realms, closer to God, were less dense and operated at higher and faster frequencies.

I began to see that the higher realms, from the Spirit World and above, perceived the material realm of Earth to be sort of distasteful, and that the glass dome covered Earth for several reasons: To prevent the radiation from above from damaging life on Earth, to just keep the realm separate, and also to prevent Earthlings from releasing various pollutants into the upper realms.

It was a little disturbing to me to see that the Hell realms were such a prominent feature of this new cosmology of the universe and I asked some spirits about it. I remember one said, “Oh don’t worry, God’s love is shown on all creation equally.” I didn’t know what this meant but the tone was almost slightly sarcastic. I wondered if the God of the universe was some sort of ‘Mad God’ archetype.

I noticed that it was time to purge and asked for the bucket which was swiftly handed to me. I began puking my guts out instantly. I looked into the bucket and there were small black tick-like bugs crawling around inside, some sort of astral parasites that I was grateful to be expelling. I was dry-heaving a bit so I asked for water which I drank and then puked some more. The purging continued periodically for the next hour or so and there were some ugly little creatures in the bucket.

I found myself back in the spirit world. There were many creatures here, a whole ecosystem in fact. There were bugs and jellyfish and I got the impression that most were sort of astral parasites. They would gently, softly float up to me and attempt to attach themselves. I am pretty good with basic energy work, having practiced Qigong, Reiki, and many other similar techniques. I was able to very easily clear the entities by simply projecting energy towards them, sending them on their way.

I wondered if I could project energy and create matter in this universe. I raised my hands and effortlessly produced a small blue cube in my hand which became solid and crystalline. It was instantly enveloped by a red sphere which was a sort of safety mechanism in the realm. Apparently, because I was rooted in the dense, three-dimensional universe, my manifestations contained a lot more energy, and if they destabilized they could explode and destroy vast swaths of the spirit world, so a force-field instantly appeared to contain the danger.

I walked among the spirit world and saw thousands of spirits going about their lives. Most were very soft, translucent, ghost like, but some were obviously warriors. I witnessed some beings forging blades out of light, a process that took thousands of years. The blades were sharp and flaming with the densely packed energy, harder than diamonds, sharper than razors, in a world of spirits as delicate as bubbles. Some of these beings had cultivated enormous strength by subjecting themselves to rigorous, painful training, like the Kung Fu-style Iron Palm technique, literally punching the sides of mountains for tens of thousands of years. These warriors were dangerous and deeply respected in the spirit world. I didn’t know why they felt the need to cultivate such strength but I was beginning to understand that the spirit world wasn’t as peaceful as I originally imagined.

I came across two spirits during my travels and we began talking. I was holding a small amber bottle containing a few milligrams of ketamine. I think the tiny amount of ketamine was a quantity that was stored in my body from past usage. The spirits asked to try it. I told them that it was too small of an amount to have any significant effect but they assured me that spirits would require far less. One of the spirits reached in and touched the residue of the crystal on the inside of the bottle and his body instantly dissolved, swirling and expanding into this spinning mass of white liquid, splashing and expanding, which quickly absorbed and enveloped the other spirit who was present. I was informed by the iboga spirit that normally only one soul could inhabit a body at a time, but somehow the liquefying effect of the ketamine had created a new form of body that could host multiple souls, something to do with the intense fluid dynamics of the accelerating, spinning gobs of milky goo. Something in the realm, possibly God, said that this could be very useful in the future, and asked to take the ketamine bottle, which I relinquished. Apparently that tiny amount of residue would be enough for maybe 10,000 doses in the spirit world.

I was shown a massive computer, unlike anything I’ve ever imagined. It existed within an enormous space, maybe a light-year across. This spherical space was empty except for some number of millions of tons of pure iron atoms. 99.999% of the iron atoms were pressed to one side of the space, densely churning. Separated by a large gulf of emptiness, the remaining .001% of the atoms were arranged in delicate lacey streams, each atom meters, or maybe kilometers, from each other, in a delicate balance, flowing gently. The churning mass of densely packed iron atoms to one side of the space and the delicate arrangement of atoms to the other side each occupied about the same volume, and seemed to balance each other in a very precise electromagnetic equilibrium. Somehow this massive, delicate ‘computer’ was responsible for much of the operation of the universe at large. I noticed the delicate streams of atoms were beginning to be slightly distorted. I had a feeling this was due to my presence.

I decided to leave the astral realm for awhile. I separated myself from my astral body. Before me I saw a ghostly blue version of myself sitting in lotus position, eyes closed. I willed a small bubble into existence around it and watched it float away to be returned to at a later date.

I learned more about the creation of Earth and ‘God’s Love’. God did love all of her creations equally but in a sort of detached, demanding way. If her creations didn’t live up to her standards of perfection, they were cast into the fire. Humanity was an experiment in density. Overall, the Earth-realm was considered distasteful, dirty, stinky and slow to the spirits. Nonetheless, the spirits did learn much about culture, music, art and love from the humans. Worst of all, humans were ignorant. God, who was always a ‘her’, according to the spirits, had decreed that the Earth-realm would never be allowed to have direct knowledge of the rest of the universe, such as the knowledge I was currently accessing through iboga. I realized that I had violated one of the supreme laws of God by eating iboga, which was actually the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I began to suspect that I was now damned to the fire for having eaten of the tree.

While iboga was explaining things about the universe to me through various animations and diagrams, I noticed a sort of Asian-stylized mask of the devil floating in view. This was a bit disturbing to me also because I’ve had such a long-standing, trusting relationship with iboga. I’ve dedicated much of my life to working with iboga, advocating for it, etc. I asked iboga why the devil mask was present and iboga presented its own face, as it sometimes revealed itself to me, the wise face of the Grandfather Tree. Then it seemed to pull away that face like a mask revealing some smiling, demonic trickster spirit behind it. I asked it, “Who are you?” and it replied, “The devil.”

-=9. When a Plan Comes Together=-

I purged more and the iboga spirit reached into the bucket and picked up one of the astral parasites with a pair of tweezers and placed it in a small plastic baggy, and the sample was placed into a wooden chest that hummed with fiery magical power. The implication was that these astral parasites would somehow be used against me in the future, like they represented sins that could be held against me on Judgement Day. The spirit cackled at me.

I began to gain an understanding that it was a very precarious thing to be a soul in the universe. Souls, I realized, were eternal and could never be unmade, and yet their fate was largely subject to the whims of beings both uncaring and infinitely powerful. The God of the universe, the white sphere, had very strict rules and many obsessive tendencies. She demanded absolute obedience and any violations of certain laws would result in being flicked like a bug into the Lake of Fire, which was inescapable, to remain in conscious agony for the rest of eternity.

The very nature of a soul is eternal consciousness, so as a sort of housekeeping in the universe, it was necessary to have a place to compress and store all of that consciousness, the practicality of that was simply horrible. The actual ‘Lake of Fire’ was only a few meters deep of an eternal, unquenchable flame. When a being was thrown into this fire they would never be able to climb out.

I spoke with spirits about this fate and there was a sort of detached acceptance of the nature of the reality they inhabited. Yes, there were billions of souls in the Lake of Fire, and if you got close to that place you could hear them screaming and even see their thrashing bodies writhing in the eternal flame. For the inhabitants of the spirit world, that fate was the closest thing to death, and when someone was lost to the fire there was nothing to do but accept it and move on. I learned that nearly all humans were destined for this terrible fate, me especially, for I had eaten of iboga.

It turned out that the Hell realms were sort of crammed to the opposite side of the universe of God and that the demonic inhabitants were desperate to break free, to relieve the pressure and the temperature, if only by a few degrees. If Hell were to break lose, of course, it would destroy all other planes of existence. Somehow the act of piercing through into the spirit world had disrupted the balance and threatened this exact scenario. I had been manipulated by iboga, who either was or worked for the devil, and used to seal the fate of the destruction of the entire universe.

I realized that the spirit world had ‘entered me’ by piercing through a small area in my right eye. It had pierced through a kind of glass bubble around my astral form. That bubble also represented the glass dome over the Earth, separating the lower realms from the higher astral realms. This barrier was now damaged and cracking. I realized that the shard of glass in my heart was actually from that barrier and that by turning it into dust and releasing it to the universe, there was no hope in repairing the barrier. I saw the cracks expanding and I knew that the universe itself was out of balance. All planes of existence were threatened and, although I was merely a pawn of dark and powerful forces, I had been a key instrument in the devil’s plan. The iboga spirit’s demonic face appeared and said menacingly, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Of course, at this point I was crushed. It became obvious to me that my fate was immutable. I was destined for eternal fire, but worse, so was everyone else. I felt utterly betrayed by the iboga spirit whom I had been so dedicated to for nearly a decade. My whole life was a lie. I knew it wouldn’t make any difference but I decided to renounce all association with iboga, cut my hair, shave my beard, and go dedicate the rest of my life to trying to guide people away from my own fate. Maybe along the way I too would find some salvation, maybe through Jesus, whatever it took. Yet, even Heaven, which I was never allowed to see in my travels, was probably not much better, for to be in the presence of this Mad God was a different level of terror, like being a prized bug in some psychopath’s collection.

The best fate one could hope for was to end up in the astral realm, the Spirit World, far away from either extreme. Hell was a terrible fate, but to be close to God was to be close to her wrath and unattainable standards of perfection, so that Hell was an inevitability. The Spirit World was a bit like purgatory, a very liminal plane of existence, but for beings that couldn’t help but be eternally conscious, at least they could mostly avoid God’s direct scrutiny and thus the risk of offending her.

-=10. The Lake of Fire=-

I was broken, terrified, distraught. My entire life was a lie. Really, everything was a lie, as far as humans were concerned. I mean, this trip had turned me into a flat Earther for God’s sake! I had clear visions of the evil Satanic Cabal’s methods for convincing the population that the Earth was truly a sphere. My heart pounded in my chest. I was doomed. Everyone I loved was doomed. The entire universe was doomed. Everything would be consumed by fire. Only God would remain to start over as it had done trillions of times before. The cycle was eternal. Buddhists were right, life was suffering.

I wondered if salvation through Jesus was the answer but I couldn’t quite figure that out. I thought of the first commandment and wondered if putting your faith in Jesus was a violation of ‘I am the Lord thy God; Thou shalt not place any other God before me.” And yes, having gone to a Catholic school until fifth grade, I understand the concept that Jesus is supposed to be one with God, not a separate entity, but in the context of everything I was being shown, I didn’t know what to believe.

Cruelly, mockingly, I was shown the visceral realities of Hell. Demons delighted in torturing the beings condemned to their plane of existence. The things I was shown were absolutely horrifying, portrayed to me in excruciating detail. Souls were chained to the ground and the heat of the flames overstimulated their nervous system to the point that their bodies were in a permanent state of seizure, standing, arms raised in a twisted dance, screaming endlessly.

But there were other levels to Hell also. For the next five hours I saw scene after scene of the tortures that awaited me and everyone I loved. Beyond just physical pain, there was no dignity. I saw a demon drink from a coffee cup and then fuse it into a woman’s skull where it would remain forever. Her eyes were rolled back into her head and she moaned and thrashed against the wooden post she was chained to while the world smoldered around her. I saw animals fused to people, people’s bodies rearranged in random and macabre ways, faces moved to the calves of their legs, arms sticking out of their necks, feet coming out of their stomachs so that for the rest of their existence they would need to be pushed around in carts. There were machines covered in spinning blades designed to eviscerate bodies. People with their bodies sliced apart were trying to hold their organs in place with their hands.

I saw hundreds, thousands, millions of people suffering in the flames. For hours I witnessed this.

Part of me was grateful to the iboga spirit for perhaps now at least I had a chance to avert this fate, though it seemed unlikely. Maybe I could at least warn others though. So did that mean iboga was actually my friend? Unlikely, for it seemed to take joy in my distress as scene after scene unfolded cruelly. I had already gotten the message. What could be the point of continuing to force me to see this horror that I was destined to experience first hand myself anyway in just a few short decades at most?

I thought of my ex and the likelihood of her ending up in the fire. It was difficult to imagine and the question was posed to me if I would be willing to take her place. I looked at the screaming people around me and rationalized that the screaming was just the the overstimulation of the nervous system. Possibly the level of intensity of the pain was so much that there was no room for thought and the beings in the fire had moved beyond suffering to a kind impersonal transcendence. One could hope. I realized that I would absolutely take her place if I could.

I had to tell B something of what I was experiencing. I felt terrible because I had no question of his and Dr. J’s sincerity. Like me, they believed in their work with iboga and only wanted to help the world. We all had believed that this substance was one of the greatest tools to treat addiction, PTSD, Parkinson’s, traumatic brain injury, and other terrible illnesses. I spoke to B, “I’ve got to tell you man. I can’t work with iboga anymore.” I think B was somewhat surprised by that but he remained very grounded, knowing that I was still in the midst of my journey. He gently reminded me of this fact but it meant nothing to me. I had been forced to behold horrors beyond most mortals’ comprehension for hours at this point. There was obviously nothing medicinal, nothing healing about this.

I described what I had been experiencing but had to stop myself. I couldn’t bear to speak of the gruesome realities I was witnessing in front of Dr. J. We had already become friends by this point and I didn’t want to traumatize her unnecessarily. I was stable enough at this point and B suggested that Dr. J feel free to go to sleep. She unhooked me from the heart monitoring equipment and removed the IV port from my hand and told me goodnight. When she left I spoke a bit more openly to B. I really appreciate the way that he gently reminded me that what I was experiencing was subjective but didn’t try to force his point. I wouldn’t have been able to accept it then anyway.

He laid down on the couch and I went back into the trip. After a bit longer I needed to use the restroom. I mentioned it to B. I was pretty stable on my feet at this point and let him know that I felt comfortable walking and that he didn’t need to escort me. “Are you sure?” he said. I assured him that I was fine and I probably would have been but I didn’t notice the bucket on the floor. I ended up kicking the bucket of vomit which spilled everywhere and I instantly slipped and fell, spraining a finger and twisting my wrist.

I wasn’t seriously injured but the metaphor was clear to me and I had to laugh bitterly. I had literally kicked the bucket (died) and slipped on my own vomit (my sins) and fell and hit the floor hard (condemned to Hell). It seemed to be another mocking symbolic message from the iboga spirit of what awaited me when I finally did kick the bucket. B helped me up and cleaned up the spilled vomit while I went to the restroom.

I came back into the room and laid down for the night. I hoped that the visions had been ready to wind down but no such luck. For the entire rest of the night I witnessed vignette after vignette of more of the brutal tortures of Hell. About this time I began to tune into the complexity of the visuals and I wondered if I could affect them with my mind. Sure enough, I was able to subtly alter the rhythm and structure of the torture machines, the way the bodies in the fires thrashed, etc. I began to suspect that I was perceiving a hallucination generated by my own mind and not an actual view into a different plane of existence. This was only a slight comfort to me. I saw hundreds more of these movies. I was able to interrupt them by blinking my eyes but another would begin almost instantly. I tried to skip as many as I could but it was pointless. It continued for hours more.

In the morning, before dawn, I decided to walk outside and kneel in the grass to pray for my soul. B heard me opening the door and questioned me, concerned that I was trying to make a break for it. I assured him that I just wanted to sit in the grass. When I got outside I fell to my knees and prayed but I admit my words felt pretty hollow. God wasn’t merciful; God was essentially a cruel, emotionless monster. Worshiping it, obeying it, was merely an attempt to escape its cold wrath. It was a lost cause.

I went back in for awhile and laid down. More visions. I saw that God had indeed sent her son to Earth. This ended up being very valuable for her own perspective. Jesus’ ministry was the culmination of the love and wisdom of God through the lens human understanding. And it was a beautiful message of brotherhood. Then humans killed him and he fell to Hell for 3 days. From what I had seen, only a few seconds of Hell was enough to traumatize a person forevermore. After three days Jesus was resurrected, then brought back to the inner sanctums of Heaven, to be allowed to recover from the pain and indignity he had been subjected to. I got the impression that Jesus was still broken from his journey.

I saw that God was obsessed with perfection. She kept 144,000 humans in Heaven but, if any of them were injured or disfigured in any way, they would be discarded and sent to Hell. And any human who was not a perfect specimen in every way, spiritually and physically, had no chance of being allowed to ascend to those realms. Thus the demonic entities strove to toxify the world, spreading heavy metals and poisons, corrupting DNA, minds and hearts.

I became aware that letting my astral form drift away in a bubble in the spirit world had been a really dumb decision. I would occasionally become aware of its perspective, floating through wilds of the astral realms populated by billions of astral parasites, spiders and grapefruit-sized tick-like creatures. I tried my best to project energy fields, to clear the parasites, and was somewhat successful, but there were millions more, and I seemed to have trouble summoning the astral form back to a safe location.

The iboga spirit appeared and spit some red dust at me. The red dust was some sort of poisonous heavy metal. I was able to block it using energy techniques. I surrounded it with bubbles and it floated away. This happened several times but some of the poison reached me and I was almost ready to give up fighting.

Ever since earlier when I realized that the glass bubble protecting myself from the astral realm had been cracked I had spent a lot of effort trying to repair it whenever my attention returned to it. I finally surrendered and just tore it down myself. The glass shattered completely and fell away.

A tiny red robotic bird flew up to me carrying a message. It showed me a map of some crowded suburb in Heaven. Among the hundreds of tightly packed homes in all directions, there was a small plot of empty land. I became aware that this plot of land had my name on it. After everything I had just gone through, whoever had sent me the message via the bird wanted me to know that there was still a place for me besides the fire, not that I was ready to believe that yet.

Finally it was dawn and I walked outside and sat on a couch, staring at some trees. I couldn’t believe what I had just been through. I had been utterly traumatized by the hours of visions of fire. Besides the fact that I was destined for eternal torture, even my Earthly life had been destroyed, for everything I had worked towards for years was a lie. I had been made a fool of.

-=11. The Face in the Water=-

I sat and stared into the trees like a zombie. Eventually B and Dr. J woke up and came to sit with me. They asked me how I was doing. Strangely enough, I was already starting to feel a bit better. I asked B if he still believed in the medicine and he said he did. We talked about some of the other interesting moments of the trip, such as the shard of glass that had been removed from my heart. B had actually witnessed this and was very interested to hear what I had experienced from my perspective.

As we talked I started feeling better and better. I then became aware of the fact that despite the intensity of what I had just experienced, the trauma hadn’t actually ‘set’ into my body. I was actually starting to feel good. Then various inconsistencies in the narrative I had been shown began to become obvious to me. I was slowly realizing that it was all, in fact, just a trip. The scary part wasn’t the violent imagery itself; That was nothing more than a horror movie. The scary part was that I believed it was real. I remembered the phrase iboga had told me earlier, ‘The universe isn’t your responsibility.’

I slowly began to understand the purpose of this fiery ride through Hell. You see, I have long suffered from something called ‘stygiophobia.’ Stygiophobia is a fear of Hell. I went to a Catholic school until fifth grade. I do believe in God. I do follow the path of Jesus Christ. And I also honor and respect the archetypes of Krishna, Shiva, Buddha and others. I am fascinated by religion and spirituality. I have done a lot of integration work when it comes to concepts portrayed by the church regarding Hell.

Nonetheless, starting in elementary school, I was taught that 2+2=4, that ‘cat’ is spelled c-a-t, and that anyone who didn’t follow the rules would be burned alive for eternity in the fires of Hell. However I had intellectually worked my way through that concept, the patterns had been firmly established in my mind, leading to intrusive thoughts during psychedelic experiences and an underlying anxiety which permeated my life, probably more than I even realized. Personally, I think it’s abusive to say such things to children.

In other psychedelic experiences I had done some work to move through these fears but had never completely succeeded. I’ve even told others of iboga, ‘If you are afraid of death, it will show you death until you are no longer afraid.’ This is what iboga had done for my fear of Hell. Iboga was curing one of my deepest fears and I realized that it was nothing less than an incredible gift of liberation. I was starting to feel wonderful. In the space of an hour, the whole trip turned around.

It had shown me more than I could handle and then a thousand times more than that until there was nothing left to be afraid of. And after all, it was all just movies. It didn’t actually hurt me. It was scary at the time, but the trauma hadn’t been allowed to take hold. I was suddenly overwhelmed with joy. My life wasn’t a lie. My faith in this teacher spirit was completely restored. Also, thankfully, my temporary belief that the Earth was flat had by this point abated. I know this whole experience might seem excessively intense but the fact is that the concept of eternal flame is particularly difficult to overcome, especially when it had been deeply rooted in one’s psychology for three decades. I don’t know if it could have been addressed another way. Given the choice, I would absolutely take the ride again for the feeling of liberation that I attained afterward.

Iboga had given me everything I had asked for from my intentions. And the number one thing I asked to let go of in the list that I threw into the fire was ‘Fear.’ This was a profound healing. It was far, far more than I had bargained for, to be sure, but I felt a great sense of strength and accomplishment for having survived this dark carnival ride through Hell and, after all, I knew what I was getting into when I ate the medicine. If you knew my history with psychedelics you would understand that this is exactly what I needed and I was ready for it. I’ve had many hundreds of psychedelic experiences, many of them dark carnival Hell rides, although this was certainly way beyond any I had experienced so far. I believe that iboga gives people what they need and are ready for. I have more confidence and trust in the wisdom of this medicine than ever.

I felt the presence of the iboga spirit in his familiar, benevolent form, as the wise old tree spirit. He smiled to me, acknowledging my success. I felt mildly embarrassed that I had doubted his sincerity and amazed at the scope of his wisdom and intelligence. He had even been willing to convince me that he was the devil just to teach me a lesson. I was filled with a profound gratitude and felt lighter than I had in years. It was absolutely worth the journey to feel as good as I did.

For years I’ve had a particular breathing rhythm that would trigger a mild heart palpitation which I can feel. This has happened consistently and often and was generally associated with anxiety. At some point I noticed myself breathe in that certain way and my heartbeat remained perfectly steady. This was very unusual for me. It seemed that something in my heart had truly been healed, possibly related to the shard of glass that I had removed. Even now, each time I find myself breathing in that particular way, there is no palpitation. This is completely amazing to me.

Modern medicine makes you feel good now, bad later. Traditional medicine makes you feel bad now, good later.

I laid on the couch peacefully and closed my eyes. A vision began to unfold. Particles of gray dust swirled in front of me in front of an orange background. I realized that I was looking at a swirl of smoke. I thought to myself, ‘Gosh, I’ve just been through an entire night of visions of fire. I already made peace with it. It’s not over yet?’

The vision panned down and I was looking at a pond of perfectly smooth water that was glowing bright orange, the color of fire. The face of a young African man rose to the surface, his eyes closed. He took one deep, peaceful breath, and sighed as he exhaled in perfect serenity. His face then sank again below the surface. It was a beautiful symbol of having made peace with fire, of it being as refreshing as a cool pond of water.

-=12. Optimization=-

That night I went to bed and the visions continued. Millions and millions of stored images were purged from my brain out of pipes, advertisements, random useless data, until the pipes were oozing out nothing but black sludge. Then scrub-brushes and hoses descended from the above and cleaned out the pipes until they were sparkling clean. A conveyor belt with symbols of millions of junk memories rushed past me on their way to deletion, giving me one final chance to review if any were worth saving. I chose not to keep any of it. Then the vision shifted to these nearly infinite advanced circuit boards, microscopic in size. They were white and hyper-advanced. The nano-scale scrub-brushes and hoses blasting soapy water cleaned everything thoroughly until it was gleaming and perfect. I knew that my brain was being optimized.

I witnessed a small nanobot that was racing around my brain, veering off of tracks and causing damage everywhere it went. Iboga crushed it open revealing a tiny entity, a little glob with the cartoonish face of a monster. It was encapsulated and sent along its way to be purged later. Then there were more visions of houses full of trash being cleaned out rapidly, drawers full of junk being emptied, rooms full of garbage being blasted out with fire-hoses. There was a dump truck full of old cans half full of trash that looked like they’d been sitting there for years. Iboga looked into one of them, stuffed with old garbage, and just tossed it, followed by the rest of the trashcans, out of the truck, sending them rolling down a hill. The fire-hose blasted the old gunk out of the back of the dump truck until it was sparkling.

The rest of the night was a final purge of a miasma of vague, distasteful, meaningless bullshit. I was absolutely surrendered to the process at this point, grateful for the absolute thoroughness. I looked forward to living from this deeply detoxed state. I’m not sure if I slept that night but I certainly didn’t mind.

-=13. Integration=-

In the morning I had an hour long deep tissue massage scheduled which was absolutely perfect. There was actually one moment when the lady was working on a muscle knot that one more entity seemed to be purged from my body.

After that I had a meeting with the Jungian psychologist again. She seemed very fascinated by my journey and suggested that the healing involving removing the shard of glass from my heart was a healing of my mother-wound on an archetypal level, something which she said was very rare, that she had always wanted to witness. She mentioned the old fairytale ‘The Snow Queen’ in which one of the protagonists gets splinters of glass from a magic mirror in his eyes and heart. I remembered the movie from when I was a kid and felt it likely that the imagery from the trip had been derived from it. The psychologist told me that the movie, specifically the character of Snow Queen herself, had a lot to do with the distorted archetype of the Mother. This made a lot of sense to me and I agree with her.

I realized that the shard of glass had been removed but the wound remained. At least the healing process could finally begin in earnest.

Afterwards B, Dr. J and I had a 75 minute yin yoga session together. By the end of this session I realized that the experience itself was truly finished. Surely the integration process would continue for months and it would take effort to cultivate, maintain, and embody the lessons from the trip, but I was now fully back.

Later we made a small fire and I stared into it for hours.

The flames were more beautiful than ever to me.

That night I slept very well.

-=14. Final Thoughts=-

While I was still in the medicine, K showed me a picture that he had taken of me meditating in front of the fire before the experience. I saw very clearly a group of Bwiti tribesman that had been with me throughout the journey standing behind me in the shadows like they had all posed there for the photo. This is one of my favorite photos ever.

This journey was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever experienced physically, mentally and spiritually. I have lived a very intense life and the depth of this experience mirrored that intensity. It couldn’t have gone any other way and I wouldn’t have changed anything about it. The sense of lightness and confidence that I now embody is something that I will carry throughout my life. I am eternally grateful to the facilitators who did an excellent job. I felt perfectly safe the entire time in their hands.

And of course, eternal gratitude to my dear friend, the iboga spirit.

Blessings.

Recommend0 recommendationsPublished in Iboga/Ibogaine