In its bare bones, 12-step addiction recovery is a group of people sharing their trials and tribulations in an effort not to get into trouble with drugs anymore. Psychedelics in Recovery (PIR) is a seven-year-old offshoot, as ever birthed in the USA.
The three founding members of PIR used ibogaine – a shrub root-extract long used by the Bwiti Tribe of the Gabon – as it has been found to heal opiate addiction, with the added bonus of not having to go through horrendous withdrawals. Apart from the use of psychedelic medicine, PIR is also different because you don’t need to have a problem with addiction to access its group support. You could be the ‘adult child of an alcoholic’, for example.
Most people coming off opioid drugs using ibogaine will require ‘integration therapy’ – as in talk therapy to look at what sometimes-profound revelations or even inner visions were seen during the psychedelic ‘journey’.
People love ibogaine because it can be a big help with kicking heroin, but like MDMA and horse riding it has killed a tiny number of people. So, not entirely risk-free – though my own experience was very positive decades ago, and I have a borderline mental health illness which could have made me more vulnerable to adverse reactions. There are many stories of people who came off of opiates with ibogaine, but it remains banned in most countries unless it is used in research.
When one of us takes ibogaine for addiction relief we first must have our hearts monitored throughout the process, and our livers also need to be examined to ensure they are not too damaged by hepatic disease. Ibogaine is not for anyone. It’s a powerful entheogen, and even one of the Shulgins tried to put me off it 25 years ago!
I experimented with the microdosing of psilocybin in 2024 for about two months, to address trauma and depression. Initially I really felt hopeful, even to the point that maybe I could heal my physical pain that way. But these were temporary fixes – albeit ones I still feel very grateful for. Theoretically, one is supposed to access talk therapy in parallel – but psychedelic psychotherapy is still largely an unregulated market with psychotherapists often charging way too much.
In short, psychedelic therapy might have worked for me in several ways if I could have afforded it, and I know I’m not alone there. Microdosing ibogaine freed me of years of SSRI use, followed by the psilocybin helping me let go of the opioids. But while it was a welcome break from both, the physical pain became too much to cope with again. I had to go back to the NHS to re-introduce my painkillers, but I did halve the dose.
PIR is a community-based, fast-developing not-for-profit support group. Within PIR, there are also two groups, which are for LGBTQ and BIPOC family. I go to both as a Cypriot bisexual.
Psychedelic therapy is seen as an ‘outside issue’ in traditional 12-step, but they both use the 12-step programme, so they have more in common than not. ‘Higher powers’ are regularly invoked by 12-step groups for support and guidance, but in PIR religious terminology has been taken out of the literature, though some members have a deep interest in spiritual paths.
Many psychedelic meds are illegal, often expensive and the debate about their efficacy is still seen as inconclusive. These medicines should be made legal and thereby regulated ASAP as they are helping people get over chemical dependencies, OCD and depression. The USA looked into legally regulating MDMA for treating PTSD, but said more research was necessary.
The John Mordaunt Trust invited a leading psychedelic researcher from Imperial College, London, to one of its board meetings. He shocked us explaining how expensive a treatment dose of MDMA from big pharma is. I’m not an expert in all this, but over 25 years I have witnessed improvements in the lives of 15 friends, and of course, Australia has effectively legalised MDMA for non-psychotic mental health treatment.
We are in a scary historical era, and I’ve tried to investigate the use of these plants for my mental health, with some success. One US doctor told me that they can now reconnect neurones broken by mental health trauma with these incredible entheogenic plants, which gave me great hope.
Andria Efthimiou-Mordaunt MSc is an activist. Usersvoice.org