119 | Ibogaine & Iboga Treatment: Safety, Ethics, and A New Approach to Addiction
“When I first did Ibogaine, I had this massive realization... I felt like I understood why I was here, and it had all made sense all at once.”
Subscribe and leave a review!
In this powerful episode, we sit down with Juliana Mulligan, an internationally renowned advocate for Ibogaine treatment and harm reduction psychotherapy. Juliana shares her personal experience with Ibogaine to overcome opiate dependency, including the near-death episode that ultimately solidified her purpose to advocate for this life-saving treatment, despite its risks.
Juliana opens up about the complexities of Ibogaine therapy, the challenges within the addiction treatment world, and her mission to improve safety standards for the practice. We also dive into the societal impacts of addiction, the shortcomings of traditional models, and Juliana’s vision for the future of addiction treatment.
She also discusses how the harm reduction model has shifted her perspective on addiction treatment and the necessity of empowerment and client-centered care. This conversation offers deep insights into the importance of ethical practices, personal empowerment, and holistic healing in addressing addiction.
Topics Covered:
Juliana's Journey: From opioid dependence to advocating for Ibogaine treatment
Ibogaine Safety: Understanding the risks and protocols for a safe treatment experience
Harm Reduction: Reframing addiction as a symptom of deeper issues, not a disease
Revolutionizing Addiction Treatment: The need for new, ethical models in recovery
Ibogaine and the Future: Creating more responsible and safe Ibogaine treatment protocols
The Role of Trauma: How societal and personal trauma influences addiction
The Importance of Flexibility: Why Ibogaine treatment should be customized and adaptive
Social Change and Addiction: Can individual transformation impact broader societal issues like addiction?
LISTEN
Things Mentioned in This Episode
Show Links:
Idryma: Training and Certification for Ibogaine Providers – Upcoming program for training Ibogaine providers
Where to find Juliana Mulligan:
About Juliana:
Juliana Mulligan, LMSW, is a psychotherapist who is formerly opioid dependent, formerly incarcerated, and has been working in the ibogaine treatment community for twelve years. In 2011, with the help of ibogaine treatment, Juliana left opioids behind and set off on a path to transform the way drug users and their treatment is approached. She has worked in multiple ibogaine clinics, was the Psychedelic Program Coordinator at the Center for Optimal Living, and was a consultant for the Kentucky Ibogaine Initiative.
She currently runs Inner Vision Ibogaine, which supports clients in preparation and integration around ibogaine treatment and offers consulting services for those wishing to approach ibogaine through their projects. She is also the founder of Idryma, the first ibogaine treatment training and certification program. Juliana has presented at various psychedelic and harm reduction conferences, is the author of the Guide to Finding a Safe Ibogaine Clinic, and co-author of Fireside’s Warning Signs When Selecting a Psychedelic Facilitator. She has taught about ibogaine at Charite University in Berlin and Southwestern College in New Mexico and has written for multiple publications about ibogaine, including Double Blind Magazine and Chacruna. Her quotes have been featured in the New York Times, Rolling Stone Magazine, and National Geographic. Most recently, her focus on abuse and ethics in the ibogaine treatment space has led to her survivor advocacy and client support work with GITA and the Shine Collective.
Website
juliana@innervisionibogaine.com
@julianamu
Looking for a professional coach to support you on your psychedelic path?
Look no further! Along with being the host of the Modern Psychedelics Podcast, Lana is a 3x certified professional coach who works with people on the psychedelic path.
-
Lana Pribic: Julianna Mulligan. Welcome to the show.
Juliana Mulligan: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation today.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, we've been planning this for months and months and months, so it's so good to finally be sitting down with you. People listening might be like Julianna Mulligan. That name sounds familiar. Your name was just dropped on the most listened to podcast in the world, Joe Rogan's episode with Rick Perry and Brian Hubbard. What was that like for you, to hear a mention like that in front of like millions and millions of people?
Juliana Mulligan: Yeah. It was funny because me a heads up. He was going to mention me a few days in advance, but it was over the holidays and I didn't think about it. And then the day before I realized, Oh my God, I'm about to get hundreds of emails. I need to get my Calendly link working and all, you know, other details like that. So it was. I didn't really process it until it happened, and it was also, honestly, I want to acknowledge that it's weird, because [00:01:00] there's also a lot of things that Joe Rogan pushes that I don't agree with, that I think have been harmful to the psychedelic world, and just humanity in general, like I'm not really that aligned with Joe Rogan, and so it was it was bittersweet, like I'm happy to have my name out there, and most importantly, good info about Ibogaine treatment out there, because Brian Hubbard kills it whenever he talks.
And also, I don't want to be, like, celebrating somebody with yeah, harmful views too much.
Lana Pribic: I totally understand what you mean, yeah, I only really tune into , his episodes about psychedelics. What did you think of that interview, and how Ibogaine was portrayed to millions of people?
Juliana Mulligan: I thought that it was done mostly well. Like I said, Brian always does an excellent job portraying the important things. I'm, of course, glad that he talked about the safety issues, which are of massive importance with iboga and ibogaine. The one thing that was missing was talk about Bwiti [00:02:00] and about the sustainability and reciprocity work that's needed in Gabon.
So that was a big missing chunk. But I also imagine that it's super hard to remember to get everything into a podcast on such a big platform. It was probably pretty overwhelming. So I don't think he did that intentionally. But yeah, that, that was a missing piece that I think is important.
But. But overall, he hit a lot of important pieces and the people who have been contacting me really understood that safety is a major factor, which was the most important thing to me.
Lana Pribic: I couldn't agree with you more about the lack of acknowledgement for a Bwiti and the Indigenous roots and even Iboga, I think, was barely mentioned, if at all. And for me the conversation lacked in highlighting the process of integration, especially for the,
Juliana Mulligan: Yeah.
Lana Pribic: community that they were speaking to.
Integration is so important. So yeah, but amazing to [00:03:00] get the information out there to so many people. .
Juliana Mulligan: Yeah.
Lana Pribic: Your story is really incredible. Do you want to share it a little bit with so that we where you're coming from?
Juliana Mulligan: Yeah. I'm happy to the way that I came to work in the Ibogaine field.
. Was through my own process with struggling with the opioid dependence. I spent the majority of my 20s dealing with the dependence to multiple opioids and subsequently going through rehabs and medication assisted treatment, 12 step programs serve time in county jail all of the typical things that happens to drug users.
users in this country, and I did not find any of the treatment that was available helpful in any way and so it didn't work, and I kept, I would sometimes make it to a few months without opioids and I'd always go back which is not surprising because you feel awful getting off opioids for months, sometimes up to a year, it takes a long time for your brain [00:04:00] chemistry to snap back out of that.
If it does at all and so I had heard about Ibogaine a few years before I did it and I knew that eventually I was going to need to do it. Something in me just knew but I didn't have the funds at the time when I first heard about it to go and use it. So I was, when I was 27, I was living in Bogota, Colombia and I was teaching English and had recently gone back to using opioids as I figured out how to get them from the pharmacies there with no prescription, which I don't think is possible anymore.
Side note because I did it so much and blew it out for, as a possibility for everybody. But it was through that process of having unlimited opioids, as many as I wanted that I realized, okay, I'm really over this. This is not fun. It's miserable. I feel very alone and very sad all of the time.
I need to move on from this. I'm over it. But I had because I had essentially unlimited access, I had developed a super high tolerance. [00:05:00] And so I thought, okay, I think the only option for me is going to do this Ibogaine that I heard about. And I found a clinic in Guatemala. And I left Bogota and never really went back except for years later for a visit.
I just picked up and left my whole life there. And I want to emphasize that it was really having unlimited access to opioids that helped me to get over it. That's why I'm a big proponent of like, let people do the drugs they want until they're ready to move on, rather than pushing people before they're ready because that was an essential part of my process.
Which is also why I'm a big harm reduction proponent in all of my work. But so I ended up going to Guatemala and doing Ibogaine. The place I selected was not safe. I didn't understand what to look for. Especially back then there was so much there was far less options than there are now for treatment.
So I just went with the place that had the person I connected with the most on the phone, which was this very charismatic, very heartfelt, but very unstable person running a clinic in Guatemala City. And, [00:06:00] long story short, they didn't follow a lot of the basic safety protocols that you should with a treatment.
And, they ended up giving me double the maximum amount that's safe to give any human being. Which, if anyone took the amount that I did, they would die or end up in the hospital. That's just how it goes with Ibogaine. You can't play around with the doses. Just like any medicine in a hospital, you don't give double the safe dose.
What happened is I had the cardiotoxic side effect from Ibogaine, which I'm not going to get really technical but it's basically a rhythm that your heart goes into that will end in cardiac arrest. I had, ended up having six cardiac arrests, fortunately, after I was at a hospital. They put me on an external pacemaker, which is temporary, for about two weeks, and Then my heart went back to normal completely.
It was just that I had too much Ibogaine in my system. And in that process people think, oh my god, this is so awful. How did you still want to advocate for Ibogaine? Because [00:07:00] my first memory of coming to and the hospital after having six cardiac arrests, I didn't remember any of that at all. I remember thinking, oh my god, this is the future of opioid use disorder treatment.
This is it. And I need to do everything I can to advance this treatment and make it safer and to change the way that our society in the U. S. understands substance use and treats it because what we have offered in this country and the way we understand so called addiction is completely wrong and it needs a complete overhaul.
So I just saw this all at once. I saw that I was Meant to do this, that everything I had been through that I had previously been made to feel guilty and ashamed of thanks to society's view on so what we call addiction. All of that, that had felt so heavy to me about my past, suddenly I saw that it had value in meeting, that it was my training to do the work I was meant to do going [00:08:00] forward.
And for the first time in my life, I felt like I had found my purpose, and I felt like I understood why I was here. It had all made sense all at one time. And the thought of wanting to do an opioid, again, it was just off the table. There was never any, what traditional treatment would call like a relapse risk.
That was not even on the table for me because I was so happy to feel connected in this world and understanding why I'm here that dissociating myself from reality didn't even make sense anymore. I would say about half the people I work with do have some cravings afterwards.
So that is normal too for some people. It's not always this like dramatic I stepped into a new brain and body experience that I had. But for some people, it is. And for some people, they might still have some cravings and there's some more work to do. That doesn't mean that. Ibogaine didn't work. I just want to set that up there.
It's not always a giant miracle like this. But for me, it really was. [00:09:00] It was a massive shift, and I really felt like I'd been given a new brain, and I skipped about, I don't know, three quarters of the withdrawal I had coming to me. I was doing a very high dose of pharmaceutical fentanyl. before going down there.
They said I had the highest tolerance they'd ever treated. So to not have withdrawal for the most part, except for some residual discomfort, was, I was in disbelief. My mom said I kept telling her over the phone, I'm not in withdrawal. And she would say, I know, you told me already. And I just couldn't believe it.
As after being an opioid user and going through so many cold turkey withdrawals it's surreal to get off opioids and not have that. And so that was the other major component. of this. So I was off on my path and running from there. I ended up moving back to the U. S. and I got a EMT certification.
I went to my first Ibogaine conference in 2012, where I met Dr. Ken Alper, the most [00:10:00] famous Ibogaine researcher, where he really broke down for me what happened to my treatment because I didn't fully understand what had gone wrong until that point. He gave a presentation about an, almost an identical case to mine, where I got, Oh, okay, so the guys who treated me, despite them very, being very heartfelt guys, they just don't know what they're doing and they're not being careful, and that's why with Ibogaine, you can't play around when it comes to safety, you can't shortcut it.
I started really getting integrated into the community and understanding the safety and ethics of how this treatment works. I did the EMT certification because I wanted to approach working in a clinic with somewhat of a medical knowledge and base. And when I went to work in my first clinic, I was on the medical team.
And I ended up working in three clinics after that, learning the treatment from different styles and different protocols. At the end of which, I realized that the medical aspect was not really my calling, nor was just running a clinic. And I wasn't sure, what [00:11:00] my role was to be in the community yet and so I went back to school to become a psychotherapist.
And since then, it's, what I do has evolved a lot to be a therapist working with people before and afterward, but also a consultant for new clinics, for research projects. That's how I know Brian Hubbard. I was apparently the second person he ever talked to about Ibogaine in the world, randomly. And so I end up advising people on all things Iboga and Ibogaine related now.
And, yeah, I guess that's, that was a longer winded version than I wanted to tell the story, but I hope that's okay.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, no, that's perfect. Thank you so much for sharing and Yes. Wow. I don't even know where to begin with that story. You mentioned that after you came out of the treatment, and after your near death experience, after treatment, the thing that stood out to you the most was that you were not in withdrawal, and also that your [00:12:00] entire The paradigm of what addiction means, what it means to be an addict shifted.
Can you tell us a little bit about that shift for you? Like, how did you view addiction before and what changed for you in that moment? How do you view addiction now?
Juliana Mulligan: Yeah, so this is an important part I didn't just mention in that part of my story, is that, Over the last ten years, I've Been lucky enough to be connected with the world of harm reduction and harm reduction psychotherapy. I did my clinical training at this place called the Center for Optimal Living with Dr.
Andrew Tretarski that does something called integrative harm reduction psychotherapy. And this is an understanding of, we don't even use the word addiction, it's an understanding of substance use as not a disease that you're stuck with forever, but just as a symptom of underlying issues. When I first got out of my Ibogaine treatment, I didn't fully, I hadn't developed my whole concept of where, like, where I'm at now [00:13:00] with understanding addiction.
It was more in that moment I just saw that this way that people who use drugs are treated. Where you go to treatment and they tell you you don't know any better, you have a brain disease, you have to listen to us, you have to surrender to what we're saying, you're powerless, you're gonna have this rest of your life.
That didn't make any sense to me. It's like, everybody on this planet has the capability to evolve and change and Addiction is not a brain disease. There's no scientific backing to that. That was invented by the charlatan named Dr. Jelinek in I think it was the 50s who wasn't even a doctor And the reason his concept of addiction as a disease caught on is because we didn't have another better explanation for it.
And of course, understanding addiction as a medical issue and not a moral issue was an important development in the history of how we understand this, but it's not the end all be all. And it's time to move on from that because telling people that they're sick and [00:14:00] there's nothing they can do about it, and they could relapse at any time for the rest of their life, is an awful thing to tell someone that has already been feeling disempowered and beaten down since childhood.
I think the original trauma for many of us, including people who use drugs, is being told that what we think and feel is wrong, either by our families or by society, by our teachers. And so the last thing that we need to do when people come to treatment is to tell them what you think and feel is wrong.
And also what you do when you label something as a brain disease, you're closing the door on exploring the many unique and significant factors of why people use a substance. It's not just because they have a disease. There's meaning in that people use substances to access parts of themselves that otherwise They're unable to access because they're cut off for whatever reason because of trauma Because of their depression because of anxiety and so when I started doing my training at the Center for Optimal Living the way we would work is We were [00:15:00] curious about everything.
I was like, oh well, what do, what do substances help you with? That's really important. We want to understand what that is and so that we can see how else that might be able to be addressed. we weren't coming at people saying you have to stop using drugs because that also doesn't work.
It has to be up to the person themselves. And there are people who successfully moderate. I just met with my client today who Had a big issue with drinking and now is able to moderate and drink in a healthy way. So this one size fits all notion, that if you have a problem you have to go to AA and stop completely or you're going to die or end up in jail, is simply not true.
Nothing like that is black and white in mental health. And, this term addict is really problematic, because what you're saying is that the only thing that's important about that person is that they struggle with a drug issue. And so that's why we're using this term, people who use drugs, or a person struggling with substance use disorder.
And, this concept that people who struggle with substance use are especially sick and different from everybody else in the [00:16:00] world is simply not true. Everybody on this planet has a time in their life where they lean on a destructive coping mechanism. Whether that be a substance, or whether it be shopping, relationships, workaholism is a big one.
The difference between people who use drugs, And somebody who's a workaholic is that workaholism is glorified in this society. Drug use is unsafe because it's illegal. The only difference between people who use drugs and everyone else is that they're doing something that society has made unsafe by making it illegal.
They don't have a special, unique disease. And that's also why I don't personally use the word recovery, because that language to me is saying that I'm an especially sick person. And other people aren't, and I don't agree with that. I think all of us are recovering from something, so I don't like to participate in language that separates me from everybody else.
I think it contributes to the stigma around struggling with substance use.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, really good distinction there between what [00:17:00] That old model of addiction was and how harmful it has been to the recovery community. Because you work with clients under this new understanding of substance dependency that it's a symptom of underlying issues, right?
, you were kind of in both worlds for a little bit. You were trying to get help for yourself under that old model. And now you're working with people under this new understanding of it. I want to ask what Is the success rate? I don't even know if we can use success rate, but like, how many people are undergoing treatment with Ibogaine, or maybe not even Ibogaine, just under this new understanding of substance dependency versus before and what is it like to take people through that process under this new model versus the old?
Juliana Mulligan: I just want to say first that, unfortunately, not all Ibogaine [00:18:00] clinics are up to date in their understanding of disorder and how to work with it. Unfortunately, there's still places that are pushing the old antiquated disease model of addiction. Most of the mental health world in this country still functions on the disease model of addiction concept and 12 step concepts, which is not scientifically based at all.
I mean, you can get court ordered to 12 step programs in the U. S. It's absolutely bonkers. It's supposed to be a voluntary program. It's also a very Christian centric religious program, so that doesn't make sense either. Anyway, I wanted to say that to say not all Ibogaine clinics are as progressive as I would like them to be.
Some are, yes, but there's others that have a long way to go. So even in the U. S., even like, this harm reduction therapy model, this is New York City, we supposedly have the most up to date everything in many ways, and the center was the only therapy center exclusively focused on harm reduction therapy.
There are harm reduction therapists [00:19:00] on their own, but it's not like it's really a mainstream thing. It has been growing in the last few years. People are starting to understand there's a lot more beyond 12 Steps. But it's still in the pioneering phase, I would say. And I want to mention that it is black and brown people and sex workers who pioneered harm reduction in the 80s with the HIV epidemic and people figured out how to protect their communities on their own because their government wasn't doing it.
So this is a movement that really started long before. It became integrated into a therapy practice. So anyway, all of that to say, what is it like working with somebody with this modality? The mainstream way to work with people is you tell them as a therapist, I can't work with you if you're still using substances.
Which is awful. If someone's coming to you for help and you say no, you have to do the one thing that's help You can't do the one thing that's helping you to survive every day in order to work with me. This obviously doesn't make sense and goes [00:20:00] against the principle, the basic principles of psychotherapy, which is you meet people where they're at, you support people where they're at.
So when you're working from the harm reduction perspective, you welcome wherever people are at and you start with checking in with them with what are your particular goals? Is it moderation? Is it abstinence? Do you want medication assisted treatment? And you, whatever it is that they want to do, you help them get there.
Even if you think your plan isn't as safe as I would like You still start with them where they're there because they're not ready to make a bigger jump like I was mentioning my client who had a big issue with drinking and he successfully moved to moderation This is somebody who was really diligent and planning and getting a lot of support To be able, to be in therapy and go to outpatient to be able to do that.
For other people it might just be, I've been using cocaine every day, I want to only use it on the weekends, and I help them get there. And often when they get to that place, they decide, you know what? I [00:21:00] actually want to cut it down a little bit more. And this happens over a years long period.
And in that time, Regardless of their substance use, because that's not the main issue, we're able to get in and dive into deeper things that they've been through in their life. To different experiences, and traumas, and their anxiety. And you can still make progress, psychologically, spiritually, even if you're using substances.
This notion that if you're using drugs you can't make progress is not true. When you're working with clients, it's about, Helping them to feel safe to dive in, no matter what's going on with their behaviors.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, it sounds like there's a lot more agency and empowerment.
Juliana Mulligan: Exactly. Yeah, and that's the thing is, like I was saying, so many people feel extremely disempowered by the circumstances in their lives, and then they go to drug treatment and they're re traumatized, being told that they have a disease for life and there's nothing they can do. And a lot of what I do in the beginning is just help [00:22:00] people recover from treatment trauma.
from the mainstream drug treatment system, from mainstream mental health. And when they finally realize and take, are able to accept, Oh, I'm not screwed for life. I don't have something wrong with my brain. That's when we can really start doing some work because they feel strong and empowered for the first time.
It's really an amazing and rewarding thing to witness. I remember, I Ibogaine that something about the way we understand addiction wasn't right. But it was really a few years later when I was taking a sociology course where I realized, oh my god, it's not the individual that's the problem, it's society.
Addiction is a social construct. People use substances and do other destructive behaviors to survive the circumstances of capitalism. Because of how much we have to work and grind and all the different responsibilities we have. If we had a more humane and gentle society, people would not need to use substances to survive it.
For the most part. And [00:23:00] so I really got to understand the sickness of society, as opposed to an individual being sick. That we are all just responding to the circumstances around us. And even what I'm doing with clients, even though I love doing it and I think it's important, , it's has a limit.
The society that we live in has to change. Capitalism is an exploitative and violent system. And we even IGA has its limits for how much we can do if people are being sent back to survive in inhumane condition. And honestly, the people I see most successful after Ibogaine are people that have money.
And I hate to say that, but it's because they have the means to take time off to do things for themselves that's nurturing. A lot of people don't have that privilege. And people that don't have that privilege don't even end up at Ibogaine. And so this is also something I'd like to bring up as important when we're talking about psychedelic therapies.
Many people can't access it. And many people don't have the means. To be, to live healthier [00:24:00] lives afterwards, like we're telling them to, because they can't afford to. I just want to bring that up, because I think it's key.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. Yeah. What is your thought around the, so the society needs to change in order to, for the individual to change on some level. What are your thoughts around? Like, how much is that social change going to be driven by individual transformation and individual growth? It's something that I think about all the time, so I'm curious to hear your thoughts here.
Juliana Mulligan: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think that's definitely really important. I think, the more a lot of us can be self aware and working on ourselves and aware of the circumstances in society, the more we're going to be able to speak up and take action to do something to change things.
I've got a client who is high up at a really globally known major bank, is an executive, and through their work with psychedelics [00:25:00] has Realized that this is a horrible industry and they want out of it, this is somebody whose whole life has been like a high up financial executive and so it is, I don't want to say damn these rich people being able to do everything that everyone else can't because they're also really important.
They have power and platform to be able to make change and do things differently. So I do think that individual transformation is important, but we really need to get it. People in power on board as well.
Lana Pribic: It's very much yeah, one affects the other. They're very related. I want to ask you, I want to go back to your Ibogaine journey, your first one.
Did you have what was happening for you during that treatment? Did you have a process of, like a visionary process that was taking place?
Did you have trauma that you were processing? Were you processing content? Or did you go straight into the heart problems and into the stress [00:26:00] response?
Juliana Mulligan: actually, the hard stuff didn't happen until think it was like 24 hours later.
Lana Pribic: Wow.
Juliana Mulligan: Because, and that can happen. You're actually in a risk zone for 36 hours afterwards. So there was a whole period I was on a ton of Ibogaine. And they had also given me a lot of Valium, which is safe to do with Ibogaine.
Not a lot, there's a dose that's safe to give with Ibogaine. Because my withdrawal symptoms were so bad, and normally Ibogaine starts to attenuate withdrawal symptoms, and it wasn't for me, so they gave me this extra medication. So I actually didn't remember anything, which is I'm not the only one that's happened to, but it was very I didn't remember anything at all until about three months later where I got a snippet of visions.
I kind of like that I had this experience because people get so focused on the visionary process of psychedelics and really the important thing for me is that I came out of it [00:27:00] with these massive realizations and insights, so it's still there. And it showed me that it's okay, , you don't have to be so attached to the visions and what you get and what you see, because Ibogaine is still going to do its work regardless.
And so I kind of didn't worry about it. And then I got a little snippet three months later. It wasn't anything about trauma. It was it was like some imagery around. I can tell you, I can tell you the whole thing if you want, but it, it was really just some symbolic imagery of me like climbing out of my old life and into my new one.
But it was, it was a brief snippet, so I don't know what else happened. I don't remember. And when I did Ibogaine the second time when I was working in the clinic it was just a lot of random images that didn't seem to make sense. And I've noticed that this happens for some people, either they don't remember, or they get random images, and then other people will get very detailed, clear storylines, where they can tell you this whole magical journey they went on, they talked to their dead grandmother, they went to Africa, and they saw this child in memory, and [00:28:00] some people get that, but not everyone gets that, and so I want to say that it's normal.
To not get that, so that people's expectations aren't, or they don't think they did something wrong when they didn't get the visions, because it's really different for everyone. Yeah.
Lana Pribic: no, thank you for bringing that in. I've seen that myself. I sometimes go to support iboga retreats and there's definitely a disappointment that is common when people don't have the whole visionary journey and then they almost trick themselves into thinking that it didn't work because they didn't get what they expected.
But on the other side, you can so clearly see that the gifts of the medicine are very much with them. And so bringing And there needs to be more awareness around, around the idea that like everyone's journey is different and the medicine's gonna do what it needs to do on you the way that it does.
Yeah. Looking back on it? How do you feel about the way your journey happened [00:29:00] and the fact that you almost lost your life?
Juliana Mulligan: yeah, I literally, you know,
the nickname they gave me at the clinic is seis milagros, which means six miracles, because they literally saw me dead and revived six times with a defibrillator. So it's dramatic, but it makes sense for the way my life's gone. I've got a lot of really intense stories and I don't know I'm glad that it was this way because it geared my work to being focused on safety and ethics right off the bat.
And when I talk about safety and ethics, people listen up because of my story. So it's actually been a really important career move for that to have happened to me. Yeah. I'm a double Ares, Moon, and Scorpio. I make a big, dramatic entrance. It's it's not surprising to me. I think that it's actually helpful to the Ibogaine world overall, to have this story so prominent, so that people understand that this is nothing to play with.
And you can't cut corners. And, these people that say, [00:30:00] Oh well, I understand the spirit of Iboga, so I don't need EKGs. That is bullshit. People can end up in the hospital even on small doses if they've got a chronic heart issue that, and some people have arrhythmias that aren't a problem in normal life that will become a problem when you give them even a small amount of ibogaine.
Yeah, there's no cutting corners. You have to do the cardiac screening and monitoring. And my story really emphasizes that.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, that's wonderful for the world that you were able to reframe such a crazy and unfortunate and tragic experience into serving humanity, into serving the medicine.
Juliana Mulligan: Yeah, and when I came to in the hospital, I didn't care that had happened because I felt so amazing. Like I felt like I literally stepped into a new body with a new brain. So I was like, great, I guess this, it worked how it was supposed to.
Lana Pribic: yeah amazing, yeah. And you [00:31:00] saying that there are Iboga or Ibogaine providers out there who rely on, intuition or a connection with the medicine in order to dose or in order to screen. You know, that might work in Africa where they don't have the pharmaceuticals and the
Juliana Mulligan: And they've grown up with the Iboga. They've it since they were in the womb. The Ngonga of each village knows each person in the village from birth. It's very different health circumstances over there. They all have the same food. They're not on medications. They're not using the substances we have.
It's, you can't compare how the safety works over there compared to here. Because we're coming from very complicated health circumstances in the West.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. Yeah, well said. And you consult and work with Ibogaine clinics right now. I'm assuming you have a pretty good understanding of the lay of the land, of the players, of who's out there, of the providers. Ibogaine and Iboga community is pretty tight knit. [00:32:00] Out of everyone out there who is a provider, what percentage would you say are providing Ibogaine and Iboga in a way that is safe?
It's safe.
Juliana Mulligan: It's a very small percentage unfortunately. I have done volunteer work for years handling complaints about clinics and providers. So I know what's going on pretty well. Right now, in Mexico, there are four clinics offering detox that I feel safe about. And there's many more than that. Open in Mexico.
There's some, not just unsafe places, there's some places that are downright dangerous where they've harmed hundreds of people and are still in operation because there's no repercussions there. It's a big problem.
Lana Pribic: Yeah.
Juliana Mulligan: There's also, iboga retreats that are off in Buiti. There's [00:33:00] a couple of those that I feel good about, and there's more that I feel bad about than there are ones.
So I don't know what the percentage is, but it is small compared to the amount of facilities that are open worldwide, unfortunately. Which is why I'm working on this new project my training and certification project. Because it's been my big dream for a long time that we have a centralized training process, which it's unreal that we've never had that centralized training process that has accompanying supervision and standards that you have to adhere to, to maintain certification.
So this is something I've been thinking about for years and something we really need. And I hope that this can up the standard of safety in the field.
Lana Pribic: That's amazing. I definitely want to talk to you about that a little bit later, but first I do want to get into some of your wisdom and insight around harm reduction, around selecting a provider when there are so many [00:34:00] out there who are not doing so safely. And in fact, the reason that I originally reached out to you to come on the podcast was following a tragic death during an Eboga.
Retreat in Costa Rica. And that was, as someone who is in the Iboga community as someone who loves the medicine dearly, that was really hard for me to process. And it was hard for me to process because it just felt like a hammer was being thrown in the whole thing. Usually when these things happen, they are avoidable. And so it's tragic to lose a human life due to not being careful when you could have been more careful. So can you start telling us a little bit about what it looks like to receive treatment in a safe way and how to know If a provider is [00:35:00] operating with the highest of safety standards.
Juliana Mulligan: Yes, so I have this guide, it's a list of questions on my website to ask providers to evaluate them for their safety. And there's a lot of really detailed questions in there about protocols, but, the first big thing is, are they doing a full medical history with you? Are they asking you for an EKG?
That's the basic. The other important one is, do they have cardiac monitoring? And if they are, the Iboga retreats generally don't have cardiac monitoring, but they are checking pulse and blood pressure every 20 to 30 minutes. And generally Iboga retreats should be taking lower risk clients and not doing detox.
Because not detox, you absolutely need cardiac monitoring. So for those places that are lower risk and doing small iboga doses, they can get away with the pulse and blood pressure check. Although, [00:36:00] I don't know, I wish there was um, some cardiac monitoring they could do. That would be less invasive for them, too.
Because, again, anything can happen. But for clinics, most people are contacting me looking for detox in a clinic. Or they have a neurological condition and they want a clinical setting. So for those, cardiac monitoring, are they asking for an EKG? The other one is, what's their mental health staff like?
How are these people trained? Is there going to be somebody present at all times for the clients to talk to. I think this is an important component. There's a lot I can say to weed out unsafe people about opioid detox. There's a lot of nuance to how those protocols work. One of the big things is Suboxone and Methadone.
Ibogaine does not work within four weeks of use of those substances. You need to be off those for four weeks. And any clinic telling you that they can do it earlier than that. is, they don't know what they're doing. Some clinics [00:37:00] will offer , to have you for a longer period of a treatment because they're going to give you morphine for a few weeks first.
That's acceptable. But if a clinic says that you can take Ibogaine like days after taking Suboxone, that's a red flag. Don't go there. It's not going to work because of the way long acting opioids work.
Lana Pribic: and is that just it's not going to work or is that actually also dangerous and fatal?
Juliana Mulligan: It's it's both. It is not safe. You're probably not going to die One week after Suboxone taking Ibogaine, but you are going to go through withdrawal right afterwards and that negates the whole point of the Ibogaine
Lana Pribic: probably what happened in that documentary uh, dosed.
Juliana Mulligan: Oh yeah, I I get the documentaries confused, but yeah that could be. And there are some people who say that they've done it and I It's just the Ibogaine is not going to work well. You're going to send people home in withdrawal if you do it sooner than [00:38:00] four weeks. So that's a big one. What else?
I have like 30 questions on my website and for some reason right now, I'm like not thinking of any of them. But let me see. Yeah, the EKG is like the most important part. And The other red flag is, are they pressuring you to come down soon? That, I think, is a big red flag because Ibogaine doesn't work unless a person is ready and committed.
And if you're putting pressure on someone, it's because you need, you're trying to make money. And to me, that is not centering safety in the process. I've always thought that. Ibogaine clinics should ultimately be a not for profit because when safety issues happen, when clinics cut corners because they're trying to make their profit margin. , , I hope someday somebody opens a not for profit clinic so we can not have the, this factor in play.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. To summarize these safety and [00:39:00] ethical issues, what do you see as the biggest gaps right now in the ibogaine treatment world that we need to fill?
Juliana Mulligan: The biggest gaps, I think You know, definitely just people understanding what the basic protocols are. Oh, something else that I wanted mention that I think is important is clinics that have people working who just done Ibogaine to get out of their own patterns. A lot of us that work in the industry have a substance disorder past.
And, yes, we're equipped to do really good work, but you need time to work on yourself first. One of the questions on my website is about, like, how long has the main provider and the other people working there, how long have they been away from their own treatment? How long has it been? I really don't think it should be less than a year, we've had a big problem with people opening clinics like a month or two after their own treatments and it's [00:40:00] mostly a disaster.
Or what happens is the provider themselves is not healthy because they don't know how to take care of themselves and they work themselves too hard. We have a very high rate of provider burnout. On average, one Ibogaine provider in the world dies or ends up homeless on the street per year. No exaggeration.
There's actually three former Ibogaine providers that I personally know and had friendships with on the street right now in Southern California. It's devastating. And this might be surprising to people. It's not to me. It's because we are all coming from really unhealthy patterns. And when you go directly into providing Ibogaine without doing your own work on yourself and getting therapeutic support, it's not gonna go well.
You're going to burn yourself out. You're not going to be safe for the clients as well. So this, this segues back to your question is um, we need more support for the people working in the industry. We need supervision, like actual professional supervision, so people can [00:41:00] be checking in about their cases, because \ giving Ibogaine treatment is the most stressful job I've ever done.
You're on duty essentially 24 hours a day when you have a client. They're gonna possibly project all their deepest, darkest, hardest material at you and blame you for it at any time. It's really hard to manage counter transference in that situation. So professional supervision and individual therapy for everybody working in a clinic.
I think the clinic should be paying for everybody's therapy who works at the clinic. So supervision, therapy are big ones that we're missing. Which is also why I'm trying to start this project that has Supervision, ongoing supervision included in it. Another big gap. Yeah, just basic training for the protocols.
Like clinics seem to be doing whatever they want in different corners of the world. You know, we have The clinical guidelines that came out in 2016, which was a huge deal that those came out. They're printed, they're on the internet, they're available, and [00:42:00] still there's people not using them. So that's a big issue.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, it's the whole iboga provider issue is very real in terms of people going through treatment, opening up clinics, wanting to help right away. And that happens with all medicines. People take medicine and psychedelics and then,
Juliana Mulligan: Yeah, I'm meant to do this work. It's, God gave me this path, and it's like this evangelism that happens right afterwards.
Lana Pribic: With ibogaine, it is.
It's more
much more dangerous than with mushrooms or, MDMA.
And I want to share a little story with you too, because within a month of that death in Costa Rica, I actually learned of another death and it was a man that was in my first Iboga retreat. He was recovering from substance abuse and I think kind of had a hard journey, lots of relapses, but he [00:43:00] also decided to open up an ibogaine clinic in Costa Rica.
It was short lived. It didn't last very long because It's exactly what you said could happen. His own personal way of being was not able to support that work and unfortunately he had a relapse again and did an iboga ceremony to detox and
Juliana Mulligan: heard about this. Yeah.
Lana Pribic: he died, yeah. was a couple of months ago, and between those two deaths, it was just a lot, it's been a lot to process for the Eboga space.
Juliana Mulligan: Yeah. And this has been happening for years. I could name, I've got a whole list of passed on providers that I could talk about. It's really devastating and clients.
And this actually just reminded me of something in terms of red flags to look for and why a lot of accidents have happened is you cannot get off benzodiazepines.
with Ibogaine. Xanax, [00:44:00] Valium, Klonopin, you cannot do that. Do not reduce your dose before Ibogaine because Ibogaine lowers the seizure threshold and you can have a seizure when you're going through benzo withdrawal, so it's like a guaranteed seizure cardiac arrest during Ibogaine. I've actually seen it happen at a clinic I worked at that wasn't screening people or drug testing people properly and the client had been on benzos and not told us.
about it, and the drug test we had didn't test for it. She survived, but it was a narrow survivor. So any clinic that tells you can get off benzos or to reduce your benzo before treatment, that is a red flag. The only way to get off benzos is a long, slow taper, unfortunately. It's one of the worst, most dangerous withdrawals in the world.
There's something called the Ashton Manual that you can find online that details how to do the long slow taper, but either you have to continue your benzo through the Ibogaine, which is safe to do at a safe clinic. They know how to do the right dosage to [00:45:00] keep you stable on Ibogaine. Or, you do a long slow taper for a year and then do Ibogaine once you're completely off.
That's the only way. So that's a huge red flag. The other thing I just remembered too is One size fits all dosing does not work with ibogaine. Everybody reacts very differently to this medicine, and the only way to understand how to dose people is once you're on a cardiac monitor, you're given a test dose and based on how your heart responds to the test dose, is how you decide to continue dosing. You can't just say everyone gets You know, this many milligrams per kilo. It's not, Ibogaine doesn't work like that. You have to be adaptable. I think when you call a clinic, you ask them about, how do you do your dosing? How is that, how do you gauge how much that I get? I think, I do have that as a question on my website another important one.
Lana Pribic: Obviously we need more ibogaine providers as this medicine is emerging [00:46:00] and as hopefully we have more research, and as people like yourself are developing training programs the demand for iboga and ibogaine providers is going to be increasing in the coming years It already is What's your vision for?
ushering people into that role in a way that is safe and Yeah, not unhinged. I want to say yeah
Juliana Mulligan: not, that's the baseline for Ibogaine, not unhinged, the bar low yeah, there are wonderful, stable, brilliant people working, but it's not the majority. So I'll talk about this program that I'm working on developing now it's called Adryma which means training or educational institute in Greek.
I recently found out that I have a little Greek side note. It's called Adryma. It's gonna be the first training and certification program for Ibogaine providers. It's [00:47:00] something I've been wanting to exist for many years and the reason that no one ever tried to attempt this is because How do you incentivize clinics that are operating all over the world, outside of many different borders, to do a program when they're already making money giving treatments?
And so this, there's always been that kind of logistical issue. It's how do we get people to do this? How do we make it so it's respected? And so that, because it's not like we can be the police and enforce protocols. But what we can do, is have certain standards people need to adhere to to maintain certification.
And so that's my plan. What I'm envisioning is having a program that has in person and virtual classes and also accompanying internships if people aren't already at a clinic. And in this program, we're going to, of course, teach medical protocols, all the safety protocols I've been talking about.
And we're going to teach the harm reduction psychotherapy approach to working with [00:48:00] people who struggle with substance issues and other behaviors. When you get the certification for this program and one of the requirements to maintain is, will be to be in our ongoing twice a month supervision.
And there will also be peer supervision groups as well. All the clients of certified clinics also will need to submit. anonymous feedback to us so that we can watch what's going on at the clinic. And so this body acts as not just a training program, but also as a standard people, clients will look for when they're selecting clinics so that they know there's a body who's keeping eyes on this clinic and who they can contact if something happens.
And so it's both training and kind of a regulating certifying body. It's crossing into a lot of areas which, Some people I'm talking to are advising me against, but I don't care. I'm going to try to do it. I think that it's important that we have all these functions so that we can not just have a comprehensive training, but have [00:49:00] support for people as they're working so that they can be checking in with somebody about their cases.
So that they can check in with each other about their cases. And the way, when I'm designing the curriculum, I've got a lot of ideas of, of, of, there's a lot to put into this curriculum, but I'm going to be doing an open call to the field for feedback on the curriculum because I want everybody's diverse knowledge and experience to be included.
Some of the most talented, brilliant Ibogaine providers who've been around for a decade or two are not, they don't have professional licensure and they operate very much under the radar, and I want to make sure that those people are acknowledged and included, because right now it's a lot of people with Ph.
D. s and the ability to publish research who get recognition for Ibogaine, and those aren't the people who, those often aren't the people who are doing the actual work and have the actual wealth of experience yeah.
Lana Pribic: That's really interesting because at least with with Eboga, there's a bit of a clear pathway to becoming an Eboga provider [00:50:00] in terms of getting your initiation, studying with a teacher and some people choose to follow that path that has been set out, and some do not. But with Ibogaine, yeah, there's nothing, like, how does one even become
Juliana Mulligan: even with Ib, Even with Iboga, I don't really think that's a clear pathway. In Bwiti, to really be deemed an Nganga, it takes years work, of living in Gabon full time. And right now, there's this guy who charges you, I think it's like 15, 000 for three months in his village, and he like crowns, he knights you an Nganga.
It's total bullshit. so I don't, I actually don't think that it's that clear to become a provider of Iboga. And I question, can someone from the West really do Bwiti and be doing a ceremony properly? There's a lot of debate about this. And I don't know, I've got some, I've got some concerns around how Bwiti is done in the West.
And one of the problems, and I uh, [00:51:00] this reminded me of something that I think is important, Bwiti, I just did my initiation in Gabul in this last July. Bwiti is in many ways very patriarchal. Depending on the lineage and what village you're in, it's often very patriarchal. It's very confrontational. It's very, we're gonna tell you how to be.
It's a very intense boot camp like experience to do an initiation. And this works for them. This is their tradition that gives them meaning and makes sense to them. We are coming from the West lot of different mental health factors and different types of trauma. And I don't think that the Bwiti confrontational approach is always the best thing.
In fact, I've seen people be re traumatized by it. And some of the retreats I see not factoring in a Western approach as much as they need to, when people are coming with severe PTSD like I had a client who went to a place in Costa Rica and she was being told It's your fault that you didn't get what you wanted out of the [00:52:00] medicine.
You didn't surrender properly. You didn't listen to us. I hear this a lot. That is awful. That is exactly what I'm, I want us to move away from. That like, you don't, you don't know any better. Listen to us. You did it wrong. That's the last thing that somebody with trauma needs to hear. And so, the way, you know, there's a few places that combine the Bwiti and a Western psychotherapy approach together well.
There's a place in Baja called Etéreo that
Lana Pribic: That's where I'm going next month
Juliana Mulligan: Oh, yay! Yes, I think, I think that they're doing a great job. My friends at Root Healing, I think, do a nice job. But there's a lot of places that aren't, and there's a lot of this of indigenous practices on a pedestal. by people in the West, which, yes, we need to revere and respect and honor and elevate and protect them.
And that doesn't mean it's the right thing for us all the time. The experience I had in the village in Gabon I don't know if I have any of my clients I would send [00:53:00] to do that ceremony. It is very intense and hard
Lana Pribic: Not trauma informed.
Juliana Mulligan: Not, oh my god, there's not trauma informed at all, and so you can't just take indigenous practices and bring them over to the West and then expect that they're gonna be healing.
Lana Pribic: you know it seems like we're in a really interesting place right now and I was talking with this about Paije West at Etéreo. The Iboga provider world is in a really interesting place right now where it seems like for a long time Eboga providers were doing it one way and there seems to be a bit of a shift happening right now um, which is, yeah,
Juliana Mulligan: getting better, there have been improvements, yes, true, yeah, I think the conferences, we used to have regular international conferences, and I think that actually helped a lot to create more communication between the two styles of treatment and The Iboga provider is really good to [00:54:00] understand.
Okay, we also deal with the cardiac risk. There's a misconception that when you do Iboga or TA total alkaloid extract that the cardiac risk is less because there's a theory that the other alkaloids counteract cardiotoxicity of Ibogaine. hasn't been proven and I don't think that anyone should just count on that as a protective factor.
To sidestep any of the cardiac safety protocols. Yeah.
Lana Pribic: Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I love everything you just said so much. I can't wait to re listen to what you just said, that little snippet there around, yeah, taking Bwiti into Western life and even Bwiti ceremony into Western life. And it's a tradition that Has empowered my life so much and I love it so much But I also understand that there are aspects of it that don't necessarily [00:55:00] Make sense for me as a Canadian white woman living in North America So yeah, it's I don't know right now in this moment, I just feel so Grateful to be alive and involved in this work at this time where we're really trying to figure out how the heck do we make this work like there are, countries in Africa and South America and, elsewhere in the world that have medicines and ways of living and wisdom to share with.
Us a culture that is deeply sick because of our capitalistic ways, which you talked about earlier, and we need their medicine. But how do we bring that medicine in? And how do we work with that in a way that yes, honors and upholds them and maintains the integrity of the medicine and the ways without appropriating it, but also works for us.
It's quite a challenge, isn't it?
Juliana Mulligan: [00:56:00] It's complicated. It's really complicated.
Lana Pribic: It's really complicated.
We're great people like you on the case though.
Juliana Mulligan: Yeah I feel lucky to get to work on it. And even with my years being involved, there's, I'm learning all of the time. And I think that's an important thing, is that there's a lot of people in the field who get to a place where they become receptive to feedback. And unable to take responsibility for mistakes and that is, I think, at the core of a lot of our issues in this, in society in general, but definitely in the Ibogaine field is that we have to be able to say, I fucked up, but I want to work on it.
And a lot of the problems that we have come from people who double down and refuse to acknowledge. That they've done something wrong like the retreat in Costa Rica that had the death there has been [00:57:00] like I'm not going to go into it in detail, but there is just a lot of effort being put out to not acknowledge any responsibility in this situation.
And I've seen that happen over and over again. It's the root of many issues we have. We're all going to make mistakes. We all have things to learn. There's things that, there's hard mistakes I've made that I had to learn from, and I probably will again, but the key thing is, is like, can we all, Be receptive to feedback and really take it in and not get defensive and say, Okay, what, I need help from the community to figure out how to repair this and what to learn.
Lana Pribic: I think a good example of that. I don't know what your thoughts on this, but I think a good example of that admitting that we did something wrong was maybe the death that happened at Beond Clinic. I heard an interview with them recently where they did take a lot of responsibility and, shared with the public what happened and [00:58:00] yeah. What do you think of that?
Juliana Mulligan: Yeah, I'm glad that they're doing that now. Yeah.
Lana Pribic: because it really is unavoidable that There will be absolutely no deaths at any given ibogaine and iboga clinic. I think Jules Evans said it the best Psychedelics are an extreme sport. They're never gonna be 100 percent safe right and so There's going to be deaths sometimes, even at the places and with the providers that are really doing their very best to follow everything that we know about harm reduction and safety protocols.
What do we do with that? What do we do with that? Knowing that deaths are going to be inevitable.
Speaker 3: I think, yes, it's like there's incidents with Ibogaine are inevitable, but I do think it's possible to not have a death. A lot of the deaths, when I look at it, it's when clinics accepted people for treatment that they knew were high risk. And they should have said no. And they knew that. And [00:59:00] so this is where it comes in with a profit driven model of a clinic, ultimately not being safe.
Because if profit is the focus, you're going to cut corners. And so I think that's really The ultimate safety mechanism is changing how we're structuring the model of the organization that the clinic is.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, I completely see that. And there's so little that we know about ibogaine that, how possible is it that death might happen despite putting all of the protocols that we know in place? What do you think?
Juliana Mulligan: It's still a possibility. But if you're screening stringently and you've got cardiac monitoring, the chances are extremely low. If you are dosing sensitively and you're not. You're not pushing a one size fits all protocol. If you have flexibility in your scheduling, to say, for example Fentanyl has made Ibogaine treatment much more [01:00:00] complicated in the last five years, because you cannot do Ibogaine right after Fentanyl.
You need seven to fourteen days off of it. And if you have someone arriving, they're testing positive for Fentanyl, you have to have flexibility in your scheduling. to allow for their treatment night to be delayed. That has to be a possibility, because if you're trying to , keep everything on schedule because the clinic needs to be on schedule for all the different reasons it does, and so you push someone to do Ibogaine too early when it's not the right time, that's when it gets dangerous.
Flexibility is the key with Ibogaine. With dosing, with the schedule, you also, I've seen clinics, Give someone the treatment when the person was exhibiting some concerning psychiatric warning signs, and they shouldn't have. You can't, it has to be, everybody at the clinic has to be sensitive and paying attention, and understand that sometimes the plans have to be even if it doesn't work for the clinic, [01:01:00] even if it loses money for the clinic.
The number one thing in Ibogaine is flexibility and room for flexibility. And, Paying attention.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, thank you for that. I want to end on hearing a little bit about your initiation in Gabon, if you'd like to share, because this, was this your first time with Iboga?
Juliana Mulligan: Yeah, this was I had been to Gabon before in 2018, but I didn't have a chance to do a ceremony We ate Iboga, but not in a big dose. So this was my first big dose of Iboga bark. Yes It's tricky because we're not supposed to It's confusing to me in we're not supposed to talk about everything but it's been really hard for me not to because Some of the stuff is so wild that happens that I've probably blurted out more than I'm allowed to.
But it's extremely intense. It's designed to push you to the limits of what you can stand. You lose a lot of autonomy over your physical [01:02:00] self. You don't get to decide when you're sleeping, where you're sleeping, when you're bathing, how you bathe. It's, can be really upsetting, especially as someone who's formerly incarcerated.
I don't like those type of hyper controlling conditions. It was very hard for me. It absolutely pushed me to the limits of what I can stand. But at the end of that week, I saw how that was actually important for me and my process. And I'm not saying that's the right thing for everybody, but for me, it helped me to have an important realization of my process, which was mainly that I saw how I put indigenous people and practices on a pedestal and devalued my own self and my own experience.
And that also led me to see how I do that with many things in my life, with people and institutions and putting them above myself and devaluing my own perspectives and experience. And I think that's a common in a hierarchical capitalist [01:03:00] society, I think we all have a little bit of that. So that experience really helps me to see the many times that I'm dehumanizing myself because I think there's something else that's better than me.
And that was only possible because the people in that village I went to, although the initiation was extremely hard and intense and uncomfortable, were nothing but loving and sweet, even when I was upset and pissed off about what was going on. These women that were taking care of me, We're just unconditional love and that, me getting upset And them not reacting to that and staying loving and supportive no matter what was a big factor in getting me to a point of being able to have that realization.
So it was a mix of extremes. It was incredibly uncomfortable and miserable and also beautiful and magical because you're in the forest with these beautiful sweet people who want to share their tradition with you. And you know at the end I saw Very clearly they love doing Bwiti.
This is what gives them meaning. [01:04:00] This is their party time, they really enjoy doing this. They were trying to give us Like a show, like they wanted us to see the best version of Bwiti they could. So they probably did things more extreme than they even do for themselves. Which is a lot, but yeah, it's if it's something you're interested in, it's not for the faint of heart.
It's very intense and the people there are beautiful and sweet. And I want to recommend to people, if you're going to Gabon. If you're really feeling upset about something that's going on, speak up. If you have a guide or translator with you, tell them that you need to take a break or that you can't do something.
They do want to know. At least the village I was at, they do want to know that. And I think that's important. One thing I was going to say something else about it. Oh the name I got was Mabundi which means the woman and the man. Which I had been excited about finding out what's my name going to be for years.
And, it's like a silly thing that I think us in [01:05:00] the West focus on because we've been stripped of our ancestral practices. through colonization. And so we get excited about these indigenous ceremonies and the names that we get and all of that. But it was really meaningful to me because I've often felt like I embody both genders.
And so Arun Ganga was like spot on and he saw a lot of things about myself and my initiation buddy. And the names we got were very profound and meaningful to us. And he also knew all kinds of. Psychic things about our lives, which is not surprising to me, but they're really on to something over there it's it's really special in the forest and I want to add that if you're going to Gabon to do initiation it's You know, the line of when you're like supporting their cultural practices and when you're harming them over there, it's really tricky and nuanced, and I suggest everybody [01:06:00] to get educated on colonization and the impacts of colonization before you go to really understand the dynamic that you're bringing, and to also do a lot of research about the village that you're going to as well, because there are some villages that are really just seeing dollar signs and trying to turn over as many initiations as they can, and when you do this You're contributing to like the economic disparities in the country.
And it's a very complex dynamic. And so I recommend getting a guide who's spent a lot of time there and understands who's safe, but also who's coming from their heart. And yeah, and important so that we can show up and do our role in a respectful and honoring way to them.
Lana Pribic: Beautiful. Thank you for that. I know you can't share too much about the experience. Is there anything you can share about something that Iboga taught you during your journey with it?
Juliana Mulligan: Yeah it was the biggest thing was about placing people and concepts and [01:07:00] institutions on a pedestal, it really showed me that we're all here on equal footing. We have different journeys, but everybody's got wisdom and knowledge and that honoring what's coming up for you. As long as it's not imposing on somebody else in an invasive, boundary crossing way, it's important to honor what your experience is and listen to your intuition, sometimes the intuition that we have goes against our surroundings and what other people are wanting from us, but you gotta listen to it. It has to come up and be acknowledged.
Lana Pribic: definitely sounds like some Iboga wisdom right there. Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. How can people support your work? Is there a way to work with you? Yeah. Tell us about everything that you have going on around how people connect with you and work with you.
Juliana Mulligan: My website is innervisionibogaine. com and people can contact me. Juliana at [01:08:00] innervisionibogaine. com. There's also a form on my website you can fill out to get in touch with me. And I'm available for pre and post Ibogaine work and also if you have any kind of Ibogaine or Iboga related projects, I'm available for consultation on that.
I'm on Instagram as julianamu, M U. You can follow some of what I'm doing on there as well and on LinkedIn as well.
Lana Pribic: Amazing. And when's the training going to come out? Do you have a date or?
Juliana Mulligan: It's, the date isn't set yet, but it will be ideally starting six months from now. I will keep the internets posted on that.
Lana Pribic: probably, leave your website.
Juliana Mulligan: I'm not good at gauging time, probably it'll take longer, but hopefully not.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. This was such a. deep conversation. Like I think we went beyond the basics of the medicine today. So I know that people listening out there will be grateful for this deep dive.[01:09:00]
Juliana Mulligan: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation. I love the questions that you asked and that you're, you have your own experience with Iboga, so I feel like we were able to get into some deeper layers, unknown hidden layers.
Lana Pribic: Definitely. Definitely. Thanks so much, Juliana. We'll talk to you guys soon. Thanks for listening.
Juliana Mulligan: Bye.
