Dealing with Cravings after Ibogaine Treatment
After a successful ibogaine detoxification most people feel pretty good, and that can be an understatement; a more accurate characterization would be ecstatic, exhilarated to finally be free of an addiction that’s kept them in its thrall for years or decades, and happy to be alive. Everything seems possible, and for the first time in many years, this feeling is grounded in reality.
Ibogaine provides an extremely effective detoxification from opiates, opioids, stimulants, alcohol, and a resets tolerance to a wide spectrum of molecules. In addition to this, ibogaine’s long-acting metabolite noribogaine is present for a period of approximately 3 months following ibogaine treatment, and provides relief from PAWS (Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome), alleviates cravings, and acts as an extremely effective anti-depressant.
All of this combined provides formely drug-dependent individuals with a window of opportunity during which you have an extended period of time wherein you can rewrite your own script for life, actually hear what other people are saying, and take what advice you find useful and run with it. In short, you have the chance to get a brand new life. It’s extremely important to make use of this time in whatever manner is possible for you, because the lift that noribogaine provides will eventually fade out, leaving you with … yourself. Be kind to yourself for a change, and lay a foundation that will sustain you when life gets harder, because everyone has periods of difficulty in their lives that need to be overcome, that’s just part of being a human being. Self-medicating yourself at the slightest hint of trouble, isn’t going to help you in the long run.
Building a Positive Foundation
Post ibogaine treatment many people rediscover what it’s like to feel good in their body, after a long period of total neglect, where your body is nothing more than a repository for pills and syringes. Eating healthy foods and some form of exercise, are two activities that many individuals engage in without too much prodding or actual planning, it’s just something that seems to naturally happen for a lot of people. If you don’t fall within this category and experience no spontaneous desire for eating less crap or getting some exercise… then this is something that you may need to work at, or allow other treatment professionals in whatever aftercare program you’re participating in, help you with.
Ibogaine kicks GDNF (Glial cell line-derived neurotrophic growth factor) into overdrive, and helps repopulate and “re-sensitize” trashed dopamine D1, D2, and D3 receptors, which allow you to once again begin experiencing pleasure, happiness, and joy, our of activities other than doing drugs. You may be surprised at how good exercise can feel, if you’ve never had positive experiences with it in the past, or just haven’t participated in a while.
If you provide your body with the food and nutraceuticals it needs to function at an optimal level, and regularly engage in some form of exercise, you absolutely will be in a better state then someone who does not. If you feel better within yourself, and about yourself, the other work that you’re doing to improve your state of being, will be a lot easier.
When all is said and done, a drug habit is just a maladaptive behavior; it’s a pattern that you’ve learned and repeated, over and over and over again. Great, just establish new patterns. If you begin exercising and you’re really not into it and don’t want to continue, just keep going. After you repeat the same action over and over and over again for a few weeks, it becomes… a habit. Only in this case, it’s a positive habit that you want to hold onto. When you engage intellect and apply at least a little force of will, you can steer your addictive tendencies into areas where they benefit you instead of cause harm to yourself.
Ibogaine Facilities Perspective Shifts
After your ibogaine treatment, and long after ibogaine’s metabolite noribogaine has worn off and been washed out of your system, the insights and experiences you obtained while undergoing ibogaine treatment will stay with you. It’s important to examine your feelings post-ibogaine, and engage in some form of journaling. You’re not writing to anybody but yourself, the future you, when you’re trying to gain insight into what’s happening within yourself.
The visions you experience will undergoing ibogaine treatment can be extremely profound and life-changing … or… not. Not everyone received a pre-packaged life-review and handy solution to all of life’s problems; in fact, very few people experience this. Some people have no visions whatsoever. But what everyone does obtain is a change in perspective. Being an addict for years, or decades of time, and then suddenly coming back down to Earth from an ibogaine trip, and discovering that… you’re not addicted to anything anymore, is extremely life-changing. It’s hard to express just how profound this experience is, without having it for yourself. It’s like living with terminal cancer, and then waking up one day and discovering that you’ve been cured.
Unfortunately the feeling of elation will not last forever, the novelty of living a drug-free existence will wear off, and you’ll begin taking it for granted, and when life’s challenges come your way, if you haven’t prepared yourself to face them, it’s going to be extremely easy and seductive to fall back into old patterns of behavior that lead you back down the same roads you’re already all too familiar with.
It’s important to utilize anything and everything you can, to better understand yourself and build — or rebuild — a strong foundation that sustains you during trying times. Some of the main keys are acceptance, of yourself and others, compassion, for yourself … hate and judgement, are nothing but external reflections of internal struggles and ultimately how you perceive and view others, is how you are seeing yourself. You’re a walking universe, where everything that happens is perceived through your own internal filters and how you choose to process the events in question.
Cravings are a natural part of the healing process. They will always rise up and confront you from time to time. We create our own reality with our feelings, beliefs and expectations. One of the most difficult lessons to assimilate and integrate is that there is no good or bad, or right and wrong, when it comes to how you’re feeling. Everything just is. Accepting that is a crucial step on the journey to recovery.
Namaste