Brooke Mueller Flies South For the Ibogaine Cure

Brooke Mueller, Charlie Sheen’s ex-wife who is fresh from another failed attempt at rehab, will now try Ibogaine, a hallucinogenic plant from Africa that has been around as a controversial psychedelic treatment for years, says TMZ. Not approved for medical use in the U.S., offshore Ibogaine clinics have sprouted on Caribbean islands and in Mexico over the past few years. In an unexpected return to the psychedelic solution, an odd assortment of ex-hippies, AIDS activists, addiction treatment experts, and maverick scientists fell in behind the use of the African plant drug as a powerful agent for “addiction interruption.” Ibogaine, which shows a mild affinity for one of the less common opiate sites, the kappa opiate receptor, has been cited by some scientists for its ability to free cocaine and heroin addicts from their cravings. Initial underground experimentation was aimed at heroin addicts, but the hallucinogenic plant has also been tried on alcoholics, cigarette smokers, and cocaine addicts. (The unlikely saga of Ibogaine, research on which has many parallels with the history of LSD, is related  in The Ibogaine Story, self-published by Paul De Rienzo and Dana Beal).