Many, many years ago, during the depths of my addiction, I met a doctor who would change the face of medicine for me (many times over, in fact). It was the first time I really wanted to get clean. I wanted something different, a better life, and I knew it had to be without drugs. I had just been discharged from another treatment center, overdosed and ended up in the hospital, ran away to Chicago and was living in a Crack Motel selling my soul for just one more hit. Lovely way to start a story, hmm? My mother, headed to a conference on Plants that Heal, called me up to beg me not to die until she returned home. A fairly simple request for anyone other than me at that time. So many mornings I would wake up, crack open my eyes, and think, “Crap. Another day in hell.”

While at the conference, which was dealing with plants that might be beneficial in healing various diseases and illnesses like Cancer and Hepatitis C, my sweet, strong mother asked a question that would forever alter the path of my life. She raised her hand, not expecting anyone to have an answer, “Do you think there are any plants that might help cure addiction?” Much to her surprise, there came an answer. Clouded in mystery, a man simply told her that he knew someone who knew someone who knew a professor at the University of Miami who was studying just that. He told my mother he would call her when he returned home. In two weeks. An interminable amount of time when your daughter is 2000 miles away in a motel room dying.

Back at home, my mother sat at her desk, her head in her hands and wept. She felt she had reached the end of what she was able to handle. She could do nothing more to save me than offer her hand, which I patently refused. The phone rang and it was that man! He was finally calling with the number and explicit instructions that when she called, she must speak in code. My mother soon found a vast well of hope that would give her the strength to try helping me one more time. She was immediately put on with the doctor studying the effects of Ibogaine on addiction. Officially, Ibogaine is a sacrament taken by the Bwiti tribe in equatorial West Africa on High Holy Days. It is also a very strong hallucinogen which produces a dream-like state in which the user is able to see visions. These visions can be from times in his/her life or they can be a sort of spiritual experience. Whatever it is, it has a much higher success rate than the more traditional treatment modalities.

My mother and this kind, amazing, smart doctor devised a way to entice me to Miami to get me on a plane to St. Kitts. It is illegal here in the United States and has the potential to be quite dangerous for the wrong person. In order to be accepted into their treatment protocol, a patient must undergo a set of rigorous tests. Needless to say, I wasn’t immediately taken with the idea. I had tried everything and nothing had worked. I had given up. I had resigned myself to a life of pure hell and a fairly early death. I was not scared of death; I pretty much welcomed it. But all that quickly changed after I had talked with a few Iboganauts, as they’re called, who had taken Ibogaine and could tell me just how amazing and other-worldly it really was. I heard from them things like:

• I have a peace about me which I never had.
• It started in my solar plexus, this warmth, that just resonated in every cell of my being.
• I have seen God and my life is good. No, not just good, but spectacular.
• I now have a reason to live. A reason for being.
• I feel steady, sure of myself. I don’t want to use again.

These were things I had always wanted, always searched for, but could never get. These were things I wanted for my life. I simply had to try. I was going to make this my last shot and I was going to put everything into it. I left that Crack Motel on a sunny, warm, Chicago day and boarded a plane for home. I picked up my every last belonging and dumped it into the dumpster out back. I left a note for the person I had been living with:

Went to go find myself. Not sure if I’ll ever be back here. Good Luck with all this.

The next day I would meet the doctor, the man, whose life would become so inextricably linked to mine that no matter how hard I try to forget him, he just won’t disappear. An abuser so vicious he would be permanently filed in my brain under Worst Nightmare Ever. And all this from a man licensed as a care-giver.

To be continued. . .