Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life Podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. Hope the sun is shining. Hope the birds are singing. Hope the wind is at your back. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Debra C. Mash. She's not just a scientist. She is the space between the question and the cure. A translator between the language of neurons and the speech of the sacred. For more than two decades, with the full force of the National Institute on Drug Abuse behind her, she walked a razor's edge between chemistry and ceremony, between the morgue and the miracle. Emeritus professor of neurology and molecular pharmacology at the University of Miami, but more importantly, one of the first to say what no one else dared, that ibogaine The strange plant from the equator of myth could be the key, not just to breaking addiction, but to restoring the human story. In nineteen ninety three, while most of medicine still clung to the pharmaceutical dream, she brought ibogaine to the FDA and said this belongs in the light. Then spent nearly a decade in St. Kitts, not on sabbatical, but in spiritual triage, guiding the desperate, the forgotten, the reborn. She discovered that nor Ibogaine, the hidden messenger, the afterglow chemical of change, the note behind the note. And now as CEO and co-founder of Demorex, she's leading the charge to bring this ancient medicine into the future, not as folklore, but as evidence-based deliverance. Alan Watts told us that you are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself. Dr. Mash built the microscope to prove it. This isn't medicine. It's myth rewritten in peer-reviewed journals. This isn't just pharmacology. It's the soft thunder of redemption under a lab coat. So lean in close because when Debra speaks, you don't just hear data. You feel the flame of a woman who walked into the dark and returned with a map. Dr. Debra, thank you for being here today. How are you? That was quite an introduction. Thank you. Well, the pleasure is all mine. And to everybody out there who's been in this fight for a long time, whether you're in the underground or whether you're in the labs, I think that everyone knows who you are. And I want to bring it to a bigger audience because you deserve to have the recognition of what's going on. And I know it's a bigger fight. I know it belongs to everybody. But I just wanted to say thanks from me and everybody listening today for all the work that you've done. So what an interesting day, right? A lot of things happening. Oh, wow. No, it's a glorious day. With the announcement of the Texas House Bill, we have the first public-private partnership to launch funded clinical trials to make Ibogaine an approved medicinal product in the United States of America. I mean, it's been, I was in front of the FDA in in the FDA was very collaborative in and they gave us permission to go forward with the first phase one clinical trial in recently abstinent cocaine dependent patient volunteers. That was actually an amendment that got approved in ninety-five. Originally, they told us to go forward in people who had taken Ibogaine already because they wanted to de-risk exposure. That made things a little difficult because finding people who had taken Ibogaine previously was a very small group in nineteen ninety-three, and most of them had been treated by Howard Lutzoff. who of course made the seminal, he was the first, he made the seminal discovery that Ibogaine, a single dose of Ibogaine could block the signs and symptoms of withdrawal and served as an addiction interrupter. That credit goes to him. He made that observation. And here we are, fast forward, never say never. And never give up, which of course I couldn't. I couldn't because seeing is believing. Seeing is believing. And now hearing these incredible testimonials of the benefits and to understand how these testimonials have enlightened and empowered people our elected officials to be brave and bold and stand up and say, now, now's the time. You know, and on the heels of Lycos and the disappointment at the FDA, I'm doing a SWOT analysis at the, no, literally, lessons learned from Lycos at the College of the Problems of Drug Dependence. And it's a panel and a group and I'm presenting kind of the wrap up on this, because there are lessons to be learned that will inform the development of all of these molecules. We can do better. We can be collaborative with our regulatory authorities, with our colleagues who are stakeholders, because there are naysayers out there. And we need to balance it. I mean, I went up against naysayers. I couldn't fund. Any research. Here I was, a funded investigator. So all my other research was deemed, obviously, of sufficient interest and quality that taxpayer dollars were funding my laboratory. And up until January of this year, I could call myself a NIDA-funded investigator. That's a long time. NIH-funded investigator. And I held funding from multiple institutes. But when it came to Ibogaine, nobody would support me on it. And I will tell you, I submitted many grants. You know, my journey with this, I didn't give up. I kept going. And the reason that I landed in St. Kitts was because, you know, here we were. We had FDA permission. We were all dressed up. I had assembled a fabulous group of investigators. Because when you do these types of studies, you know, you need clinicians, you need therapists, you need people who know how to model the pharmacokinetic data, you know, the blood levels. And when you take an oral dose of Ibogaine, you have two drugs on board. You've got Ibogaine and a metabolite, as you pointed out. So they're different. They have different profiles in terms of where they work in the brain. They have different effects on the body, and you want to sort out what is the good and what is the bad and understand the blood levels to get you to a therapeutically safe dose range. So when I went into St. Kitts with government approval, that was really the first government-approved psychedelic treatment center anywhere in the world. We had all the approvals. And those data were data that were ultimately submitted to the FDA. And those data helped us to get MHRA approval to continue the trials in the UK, the ones that were done in collaboration with the Thai. So those data are large. They are my academic data, largely. Some of the work was done also at Demarex, of course, to kind of, you know, re-up our database. But that data is, those data sets are really, they stand today, they are seminal data. And, you know, I will share those data. I will share that. Let your listeners hear that. Those data, I will give right of review to those data to the people that want to advance this drug product in Texas. This is not about me. This is about that Manhattan Project that I called for when I gave public testimony in Kentucky to make this work. So I am one happy person. And as my colleague Wiz Buckley says, Fight on. I love it. Yeah. And we're all here to make it move forward. It's such a lot like nineteen ninety three. Why do you think it took this long? Was it was it just minutia? Was it people fighting? Was it was it everything the pharmaceutical? Was it everything all at once? Or what's your breakdown there? I think, you know, as I look back on this, you know, psychedelics were not really being tested yet. Right. And there were only a few of us. There was, um, uh, Rick Straussman with DMT and his work. There was, uh, Dr. Charles Grove who was doing work with MDMA and, uh, You know, God bless Rick Doblin, who was out there trying to navigate the waters. And we were all, you know, and then, you know, we appear on the scene from University of Miami. No one really in the, you know, kind of the proverbial psychedelic treatment underground knew who we were. And I was a complete unknown. I can take that title now myself. I was a complete unknown. No one knew. Who is this woman in Miami? What is she up to? And I remember getting invited out to Esalen, to the Esalen Institute. And my colleague, Dr. Juan Sanchez Ramos and I went out there and we got to meet some of the amazing people who have been working with these medicines in the underground. And they wanted to know who we were and where did I come from. But I came out of the, I never worked in the addiction space. I came from neurology. Addiction medicine is mostly psychiatry. I was running one of the largest biorepositories of human brains donated for research in Miami and working in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. And we get hit with the cocaine epidemic in Miami-Dade. And we went from cocaine and champagne, which was kind of cool, you know, and party on to something very horrible. Crack exposures, infants, crime, people, you know, just going from zero to one hundred in their addiction overnight. And between the violence, the crime, the disruption to life, the loss of companies and businesses, you know, the wreckage was huge. And we had a lot of dead bodies. Miami-Dade Medical Examiner Department, you know, they were, people were dying with what we thought were recreational blood levels of cocaine on board. So nobody knew what was going on. And that's how I got lured in. CDC from Atlanta came down to Miami. The doctors were all talking together, looking at this thing. And they said, well, we've got, you know, We've got cocaine delirium. We've got seizures and sudden death. And then we've got these low-dose cardiac deaths. What's happening here? And someone said, well, there's this woman over there in neurology who has a biorepository of postmortem human brains. We're medical examiners. We're kind of good below the neck. We don't have an understanding of the mechanism of death. She might have an idea by looking at the brain. And that's how I got into this. And that was when we reported on the so-called Miami Vice metabolite. You know, when you drink and use cocaine in combination, your liver transesterifies. And so that's why people love the combination of coke and booze. You can kind of slide off the cocaine high, and it's not as anxiogenic. Not so much edgy, you know, feeling yuck. You kind of slide off. So people like that combo. It feels good. Well... It's because not only the effect of the alcohol and the cocaine, but now you have this other drug on board, cocaethylene. So we get national recognition for this. And I mean national recognition. APY or Miami Vice Metabolite. And this was all in the context of my first NIDA grant. Again, keep in mind, Miami, our group, a complete unknown, hadn't published it in the field. We get funding. because of the relevance to the cocaine epidemic. And the next thing you know, we're getting national press. God has a sense of humor. Because in the context of all of that is when I heard about IVA. And I heard about it three times. And the third time I heard about it, I got on an airplane and I went to Amsterdam to see it with my own eyes. And I will go to the grave with that. I saw three men take Ibogaine in a, in a, in a setting that was something out of a flea. I had thought I lost my mind. I got there and I said, what is, what is this? Why am I here? You know, I have a good reputation. I'm a scientist. I have funding and here I am. And it was, you know, Howard less often his entourage. And, um, Actually, a wonderful psychiatrist who had worked by the name of Dr. Boss Johns, who had worked with Holocaust survivors with LSD. Holocaust survivors. And he was there, but it wasn't a medical setting, and there wasn't any research going on, and they really didn't know dose response. It was all observational, and I wouldn't call it data. But I saw it too. I observed what Howard told people, a powerful addiction interrupter. And I said, wow, we absolutely need to study this. As I sit here today, we need to advance the pace of the studies. But I came back and I did what any good academic would do. I went to my funding agency, to NIDA, and I told them all about it. And I shared what data we had, what I was able to gather. And I couldn't do any research in the Netherlands, but what I did do was bring back urine. Any good shaman would know the alkaloid is in the urine. And I'm kind of a neuro shaman. Right? So this neuro shaman said, I got to collect the urine. So we wrote up a little informed consent. And I told the three young men, I said, will you give your, Matt, take your urine back to the University of Miami? And I did. And I got it on the airplane. I remember that day too. I gave a few dollars to the guys and had my styrofoam, my dry ice and urine samples. And I put it on the plane from Amsterdam to Miami. And I said, get that box on the plane. And I took it to my colleagues. NIDA had bought me a piece of equipment. We had a gas chromatograph. And I put the box down on the table, and I said, find the metabolite. Because I couldn't believe that you could take one dose of Ibogaine and completely reverse no withdrawals and complete reversal of years and years of hardcore use. over a hundred milligrams of methadone on board, you know, and you go from that to this and have people, you know, here you are, you've got, I'm sitting with people who are very sick. They take one dose of the Ibogaine and the next day they get up out of bed, shower, shave, and by, you know, midday are eating a full breakfast. People don't eat when they're in opioid withdrawals. No. But even the more amazing, okay, that was the physiologic, but what was even more amazing was the discussion we had where they felt empowered to do exactly the way you stated it, to rewrite their personal narrative, to look themselves in the mirror and go, you know, I don't need to run out and get high right now. There was Howard's addiction interruption. It's mind blowing to think how in one day, someone that may have been an addict for a long period of time, cannot feel the cravings, cannot feel the urge and can rewrite that story. It was, you know, I, again, as a scientist, I wanted to know. Yeah. What is this? What can we learn from this? And the only thing I could do, because I didn't have any money, I didn't control the patents. Howard Lutzoff had five patents, used patents he had filed. Opioids, psychostimulants, alcohol, nicotine, and polydrug dependence. That's how he got to me. he called me was because he wanted to use our coca ethylene, our work with coca ethylene to support his polydroid dependency patent before the patent and trademark office. And when he called me up and said, what is your work with coca ethylene? And I had already heard about Ibogaine. And I said, you're behind, you're the man behind Ibogaine. What is it? How does it work? What's the mechanism of action? What data do you have? You know, I was like, oh, I was already all in. And that was when Howard came down to Miami and we sat across the table and I got the invitation to go to the Netherlands. It's mind-blowing to get to hear the foundation of it on so many levels and then see where we are today. You had mentioned we needed a Manhattan Project. Are we in the midst of that Manhattan Project? Are we seeing it or have we not even begun it yet? I think right now... You know, that's a really good question. Is there a collaborative framework in the United States academically at the universities? No. In terms of companies that have been advanced to look at this class of molecules, so whether it's Ibogaine, Nor-Ibogaine, or the next generation Ibogaine analogs. It's a Tidemorex, and then Gilgamesh, and Delix. And there are some other companies that also have some preclinical molecules in development. And I've read the literature and had the opportunity to look at some of that work also. And of course, we ourselves have dabbled in that. And we published an act. You can imagine, in nineteen sixty-six, Simon Mbua Nagala Ethangi, a Cameroonian and African-born medicinal chemist trained in the United States, was my colleague and collaborator. Again, God has a sense of humor. How would I meet this guy anyway? But there it was. And so we published a series of Asapeno indoles that are kind of similar to the Tabernantholog series that Professor Olson and his company, Delix, are advancing. I'm a huge fan of the work at Delix and Gilgamesh. They're my competitors with the Nora Ibogaine. I love both of those companies, and I love the scientists behind them. They are brilliant. They are brilliant, and they are brilliant. I can't say enough good things about them. They are some of the finest scientific minds that I've ever encountered. And as an old woman in science, I get to say that. I get to say that. But I'm really proud of them. And so I'm very optimistic that when you look at, I have the book from Sandoz right behind me here, and you look at Albert Hoffman's work, it led to many blockbuster drugs. Right? The work that he did was, you know, he made that pharmaceutical company. Is it possible, and I've had this conversation with Dalibor Samas, is it possible that, you know, we can do something similar here? That this can be, you know, these are lead compounds, ibogaine or ibogaine, and that there may be molecules here that can restore function functionality in the brain for a variety of illnesses. That's incredible. That's incredible. And, you know, we need this type of disruptive pharmacology, big pharma abandoned central nervous system. Let's name it. Oh, they're not interested. We've heard these stories. We know these stories, you know, They had some really good molecules. I heard a story yesterday about this. And I think it was a Merck drug. It's not for the brain, but it was an interesting molecule that could have done something incredible for cardiology. And it got shelved because, you know, company reorganization and we just want to develop blockbuster meds. you know, and I get it, it's expensive to develop molecules, but we have not had new molecules come through. Look at the forty-four, what was it, forty-four drugs approved by FDA last year, two, two for CNS, one, Karuna's molecule, M-one-M-four muscarinics for schizophrenia. We knew when Clozapine, Clozaril, had activity on the cholinergic receptor subtypes in the striatum. We knew that. We had that going in my lab. In fact, we were doing assays in the test tube with that molecule and looking at muscarinics. That work that was spearheaded by that drug company and Stephen Paul, actually, who was on the board of Demorex when we first started. Should have kept him. Oh, yes. is a huge success story and wonderful for schizophrenic patients who have not had, you know, more and better molecules. So great for that. And then the other drug that was approved, you know, was another in the same category for Alzheimer's. And we still don't have, you know, disease-modifying treatments for Alzheimer's, despite all of the, you know, and I, again, as I mentioned, I started in the Alzheimer field. My dissertation research was published in the science on the cholinergic nervous system. That's where I began my journey in the field. So with all of that, with all of my human experience and sort of corporate knowledge of how things work, it's time for us to kind of take back the mental health issues in our country and to force the hand. And I think, back to your question about the Manhattan Project, I think this opens the door. I think the leadership of Brian Hubbard, which is absolutely stunning. I mean, I got to know him in the context of Kentucky. He's a force of nature, no doubt about it. He is a force, that's a man on a mission. And I can deeply respect that and have an attitude of gratitude when I think about Brian Humbert. He's a gift from God. I think that the groups will come together. I think this is going to force the NIH people, my friends and colleagues up there, to take a second look or a third look or a fifth look at this and want to be part of it. I expect that will happen. I think the stakeholders in addiction medicine Many of them have been proponents of this, but they kind of hang in the shadows a little bit. Do you know how many doctors tell me I had a patient who went to Mexico? I hear it all the time. People will call me on my cell phone, family members. I get cards, letters, and flowers on Mother's Day for people who have gone and taken Ibogaine. Not necessarily with me. But people who thanked me and said, it was your research that made me believe that this might help my loved one. That, you know, I come to this with incredible humility. And when I hear the veterans' stories, I choke back tears. And, you know, I try to talk people out of it. You can't go to an unsafe setting. I mean, that's me. I've always been the kind of... can only take this drug. And by the way, you can only take this drug under, you know, under full medical monitor and you have to, it's an investigational medicine, you know, medicine. And you got to have people who really know how to, how to use it. And there's been a lot of the reason that we got, I think part of the, the, you know, the backlash, the dark side of Ibogaine is that, you know, people, some well-meaning and maybe some, just in it for the money, that's between them and God, will set themselves up as knowledgeable and then people go into these settings and they don't have a doctor. So we've had Ibogaine mishaps, we've had ER admissions, we've had deaths. Now the causality here, The causality assessment, and I did a review of this with my colleague, Matthias Luz, Dr. Luz, when we published a few years ago on this. We did a deep dive. We had to for the regulators, you know, as part of our package and our submission is what's going on here. And I think we know the risk mitigation. You don't want drug-drug interaction. Ibogaine is a QT-prolonging drug. What does that mean? It changes the refractory period of the heart. Now, people's normal circadian variation, your heart rate and your QT interval can change over the day. It happens. But you don't want it to go up too much. And why does it go up too much? Well, it goes up too much for a number of reasons. One, because your electrolytes are off. What are electrolytes? Potassium. the big one is the one we're most concerned about, but also calcium and also magnesium. So we knew early on in St. Kitts, we put magnesium, we gave administered magnesium before Ibogaine. I figured that out and I had my cardiology team with us and I said, doctor, should we not be putting mag in the bag? Mag in the bag. I've told everybody, no Ibogaine without mag in the bag. It's the first line of what you would consider, what an ER doctor would consider. I quiz people when I go to these Ibogaine clinics. I give everybody an exam and scare them. I like to do that. It's kind of me. I like to do it. Because, you know, you don't want to make a mistake. And most of them come back with the right answer, and that's great. And, you know, we, two hundred and eighty-seven people went through St. Kitts. And we didn't have deaths. Nobody went to the hospital. And we watched the telemetry. We watched cardiac telemetry on every single patient. But that's going to be the concern. That's the concern. You don't want to have a cardiac arrhythmia that's going to advance to ventricular tachycardia and then more severe life-threatening arrhythmia. No. But Having said that, I assembled a premier group of cardiologists, ex-FDA, one of the leaders in the field. I have had more cardiologists around me and learned more cardiology than I ever thought I would do in my entire lifetime. But I brought in the experts, and what the experts told me from the very beginning here, I said the risks got to outweigh, you know, the benefits got to outweigh the risks. The risks can't dominate. this discussion. We're not going to get through the FDA or any regulatory agency. And they said to me, no, this can be done. And given that, you know, addiction is a life threatening disease and the cost to society is trillions and the numbers, the projected numbers of people who will be addicted if the trends keep going are going up and the percentages are going to be incredibly bad for society in twenty fifty, if it keeps going the way it's going, that we need to be radical, we need disruptive pharmacology, we need to think outside the box. Many drugs, many drugs that could have been blockbuster meds were taken offline because of the so-called E- fourteen guidance. It is below the regulatory level of concern. You can only go up ten milliseconds. We need to rethink. But we can have that discussion. And I assure my listeners and my colleagues who are going to be, you know, working on this Texas initiative that the FDA will be collaborative. They have always been collaborative with me. You do what they tell you. You work in collaboration. And they'll open the door to this. Yes, they will. Yes, they will. I've had the privilege to speak to not only the FDA. I've been in front of the MHRA, the UK equivalent of the FDA. I've been in front of European Medicines. I've been in front of the Israeli Ministry of Health. And I've been in front of Health Canada. And we've been in front of Medsafe in New Zealand. You can do it. young medical doctors and scientists, listen to Deborah, you can do it. It's so inspiring to hear, you know, it's, When I think about the addiction model we have today, it almost seems like we have addiction to cure addiction. You start looking at some of these pharmaceuticals and you look at the industry that's built up around it. That part seems like it might be the hardest part to break is the fact that there's an industry around addiction that feeds it with other addictions. Well, that's, you know, the substitution therapies, right? Yes. Yes. Well said. That's treating opioid use disorder where you're replacing one opioid with another opioid, you know, whether you're buying, you know, street dope, you know, and now laced with fentanyl, which is, you know, forget about it. And then you get your safe medicine and you stay on opioids. And before, before NIDA, work to repurpose buprenorphine. I mean, buprenorphine would be abused. I mean, there was that data was out there, right? Anyway, it's exactly what you said. And it's a revolving door for patients, right? Because they go, they're messed up and then they get some help with buprenorphine. They get stabilized. What did they do? They come off the buprenorphine, go back out and start using again, because You haven't dealt with the underlying disorder. You know, addiction is an acquired disease, right? If you never pick up drugs or alcohol, you're not going to get addicted. But not everybody who does use drugs or alcohol does get addicted. So some people don't have that, you know, that unleashed changes that go on in the central nervous system that put them at risk for this. And many people self-medicate. I mean, we know. comorbidity with depression, anxiety, trauma, you know, Gabo Amate talking about, you know, the trauma. Yeah, we did that. We looked at our patients in St. Kitts and, my God, did they light up the scoreboard on risk factors. I mean, it's serious. These were people in St. Kitts had failed the standard of care, right? So, you know, a lot of that. And, again, that's the testimonials with our veterans. Think about it. multiple deployments. These are many of our veterans who are really true, my God, heroes that serve this country and have multiple tours of duty. Iraqi freedom, enduring freedom, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the stress, my fly boys, the stress that they go through, these top gun pilots, And these are brilliant human beings, but they also come with their own baggage from childhood and everything else. Put it all together, come back home, and you start drinking and drugging to self-medicate. Your family life is disrupted. The way they describe it is just amazing. And then the exhaustion, they can't. manage it to the point where it's so painful that they opt out. And that's why we have all this suicidality. And it tears me up. It tears me up. My father was a recovering alcoholic. The only thing is he never recovered. He white-knuckled sobriety. He white-knuckled sobriety. And he died at fifty-six. And I can tell you, I think he committed... I think he chose death. I was in college. I was twenty-one. And I don't really like to think that way, you know, because I always thought he would choose me over alcohol. I always thought if I was a perfect daughter, you know, that he would choose me, you know, and not choose death. And he chose death. And I think that memory has what has kept me here all those years. Because I wish somebody had given my dad some LSD. Back then, that was around. And there was no Ibuprofen anyway. But he, LSD, maybe if they had given him LSD, maybe that would have helped him. I don't know. But it doesn't matter. We're here today now. And when I see how this drug, and I've been a skeptic too. I always question my data. I've never taken Ibogaine. Everybody says, why have you not taken Ibogaine? And I've not taken Ibogaine because I've always wanted to maintain a healthy scientific skepticism. I look at a lot of data. And I would never, ever want to do anything in my power that would jeopardize this field. And so I haven't taken the Ibogaine. I could have taken it. People will offer it to me. We're going to give Dr. Maish Ibogaine. But to this day, I have not. And it's because I really want to maintain objectivity. I want to see this get to patients. The patients are waiting. I want that daughter who loves her father to have her father. That brother and sister to be together and grow old together. How many college kids have come to me to tell me they want to write papers on Ibogaine because their brother OD'd on OxyContin? The stories go on and on and on and on and on. I want this with my whole heart. Today is a great day. I'm so glad to be with you talking because it's like Holy communion, you know, on steroids that, that after all these years that, that we would have this opportunity, the chance, that's all I ever wanted was that this would be tested. So we could show that the benefits outweigh the risks and the testimonials, the open label data, can be shared so that we can offer people a safe and effective, and yes, paid for by the insurance companies, treatment in the right setting. Addiction is a biopsychosocial spiritual disorder. Doesn't sound very scientific, but I'm old enough now that I don't care. Good. I don't damn care. I'm not afraid to say that. If you're going to take away your tribe, your drug-using tribe, you need another tribe. Welcome to Ibogonauts. But that's a way of learning and having a connection not only with... How is it used in a sacramental way in Africa? And there are people who are much more knowledgeable about this than me. I know what I know. But it is a rite of passage. And I called it back in Omni Magazine. Some of the listeners don't remember that magazine, but that was an old magazine that was out there, Omni. It had cool stuff in it. Yeah, it did. And they interviewed me one time, and I called it a chemical bar mitzvah. You know, because that's where you, you know, really you find your tribe. And that's kind of like, you know, what it is in Judaism too, is that you, you know, you're moving up into your rank. And so many of our young people today are disconnected. We've become more isolated, more disconnected. We need to find, you know, that's the excitement for me too with looking at, you know, when we used to do groups, So we would have a group meeting of the patients. And some of the patients were cocaine users. Some were alcoholics. Some were poly drug dependents. And many were opioid, of course, opioid users. And wanting to undergo successful detox. Successful detox. And when my therapist would have their Ibogaine group meeting, it was profound. It was incredible. And I stayed away from it because I'm not a therapist. I knew my role was over here, you know, go check the crash cart, Debra. That was my job. And make sure the charts, all the data in the charts. But the therapists would get together. And I remember one day I was working in the clinic in St. Kitts. And I was like, where is everybody? I said, where are we? I think we had a fourteen person group that time. Fourteen people went together. through Ibogaine over a period of four days. And I looked at one of the nurses and I said, really, where are our people? And she said, they're in group, Dr. Mash. I said, what do you mean they're in group? They've been in group for hours. She goes, no, yeah, they're still in group. They weren't even outside smoking. You know, if you go to... Right, right. Everybody's not in group. They're outside smoking. Yeah. So it was crazy. And we used to have these, I would always tell them two things before they took the Advane. I said, purity of intention and go with the flow. Because many of them had, you know, failed every kind of treatment. And they were like, I'm not going to any effing meetings. You know, forget it. Don't ask me to do ninety and ninety. You know, they burned out in the rooms. You know, they had been to rehab. Their families had, you know, put second mortgages on the homes. just to save their loved ones and, and, and. So here they were. And now the scoreboard would light up on what they needed to do. One of my patients, one of the people who came through St. Kitts, I had many favorites. They were all favorites. But one, he was a clever man who had, good luck finding a vein on this guy. I mean, he... had abused so much dope over decades. I could never hold it together and was on methadone for a very long time. And he got cleaned up with Ibogaine and then he went and got a PhD. I know, I have all these stories. One day I'll put them all in my book. I'll have some vignettes of them. But he used to call Ibogaine the high dive of recovery. He said, you still have to swim when you hit the water. Listeners, You still have to swim when you hit the water. But some of our people who went into treatment, because some people, you know, we said it would be a great idea if you could go into inpatient. You know, we have people going inpatient, outpatient, working with their doctor, working with their counselors, because you have to do an aftercare plan. And it's not a cookie cutter. You have to really individualize it. It can be done. It can be operationalized. It can be done. But some of our people, especially some of the younger ones, or people who didn't have a good stable environment to go back into, need a little more time on the ground before they got back fully in the game. And we'd send people into treatment, and I would get phone calls from people who ran those programs saying, what are you doing in St. Kitts? These people look like they're already ninety days clean and sober. That's how I began. Thank you, Howard Wetzel. It makes me wonder, Deborah, is it... We talk about being addicted to opiates or alcohol or some of these drugs, but addiction has permeated everything from social media to business models. I look at Xerox, for example. I remember that was one of the first strategies where I began to see addiction in business where, okay, we're going to give you the machine and then we're going to sell you the toner. Now you're addicted to this model. It's almost like the subscription model is based on addiction on so many levels. Is ibogaine something that can clear us? Because we seem to be afflicted by addiction. Like I said, not just in drugs, but in life itself. Is iboga something bigger that can allow people to see these things in their life that they're addicted to? Maybe it goes far beyond. And you use the idea of chemical bar mitzvah and rite of passage. Maybe that's where we're at as a society and as a species right now. We're going through a rite of passage where we're beginning to become more aware of what is possible. And maybe it's the plant medicines like ibogaine that are sort of midwiving this sort of new awareness. That's a very interesting question. And, you know, you're talking about behavioral addiction. Yes. It's the same pathways. It's maladaptive behavior. Yeah. And I agree with you that I think that this can you, I like to say neurons that fire together, wire together. I love it. And I think that the knowledge from, you know, we've learned more about the human brain in the past. Twenty five, thirty years than we have throughout all of human history. There are more neurons and neural connections in our brain than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. And the brain has a lot of redundancy . These are neuroplasticians. David Olson, don't give him the credit, psychoplasticians. He taught me the word. And that's what they are. You know, and I did a lot of brain mapping of autopsy samples and we looked at the chemicals and the genes and epigenetics and the neurochemistry and there's a whole lot going on in the brains of people who have abused drugs and alcohol. That's neuroplasticity too. It's just the bad neuroplasticity. You're overwiring that reward circuitry. You're shifting the dependence in the part of the brain called the striatum from the rewarding circuits. And when you come off of, and it goes up to the habit formation, different parts of the brain shift from that immediate, I feel great. When you get up in the morning, and you're like, game on, that's your dopamine, right? You're ready to go out and get reward from the work that you do. So your endogenous circuit in the brain is working. And that's drive, motivation, and affect. How you feel and what are you going to do today. You know, get in the game. When this gets hijacked by drugs and alcohol, you're relying on that quick fix. And people chase that memory of that high. I feel normal. I don't have the anxiety. I don't have the social phobia. I'm not depressed. I can move around. But then it goes, you know, you burn it out. When we looked at some of those signaling pathways, comparing the reward neurons with the habit formation neurons. And guess what? It shifted. So it looked like it was burned out. And the habit formation was lit up like a Christmas tree. So overwiring here and lack of signaling here. Well, then you stop using drugs and alcohol. And you're in this protracted state of anhedonia. anhedonia, what is that? The inability to derive pleasure. You don't get the reward. And that's why it's this protracted, and unless you've experienced it, you don't understand it. And it's, you're in a black hole. You know, you're in a black hole and you can't climb out. And now we tell you, stay sober. Don't use. Just say no. Don't work. Because in the back of your mind, your brain is going, just one more cigarette, one more Oxycontin, one more crack rock, one more hit of dope, and I'll feel okay. No, you're not going to feel okay because you're going to be bang zoom, you're back out using. But that's what's going on up here. So What appears to happen here is you're getting that disconnect from that. You're feeling good. You're getting rapid, you know, changes in the depression reset. This neurochemical reset everyone talks about, including me. This reset through the polypharmacology of Ibogaine and Noribogaine. And then you're turning on growth factors. And one of them is The factor that regulates the neurotransmitter, dopamine. So you have the serotonergic psychedelics that work on that circuit, and then you've got the iboga compounds that act right on the dopamine circuitry of the brain. That's the addiction loop. So yeah, addiction can be behavioral, and there are maladaptive behaviors around drug-seeking or buying junk on the internet that you don't want. get another box comes in and you go, you know, and when did I get on this subscription model? I'd be glad to see that they had that app where you could cancel all your subscriptions because it happens to me too. Yeah. Yeah. No, well stated. I love it. I want to, I want to shift gears here. I got a bunch of questions that are kind of stacking up for us, Debra. Are you ready to field some questions from the greatest audience in the world? I am. Okay. First one comes to us from Ranga Padamanabhan, my friend from Canada. Ranga, reach out to me. We need to catch up. He says, do you believe that ibogaine contains an intelligence, not metaphorically, but functionally? And if so, what language have you learned to speak with it? Oh, my God. That's the plant teacher idea. That's a beautiful question. Thank you for that question. Again, I've never taken the drug, so I haven't spoken to the plant yet. people who have taken the drug sometimes will give me messages and you know what? I actually listened to them. So I honor that. Um, other psychedelic medicines, you know, it's the plant kingdom, right? Yeah. And the plant kingdom is a kingdom plant and animal kingdom. Plant kingdom is, um, very amazing and beautiful and wonderful and important to our planet and part of us. And, you know, I watched Avatar too. And all the Avatar ones, not just two, one and two. I watched Avatar and that idea of, you know, the tree of life and all of that. You know, I get it. I mean, as a scientist, I have no idea what that language is, except that I think plants talk to insects the insect kingdom through alkaloids that they, they have. And they talked to us through it too. And it's just fascinating to me that, you know, um, these so-called psychedelic, these neuroplastogen molecules that come from mother nature. I mean, mother nature gives us addicting things too, right? Cocaine, opium, nicotine, you know, I remember there was a great, there was a comedian who said, who was it? P.J. O'Rourke. Yeah, that's who it was. P.J., your listeners are too young. P.J. O'Rourke, he passed away a few years ago, but a really brilliant guy. When I met him, he was managing editor of the National Lampoon, and he did a skit on Native Americans, and he said, here, nicotine, for us, sacrament, for you, dope. Yeah. uh, addicting substance. So, you know, but yeah, so we do get alkaloids from nature that are addicting, but we, we have this class of, and they're part of the evolution of societies, the earliest societies. So we don't really know how far they go back. And, and certainly, um, you know, I give credit to those who are trying to, you know, resurrect, uh, the ethno botany and the ethno pharmacology around, around all of these molecules. This is important information. Yeah, it reminds me, Jeremy Narby wrote a really great book called The Cosmic Serpent. And in that book, he tells a story about a bunch of, I think they were ethnobiologists that went down and they were studying with this tribe. And for the first week, most of the tribal members wouldn't really even talk to them just because they were aware of what the people were trying to do is to take out the medicine. But there were two that after like two weeks, they stayed, everyone left. And some of the elders were like, why did you guys stay? And they're like, well, we heard that you talked to the plants. And the guy's like, yeah, I told everybody that, and everyone left, except you guys. Why? I'm like, we want to know. What does that sound like? What does that look like? And he goes, okay, I'll show you. So they walk out into the forest a little bit, and they see this incredible snake. It's like the most poisonous, venomous snake out there. And he goes, you see that snake? And they're like, yeah. He goes, tell me what it looks like. He goes, well, it's a... It's got a green head with sort of an oviate sort of a head, and it's got two white diamonds on its neck. He goes, all right, you can see. What does that plant next to it look like? Well, the leaf looks a lot like the head snake, and it has two white diamonds right on the side. And he goes, okay. The plant's telling you right there that that is the antidote for that snake bite. If that snake bites you, you die. If you take that leaf, that will help you. And when we start looking at the idea of talking to plants like in that format, not the Western way of having a conversation with them, but having the awareness to look and see what the environment is speaking to you via the rest of the environment, I think the idea of language and talking to plants becomes something more people can digest. It's pretty interesting, right? Extremely interesting. And I'm certain, you know, there was a company years and years ago called Shaman Pharmaceuticals, and they tried to do just that, to go into work with practitioners of this medicine and the ones who had that ancient knowledge, which is lost. Now we've got to rediscover it. There's a lot of information out there that we don't have, and you've got to be open-minded and just work with it. And I know from people that I've chatted with that are Iowa scaredos, they talk to the plane all the time. They have a conversation that goes. Very interesting conversations as a matter of fact. The beauty of being in science is when you recognize that we know so very little. I agree. People are blowing me up. I got you guys. I'm coming. It's just such an interesting conversation. I'm trying to steal it all. So here we go. This one comes to us from Jen. Jen, thank you so much. Jen has been crushing the volunteer work in the world of psychedelics. She's a force of nature. She says, so thrilled to see the queen of ibogaine on your podcast, George. I hold the very deepest respect for Dr. Mash and the work she's dedicated her life to. I reached out at some time ago specifically about Ibogaine's potential as a neuro prophylactic for Huntington's, particularly its application to delay the onset of the symptoms. With the Texas clinical trials now moving forward, is there any hope for exploring its use in neurodegenerative disease? And Dr. Mash, could you speak to this topic? Thank you, Jen, for that. Thank you for that question because Again, I come from a neurology department and I know the devastation of Huntington's and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and mild cognitive impairment and stroke and trauma recovery. And yes, the answer is yes. And who's really pioneering this and lighting the way again is the, the, testimonials from our veterans, but the pioneering work done by the group in Stanford and Nolan Williams under the leadership of Nolan. And that research is phenomenal. And he is a phenomenal neurologist. I mean, he's a rock star. There's no doubt about it. And then the important work done by Gull Dolan. And she's a rock star too. And both of them are really championing these indications, and wow, wouldn't it be magnificent if we could slow the progression or help to... The Huntington's disease acts on the striatum. Drug addiction affects the striatum. Genetic diseases, you know, we... Just scratching the surface. on how to do that. And Huntington's is a genetic disorder. If there was some mechanism that would allow this, that could slow the progression, that's a disease modifier. And I mean, I think that we will see this. I think that this will, that's again why it's so exciting working with the veterans because Many of them have TBI, traumatic brain injury. And I think this is why my colleagues, both Dolan and Dr. Nolan Williams, come from neurology background, as do I. So I love that question. I'm very excited about it. And, you know, Wiz Buckley asked me that on his podcast. You know, Dr. Nash, if you were diagnosed with, you know, early onset Alzheimer's, would you do psychedelics? And I think the answer is yes. Just saying. You know, we don't have the clinical trials. We don't have the neuroimaging. We don't have all the science that goes with it. We need the biomarkers. And Nolan Williams is hot on the trail of biomarkers in the brain. Yeah, I'm waiting. There are more data sets that he needs to publish. And I want him to be funded and I want him to get going because he's really leading the way. The group at Imperial College in the UK, David Nutt and all of his colleagues over there also, Carhart Harris, brilliant work coming out of his group in neuroimaging. So I think, again, back to the Manhattan Project, is that I put addiction in with the neurology because that's my background. And look at it as an acquired disease, look at it as a neurological acquired disease, and then think about what are some of the other spinoffs for really developing a class of compounds, be it ibogaine, noroibogaine, or the next generation molecules that are going to be disease modifiers to brain. Wow. And that goes back to your question about, you know, addiction and substitution therapy. There's a great quote from Herb Kleber, Dr. Kleber from Columbia University was the, medical advisor to Bill Bennett. He was the leader, one of, but the leader of addiction medicine. And he passed away a few years ago. And he said patients need to stay on methadone precisely because we don't understand how to modify the acquired disease of addiction. Maybe today we have disrupted pharmacology to help do that. Yeah, I think it's on the forefront right here. And I think that a lot of the work that you've done and so much of what's happening in the world is hopefully leading us down that road. I got another, this one's coming to us from Desiree. And I know Desiree. Desiree, you're a beautiful human being. I love you. Her daughter died of a fentanyl overdose. And she says, how would you explain ibogaine to a child? I'm sorry for your loss. How old was her daughter? I think she was twenty two. Yeah. Yeah. She she found her. She got up. She wasn't responding. She went over there. Desiree went to her house, her young daughter's first apartment and just found her and door was open. And there she was. So how do you explain Ibogaine to children, to young people? Well, you know, again, This is early part of the narrative for educating young people about alternatives to getting themselves into harm's way is a whole other large discussion. I think the young people that got caught up in that wave of the transition to Oxycontin, to heroin, to fentanyl, were just swept up in that wave. I mean, I have my niece who had a stroke on birth control pills after the birth of her child, and her neurologist gave her oxys for post-stroke migraine headaches, and she ended up injecting heroin. And she went for Ibogaine because somebody, my sister called me and said, you have to send your niece for Ibogaine. And I was like, what? Okay. So, you know, it's in all of our families. Yeah. We're all one degree or immediately involved somehow, right? You know, the narrative is emerging. And I think that The psychedelic movement and the information that's out there, we need to get our children before they get hooked. I was fortunate. I grew up in the time of the end of the Vietnam War and the Beatles and the psychedelic movement. I grew up And I never picked up hard drugs. Did I try mushrooms in college? Yes, I did. Sure did. And was it an important experience for me? Yes, it was. And I mean, you look at what came out of that movement, and we know a lot of unicorns and a lot of great companies. And creativity and LSD. use of psychedelics in the setting of death and dying all that was right there and our generation my generation you know were the ones that were you know going right through that and you know I remember my professor at harvard he he tried mdma harvard was being used mdma was being used when I did my fellowship in austin it hadn't been you know they were using it for couples there So again, the narrative is going to emerge. There's a lot. And of course, now we have the internet. My goodness. So I think the education and NIDA, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and again, other programs of prevention and dialogue. But I mean, I can remember when I was in high school and they brought heroin users into the school to tell their story to prevent us from going out and getting high. That really didn't work. People would listen, and then they'd want to try it. So your curiosity is out there, and if the drugs are out there, and we're not going to intercept all of the drugs. With all due respect to closing up the border to people that are trafficking drugs, the issue is I've spent time with government officials in Mexico, and their attitude is Americans want to buy drugs. If we were buying the drugs, they wouldn't be coming in here. So we need to offer, you know, we need to have something else. You know, and I'm not saying that recreational use, you know, is the way to go, but certainly decriminalization of psychedelics is the way to go, I would think. Right. Yes. And, you know, we need to think about two words. It's called harm reduction. And for some in high places, that's a dirty word. Not in Europe. But we need to talk harm reduction and we need to talk about, you know, medical development so we have more tools in the toolbox to, you know, rescue our children before they go full, you know, have to spend ten years, you know, in and out of rehab. And again, I'm sorry for your loss and We as a society need to protect our young people. We need those twenty-year-olds becoming engineers and getting great educations and inventing wonderful things and taking care of this planet. And if they can get in touch with a different tribe and talk to plants and find a connection to their to a tribe of individuals who have interesting stories to talk about and want to be tuned into health and wellbeing and preserving the planet and being ready for this exponential growth curve that's coming our way. We need to be all in. And by the way, it's the parents who need to champion this. You are a citizen scientist. Demand treatment for your children and loved ones. Do it. Because you will make the FDA sit up and listen, and you will make the NIH sit up and listen. Same way that the veterans and their cause has awakened these very brave legislators in the great state of Texas. Well said. I love that. I love that. Lakshmi, we have the incredible Lakshmi coming on. Everyone should check out the Awake.net network and the incredible event coming up at the Boulder Canyon Theater on June, June, June. June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, June, She's a force of nature, too. She really is. Thank you for your leadership for so long in educating the public. I think the correct response is to be brave and bold and stand up and speak the truth. Don't be afraid. And certainly, I mean, I'm old enough now that I'm not afraid. Fear is not in my repertoire of behavior, but I think You know, there are a lot of, you know, conflicts of interest and people who, you know, stakeholders who have something to lose. And people are, you know, people are desperate now. This is life and death. And I think that the more, again, I want to, you know, applaud the bravery of No Fallen Heroes and Vets and the other organizations. the scientific work of Nolan Williams and Galdolin and others, the work of Gilgamesh, Delix, to really frame the narrative. I mean, we are making this mainstream now. And not putting our hands up and diminishing these narratives you know, below ground movements. We're actually learning from them. And that's the difference. I think that's really what we're getting at here with WatchMe, is that we need to join hands and be ready to, you know, let more people understand it. And I think, you know, the comments from our current, our newly appointed FDA director, and our new surgeon general. It was amazing. I had just listened to, I hadn't read her book, and now I will, but I just learned about it before the announcement. We have stunning leadership. These are, you know, yes, there's been, we've kind of atherosclerotic, doing the same thing over and over again. We need to break out of that mold. And I think that given the societal burden, the costs that we bear as taxpayers, and you look at mental health, and we need to do better. And if the pharmaceutical company is not going to help us, we're going to learn from the underground practitioners. We're going to learn from the patients and the family. And the families and the patients are going to drive the consumer movement. And then we need to get the payers engaged. And that's where the importance of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, the psychiatric groups, biological psychiatry, ACNP, the College on the Problems of Drug Dependence, all these different groups that are the key opinion leaders, the stakeholders, they need to step out of their comfort zone. And I hope to be a part of that. I hope to be a part of that so that young investigators who don't want to stake their careers coming out of the box. I mean, I think we heard some of that at the Lycos hearing. I was very disappointed in that. Did Lycos make mistakes? Yes. Okay. Yes, they did. But that was a long time coming to get to that point. And there are plenty of strengths that were not championed. And at the end of the day, the narrative was taken down by some weaknesses and flaws. Could we have not been a little bit more forthcoming in that discussion? But I think there was some fear. I think there was fear, fear factor. And the FDA had extra burden on them too, you know, the first. And you have psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, which was something the FDA, that wasn't necessarily in the FDA's wheelhouse. So, but with the new leadership that has come from our government today, in terms of FDA and the work and some of the changes at the NIH, I'm all in. I think this is our time. And Texas has said so. Let's go. Yeah. Yeah, let's go. We're right there. Lakshmi, thank you so much. She also mentions this, that during World War II, penicillin was an underfunded research project. It was fast-tracked by the US, UK, and allied nations. They got together with pharmaceutical industry and created the solution to save soldiers from infection with mass production. In other words, if there's a political will, we could do this very quickly. Thank you, Lakshmi. That is brilliant. Lakshmi, that is brilliant. And the analogy is so perfect for today. It is will. It's stand up and make a change. And I think we're right there. And I'm just, I couldn't be happier today, as I said at the beginning. I couldn't, I... I'm so humbled and so grateful and I just, this can't happen fast enough, but here we are. Never give up. Yeah. Clint Kyle's the incredible psychedelic Christian podcast. Everyone should be checking him out. He's an incredible individual and has an incredible delivery. Great guy. Listen to the psychedelic Christian podcast. He says, unfortunately it's so often requires that a profit model be established for a new form of treatment, not just prove that a new modality can promote healing. Yes. And, uh, And many people have pharmaceutical stocks in their portfolios, and we invest in them. And it is that investors want a rate of return on their investment. Commercial use drives the industry, no doubt about it. And I think that there's money to be made, but there's got to be an understanding here that we're filling the gap that the pharmaceutical companies is not addressing. There's no new products. Right. I mean, I don't even need to go into it. The drug products that are available, forget about it. And I've been doing this for a very long time. And it makes me quite angry that more molecules have not advanced. Okay. And why haven't they advanced? Why didn't I advance, you know, for money? It's the money. I was right there at the gate, but I needed the money. And in the absence of the funding, you can't do it. Clinical trials are hugely expensive. We just completed one, a multiple ascending dose study of noreibogaine. And we had our database locked. We're going through our data right now. Millions of dollars were spent for enrolling four cohorts and a placebo group, multimillion-dollar study. That's the problem. The solution is to have these public-private partnerships where there's an understanding that the payers, that's why the payers don't develop your drug if you don't know what the payers are going to think about it. You have to have an understanding You have to know what your label's gonna look like, in other words, early in the course of development. At the same time, the veteran administration can really accelerate the pace of this. And I believe that there will be a way for us not to get this thing completely hijacked by greed factor. Because it is exactly what Lakshmi said. You've got to bring the people to the Manhattan Project table. And who's got to sit there? It's right in the House bill, thirty seven seventeen. The payers need to be engaged from the get go. And please pray for us. My friend who just asked the question. that we can rise above the greed factor. Yes. It's well said. I think we can. Just the amount of traffic I see coming through, it's time. Who do we got here? This one's coming from Betsy. Betsy says, what did the morgue teach you about miracles that the laboratory could never explain? These are wonderful questions. And thank you for that. Well, yeah, that did teach me something. You're absolutely right. Um, yeah, death doula. Right. When you deal in the setting of death and dying, and I went from elderly people who had died with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to, um, Standing alongside of medical examiners performing autopsies on young people. And just seeing their personal belongings on the gurney. It was not lost on me. And just the respect. The respect for life. And understanding how precious it is every day. Every day, every day, every day. And, you know, I'm I don't feel that death is final. You know, I think you just changed the channel, you know? Yeah. Only my psychedelic friends know what that is. Yeah. Without a doubt. You got to, you kind of, what is Dr. Bash talking about? But I think it's the change the channel. And, uh, it was, uh, I handled a lot of and taught people how to handle a lot of, uh, you know, participating in autopsies and, And every one of our donors, our brain donors, people who donated their brains for medical research, it was so... We called it the Brain Endowment Bank because it truly was an endowment. It wasn't going to serve them. It was a gift that would help their children and their grandchildren. We took that... I was a fiduciary. That was a contract between... our program, University of Miami, and our donors. And our donors believed in the mission and they became part of it. And I was very proud of that work because we provided, donated tissues to laboratories all around the world, academic and industry laboratories all around the world. Our tissues, that was the way we honored our contract. And for us, it was a spiritual contract. I mean, the bodies came in, we did the removals, we sent out our donors with grace and dignity. But treating those donated tissues as really, I was a brain banker. That was our currency. And they became part of the knowledge We learned everything about our donors. You know, it was a great detective story. We've learned not only about in health, the brain with normal aging and in health and disease. And we collected a lot of information from our donors before they died. And we collected information after death. And we worked with the families and all of that information, that phenotyping, allowed our researchers, not my lab also, but other labs all over the world to be able to, you know, advance the research. And with the genomic revolution, that was pretty outstanding. And I was part of the GTEx project, the Genotype Tissue Expression Project. We biobanked the brains for that program. That's one of the most... well-cited research on the planet. And that was one of these, that was a great program from the NIH. What an honor to be part of that. I mean, our laboratory was kind of taken over by that. But, you know, we, I'm so proud of that. Those citations, you know, we have, that spearheaded so much fundamental research on genetics. And not only of the brain, but also of other, you know, organ systems. So it was funded by multiple NIH institutes. Cancer, mental health, a little bit of addiction money went in there. But I mean, it was a lot of different groups that were involved in that. And yeah, that was the ability to donate tissues, eyes to give sight, organs to give life. But people hadn't thought about donating your brain for research. And I was part of that campaign very early. And that was great work too. And I was really, again, blessed with that. And being next to someone who, you know, died and to witness death, and it makes you just love life all the more. Yeah. No one ever thinks about that. Like, you don't think about donating your brain to research, but the amount of, knowledge and well-being and potential outcomes for people later in life. Like it's truly giving to the next generation on so many different levels. It's mind-blowing to think about. I want to, this is a great question. You've walked between Morgan Miracle. When you finally step out of the lab coat, what do you want your final paper, the one written in the heart of those you helped to be titled? I've got the best audience in the world. You know, I'm, that's such a, I don't know who gave me that question. This is not about me. You know, I, I want this to be I want this to be tested. That's all I've ever wanted. It's not about me and it's not about my paper. You know, we learned that this drug does what we all seem to think it does. There's an awful lot of open label science out there, right? Forgive me for getting teared up on that because that was just knocking me out. but I would say that this is not about me at all. You know, I will be a footnote, but all knowledge exists in the mind of God. And I have had, I had to learn that. This is, you know, stepping out of your ego. Every once in a while, my ego comes back. But I recognize it, you know, and I go, I'm like, There it is. There you go, Doug. This is not about me. This is about knowledge that in the plant and we have to give gratitude to the plant that the molecule that we've learned about that can save lives, give moms back to their children, fathers back to their children, brothers and sisters have a lifetime together. diminish the societal cost, and give the next generation, the young people, the tools in the toolbox so they don't have to suffer. And if we can learn something about this, I used to talk about healing the brain and healing inner wounds. If that's what this does, I will make my transition when the channel changes. And this has been an amazing journey for me. And I am just so blessed to have been part of it. I will remain a footnote in this story. There's a bigger story coming. It's beautiful. Dr. Maj, this conversation has blown my mind. And to all, I'm really grateful for your time and I'm so thankful. But do I get to talk to you on this day of all days? You know, it's so amazing to me. Like, I don't believe in coincidences. So for whatever knowledge or whatever divine intelligence is out there, I'm so grateful for all of it. And before we land the plane completely, I was hopeful if you could just tell people where they can find you, what you got coming up and what you're excited about. Anyone can find me at info at Demorex, or you can email me at dmash at miami.edu. I still have my email from the University of Miami. They've left me with it, and I'm grateful for that to my university position there as an emeritus faculty member. Demorex is... As I mentioned, we were just writing up our study, our clinical study report. So we will have a, we will be providing some top line results on our multiple ascending dose. So these are people, you know, when you, everybody, when you microdose Ibogaine, you're dosing nor Ibogaine. We didn't talk about that. That's another show. but um and some people are doing that I'm not saying you should do that but ibogaine in low doses is a pro dose to noribogaine so we this is the first time that multiple doses have been daily doses of noribogaine have been administered to healthy volunteers and so this is exciting data for us and we're still learning we're still learning so we're you know looking uh through the lens of a lot of collaborators at our data sets. We'll be reporting the top line results with that. And we hope to be able to be phase two ready with these data. We're waiting on a grant announcement from the NIH to fund some of the animal work that needs to be done. Again, the money. The money is the stumbling block for this work. But originally, I just want to say when I first worked with Ibogaine, Down in St. Kitts, I had said, you know, noribogaine was the preferred molecule. Well, because noribogaine is not an oneiric, right? It doesn't cause the, you know, the dream state that ibogaine does. And the question is, do you need the trip to reach the destination? That is the question. Right. And as I sit here, we still don't know. Now, Demorex will have the metabolite ready and we can share that data with the, you know, because the FDA is going to want to know about what noribagaine does. So I've been talking to noribagaine for a long time and a friend of mine called it nori. So we'll see what nori is teaching us and we can provide that knowledge back to help inform the ibogaine research as well. because you have high levels of noribogaine in the blood when you take a flood dose of ibogaine. Noribogaine, high levels when you take a flood dose of ibogaine. Microdosing, ibogaine, noribogaine. So we can begin to share that knowledge. And I finally got to the point where I said, why not allow patients to have the ibogaine journey, have the oneuric experience. have the beneficial, you know, break the cycle of addiction with the Ibogaine, and then to be able to follow, to keep that window that Goldolan describes, that psychedelic window open a little longer, because we know nor Ibogaine has a long half-life and washes out over time. And if Ibogaine depots in the body, you've got a slow release to nor Ibogaine. And I know that you could measure nor Ibogaine three weeks in the urine. We did that. So the idea would be have the psychedelic, the oneric experience with the Ibogaine under full medical monitor in a safe setting. Let the brain start to heal. And then if patients need to keep the window a little longer open to be able to give nor Ibogaine in a pill patch or a depot for daily use, that could be a novel pharmaceutical to help with the transition to recovery, a non-addicting alternative for people coming off of opiates and alcohol and perhaps other drugs as well. It sounds like such an exciting future. It's so beautiful. I don't know. That's the best word I think I can describe it. It's so beautiful. Well, Dr. Mash, hang on briefly afterwards, but to everybody within the sound of my voice and the entire audience that participated today, from Betsy to Desiree to Lakshmi, from Neil, from Jennifer to Louise, everybody that's in this chat, right? Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. I had a beautiful conversation. Go down to the show notes. Check out Demorex. Check out Dr. Deborah Mash. All her links will be down there. And hang on briefly afterwards, Dr. Mash. And everybody else, have a beautiful day. That's all we got. Aloha.