Ibogaine seems to reset opiate withdrawal. There are many stories of people with 20 year old heroin addictions that are cured within one session.
If this is true, and there are no drawbacks, then we basically have access to wireheading. A happiness silver bullet. It would be the hack of the century. Distributing ibogaine + opiates would be the best known mental health intervention by orders of magnitude.
Of course, that’s only if there are no unforeseen caveats. Still, why isn’t everybody talking about this?
Anti-tolerance drugs seem neglected, tractable, and scalable. We’ve done some shallow investigation at QRI and think it is pretty promising. Have been keeping it as a bullet point as we ask around in funding and academic circles. It’s an area that could use a dedicated effort for sure.
Based on a quick glance at the Wikipedia page, it looks like ibogaine may have a significant risk of toxicity (and also the experience of being on it does not sound necessarily fun? I would not choose to take it): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine
Also, I think this would rely on opiates being a pleasure-causing experience for everyone or almost everyone, which doesn’t seem obviously true to me. (Source: recently had major surgery, had experience of various opiates including given by IV, kind of hate all of them except for the part where they result in less physical pain.)
We can fund the search for analogs to ibogaine with no side effects. We can figure out if microdosing ibogaine works (some promising but weak evidence it does).
Typical mind fallacy: people with good lives underestimate drastically how important low dose opiates can be for helping people with unlivable chronic pain.
Oh, yeah, for the subpopulation where opiates are therapeutic this seems really valuable. (Which, who knows, I could end up being in, if I’m unlucky and get chronic nerve pain from my amputation). But IMO that’s a pretty different thing from “wireheading” or a “happiness silver bullet” and it really confuses the issue to call it that.
I had an above knee amputation due to cancer in March and have been on opiates – several different kinds, less over time, sometimes when I was in a lot of pain and sometimes more prophylactically when I’m not in pain but am preparing for something I expect to be painful. I mostly hate the experience of being on them, especially the “high” if I take it before I’m actually in pain from physiotherapy or whatever. (I do appreciate being in less pain. Pain is bad.)
I...guess it’s interesting and I could see a different person liking the experience? I get a lot of dissociative effects, especially with the IV opiates they gave me in hospital. (Feeling like I’m floating above my body, feeling like I don’t have free will and am just watching my actions happen from a distance.) I don’t particularly enjoy this. They also make me feel tired and out of it / cognitively impaired, and I am really, really averse to that. I ended up drinking so much coffee in the hospital trying to fight this off.
My guess is that brains vary and some people would experience this as “feeling great”. (I’ve noticed this with other things like stimulants; I really like how coffee makes me feel, for example, but I know a lot of people who experience it as anxiety/unpleasant jitteriness.)
Ibogaine seems to reset opiate withdrawal. There are many stories of people with 20 year old heroin addictions that are cured within one session.
If this is true, and there are no drawbacks, then we basically have access to wireheading. A happiness silver bullet. It would be the hack of the century. Distributing ibogaine + opiates would be the best known mental health intervention by orders of magnitude.
Of course, that’s only if there are no unforeseen caveats. Still, why isn’t everybody talking about this?
Anti-tolerance drugs seem neglected, tractable, and scalable. We’ve done some shallow investigation at QRI and think it is pretty promising. Have been keeping it as a bullet point as we ask around in funding and academic circles. It’s an area that could use a dedicated effort for sure.
Based on a quick glance at the Wikipedia page, it looks like ibogaine may have a significant risk of toxicity (and also the experience of being on it does not sound necessarily fun? I would not choose to take it): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibogaine
Also, I think this would rely on opiates being a pleasure-causing experience for everyone or almost everyone, which doesn’t seem obviously true to me. (Source: recently had major surgery, had experience of various opiates including given by IV, kind of hate all of them except for the part where they result in less physical pain.)
We can fund the search for analogs to ibogaine with no side effects. We can figure out if microdosing ibogaine works (some promising but weak evidence it does).
Typical mind fallacy: people with good lives underestimate drastically how important low dose opiates can be for helping people with unlivable chronic pain.
Oh, yeah, for the subpopulation where opiates are therapeutic this seems really valuable. (Which, who knows, I could end up being in, if I’m unlucky and get chronic nerve pain from my amputation). But IMO that’s a pretty different thing from “wireheading” or a “happiness silver bullet” and it really confuses the issue to call it that.
Have you tried opiates? You don’t need to be in pain for it to make you feel great
I had an above knee amputation due to cancer in March and have been on opiates – several different kinds, less over time, sometimes when I was in a lot of pain and sometimes more prophylactically when I’m not in pain but am preparing for something I expect to be painful. I mostly hate the experience of being on them, especially the “high” if I take it before I’m actually in pain from physiotherapy or whatever. (I do appreciate being in less pain. Pain is bad.)
I...guess it’s interesting and I could see a different person liking the experience? I get a lot of dissociative effects, especially with the IV opiates they gave me in hospital. (Feeling like I’m floating above my body, feeling like I don’t have free will and am just watching my actions happen from a distance.) I don’t particularly enjoy this. They also make me feel tired and out of it / cognitively impaired, and I am really, really averse to that. I ended up drinking so much coffee in the hospital trying to fight this off.
My guess is that brains vary and some people would experience this as “feeling great”. (I’ve noticed this with other things like stimulants; I really like how coffee makes me feel, for example, but I know a lot of people who experience it as anxiety/unpleasant jitteriness.)
As for being on ibogaine, a high dose isn’t fun for sure, but microdoses are close to neutral and their therapeutic value makes them net positive