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Howard Lotsof
1943–2010
Howard Lotsof, a persevering advocate for the use of ibogaine
in addiction treatment, died January 31, 2010, from liver cancer.
Lotsof was addicted to heroin during the early years of his adulthood,
but his life changed in 1962 when he ingested ibogaine, an
extract from the West African shrub iboga (Tabernanthe Iboga,
Apocynaceae). While iboga has been used by indigenous African
tribes during ceremonies and to treat fatigue and hunger for
many years, Lotsof was the first known person to attest to its
effects on drug addiction.
About 36 hours after taking ibogaine,
the psychoactive state it had induced began to wear off, and the
heroin withdrawal symptoms Lotsof usually experienced were
absent. While he once thought of heroin’s high as euphoric, he now
saw it as an emulation of death. “I followed the tree up into the sky and I
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saw these clouds in the
sky, and I realized for the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid,” said
Lotsof at a 2008 lecture. “And that brought me to the understanding
that at least certain drug addiction is fear and anxiety driven,
and that fear and anxiety were gone for the first time in my life.”
Lotsof then administered dosages of ibogaine to about 20
people, seven of whom were heroin addicts, and five of the 7
addicts reported that they did not use heroin for 6 months or
longer.3 These studies, however, were carried out in unconventional
settings. Further research was prohibited, as the US Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) labeled ibogaine as a Schedule
I substance in the late 1960s, a time when many psychedelic and
hallucinogenic drugs were banned by the government. Lotsof’s
passion for ibogaine continued, however, and he would eventually
become its foremost advocate.
“He had a great medical and personal intuition, and his knowledge
in addiction science was amazing,” said Boaz Wachtel, a
former Israeli Army medic who worked with Lotsof on several
ibogaine research projects (e-mail, May 9, 2010). “He was a true
activist who dedicated his life for the promotion of a drug addiction
interrupter.”
Lotsof began encouraging researchers, public officials, and
pharmaceutical companies to study ibogaine’s potential as an
addiction interrupter, and in 1982 he created the Dora Weiner
Foundation, named for his grandmother, in order to work for
the development of an ibogaine medicine.1 But the foundation
had difficulty obtaining funding for research, largely because
the pharmaceutical industry was uninterested in developing the
plant substance into a drug
In 1986, Lotsof obtained patents on ibogaine for heroin,
cocaine, amphetamine, alcohol, nicotine, and polysubstance
abuse, after which he formed the private company NDA International.
3 He began working with international partners on laboratory
studies, which showed efficacy in animals. From 1991 to
mid-1993, NDA co-sponsored several non-medicalized human
studies in the Netherlands and one in Panama, with 2 other
addict treatment organizations.
Many addicts in these studies reported improvements in withdrawal,
drug-seeking behaviors, and the length of time before
relapse,3 and it has been reported that about two-thirds of
them stopped using drugs for 4 months to 4 years.1 This was
an improvement compared with conventional addiction treatment,
after which addicts usually relapse within 6 months. In
1993, however, a female subject in one of NDA’s Dutch studies
died, and though ibogaine was not suspected to be the cause of
death, NDA stopped its treatment programs in the Netherlands.
According to Rick Doblin, PhD, founder and executive director
of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
(MAPS), who knew Lotsof for about 20 years, Lotsof sympathized
with the family of the deceased woman and had great
compassion for those who have died in treatment clinics. He
thought these deaths could have been avoided if studies were
conducted in more medicalized settings (oral communication,
April 27, 2010).
The US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) had been
developing Phase I and II clinical trial protocols for ibogaine
but decided to end this project in 1995. Exact causes for the
cancellation remain unknown, but rumored reasons range from
contract disagreements, fear of unproven neurotoxicity, the
pharmaceutical industry’s alleged lobby against it, and NIDA’s
supposed bias against the psychedelic aspects of ibogaine.
“That was the closest that ibogaine ever came to ever being
studied [in the United States],” said Dr. Doblin. “Howard was
heartbroken when that happened.”
Because Lotsof still believed in ibogaine’s positive results,
he continued to push for research, said Wachtel. He produced
research protocols, created safety guidelines, searched for funding,
and joined with partners interested in ibogaine research and
treatment facilities.
One partner, Deborah Mash, PhD, received
FDA approval for a Phase I study on ibogaine in 1993, but the
research was never completed. While conducting controlled
research on ibogaine remained difficult, Lotsof focused his attention
on the independent ibogaine clinics in Europe, Mexico, and
the Caribbean, which have been treating addicts for years.
“He dreamed that [ibogaine] would eventually pass the FDA
and be used under clinical environment,” said Wachtel. “It did
not happen the way he expected, but [ibogaine] is used today
mostly outside the USA with complete disregard to the FDA |
