One of the most remarkable moments in psychedelic science happened not in a laboratory, but in a clinic in Mexico.
After spending more than 20 years studying ibogaine, medicinal chemist Dalibor Sames finally decided it was time to experience the drug himself. What followed wasn’t just another psychedelic trip. It fundamentally changed how he thinks ibogaine works.
Two Decades of Study
Sames isn’t just another psychedelic enthusiast.cHe’s a professor of chemistry at Columbia University who has spent years trying to understand why ibogaine appears capable of doing something few other compounds can. And that’s rapidly interrupting severe addiction while producing long-lasting psychological change.
His laboratory has focused on designing safer versions of ibogaine that retain its therapeutic effects while reducing its well-known cardiac risks. But eventually he reached an unusual conclusion. If he truly wanted to understand this extraordinary molecule, he needed to experience it himself.
A 36-Hour Journey
Under medical supervision at an ibogaine clinic in Mexico, Sames received what is known as a “flood dose”, which is around 10 mg per kilogram, a dose commonly used in addiction treatment.
The experience lasted more than 36 hours. Unlike the shorter experiences associated with psilocybin or DMT, Sames describes ibogaine as unfolding in distinct “chapters.” He says he remained conscious and able to communicate with nurses while simultaneously experiencing highly detailed visual worlds, conversations, symbolic imagery and what felt like structured lessons.
“It felt like I was finally meeting ibogaine after twenty years,” he recalled.
One moment stood out above all the others. While resting after the main phase of the experience, Sames noticed a blurred point of light in the room. As he focused on it, he says it transformed into a three-dimensional molecular model of ibogaine itself, rotating in front of him. As an organic chemist who had spent decades drawing and modifying the molecule, he immediately recognised it.
From there, he says the experience became something unexpected. Rather than simply observing the molecule, he felt as though he was brainstorming new chemical analogues with it. He frantically filled notebooks with structural ideas that he now intends to synthesise and test in the laboratory.
Whether these designs ultimately prove useful remains to be seen. But for Sames, the experience reinforced years of scientific thinking rather than replacing it.
More Than a Drug?
Sames has argued for several years that ibogaine doesn’t behave like a conventional drug. Most medicines work by strongly activating or blocking one or two specific receptors. Ibogaine doesn’t appear to. Instead, he proposes that it weakly influences many interconnected biological systems simultaneously, a framework he calls “matrix pharmacology.”
After his own experience, he took that idea a step further. He now describes ibogaine as an “endocomputational therapeutic technology.”
In his view, the molecule temporarily creates a completely new computational state inside the brain, one capable of scanning existing neural networks, reorganising them and helping reset deeply ingrained behavioural patterns.
This remains a hypothesis, not an established scientific fact. But it represents one of the most ambitious attempts yet to explain why ibogaine’s effects often appear so different from those of other psychedelics.
Science Meets Experience
What makes Sames’ story unusual isn’t simply that he took ibogaine. Many scientists have used the compounds they study. What’s unusual is that he believes the experience generated testable scientific ideas.
Rather than treating the visions as mystical revelations, he sees them as hypotheses that should now be investigated experimentally. His lab plans to synthesise some of the molecular structures that emerged during the experience and determine whether they have any real pharmacological value. If they don’t, the ideas can be discarded.
If they do, it would raise fascinating questions about the relationship between altered states of consciousness and scientific creativity.
The Bottom Line
Ibogaine remains one of the least understood compounds in psychedelic science. It’s capable of producing profound psychological effects, but it also carries genuine medical risks, particularly affecting the heart, which is why treatments should only occur in specialised clinics with appropriate monitoring.
Sames’ extraordinary 36-hour experience doesn’t prove that ibogaine creates a new computational state in the brain. But it does highlight something increasingly common in psychedelic research: the boundary between neuroscience and subjective experience is becoming harder to ignore.
Whether his theory ultimately stands or falls, one thing is clear. After spending two decades studying ibogaine from the outside, Dalibor Sames believes he finally learned something about it from the inside.
Watch the interview here.
Keep up with the research here.
