Can psychedelic endorsed by Joe Rogan transform Gabon’s fortunes?
The music of drums, a sacred eight-string harp and the mongongo musical bow that speaks to spirits fills the air around a campfire in the west African forests of Gabon.
It heralds the beginning of the traditional iboga treatment, said to lead to psycho-spiritual healing.
Participants speak to an elder before they consume iboga bark, inducing more than eight hours of visions in a psychedelic experience lasting more than a day of sweat, tears and purging.
The treatment concludes with a rite where “the ‘gateway’ to meet one’s ancestors is opened”, according to the Elder Council of Bwiti House, one of Gabon’s long-standing iboga treatment centres that follows the Missoko Bwiti tradition.
“The medicine cannot be lied to,” Nganga Mboma, its spokesman, said.
The healing properties of iboga and its ingredient ibogaine have been known since time immemorial in Gabon, where the plant is grown and considered a national treasure. The drug, and Gabon, have been thrust into the spotlight by an executive order from President Trump for American regulators to review ibogaine’s legal status and its potential use to treat mental illness. It is a federally illegal drug at present, equal to heroin.
Trump’s executive order is expected to bring a flurry of investment to Gabon whose oil-exporting economy is still reeling from decades of alleged corruption under the Bongo family, which was ousted in a coup in 2023.
Viewed by some as a means for Trump to win back the drug-friendly “bro vote”, the president’s order in April came after lobbying by the podcaster Joe Rogan. Ibogaine has found unlikely backers on the American right, historically opposed to drugs, including the former Texas governor Rick Perry, who credits it for helping his anxiety and brain atrophy, and advocates its use by veterans.
Since the 1990s ibogaine has been a popular choice for those seeking psychedelic enlightenment or healing for the likes of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or addiction.
Moughenda Mikala, a tenth-generation Missoko Bwiti shaman who founded Bwiti House and is also a Gabon politician, has treated Scott Disick, the American media personality and one-time member of the Kardashian clan.
At Bwiti House and its centres worldwide thousands of people have been given iboga in treatments that can last two weeks and cost $15,000 or more. Their patients have included the chief executive of one of the largest US technology companies, an NBA player and a footballer in France’s Ligue 1, Mboma said.
Ibogaine’s properties are lauded by practitioners and patients despite a lack of scientific consensus, including on serious health risks to the heart, which the drug can put into dangerous irregular rhythms.
Mboma said Bwiti House conducted extensive US-based medical checks on potential patients and that treatments were given under medical supervision.
The American presence in Gabon was already felt before Trump’s executive order. Gabon’s capital, Libreville, hosted a conference in January with Americans For Ibogaine, whose chief executive, W Bryan Hubbard, appeared alongside Rogan when Trump signed the order.
“A sacred medicine held quietly for dozens of thousands of years has suddenly become the focus of global executive orders and intense commercial interest,” Mboma said.
Rich in natural resource wealth from oil and mining but suffering from poverty and inequality, Gabon does not want to miss out on a US-driven boom. This month the government approved plans for iboga to be classed as a strategic asset and created a sovereign fund to support the domestic industry.
Libreville is also attempting to bring under firmer regulatory control what has long been an informal sector with massive price dislocations and widespread illegal exports of iboga bark. In Gabon a single iboga tree can cost less than $20, while one kilogram of its bark can fetch almost $2,000 abroad.
But some are suspicious of US interests muscling into a national tradition.
Yann Guignon, president of Blessings Of The Forest, a Gabonese non-profit working to protect iboga, traditional knowledge and biodiversity, said: “Among many Gabonese people, the reaction has been a complex mix of pride, concern and frustration. On one hand, there is recognition that the therapeutic potential of ibogaine is finally being acknowledged internationally. On the other hand, this sudden enthusiasm from the United States comes in a broader geopolitical context that many Africans perceive as contradictory and difficult to fully trust.”
He added that the growing international demand was creating new risks. “Some [foreign actors] are sincere and respectful, but others are opportunistic,” he said. “There are increasing concerns about poaching, false healers, exploitation of traditional knowledge and the emergence of informal or predatory markets around iboga.”
Part of the focus for Gabon is to secure rights to synthetic or semi-synthetic versions of ibogaine, such as those used by some clinics in Mexico, where the UFC star Conor McGregor said he “saw Jesus” during his treatment.
Gabon is attempting to use a World Intellectual Property Organization treaty on genetic resources to get credit for developments based on iboga or derivatives. The country is also pushing for a share of ibogaine profits — to benefit local communities — based on the Convention on Biological Diversity’s 2010 Nagoya Protocol, to which the US is not a signatory.
Yet Gabonese practitioners are critical of synthetic ibogaine, saying it takes away from the spiritual process critical to traditions that have made iboga famous.
“Ibogaine is a single alkaloid, a molecule, and we respect the western pharmaceutical protocols that use it,” Mboma said. “But iboga is the whole sacred root … the ceremony is not a ‘wrapper’ for the molecule; it is the medicine.”
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