Pubdate: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 Source: Vancouver Magazine (CN BC) Contact: http://www.vanmag.com/ Author: Ross Crockford Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?196 (Emery, Marc) PROBLEM ROOT A West End addiction clinic test-drives tries an African drug. Residents of the West End live on top of each other, but they're often clueless about their neighbours. Consider the tenants of a particular condo tower near Stanley Park. The retirees drifting back from breakfast, the Japanese girl heading out for a run-they'd never guess that up in one neighbor's apartment this morning, a Seattle dominatrix is trying to kick her addiction to heroin by undergoing a treatment rooted in African shamanism. Kelly, 34, pale and thin, her eyes flickering, is wrapped in sheets on a bed, whispering of dragons and wolves. She's 24 hours into a three-day hallucinogenic trip induced by ibogaine, an extract of Tabernanthe iboga, a shrub native to Gabon. In that region's Bwiti religion, it's believed that chewing the plant's root enables people to speak with the dead. "She's been speaking in tongues, too," says Marc Emery, munching on 7-Eleven crudites in the living room. "They don't understand what they're seeing. It's after, when they're clean, that they reflect on it." Emery's no doctor. He is, of course, better known as Vancouver's loudest pot activist and the owner of a $3-million marijuana seed business. Now some of that wealth funds his clandestine Iboga Therapy House, a free clinic and the first of its kind in Canada. Over the past year, he's dosed 28 hardcore addicts-including his own adopted son-with ibogaine, which reportedly purges all cravings for drugs after its hallucinations fog the trauma of withdrawal. "From our perspective, it's going great," says Emery- although nearly all of his "patients" have relapsed into drug use after a month or two clean, and he's now getting them in for week-long follow-up treatments. (His son, after a third treatment, has stayed off heroin for six months.) Emery says the ibogaine and round-the-clock "facilitators" trained in first aid cost him $2,000 per patient. "But all education costs money." Ibogaine is illegal in the United States, but it isn't in Canada, which is why Emery's clinic has recently been cited in publications ranging from LA Weekly to the Journal of the American Medical Association. It's been applauded by U.S. drugpolicy liberals, who claim it could complement Vancouver's new safe injection site by reducing the demand for hard drugs. But Emery has also enraged addiction doctors in the States who accuse him of running a dangerous, uncontrolled experiment: over the past 20 years, at least three patients at other clinics have died after taking ibogaine. (Emery insists all of his patients have a full medical beforehand. "Even though we're dealing with vulnerable, healthimpacted individuals, I never really see any serious health anomalies. It seems very safe to me.") Emery has also angered members of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, who say he refuses to treat addicts from the downtown east side, and plans to create a "detox resort" like similar ibogaine clinics in Panama and the Virgin Islands that charge up to $15,000 per treatment. But Emery says he can't waste his money on someone headed straight back to a welfare hotel awash in smack. "I need these people to have some ability to succeed," he says. "And I've never asked anybody for a cent." The real question, of course, is whether ibogaine really helps the people who take it. Kevin, a Coquitlam car salesman, subjected himself to Emery's treatment to break a decade-long crack habit. He suffered 19 hours of vomiting and gruesome hallucinations, "like something out of Caligula," he says. Neurologists have found that ibogaine increases serotonin levels, like an antidepressant, and simultaneously shuts off cocaine and heroin receptors in the brain-but, Kevin says, "it had absolutely no effect on me whatsoever." He went back to using within a month. Still, at least that was a month clean. A fresh start. And for that, he's grateful. "Whether or not I like Marc and his tactics, I have to respect him. At least he gave me the opportunity to change my life." - --- MAP posted-by: Josh