STATS
52 million people currently use opioids.
Opioids are responsible for ~2/3 substance abuse-related deaths.
11 million people inject some form of opioid on a daily basis.
I could list all the addictions in the world but I’m sure you get the picture. It’s a serious issue, one that MMED seeks to resolve with 18-MC.
Before we look at 18-MC we have to talk about Ibogaine. This study gives a great overview of Ibogaine but I’ll give you the summary here. Ibogaine is a psychoactive alkaloid that is found within the Tabernanthe iboga plant in West Africa. The plants' root bark can be consumed in both refined and crude forms, and in high doses can produce trance-like states with visual and auditory hallucinations. Ibogaine has been theorized as an effective natural treatment of substance use disorders.
How Ibogaine works on the human body and mind is still speculative. Ibogaine serves as an N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor agonist. This particular receptor is a molecular target for several abused drugs. A previous study on NMDA receptor modulators found that agonism of these receptors has some limited benefit in treating drug addiction. However, without further study, the way it produces its anti-addictive effects are still in question. For all the science buffs out there, this study rules out one other mechanism of action of Iboga Alkaloids.
Ibogaine has previously been investigated as a treatment for opioid use disorder. A study in 1999 focused on ibogaine in the opioid detoxification process. Patients were treated using different doses of ibogaine based on bodyweight. 76% of the participants did not experience opioid withdrawal symptoms after 24 hours. Furthermore, they did not seek out their substances of choice for the three days they were under observation post-treatment. Another 12% of the patients did not experience withdrawal symptoms but still decided to resume drug abuse.
Another study on individuals who sought out treatment for their opioid use disorder found that after 12 months, 75% of participating patients tested negative for opioid use. To back this up, a later study found that one month after treatment, 50% of patients reported no opioid use for the following 12 months.
Despite this promise, Ibogaine has the potential to be a dangerous compound. There have been 19 documented fatalities from Ibogaine, one of which was under medical supervision. Ibogaine induces body tremors at moderate doses. In high doses, Ibogaine is neurotoxic. Ibogaine also has the potential to decrease the human heart rate and impact blood pressure. These possible dangers served as the impetus of Stanley Glick (Big Stud) and colleagues to try and produce a safer synthetic iboga derivative. 18-MC is born
Since 18-MC and Ibogaine are so closely related I’m going to pull from some more recent studies on both of them to give insight into the efficacy of these drugs on addiction.
This study found that the clinical effects of ibogaine on opioid withdrawal symptoms appeared to be comparable to those of methadone. In this particular study, 50% of patients reported no opioid use during the previous 30 days, 1-month post-treatment, and 33% reported no use in the previous 30 days at the 3-month mark. These rates of reduction in use were greater than those who had been treated with buprenorphine. Drug use scores were improved relative to pre-treatments and were (moderately) sustained over 12-months.
In one of Glick’s early studies on 18-MC in rats, he and his colleagues found that it shared all the purported anti-addictive effects of Ibogaine. The advantage of 18-MC is that it is theorized to not have the same hallucinogenic activity as Ibogaine since it does not bind to serotonin receptors. Furthermore, it is less toxic than Ibogaine both physiologically and neurologically.
It is theorized that 18-MC will be able to assist in dealing with more than opioids, however. Alcohol, amphetamines, and cocaine have all been mentioned as possible substances of abuse that can be addressed.
One important thing to take out of all of this is that one of the studies found that abstinence from drug abuse lowered over time. This means that there is a potential for repeat treatments over time. Despite this, the frequency in which this would have to occur appears to be significantly less than current alternatives like methadone treatment.
