The Bowling Green Daily News
By Sarah Michels | [email protected]
Jul 25, 2023
FRANKFORT — Jessica Blackburn grew up in Betsy Lane, an Eastern Kentucky town home to 650 people. She had a great childhood, she said, filled with love, friendship and community.
She’s not the typical person you’d expect to become addicted to opioids, she said recently at a Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission public hearing.
The KOAAC is considering allocating $42 million from its $842 million share of federal opioid settlement funds toward research into ibogaine, which is currently illegal in the U.S. as a classified Schedule 1 drug.
Ibogaine researchers and proponents think that it has the potential to completely alter the landscape of the opioid crisis.
Ibogaine is a naturally occurring substance from central African country Gabon. It is known for its hallucinogenic properties that put people through an immersive, dream-like, often spiritual experience.
Observational studies have also demonstrated its ability to reset an opioid user’s brain.
When a person abuses opioids, the drugs begin to hijack their brain. They rewire it, triggering unnatural surges of dopamine that can overload circuits in multiple regions of the brain, including those involved in decision-making, self control and emotion.
So even when a person detoxes from opioids, the brain is still in its rewired state. It can take weeks to months to transition to a normal, withdrawal and craving free state, an amount of time that treatment centers and other recovery methods often do not afford.
Ibogaine eliminates that transition period. It’s a single dose that takes about 45 minutes to act. It opens the brain’s plasticity, allowing it to be remolded.
Blackburn told the commission about her experience with addiction, that eventually led to her taking ibogaine.
By the time Blackburn was in middle school, pills were omnipresent. Kids would pass them around to their peers after stealing them from their parents’ medicine cabinets. It was around the time that just about everyone in Eastern Kentucky had an opioid prescription, Blackburn said.
The economic decline caused by coal mine closures made people desperate. Blackburn said people like her friends’ grandparents became drug dealers.
While she wasn’t interested in taking the drugs in middle school, they piqued her curiosity. And they only proliferated more.
In high school, parties weren’t just places to drink and smoke. There was also OxyContin everywhere.
By 17, Blackburn had developed intense depression and anxiety, and pills seemed like a solution. Her first time on opioids was the first time in awhile she felt calm and in control.
But what began as an escape turned quickly into a nightmare.
“I didn’t understand fully what I was doing to my body until I became very sick,” Blackburn said. “I thought I had the flu. But it was opiate withdrawal.”
Opioid withdrawal is a clinically robust syndrome, said Dr. Kenneth Alper, associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at NYU School of Medicine.
It’s marked by nausea, vomiting, muscle aches and tension, sweating, insomnia and anxiety, often for weeks to months, he said. During the withdrawal period, people often become desperate for the only thing sure to provide relief – more opioids.
Such was the case for Blackburn. She said that when she realized she was experiencing withdrawal, the only thing on her mind was how to get more drugs.
Blackburn continued to fall deeper down the rabbit hole. She failed all her classes her first semester of college, but she didn’t care, because all her problems disappeared when she got her next high.
Her parents took her out of school and entered her into an inpatient treatment facility. Blackburn remembers seeing the bill – $28,000 a month, half of which her parents had to pay out of pocket.
It would not be the last treatment Blackburn’s family had to pay for.
“I tried every traditional treatment that is out there – like all of them,” she said. “Inpatient, detox, outpatient, residential, 12 Step, support groups, smart recovery – you name it, I tried it. I was very blessed. My family had quality resources, so I received a lot more opportunities than a lot of people would receive.”
Eventually, Blackburn had all but given up. She said she was “an empty shell.” That’s when her parents happened to come across ibogaine. It was a risky move. Blackburn had to fly to Mexico to get treatment in a non-clinical environment, since the drug is not FDA-approved or legal in the U.S.
She didn’t expect it to be successful.