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May 12, 2023 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
46:29
Dr. Deborah Mash from DemeRx.com explains the IBOGAINE molecule for addiction treatment
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Welcome to today's interview on Brighton.com.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Brighton.
And as you know, we really care about the number of people in America who are suffering from serious drug addictions.
And the solutions that have been offered out there so far are not very good, not very effective.
And more and more lives are being lost to things like fentanyl and heroin and many others.
In fact, as you know, I shared one of my relatives died from a fentanyl overdose a couple of years ago.
Very sad.
But there are people out there, I think, very intelligent, compassionate people who are looking for solutions that can potentially help the millions of Americans who suffer from addiction.
And some of these solutions are in the process of being reviewed by the FDA.
and approved for treatment for addiction.
And we have with us today an extraordinary woman.
She's a founder, a neuroscientist, and she is with a company called Demerex, D-E-M-E-R-X.com is the website.
Her name is Dr.
Deborah Mash, and she is working on two molecular solutions.
That can help treat addictions and help save lives.
And we want to welcome you, Dr.
Deborah Mash, to the interview today.
Thank you for taking time with us.
Thank you for having me.
It's our honor to have you on.
And could you give us a little bit of a background of sort of who you are, what Demarex is about, and the two molecules that you're working on right now to treat addiction?
I'm a...
Founder and the CEO of Demarex, which is a company that I launched many years ago, actually, at the height of many different drug abuse epidemics that we've faced.
I live in Miami, Florida, so you can recall that we were on the front end loading of the cocaine epidemic.
And for many years, I worked at an academic medical center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
And I held NIH funding to understand the effects of drugs that are abused on the brain and behavior.
So I'm an NIH-funded investigator, and I spent many years in academia pursuing bench-to-bedside kind of research.
And in the 1990s, I heard about a molecule that came from Africa, from Mother Nature, You know, and it's very interesting when you think about addiction and addicting alkaloids.
You know, they come from Mother Nature too.
Yes.
Pain, nicotine, opium.
Mother Nature gives us those.
That's right.
And here's another molecule that comes from western equatorial Africa.
That may be an antidote to addiction and indeed there is open label evidence that supports this idea that Ibogaine can be an addiction interrupter.
So Ibogaine, this molecule, where is it normally found or is it extracted from certain types of plants right now?
It is.
It grows in the region, as I said, in western equatorial Africa in the part of the deep forests of Gabon and Cameroon.
And it has over 100 years of ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology behind it.
And before the pharmaceutical industry, before the synthesis of chemicals that became pharmaceuticals, Yes.
And the Europeans were really sort of in the forefront of all of that, looking for, you know, different plants and different medicines that could be used to treat all manner of things.
Yes.
And...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Please.
Well, I love what I'm hearing about this so far because Mother Nature does give us often answers.
And yet, what you're attempting to do through the pharmaceutical FDA approval approach is, I think, one of the positive uses of the pharmaceutical approach to medicine, which is you want to have quality control, you want to standardize doses, and You want to have efficacy testing and then you want to be able to reach all the distribution that is recognized by the medical establishment to reach addicted people and also potentially maybe allow insurance to cover this because it's a
good investment to get people off addictive drugs and bring them back to society.
Are all those things, does that ring true with what you're attempting to do?
150% rings true.
Okay.
You know, the If you look at molecules that have been approved by the pharmaceutical industry, and keep in mind, big pharma does not put money into the development of addiction medicines.
Really, most of the work was pioneered by the NIH. What have we got?
We have methadone, which we know came from Germany and comes into the United States, and we have the methadone clinics, which were substitution therapies to take people off of heroin and illicit opioid and put them on a On a medication that could substitute for, you know, going out and scoring heroin.
And, you know, here, there, and everywhere.
We then got buprenorphine.
And buprenorphine was a pain medicine.
Suboxone, Sublocade, Subutex.
And that was repurposed because that was developed and advanced in France for that purpose.
And again, it's another opioid.
So methadone and Buprenorphine are substitution therapies.
You can replace prescription opioids, which you may become addicted to, or heroin or fentanyl with long-term maintenance therapies.
And this is where most of the money is being spent right now, is to transition people from illicit drugs to On to prescription medication that's been approved by the FDA. And allow me to interject, the criticism that I hear of that is that you're simply shifting someone's addiction to now dependence on a pharmaceutical, but you haven't really allowed that person to be free from addiction, right?
So that's the problem with methadone.
Is that what you are aware of as well?
It is a kind of a definite issue for many patients because what are you treating?
You're treating the symptoms and you're not treating the underlying disease of addiction.
Why do people become addicted to drugs and alcohol?
Some of us...
We can go out and try a drug, try an opiate, try a prescription opiate, try a line of cocaine, smoke a cigarette, have a vodka martini, and we don't escalate to dependence.
Other people are vulnerable.
They're at risk.
And so there may be underlying traumas, self-medication, depression, anxiety, you know, the list goes on.
So that person gets into a situation where they, you know, Start using an opioid and they feel better.
They feel normal.
They feel better in social situations.
They have anxiety relief.
It helps to deal with the pain of trauma.
And then you get into the cycle of abuse.
How do you get off of drugs?
The problem is that for many patients who become detoxified from opiates in the early stages of recovery, they're at high risk for going back out and using heroin prescription opioids or fentanyl and they overdose.
Yes.
So the medical community is really in a rock and a hard place because we want to save lives.
And at the same time, we want something novel.
Clinicians, doctors, addiction medicine specialists, pain medicine doctors, addiction psychiatrists want alternative approaches to break the cycle of addiction and to get wean people off the opiates, get them off and transform the life of the person so that they can get them off and transform the life of the person so that they can be, you know, of sobriety.
So then that brings us right to the question about ibogaine.
You're an expert in neurophysiology and neurochemistry, so I'm curious to hear about how does ibogaine work?
I honestly don't know anything about the molecule, but does it help rewire the brain into a way where the person no longer needs that addictive substance and doesn't even need a replacement?
Please, please explain.
In layperson's terms, A person's term.
So, the mechanism.
If Ibogaine was discovered, let me back up and say this, that the seminal discovery of Ibogaine was not made in an academic medical center.
I didn't make the original discovery.
This comes from an underground railroad of addicts helping addicts, and a person by the name of Howard Lutzoff is credited with making this seminal discovery.
He took a dose of Ibogaine, Like other psychedelic medicines that were in use at the time or being explored at the time.
And he found that a single dose of Ibogaine would completely block the signed symptoms of withdrawal from opioids.
But not only that, he didn't crave or desire to go back out and get high.
Wow.
But absolutely interrupted his addiction.
And when I first learned about this, I thought...
You know, no.
Yeah, it sounds impossible.
No.
You know, no.
And I didn't believe it, but his path and my path crossed, and he invited me to go to Amsterdam and to see it with my own eyes, and I did that.
In 1992, the end of 1992, I got on an airplane.
I brought a medical doctor with me, and we traveled there, and I saw three young men detoxify from opioids.
And it was...
Not short of remarkable.
And what was remarkable to me as a person, as a neurochemist, neuropharmacologist, was how could one dose of this drug have all these lasting effects?
I have that same question.
They don't have to take it once a week or once a day?
No.
It's a single-dose administration.
And in fact, indeed, with the company that I'm working with now in partnership with the Thai Life Sciences, we're developing it as a hospital-based intervention.
Single-dose administration for relapse prevention.
But let's go on and tell you a little more about it.
Okay, please.
So right now, and also, ibogaine is converted to an active metabolite.
So you're getting the psychedelic effect of the ibogaine, but then when the ibogaine is cleared from the blood, there's a long-acting metabolite.
So we're looking at both of those molecules and trying to understand how they're contributing to this abrupt addiction interruption and helping people to not feel sick When they withdraw from drugs and to have mood improvement so they're not depressed, they're not anxious, they're not craving and they're not ready to go back out and score drugs again.
So let me get this straight, and please correct me if I have any of this wrong, but let's say someone is addicted to opioids and they decide to check into an addiction center or whatever is appropriate, and they stop the opioids and they're about to go through hell,
you know, withdrawal, and then they could take at that point a single administered dose, once it were approved, of course, of Ibogaine, And that that would allow them to, would it ameliorate the withdrawal symptoms or eliminate?
Or what do you say?
I mean, they would just take...
It blocks the signs and symptoms of withdrawal.
And this was what I saw with my own eyes with my colleague when we went over to Amsterdam and saw it for the first time.
And is this for opioids?
What about heroin?
What about...
It's a very good question.
So...
Backing up historically, when I saw this and I came back to my academic medical center, I wanted to tell everyone about this because I thought, this is important.
We need to test this in a controlled environment.
So I went to my colleagues at the university and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine was very supportive of me.
And we went up to the FDA at that time and we presented a protocol to the FDA. I also presented a grant application to the NIH to get funding for this.
The good and the bad of that story is that I was able to get FDA permission in 1993 and again in 1995, and the FDA was extremely collaborative with us.
They were providing real guidance and support, but they don't pay for clinical trials.
The FDA approves your study, they don't pay for it.
So now we had approval to test, but we didn't have the money.
And I couldn't get the money.
And I didn't control intellectual property.
And you know that drug development costs hundreds of millions of dollars.
That's right.
To get from a molecule to, you know, to the patient bedside.
So this was, we were, you know, all dressed up, ready to go, FDA approval, wonderful team of collaborators and scientists and clinicians, doctors behind this, no funding.
Can I interject something here?
I'm sorry to interrupt, but this seems so short-sighted on society's level because the investment in halting addiction pays off in orders of magnitude in terms of reduced...
Not just lives lost, but the economic implications of addiction and the health care, the stress on the health care system, beds being taken up by many addicts because of the emergencies they get into, first responders, paramedics, you name it.
And also the chaos caused in society by people dealing with addictions, which feeds into crime sometimes, thefts and so on, to steal things, to get money, to buy drugs.
This is an investment pennies on the dollar, it would seem.
But we have, yes, but we have a regulatory pathway.
And the other aspect of this is, keep in mind, this was the 1990s, and Ibogaine is part of the new renaissance of psychedelic medicines.
You know that psilocybin...
has breakthrough designation with the FDA for the treatment of depression.
Yes, we covered that.
MAPS and their development program and the pioneering efforts of Rick Doblin is now very close to getting the full green light to be used as a medical treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ibogaine enters this now, fast forward, you know, 30 years from when I was first talking to the FDA. Now we have more of a societal climate where we can look at these molecules.
These molecules got blacklisted.
They got scheduled and they got blacklisted.
They were being tested by qualified clinicians and scientists, but they got taken away from being studied.
And Big Pharma, their roadmap is to have a blockbuster drug.
If they're going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to get a drug to an approval, to get a label and an approval for use, they need to have intellectual property.
And they need to have a business model, a commercialization scheme to get paid back for that investment.
So Big Pharma pulled and never really put the money behind addiction.
But exactly what you're saying, I mean, now we're at a point where nothing's working, where we have a chemical weapon attack on our country with fentanyl.
Agreed.
120 people dying a day.
That's like a plane crash a day.
Yes.
In our country.
So we need to, you know, Start to think outside the box and say, what are we doing wrong?
What can we do different?
If Ibogaine is an addiction interrupter and it helps to transition patients so that we can get a rate of return on the healthcare delivery, we can save a lot of money.
And this, as you pointed out, is a trillion dollar cost, societal cost.
Well, you know, I have so many questions for you.
I live in the state of Texas, and I would think that even a large state like Texas or California or New York or Florida would themselves say, let's invest in this because it would save our state so much money in terms of treatment and dealing with addiction and helping people get back on their feet.
I mean, there's a humanitarian side of this, obviously beyond the economic side, but both of them have merit.
So let me ask you a couple of questions.
This is the first time we've ever spoken, so I apologize.
These are basic questions, but do you have enough money now?
Do you have investors?
Are you looking for investors?
How do you fund this right now?
Right.
Thank you for that.
So, you know, I founded Demarex, and in 2017, at the height of the opioid epidemic, at the end of that year, I stepped out of my academic job to work full-time on this.
So I'm all in.
I kind of had a crisis in my own conscience about Ibogaine and the metabolite and said, you know, people are dying.
This is ridiculous already.
I need to finish what I started.
We raised funds.
I've reorganized our company, Demarex, and in 2020, we were successful in getting a joint venture with Atai Life Sciences.
Atai Life Sciences is a publicly traded company, and they've made a commitment for advancing these types of molecules through regulatory approval to make them available to patients who desperately need them.
So we're working with Atai, and Atai is funding the clinical trials, and we're advancing Ibogaine that way.
Now, do we have enough money going forward?
You know, what is going to be the development path to get this done?
Are we looking for strategic public-private partnerships?
I think all of these things would be a yes, because we need to go fast.
I'm getting old.
This is getting old.
People are dying.
I want to go fast.
I'm tired of this.
We also have the metabolite noribogaine, and we're looking to develop noribogaine as much more of a standard use.
So in other words, ibogaine would be given as an addiction interrupter, relapse prevention for opioid use disorder under full medical monitor in a setting where you have doctors to ensure patient safety.
Yes.
Oribogaine could be developed in a pill, a patch, or a depot to help maintain long-term sobriety.
It's not an addicting substance, nor Ibogaine.
I see.
So this, we wouldn't be replacing one addicting molecule with another one.
We'd have an alternative.
And what some new information that's coming out and what's really exciting about the psychedelic renaissance is that, you know, when you abuse drugs and alcohol, what do you do?
You damage your heart, you damage your liver, but, oh yes, you damage your brain.
There's new evidence coming out from psychedelic medicines, whether it's ketamine, psilocybin, MDMA, that they're actually turning on growth factors in the brain.
Windows of neuroplasticity, which allow people to be able to really have, perhaps that's part of the mechanism of this long-term open-label efficacy.
But again, it's got to be proved in the clinic.
And there's some novel in a placebo-controlled, you know, proper FDA-approved study.
But the open-label information, because people are so desperate...
People are so desperate.
They're going now to offshore XUS and to Ibogaine clinics, and I'm not endorsing that.
It's really buyer beware.
You have to be very careful if you're going to go take a drug that's not approved for use in a setting.
You really need to do your homework on this.
And I want your listeners to understand that because Ibogaine has risks and has been associated with adverse events.
So you need to take it under a medical monitor.
The data, what we're hearing from people, and I get things in my internet almost every day where a mother or a father will write to me and say, my son or daughter went off and took Ibogaine in Mexico or elsewhere.
This helped him or this helped her.
And I'm glad you mentioned that there can be adverse effects of this.
However, and I'm sure you're well aware of this, this is one of those cases where it's risk versus reward.
And if we look at the math on that, it's very simple.
What's the risk of not helping someone overcome addiction?
That risk is catastrophic.
And if we have an intervention, and by the way, even my own audience might be surprised to hear me saying this, because so often we're critical of what big pharma does with its business model that often doesn't necessarily help people, but rather just sort of exploits them.
But when there are cases where a molecular intervention can save a life, Can restore humanity, can restore someone to society, even if there's a risk.
Let's say there's a 1% chance that this person has a very serious adverse event.
But there might be a 50% chance that if that person is not cured of addiction or treated for their addiction, that they're going to end up dead one day.
I mean, I don't know what the exact number is, but it's a significant number.
So we have to think about risk versus reward in these cases.
This isn't just treating high blood pressure.
This is treating somebody who is in a situation that very often leads to suicide or death.
And aren't I correct to point that out?
Does that make sense?
Absolutely.
Well stated.
This is a life-threatening illness.
We see it every day.
It's a life-threatening condition.
And I lost a loved one, someone very, very dear to me to an addiction, at 56.
And I wish that something like this was available for him.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Well, and I have the same wish, you know, for my family member now passed years ago, but we are all living in a society where there are many people who are addicted to substances, and sometimes no fault of their own.
Maybe they underwent surgery, and they were put on opioids, and then they needed more opioids, and the prescription ran out, and so on.
Life is difficult right now for a lot of people for a lot of reasons.
But let me ask you on a practical note.
If ibogaine is a naturally occurring molecule, as you mentioned, how does Demarex establish intellectual property with this molecule and obtain some...
Because an FDA approval is really an exclusivity arrangement, essentially.
A license for exclusivity for some period of time.
How does Demarex solve or deal with this if the molecule is also out there?
Demarex and a tie...
This is an important question for all of these classes of molecules.
Noribogaine has robust intellectual property, and as we get in the clinic and we learn more about ibogaine, there will be new intellectual property that will be emerging.
I mean, that comes with the clinical development plan.
Okay.
You can do different things.
You can have IP around, you can have patents around synthesis, formulation, you know, methods of use, etc.
So I think, you know, the more we learn, and that's why clinical trials are so important, because you do exactly what you said, which is to define the risk-benefit profile of the molecule.
Yes.
You optimize the Ibogaine as a method of care therapy, and And, you know, you advance it to a point where it can be commercialized.
Yes.
And my other question then, because, you know, I'm a business owner too, so some of these business questions come to mind, but you mentioned that at least in one protocol it's a single dose.
So, obviously, that single dose would have to be somewhat, let's say, high price, because it's the one dose that...
Potentially solves the problem.
So wouldn't that one dose have to be maybe $25,000 or something?
And even if it were that level, seems worth it to me if it works, by the way.
I'm not even saying that that's too much.
But wouldn't that have to be somewhere in that range?
And we're going to learn more about this.
Again, with the psychedelic companies that are advancing these molecules, they're going to start to price them for use.
And addiction is a chronic relapsing disease.
We know this, all right?
So even if you put someone into remission, which is what you're doing, it's an addiction interrupter, you're going to put it into remission.
We don't know whether you take Ibogaine once a year, you take it every six months, maybe you need it three times in your life.
Maybe you relapse, you go back and you get another treatment.
So we don't know yet.
I mean, that's why you must do the clinical trials.
Demonstrate what that window is.
You put the disease of addiction into remission for how long?
Is it 90 days?
Is it six months?
We know from the work that we did that When I established an offshore clinic, and we had 277 people who took Ibogaine in a government-approved facility in the Caribbean.
And we followed them, and we studied them, and they participated in the research.
And for some subjects, it had long-term effects, and for others, they needed more than one dose.
So again, we've got to get into patients.
We've got to have the real data.
Well, I wonder, too, if there's something about the genetics of different individuals who are metabolizing the molecules more quickly.
I mean, I'm a food scientist, and I know this about MSG, for example.
People of Asian ethnicity are able to very easily metabolize MSG, and they don't suffer from headaches and flushing and things like a lot of Native Americans do.
I'm sure you're going to be looking at all that.
But I have another question for you.
You're an expert in neurochemistry, but I want to ask you about the neurosocial triggers in this, because as I understand it, having interacted with my now past family member trying to help him, What happened to him or what happens to a lot of addicts is in isolation, they may be fine, but they go back to their social circle.
And in that social circle, those people are users.
And that pattern re-triggers the comfort zone in their brain.
I want to be socially accepted, got to do drugs with these people over here.
Is that not true?
Absolutely.
I mean, the social peer pressure...
It's one of the big drivers.
I have a slide that I show when I give talks where you talk about why do you get stuck in this cycle of abuse?
Well, it could be that you're mood disordered and you're self-medicating depression or anxiety.
I mentioned that.
But also there's learned behavior.
Drugs hijack the learning mechanism of the brain.
So when you take a drug or alcohol and you feel good, You make an association.
It's a learned association with that setting where you use the drug.
And so when you go back into the setting, you trigger that memory of the high.
So absolutely.
But what's interesting about Ibogaine is that, again, what I said about this neuroplasticity.
I think when you become dependent, drug dependent or alcohol dependent, what you Basically, what's happening is this is plasticity in the brain, too.
I've studied genetics and genomics of the brain, and many different markers turn on.
You actually remodel the actual DNA in the cell, the cells that are part of the addiction loop.
And doctors and neuroscientists and genomic scientists are looking for those pathways to try to repurpose molecules to kind of reset that.
It looks like Ibogaine does reset that.
So if it's doing that, then you can be in a surrounding where it's not going to trigger that memory of the high.
And that's what we need to learn.
We need to learn more about that.
But people need to work a program.
There's no simple miracle cure with Ibogaine.
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
One of my patients, if you let me say this, one of my patients said it best.
He said, Dr.
Mash, Ibogaine is the high dive of recovery.
You're going to get out further and farther in the pool, but you still need to swim when you hit the water.
I completely agree, and I want to reinforce what you just said, that in no way are we saying that there's one magical dose that's going to take over the responsibility of the patient taking that journey of self-healing.
And that they need a support network, they need proper oversight, they need care.
This is a journey that needs tremendous support in order to be successful but the rewards are quite great on the other side.
I want to clarify, did you mention that Ibogaine, you called it a psychedelic itself, I believe.
Yes.
And by that, I mean, do you mean in the general sense that it has some psychedelic properties as well?
It does.
Okay, I'm curious.
Ibogaine is dose-dependent, so when you get up to certain higher doses, it's Not LSD-like, it's not psilocybin-like, it's not MDMA-like.
It seems to be, I've never taken it, but what the patients tell us is that it's different than these other classes of molecules.
But what it does do is that the patients report about 35-45 minutes, an hour after they take an oral dose, that it's What we call an oneric experience.
It's like a waking dream.
If you've ever had a lucid dream or you wake up from a lucid dream and you're like, wow, I was right there in that dream.
Well, they're experiencing this.
And those visions often center on early life events, traumas, Bad things that happen when you use drugs and alcohol.
And what the patients tell us, it's like a fourth step in the NAAA movement where you get a moral inventory.
So some of the visionary, people are very excited about the visionary experience of Ibogaine, which lasts anywhere from about four to eight hours.
And then it shuts off abruptly and there's a deep phase of cognitive introspection where you're kind of piecing the information that came to you while you were under the experience.
And this is profoundly transformative.
Wow.
And that's why many in the medical field and the psychiatry field are looking at these classes of molecules, whether it's psilocybin or Or LSD, the old LSD therapy that was done, you know, many, many decades ago that all got shut down, that these molecules now may give us windows onto the brain and behavior.
And you made a very important comment when you said, you know, people need to take back control of their lives.
Ibogaine helps you to rewrite your own mythology.
So I was addicted to Yesterday, today I'm not.
And now I have an opportunity To change it up.
What's going to be different this time?
To take back the locus of control.
That's extraordinary.
I'm really glad you brought that up because we live out our lives through internal narratives.
And those narratives are influenced by a lot of external forces.
And sometimes they're false narratives and sometimes they're destructive.
And although you probably don't use this term, but I would say in a general sense, some people might describe what you're describing as kind of Hacking your own neurology.
Now, again, maybe that's a negative connotation with that term.
I love it.
Yes?
I love it.
You like that.
You use it.
Oh, you do?
Okay.
You just taught me, hacking your own neurology.
It's well stated.
Yeah, it's hacking your own neurology with positive intent.
And...
This term, you used the term neuroplasticity, which that's one of my favorite terms because human civilization would not exist without neuroplasticity.
And yet that process can be hijacked through addictive molecules that rewire the brain in a destructive way.
But we can also choose to rewire it in a positive way by harnessing molecules from nature, which is what you're doing.
And I wonder, was in the ethnobotanical use of this molecule, was it, I'm guessing, used ritualistically by shamans and so on?
It was used, yes.
It was an act of sacrament in the Bwiti religion, in the parts of Gabon, in the deep forest.
And It was really given in the highest dose, maybe once or twice in a lifetime only, but it helped to bond people together and was very powerful and very sacred medicine.
I would imagine so, yeah.
And that, you know, even from an anthropological point of view throughout the history of the world and all the different ethnicities, they have turned to many local plants for such things.
There's even a plant in Texas.
That is, the Latin word for it is like vomicus, but it's actually, it's a very common shrub, and it's the only North American source of naturally occurring caffeine, and the Native Americans would overdose, you could say, on caffeine, and they would have caffeine-induced visions, and then they would vomit, but this was part of a ceremony right here in Texas.
There you go.
It's amazing when you look at the history of all this.
So, can I ask you about FDA then?
What's your roadmap look like for FDA consideration and approval and is it appropriate for grassroots people to help provide any kind of, I don't know, awareness about this?
Thank you for that question.
I'm with you on being a, you know, kind of citizen scientist.
I am with you on that.
I believe food is medicine.
I think we need to take back the power of healing ourselves and become good consumers.
And yes, the grassroots, the, you know, giving, you know, requesting that we go fast will help to put Pressure on stakeholders to help with the regulatory path for approval of Ibogaine.
And I think there's a lot of people, you know, there's a whole network right now of Navy SEALs and some of our ex-military men and women who suffered blast trauma and became addicted and they suffered from PTSD.
I get phone calls all the time from people who have served us in our country and have gone offshore to take Ibogaine.
And some of them have actually participated in neuroimaging studies after their doses.
And that's what we're learning about this neuroimaging and the neuroplasticity.
Excellent work that will be reported out of Stanford University.
So the grassroots, the real world evidence, families who have lost loved ones, all of this comes together.
And I don't think it can come together fast enough.
So I really appreciate the message you're giving to your listeners.
We need all the help we can get.
Well, so what can listeners do, for example, on their social media?
Would it make sense to hashtag Ibogaine?
Yes.
Like, we need solutions for addiction?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Spread the word.
Talk to your doctors.
Talk to your clinicians.
I'm looking forward to having...
It's been a long time since I've been in front of the FDA with Ibogaine more recently, with Nora Ibogaine, but we're preparing now to go back in and have conversations.
The Ibogaine research has been approved for For testing in the UK, and the FDA equivalent of the UK has been very collaborative.
I know that the FDA will be very collaborative when we go and bring the safety information to them, and that they will help to guide us.
And hopefully, you know, we'll be able to do something innovative with the FDA. FDA can give breakthrough designation.
They can give fast-track designation.
Yes, I was just thinking that.
You know, the FDA, the men and women there, want to help us.
Want to help to advance.
And I know that they want to help come up with novel mechanisms.
You know, we just have the new naumethene, the new opion molecule that's going to be approved for use for fentanyl overdose.
You saw how Narcan moved forward very quickly.
So we're going to save people from overdoses.
Let's give them an alternative to help take back their life.
That's an interesting point you just brought up.
What was that molecule you just mentioned?
Nalmethene.
Okay, you might have to spell that for me.
I'm not familiar with that one.
A longer acting opioid antagonist.
So, you know, the fentanyl, you have to have multiple doses of Narcan in order to, you know, bring risk often to resuscitate someone from an opioid OD to fentanyl.
So this molecule is going to show that it can save people that are overdosing on fentanyl.
Well, I'm really glad that you mentioned our men and women in uniform, our veterans and active duty soldiers, but also first responders.
So, you know, we, in my universe, we interact with a lot of law enforcement and a lot of Navy SEALs and special forces.
And law enforcement deal with...
Contact exposure to fentanyl or inhaling it during an arrest, for example.
And I've seen, I guess, Narcan injections that have saved lives of law enforcement right there on the spot because they were going through an accidental exposure overdose during an arrest event.
So these antagonist molecules are really critical for first responders, I think.
Absolutely.
And, you know, we all should carry them.
Because you never know where you're going to be.
You may see someone who, you know, is...
Suffering from an opioid-related overdose.
Wow.
I carry it in my purse.
Really?
Okay, I didn't know.
Can people get that over the counter?
Yeah, they can now.
They can now.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Well, next time I go to Austin, I'll bring some because I don't know what kind of craziness is going on in downtown Austin these days.
There are different parts in Colorado and whatnot.
They're giving them away.
They're distributing them.
Wow.
Okay.
Well, this is really critical information, and I want to thank you for taking the time to share this with us, and I hope you'll keep us informed.
And I want to say to our audience, this is a positive use case.
For the pharmaceutical approach and going to the FDA and making the argument and presenting the data and saying, look, we need this now.
So I want to wish you the best in this, Dr.
Mash.
I think that the world needs this solution that you're bringing to us.
We're very grateful.
I'm very grateful to you and to my joint venture partner, Atai Life Sciences, because they're funding this and with the support of people like yourself and others and families, We'll get this done.
We'll make this available for patients.
Any idea?
Are we talking five years out?
Is there any projection at all?
I don't have long.
Let's shorten it.
Let's hope it's faster.
I agree.
This is an emergency.
This is a national emergency.
We're losing, what, 60,000 men a year in America alone, something just to fentanyl, I believe.
Yes.
This is, okay, a real crisis, but we've got solutions.
Well, thank you, Dr.
Deborah Mash.
It's been a pleasure speaking with you.
Thank you very much.
All right.
And the website, folks, again, is Demerex, D-E-M-E-R-X.com, if you want to learn about this.
Just to be clear, I'm not an investor.
I haven't been paid for this.
This just came up on my radar, and Dr.
Deborah Mash was kind enough to join us for this first-time interview.
And I think this is a very valuable solution that we need to really embrace as a society.
So let your governors know about it.
Let your congresspeople know about it.
Let your senators know about it.
And let's see if we can get the FDA to put this on emergency approval for something that can save lives.
Thank you for watching.
I'm Mike Adams here of Brighton.com.
Feel free to repost this interview on other platforms.
Thank you all for watching.
Take care.
I want to bring your awareness to a natural solution.
And I know the folks at this company.
It's called Crave Kicker.
K-R-A-V-E. I've got the website up here.
I'm not part of this company.
They're not paying me for this.
They did send some product samples.
Cravekicker.com offers products.
I've got some.
They sent me some from my desk.
I've got them here.
That have mucuna.
So this is an herbal approach to...
Helping you deal with nicotine addictions or sugar addictions.
And I want to be clear, this does not treat fentanyl addictions or opioids.
There's no such claims and it doesn't work like that.
These can help your natural production of dopamine to help ease your journey off of nicotine or sugar addictions, which is going to be a challenge no matter what.
But this can help you along the way.
A lot of people rave about this as a natural supplement.
It's called CraveKicker, K-R-A-V-E, CraveKicker.com.
They did extend a discount to our audience.
If you use discount code RANGER, you can save, I believe it's 15%.
And they've got several different flavors, and they're doing some great work, and they're working on some other products as well.
I hope to bring you some more news about them as they release other things.
But just check them out, CraveKicker.com.
We don't earn an affiliate fee or anything like that off the sales, but I want to help these folks out because I think they're doing good work.
And also, you know, look, I think that Demarex is doing really important work through the pharmaceutical channel, through the FDA. And this might be one of those cases where the FDA is actually making a good choice that could be in the interest of public health.
And I want to support that kind of effort when it is a positive application that can help save lives as well.
You know, natural world, pharmaceutical world, or in this case, pharmaceuticals from the natural world that might be recognized by the medical establishment and can help save lives.
Yeah, I'm all in favor of that when it's backed by clinical trials and efficacy and safety as well.
So a lot of interesting things to check out.
The good news is that if you're addicted to something, no matter what it is, it's not hopeless.
Help is coming.
There are solutions that are available even right now.
There are some natural solutions.
There are some behavioral solutions.
There are some upcoming pharmaceutical solutions.
Bottom line, more options are coming.
We've got to deal with the addiction problem in America in a compassionate and efficacious way that helps people restore their lives.
So thank you for watching.
Mike Adams here at TheHealthRanger, Brighteon.com.
A global reset is coming.
And that's why I've recorded a new nine-hour audiobook.
It's called The Global Reset Survival Guide.
You can download it for free by subscribing to the naturalnews.com email newsletter, which is also free.
I'll describe how the monetary system fails.
I also cover emergency medicine and first aid and what to buy to help you avoid infections.
So download this guide.
It's free.
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