Ibogaine

Ibogaine is a naturally occurring psychoactive substance found in plants in the family Apocynaceae such as Tabernanthe iboga, Voacanga africana, and Tabernaemontana undulata. It is a psychedelic with dissociative properties.

During an eighteen year timeline, a total of 19 fatalities temporally associated with the ingestion of ibogaine were reported, from which six subjects died of acute heart failure or cardiopulmonary arrest. Its prohibition in many countries has slowed scientific research. Various derivatives of ibogaine designed to lack psychedelic properties (such as 18-MC) are under preliminary research.

The psychoactivity of the root bark of the iboga tree (Tabernanthe iboga), from which ibogaine is extracted, was first discovered by the Pygmy tribes of Central Africa, who passed the knowledge to the Bwiti tribe of Gabon. French explorers in turn learned of it from the Bwiti tribe and brought ibogaine back to Europe in 1899–1900, where it was subsequently marketed in France as a stimulant under the trade name Lambarène. Although ibogaine's anti-addictive properties were first widely promoted in 1962 by Howard Lotsof, its Western medical use predates that by at least a century.

Ibogaine is an indole alkaloid obtained either by extraction from the iboga plant or by semi-synthesis from the precursor compound voacangine, another plant alkaloid. The total synthesis of ibogaine was described in 1956. Structural elucidation by X-ray crystallography was completed in 1960.