13/05/2026
I’m Dr. Gary Montemayor, Ph.D., D.N.M., and I’ve spent much of my time researching consciousness, healing, and the deeper intelligence of the body.
This was my second experience with ibogaine, and this time I was also there as a researcher. I was observing the process, collecting insight, and trying to understand what this medicine was really doing beneath the surface. I also have a paper coming out this year on this work.
But even with all that preparation, my ibogaine experience was nothing like I thought it would be.
It was better, but not in the way I expected.
I think part of me still expected the big visionary journey, the fractals, the colors, the mystical scenes people talk about.
That was not how it happened for me.
For me, it was very physical. I purged a lot I mean for hours. I slept for days. I went through it. At first, honestly, it felt more traumatic than beautiful, I saw death what some call the “serpents corridor”, where one goes before rebirth. There was a point where I felt I might not recover.
But then something changed.
Not immediately. Not dramatically. A few days and weeks later, after my body started to come back, I began to feel it.
Something inside me had shifted.
It was not a vision. It was not a movie in my mind. It was a feeling. A quiet clearing. A deeper reset. Like something old had been moved out of the way, and my system was reorganizing itself from the inside.
That was when I understood the medicine.
And I saw it in other people too.
I saw remarkable transformations. I saw people who looked like they were headed for tragedy, addiction, or total collapse come back with a different light in their eyes. I saw lives begin to turn around right in front of me.
That stays with you.
So my experience taught me not to judge ibogaine by whether you see beautiful images or not. Sometimes the real work is happening underneath the surface, through the body, through the purge, through the sleep, through the silence, through the recovery.
For me, the gift came later.
And it came after the storm, and it continues with every moment.