05/04/2026
As wonderful as I found the Cascade-Analytics discussion with Deborah C. Mash of DemeRX on Friday, 1-May-2026, I also need to invoke the Beloved Memory of Howard Lotsof tonight.
Sharing a link to some of his biography and work in the field of ibogaine access, available at the Global Iboga/ine Therapy Alliance, which he founded in 2009.
An sharing an early timeline, copied from science writer Brian Vastag's December 2002 Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) publication: "Addiction Treatment Strives for Legitimacy," Vol. 288 No 4, 3096, 3099-101, as well as a link.
A Brief History of Ibogaine
1885: First published description of religious use of Tabernanthe iboga in Gabon appears in France; it reports that initiates of the Bwiti religion eat rootbark to induce visions and "meet their ancestors."
1939: Sold in France as a stimulant until 1970.
1962: Howard Lotsof, a 19-year-old from Staten Island, receives ibogaine from an L*D chemist and gives it to 19 other people. He later reports that five of seven he**in and co***ne addicts in this group, including himself, stop illicit drug use for up to 18 months and experience little or no acute withdrawal.
1970: The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classifies ibogaine as a Schedule I drug, making it illegal. Belgium also outlaws ibogaine, but today it remains legal in the rest of the world.
1985: Lotsof receives a US patent for use of ibogaine in opioid withdrawal. Additional patents describing ibogaine treatment for co***ne and other addictions follow.
1989: Ibogaine addiction treatment begins in informal clinics in the Netherlands. By
2002, informal clinics have opened in the United Kingdom, Canada, Slovenia, and Mexico.
1991: After intense pressure from activists, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) begins funding preclinical toxicology and other laboratory research on ibogaine.
1993: The FDA approves a US clinical trial of ibogaine sponsored by University of Miami neuroscientist Deborah Mash, PhD.
1995: NIDA review committee rejects funding for Mash's clinical trial.
1999: Mash opens ibogaine clinic on Caribbean island of St Kitt's. By late 2002, she has collected safety and efficacy data on 257 addicted patients.
2002: Long-running legal dispute between Lotsof and Mash ends with the University of Miami winning patents for noribogaine, a metabolite of ibogaine. Stanley Glick, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Neuropharmacology and Neuroscience at Albany Medical Center, signs contract to bring ibogaine derivative 18-MC into clinical trials.
-B.V.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/1845372
https://ibogaalliance.org/our-founder/
xoRBM/aIr/IBOInterrupt
Howard S. Lotsof, loving husband of Norma Alexander, died of liver cancer on January 31, in Staten Island. He was 67. He leaves a legacy as an innovator, advocate and activist for the therapeutic administration of ibogaine. His devotion to this medicine took him from the 1960’s Lower East Side dru...
