Before: 30 Years in the Trades, Broken Sobriety, and the Internal Tornado

For nearly three decades, building homes in Amarillo had provided a solid livelihood, but beneath the surface was an ongoing battle with drugs and alcohol. Over the years, multiple stays in traditional residential facilities had provided temporary reprieves—even culminating in a six-year period of sobriety—but lasting freedom remained elusive:

“I’m 67 years old. I am a residential home builder in Amarillo, Texas. I’ve been doing that for close to 30 years. I’ve been in residential treatments before for drugs and alcohol and I’ve had somewhat sorted results. I had six years sobriety at one time, but I never could finally get a full 10 years of sobriety. I don’t know if it was the dogma of the constant going to meetings… after a period of time, I believe I got complacent and I let things slip through the cracks… and that put me back on a path of pain and anxiety.”

Falling off track quickly unraveled his emotional resilience. The daily stress of work and life transformed into an unmanageable cycle of panic and chaos:

“It was like a tornado because I didn’t know where to get on and get off. I was constantly dealing with turmoil. I couldn’t handle problems. I was anxious. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d say it was like a two. And I was looking to try something different that would impact me in a way that I could probably spend the rest of my life clean and sober and happy.”

As the substance use crept back, it brought a heavy blanket of guilt. Rather than asking for help, he pulled away from lifelong friends and colleagues:

“I’ve kind of put on the back shelf because I was ashamed of what I had become and where I was going, and I had to do something different.”

At 67, motivated by a desire to bring peace to his worried family and find a sustainable alternative to the revolving door of conventional recovery, he made the decision to explore ibogaine therapy.

During: Quiet Oversight and Surrendering the Overactive Mind

Arriving at the clinic, the open atmosphere offered an immediate contrast to the sterile, highly restrictive environments of past residential centers:

“I didn’t know what to expect… and it is not overwhelming like you’re under someone’s thumb or being watched. It’s very subtle, but they are there and you know it’s there if you need help with anything. They’re there to give you whatever you need.”

Approaching the flood dose, his habitual instinct to analyze and control everything triggered an initial spike of apprehension:

“The flood dose was very interesting. I didn’t know what to expect when I went into that. I had a lot of anxiety because I’m an overthinker and I tried to overanalyze things, and so I was spinning a little bit in my head about what it would be and what it wouldn’t be. I just didn’t know.”

Once the medicine took effect, the mental loop broken down, guiding him into an introspective, dreamlike state where he finally let go of resistance:

“Once I got into the dreamscape of the flood dose, I was able to relax and let the system help me and not try to fight it. And at the very end of that dose, I had a peace come over me that I probably never had before. And it gave me confidence that, you know, I could do certain things that I haven’t been able to do in the past as far as being happy. And it was life impacting.”

After: Rebuilt Vitality, Reconnected Family, and the Invisible Bridge

Emerging from the treatment, both the physical toll of addiction and the mental obsession to use were entirely absent:

“I haven’t had any symptoms, no cravings. My strength is coming back. My everything—my libido, the way I look at life, my happiness is like tenfold. I’m able to smile again. I feel a warmth in my heart that I haven’t had in a while.”

With the physical receptors cleared and his mental clarity restored, the shame that had isolated him for years began to dissipate, replaced by an active desire to rebuild relationships:

“I want to reach out to people that I haven’t reached out to and reconnect that I’ve kind of put on the back shelf because I was ashamed of what I had become and where I was going.”

Looking back on his journey from the panic of relapse to total inner calm, he described the psychological hurdle of choosing alternative medicine as stepping onto an unseen crossing:

“It’s like a leap of faith. It’s like you’re standing on a cliff and you know there’s a bridge across, but you can’t see the bridge—but you’ve got to have faith that the bridge is there. And that’s what you have to do with ibogaine. You have to take that leap of faith and give it a try. And I think that for most people that I’ve talked to and for myself, it’s been very impactful.”

For others whose families are urging them toward help while fear keeps them paralyzed, his final reflection speaks directly to pushing through that hesitation:

“One of the reasons that I came here was to kind of appease my family and to give them confidence that maybe I could do something different. I was scared. But don’t let that fear of you doing something that others want you to do [stop you]. They’re doing it because they love you and they’re not doing it in a way that’s going to hurt you. Anything here is going to help you. So take that leap of faith and come and let these people help you.”