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[Tyler] What do you think the end
of this documentary should be?
I'd like to be sober...
at the end of the documentary.
But I'd just like to be sober.
[Adrianne] I think we should just take a walk down Hastings
'cause there's always, like, crazy stuff going on.
I'm gonna see lots of people that know who I am
and know me and they're gonna offer me drugs.
They're gonna assume that's why I'm here.
You may go over there by yourself and I won't go over.
I owe money to people on Main and Hastings.
That's the corner
and there's a lot of drug activity that goes on there.
So you go over there, I'll meet you on the corner over there.
There's a fentanyl crisis, opiate overdose epidemic
going on in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver
and all over Canada and the U.S.
I'm playing Russian roulette every time I pick up drugs.
I never know if this is gonna be the hit
that is gonna kill me.
I've tested positive for fentanyl.
It's in everything.
The problem is people don't have a tolerance
to this super powerful drug.
I don't know how many people
have died in the last six months that I know.
Alcohol was the gateway but, um...
I'm addicted to the harder stuff.
But really I'm what you would call a "garbage can" addict.
I will do anything.
Anything to not be sober,
anything to get out of myself,
anything to escape.
I just moved back to my dad's house.
I was so depressed.
I was considering suicide and I didn't want my parents
to have to clean out my apartment.
I've been homeless a few times and kind of couch-surfed
and I've had to stay in a hostel.
I've never had to actually live on the Downtown Eastside.
I have parents that wouldn't ever have allowed that.
It's just dumb luck.
Like, there's-- there's no difference between me
and, like, that person that's shooting up in the alley
or that, you know, that you see on the street.
I'm Adrianne and I've been struggling with addiction
for about 20 years now.
I always wondered why I ended up as an addict.
I didn't have a horrible upbringing,
I had really good parents,
um, never wanted for anything.
I didn't think when I was 12 or 13
that I wanted to grow up and be a drug addict.
I wanted to go to law school. I...
had big dreams when I was younger.
It's been really hard on my family.
It's been hard on my friends.
I don't know what my parents think.
They have, probably, a lot of guilt
thinking it's their fault that I'm this way and
that's not true.
I don't know. I think they're just
really worried and scared and...
it's probably really hard for them.
[Tyler] Do you know of any traumas
that have happened in your past
that could have led you to become an addict?
I've thought a lot about... past traumas.
Going through puberty in high school is pretty traumatic.
Changing relationships with boyfriends and things like that.
But there's no major trauma that sticks out.
My brain has learned that when I'm in pain,
emotional or otherwise, if I take a drug,
I will escape that pain which kind of...
sends me deeper into that spiral of depression and anxiety.
[Tyler] I've known Adrianne for years.
She's always struggled with anxiety and depression
and addiction as well.
And in the last few years, things have gotten a lot worse,
but she was hiding that from her friends and her family.
She texted me
said she was thinking about killing herself.
She said she fucked up again.
She used drugs.
She spent her tax return, took out a payday loan.
She's gonna jump off a bridge.
And I'd just learned that microdosing psychedelics
was good for depression, so I asked if she'd ever tried that
and then she told me about a clinical trial
that was being done using--
Psilocybin, which is the active ingredient in mushrooms
to treat addiction.
[Tyler] And now you just don't want to wait for it?
-No... -[Tyler] So...
I don't know if I'm going to live
to see the clinical trial.
I might overdose and die.
[Rick Doblin] The field of psychedelic medicine,
of psychedelic psychotherapy,
is fundamentally helpful
for the treatment of depression and addiction.
It can help people break out of patterns like that.
I have heard anecdotally from a number of sources
that taking hallucinogens
could curb cravings for alcohol,
drugs, smoking, all those things.
Addiction is a way to run away from pain,
to run away from difficult experiences.
And so under the influence of psychedelics,
the things that people have been pushing down
and suppressing and running from will come to the surface.
[Tyler] But you did say that you're scared of psychedelics.
And therefore you're scared of taking mushrooms.
Yeah, I guess I'm afraid of confronting my emotions,
but I think I'm more afraid
of living another 20 years like this.
[Tyler] What we need to know is what you'd wanna do next.
And just figure out if
doing a full dose would be the next step.
[sighing heavily]
I was more, like, I'm honestly more
interested in the microdosing.
I would try a full dose.
I said I was willing to try a full dose.
[Tyler] The clinical trials,
that was not microdosing.
That's why we did a bigger dose.
I'm interested to see if a full dose
does change my brain chemistry or has any effects on me,
but I'm not trying to reproduce this clinical trial.
[Tyler] We can't duplicate it because
there's no medical professionals,
but this is the other thing, so if you take it then...
-how, like, where-- -I'm just...
curious to try... to see what happens.
[Tyler] We're bit nervous that Adrianne
might have a bad trip on the magic mushrooms
and maybe have a psychotic episode.
We're not really too sure
what to do in a situation like that.
We don't have any experience with psychedelics.
And here we are with cameras
and illegal magic mushrooms...
you know, trying to help our friend
who's depressed, but, uh...
I guess we'll just see how it goes.
And hope for the best.
[Tyler] What can we do to help today?
I have no idea what you can do to help, like,
I'm not even really sure about this entire process,
but I'm open to it
because I kind of am out of options right now.
[Nick] Would there be a more ideal scenario to do it?
Probably.
I mean, we're doing it, it's fine. I've done worse.
I've put myself in far more dangerous...
situations.
OK.
Here goes.
Do I just go, like-- eat it like this?
I've had some negative...
mental health experiences.
So, I wouldn't want to...
end up in the psych ward again or something.
[Nick] Adrianne, you're not gonna end up in the psych ward.
If you have any negative thoughts, just...
they're gonna pass.
Yeah.
[Tyler] How do you feel about taking that amount?
I just generally don't like experiencing
any negative emotions.
I usually avoid those, like... quite a bit.
By any means necessary.
So I'm worried I'm gonna have negative emotions.
[yawning]
I'm definitely, like, feeling something right now
for sure.
Yeah.
I don't think you're gonna get much, though.
Like, I think it's one of those things
that I have to go through the process.
I think right now, I'm just, like, really high
and, like, I don't think you're going to get anything.
How long was that?
[Nick] Couple of hours.
That you were gone?
-[Nick] Yeah. -[Tyler] Were you crying?
I was off my face.
[Tyler] OK.
Then I just went into the bathroom.
I don't know why
and I just started crying.
[Nick] Yeah.
I was, like, outside myself, looking at myself, like...
like, a drug addict. Like...
I was anyone on the street.
I just realized, that like...
I don't care about myself
the way that I care about other people.
Like, when I look at someone else
and have compassion for someone else,
I just don't have that for myself.
So, it takes all the bullshit away, like...
and you just kind of see things...
the way they really are.
Any alone time is usually just...
pretty dark.
I guess the dark thoughts take over a lot.
And I feel like I was surrounded--
I'm surrounded a lot by the dark--
the dark voices.
And it just gave me some breathing space from that.
I remember feeling very calm and, like, not anxious...
and just...
very peaceful.
I am Rosalind Watts
and I'm a clinical psychologist at the Imperial College
Psychedelic Research Group.
At Imperial, we did a study
where people with treatment-resistant depression
came in for two experiences
with magic mushrooms or psilocybin.
And so I interviewed everyone about their experience
and what it has been like
and how they had changed afterwards
and the most common theme was
that depression felt like disconnection,
disconnection from self, other and the world around them.
And then after their psychedelic session,
they went from being very disconnected to very connected.
They could feel a whole range of emotions
rather than just constant apathy or sadness.
And most of the participants in our study cried and they wept
and the tears were usually because of
this-- the amazing feeling of sinking in
to self love and self compassion
after many, many years of hating themselves.
They're constantly in their heads,
berating themselves, criticizing themselves,
thinking how they can change it, make it better,
and then they're often in these cyclical behaviors too,
so needing to-- to do something to numb the pain,
needing to take something, needing it 'cause it's just
so hard to sit through it.
So they get locked into these vicious circles
and downward spirals.
And who you really are isn't
your constant negative thoughts on a loop.
The psychedelic experience
can break those rigid thought patterns
it can break that default mode network,
it can break through these behavioral patterns too.
[Adrianne] I have these cats and I would never dream of
hurting them or doing anything bad to them.
I take care of them, but I don't treat myself
with that same kind of love and compassion.
With magic mushrooms people often describe
this absolute pouring of love.
Love for themselves, love for other people,
love for the world, just this beautiful love.
It's love that people may never, ever have experienced before.
[Adrianne] I don't think I've felt like that
since I was, like, a child.
It's... weird. It was weird.
But beautiful.
That self-love is something that does often fade.
People access it so strongly,
and they think it's never gonna go away.
It requires more work. It requires more practice.
Those new pathways require being trodden on a few times
to really get them deeply embedded.
When magic mushroom therapy is done well in a safe place
you witness people having more benefit
from just one or two sessions
than they've described having from 10 or 20 years of therapy.
Over the last year I have
contemplated suicide,
sometimes feeling like that was my only way out.
And when I was on mushrooms, I did ask myself that question,
whether suicide was the only option for me
or an option for me and, um, my answer was that...
it's not.
[Paul Stamets] What these mushrooms do is they
give you the ability not only to see your position
in the universe and nature and everything is all connected,
but you get the feeling that it's OK
and it's OK to be you.
It's OK for you to-- to have these problems and issues.
But you're better than that.
Magic mushrooms allow you
to change your mind... literally.
Our studies have shown that magic mushrooms
disrupt the default mode network.
So, deactivate the ego, essentially.
When that happens, rather than this very rigid brain pattern,
you see hyper-communication in the brain,
you see hyper-connectivity.
All the different parts of the brain all talk to each other.
[Ingrid Pacey] With psychedelics the whole brain
starts to relate in ways that it's not used to doing
and that's why we get new insights
and new perspectives.
[Adrianne] Using psychedelics, it's about,
connecting with yourself, connecting with nature
and connecting with a different part of your brain.
All the psychiatric medications
just dulled me and numbed me out.
I've been constantly medicated by doctors.
Zyprexa, Seroquel, lithium, Zoloft,
Celexa, gabapentin, lamotrigine,
risperidone, valproic acid, trazodone,
Wellbutrin, Concerta and many other antidepressants
and other psychiatric medications.
None of them have helped me.
Currently I've stopped taking all medications
except methadone.
It's a substitute opiate to prevent you
from going into withdrawals
and it's a regulated dose given to me at the pharmacy every day.
Methadone doesn't make you feel very good.
I feel tired when I'm on a high dose.
[Rosalind Watts] Magic mushrooms are not addictive.
In fact, magic mushrooms are anti-addictive.
If you keep taking them, they stop working.
Big pharma succeeds when people take the same medication again,
and again and again, and again.
[Ingrid Pacey] People suffer a lot of side effects,
headaches, weight gain and blood pressure.
Their sexual drive is eradicated.
They're juggled from one antidepressant to another,
there probably is maybe 30% of people
that do get benefit from antidepressants,
but their usefulness and their efficacy
is much less than people had hoped.
[Rosalind Watts] They don't provide you with an opportunity
to really explore your suffering.
They don't get to the root of the problem.
Psychedelic experiences can be
profoundly beneficial for people's lives.
We're taking people off medications that they've been on
-for long periods of time. -[Ingrid Pacey] It was amazing
how often, once we started working more deeply,
that early childhood trauma would come up,
you know, a variety, emotional, physical,
and, of course, childhood sexual abuse.
What drives a lot of people to addiction is trauma,
is difficult experiences in childhood
and you can help somebody break an addiction
but what about the factors that drove them to the addiction?
[Tyler] Do you think you have PTSD?
Maybe, like, I think that.
Like, I was asking my mom, why do I do this to myself?
There's got to be a reason like...
there's gotta be a reason that I continually
self-harm and continue down this path that clearly...
there's some kind of pain,
obviously I'm in some kind of pain
and I don't know why I mean she did say, like,
"I think you're just a really sensitive person,"
which I think is true, um, but yeah, like,
so I think there is something, like, yeah...
[Tyler] How do you know if somebody has PTSD, then?
There's a list of symptoms which has to do with,
you know, re-experiencing the event,
very high anxiety, being really jumpy, um,
you know, avoiding, say, the geographic area
where it might have happened.
Some people are more anxious.
Some people just get numbed out and dissociate,
they freak out
if there's anything suggestive of what happened.
They keep reliving the trauma and dreaming about it
and thinking about it and...
or it can be the numbing, so that there's just--
they don't feel much, they don't relate much.
You can have trauma but not necessarily have PTSD?
-You can. -Yeah.
You can, but...
for the people who end up with PTSD,
then for some of them, you know,
addiction is a way of dealing with that.
So is it possible to have PTSD but not really remember,
if it was something that happened
when you were really young you might not remember it
but you're having--
experiencing all these behaviors,
but you're not really understanding why.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[Adrianne] It's been exactly one week since my first experience
with psilocybin mushrooms.
For the first four or five days after the experience
I had quite a bit of energy.
I was feeling really motivated to make some changes in my life.
[Nick] You look really stressed out, are you OK?
Wednesday, I relapsed. I used heroin.
And I also used heroin on Thursday.
I might still be using but I definitely think I'm in
a much better place, emotionally.
I really have this sense that, like,
I'm being guided in a certain direction
and there's a reason that I'm on this path now
with the psychedelics,
but I've kind of hit a wall with the psilocybin because
it's really hard to curb that physical craving for the heroin
[Trevor Millar] If you've been dependent
and using opiates for a long time,
your body's natural internal opiates
don't get produced anymore.
Take that away and all of a sudden a person is in dire pain
and that's what physical withdrawal is.
If you know all you need is a little bit of that opiate
to feel normal, then you're gonna reach for that opiate.
Psilocybin mushrooms can be particularly helpful
to people who are addicted to opiates
after they've been through the withdrawal.
[Adrianne] So, I'm checking into detox.
[Tyler] You know where we're going?
Yeah, sort of, just drive.
[Nick] Why are you anxious?
Because I don't wanna go through withdrawals. It's really awful.
Being down here too, like, I really just wanna fuckin'...
pick up.
I'm not really gonna get anywhere
until I completely sober up
and that's when the real work is gonna get done, right?
Let's go.
[intercom] Hi, can I help you?
[Tyler] Yeah, I'm here to visit Adrianne.
[Tyler] Will they let you go back on methadone?
I just got out of detox.
I've never been so dope sick in my life.
Barfing my guts out.
Methadone is the devil.
You're actually better off switching to heroin
and then trying to detox off heroin than methadone.
I had a really bad reaction to the Suboxone.
It made me so anxious and agitated.
After the second day I told them,
"I can't take this, just give me my methadone back."
But I talked to the doctor.
There's another alternative which is a long-acting morphine.
[Trevor Millar] We're in the face of an opioid crisis.
We've never seen anything like this.
Young people, old people,
from all walks of life are dying from opioids
and some people would rather kill themselves,
unfortunately, than be stuck on drugs like this.
I've had more than one person come to me saying
that "It's either suicide
or this psychedelic thing better work for me
because I'm at the end of my rope."
[Adrianne] Since I first started using mushrooms
I integrated some more positive things in my life
like floating, yoga, connecting with family.
I have quit smoking.
I don't think I've had a cigarette for at least a month.
I've disrupted the pattern of my heroin usage.
I'm not using it daily.
I definitely have not been depressed.
Before we started this whole process I was...
going down a pretty dark road.
[Tyler] So, let me just ask--
When did you first meet Adrianne?
Yeah, that's such a nice picture.
Aw, this is so nice.
You haven't made me a card for a long time.
Oh, this is a story.
[laughing]
"It's a sad story, but I couldn't think of
another kind of story."
[Mom] She was happy, loving.
She had lots of friends.
She did well in school.
I always said to people,
"boy, if I could have another one of these
this would be easy."
That's that one summer-- so that-- I think you were--
The summer that I went to the house that I hated so much.
[Tyler] Do you know anything about
a house that Adrianne has mentioned a few times?
[Mom] She mentioned that
this memory had come back to her.
I think it was about when she was two.
I went to work for a friend of mine.
I cannot think back to that time that there was a difference or
something she was afraid of at that time in her life.
What is trauma?
Trauma to one person might not be trauma to someone else.
Maybe the fact that she grew up in a single-parent home
was trauma for her.
Maybe it was the fact that I got a boyfriend
for a couple of years
when she was 12 that she didn't like.
She found out her boyfriend cheated on her,
that was emotional and traumatic for her.
Her job was very stressful,
working for a law firm and they were drinking
and doing coke
at night and probably during the day.
Yeah, I was somewhat in denial, I guess,
because I just thought,
"OK, well you can beat this. This is not you."
I don't think I realized how serious it was
and how hard it was going to be.
People did say, "Don't enable.
So what if she ends up on the street?"
And I wasn't ready to do that.
When she was 27, she was into a--
a treatment center.
It was about $30,000.
I had to borrow money
against my house.
She got out right near Christmas and immediately relapsed
and actually ended up in the hospital.
So back to the treatment center she went.
[Adrianne] Christmas has always been
a really difficult time for me.
I tend to have major meltdowns.
Or there's some major chaos that happens and this year...
um, Christmas went well
and there wasn't any, you know, major issues.
I'm gonna go check out a conference run by MAPS.
It's a society for using psychedelics
for therapeutic purposes.
I do think that there is some kind of trauma,
there's something going on emotionally, psychologically,
that I need to explore and that...
through the use of psychedelics
I can work through that.
-I am. -Hi, I'm Adrianne.
What role would you like to play?
Oh, perfect! OK.
Let me give you a hug there, girl.
-OK. -Yeah.
-Oh, they told me about you. -Yeah.
Oh, you're a-- you're a movie star.
-Yeah. -Oh, my God!
or shaman or something.
I applaud your courage and your-- your...
honesty and your transparency and...
thank you for being who you are.
Thank you.
If you can take your seats
or find standing room only
that would be great.
How many of us struggle or have struggled
with secret anxiety
or heartbreak
or depression,
addictions?
It's just so hard in this society to be a human being
because so much about this society
takes us away from ourselves.
It's so important to be healing PTSD.
It's so important to be healing people
who are anxious or depressed.
Here we are, you know, 50 years after the criminalization
and it looks like we're on the verge of really integrating
psychedelic medicine into our society.
Prohibition is slowly crumbling under the weight
of its sheer ineffectiveness.
It does not protect our communities.
It does not protect our families
and it does not protect our children.
So prohibition will end and what I ask is,
what are we gonna replace it with?
The two psychedelic drugs that are
likely to become prescription medicines
the soonest are psilocybin,
not from mushrooms, but made synthetically and MDMA.
And what we're trying to do is
bring back the field of psychedelic psychotherapy
where they'll be clinics where people can have
either psilocybin mushrooms or MDMA
or eventually other drugs as well
in a long-term sequence of psychedelic psychotherapy.
From a political perspective, I think the most important...
step that's not being taken in psychedelic research yet
is gonna be to develop ibogaine
for the treatment of opioid addiction.
Ibogaine is the only thing that we know of
that is able to go in and address that issue
of the physical withdrawal.
Iboga and ibogaine come from a root in Africa
and are among the most powerful psychedelics on Earth.
They've been used ceremonially for centuries
and in 1962 in New York
a chemist gave ibogaine to his heroin addict friend
who would try anything.
He noticed immediately after the experience
that he wasn't craving heroin anymore.
That's when it's anti-addictive properties were discovered.
-You have a question. -OK, um,
you might have to be careful how you answer this,
I guess, for legal reasons, but what would you suggest people do
who might need therapies like this
um, but it's not legally available yet?
I don't think I have to be that careful
to say that there's loads of underground therapists
and they're usually very passionate and committed
because they're risking so much to do it.
So the problem is, how do you find them?
[Garyth Moxey] The ibogaine thing,
I'm really not supposed to be working with ibogaine.
So, for myself at the moment, it's civil disobedience.
Fuck them and their bullshit.
They're gonna kick my door in
'cause I'm helping people get off heroin?
Normally when you come off of the opiates
things would be difficult, up and down, up and down.
Peaks and valleys, being sick.
After an ibogaine treatment, you would feel the same way
as you would months after a traditional detox from heroin.
It's not a magical cure,
but it's the closest thing we have to it
I'm afraid of, like, what's gonna happen
when that methadone's not there...
-Sure -Anymore.
-Yeah. -Um, I feel like I want
to have some stability first and stay away from the heroin
and, like, working with the mushrooms
and working through some things before I'm ready to...
-pull the rug out, I guess. -Right. OK, so normally
when we're working with ibogaine,
we have people that stay with us
-for two weeks at a time. -Right.
So, we're kind of booked out for the next few months.
However, I can put you in touch with somebody
that would be able to get to you sooner.
And in the meantime,
you could come and do mushrooms with us.
[Adrianne] We were talking about the iboga, the ibogaine,
that's what this guy is really recommending
-and apparently-- -[Mom] Well, how does that work?
-Is that a one-shot deal? Like-- -Yeah, it stops you
from going into withdrawals,
but it's also, like, an addiction interrupter.
So it changes your pathways,
it starts repairing the opiate receptors,
but I don't know if I'm ready...
uh, to get off the methadone yet.
That's, like, down the road.
-So, what happens this week? -We're gonna do, like,
a mushroom sitting.
And there's gonna be a female therapist there
and it's gonna be a larger dose of mushrooms
than what I've done, but this would be guided
so that if anything came up or I wanted to work
with something I would be safe and with people.
Keep on the right path, honey.
Keep doing the... doing the good stuff.
-Yeah. -I think you do need to try...
lots of different, alternative things.
I'm not-- I don't prescribe to one,
you know, mantra.
Check out voodoo if you have to.
[Adrianne] Today will be the first time that, um...
I'm doing mushrooms with some support. I've...
done it in the past just on my own.
We have all sorts of anecdotal stories
of people who have done it on their own
and it's been really positive
but it's not something that you would recommend.
[Rosalind Watts] Three crucial factors for psychedelic therapy
are set, setting, and dose.
The set is about the intentions.
I don't want to be this, like, lying, dishonest person.
You start to cross those lines and you're like,
"I can't believe that I did that-- that's not me."
The reason it's important to have this intention
is that when it gets really tricky,
if it gets really tricky,
you can remind people of why they're doing it.
A bad trip means that something is opening up
that is difficult for you to deal with
and you're not in a setting
where someone can support you to do it.
It's what, really, recovery is about...
is recovering yourself, you know,
and who you really are.
You know, and I really think that the plants
play a huge role in that. They did for me.
Setting is the environment that the experience...
-happens in. -Being somewhere where
you really, really, really can trust the other person
and that you know that you're not gonna be interrupted
and you're gonna have access to everything you need.
We're your support. Should you need anything
-then we're right here. -[Rosalind Watts] But, really,
it's the people that make the setting.
Anybody who makes this choice should be well supported.
I wanna be here for you.
Dosage is what you take and how much.
[Garyth Moxey] We're working with these Mexican mushrooms,
they're a little bit stronger than the cubensis,
so we'll take that into consideration.
When I hear about people doing these high,
high doses on their own, for some people it's fine.
But for a lot of people I think it's...
-scary. -[Garyth] We can always add.
-[Adrianne] Yeah. -Whereas it's a little difficult
to subtract.
[Adrianne] You can't take it away.
Beyond set, setting, and dose,
what really matters, though, is the integration afterwards.
[Garyth] I had a really big mushroom experience
and it wasn't until later on in that day
that I really understood what happened.
Around the psychedelics, before and after would be...
non-drug psychotherapy to prepare and to integrate
the experience and that's really the route
to overcoming addiction in the long run.
[Garyth] And then also, if she's got anything, you know,
really profound or interesting to say, then...
we might write that down and then discuss that later.
-Hi. -There she is.
Oh, we're filming already.
And then I just, like, fell asleep and I woke up
and I realized it was, like, six o'clock.
Oh, my God.
It was really intense and, um...
I definitely had a pretty big emotional breakthrough,
and it was very, cathartic and, um...
There were tears and there was deep work going on
and clearly it mattered more to just go through
whatever it was than to try and problem-solve
or anything else. It was to-- to...
really allow yourself to feel.
I don't do that normally.
I don't just let myself...
feel. Yeah.
I'm always trying to shut it down
or trying to fix it or, like, figure out a way,
a scheme or plan to, like--
how am I gonna control this and manage this and I just...
didn't do that.
[Tyler] And what's "this"? Getting off methadone...
-stopping using--? -No, it's something, um...
something different.
[Tyler] Will you tell us about
your actual breakthrough...
on Saturday?
[Adrianne] It's not a surprise to me that I
consistently seek out unhealthy,
abusive...
um, relationships that
reaffirm this deep-seated belief that I'm, like, unlovable.
I...
realized for the first time how much
that belief is affecting me and...
it's a huge factor in why I use. It's that loneliness
and that unlovability, that...
like, my only friend is heroin.
The only thing that makes me feel loved and warm
and gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling
is heroin, which it doesn't even really anymore.
But I guess it's just...
I just want to go home.
[Adrianne] I get, like, really bad nausea from the methadone
and I just don't feel well today.
[Tyler] Can you start taking
a little bit less and less methadone?
Do you want to come to my next doctor's appointment with me?
-[Tyler] Just, like, sit in? -Yeah.
[Tyler] Uh, for what benefit?
I don't know because he's the one
that wants me to keep going up.
[Tyler] You're saying you're starting to feel more tired,
and that's obviously also going to be counterproductive
-to even microdosing. -I know!
I've been pulled in, like, 8 million directions
for the last 10 years
and every doctor has a different opinion.
Every person I talk to has a different opinion.
So, I don't really need to hear this right now.
It's not helpful.
Like do you have any idea how many doctors and psychiatrists
and therapists and counselors I've seen?
[Nick] We'll figure it out. Let's try microdosing.
[Tyler] Why don't we all try microdosing
and see what happens?
See if it helps with your mood,
see if it helps with the energy levels.
[Tyler] The methadone is making her tired.
So, what I'm wondering is if we can get an opinion from you
about whether microdosing will even work for her
-or if it's pointless-- -Like, what she needs
is a fucking ibogaine treatment.
You know, we're dicking around with mushrooms and stuff.
You know, all of the other psychedelics could help
and will help and have been helping
but at the same time we're kind of dicking around.
Do you know what I mean? Because there's one that
fucking nails it right home
and that's ibogaine and iboga,
for her situation, you know?
And then all of these other psychedelics
will help afterwards.
[Trevor Millar] You need the iboga
to take the hooks of the opiates out of you.
Otherwise, you know, you'll have a beautiful...
mushroom experience,
but 12 hours later you're still gonna need opiates
'cause you're gonna go into physical withdrawal.
I've had a lot of insight and that self-compassion
and self-love with the mushrooms, but...
it just doesn't last very long because then I need
to go back to using the opiates.
[Trevor] Iboga works so well for somebody who just
hasn't been able to get the leg up
-on the physical addiction. -Yeah.
[Trevor] Where I work with the medicine,
it's almost more clinical
and there's a place for that, for sure.
But I've seen Mark do his work
and the beautiful ceremonial aspect of it
and it's totally the way to go.
He takes you on this soul journey which...
you know, in layman's terms, might be called
a visualization exercise.
[Mark Howard] Half of the iboga session is therapy,
you know, the people of the Bwiti have taught me
how to use iboga in a traditional way.
50% of our healing is the talk
and that's where things get done
because you rearrange the way you think.
Methadone didn't work for you,
the treatment centers didn't work for you.
You know, what we're trying to do is get this medicine
to at least be an option for people because it's so effective
at dealing with physical detox, and getting someone clean
so that they're more receptive to therapy
and then we can use the medicine in a more sacred context
to deal with people's traumas
that are at the root cause of the addictions.
Really acute forms of addictions
can be really dangerous with iboga.
Very dangerous. Benzodiazepines, methadone,
things like this, it does certain things,
like slows down the heart rate.
I'm way more comfortable working with morphine
than even methadone.
Just kind of make it clear that we didn't just
throw loads of ibogaine on top of methadone here.
[Mark] When people start getting ideas off documentaries,
that's when things get dangerous.
What they should get an idea off this is that it is dangerous
because we have seen enough to know that.
I did get some names of some doctors that might be willing
to switch me to morphine.
Switching to morphine is the best plan.
I remember I went to the pharmacy,
this one pharmacy and I said that I was thinking
of switching and they were just all over me, like,
"OK, well give me your information and, like...
we'll wait for you. We close at 6:00,
but we'll wait until 6:30, until you get off work or whatever."
And I was just like, "That's strange...
Why are they so keen to have me?"
[Trevor] Do you know those pharmacies get paid
$6,000 per year, per person that comes in?
That's why they want you to show up every day.
"We'll give you a McDonald's gift card
if you come and get your methadone from here."
They're getting rich off...
this misery.
[Adrianne] I forgot how to live
or I never learned how to live
um, because, you know, all that emotional development
was stunted when I started drinking and using
at the age of 15.
I was able to finally switch off methadone.
So I'm off methadone now and I've switched over to Kadian,
which is a long-acting morphine.
I'm always on something, whether it's prescribed by a doctor
or, like, prescribed by a drug dealer...
I've just been on so much,
so I'm really excited about the iboga treatment because
I'm hopefully gonna be free of all,
you know medications and
just have a clear mind for a little while
just to get a sense of, like, where I'm at and who I am and...
how I feel without a substance in my body. That's gonna be...
amazing.
[Adrianne] I used last night.
I ended up having some heart palpitations
and having to call an ambulance and go to the hospital.
[Adrianne sobbing]
[hyperventilating]
[Adrianne] I just don't want to.
I'm not saying I'm not going tonight.
I'm just saying I don't want to put that pressure on myself.
Let's just play it by ear.
Or just to let me know how it's going.
[Adrianne, tearfully] Yeah.
-Yeah. -[Tyler] How are you feeling?
I'm so sick of this.
You know, I already have anxiety about being away from home
on a good day and then, um...
Just, like, everything that's happened and
putting the cat down yesterday was really...
really hard.
And when you're just not in a very good place
you just want to be, like...
at home.
In your familiar safe place, but...
[Tyler] Are we going to get you a bit of your dose, then?
Yeah, let's just go get, um, my last...
uh, morphine dose.
I'm just gonna get changed
Bye, little Buff-Buff.
I've used and stuff
but definitely, like, nowhere near...
you know and like, I have had-- I've been really trying
and especially in the last week to not use anything
because I don't want to complicate the process
but I've just had panic attacks all week,
extreme anxiety and, like, stress reaction
and my addiction wants me dead.
Like, it wants me not to get better.
'Cause I really do but then there's
this other part of me that just sabotages everything.
I had to put my cat down the other day, which was...
really, really upsetting.
I'd never even seen a hard drug in my life
when I got that cat and it's almost like...
[sniffling]
he came into my life for a reason.
It was just me and him.
And he's gone now and it's just...
[sniffling]
It's just really sad.
[sighing tearfully]
[suspenseful music]
Right now I'm going to get my final dose of morphine.
My opiate replacement therapy drug.
I'm only gonna take, uh,
half of my dose.
I'm supposed to take 600 milligrams a day,
but I'm just gonna take half today because...
I need to be starting withdrawals
before I do the ceremony.
-[Tyler] Do you want to? -[Adrianne] Yeah.
[Tyler] Do you wanna just do it here?
-[Adrianne] Yeah. -[Tyler] Do you wanna...
-let Nick film this? -[Adrianne] No!
[Tyler] Where you gonna do it?
Fuck!
[Tyler] Here. Here, here. Some of them are busted open.
-Here's a tissue. -[Adrianne] OK.
[Tyler] Just keep that. That's enough.
[laughing]
[Tyler] You should have just had your purse open.
-I know but, I-- -[Tyler] It would have been
the easiest thing in the world.
No, it wasn't. I was scared.
Nine, ten...
-[Tyler] Here, give 'em to me. -No, I want them.
[Tyler] Adrianne, I've got-- I've got the pill bottle here
and we'll give them to the nurse.
[Adrianne] I don't care. I don't need a pill bottle.
'Cause I'm gonna decide if I take those other five later.
[suspenseful music]
That's...
what dogs do.
*
It all worked out.
[Patrick Fishley] You don't have any sharp objects?
[Adrianne] No. I don't think so.
[Patrick] And if I don't do this, then...
you're gonna be like "Oh, this guy
doesn't really take it seriously."
Jesus...
-But it's just clothes. -Good God.
Have your whole apartment in here.
[Adrianne] Sorry. Well, I had a rough day getting here.
You did. You did, right?
I had a rough week, getting here.
[Patrick] Mm-hm. So, I'm just glad you're here, right?
[Adrianne] Me too.
-Hey. -Hey, how are you?
-Good, how are you? -Good.
-Hi -Hi, Mark.
-Hi. -Hi.
Hi, nice to see you again.
[Trevor] This is the woman of the hour.
I took 300 milligrams last night.
-[Gabor] 300? -Yeah, so I only took the half.
I'm starting to feel a little bit uncomfortable,
just, like, that fatigue.
You're going through withdrawal?
-Yeah. -It'd be nice for you just to
talk and just share what you think about
what's going on, maybe, with the world.
Well, I think rather than the general lecture,
let's just talk with them about where they're at in the world.
[Mark] Sounds good.
[Adrianne] So, you've done iboga?
-I've done iboga. -Yeah, OK.
[Adrianne] I actually started using heroin
to manage my cocaine addiction.
The cocaine was working for a while, but, you know,
10, 15 years down the road...
So, actually-- so the addiction wasn't your problem.
The addiction was your attempt to solve a problem.
Yeah.
No, I never did. I always do things last minute.
-Do you know? -[Adrianne] With stimulants.
Exactly, so it was a self-medication for you
in a sense. It's that simple.
So, the cocaine makes you more focused.
It's-- it's how you coped.
Yeah.
The substance gave you
at least a temporarily desirable state.
It wasn't a bad thing.
It was actually a way of feeling more yourself, more...
in charge of your life and less overwhelmed.
And you weren't sexually abused either?
[Adrianne] Not that I know-- not that I can remember. Yeah.
OK.
[woman] How would you approach this kind of conversation
with somebody who does not have the memories of their youth?
Who cannot dig out exactly, you know, what they felt like--
People will go into the iboga experience
and memories will come up that
they never were conscious of before.
I have a memory of going to this house and being babysat
and I just have this very terrible feeling about it,
but I don't know why. Like, I just...
did not like it there.
Yeah, I think that's what I'm afraid of.
-[Gabor Maté] What's that? -That's what I'm afraid of.
Why are you afraid of it?
Because I don't like feeling uncomfortable. I don't like...
negative emotions. I had a really hard time
identifying it the first time I went to treatment
like, my only emotion was good or bad.
[Gabor Maté] Tell me something.
It would be a negative emotion to me.
-It would be negative? -Yeah.
[Gabor Maté] Why would it be negative?
'Cause it would feel uncomfortable and I don't like--
Yes, you would.
And if I were to cut you with a knife,
you may not like it, but the whole point is not to like it
because if you don't like it, you're gonna move away from it.
-Right. -So, it's necessary, right?
So, if in that house, for whatever reason...
you feel uncomfortable,
are those negative feelings or are those necessary feelings?
-Necessary. -[Gabor Maté] OK.
Here, if those feelings come up, you're not alone.
Yeah.
[Nick] How are you feeling that you're about to be embarking
-on this iboga journey? -I don't know, it's just--
it's hard to believe that I'm not gonna suffer.
I just think about what it was like in detox
and that was fucking awful.
Like, so awful.
I've never been so sick in my life.
[Mark Howard] How you feeling? What's up?
Um, I don't feel great.
Well, we should-- you should come down to the temple now.
-[Adrianne] Really? -[Mark] Yep.
[ominous music]
[Mark] This is about, like, you know, taking on tonight
the opportunity just to be nice to yourselves.
You know what I mean? Let's just get you guys cleaned up.
What this is about is just a detox.
You know, we'll work on the rest later.
But tonight, the medicine is gonna work on a physical level.
OK, I'm gonna torch this place in about two seconds.
I'm going to set up a ring of fire around us.
So if you feel freaked out, that's OK.
No one's gonna die, no one's gonna be hurt.
I don't want to do it.
[horn blowing]
Iboga goes deep...
-to the root cause. -Check her pulse.
I've been down the addicted path
and the partying endlessly.
You're always trying to get something that is, like,
never gonna fulfill you as much as just being yourself.
I can't do this.
OK, I'm gonna go talk to her.
[rhythmic percussion]
[Patrick] You know, her vital signs remain stable.
She's, you know, nice and calm.
She had a really good night with the medicine.
[Mark] You know, she's different but very weak
because the battle has tired her out.
She needs rest, right? You know what I mean?
[Patrick Fishley] She's going through a lot.
At the same time, she's a strong girl.
[Patrick] Well, you're looking better this morning.
[Mark] She looks bright.
A day in the life of Adrianne.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
Everything is just so strange.
It's gonna be a long road, but it's an awesome start.
[Tyler] I called your dad and let him know
everything's going the way it's supposed to go.
Yeah?
OK.
[Nick] So what were we seeing up there?
You're seeing a computer getting completely wiped.
[Tyler] What are you gonna do today?
[Adrianne] I don't know.
[Tyler] Snowboarding or something?
[Patrick] You're not gonna want--
I can go snowboarding.
I can, if I want to.
It's like she's a kid or something.
[Mark] She is a kid.
It reduces people down to that baby level.
We gotta rebuild them back up.
[Tyler] Did you like it?
[Adrianne] Mm-hm.
Yeah, very much.
It was very wonderful.
[Tyler] It looks fun.
Yeah, just the funnest, like...
[Tyler] Should Nick do iboga?
[quietly] Fun, funny. Yep.
Yes, you should.
Yes, he should.
Yeah, Nick, you should.
-[Nick] I'm gonna do it. -Yeah.
[Nick] I want to. It looks like a trip, looks fun.
Looks like it puts you in a good frame of mind.
[Adrianne] Oh, yeah, like...
right. Yeah, the...
[murmuring quietly]
[Tyler] You trying to do a thumbs up?
Yeah.
[speaking gibberish]
[gibberish continues]
She was like a young, little child.
[speaking gibberish]
-[Tyler] Is this normal? -Yeah.
[Mark] Ice cream?
You cool with that?
Maybe not like that.
[Mark] Can you get her a wipe?
It'll be OK.
[Mark] It's like we haven't been feeding her.
Nothing to worry about.
That was the most amazing thing I've had in my life.
[Mark] And then she went to, like,
a teenager, getting nastier.
[tapping]
Have you had a chance to get up and wash your face yet?
You might feel a little better.
Get these lazy kids back to work.
[Nick] Do you need anything, Adrianne?
-Any water or anything? -No.
[Tyler] Well, we'll get some anyways.
Are you fucking kidding me?
[Tyler] You don't have to drink it.
I'm just putting it back.
[Mark] Parents take care of a lot of things for kids.
Eventually what it's like-- she's like a bird, you know,
you're going to have to kick her out of the nest
and she's going to have to learn to fly on her own.
[Patrick] Yeah. How's that make you feel?
It's, like, just crazy.
Did you ever think it was possible?
No, I didn't. Even up until--
I just didn't believe it.
It was like "there's no way."
I'm just, like, so blown away.
Yeah.
I just wanna go and yell from the rooftops,
and just tell everybody, "You have to do this."
Dad.
[sniffling]
I'm good.
I'm in detox.
I'm just in bed.
No, I'm good. I'm really good.
[Mark] You take away the drugs, now the mind's left on its own.
I don't feel any withdrawals. Nothing.
[Mark] The medicine is so powerful
that it's like a rebirth.
I just got out of bed for the first time.
I've been just out flat on my back for, like, five days.
[Mark] We're very early into this.
-[background phone chatter] -OK.
OK. OK. Bye.
Maybe I should get up again?
[Tyler] Yeah, let's go downstairs.
I don't want to really.
[Nick] It's almost like whatever
she's suppressing with the heroin
is starting to come to the surface.
Oh, totally. It's 100%.
Every addict is the same thing.
They all had something really bad happen.
Addicts just aren't addicts by choice.
Addicts are covering pain and hurt and sorrow and grief
and all kinds of different things.
[Adrianne] Whoo! I just need to keep moving.
[Geoff Acres] She's not cured from drugs yet.
Like, she's reliving some moment over and over and over.
[Nick] Did she say it was something
from her past that she's seeing?
She didn't say anything. She just wouldn't tell me.
She's not ready to deal with it.
Something happened in that house, right?
And there could be more.
[shower spraying]
I'll be right outside the door if you need us, OK?
Iboga always works.
It just can be a bumpy road sometimes.
I'm really tired and, like, I'm just really restless.
I've been sleeping for, like, five days.
[loud moaning]
I just can't lay here anymore.
Fuck! Fuck this!
[Tyler] Mark says once you take a bit more iboga
then this feeling will go away.
[Adrianne] Ahh! I need to do it now, please.
I don't want to do this anymore
[Mark] Ceremony will come fast if you just kind of rest, OK?
I can't rest anymore.
-[Tyler] Yeah? -Yeah.
-That's what's going on here. -[Tyler] And what's that again?
The more you push her, the more her brain activates.
[pops] She needs a journey.
[Adrianne] I just feel like everything all at once.
[Mark] That's why we're gonna do iboga tonight.
[beeping sounds from opening safe]
There's obviously residual drugs
and anxiety feelings in there, right?
And that's what iboga is good for.
It's good for going in and kicking all that stuff out.
[suspenseful music]
[Mark] When you're young and events happen
or trauma happens or suffering happens,
you begin to forget and lose track of who the hell you are.
What do you think about yourself?
I don't like myself very much.
Why?
I don't know.
-Ever thought about it? -No.
-You think it's a good time to? -Yeah.
What if you had a little girl?
[Mark] What if I said your soul is like a little girl?
Yeah.
[Mark] You've got to just learn
to be comfortable in your own body.
It takes practice.
And the problem with heavy drugs as we've seen
is that they destroy
one's ability to make any sort of reasonable choices anymore
until, barely, you make it to a place like this
where you might have a chance.
It's not too late.
You're, like, right on time.
You know now that you're out of the dark alleys
and you can start seeing the light,
you understand that that light is in you.
And understand that making a good decision
is based on love for yourself.
The problem with our society is
there's no real guidance system that's inside,
connecting us to making good decisions.
You know, and then we make bad decisions
and that makes us feel worse.
So, we make more bad decisions.
And so the only answer we have is to run.
You know? Out of fear.
What's something that's bothering you
that you would let go?
Maybe letting go of the notion
that you're not good enough is a good start.
"I'm not good enough so I can hang out down here
in these streets and get wasted."
Adrianne, are you feeling the medicine over there?
Feel that medicine?
-Feel the new one? -Mm-Hm.
-Are you cool with it? -Mm-hm.
All right. Good.
Oh, I massively, massively lied and underestimated
and grossly misrepresented the amount of heroin
I was still using on a daily basis.
-[Tyler] Are you serious? -[Nick] To us?
-Yeah. -[Nick] Adrianne...
It's not funny. It's not funny at all.
It's sad, but, ugh...
No, I, like--
I was taking points of heroin a day.
[Geoff] Are you ready to go?
-Yeah. Let's go. Hurry up. -Let's go, we're gonna miss it.
[Tyler] With you lying so much,
like, what would have happened without--
Like, I know that this is really hard for you to get--
like to understand,
but I don't have-- I didn't have the capacity
to be honest about anything before.
I just did not have that capability.
[Tyler] What was the end game though?
Let's say that this didn't work or this didn't even happen?
Death.
Oh cool, so we would have been documenting--
But that isn't the ending, Tyler.
So we don't need to worry about it.
Yeah, but we went months not even knowing what iboga was.
[Adrianne] Well, now you know.
I'm just telling you the truth now
because I'm coming clean about everything.
Obviously that happens with a lot of people.
It's OK, you're here
but you were on more drugs than what we knew.
All I got to help heal anybody is the truth.
Look how fucking far you've come.
It's the first time you've had to deal with stress.
Yeah, I just escape all the time.
Well, yeah, what's bad with just being in it right now?
It's safe. You're not in danger.
It might be uncomfortable and crazy,
but it's like everything, it'll get better.
You got to make it to that point, right?
[Adrianne] Yeah.
So, I think right now, movie and popcorn.
-OK. -You know what I mean?
Before, it was morphine and heroin
and now it's movie and popcorn.
I want to see a movie anyway, so I was like,
"What can we do?" We can sit around and--
[Tyler] That wouldn't be too intense?
I don't know. What's too intense?
I think she's too intense, so.
[chuckling]
If I take you, like, downtown,
you're not going to run away from me, right?
-No. OK. -I'm fast.
OK. Let's go.
[Nick] Geoff, do you want to go to her house
and grab the stuff?
[Geoff] I can do that, yeah.
[Mark] Can they go to your house and clean it up?
Under my bed, um, there's a pouch and it's full of shit.
Like, full.
[Nick] What are we gonna go do right now, Geoff?
Get rid of the shit!
Everyone keeps their bags
because they all have residue on the side
and when you run out of drugs, you take all your bags
and you scrape the residue off the sides
and you end up with enough to use.
She's gonna have stashes in there, for sure,
and she could have stashed stuff when she was fucked up
-and she forgot about too. -[Tyler] Hello.
-[Dad] Come on in. -[Tyler] How's it going?
-Good, how are you? -Good.
-Nice to meet you. -Nice to meet you.
She's through the detox. She's good.
It's been either nine or ten days today that she's drug free.
Today she's gone... downhill a little bit.
But there's lots of ups and downs.
She's still got further to go but she's doing really well.
-Right, she's a tough girl. -Good.
I know you've had many years of hearing this
and believing it, but this time she's gonna--
Yeah, I know she's determined, so...
Yeah, she's determined.
She just needs more treatment.
Oh, yeah?
She's gonna come back for another week
then she'll never have a need to use again.
[Dad] Yeah. OK. Well, her room's just around here.
Just go ahead and do your thing.
[Geoff] I'm gonna lift this mattress up and see.
This could be $10 to $100 per bag.
She'd probably end up with a gram or two grams.
See the pile? Look at the size of this pile of baggies here.
-Holy shit! -You save them
and then you cut them, you fold it out.
Then you just scrape it with a card
and then she'd end up with a pile at the end.
The same with the pipe. You can break the pipe in half
and scrape the residue off the pipe.
That's what she uses to snort it with.
This is what she used to smoke it with.
OK. I want to look in this cabinet right here.
You can just look in and see.
And that had baggies in it too, right?
There's dozens and dozens and dozens of them.
There's baggies full of baggies here.
We could spend the next four hours
going through every pocket but
I don't want to go through her dirty clothes, do you?
[chuckling]
[Tyler] Nope.
That's empty anyways.
All right, good?
[Dad] OK. Good seeing you guys.
-Take care. -Thanks for coming by.
[Nick] That was kind of shocking.
You know, we've been, uh,
we've been spending time with her for six months.
And we know she's a heroin addict.
And it's so bizarre
because she doesn't act like a heroin addict
most of the time that we talk to her,
just conversations that we have and everything, she seems--
What does a heroin addict act like, though?
I guess-- acts like her.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, but that's the small percentage.
The large percentage are functioning addicts
that you never know.
You walk by them all day, every day.
Doctors, lawyers, judges.
There's no one that's immune.
And then there are the unfortunate people
that get hooked by mistake
when the doctors prescribe them opiates.
Then they take them off and they go through huge withdrawals.
They got no choice but to go to street drugs.
Then they realize that the opiates are no good.
They can't prescribe opiates anymore
because everyone's getting addicted to it.
So what do they do? They come up with methadone.
"Oh, methadone's even better.
They're hooked on it for life now."
Like, other than iboga,
there's pretty much no other way to get off methadone.
You're fucked for life.
I'm sure there's a small percentage of people,
like, very small,
that can slowly wean themselves off, but...
how are you supposed to do that when you go to the doctor
and you ask to get your prescription weaned--
cut down and they double it?
Like, it's ridiculous.
I'm so hopeful for Adrianne because Adrianne--
she reminds me a lot of my daughter,
she's very similar, just...
similar story and similar use.
And I'm really, really hoping this works for her
because then there's hope for my daughter.
But you look at the pictures of her, happy little girl, right?
As a father, it's just horrible to...
to see what your little girl's turned into.
[Tyler] Her dad's in the waiting room.
[Mark Howard] It's a process. It's not something that
you know, people should just look at and say,
"Hey, look, there's this thing out there.
Let's just go do that and then I'm fucking good."
It's like a springy box inside that's being held down.
You have to deal with...
whatever's inside that people are afraid to face.
[Dad] I'm not sure.
What does she want?
And I said, "No. Out of the question.
Not happening."
[Nick] Temptation is everywhere.
Certainly. I can't blame you for trying to help yourself in
whatever way seems to make sense.
[Adrianne] Yeah, I know. Thank you guys.
Those doctors, they were so kind and compassionate
and when I said no to methadone,
they didn't get aggressive with me like the other doctors.
They didn't make me wait for six hours.
They helped me. They know what I'm going through.
They're like, "You need medical attention."
They're like, "You were on 1,000 milligrams
of fucking dope.
You think GABA over the counter is gonna fucking do anything?"
[Tyler] It was 12 days ago, though.
I'm still detoxing.
I'm still in withdrawals.
I didn't get it out of my system
because if what they say is true,
I should be dead from 20 milligrams.
I didn't feel a fucking thing.
My case was a very severe case.
Probably had I weaned down, this may not have gone this way.
Like if I had cut down more and more,
but I never said that plants don't work.
I'm still a firm believer that there's a place for both,
but I'm not going to just throw the baby out with the bathwater
and, you know, listen to just Garyth
or, like, just the doctor.
I can make decisions for myself. I'm educated. Like...
I'm capable of some rational thought.
Sometimes.
And I know I made the right decision.
-[Tyler] That's good. -[Adrianne] Yeah, so...
I'm sorry that that may be disappointing
for your documentary.
But that's my truth and I can't--
[Nick] Documentary? I don't give a fuck. Are you kidding me?
Yeah, who cares about this stupid thing anyway?
[Tyler] You went in on twice as much as what you said
and Mark said he would never treat somebody--
Do you want to, like, rub that in again?
Do you want to like...
Yeah, it happened. I'm sorry.
But I believe because I was dishonest,
grossly dishonest about how much I was using,
and-- to myself, to everyone,
that there was complications, wires were crossed.
Trevor was involved, Garyth was involved,
you know, all these people are involved and I'm lying.
Like, I really appreciate
everything you guys have done for me,
but at the end of the day, you have not lived addiction.
And I'm not-- it's not a cop-out.
Like, I have tried so hard.
Do you think those people downtown
grew up thinking that's where they wanted to be?
Do you think they want to be face down
with their pants on the ground,
and a fucking needle sticking out of their arm?
That's no way to live. Nobody makes that choice.
[Tyler] We're just here trying to bring you through it.
[Adrianne] You can't understand addiction.
It won't make sense to you ever.
It's because of our fucked system.
The Downtown Eastside has become acceptable in our society
and no one's willing to do anything about it.
And no one's talking. It's no one's fault.
The problem is that you've got these two sides.
You've got plant medicines
and then you've got the Western medicine
and they're just like this
and they don't listen to each other.
If they started talking and working out a solution,
there may be a common middle ground
that could really help people.
[Tyler] Don't you feel like
you're significantly improved, though,
-from even two weeks ago? -[Adrianne] Yes!
I just think that I was not detoxed.
[Tyler] And the fact that you're back on morphine,
in a way, it kind of makes sense, right?
What's gonna get you through to the next week, right?
[mellow instrumental music]
[Mark] When the mind's going all over the place,
that's what your life does,
and that's why you're down on the streets,
because, you know, for whatever reason
you didn't like your reality so you decide to escape from it.
And then that's where the drugs come
because you want to keep living an illusion.
-Yeah. -It's all good.
It's just all shit you just picked up,
especially with having hard addictions.
Man, I've been there. We just do crazy shit.
What types of answers do we want
to help you move forward in life for real?
[Adrianne] What is my passion?
Yeah, something that I'm passionate about,
and that fuels me and that I love doing.
[Mark] How about "How can I love myself?"
Imagine if you treated yourself like a cat?
"How can I treat myself like my cat?"
Think about that.
"...like my cat."
That's kind of a funny question, but you know what I mean?
It's got a lot of pertinent relevance, you know?
The best way to love yourself is to just be yourself.
It's time to really move forward.
Now it's time to move out of the--
being stuck in the mud and being stuck in the addiction.
You come here because, you know,
you've heard that iboga has something about it
or it can give you whatever you think you need in your life.
Iboga is not gonna give or take anything away.
It's going to show you how to do it.
All it's going to take is caring about yourself enough
to make really good choices for yourself.
You know, it's not about what other people think about.
It's about what's really good for you.
You're better off knowing about yourself than anything.
The biggest fear you should have is not knowing yourself.
[Chor] Look...
at who...
you're going to love...
for the rest...
of your life.
Who do you love?
[sniffing]
[Tyler] Did you throw up last night?
[Adrianne] I threw up a lot last night
and it was, like--
it was awful because I was dry heaving, and...
[gasping and soft muttering]
[quietly] Oh, shit...
And then you puke up iboga,
and it tastes worse coming out.
It's so bitter.
[Nick] When was the last time you had some morphine?
About two days ago, I guess. Two days ago
I had my last dose of 80 milligrams of morphine.
[Nick] What was it like last night?
[Adrianne] My journey took me to some really dark places,
but I guess that's where I needed to go.
I was outside myself watching myself in that alley
and someone started to beat me up
and smashed my head into the side of a wall.
I saw my own death.
It was awful. It was violent.
[Nick] Do you recognize the alley?
It's the alley I always go to.
[Tyler] Do you think that's a sign? Like a message?
[Adrianne] It just made me see that I actually do want to live
and that I value life.
I don't want to ever let go of that, or forget that...
it's only a short time we have with people.
You never know when they're gonna die.
I'm just tired of being a selfish jerk.
Just...
been out doing what I needed to do to get
high and drunk and whatever else,
and it didn't matter what I did to anybody else.
[low melodic music]
[announcer] This is the Jon McComb Show On Demand
on 980 CKNW.
[Jon] So, are you off opiates all together now?
Yes. I've been sober for just coming up on four months now,
so it's been a pretty amazing journey.
[Jon] And here you are on the radio talking about it.
Yeah. [sighing]
Everything's been just crazy, right?
My relationship with you guys now, being sober.
You better not have, like, done some drugs
out of this thing and then I get framed.
[Tyler] Negative, negative, negative, negative, negative.
I'm always surprised when I wake up sober
because for so many days and months and years, I couldn't...
stay sober for more than five minutes.
If I have to do a mushroom session or an iboga session
once a month or once every three months,
that's a lot better than taking antidepressants every day
or using heroin every day, which was my solution to life.
I'm sure some people might think
that I'm just substituting one drug for another
and, you know, how is this any better?
And, for me, personally, they're just not the same
because I had to use every single day
and I was using to escape myself.
And it caused me immense pain and suffering in the end
and that's not my experience with psychedelics.
I use them in a therapeutic setting
with someone who is experienced at guiding me through that.
And it helps me immensely
in my personal development and healing.
Anxiety is a part of my life
and I just maybe want to go in
and ask the medicine sort of, "What's the root of that anxiety
and how do I manage it?"
-Perfect. -Yeah.
[Trevor] Yeah, I think that's a perfect intent
for going in with this medicine
I've seen it work specifically on anxiety for a lot of people
Let go. Surrender.
Go downstream.
-She sat up and... -[chuckling]
was just-- "Holy fuck."
[sobbing]
[whispers] Holy fuck.
[sobbing]
Holy fuck.
Holy... fuck.
[breathing deeply]
I know that I never, ever
fucking need to use another drug again.
Like ever.
Holy fuck!
In that moment,
I felt every single human emotion, like grief,
joy, pain, sadness, gratitude.
It, like, shook me to my core.
-[Trevor] Six grams, yeah. -Holy fuck, that was crazy.
Yesterday was the first day that I woke up with no anxiety.
I feel like my anxiety is really just life trying to get in
and I've been constantly, like, damping that down
and trying to push life away.
And now I know that I don't have to live that way.
I feel like I woke up from this terrible nightmare.
Like I just showed up to my life.
That experience was the most intense, profound experience
that I've ever had in my life.
What is this? I feel weird.
[Trevor chuckling] You're on mushrooms.
Oh, my God.
I saw God, for sure.
And in that moment I saw the truth about my existence.
It sounds like a cliché but it's just love
and I feel connected to myself.
It's really, like, intense and beautiful.
That experience was because of everybody, right?
I couldn't have done it without,
like, your help and Mark and Garyth
and I mean Patrick, Geoff, like, everybody!
I can't even begin to list everybody
that's helped me on my journey.
[Trevor] Now, it's time to microdose.
Now-- now microdosing will be very effective.
Just that tiny subperceptual bit
that is an antidepressant.
[Adrianne] So, I found that macrodosing
is what I needed to get sober.
But in the last seven months,
I've been microdosing with mushrooms and with ibogaine
and I really attribute that to how I feel today
and staying sober and staying on that spiritual path.
There's quite a bit of stigma around using psychedelics.
Unfortunately, it's still quite difficult to access
those services. It's not widely available to everybody.
I was extremely lucky.
I want to get that message out there,
and for other people to see the benefits
that this medicine can have.
When we started this journey,
I was just in a really desperate and dark place
and, um... [sniffling]
I was willing to try anything at that point
and it was sort of my last hope.
I didn't know if I could hold on much longer.
It's not about what happened in the house.
Everybody has their "house" or the thing
that they're working through.
It doesn't really matter what mine is.
Everybody has their own story
and the details are different but it doesn't matter.
The feelings are the same
and the pain and suffering is the same.
And the destruction that drugs and alcohol cause
in a person's life is the same.
It's not why the addiction, it's why the pain.
And whatever your pain is...
recovery and sobriety is about how we move forward from that
and what we do with that.
* I'm holding on
* I'm trying to belong *
* Waiting for the day
* I'm waiting for someone else to see *
* The other side of me
* The other side of me *
[Adrianne] Aw, there's little mushrooms on it!
[cheerful chattering]
* I see the empty faces that are ghosts of us *
* Let out like stars in the sky *
* Waiting for the sun to rise *
* I dream of waking up
* Before everyone I know has lost their way *
* Can't you see?
* No, no
* What to believe
* I'm holding on
* I'm trying to belong
* Waiting for the day
* I'm waiting for someone else to see *
* The other side of me
*
* The other side of me
*
* The other side of me
* The other side of me *
[music fades]