What Iboga Taught Me About Obsession and Fear

My brain is going to short-circuit any moment now. 

Check the lock on the front door. Check the lock on the back door. Check the lock in the basement. Touch all four knobs on the stove to make sure they’re fully turned off. Did I check the front door? I’ll just make sure. Call Dad and remind him to take his meds, lock the doors and check the stove. What if this is our last phone call? Talk with him for an hour. Call Mom to remind her to lock the doors and check the stove. Text family chat and remind everyone to lock the doors and check the stove. Okay, you can go to sleep now. Did I lock the doors and check the stove?  I’ll just make sure.

That’s my evening routine. Every day, around 7 p.m., I start to feel uneasy. My body feels out of place. No matter what I’m doing, I feel like I’m doing the wrong thing. I try to focus on what is in front of me: work, friends, partner. But the uneasiness builds into restlessness, and restlessness into anxiety. My attention clings to catastrophe like a magnet and I can’t rest until I’ve done everything I can to prevent it. It, catastrophe: Whatever my mind decides is the worst thing that could happen to the people I love most.

This cycle of fear, obsession, and ritualistic behavior is called Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. At my lowest points, I find myself in a state of panic—sobbing, ticking, repeating. A faint voice at the edge of my awareness says: you know you can’t keep going on like this. And I know. In my attempt to protect everyone from everything, I’m harming myself and the people I love. 

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is a brain disorder characterized by overactivity in the orbital cortex, sometimes referred to as the “error-detection circuit” of the brain. Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, a research psychiatrist and author of the seminal book Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, writes that this malfunction translates into a strong feeling that “something is wrong,”  leading people affected by the condition to perform repetitive and irrational behaviors to “feel right.” This is a story of how I used iboga, a psychedelic root bark from Central Africa, to attempt to heal myself from this debilitating condition. 

Upgrade to read the rest of this story.