Martin Polanco, MD
The Iboga Insurrection (Pt.1) Ibogaine Medical Doctor
Source of Article: http://www.realitysandwich.com/iboga_insurrection_part_1
by Charles Shaw
Polanco was a fixture in the ibogaine underground for many years, particularly in Mexico. He is credited with breaking open many heads, including Rocky Caravelli, the owner of the “Awakening in the Dream” ibogaine therapy house in Puerto Vallarta. Pinchbeck did his second journey with iboga at Polanco’s, where he met Randy Hencken of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), who had just started overseeing a MAPS ibogaine program and would later collaborate with Polanco on a study, only to have things go terribly wrong.
MAPS tapped Valerie Mojieko to design the study and sent her down to undergo the treatment. Unbeknownst to her, Polanco was developing a bad reputation for being a provider who gave poor-quality treatments. Consequently, Mojieko had a very stressful and unpleasant experience, at one point believing she was having major heart complications. Her bad trip was made worse by the language barrier of Polanco’s staff and, ironically, their lack of training in how to care for people having difficult psychedelic experiences, a major focus of Mojieko’s work. Shortly thereafter someone died while being treated by Polanco, and the clinic had to be shut down. The MAPS study was dead in the water.
Around that same time Clare Wilkins came to Polanco for treatment and she had a similarly alienating experience. Although as an addict she respond well to the medicine, she was unable to connect with either the setting or the treatment staff on hand. None of them were addicts, and none of them had ever taken ibogaine.
“I was left completely alone when I did my treatment, ” Clare says, making sure I understand how un-kosher this is. “I was the only person in the clinic at the time. It was terrifying. I didn’t want to ever see another addict go through that if I could help it.”
Intending only to volunteer for Polanco in order to have at least one other addict present who knew what the patient was going through, Clare, who has no formal training in addiction, psychology, or medicine, ended up buying the Ibogaine Association from Polanco when he ran into trouble. A chance meeting with MAPS founder Rick Doblin at the 2006 Burning Man festival led to a renewed relationship with the organization, and a new study.