- A new harvesting method allows an undisclosed Amazon plant to provide production of ibogaine, a psychedelic compound known for its largely unregulated and understudied properties in helping chemical addiction.
- Regarded as sacred in Gabon, the iboga plant that’s the primary source of ibogaine has been subject to poaching and smuggling, leading to the decline of its natural reserves and encouraging researchers to seek out alternatives.
- The substance is at the center of a new political and scientific movement to advance medicinal studies of natural compounds labelled today as illegal drugs.
For generations, the Bwiti religion in Gabon has revered ibogaine, a powerful psychedelic alkaloid extracted from the iboga shrub (Tabernanthe iboga). While ancient African cultures have long held the plant as sacred and understood its spiritual depth, modern science has only recently been exploring its potential as a clinical tool to treat drug addiction. Recent trials and historical accounts suggest ibogaine can reduce withdrawal symptoms and the craving for drugs like heroin and methadone, offering a neurobiological “reset.”
Although ibogaine’s medicinal use is still largely unregulated, the global demand for this anti-addiction agent has pushed the African iboga plant into danger. The shrub takes up to 30 years to mature and yields just a single gram of ibogaine; traditional extraction usually requires uprooting the plant, leading to its destruction. This scarcity has fueled poaching and smuggling, prompting the Gabonese government to prohibit its export.
Now, a breakthrough has emerged from the Amazon Rainforest, centered on an undisclosed species. The identity of this plant remains a closely guarded secret by Brazilian researcher Ricardo Marques, who spent nearly two years locating it and studying its ecology. This species contains a chemical precursor that can be transformed into ibogaine using a new, potentially sustainable harvesting method that allows the plant to regenerate after extraction. By keeping the plant’s name a secret while training local families in its collection, Marques says he hopes to create a permanent, ethical supply of ibogaine without repeating the ecological harm seen in Africa.
Up until now, the only alternative to obtaining ibogaine, besides harvesting iboga, was to synthesize voacangine, a compound found in the voacanga plant (Voacanga africana) at high concentrations and with a chemical structure similar to ibogaine.
Ibogaine scarcity sparked the interest of researchers like Marques, a Ph.D. in natural products chemistry and postdoctoral fellow in biotechnology and organic synthesis at the Federal University of Ceará. In his investigations, he found a Brazilian study from decades ago that mentioned an Amazonian species containing voacangine.
“There was practically nothing in the pharmacological literature about that plant,” Marques says. “It took me almost two years to locate it in the rainforest and understand its ecology: how many times a year it produces seeds and how it germinates and multiplies, for example. I wanted to discover the best times of year to extract the part of the plant used to make voacangine, and whether there was enough to produce it on a large scale.”
Marques doesn’t reveal the name of the species for commercial reasons, warning that publicizing it could trigger a new pharmaceutical rush into the rainforest. To the Brazilian news outlet Exame, Marques only revealed that it’s a common sight in pastures — a plant that ranchers often treat as a weed. In his research, he says he developed a harvesting method that allows the specimen to regenerate, unlike what happens with iboga. “The African shrub is commonly uprooted, where most of the ibogaine is concentrated. In Ghana, where the [iboga] plant is endemic, a technique was created in which the surrounding soil is excavated to peel away part of the root. The plant is preserved, but the extraction cannot be scaled up.”
In the Amazon, the extraction of the raw material is still incipient, so Marques, born in the Amazonian state of Acre to rubber tapper parents, has been training two families to cultivate the mystery plant in the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve. They learned to identify and geolocate the areas where the species occurs, as well as how to collect and dry the part of the plant used. Marques obtained authorization from ICMBio, the agency responsible for federal conservation areas, to collect the first batches.
“All the families [in the reserve] want to work, they are very excited [about the prospect],” Marques says.
ICMBio told Mongabay that it allowed Marques to collect the species for research purposes, and it’s up to him to disclose (or not) his findings — including its name.
The choice of the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve in Acre — notorious as the scene of agrarian conflicts, illegal occupation and high rates of deforestation — “was for the purpose itself,” Marques says. “We want to give these families an economic alternative. When that conservation area was created in 1990, they already lived there, but until today there is still much poverty. People barely have clothes to wear and lack basic health services.”
Besides helping the local economy, Marques also created a company, called Hylaea, to develop pharmaceutical inputs using raw materials from the Amazon.
His business works to optimize the production of ibogaine at scale in partnership with the Chemistry Institute of the University of São Paulo. It has also secured grants and investments, according to Exame.
“Our first sales of voacangine were at the end of 2025 to a U.S. company,” Marques says. “The volume was small, but we were pleased because it passed the quality tests. Israel also placed a small order for ibogaine last year.”
Igaboine treatments are not regulated in Brazil and the substance cannot be sold in the country, but it can be commercially exported to countries where it’s regulated. For larger-scale production or sales, Hylaea will need new permits.
Powerful plant
After Tabernanthe iboga was described in an 1889 French publication, ibogaine was brought to Europe and began to be sold as a neuromuscular stimulant. In the 1960s, heroin users reported that ibogaine reduced opioid dependence, according to a historical review of the substance published in 2026 in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies.
But cases of arrhythmia and deaths from cardiac arrest in detoxification therapies, associated with insufficient clinical studies on the substance, have led many countries to restrict or ban its use. Where ibogaine is unregulated or legalized, treatment clinics — with or without medical supervision — have proliferated in the last 10 years or so, as in Mexico, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand.
“There are still thousands of people using ibogaine without even basic information, and the best place to gather high-quality data is in a clinical setting, where a team of professionals can closely observe what is happening,” Genís Ona, study coordinator at Sant Joan de Déu Hospital’s Clinical Research Unit in Barcelona, Spain, tells Mongabay.
Between 2019 and 2024, Ona conducted the first clinical trial on ibogaine for methadone detoxification. Most of the 20 participants had been using methadone daily for at least 15 years and all had attempted detox several times, without success. The ibogaine used was synthesized from voacangine, obtained from Voacanga africana.
The results of that trial, which will be published soon in a peer-reviewed journal, were overall positive, according to Ona, particularly in terms of safety. “We found that subjects could receive up to 600 mg of ibogaine without presenting serious adverse events and without a clinically significant effect on cardiac function. No clinical study has reported a safe use of such doses of ibogaine. In terms of efficacy, they were able to reduce their methadone dose, with some discontinuing it completely.”
A new momentum
Other recent studies have been testing ibogaine for health problems as diverse as cocaine addiction, Parkinson’s disease, alcoholism, and brain injury. Experts from Stanford School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences analyzed electroencephalography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of 30 U.S. veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, severe depression, and anxiety. They had previously been treated with ibogaine and magnesium (to protect the heart). The results, published in Nature, showed ibogaine “safely led to improvements in depression, anxiety and functioning among veterans with traumatic brain injuries.”
The improvement in these and many other veterans who sought ibogaine-assisted therapy — banned in the United States — is driving a movement advocating for the regulation of the substance, The New York Times reported. In April, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to promote research on the medicinal use of psychedelics, which includes funding for ibogaine studies.
In the 1960s, researchers looked into ibogaine, but studies were canceled when then-president Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs. In the 1990s, during the crack epidemic in the U.S., human clinical trials were resumed, and then interrupted after deaths related to cardiac arrests.
But with many U.S. citizens traveling to ibogaine clinics in Mexico, where the substance isn’t regulated, U.S. lawmakers have been proposing bills to resume studies on the substance. Last year, the states of Texas and Arizona approved investments, totaling $55 million, to fund Food and Drug Administration-approved clinical trials of ibogaine. Other states, like Ohio, New York, and Oregon, are following the same path, with bills in the works for the use of the compound.
Banner image: Researcher Ricardo Marques visiting a forest seedling nursery in the Amazon. Image courtesy of Hylaea.
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Citations:
Ona, G., & Marie, S. (2026). The long roots of ibogaine: A journey from plant to pharmaceutical. Journal of Psychedelic Studies. doi:10.1556/2054.2026.00491
Luz, M., & Mash, D. C. (2021). Evaluating the toxicity and therapeutic potential of ibogaine in the treatment of chronic opioid abuse. Expert Opinion on Drug Metabolism & Toxicology, 17(9), 1019-1022. doi:10.1080/17425255.2021.1944099
Cherian, K. N., Keynan, J. N., Anker, L., Faerman, A., Brown, R. E., Shamma, A., … Williams, N. R. (2024). Magnesium–ibogaine therapy in veterans with traumatic brain injuries. Nature Medicine, 30(2), 373-381. doi:10.1038/s41591-023-02705-w
Lissemore, J. I., Chaiken, A., Cherian, K. N., Buchanan, D., Espil, F., Keynan, J. N., … Williams, N. R. (2025). Magnesium–ibogaine therapy effects on cortical oscillations and neural complexity in veterans with traumatic brain injury. Nature Mental Health, 3(8), 918-931. doi:10.1038/s44220-025-00463-x
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Cite this article
Jenny Gonzales (2026). Secret Amazon species may be new source of ibogaine for addiction treatment. Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-322102Credits
