Omahan: Drug breaks meth's grip

LINCOLN — Lauren Wertheim was a textbook meth head.

She became hooked in 1999, shortly after snorting methamphetamine under the mistaken impression that it was cocaine.

Meth provided an unbelievable rush of energy. She believed she could accomplish anything.

Soon, Wertheim, a graduate of Omaha's Brownell-Talbot School and daughter of the founder of the Little King restaurant chain, was dealing meth to support her eight-ball-a-day habit (an eight ball is an eighth of an ounce, costing about $300).

Her weight plummeted until she was like a skeleton. Yet she'd do about anything get another high.

“It's an inexplicable power, like the devil is inside of you,” Wertheim said.

Even after a year in prison, her cravings did not subside.

“It's cunning, baffling, powerful and patient; … the biggest fear is that you're going to relapse,” she said.

But now, the 42-year-old Omahan with wavy brown hair and penetrating dark eyes says her cravings are gone. She credits that to a controversial treatment in Mexico with ibogaine, a hallucinogenic extract from a West African shrub that is illegal in the United States.

Medical researchers are skeptical of ibogaine success stories and say it can be dangerous — possibly lethal in some cases. No scientific studies have substantiated the accolades by Wertheim and others who claim ibogaine's curative powers.

Wertheim has teamed up with one of the original Yippies in hopes of getting ibogaine reclassified so it can be legally administered in Nebraska to treat drug addictions.

States could save millions in treatment and incarceration costs if a cheap, quick cure for addiction was available, said Dana Beal, a leading advocate for the legalization of ibogaine as well as medicinal marijuana.

Beal is a counterculture icon. Along with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, he was one of the original Yippies, the radical, anti-establishment Youth International Party of the 1960s. Beal still operates the Yippie Cafe in New York City.

He has organized marches for pot legalization and now is campaigning for ibogaine.

“If it's a medicine that will help somebody, people should be able to get it,” he said.

Beal made news in Nebraska last September. He was among three men arrested in a van on U.S. Highway 6 near Ashland that held 15 pounds of marijuana.

Beal, 63, said that when all the facts come out, he'll be exonerated. The case is scheduled to go to trial this September.

Meanwhile, he continues to promote ibogaine.

He co-wrote a book about the powerful drug in 1997. It details the 1962 claim by a friend of Beal's, Howard Lotsof, that a single dose of ibogaine ends heroin cravings.

Last year, ibogaine was featured in an episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” that portrayed a doctor administering it to a heroin addict so he could testify in a murder trial.

Beal has been traveling the Midwest in recent weeks, holding talks on the benefits of ibogaine. He and Wertheim said they have talked with a couple of state senators and with members of the Nebraska Board of Pharmacy about reclassifying ibogaine.

They want it changed from a Schedule I drug — meaning it has no currently acceptable medical use, could be unsafe and has a probability of abuse — to a Schedule II drug such as cocaine or Oxycodone, which can be prescribed as a treatment under limited circumstances.

The same reclassification is being sought for marijuana in Iowa so it can be prescribed as a treatment for chronic pain and other maladies. A group in Nebraska plans to make the same case to the pharmacy board here this month.

Rick Zarek of Gothenburg, head of the state pharmacy board, said he recalls fielding some calls about ibogaine recently but otherwise is not familiar with the drug. As a general rule, Zarek said, pharmacists are skeptical of testimonial claims unless scientific studies back them up.

A leading researcher in the treatment of addictions, Richard Rawson, associate director of the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Program, said researchers have serious concerns about the safety of the powerful drug, which can induce 30-hour, dream-like reactions.

“Ibogaine appears to damage at least one critical set of neurons in the brain, and in some of the treatment trials outside the U.S., there have been unexplained deaths during ibogaine treatments,” Rawson said.

“Well-controlled scientific research” is lacking, he said.

Lorelle Mueting, project manager for Heartland Family Service, which treats meth addicts in Nebraska and Iowa, said she is unaware of any pills that cure meth addiction. Heartland uses a research-based treatment involving 12 weeks of intensive counseling, followed by 40 weeks of follow-up counseling, she said.

Beal maintained that ibogaine must be administered with medical supervision and that past studies have used much too powerful doses. He added that many legal treatments for cancer and other diseases have potentially fatal side effects.

He also pointed to a 2008 report in the Journal of Ethno-Pharmacology that concluded further investigation of ibogaine's addiction-reducing qualities was warranted.

Beal said the drug's use in other countries has reduced the mortality rate among addicts.

Wertheim said she's living proof.

She served two stints behind bars for meth possession. She was released in 2007 after a year in state prison.

Wertheim emerged with a daughter, born during her prison stay, but still with cravings for the powerful high from what she calls “mommy's little helper.”

In January, fearing that another relapse would cost her custody of her daughter, she traveled to a clinic near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where ibogaine is legal.

She threw up the first time she took the drug. The second time, a dose of three pills sent her into a 17-hour “dreamlike state.”

The cost of the two treatments was $1,500. Traditional meth-addiction therapy costs an estimated $2,500 to $5,000.

When she returned to Omaha, Wertheim said, she no longer felt meth cravings, though she would not say she's 100 percent cured.

“That little thing inside of you that taps you on the shoulder and says, ‘Let's get high' … there's just nothing tapping on my consciousness now,” she said. “It sounds too good to be true. That's the problem with it.”

Is there any chance that a conservative state like Nebraska would permit a powerful hallucinogenic extract to be used in treating addictions? After all, several other states have legalized marijuana for medicinal use, but the idea has little traction here.

Wertheim and Beal acknowledge that it's a long shot but say if ibogaine was reclassified and clinical tests were conducted, the drug would prove itself.

“Some people don't have an ice cube's chance in hell of kicking their addictions,” Beal said. “This gives them a chance.”

Contact the writer:

402-473-9584, paul.hammel@owh.com

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