Well, I did start it, but as we (my girlfriend and I) were there in May, we were faced with the end of the Gabonese big rain season, which appeared to be a very unpleasant moment, both because of the humidity and the heat, which were both absolutely overpowering. (Dan Lieberman, our guide there, went back in july, and wrote us quasi-teasing that it was "cool" then.) In Libreville, right on the coast, the temperature at 23:00 hrs was usually 30-32 degrees Celsius. As soon as you walked into the city, you could notice the temperature rising about another five degrees. But... as said, that was on the coast, where there was also a nice breeze, and we had the idea it was manageable allright. In Komy though, the story was a little different. In Lambarene, the temperature at 14:00 hrs. was a stiff 47 deg. Celsius... Humidity was about 90-95%, and there was NO wind. And then we had to stay for at least four days in the village of Komy, in rather primitive conditions: starting the day before the ceremony (thursday) until -at least- sunday, but more likely tuesday -because of the crippling effect of the huge doses used in initiations. I hardly slept because of the heat & humidity. So when I started the initiation friday, I was already pretty tired. And then I had to shake bouquets of plants for hours (starting immediately after the ritual clothing, and continuing until reaching the visionary stage), and, as soon as we were in the temple, I was placed in front of a huge fire pot (distance 1.5 mtrs, height of the flames about 80-100 cm...) So I was shaking the flowers, and staring into my own eye's mirror image, and getting warmer and warmer and ever more tired. At some point I looked to the ground and noticed that there was a wet spot (diameter about 20 cm), caused by my dripping sweat. Also, my entire body was completely drenched. I ate and ate the powder (with honey, as the dry bitter stuff seemed to stop my saliva production) and slowly, hallucinations started to manifest. First as faint images at the rim of my field of view and progessively increasing distortions of the image of my face in the mirror, as if it became painted with white stripes and red dots and slowly being molded further and further as if it were made of clay. Then, suddenly, a 'hole' appeared in my field of view, mostly green, and I immediately felt I was looking into (an)other dimension(s) than the known three. This was an an abstract image, and it immediately disappeared when I enthousiastically tried to focus on it. Soon thereafter, another such a hole appeared, and this time it was as if I looked through a window into another world; sunny, with a city in the distance, and a woman nearby. Same disappearance when I tried to focus on it... At that moment I realised that if I went any further, I would be knocked out for at least two days, and I asked myself whether that would be safe in the conditions we were in. I decided it wouldn't be: I did trust the villagers to have enough knowledge about iboga and its effects on man, but I doubted whether they would notice soon enough when I would become overheated, which might very well have been a pretty dangerous sitiation, requiring swift intervention. So... at that point I decided to abort the initiation -even though this was the ultimate goal of the entire trip to Gabon, and had taken us months of preparation. I felt horrible about it, doubted for many months whether I had taken the right decision or that I might have quit because of fear, but finally I realised I had taken the only sane decision possible. Here's a (probably rare) picture of the early stage of the ritual, the eating of a banana filled with two tablespoons of iboga powder, just after the washing, smearing (with herbs) and the dressing in the ritual clothing." 'Asterix' approx 2001
So you're saying you had a choice of whether to go on the journey or not? Did you purge the iboga back up at this point?
Stalk, i'm not saying a thing that's this banana? http://shaman-australis.com.au/Website/Constituents/Ibogaine.html
