Hi Everyone!

By way of introduction: I'm a 26 year old woman, who was diagnosed with Alopecia Areata a year ago. I lost almost all of my scalp hair, and then did a 6 week course of prednisone which resulted in a complete regrowth of my hair... for about four months. After that it started falling out again, and kept on falling out (I was nearly completely bald) until last week. Injections were ineffective, methotrexate didn't work, and even prednisone didn't reverse the damage the second time around. I also tried acupuncture, the really awful cream that causes your scalp to burn and flake off, sulfasalazine, and UV light therapy. The doctors told me there was nothing else they could do.

Like most people here, my journey has been incredibly emotionally difficult, (though I handled the hair-loss much better the second time around!) - a number of major life changes and setbacks also added to a general sad state.

Then about a week ago I went to Mexico to a treatment clinic where I took a flood dose of Ibogaine and participated in two ayahuasca ceremonies. Both ibogaine and ayahuasca are completely non-toxic (ibogaine can be lethal though if you take it while you're on opiates!), non-addictive, though it's recommended that both be taken with supervision and in a safe environment. I came into both medicines with the intention of being healed, and for one of the ayahuasca ceremonies my intention/request was specifically to regrow my hair. Immediately I felt the medicine work its way up to my scalp, and start to work on the bald patches. After the ceremony, my scalp felt healthy - meaning there was no itching, no burning, and no hair falling out. Not only that, but a lot of it is now growing back, fairly quickly too. I feel so grateful, and a bit nervous that this won't hold up and the alopecia will come back any day. However, the medicines also healed a lot of the inner trauma that I had stored up from having the alopecia - I no longer feel strange, or lonely, or hate going outside because of image issues. So I feel good about many things, not just the hair regrowth.

Has anyone here ever looked into ayahuasca and/or ibogaine for any kind of treatment? Both medicines are illegal in the US, but ibogaine is legal most other countries (including Canada, UK, Mexico, France, Australia, NZ, etc.) and ayahuasca is legal in most of South and Central America.

I can vouch that the experiences I had on the medicine count as the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced in my life. I feel whole, blessed, grateful, and healed in the best sense of the word. I'm thinking about getting into this line of work, as these plants seem to me to be miraculous - besides the alopecia they also relieved my arthritis symptoms (I've had Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis for 14 years). I know that ayahuasca has been known to treat autoimmune diseases before, and ibogaine takes drug addicts off of drugs without any withdrawal symptoms overnight (however, that doesn't mean that they can't get re-addicted after they go through the experience!).

I would be really interested in any thoughts, personal experiences, or advice in how to continue exploration of healing plants.

Cheers to all!