Ibogaine Mesodosing Week 4: Lessons About my ADHD and Emotional Trauma

Before you step into reading my Ibogaine Meso-Dosing Week 4, a quick note: if you’ve arrived at this blog first, I’d recommend you start at Week 1, Week 2 and Week 3 for it all to make sense.

By the fourth week, something fundamental shifted for me.

In the previous three, I had begun to change how I showed up for my sister and mother. It was the first time I could clearly see that I could love my family deeply without sacrificing myself in the process.

I grew up in a regular, well-meaning family that was also saturated with unprocessed, intergenerational trauma, emotional chaos and toxic dynamics.

I was emotionally parentified by both my mother and father. Parentification trauma is where a child is put in the role of caretaker or confidant to one or both parents, or pulled into taking care of one on behalf of the other.

What that meant in practical terms is this: as a parentified child, I was born into my mother’s depression, my father’s passive-aggressiveness, his repeated marital infidelities, and her decline in mental health because of it. My father, himself a workaholic and emotionally unavailable, would “reward” me with presents and gifts for “taking such good care of mummy.”

For most of my life I felt responsible for everyone’s wellbeing, and deeply not enough when I couldn’t “fix” the people I loved, or perform infallibly at work.

During this meso-dosing process with ibogaine, I was learning to set boundaries around what I could and couldn’t do, how I would show up, and, more importantly, how I could change the way I let our family dynamics affect me, instead of waiting for everyone else to change first.

My first ibogaine treatment in 2022 had already shown me very clearly who I genuinely was, and what I had inherited emotionally from the adults in my life.

Once I knew what was and wasn’t mine, it became clearer what needed to change. Now, nearly three years down the line, mesodosing with ibogaine tincture was helping me actually implement those changes in real time: becoming more aware of why I was reacting the way I was, and meeting myself with a little more compassion instead of automatic shame when I slipped back into old patterns.

With that in mind, let’s dive into Week 4, where you’ll read about another defining insight I had about myself. I had briefly acknowledged it as a diagnosis 10 years ago, but had never deeply researched it. If you’re curious to know what it is, go ahead and dive in!

9:30am – 30 drops Ibotincture

• I will pace my body through long hours and add small resets often.
• How will I notice my patterns without shame and choose one helpful adjustment?
• I choose one small, finishable task to complete today.

Day 8: No alcohol

Was up last night reading and researching about my ADHD, and am dumbfounded by what I learned. Also, when reviewing the list of symptoms below, I now see exactly how mesodosing with ibogaine has softened many of the symptoms. Learned about the impaired default mode network ADHD brains live with, and how it remains overactive during tasks, messing with our ability to focus. My own is the combined type: inattentive and hyperactive.

How my innate drive to care for others is both magnified & drained by my ADHD because I would so often say yes before assessing my capacity.

Interestingly, from my research I discovered that in the ADHD brain there is a more pronounced dopamine deficit than usual, which is one of the factors that makes me prone to stimuli like drugs, alcohol, porn and even compulsive infatuation – a lived example of how ADHD and addiction can intertwine.

Paradoxically, while one of its benefits is creativity through divergent thinking, it also makes consistent output more challenging.

Some Key Areas ADHD Affects Me In

Perfection Paralysis
ADHD makes one overly attuned to how actions will be perceived by others, which slows task initiation for fear of disappointing others.

Shame Loop
Together w/ my parentified childhood, my ADHD amplifies the underlying sense of “not enough.”

Delayed Reward Sensitivity
When something doesn’t have a tangible payoff or feedback loop, it becomes very difficult to sustain.

9:00am – 30 drops Ibotincture

Day 9: No alcohol

Continuing from last night’s entry, here’s what else I found studying about ADHD and how it related to shame and perfectionism. The DSM-5 states that in adult ADHD, one must check at least 5 symptoms from one of the two types.

And it’s not symptom count alone. It’s also necessary that they:

• be present often for more than 6 months
• cause clear impairment
• show up in two or more settings (e.g., home and work),
• have some symptoms present before age 12,
• and not be better explained by another condition.

I check all the points above.

I’m copying the list of symptoms by hand into these pages, so it really lands with me.

Why? Because I don’t just have a few from each list. Of all the eighteen symptoms in both types, there are only two I don’t have!

I had a diagnosis for it 10 years ago, in rehab as I was quitting heroin, but its actual full impact was lost on me then. It’s stunning to read this now.

It’s as if a gigantic weight has been lifted off me; where before I thought I was less capable than others, or (as I used to so kindly call myself) “slightly retarded,” I am now starting to see the condition’s impact on my self-esteem, focus, imposter syndrome and compulsive tendencies.

Inattentive symptoms

1. Often makes careless mistakes or misses details
2. Often struggles to sustain attention in tasks or reading
3. Often seems not to listen when spoken to directly
4. Often starts tasks but has difficulty following through or finishing
5. Often has difficulty organising tasks and materials
6. Often avoids or dislikes sustained mental effort
7. Often loses things needed for tasks
8. Is often easily distracted, including by internal thoughts
9. Is often forgetful in daily activities

Hyperactive-impulsive symptoms

1. Often fidgets or feels physically keyed up
2. Often leaves seat when remaining seated is expected
3. Often feels restless; in adults this may be an internal restlessness
4. Often finds it hard to relax or do leisure activities quietly
5. Is often “on the go” as if driven by a motor
6. Often talks excessively
7. Often blurts out answers or finishes others’ sentences
8. Often has difficulty waiting their turn
9. Often interrupts or intrudes on others

Day 11: No alcohol

• I will write in my voice and welcome the friction that makes it real.
• How will I reduce reliance on tools that flatten my expression?
• I choose one small writing target I can keep today.

Today I managed to really reconnect with my own creativity, and began writing a blog without getting Chat GPT to draft or polish it for me.

I feel that, more than anything else, it has been the over-reliance on GPT that has disconnected me from the act of bringing myself to the act of writing, especially for work.

The reason I have used it so much in the past year started because of the speed at which AI writes content, and I am not a speed writer.

Day 12: No alcohol

It has now been a month since accepting these new projects with Alvaro (Ibogenics, Mesodose, and Transilience Health).

Thirty full days since Iboga made its spirit known to me again.

Since I once again managed to take the reins of my life with conscious intent.

As I take the time to review this last month meso dosing with ibogaine, I will put down themes, successes, and areas for improvement.

I notice now that, although I have always extensively journaled, I seldom return to those pages once written (perhaps out of fear of reconnecting with the past) but there is a reason for such avoidance, and it is this:

The past can only hurt one insofar as it rests collected and unexamined, and therefore, unprocessed, outside the conscious mind.

1st Monthly Review

Main Themes
• My relationship to work
• Boundaries with Mum & Sister
• Performance wound — how others see me
• Psoriasis: skin care & relationship to my body
• Self-care and attunement to emotional states
• Residual addictions: alcohol, porn, Netflix, binge-eating, YouTube
• ADHD consciousness & reframing
• Re-writing shame
• Understanding & honouring anxiety
• How I’ve managed to show up differently for my sister

Viewed like this, and all the pages read, what an incredible month of conscious intent; of agency reclaimed step by step; of emotional responsibility both nurtured and taken through active steps.

I’ve made progress in key areas, and while I have had some setbacks and slips, I have chosen not to view them through the usual lens of shame-tainted failure. That, in and of itself, is a seismic shift.

My ability to be more honest with those I love, and not always put myself centre stage, allowing others the space to exist just as they are without trying to change them, is also notable, and it has made me more honest with myself.

It’s now November 2025, and having re-read and edited these journals for the first time since then has revealed many things.

A part of me can’t actually believe I just put considerable parts of my own private journals up for public consumption, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that healing doesn’t happen in a vacuum…it needs to be shared.

If I had to name what changed, it wasn’t that life became easier, as much that the space between impulse and action widened enough for me to notice myself.

Sometimes I saw the reach for the bottle before my hand moved, other times I didn’t. But the ensuing loop of shame afterwards grew softer and softer over that month, until I stopped drinking from a grounded place of choice rather than forced willpower.

Addiction is a many-headed beast, and it’s not just about drugs. It’s any impulsive behaviour we self-soothe with and can’t stop despite its negative consequences in our life.

First, we have to identify what the behaviour is. Some are easy to spot, like drugs or alcohol, but others such as sex (or porn), relationships, tech, money, work/achievement and food can be harder to identify.

But once we’ve identified the problem, if we don’t dig to understand what drives the compulsion, we stand little hope against it; awareness is only the first step.

Mesodosing with ibogaine tincture helped me by slowing the channel in my head that never stops talking (in neurological terms, the Default Mode Network), which is the part that chews on old stories and runs the same anxiety loops.

With the noise of my monkey-mind turned down, it was easier to hear my body ask for simple things. Food before beer. A walk before another hour at the screen. A few deep breaths before reacting.

As far as plant medicines go, in my personal opinion, I find ibogaine is more introspective and related to specific turning points in one’s life than either psilocybin or ayahuasca, even when mesodosing. It shows you how and why certain protective (self-soothing) behaviours started, and what you need to know in order to change them, and if you are willing to look, it keeps you there long enough to tell the truth.

For the second time around, since my first flood dose treatment at Tabula Rasa Retreat, it offered me clarity and curiosity enough to understand the actual impact ADHD was having on my personal and professional life (something I had never fully realized).

It also allowed me the self-compassion to start implementing small changes from then on to build a more solid scaffolding in my life.

Since June, I’ve done three full mesodosing cycles: one month on (with three off-days a week), and then a full month off.

So, in my humble opinion here’s the truth about any kind of psychedelic therapy, whether microdosing, mesodosing our full marcrodoses: they help you to see your authentic self, sometimes gently, sometimes starkly; they teach you to look beyond all the inherited narratives you grew to believe about yourself, from “not good enough” to “I have to work really hard to be loved.”

But peeling back the layers to get there?

That was never their job.

But it could be yours, if you choose it.

Is it easy?

It depends on how you see the concept of “change,” so for what it’s worth, here’s mine.

For starters, even if we don’t believe in God, or universal consciousness, at the level of astrophysics, we live in a universe where stasis (stagnation) is impossible; therefore, change is the only constant.

Leave it to us humans to think that our life will always be the same, our marriage the same, that nothing will ever change. Even without our attempts, everything and everyone around us is changing.

From childhood on, as I’ve explained in this blog series, we are taught to assign good/bad attributes to our emotions by society as much as our parents. And, by observing society and our parents, we learn that the default behaviour that should be done is avoid the “bad” emotions at all costs, in any way possible.

Another element of late-stage capitalism we are indoctrinated with is our obsession with outcomes: “my life will be better when I get/do/have/achieve/buy/marry/find/.”

When it comes to healing journeys – or, at least, how I came to see and appreciate mine – if you focus on the outcome, then yes; they can be at times long, exhausting, and frustrating enough to abandon and go back to our old ways.

But if we learn to appreciate “process” for what it is; if we progressively learn about what emotions are, what they do, and the messages they carry, we can learn to see them as our body’s messenger about what serves us, and what does not, and make choices and build from there.

So, I’ll ask again? And I’ll give you my answer:

Is it easy?

Hell, no!

But it’s much better than staying stuck, in fear, afraid to be your true self, speak your mind, seek authentic connections, afraid to treat your body and brain like the sensory temple of possibility they truly are, simply because you learned to believe you didn’t deserve unconditional love.