There Is No Single Ibogaine Success Rate
A number describing withdrawal relief after two days cannot tell you the probability of someone remaining well a year later. The human research on ibogaine for opioid addiction includes encouraging observations, but it also comes with small samples, uncontrolled designs, retrospective reporting, and incomplete follow-up. To understand what a percentage actually means, you need to know what counted as success, who was counted, and when the outcome was measured.
This article focuses on opioid-related outcomes specifically. Results from research on other conditions should not be read as an opioid recovery rate.
| Study | Sample | When Measured | Result | What It Does Not Show |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Malcolm et al., 2018 | 50 | 48 hours | Reduced withdrawal and craving symptoms | Long-term abstinence |
| Brown & Alper, 2018 | 30 | 1 month | 15 reported no opioid use in the prior 30 days | A durable result a year later |
| Noller et al., 2018 | 14; complete-case analysis — 8 | Up to 12 months | Reduced addiction-severity scores | An overall probability of success for a new patient |
Full details, including each study's limitations, are discussed below. These numbers are not combined into a single range — they measure different outcomes at different time points and cannot be averaged into one success rate.
Five Different Things Can Be Called Success
None of the five outcomes below should be dismissed — they answer different questions. A clinic quoting a success rate should be willing to say which one it is measuring, rather than letting a reader assume the most favorable meaning.
- Withdrawal relief — a change in symptoms during or shortly after admission. Says nothing about sustained recovery after discharge.
- Reduced craving — a change in a symptom score or self-report, not the absence of future use or overdose.
- Recent abstinence — usually means no reported use within a defined recent window, not continuous abstinence since treatment.
- Reduced use or severity — fewer use days or lower severity scores, not complete cessation.
- Long-term health outcome — survival, overdose rate, or functioning over time. The most meaningful measure, and the hardest to attribute to any single component of care.
What Individual Studies Actually Reported
Malcolm et al., 2018 followed 50 participants with opioid use disorder through a week-long ibogaine detoxification protocol. At 48 hours after ibogaine administration, 78% did not show objective clinical signs of withdrawal, 79% reported minimal cravings, and 68% reported subjective withdrawal symptoms in the mild range. This is a short-term symptom endpoint. It is not a long-term recovery rate, and the study itself describes these results as warranting further research with controlled trials.
Brown and Alper, 2018 (published online in 2017) followed 30 participants treated at a clinic, with 15 reporting no opioid use in the preceding 30 days at the one-month mark. There was no randomized comparator, and the window measured was a specific recent period, not lifetime abstinence.
Noller et al., 2018 (also online in 2017) followed 14 participants in New Zealand for up to 12 months. The study's main analysis, comparing baseline to 12-month follow-up, included the eight participants who completed every interview, and showed a significant reduction in addiction-severity scores. Four additional participants with partial data also showed reductions in drug-use severity and family/social problems, though they were not part of the primary complete-case comparison. One participant died during treatment. Fourteen people entered the study; the strength of the evidence is strongest for the eight with complete follow-up, and weaker — though not absent — for the four with partial data.
A retrospective online survey by Davis et al., 2017 collected responses from 88 people drawn from a clinic contact list. Thirty percent reported no opioid use after treatment, while 70% reported a return to use at some point. Some people who later returned to opioids also reported a period of abstinence in between, so "never used again" and "currently abstinent" describe different histories within the same dataset. Neither the 30% nor the 70% figure should be read as a universal probability for a new patient; the survey drew on a self-selected group reachable through a clinic's own records, not a prospectively tracked cohort.
A larger open-label clinical series by Mash et al., 2018 followed 191 people seeking opioid or cocaine detoxification. The follow-up loss within this series is substantial and worth seeing concretely: for the opioid craving measure, the published data cover 75 people before treatment, 74 at discharge, and 37 at the one-month follow-up. That one-month figure describes roughly a fifth of the full 191-person series, not everyone enrolled, and the mixed opioid-and-cocaine population means this series does not produce a single comparable opioid outcome number either.
Sample Size Is Not the Same as Strength of Evidence
A series of 191 people sounds more reassuring than a study of 14. But a larger sample does not supply a missing control group, make incomplete follow-up complete, or turn a mixed opioid-and-cocaine population into a single opioid outcome cohort. Several publications can also describe the same participants under different author lists; counting papers rather than independent cohorts can make the evidence base look larger than it is. Our research database links to the original papers so you can check methods and follow-up directly rather than relying on a citation count.
A Randomized Trial Exists, But It Is Not What It Sounds Like
Glue et al., 2016 ran a randomized, placebo-controlled, ascending single-dose safety study of noribogaine, ibogaine's active metabolite, in 27 opioid-dependent patients. Its primary focus was safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics; exploratory withdrawal outcomes were also measured but did not establish efficacy — ratings showed a non-significant trend, while QTc increased with exposure. Noribogaine is a distinct administered compound from ibogaine itself. This trial should not be described as a randomized demonstration of ibogaine's long-term efficacy for opioid use disorder.
Safety Has to Sit Next to Any Benefit Claim
A success-rate claim should say how adverse events, transfers, early discontinuations, and deaths were counted. Excluding people who did not complete treatment from the denominator can make a program look more effective and less hazardous than its full experience actually was. Our cardiac risk guide covers the primary safety concern in more detail. A high percentage of symptom improvement is not the same measurement as a low complication rate, and neither can be inferred from the other.
Why These Studies Cannot Rank Ibogaine Against Standard Treatment
Comparing a two-day symptom score against a six-month medication-retention measure is not a treatment comparison, because the populations, aims, follow-up windows, and opportunities to record adverse events differ. Any claim that ibogaine outperforms another treatment needs a comparison using the same outcome definition for both. A clinic's own discharge data set against an unrelated study of long-term maintenance medication cannot establish that. See our opioid evidence overview for broader context, and our separate comparison of ibogaine against methadone and buprenorphine for how that specific comparison should and should not be made.
Fentanyl exposure is a further reason to look closely at a study's population. An older cohort built around heroin or prescription-opioid dependence does not produce a validated fentanyl-specific recovery estimate; see our fentanyl-specific screening considerations for why that distinction matters.
Seven Questions to Ask About Any Clinic's Percentage
- What exact outcome is being measured, and at what date after treatment?
- How many people began treatment, completed it, and actually answered follow-up?
- Does "abstinent" mean continuously since treatment, or only during a recent reporting window?
- Were outcomes self-reported, clinically assessed, or verified some other way?
- How were missing participants, adverse events, repeat treatments, and later medication use handled in the calculation?
- What other treatment or support did participants receive alongside ibogaine?
- Is the full report available for independent review, rather than a summary provided only by the clinic itself?
These questions are useful even when a provider has not published a journal article. A center should still be able to distinguish systematically collected outcomes from anecdotes. A refusal to define a headline percentage is itself useful information.
What You Can Reasonably Take From the Evidence
Selected studies report short-term symptom improvement and, in some cases, later changes in opioid use. They do not establish a universal success rate or a cure. The right conclusion is specific to each study's own design and outcome definition, not a single number that applies to every patient at every clinic.
Before enrolling in a program, it is worth asking what benefit is realistic given your own history, what the risks are, and what happens if improvement does not occur or does not last. A plan for aftercare is part of that conversation, though the literature summarized here does not establish one optimal ibogaine-specific follow-up package.
Clinic Ratings Are Not a Success Rate
Elsewhere on this site, centers display a Safety Score out of 10 and labels like "verified" or "safety-screened." Those ratings describe a center's self-reported screening protocols, staffing, and monitoring practices, as assessed against our published methodology — they are not a measure of treatment outcomes, and a high Safety Score is not evidence that ibogaine will be effective for a given person. See how we calculate the Safety Score for what it does and does not evaluate. Nothing in this article should be read as implying that a center's rating substitutes for the kind of outcome evidence discussed above.
Sources
Literature reviewed as of October 2026. Primary sources cited inline above:
- Malcolm BJ, et al. Changes in Withdrawal and Craving Scores in Participants Undergoing Opioid Detoxification Utilizing Ibogaine. J Psychoactive Drugs. 2018. PMID: 29608409.
- Brown TK, Alper K. Treatment of opioid use disorder with ibogaine: detoxification and drug use outcomes. Am J Drug Alcohol Abuse. 2018. PMID: 28541119.
- Noller GE, Frampton CM, Yazar-Klosinski B. Ibogaine treatment outcomes for opioid dependence from a twelve-month follow-up observational study. Am J Drug Alcohol Abuse. 2018. PMID: 28402682.
- Davis AK, et al. Survey of entities offering ibogaine treatment for drug dependency. J Psychoactive Drugs. PMC6157925.
- Mash DC, et al. Ibogaine Detoxification Transitions Opioid and Cocaine Abusers Between Dependence and Abstinence: Clinical Observations and Treatment Outcomes. Front Pharmacol. 2018. PMC5996271.
- Glue P, et al. Ascending Single-Dose, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Safety Study of Noribogaine in Opioid-Dependent Patients. Clin Pharmacol Drug Dev. 2016. PMID: 27870477.