Inside My 72-Hour Psychedelic Iboga Therapy With Julie Piatt
Rich Roll and his wife Julie Piatt discuss Rich's 72-hour iboga ceremony experience conducted in the Bwiti tradition, exploring how the grueling psychedelic journey differed from his prior psilocybin/MDMA experience and what personal transformations emerged in the weeks following. Julie shares her perspective as his partner of 25 years, noting specific behavioral shifts she observed. Both emphasize the importance of integration, the role of feminine healing energy, and caution listeners against pursuing this without serious deliberation.
Summary
Rich Roll opens by providing context for his iboga experience, explaining that his history of addiction recovery made him resistant to psychedelics for years despite growing scientific evidence of their therapeutic potential. His first psychedelic experience — a combination of psilocybin and MDMA — cracked something open in him but did not resolve persistent recursive patterns, resentments rooted in early childhood, and a relentless negative inner monologue. Over the following year, ibogaine kept appearing in his awareness — through podcast conversations, documentaries, and encounters at events — eventually leading him to a facilitator his wife Julie had serendipitously encountered at a dinner party.
Julie describes her intuitive pull toward this woman before even knowing who she was, sensing a powerful feminine frequency. She also explains that the facilitator works specifically with the full iboga root in the Bwiti tradition rather than isolated ibogaine alkaloid, which she frames as working with the feminine aspect of the plant rather than a Western clinical extraction. Rich emphasizes that Julie's endorsement of the facilitator was critical to his willingness to proceed, and that he wrote farewell letters to his family before beginning due to the cardiac risks involved.
Rich describes the experience itself as the 'Mount Everest of psychedelics' — far more confrontational and physically destabilizing than psilocybin. Beginning Friday evening and lasting approximately 72 hours, the journey involved consuming powdered iboga root multiple times, accompanied by relentless Bwiti ceremonial music that felt torturous. Unlike the veterans in the Netflix documentary 'In Waves and War' who experienced recognizable memory-based visions, Rich's hallucinations were abstract and unrecognizable, leading him to feel he was 'doing it wrong.' He later came to understand that the plant was probing and dismantling his defense mechanisms rather than showing him specific memories.
Saturday was largely spent immobilized and dissociated, followed by a second dosing phase that shifted into a rebirthing process — an inner child reparenting journey that culminated in an intensely emotional cacao ceremony that unexpectedly moved him to tears despite his prior cynicism about it. In the days following, Rich noted a significant reduction in his coffee dependence, which he found shocking and symbolic of the plant's anti-addictive properties. Over the five weeks since, he reports feeling more grounded, patient, present, and less hypervigilant, describing the change metaphorically as being able to set down a backpack full of rocks.
Julie offers her own observations, noting that Rich showed up differently in small mundane moments — accompanying her to a car wash without resentment, sitting close at the movies with full presence — in ways she had never experienced in 25 years together. She frames this shift as a resonant change in presence rather than grand gestures, and connects it to her hope for an evolved next chapter in their relationship. She also reflects on her own 28-day Panchakarma retreat in India that overlapped with his iboga journey, framing their parallel paths as spiritually synchronized.
Both Rich and Julie discuss integration at length, with Rich acknowledging the tension between his achievement-oriented brain wanting to 'ultraman the integration' and the facilitator's reminder that the spirit animal of iboga is the turtle — urging slowness. Rich connects his experience to his long-term engagement with therapeutic modalities, noting that Gabor Maté had suggested psychedelic therapy to him a decade earlier and he wasn't ready then. He closes by strongly cautioning listeners that this experience is not a recommendation, that it is physically and psychologically dangerous without proper vetting, and that anyone considering it should research extensively and consult mental health professionals.
About this episode
Julie Piatt is my wife, my partner, and the person I needed sitting across from me for this one. This conversation explores my recent experience with iboga, the root bark medicine used by the Bwiti people of Gabon for thousands of years. We discuss what led me there after decades of recovery and therapy, the confrontational nature of the ceremony, the rebirthing process, the role of the divine feminine, and what has quietly shifted in the aftermath. Julie also weighs in, sharing what she's witnessed from the outside. This one is personal. And I'm glad I finally talked about it. Enjoy. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Plant Power Meal Planner: Get $20 off an annual subscription with code PLANTPOWER20👉🏼https://meals.richroll.com Momentous: High-caliber human performance products for sleep, focus, longevity, and more. For listeners of the show, Momentous is offering up to 35% off your first order👉🏼https://www.livemomentous.com/richroll Freaks of Nature: High-performance everyday essentials–deodorant, sunscreen, hydration, and more. Use code RICHROLL to save 20%👉🏼https://www.FreaksofNature.com Ollie: Fresh, healthy dog food made with real, human-grade ingredients. Use code RICHROLL to get 70% off your Welcome Kit👉🏼https://www.ollie.com/richroll Rivian: Electric vehicles that keep the world adventurous forever👉🏼https://www.rivian.com Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange
Key Insights
- Rich argues that the idea of a powerful mind-altering substance being the solution to an addict's problems is itself intoxicating and frightening, which kept him resistant to psychedelics for years despite emerging science.
- Rich claims that iboga, taken as the full root in the Bwiti tradition, is categorically different from clinical ibogaine treatment — the latter isolates only one of 22 alkaloids and strips away ceremony that he believes is integral to the healing.
- Rich describes the iboga experience as not delivering the recognizable memory-based visions he expected from veterans' testimonials, and was told retroactively that the plant was instead dismantling his defense mechanisms by provoking and observing his reactions.
- Julie argues that the woman facilitating the iboga ceremony works specifically with the feminine aspect of the plant, in contrast to clinical Western formats she characterizes as engaging only the masculine aspect.
- Rich reports that five days of forced coffee abstinence before the ceremony — required due to cardiac risks — combined with the experience itself led him to pour out his first post-ceremony cup without craving it, which he frames as an unexpected and immediate anti-addictive benefit.
- Rich contends that the negative inner monologue most people carry is often mistaken for the self, and that even a partial ability to observe it as separate — rather than identifying with it — has already produced significant change in his behavior.
- Julie observes that the most meaningful post-iboga shift in Rich was not grand gestures but a change in presence during mundane activities — going to a car wash, sitting at a movie — which she says she had never experienced in 25 years together.
- Rich argues that his life has been characterized by violence toward himself — constant self-punishment and self-judgment — and that his capacity to love others is fundamentally limited by his inability to love himself first.
- Rich claims that the iboga experience mimics a full hero's journey arc within 72 hours, cycling through confrontation, death-like states, rebirth, and an inner child reparenting process before culminating in the cacao ceremony.
- Gabor Maté personally suggested psychedelic therapy to Rich over a decade before this episode during a recorded interview, and Rich rejected it at the time — framing it as evidence that he needed years of additional maturation before he was ready.
- Rich notes that the Marcus Capone podcast conversation was already in Tyler's email pipeline before Rich had even undergone the iboga experience, which he frames as a meaningful synchronicity reinforcing that his path was unfolding as intended.
- Rich argues that the healing energy of the four women overseeing the ceremony embodied a feminine antidote to the patterns of male power-seeking he connects to historical violence, and that this specifically made the experience transformative rather than merely pharmacological.
Topics
Transcript
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