Integral approaches to Opiate Addiction and its treatment with Ibogaine

Integral approaches to Opiate Addiction and its treatment with Ibogaine

2^nd International Conference on Addiction Research and Therapy
May 13-14, 2019 | Prague, Czech Republic

Adrian Auler

California Institute of Integral Studies, USA

Scientific Tracks Abstracts : J Psychol Cognition

Abstract:

Opiate addiction is spreading, and its treatment has been a spectacular failure, due to the predictably narrow, incomplete grasp of its character one would expect from the paradigm of scientific materialism. Opiate addiction research conceived within a positivist-reductionist container has focused on the clinical addiction to opiates, as if this were the causal factor rather than a consequence. True, clinical addiction to opiates is an immediate threat to the health and welfare of the individual and must be attended first; but opiate addiction is a mental illness that is exacerbated by sociocultural stigmatization, political and corporate denigration of the individual, and a worldview which maintains that life and the cosmos are meaningless. Opiate addiction is thus a triage response to existential despair, characterized by a sense of hopelessness, and resulting in a kind of Kafkaesque nightmare. The integral philosophy and yoga of Aurobindo Ghose and the Mother contains an inherent whole-person psychology, which I use in conjunction with Jungian depth psychology to evaluate the personal aspects of opiate addiction. Integral philosophy is a lens I use to consider.

Biography:

Adrian Auler is a doctoral candidate in East-West Psychology (EWP) at the California Institute of Integral Studies. His dissertation topic is opiate addiction and its treatment with the entheogen ibogaine. His real qualification to address the topic is that he was a heroin addict for 22 years and only escaped it using ibogaine. He finished most of his higher education in the 21 years since he got clean. He has also written a book which is a popular treatment of his dissertation topic. He got BA’s in anthropology and psychology as they complement each other to produce a comprehensive perspective. He also got an MA, and now ABD, in EWP. His lenses are depth, transpersonal, and integral psychology, psychological and medical anthropology, and autoethnography. He focuses on consciousness studies, including energy medicine and psychedelic research. Integral psychology is a philosophical and spiritual transpersonal psychology, and the “hard problem” of Chalmers is a touchstone in his work.

E-mail: adrianauler21@gmail.com

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