Integrating Ibogaine: A narrative approach to meaning, identity and lasting change

Ibogaine is a powerful psychoactive substance capable of interrupting substance use disorders, revealing insight, and catalysing profound psychological change. Yet what happens after the experience is what ultimately determines whether change can endure.

In Integrating Ibogaine, Martie Underwood explores an underdeveloped area in the field of psychedelic-assisted therapy: how people make sense of, organise, and live the insights that emerge from ibogaine.

Drawing on original doctoral research in psychology alongside years of practical experience, this book frames integration not as an optional aftercare process, but as the central mechanism through which transformation becomes sustainable. It presents integration as a narrative process that unfolds over time, shaping identity, behaviour, relationships, and meaning.

At the heart of this work is a simple truth: insight alone does not create lasting change. Transformation requires the gradual reorganisation and development of the narrative self.

This book explores:

• Why insight alone is not enough
• How ibogaine shifts identity and meaning
• Navigating shifts in identity
• How language and relationships shape integration
• Ethics in supporting ibogaine work
• Keeping narratives open and flexible

Written for clinicians, facilitators, integration practitioners, and participants seeking to understand their own experiences, Integrating Ibogaine offers a grounded and psychologically rigorous framework for approaching one of the most complex aspects of psychedelic work.

This is not a book about the experience itself. It is a book about what follows.