Deborah Mash

Deborah Mash (* 1952 ) is Professor of Neurology and Pharmacology at the University of Miami . She wrote her dissertation on Alzheimer's disease . She also researched Parkinson's disease . However, her main interest is in the neurological aspects of substance abuse .

In 1990, she discovered her team the metabolite Coca ethylene , which in mixed consumption of alcohol and cocaine in the liver is formed and both the euphoric increased action and the dangerousness of cocaine.

In the early 1990s, she started a research project in collaboration with Howard Lotsof to scientifically prove the addiction-disrupting properties of ibogaine . This research project was discontinued in 1995 because of a death in the Netherlands in connection with ibogaine and because of a study at Johns Hopkins that believed that ibogaine could cause brain damage.

At the same time, Mash built a clinic on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts with the help of private investors, in which drug addicts have been treated with ibogaine since then , with around two thirds of the patients remaining abstinent for a long time through a single treatment , according to Mash .

In 1997 there was a legal dispute between Mash and Lotsof, who had fallen out for a long time and are now suing each other. The patent rights proceedings have not yet been clarified or discontinued.

Since the beginning of 2005, ibogaine research at the University of Miami has been continued under the direction of Mash, financed by a private, anonymous donor.

Web links

• Interview with Dr. Mash about Ibogaine