#171 - Meet The Greatest Ibogaine Psychedelic Scientist You’ve Never Heard Of

🧠 JOIN THE GIANT'S SHOULDER FAMILY Become a YouTube Member for exclusive episodes, early access + ad-free viewing 👇 https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder/join Dalibor Sames is a Columbia University chemist who has spent more than twenty years on a single molecule: ibogaine. His lab built the fluorescent tools that let you watch neurotransmitters move through living brain tissue — and used them to show that ibogaine works nowhere a drug is supposed to work. When they screened it against the 40 to 50 receptors every psychoactive drug hits, the result came back empty. Then he flew to Mexico, took it himself for thirty-six hours, and came back with a new theory of pharmacology. Expect to learn: - The Screen That Came Back Empty: cannabis hits CB1, LSD hits serotonin receptors, ibogaine binds nothing they tested - The Stimulant That Lowers Dopamine: every other stimulant raises it, and ibogaine still doesn't cause parkinsonism - Molecular Wizardry: how one molecule refolds proteins your own genes got wrong - Thirty-Six Hours: his account of the molecule drawing its own atomic structure and teaching him chemistry - Matrix Pharmacology: the theory that ibogaine reads a living system from the inside SPONSORS Download the most scientifically rigorous nutrition app MacroFactor! Use code GIANTS for a 2 week FREE trial - https://app.macrofactor.com/mfgiants GS EPISODES MENTIONED Dalibor Sames - Meet The Greatest Ibogaine Psychedelic Scientist You've Never Heard Of: https://youtu.be/K9whp_wtCoc Deborah Mash - Meet The Ibogaine Psychedelic Scientist Who First Unravelled Its Big Mystery: https://youtu.be/z7eRtXV6ptA GUEST LINKS Columbia Chemistry faculty page: https://www.chem.columbia.edu/content/dalibor-sames Sames Lab: https://www.samesgroup.org/professor-dalibor-sames Matrix pharmacology / transporter paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.04.641351 Oxa-Iboga paper (Nature Communications, 2024): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51856-y Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals: https://www.gilgameshpharmaceutical.com/ Beond Ibogaine Clinic (where he took ibogaine): https://beondibogaine.com LISTEN ON YouTube - https://youtu.be/R8zZ3x4FIas Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249 SKOOL Want a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/about FOLLOW EVAN https://x.com/evan_mcgl TIMESTAMPS 0:00:00 Trailer 0:02:43 Twenty Years Chasing One Molecule 0:05:36 Why He Finally Took Ibogaine Himself 0:07:17 Thirty-Six Hours Of "Chapters" 0:09:42 The Molecule Drew Its Own Structure 0:17:20 Day Two: The Download Kept Coming 0:24:55 Lucid And Tripping At The Same Time 0:29:17 300 Trip Reports: The Common Themes 0:33:03 It Finds The One Thing You're Hiding 0:35:39 Telephone Booths To Your Future Self 0:40:25 Noribogaine, The Metabolite Nobody Tracks 0:46:30 The Heart Risk That Kills People 0:49:21 Now We Break Everyone's Brain 0:53:03 The Receptor Screen Came Back Empty 0:56:28 The Opioid Paradox 1:05:24 Matrix Pharmacology, Explained 1:07:28 Ion Channels And The Nicotinic Pore 1:17:14 The Transporters: SERT And VMAT2 1:25:06 The Result That Drove His Students Crazy 1:31:04 Molecular Wizardry: Refolding Broken Proteins 1:35:53 Don't Call It A Dirty Molecule 1:41:21 A Stimulant That Lowers Dopamine 1:48:29 A Molecule That Reads The Living Matrix 1:49:55 The Ibogaine Genome Project: Billions Needed 2:00:34 The Man In Aspen Who Walked Again .....Email for sponsorship enqu