Sidsel is a PhD fellow in social anthropology at the University of Bergen in Norway. Her PhD
project titled (Up)rooted healing: relational trajectories of iboga/ine efficacy from Gabon to
the opioid crisis follows iboga and its many derivates in selected localised encounters where
it has been or is currently used for therapeutic purpose. Apart from tracing the historical trails
of iboga/ine from its colonial appropriation from the Congo Basin in the 19th century through
its early pre-1960s implementation in western pharmaceutics, I have explored its manifold
current uses in Gabon and followed a clinical trial in Spain that investigates the safety and
efficacy of using ibogaine for ceasing methadone dependence. Finally, she has done extensive
fieldwork at a therapeutic retreat centre in southern Europe where iboga/ine is given to
manage a broad range of conditions related to substance dependence and psycho-spiritual
affliction. In all these varying settings, she analysed how iboga/ine exhibits different forms of
efficacies depending on the differing contextual, political, ecological, socio-cultural,
pharmacological, and extra-pharmacological relations. In highlighting the intricate relational
webs in which iboga/ine has been and is entangled when developing potency and exerting
efficacy, her project also discusses the ethical challenges inherent in the current globalisation
of iboga/ine and its attempt to dissociate from the obligation to recognize and reciprocate to
the cultural and ecological origins of iboga and its therapeutic uses in and around the Congo
Basin.