Why ICEERS Exists
ICEERS is dedicated to marshal the forces of the ethnobotanical knowledge of the indigenous peoples and modern therapeutic practice, responding to the urgent need for efficient tools for personal and social development.
For thousands of years, indigenous and pre-industrial societies mastered special plant species, known for its psychoactive properties, through religious and ritual use, to address medical, psychological and social issues critical to social relations and survival. The importance and scope of these plant species for the human family, as tools for personal and social development, cannot be overstated.
From this perspective ICEERS works towards the acceptation and integration of these ethnobotanical tools in contemporary society on three levels: Education - Scientific Research - Service
Who We Are
Board of Directors
Joan Obiols
Maria Carmo Carvalho
Òscar Parés
Joan Obiols-Llandrich, MD, Ph.D - President
He was born in 1951 in Barcelona in a family where psychiatric practice and the pursuit of scientific rigor in mind-spirit duality was already present. He simultaneously studied Medicine and Social Anthropology from which he graduated in 1974 and 1975 respectively. He got his Ph.D in Medicine (1991). As a psychiatrist he has intented to work in the frame of Transcultural Psychiatry. He has been a member of the International Committee of the Transcultural Psychiatry Section (World Psychiatric Association) from 2002 to 2008, serving as secretary of the Section from 2005 to 2008. In 1992 he did fieldwork in Ecuador in a Shuar community, known for traditional use of Ayahuasca. Dr. Obiols is currently the director of the Public Mental Health Department of Andorra (SAAS).
Maria Carmo Carvalho - Vice-President
Maria Carvalho, living in Porto, Portugal, started as a junior research assistant in projects that studied the most problematic aspects of drug use. For her Masters research and PhD studies, she developed an interest for drug use by youth populations in recreational settings. As a lecturer in the field of Psychology at the Universidad Catolica in Porto she became particularly interested in teaching her students the evolution the human act of altering conscience has suffered, from a historically and culturally integrated practice to a “social problem” in modern societies, and how we see it becoming more recently a tool used by youth in their understanding of fun and pleasure. There are multiple challenges for intervention in this field.
Òscar Parés - Secretary
Òscar Parés studied Philosophy and Anthropology, after which he got a Master’s degree in Drug Addiction at the University of Barcelona. In the 14 years following he got interested in the use of ethnobotanicals in indigenous contexts as well as modern psychotherapy through the consciousness expanding techniques. He currently collaborates in the drug-prevention team of the Program on Substance Abuse at the General Directorate for Public Health, Department of Health of the Government of Catalonia. Òscar Parés has done trainings in prevention of problems related to drug use in schools, institutes, for professors, academici, public health professionals such as doctors, nurses, therapists, police officials, night life staff, youth prisoners, etc. He is also involved in diferent european projects such as Democracy Cities & Drugs, Newip, Club heath conference, Psychonaut, Drojnet2, etc.
Margot Honselaar
Margot Honselaar - Treasurer
Living in Halsteren, the Netherlands, Margot has been working as an accountant for over 10 years of which 2 years in Kenya training local personnel, amongst other activities. In 2002 her daughter got cancer and a very difficult time followed, until she died in 2006. After a long and devastating mourn process, Margot got in contact with Ayahuasca which provided a profound integration of her daughter’s death, giving many answers to unanswered questions about life and death. At present, Margot has continued her accounting activities for a number of companies, but in addition started a foundation to help grave or incurable sick children to express their feelings and emotions. The important role Ayahuasca has played in her life make her a dedicated treasurer for ICEERS.
Advisory Board
Kenneth R. Alper
Jordi Riba
Uwe Maas
Kenneth R. Alper, MD
Is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at New York University School of Medicine. He is author of over 70 peer-reviewed publications, books and book chapters. His research on iboga alkaloids has combined psychopharmacology and the methodology of medical ethnography, includes a case series on the use of ibogaine for the indication of heroin detoxification, and a recent paper published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology that combined qualitative and quantitative methods to provide a comprehensive overview on the global use of ibogaine. Dr. Alper is independently supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse as investigator in the quantitative EEG in cocaine dependence. His published clinical research on the neuropsychiatric aspects of epilepsy has included highly cited work on trauma and abuse in conversion disorder and dissociative symptomatology, and the effect of psychopharmacological treatment on seizure threshold.
Jordi Riba, Ph.D
Received his PhD in Pharmacology in 2003, at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), with a thesis on the human pharmacology of ayahuasca. He is Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the UAB and Associate Researcher at the Drug Research Center of the Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona, where he has conducted a series of clinical studies with Ayahuasca, which have assessed its phamacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, including alkaloid disposition, subjective effects and electroencephalography and neuroimaging measures of acute ayahuasca administration. The results have been published in scientific journals such as Psychopharmacology, The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and The Journal of Psychoactive Drugs. He is currently the lead researcher of a study assessing the effects of long-term ayahuasca use.
Uwe Maas, M.D.
Living in Witten, Germany, Dr. Maas is clinical Pediatrician, trained in Family Therapy, and passionate violinist. He worked in Germany, Bangladesh, Gabon, Zimbabwe and Mozambique as a pediatrician and in treatment programs for people affected by HIV and AIDS. He was engaged in one of the first methadone detoxification programs during pregnancy in the late 1980th in Berlin. After extensive contacts with traditional healers in Gabon he underwent the Iboga-initiation of the Mitsogho tribe. Field studies from 1999-2007 led to several publications about the psycho-therapeutic potential of Iboga, the brain-organic induction of near-death-experiences, prevention of the cardiac risks of Iboga-intake, and the structure and music- therapeutic effects of Gabonian ritual music. Uwe Maas was president of ICEERS from 2009 until 2012.
Rafael G. dos Santos
Roman Paškulin
Stephan V. Beyer
Rafael Guimarães dos Santos, Ph.D.
In his M.Sc. in Psychology, he investigated the acute effects of ayahuasca on psychometric measures of anxiety, panic-like, and hopelessness in Santo Daime members. In his Ph.D. thesis in Pharmacology, directed by Dr. Jordi Riba, he compared the acute subjective and physiological effects of ayahuasca with those produced by d-amphetamine, and also investigated the pharmacology of two repeated doses of ayahuasca.
Roman Paškulin, M.D., Ph.D.
He is director and principal investigator at OMI Institute for anthropological medicine and lecturer in pharmacology at the University of Primorska. His scientific approach to evaluation of remedies of natural origin aims to bring traditional knowledge into western medical use. His special interests lie in lifestyle diseases, especially addiction and most of his work deals with the »soul healing« herbs. He has conducted field research on iboga, ayahuasca, and mandrake ethnopharmacology and is author of a series of scientific publications that bridge molecular genetics with psychological, sociological and spiritual impact of entheogen use.
Stephan V. Beyer, Ph.D., J.D.
He holds doctorates in both religious studies and psychology, and has taught as an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, the University of California - Berkeley, and Graduate Theological Union. Expert in both jungle survival and plant hallucinogens, he lived for a year and a half in a Tibetan monastery in the Himalayas, and has undertaken and helped to lead numerous four-day and four-night solo vision fasts in the desert wildernesses of New Mexico. He has studied the use of sacred and medicinal plants with traditional North America herbalists, in ceremonies of the Native American Church, Peruvian mesa rituals, and with mestizo shamans in the Upper Amazon, where he received coronación by banco ayahuasquero don Roberto Acho Jurama. His current research centers on the phenomenology of anomalous and visionary human experiences, particularly in the context of indigenous ceremonial plant use. The Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions at the Smithsonian Institution has praised his “unparalleled knowledge of sacred plants.”
Executive Office
Benjamin De Loenen
Pep Cura Oliveras
José Carlos Bouso
Benjamin De Loenen - Founder/Executive Director
Director, producer and composer of the documentary ‘Ibogaine-Rite of Passage’ (2004). After making this documentary, his interest in ibogaine leads him to further study this ethnobotanical and found ICEERS in 2009, with the objective to integrate ayahuasca and iboga as therapeutic tools in occidental society. Benjamin is the engine that keeps alive the agenda and ambitions of ICEERS, through the motivation and confidence of its employees and volunteers. He has given many lectures and screenings and formation in various specialized courses about Ibogaine. In 2012 the documentary ‘Experience BWITI: Renascence of the Healed’ was released and he is developing a new documentary about the therapeutic potential of ayahuasca. Since 2012, Benjamin also serves GITA (Global Ibogaine Therapist Alliance) as member of the board of directors.
Pep Cura Oliveras - Content Manager
Studied Medical Anthropology at Universitat Rovira i Virgili. He has extensive experience in adolescent drug education and is presently involved in a number of social research projects related to heroin consumption and its social impacts. Pep is also collaborating in the development and implementation of drug policies in Catalonia at the Catalan Goverment Office.
José Carlos Bouso, Ph.D.
He is licensed in Psychology at the Autonomous University of Madrid. His studies addressed preliminary data on the safety and efficacy of different doses of MDMA administered in a psychotherapeutic setting to women with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of a sexual assault. He also has been conducting neuropsychological research about long term effects of ayahuasca use in both Spanish and Brazilian communities. He is co-author of several scientific papers and book chapters. He currently combines his activity as a clinical researcher at the IMIM - Institut Hospital del Mar d’Investigacions Mèdiques- with his scientific work at ICEERS.
Marc B. Aixalà
Marc B. Aixalà - Project Coordinator
Studied Telecommunication Engineering and while doing his final project in Perú got interested in the use of ethnobotanical tools as self-actualization and psychotherapeutic agents. This led him to study Psychology at Universitat de Barcelona and to get trained in Transpersonal Psychology and Holotropic Breathwork at Grof Transpersonal Training. He is interested in the development of protocols to use non ordinary states of consciousness as a psychotherapeutic and self-development tool in an ethical and effective way, in the context of the western culture. He combines his work as a teacher with collaboration with ICEERS and his vocation as a Holotropic Breathwork facilitator.
Collaborators
Jonathan Dickinson
Rosario Pribyl
Jonathan Dickinson
Jonathan is inspired by the intersection between traditional healing practices and policy reform through psychedelic medicines and their subcultures. He has been working for ibogaine clinics in Mexico and Canada since 2009, and since organizing their 3rd international conference in Vancouver in 2012, he has been a board member of the Global Ibogaine Therapist Alliance. Prior to his work with ibogaine he was a staff member for the Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, helping to establish their national office in Ottawa. and to initiate more conversation about psychedelics and ethnobotanicals in the Canadian drug policy reform community.
Rosario Quevedo-Pereyra de Pribyl
She is clinical and health psychologist, systemic family therapist, graduate in Psychoneuroimmunology and intercultural coach, and has completed a PhD in Medical Anthropology at the University of Vienna (Austria) with a dissertation about the integration of the traditional medicine into the Peruvian health care system on 2012. She worked many years as psychologist, therapist, lecturer, researcher and academic advisor in hospitals, health centres, non-governmental organizations, professional associations and universities in Peru. Her current research focuses on integrative health care models, transcultural psychology, and the socio-medical implications of ethnomedical knowledge transfer. She currently works as scientific consultant for the Committee for Traditional Medicine of the Peruvian Medical Association and as coach for healers and their clients.
