CASE STUDY
Reimagining Ibogaine Treatment for Veterans
how might we design delivery systems that are safe, sacred, scalable — and not sensationalized?
Honoring Tradition, Healing Trauma: A Patient-Centered Ibogaine Journey for Veterans
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DESIGN CHALLENGE
How might we design safe, respectful, and effective ibogaine treatment pathways for veterans—bridging ancestral tradition and clinical rigor in a landscape of policy urgency and cultural complexity?
Solution Overview
As part of the Psychedelic Medicine x Design course, students explored the future of ibogaine therapy, a sacred medicine from the Bwiti tradition now being fast-tracked in Western policy circles to address opioid addiction and PTSD—especially in veteran populations.
Image Credit: Stanford Students Samantha Milewicz, Trinity Price, Jason ChenOne student team developed a speculative care model specifically tailored to the needs of active military personnel. Their design integrated battlefield-adjacent modular healing tents, trauma-informed intake rituals, culturally grounded orientation, and visionary medicine journeys—all rooted in both Bwiti wisdom and modern clinical protocols.
The experience included a proposed ceremonial discharge from military service and a peer-supported integration circle that emphasized dignity, agency, and the long arc of healing. The students visualized every phase of the experience—from rapid deployment to reintegration—creating a system map that illuminated the immense complexity of delivering this treatment ethically, safely, and soulfully.
Despite limited field access, the students' concept demonstrated such clarity and integrity that it was shared directly with teams at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as a spark of inspiration for how design could help shape emerging psychedelic treatment infrastructure.
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