Due to some unforeseeable circumstances I was privileged with the opportunity to watch a preview version of Michel Negroponte’s new film about the work of Dmitri Moughianis called I’m Dangerous With Love.
By now Dmitri is a fairly well known ibogaine provider living in New York City. Of course, Ibogaine is illegal in the United States, so Dmitri is one of a growing number of practitioners who work underground out of homes and hotel rooms. He is unique amongst underground providers in that he is admirably outspoken about his work. It’s possible that his personality wouldn’t let him do it any other way.
I’m Dangerous With Love recounts Dmitri’s history as a heroin addled front man for a New York based rock group, Leisure Class. After a single ibogaine treatment he kicked a reckless speedball habit and soon after started to provide treatments himself.
The story isn’t really about Dmitri, it’s about a calling. Negroponte filmed Dmitri before and during his first initiation into the Bwiti, the iboga-centered shamanic religion in Gabon. And now, after several trips back, Dmitri’s sessions have shifted from gung-ho experimental detoxes to full-fledged initiatory celebrations adorned with Bwiti instruments, face painting, and dancing.
In my view, this ceremonial heritage is an external manifestation of iboga’s magic. Whatever healing people are coming for, whether it be to detox from a drug habit, another kind of longing, or whether they are not even fully aware of why they need it, they are coming to reconnect with their ancestral roots.
Dmitri is also the founder of an organization called Iboga Life, and one of their most striking images is the correlation they draw between the pygmy people in the West African rain forest, and “junkies” copping on the streets of New York. Both are marginalized to the point of being considered subhuman.
The pygmies were historically the first people to use iboga. Now the land that they live on is being clear-cut and there have been cases of their people being killed and eaten by neighboring tribes. NY drug users aren’t being eaten, persay, but the mainstream does tend to overlook flagrant human rights abuses and incarceration that is evidently racially biased. It is one of the most affective and open demonizations present in our cultural dialogue, second only (and connected in many ways) to prejudice against Native Americans.
The film is intensely emotional and personal, and it provides an honest and accurate look at a life of radical service. Once it has made the rounds of the film festivals make sure to check it out.
Images © Ashley Valmere