Welcome back to Ibogaine Uncovered, and I'm your host, Tally Eisenberg. Today, I'm joined by Norman Ohler, the best-selling German author and historian known for Blitzed, the groundbreaking book that revealed the hidden role of drug use in the Third Reich and reshaped how we understand modern history. Norman came to Beyond not as a researcher, but as a writer deeply curious about the architecture of his own mind and how Ibogaine might influence creativity, perception, and narrative. In this conversation, we explore the writer's mind on Ibogaine, how the medicine reshaped his inner landscape, strengthened neural pathways connected to his creative work, and altered how he experiences memory, language, and meaning. We talk about his experience at Beyond, what he observed in himself and others, and how Ibogaine influenced his sense of clarity, presence, and creative flow. This is an intimate conversation about creativity, consciousness, and what happens when a writer known for exploring altered states steps into one of the most powerful journeys on Earth.
All right. Well, it's wonderful to have you here on Ibogaine Uncovered at Beyond's.
Thank you so much. It's been really nice to see your process, too, through your Ibogaine experience with us. In general, I'm very curious, first of all, about the writer's mind and the creative process and Ibogaine, but I think we can go back to your, you know, you wrote a book that was a New York Times bestseller. Congratulations. I think it was translated into 30 languages. It was called Blitzed, and it's about the drug use in Nazi Germany. Can you just share a little bit about that for the audience?
Yes, I mean, drugs and history are an interesting topic in general. How do drugs influence us as humans and our history? And I focused in this book Blitzed on, you know, a very particular time period, 12 years from 1933 to 1945 when the fascists were ruling my country, Germany. And I had been educated quite well in high school about it because we have like this mantra of never again, which is good. You know, we don't want fascism again. So, we were very well educated, but drugs never played any roles. So, when I first heard through coincidence that there was a massive drug abuse in Nazi Germany, I didn't believe it. But then I did some research and I went into archives and I found a lot of documents showing that the German army, the Wehrmacht, systematically used methamphetamine for their early war victories. And so, I was the first person to actually properly examine this and write about it and also about Hitler's drug abuse. Hitler always portrayed himself as this pure being, the teetotaler. He wouldn't even drink coffee, was vegetarian. He was just like a pure vessel working for the German people. That was the Nazi propaganda. And when I read the notes of his personal physician, I found that it's well, that was a complete myth that Hitler was actually an opioid addict. In fact, he was using oxycodone, which at the time was a German product because it has been a German, it is a German invention. So, that was all very interesting and that led to that book Blitzed, which then was also of interest to many other people because it shows a much more precise picture of the so-called Third Reich. It doesn't change any evaluation of their horrible doings, but it shows more clearly how it actually happened.
How they were able to carry this out, you know, because meth and opiates numb people, of course, and you can get more work done. There's no empathy. It's really fascinating that you helped uncover this. You know, I myself, like coming from, you know, Holocaust survivors, to hear how this was carried out, it makes sense.
I mean, I always tried to examine how drugs specifically influenced the Holocaust, but I didn't find any documents, but there is reports that, for example, concentration camp guards were drinking a lot and using Pervitin to be able to drink more. Pervitin was the brand name for meth. So, when you're methed up and a bit drunk, then you can like stand in the watchtower for hours and then watch. But mostly it was really influential, especially for the strategy of the war advances because you could keep the soldiers up for like a long period of time and the enemy, the opponents, the Western allies or the Soviet Union didn't have this drug at their, they didn't have it. So that was a tactical advantage for the German army.
Right, it helped them progress faster. So, this became a New York Times bestseller and now maybe you can share a little bit more about why drugs are so, in your opinion, why drugs are so popular right now?
Well, drugs have always been popular. Humankind is unthinkable without drugs. We are the creatures of the big brain and the big brain always wants to, you know, a very complex brain wants to be stimulated, wants to know, we are the beings of transformation, of change. So, whenever we find drugs, iboga back in the day, or at one point opium was discovered in Crete, on Crete.
Acacia is supposed to be the tree of life in the Bible.
I mean, we live on a planet with very potent plants. Potent in this case means they contain, some plants contain molecules which are basically information structures. And if we intake them, this information changes something in our brain, in our consciousness. So, people of course have always been interested in this and have always used it. Also, alcohol is a prime example of cultural change. When beer was first brewed, that was a big change. Suddenly, people were drunk. They started to behave differently. Different types of violence, for example, came up. So, different hierarchies came up. Priests were coming up. So, drugs have influenced the culture throughout the millennia. That's what I'm working on in my new book, Stone Sapiens, which is a complete new history of humankind looking at how drugs actually shaped our destiny, our history, and our future, also.
Yeah. That's why it's so interesting right now because we, of course, we're still interested in drugs.
Now, we know a lot more because we have scientists. We have tools to really look into the brain, what is happening in the brain. So, we can see very clearly that certain drugs, for example, cocaine or methamphetamine, they work on the dopamine household. So, while other drugs, psychedelic drugs like LSD or mushrooms, they change the energy level in a way that makes the brain more plastic, neural plastic, not plastic, neural plastic, which is good, you know? So, we understand much more about drugs. That's why we get more and more interested in it. We're looking for medicines against dementia, against depression, against trauma. And that's why there's the so-called psychedelic renaissance right now. And there's also a new kid on the block, which is ibogaine, which is actually the oldest kid on the block, because iboga is, in my opinion, a very, very, very old drug. So, I think it's fascinating what's happening right now.
Before we get into iboga and ibogaine, I'm curious about your own, you know, your writer's mind and when you first realized that you were a writer.
Well, that was when I was a late teenager after I realized I was not going to be a tennis professional, because I was not good enough. I was pretty good, but the last step was missing. I just couldn't compete with the really good people. And I always had an interest in literature, so I kind of just switched from tennis to writing. And then I, you know, wanted to at least be world class in writing. And no one keeps you back, you know, you just have to write really good or you have to write a really good book, I guess. So, that was my goal to write the perfect book where every word is where it should be and the story is great and the characters are good. That's the challenge. And some writers have achieved that. Some books are perfect and they were examples for me like The Stranger by Camus is one of these perfect novels. So, but this was not connected to drugs yet. I was just trying to write, but writing is very difficult. It's very lonely. It's very, not boring, but it's kind of tedious. You need a lot of discipline. And at the same time you need inspiration. You need to have the coolest style possible. So, to get the coolest style possible, I was listening to like Lou Reed and music and then suddenly the drugs came into play, like they're taking drugs. Maybe that's why they're so cool.
Maybe that'll help me be a better writer. Maybe I should try that.
Yeah, so I started smoking like cigarettes that I rolled myself when I was 19 and that already was good. Smoking I think is good for writing. It might be bad for the lungs, but for writing it's good. I don't smoke anymore, but back in the day it helped me, too.
Yeah, I smoked a cigarette. I was writing my first novella. And then when I wrote my first novel, I had left Germany by then. I was 23. I moved to Manhattan to the Lower East Side. And the novel was progressing. It was good, but then my girlfriend at the time gave me LSD. And I had no idea what that was. I'd never taken a drug. Just, you know, self-rolled cigarettes. So, and it was a really strong tab. And I took this LSD and it probably changed my life. I had the most extreme horror trip that I could have imagined. Like it was really scary. I was walking in downtown Manhattan at night and I saw things that are really, that are, you know, they are there. They're structurally there. Violence, racism, abuse, alienation. I saw all of these things even though I was walking through a normal Saturday night in Manhattan. But I had extreme hallucinations, visions and it was, and I didn't know if it would end because I had no idea what LSD was. I just thought now I'm going to, I'm crazy basically. I'm crazy and I see that everything's...
I'm stuck this way forever.
I ask you, was it because you were in the Lower East Side? Because that alone at night...
Well, it's, and that was back in the day, it was a lot of freaks outside. I saw a lot of freaks. So I realized the world is not what I thought it was. And but then I came back to myself after like 12 hours slowly and it faded. It was very strong, but it did fade. And then I thought this was really interesting. What did I see? What was that? So I kind of stayed interested in especially LSD and took it over and over again, but once in a while I would take it too. And now I understand that LSD actually decreases the energy flow to the default mode network. So other parts of the brain are more active. Which leads to different perceptions, different thoughts. And that of course is great for a writer.
So how did these experiences with LSD change your mind as a writer? How did it help you organize and make sense of the world? Patterns, characters, metaphors.
Well, it doesn't help me to organize really. I mean maybe by now, but at the time it was just disorganizing. So my beautiful plan for this novel was kind of thrown up in the air and swirled around. And also my perceptions, you know, how would I describe something? So I did a lot of rewriting after the LSD and I organized my first novel as a hypertext because I wanted to suddenly break away from the hierarchy of the writer as the authority telling a story from A to B and the reader has to follow. I created actually the first hypertext novel in literature history which I then published myself online in 1995. I made a clickable map of Manhattan. And wherever you clicked on the map, you entered the story, which was a detective novel at a different entry point, and connected the dots by yourself. And so, every reader had a different reading experience trying to solve the case. And that was a great idea. That was a kind of an LSD idea. So, yeah, it just really, you could say it broadened my horizon in how stories could be told and what the world is and what I was in the world. So, it was a learning process that started back then.
Yeah, it sounds like it helped you create almost a new genre of writing that was more experiential, which is very cool. So, let's talk a little bit about your experience here at Beyond the last few many days. I'm curious. I've seen you writing a lot. You have a little piece of paper that's sort of folded over and you're taking copious notes through various activities like we have workshops where clients are sharing, you're sharing their experience. I see you taking notes. I see you taking notes during lunch. But, one thing you said to me that was interesting was that, so, there's this tension between having your own as a writer experience, you're observing others versus your own inner journey, of course. I'd love to hear more about that and how you were able, you mentioned to me it was like a 50/50 experience you were trying for there. How you were able to navigate that?
Well, I mean, in the end, it's really a 95 to 5 percent, you know, I'm really interested in myself here, which everyone should be, because the ibogaine journey is an introspective journey where everyone learns about him or herself. And but I do, for example, have a Substack. I can highly recommend the Stone Sapiens Substack and I write stories. I will write Substack posts also about my stay here at Beyond. So, it is interesting. I mean, I like it here at Beyond also because you get in touch with other people. So, you hear their stories and that is very interesting and that's also very healing to be part of that healing community. And I also did like a podcast with people here, which was great. So, that I recorded for my own, for my Dope Cast. What's the, that's the name of my podcast. So, being in this community is very good, but mostly really it's about my own healing process and it's my second time taking Ibogaine and the first time, which was 3 and 1/2 months ago, was very much driven by my intentions. Like I wanted to stop my severe cannabis addiction. I wanted to check out my early childhood, what happened, why am I so tense, which then leads to cannabis and all sorts of other things, why am I so stressed when there's no real reason. So, I had a lot of questions and the first Ibogaine journey gave me a lot of answers, which was really helpful and which I know now, but I realized that these answers still, they made me calmer and more relaxed and more healthy, but I wasn't there yet. I needed to implement all of my understanding physically because trauma, I also had a very difficult episode with my second child, which caused trauma, and my partner at the time. So, all of these things I understood, but now here at Beyond in the second experience, I wanted to incorporate them into my physical being, and I thought this is what I'm going in for, the flood dose as it's called. So, when the flood dose, the Ibogaine started, I kind of tried to work this out, and basically Ibogaine said within like 2 minutes, just showed me. I thought it would be a very complicated, painful physical process to kind of get to my emotional core, but it was totally easy actually, and Ibogaine was kind of laughing at me like, you're done after 2 minutes. Not 2 minutes, but it was pretty quick that I had kind of figured out my kids, my life, my love life, my childhood, the trauma. Like, it was clear how I would implement that, and how I would go forward. So, I was lying there, and I knew I had like 6 to 8 hours more of the journey. So, what am I going to do now? And I had no visions the second time. So, I thought this is actually not so great. I'm done now. I have no visions. What's going on? But suddenly, I thought, well, I might as well, you know, look at my upcoming books. Maybe I can structure them better because on Ibogaine you can think very, very clearly. It's a drug, a medicine that does not in any way create an intoxication. Like, unlike LSD, ketamine, DMT, where you're tripping. You're also tripping on Ibogaine, but you're still totally sober at the same time.
Even without you having visions, you felt you were tripping. You could feel the effects.
Yeah, I could feel the effects and it was very good. I just was missing the visions. So, I actually asked for more because I thought then the visions would come, but they gave me two more pills, the doctor, but they didn't come.
And you were organizing your future books and looking...
Yeah, and then I was organizing my future books and then it turned into the most beautiful writing trip that I've ever had so far. 6 hours I was just organizing Stone Sapiens. I have already written a first draft, so now I could look through the whole draft and kind of decide how I structure it and I did some restructuring and also found like the tone and I found sentences that should be in it and chapter headlines and this is really hard work actually.
It's incredible that you were able to pull on the manuscript during the Ibogaine and go through sentence by sentence.
Well, not sentence by sentence, but like, not sentence by sentence. I could look through it. Like theme by theme basically. So, I had the whole book kind of in front of me and then after Stone Sapiens, I have another book coming up and I had thoughts about that one. And then I have a third book, which is like a big novel I'm going to write after these two books, which in the first journey I was cheeky enough to ask Ibogaine what should be my next big book and it said it with the title. So, I was like now working on this third book and it gave me a lot of insights about this third book. So, for me that was perfect because personally I felt good. I didn't have any more personal issues and work, which is next to my kids and my love, the most important thing in my life. I got so many answers. So, in the morning I thought this is like a million bucks what I just wrote down in my notebook and since then I've been carrying my notebook. I mean, I'm trying to overcome anxiety. The only anxiety I now have is that I'm going to lose my notebook with all these, because these thoughts, I will never, I cannot remember this. Like so many things happen and I wrote them down and it was really intricate. But I'm not going to lose it. I even scanned it this morning with my phone.
That's like your greatest fear. It's priceless.
