What explains the bizarre and confused behaviour of Liz Truss?
Please read the final line if this seems familiar 😉
Not much has been written about the Ibogaine Effect as a serious factor in British politics, but towards the end of the Liz Truss’s premiership — about a week before she resigned — word leaked that some of Truss’s top advisors had called in a Brazilian doctor who was said to be treating the Prime Minister with ‘some kind of strange drug’ that nobody in the press lobby had ever heard of.
It had been common knowledge for many weeks that Kwarteng was using an exotic brand of speed known as Wallot… and it had long been whispered that Truss was into something very heavy, but it was hard to take the talk seriously until I heard about the appearance of a mysterious Brazilian doctor. That was the key.
I immediately recognized The Ibogaine Effect — from Truss’s tearful breakdown during the Tory conference, the delusions and altered thinking that characterised her mini-budget, and finally the condition of ‘total catatonia’ that gripped her in the Commons.
There was no doubt about it: The Woman from Oxford had turned to massive doses of Ibogaine as a last resort. The only remaining question was ‘when did she start?’ But nobody could answer this one, and I was not able to press the premier herself for an answer because I was permanently barred from Number 10 after the incident in Blackpool… and that scene makes far more sense now than it did at the time.
Truss has always taken pride in her ability to understand economics; she frequently cites obscure economic papers, calling them up to force the poor bastards to defend her policies.
But there was none of that in Blackpool. Big Liz went all to pieces… which gave rise to speculation, among reporters familiar with her management style as Chief Secretary of the Treasury, that Truss was not herself. It was noted, among other things, that she had developed a tendency to roll her eyes wildly during TV interviews, that her though patterns had become strangely fragmented, and that not even her closest advisors could predict when she might suddenly spiral off into babbling rages, or neo-comatose funks.
In retrospect, however, it is easy to see why Truss fell apart during the conference. There she was — far gone in a bad Ibogaine frenzy — suddenly shoved out onto the podium in front of a sullen crowd of coke addicts and forced to attack some bizarre conspiracy between Green party members, country squires and homosexuals.
It is entirely conceivable — given the known effects of Ibogaine — that Truss’s brain was almost paralysed by hallucinations at the time; that she looked out at that crowd and saw gila monsters instead of people, and that her mind snapped completely when she felt them bare their teeth, ready to strike.
We can only speculate on this, because those in a position to know have flatly refused to comment on rumours concerning the premier’s disastrous experiments with Ibogaine. I tried to find the Brazilian doctor on Thursday, but by the time she had resigned he was long gone. One of the hired bimbos in Number 10 said a man with fresh welts on his head had been dragged out the side door and put on a bus to Milton Keynes, but we were never able to confirm this.
[This post has been lifted almost word for word from Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, p. 144. You should read it, it’s very good.]