Western Australian Brodie Smith's bid for ibogaine drug cure ends in death

Brodie Smith and his girlfriend, Kara Spark.

Bangkok: Australian Brodie Smith was convinced a radical treatment using an African shrub would cure his craving for illegal drugs and turn his life around, even though it is banned in some countries.

"Hey Mama Bear, I know it's been a while since I have actually seen or spoken to you . . . sorry, but I think it was mainly to do with me being ashamed, as once again I was on drugs and being around negative f---wits," he wrote to his mother on Facebook, only days before he stopped breathing, his eyes wide open while lying on a bed in a $19-a-night guesthouse on a remote Thai island.

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Mr Smith, 33, assured his mother that even though it sounded unbelievable because the plant called ibogaine is hallucinogenic and is treated as a party drug, African tribes have been using it in its natural form for centuries in a rebirthing ceremony.

"It has a 92 per cent chance of people not using [drugs again] within the first . . . months," he wrote.

The night before he died in front of his girlfriend, Kara Spark, on the island of Ko Phangan in the Gulf of Thailand, Mr Smith had told her he wanted to marry her as he held her in his arms and the couple repeated their love for each other.

"It was the best feeling I ever felt," Ms Spark says, adding that she and Mr Smith made plans that night to have babies and get new tattoos to mark a "new beginning" for them both.

There are conflicting accounts about what happened in the following hours before Mr Smith died in room 4 of the Utopia bungalows on the first morning of what was supposed to be a $5300 four-day ibogaine treatment program for the couple from Mandurah in Western Australia.

But Mr Smith's death has prompted calls for an inquiry into the use of ibogaine, which is illegal to import into Australia without a licence and has been illegal in the United States since the 1960s because of severe sideeffects such as hallucinations, seizures and fatal heart arrhythmia and brain damage in patients with prior health problems.

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Western Australian Brodie Smith's bid for ibogaine drug cure ends in death