AN ACCLAIMED documentary maker has admitted that he is prepared to die while filming himself taking a powerful hallucinogenic drug that has been hailed as a cure for addiction but linked to a number of deaths around the world. David Graham Scott, who is based in Glasgow, said that he will take the controversial drug, ibogaine, in a film that will form the final part of his trilogy on Scotland's drugs culture. In the documentary, provisionally titled The Quick Fix, Scott intends to overcome his own methadone addiction, which he says has plagued him since he stopped using street heroin and prescribed drugs 15 years ago. Under the supervision of colleagues who are working to set up an ibogaine clinic in London, and a recording team, Scott will be filmed next month undergoing an intense 36-hour hallucinogenic "trip", from which he hopes to emerge free from his addiction. Although the substance is legal in the UK, where it is classed as an unlicensed, experimental drug, there are wider concerns over its safety. The drug has been banned in the US, Belgium and Switzerland and experts also say that in recent years ibogaine is known to have contributed to at least four deaths in Europe. Last year, a 35-year-old woman died after taking 500mg of the drug during an informal ibogaine session in Germany. In 2001, an inquest in London into the case of JW, a 40-year-old heroin addict, ruled that the man had died principally from a fatal reaction to…
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