Gabon longs to cash in on sacred hallucinogenic remedy

For centuries, religious devotees have eaten it -- a psychotropic shrub that users say has addiction-fighting powers. It fascinates foreign visitors, psychiatric patients and rich pharmaceutical companies that want to market it. Now this central African country, where its use is enshrined in ancestral tradition, is scrambling to avoid missing out on the boom. Teddy Van Bonda Ndong, 31, an initiate in the Bwiti spiritual tradition, calls it "sacred wood". He consumes it in small amounts daily, he said, for his "mental and physical health".