A beautiful story of someone's journey with the wonderful MDMA. Written in their own words.
For years I have been in and out of psychotherapy. It just wasn’t doing it for me, it felt very disappointing. No matter which style I tried, Humanistic, CBT, Mindfulness, Yoga, nothing seemed to work. I think I know why, I was so traumatised I couldn’t connect with my emotions let alone other people. Just could never open up. Recently I think I have gained an understanding of therapy and the therapeutic process. In my opinion it doesn’t matter what type of therapy it is , the real gold is being able to get in touch with the emotions around what has caused all the pain in the first place. Finding your distress, holding it and reducing the emotional charge. Behind the various masks and smoke screens your personality has developed over the years, is the answer to your unsettled mind. This sounds too good to be true and really simplistic. In fact its that simple its complex !
Then you go to traditional psychotherapy and the lovely therapist nods, smiles and encourages then tells you she can’t really give you an answer, but the answer is hidden within you. I just want to scream ‘ This isn’t a treasure hunt or something, its not a ring Im trying to find, just give me the answer , make me better for crying out loud ‘ . I had no grasp of the therapeutic process. But now I truly believe the answer to our troubled mind is within us, the trick is how to find it. There is a real depth to psychotherapy/counselling that I struggle to verbalise. Its the human connection, a higher level way of communicating, just like magic working its way on a deep emotional level. When a therapist can work with someone and have a deep genuine connection and desire to help , then healing commences. That genuine empathic bond is the magic spell which helps you open up to your pain and let you reprocess the emotions in a safe way. This is the magic form of communication or bonding I struggle to articulate. In fact I don’t think sometimes you need a trained therapist, just someone that truly cares for your emotional well being and really listens. Sometimes just looking into their eyes knowing they really care is enough for that magic to start working. So I suppose the real skill of the therapist is to help the person genuinely feel understood and develop a deep emotional connection. But you see, for someone like me it felt impossible to get there. I was so emotionally messed up through trauma all those lovely people that genuinely tried to help me over the years had no chance of helping me. Besides I didn’t have the money to pay for enough sessions required to get me there. Money is a big issue for some people with mental health problems because it spills over into your work and can reduce your ability to earn properly. Even though I struggled to get anywhere with traditional psychotherapy I still think it works great for lots of people. However if you have Complex PTSD or some other treatment resistant mental disorder, my view is traditional therapy doesn’t work or at least not for many years. People with cptsd are so disconnected from themselves and their emotions, to think they are going to connect with a therapist is unlikely. Traditional Western medicine didn’t work for me, just numbed me out The real breakthrough for me in therapy came when I found a therapist willing to assist me with the help of MDMA. This is the first time in 38 years I have felt really connected with my emotions. After my first session I looked at my therapist and said ‘Why is that illegal ?’ Its different from traditional psychedelics in that I had no fear and an amazing relaxed non-sexual loved up feeling. This was the gateway to opening up deep unresolved traumatic experiences and helped me connect with a therapist. Its crazy but it’s like someone has opened your skull and let the surgeon in to fix you. Of course the answer is within yourself but without the use of MDMA I would not have been able to get to my pain and hold it long enough to work on it. It helped me look at the distressful memories and feel the emotions I probably felt at the time. This helped me reduce the emotional charge and is still helping me to reduce the charge they had over my mind. Don’t get me wrong , this is no walk in the park, it’s still painful but very bearable all at the same time. So the magic of MDMA therapy is not a magic bullet but it certainly opens the road to recovery. Peace.