MDMA: A personal journey

Rebecca Huntley is a well known Australian author ( her MDMA memoir is 'Sassafras') and social analyst who  has described herself as a "good girl. " She was brought up in a dysfunctional family and had it tough. After years of therapy she decided to try MDMA which at the time was not approved for therapy. It transformed her. This is an intriguing story of endless possibility and hope.

Transcript

Daniel

Rebecca Huntley. Hello.

Rebecca

Hello, how are you?

Daniel

I can't tell you, I'm great thank you, but I can't tell you how excited I am to talk to you. And I'm excited for a few reasons, but one of them is. I picked up your book on holiday and I just could not put it down. It was one of those books. You. Read in a day and and I never read books in a day. Any time someone comes to interrupt you or want something, go away. Just go away. 

Rebecca

That's wonderful to hear. 

Daniel

So your book is called sassafras, and the name comes because it is a way of producing a chemical substance called MDMA, and most MDMA is synthetically produced, and I'm actually a trained herbalist. I didn't know you could produce MDMA from sassafras, so. That was my instant learning. Thank you. But your story is fascinating for for many reasons, and one of the reasons it's fascinating is because. You grew up in the same suburbs as I did, so I could relate very strongly to everything you were talking about and the areas you were talking about, but also, you know, you put yourself out there. It was a deeply personal memoir. Of you, your life, and your history. So I'm wondering, Rebecca, you know, how do you make that decision to expose yourself?

Rebecca

So I think you know, go big or go home or I think if you're going to write something about trauma. I don't think you wanna pull too many punches. I think you have to be as honest with the reader as you can be. That's different than absolutely telling them everything and kind of trauma dumping everything that's ever happened to you in a book because you do have to consider, what do you need to. To. Really tell to be able to tell the story. And I also the other thing I thought was important for me. You know, when I wrote that. When I started to write the book. Is I had to assume a a compassionate and curious reader, so somebody so a big part of I think why we don't want to disclose things or why we don't want to talk about things is we assume that we'll be judged by somebody when we tell them or we assume that person will think. Ohh well that can't have happened or you know you're exaggerating. So often you do pull back and you get you kind of self censor because you're so worried about its reception. But I think one of the things I also learned from the MDMA process and therapy is. To be less concerned about the views of people I don't know. And just and to trust that people who know me know I've told an authentic story and everybody else can take it or leave it, if that makes sense. Daniel.

Daniel

It makes complete sense to me. But what about? Have you had had any negative feedback? For example, colleagues at work or clients or customers that you have to deal with on a day to day basis?

Rebecca

Yeah. So I praised myself for that, particularly from a professional point of view, because so many of my other books are my professional. My profile, to the extent to which I have one is, is of a. Kind of. Sober evidence based person who talks about social trends and politics and, you know, goes on Q&A and so forth. So this is very different and disguising that side of my life, as well as disclosing that, you know, I've engaged in underground MDMA therapy. So I'm, you know, essentially admitting to taking illicit drugs. Yeah, there's a risk there. I mean, interesting. Interestingly, some of my clients read the book. And contacted me and said they loved it, so that was very nice and clients I wouldn't normally have expected. My colleagues were also very supportive and I've got a very supportive bosses.

Rebecca

And look, actually pretty much not a lot of negative feedback at all. I think maybe people just keep it to themselves. AF Q little kind of narky things on social media, which is kind of to be expected, but actually what has what has been really delightful and surprising. Is just the diversity of people like how how different kinds of people have responded to the book.

Daniel

I read somewhere that you had quoted because quite a leap for someone of your calibre. I'm guessing to go to seek underground therapies or non approved therapies at that time and I read somewhere that you are quote from you. If I get this right is I'm a good girl.

Speaker

Hmm.

Rebecca

Yeah. Fair.

Daniel

Because I don't speed.

Rebecca

Sure. I am very. I'm still I'm a good aligner, you know, I feel very nervous about. I even feel nervous about, like leaving my car for too long. And if you. Don't. I don't like and I never parked and no standing zone, all that kind of stuff. I mean, I think that's quite a good girl stuff that's also quite Australian. We're very rule bound. That's incredibly rule bound.

And actually, never had MDMA before you know kind of the party scene as well. A lot of people I know kind of found that hard to believe, but I'd never really tried it. Before I tried it in a underground therapeutic setting. And so and I'm also, you know, even in addition to that I'm while I'm done kind of things like acupuncture in the past and so forth. I'm. You know, not a huge alternative medicine person. I you know, I do yoga. I've had acupuncture. I've had Chinese herbs and everything, but I'm not one of you know what I mean? I'm not a I'm not. I'm not somebody who.

Daniel

Yeah. Yep.

Rebecca

Rejects kind of conventional medical conventional medicine for the problems that I have as well. So that was kind of interesting to me. It was interesting that I obviously the part of my life where I was open enough, flexible enough, interested enough to see whether this might be useful. As a way to kind of breakthrough what had clearly happened, which was like a bit of a break in the work that I was doing around trying to address my mental health issues.

Daniel

Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Look, I'll just pull you up on one minor point there. Yeah, most people in in my career.

Speaker

Sure.

Daniel

Who are into natural medicine have not rejected medicine if yeah, but they they they find a way to transverse across both.

Rebecca

Exactly to combine to combine the two, you're exactly right to pull me up on that. One of the best practitioners I ever had was a GP who was also a Chinese herbalist, and I went to her in my early 20s. She was amazing. So very much horses for courses like, you know, treat the horse.

Daniel

Indeed. Whatever works for.

Speaker

Yeah.

Daniel

Went through an amazing personal history as a as a young person and as a teenager and young adult, a very difficult childhood in terms of dysfunctional family personal losses. I guess a lot of rejection within the family, probably fairly harsh judgments.

Speaker

Hmm.

Daniel

Which drove you to a decision of of trying to find a way out of it, and you seem to have gone through a lot of conventional type of approaches, psychological approaches, which I think we've mainly talked about is talk therapies, is that right?

Speaker

Hmm.

Rebecca

Yeah. Yeah, so. I only had a very brief. I had a brief period of time in my 20s when I was doing my PhD, very isolated, not in a great relationship where I was starting to develop a bit of a fear of flying and a few panic attacks. And that's the the only time that I've been on an antidepressant. So I was on an antidepressant for six months. Less the less the boyfriend that made a big deal. That might be give me. And finish my PhD and so pretty much at at that stage went to see a psychiatrist to help me with some of the panic attacks and kind of then transitioned off the antidepressants. But I haven't, so I haven't had, you know, been honest.

Daniel

OK.

Rebecca

Flyers or any of those things. But I have been in and out of psychiatric. Hair since my early 20s relatively consistently and at 53, that's quite a long time to be in that. And in fact, even in my early 20s, when I think back about it now and there was such a stigma around going to psychiatrists in my early 20s, I didn't know anybody else who was going to see a psychiatrist. And in fact, if somebody said Ohh that person seeing a psychiatrist you were like, Oh my God, they were barking mad. Like, that's what you thought in your head. And I didn't tell anybody.

Daniel

Yeah.

Rebecca

But I've sought sought out somebody that I had briefly seen for an eating disorder when I was in my 20s. My teens and I got help from her and and help at different types of my life. So yeah, so on and off for 30 years. It's a long time to be in psychiatric care.

Daniel

Yes, I'm wondering. Going through the talk therapies and the psychiatric and psychological care where you found the block, I mean obviously there was something that wasn't getting you across the line in terms of help because you went for the MDMA therapy. So, So what do you think, were that that major hurdle was?

Speaker

Hmm. Yeah. And look.

Rebecca

Looking back at it, it's not that any of the people I went to weren't good at their job. They were, I think what they gave me and and what they empowered me to do is to go out and have a very good intellectual understanding of why I was having the challenges I was having. What? I don't think I had until very recently is an understanding that trauma is is a both a a mind and body question like it. And in a sense, before I knew that before I really had understood that and done a lot of reading on trauma prior to doing the MDMA therapy, I used to always think, look, I I understand why I'm the way I am. I understand what's happened, but I almost felt like there was that the anger that I felt in my that this kind of roiling. Anger inside me was like a poison, like I'd been poisoned, and it was kind of in my bloodstream. It was in my body and I couldn't think my way through it. Like I could kind of try and control it. With breathing or with focusing, but it would just erupt at different times as if it was like as if it wasn't even. It was my body taking over my mind and I couldn't really. So I kind of felt like how can I be free of this? And until I really did a lot of reading on trauma and understood how grief, sadness. Trauma can be trapped in the body, and I think particularly it's the case if. If you have been, if the if the violence towards you has been physical violence as well, I think in many ways. And so it wasn't until then that I realised that the body was the missing part of all this and that I needed something I didn't need to just be intellectually understanding it. I needed to kind of. The block was in the body in a sense.

Daniel

Yeah. OK. Because MDMA specifically as you know, but for our listeners increases serotonin to extraordinarily high levels dopamine and norepinephrine.

Daniel

And I guess the net effect of all of that is that it creates several days apparently of brain neuroplasticity, meaning that the brain can develop new neurons and that is a physiological change, a body change, as opposed to a a mind change. But that body change that. Brain physical change. Change can obviously create a different perspective on thoughts and your approach to things, so that's that's the interesting part. But just before I talk a bit more about your experience, I'm just wondering how what level of you know how brave you are as a question, not a statement?

Rebecca

Yeah.

Daniel

You know what got you over the line to want to try MDMA.

Rebecca

I. You know, I've spent years. Developing, I would say people would say self soothing or regulating behaviours in my life to kind of get this anger under control and for some people who have that anger, pain, sadness, grief inside.

Rebecca

They see self soothing behaviours like addiction or like alcohol addiction or drugs or. You know, for me it was. It was a very good girl, middle class, addictions, cleaning. Cleaning. I mean just like constant activity. You know what I mean like constant activity like work cleaning. I was a really big Walker. I was a long hike. So I was like from the moment like I snapped my eyes awake at, you know, 5:30 to the moment I lay my head on the table on the bed. I've always been like in constant motion, constantly cleaning, constantly doing stuff, and that's how I kind of tamed that. That feeling of rage inside me as I got older, and as I think I started to identify as I I think, started to identify that some of these cycles that I were trapped in, what kept occurring, I started to feel perhaps, as we all do, a bit older, things being a little less. Having a little less energy and than usual self soothing behaviours weren't working anymore like I was kind of feeling like that age was was perhaps not as much under control, but my primary motivation for all of this is. My love for my children, I really didn't want. Well, my children have very, very rarely been the subject of my rage. The rage has always been inanimate objects, and largely myself or other, you know, other adults. We carry the all the emotions of our parents with us, even if those emotions are just proximate to us rather than directed at us. Their sadness, their joy, and I just didn't want them to. Be affected by. This rage inside me in any way, so that was a big motivation and I really, really wanted as I started, was reading more and more about intergenerational trauma. Break the cycles of intergenerational trauma. You know, not keep them going. Or break them as much as I possibly can. Because I realised that the the women and men who came before me didn't have their their often didn't have that opportunity. You know, if I think about my mother's parent. Thanks. Who I knew very well, or even their parents, you know, they're Italian migrants that came here in and around the 1st and 2nd world wars, you know, no one was getting psychiatric care. No one was had the had the spaciousness or opportunity society wasn't. Supportive of of people seeking help to address their, you know, pain, pain, rage, sadness or loss from from of poverty or migration or any of those things. So I also thought of responsibility of past generations as much as I felt to future generations to say. I'm gonna crack this. I'm gonna do this. I'm not gonna carry this explosive rage into my 60s and 70s and 80s. And if I do, if I do manage to kind of. Find a way. To really understand myself and really, really, really stop this cycle of intergenerational trauma then. I'll feel like I've really achieved something, so those were the things that drove me.

Daniel

OK, been a lot written about intergenerational trauma in the last few years, particularly some massive studies as well, particularly by children of Holocaust survivors. And that was where some of the big studies came from. And do you think it's mainly learned or organic or a combination of both?

Rebecca

Yes. Yeah, I don't. I don't know. I think it's interesting. I think, I think it, it has to be a dynamic interrelation of both. And I think there must be something about. Having this constant this. You know, this nervous system constantly and fight or flight. As a mother, you know, with a child in the womb. I I I just, I would not. I I just think that there has to be some impact that it has of maternal health and stress on the baby or at very least the attachment between the mother and the child. Which goes. On. So. You know where one ends and the other begins. Depending on what your experience has been or you know what your, you know, genetic makeup is or your family history. I definitely think there is. Yeah. There's a dynamic relationship between the two. It can't be all one or the other. No. I mean, the fascinating thing for me is how. In one of the the final MDMA session I had, how much of my grandmother's? Sense of insecurity and sense of feeling. Completely besieged and alone in an environment in northern Queensland where there was a lot of antipathy towards Italians, it was the Second World War where there was a lot of uncertainty where the men were taken away and in turn. All of that, like, it's so interesting that, you know, when all of my when the drug was in my system, in that third session, it took me back to what it must have been like for her, which was kind of a really unexpected part of the, the kind of the MDMA, you know, MDMA experience to me, I would never have guessed that it would have taken me there. I thought that was again something that I knew about. Something was in the past. Thing that I didn't even exist because that happened to my grandmother when she was like a young woman. So I don't even I don't even remember. Discrimination against Italians. When I was growing up but let it so clearly, some of that carried through to a lot of that carried through to her daughter, which carried through to me.

Daniel

Yeah. Had you known your grandmother very well or spent much time with her?

Rebecca

She I spent a lot of time with her. She is. At one stage my the woman that I worked with who I called Julia in one of the sessions asked me. A question, she said. Who did you? Who taught you how to love? And I immediately said my grandmother. So my mother's mother. She was the only person I. Felt. Truly comfortable with.

Speaker

Right.

Rebecca

And truly accepted she was. She was very consistent. So she was. There's nothing mercurial about her. My mother was often like she could be loving one moment and just unbelievably cruel and cold the next. So there's nothing in, you know, but nothing. You could just soften in her presence. She was also the only person who wanted me to eat. I think kind of you know. Very much like Italian grandmother, she was the only just like, didn't restrict how I ate or watched how I ate or kind of was worried that I was gonna. Lose weight or gain weight or anything, and so I could I could in all the ways that you could relax with a human being physically, emotionally, you know to be able to eat, to laugh and everything that she was the person she taught me. How how to cook. And she had a great. You know, she just had a great sense of humour and, you know, and a great curiosity. About my life, so I was. Really, really blessed to have her. To have experiences with her and to know her. And I think it's her that I channel mostly with my children as much as I possibly can.

Daniel

With the MDMA therapy and I've loosely spoken to a few people that have had some experience with it. And some people describe it as finding a door in your brain that you never knew existed. Some people describe it as finding a door in your brain that you know that you've locked, and it gets opened.

Rebecca

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel

And most people have some sort of metaphoric visualisation I guess is the word where they kind of experience watching a movie in their head where they they may or may not be part of that movie at that particular time. How was your personal experience with all?

Speaker

Hmm. Hmm.

Rebecca

Yeah. So I I, one of the early metaphors I use that realise that throughout the book there's quite a lot of water. There's a lot of water metaphors in my book. But for me it felt like I was kind of. Floating on a on on a kind of ocean of memory and emotion, which were kind of memory and feeling. Where I was kind of drifting, kind of like being held by the water, but kind of being drifting from 1 memory to another. So. The the the thing you said about kind of a movie in your head, but a bit felliniesque. I've gotta say, from one kind of, you know, kind of scene to I'm kind of a significant, you know, allegorical scene to the next is a bit like it. In in some of the work that I've been doing since writing the book with some of the psychiatrists and researchers who are doing the clinical. Trials, one of the great researchers that I know has the kind of metaphor of like an attic, where that's full of kind of boxes and everything, and it's almost like the MDMA shines the light on the attic with all of these, you know, all of these things that have been stored so similar to you. A door in the mind. And when he showed that he gave that metaphor and he showed an image, I immediately thought, yes, that that also is very useful. And often when people say to me, should I? Should this be something I do? I say, well, you know, Are you ready for all the these doors in your mind to start opening and the things that you've shoved in, you know what I mean, the things that you've shoved in there to start kind of falling out of the doors and you've gotta kind of unpack them and repack them in a way that makes sense. That's kind of it. You got a Marie condo. All of that.

Daniel

Yeah.

Rebecca

So I that's kind of what I think. So I think that that all of those metaphors really probably work quite well.

Daniel

Yeah. When? When you're going through the movie in your mind, what are your emotions like at the time? Do you see it as?

Speaker

Yeah.

Daniel

Like hovering over your own body sort of thing where you go, like, can see where this is going. Do you feel like you're in the depth of the emotion at that time or you sort of? Hovering over the emotion. I'm. Yeah. I'm not sure if I'm asking the question or what way. Yeah.

Rebecca

Yeah, I know what you mean. Well, I think that. The most wonderful thing about it is for most people, I mean, obviously people are very different experiences and depending on the intensity of that experience and your preparedness to address it. I think the thing that is really wonderful about it is. The emotion you're likely to feel the least. Is fear anxiety or rejection right? So I mean the the the magic to it as oppose is that. Normally, if you've had traumatic experiences or overwhelming experiences, you either block them out or forget to remember them or, you know, actively forget them. Or you kind of remember them and then you push them away because it's just too distressing. Right. And and of course, a lot of people, in order to distract themselves from thinking about it, do all of these, you know, over the top self regulating behaviours, you know, for everything from, you know, heroin addiction to work or work or, you know, to be a workaholic. All the rest of it so.

Speaker

Yep.

Rebecca

So one of the good things is that you're unlikely to feel that usual kind of panicky pushing away. And, you know, anger or any of those other kinds of negative emotions, because underneath that are the more prevalent emotions, the ones that I felt. Throughout the entire process in different in different sequences, and those emotions are. Ah. Ah, true sadness. Like deep, deep sadness, which is a kind of honest grief about what's happened. Empathy. You know, one of the things that. You know, is remarkable not just in my experience, but all the experience of a lot of people I've talked to is that actually you feel one of the things you can feel is deep empathy and compassion for the very people who hurt you. And in fact, potentially, that's such an important stage to go through before you can have self compassion in a way like to. And secondly, is kind of love like really that enormous sense of connection and love? And so that kind of sadness, grief, loss. See compassion and love are the ones that you kind of feel so intensely. And I think they're also the ones. That. You need to feel in order to process the you know, order to begin to process the trauma, because this kind of reactivity that can happen with memories that where you've of, you know, violence or. Faulty or whatever rejection. They're so uncomfortable, you know? And so you, you swing between pushing them away to being super angry. You know, you kind of all of that normal stuff that you feel. You know, it doesn't. Is isn't what it aren't. The isn't the emotion emotional landscape. You feel the MDMA, and you're right in it. In terms of I wasn't kind of hovering it over it like a observer I was. You know, deep inside it at yeah. And that and I think itself feels really important as well, cause often when you're when you're intellect overly intellectualising something or observing it from a distance. That can be. I mean sometimes that can be helpful. I think it is useful precursor to this work in a way. But I think it can also be a problem like you can kind of think, oh, if I I just solve this as an intellectual problem, it will be OK itself or.

Daniel

Yeah. Not because I mean as a child. The constant feeling of rejection must be incredibly traumatic. And and that was certainly something that came out quite strongly in your book and the way your father in particular, I guess, judged you for the way you did things and your mother's inconsistency with her own behaviour and responses to your situation. So when you're in, going through a session.

Speaker

Yeah.

Daniel

And whilst on MDMA and I, I suspect, and I don't know this sort of stuff comes up. And with the empathy side of things, are you then in a position to kind of understand how they as your parents got to that position ago? Is there an AHA moment where you go, oh, I get it.

Rebecca

Yeah, I mean, look. With my mother. I. The the three sessions plus what I already knew about her, plus what I've already been working on for years. Made me realise that it's very difficult to love when you have and when you yourself feel you haven't been loved. And. I think one of the greatest, you know, one of our greatest problems collectively as society or individually is when we feel like we're isolated and we are incapable of connecting with other people. We're incapable of that. Wonderful. We don't it, you know, we all struggle with it. But at the that kind of secure attachment. That a child can have with a parent doesn't always have to be a mother, but it has to be somebody where you're attuned, whether where they can feel your pain, where they can mirror the things that you feel. That is so important as a kind of a a basic prototype for all healthy, loving relationships. And if for whatever reason you don't have that, if something has broken that or something hasn't allowed that to be established. Then you're always playing catch up. You're always hungry, right? For for that sense of what that feeling is, and for a whole range of reasons, my. And mainly because her earliest memories were of violence, mainly her fathers, violence towards her. And she never. She always wanted to be close to her mother. But my grandmother was. She was a very beautiful, loving person, but she was also, you know, left school at 9, was the cook on the farm, was constantly looking after everybody. She was a slave for everybody in that family. Her parents, her father, uncles and aunts, you know, it's not surprising. That's the migrant woman's story and the, you know. In the 1920s, nineteen 30s and my mother was a very like at the end of that list, right? She was her only child, but she was at the end of that list and in fact. So so I I have. I've always understood kind of why my mother was it is the way she is and I I do have compassion for it. I think what one of the things that children do. Is we, you know, because we're so dependent upon parents, like for everything, you know, in, in every single way that when they reject us. We can't say ohh it's because they're damaged and it's got nothing to do with me. That just seems like too impossible to imagine and almost like an existential threat, right? To really know at 5 or 6, this person is incapable of looking after me in a healthy way. So you have to internalise it. You have to say if I'm just really a lot better or a good, better child or more successful or more this or more, then that love will be earned. So I. But so I knew some of that but. I really understood it in the MDMA in terms of a kind of physical sense of it, and then the other wonderful thing that came out in the first session was some beautiful one particular beautiful memory of a moment with my mother when I was sick. Where I really did feel that she was like caring for me and focused on me in a very. Unselfish way in a very consistent, unselfish way. And I remember being. I remember what it felt to feel loved at that moment. So. Those moments have been were really important in the MDMA to kind of flesh out and deepen what I already knew. What I already had a lot of understanding and empathy for my mother.

Speaker

Oh.

Rebecca

In particular, and I return to those sensations and experiences even now at times where. You know, difficult memories come up or thoughts of her come up as well.

Daniel

Yeah, I get that. What about self love? I mean, you go through a a difficult upbringing, you you can certainly easily lose the ability to.

Rebecca

Yeah.

Daniel

To love yourself. Yeah. And do you feel that MDMA helps propel you towards some degree of self love?

Rebecca

It it I'm still, I still am struggling with it. I think what it helped me do was prepare the groundwork for a more consistent approach of self compassion and self love. I mean, I give you a little little example of this, which is really interesting after the second session a couple of days after the second session, I went to my computer to start. Network and I have a kind of document which is A to do list on my desktop which is a list of. You know it's it's everything from things I have to do around the house. The things for work and all the rest of it. And you know it's a it's a very comprehensive list. And I looked at it like with fresh eyes and I realised it was a series of it's not just like items, it's direction. It was a series of the most horrible critical.

Speaker

Who?

Rebecca

Orders that of myself to like like. You know, be better about this or right don't. This thing that you know and I. Thought Oh my. God, this is me talking to me like. Terrible in a way that I would never talk to anybody else. You know, assuming that you know, just because you failed to do it once, you've failed to do it again. It was a very self. It wasn't A to do list. It was a self critical. It was like a it was a anyway. It was very interesting. And So what I did is I went through a process of rewriting this To Do List. As a series of of encouragements, rather than a series of hypocritical critical order.

Daniel

Be nicer to yourself. That's an order.

Rebecca

It will be. Yeah. Exactly. I just like, how do you that self talk in your head, you know, for for many years, I always thought that the the biggest voice in my head, the the the primarily negative voice in my head was actually my mother.

Daniel

Yeah.

Rebecca

And whether it's and and that's always certainly been the case every time I've ever felt a sense of compassion for myself. Or alternatively, a sense of. I've done a good thing, you know. So even when you said you've done. You know, it's something very brave. It's Once Upon a time, it would have been very easy for a voice to go into my head and say you're not brave. Actually, you're weak and beast and all these.

Daniel

Yeah.

Rebecca

Things. So that's happening less, which is good.

Daniel

Yeah. Did you have any expectations when you went, went into the first session and? Did you come out with any fears or other concerns about it?

Rebecca

I went in with no expectations. I I went in with a sense of. If this gives me a bit more insight on my lifelong. You know, quest to be to address these questions and then great. I think even if you even if you had given me, you know, if you'd been able to go into the future, come back with the book that I had written and given it to me, I just sort of thought there was no way this is gonna happen. You know, I I just can't imagine that something like this could work so effectively with. So what? What came out of it was from that first edition. Was a genuine curiosity about why did it work so well for me. Like what were the conditions that needed to be there for something to be this effective and good? So yeah.

Daniel

Yeah, and the sessions can be quiet from what I understand, quite gruelling, quite long sometimes going for hours, changing a lot of brain biochemistry, you must come out of there feeling pretty exhausted, I would think.

Rebecca

You're definitely exhausted at the end of the day you are. Working through a lot of it, and so often what you, my Julia who I worked with, suggested I take something called a schwangau. Is that what it's? Called a very effective.

Daniel

Ashwaganda gosh, you were close. So close.

Rebecca

Ash, we're going. That's it. That's you got that. You said it. Right, I said it wrong. It's it's very. I was not very close at all. I'm very bad at, I don't know, very. Anyway, I found that really, really effective. I found a very gentle way to kind of calm the nervous system down and I still take it every now and then. Well, the next day you do feel well. I I often, I said after the the next session, the first session I woke up. I felt like I woke up the next day in a different body. What had actually happened is the MDMA had done something, had relieved what was obviously a lifelong tension in my nervous system, like just constantly in fight or flight all the time. And I had just cried and cried and cried over 8 hours. And so it wasn't a kind of an emotional exhaustion. It was a sense of peace and being at peace with, you know, at being at peace in my body and my mind. And. That I can't really ever remember having. I know. Well, it was so weird. I remember thinking. Ohh wow, I I can.

Daniel

Wow, what a crazy feeling that must have been and all of a sudden.

Rebecca

If this is what it's like I could, I could see myself being addicted to a drug like they're addicted to this feeling. And then I wondered, I wonder this is what it's like. If this is like for other people, like maybe this is how other people feel. Other people haven't had my kind of background. And of course, a lot of people have as writing the books, maybe realise that. I'm not making that, but people who actually did have.

Daniel

Yeah.

Rebecca

Functional loving families without violence and maybe this is how they feel quite a lot of the time, and how wonderful would that be? So having access to that sense of being at peace in your body and your mind not exhausted but just not like up here all the time and constantly on high, low constant. Hyper vigilance. Yeah, it was really kind of. It was really crazy. It's amazing, really.

Daniel

And what and what happens like three days a week, two weeks after a session, does the thought process continue or? Do you? Does it just stop after a while? Definitely.

Rebecca

This. The thought process continues, So what this? This seismic event for me. Allowed me to reconsider and rethink. A A whole lot and that in itself is challenging. You know, you think back and thought, oh. I thought that was happening, but perhaps something else was so you know you you go through it's it's while the drugs out of your system the the long tail of the impact that it has on how you think about things is really critical for me. The other thing that happened was. I was not somebody you weren't really allowed to. You weren't really allowed to cry in a household crying was was it would absolutely enrage my father if he if he hurt you and you cried. So there's been a lot of suppression of sadness in my family. And so I would often find every time I would cry, I would think that that was. A failure or a defeat or a weakness. And now I've gotta say, I cry a lot more easily. I don't know whether that's a because I recognise how critically important it is to be sad, because if you don't allow sadness, particularly at the time in which it needs to express itself, it becomes something else.

Daniel

Yeah.

Rebecca

Right. It doesn't go away. It becomes something else. It becomes anger. It becomes depression, it becomes something else. So I'm a lot better at that. And that's both an intellectual and physical.

Daniel

When you finish this session I. I would think that it would be nice to be released into an environment where you have supportive people around you. Did you have the supportive people around you?

Rebecca

Ohh yeah, I've been. You know, I've I've been. I've had. Some of the most incredibly supportive and beautiful friends in my life, at all stages of my life, including one of my oldest friends who I've known since I was 11 in Adelaide, who grew up in. Went to 11/12, went to high school first year of high school together to yeah, I just have. I'm very very lucky. In my friendships and really I I'm not sure I would have got this far without them, so I've been very fortunate to have beautiful friends who have carried. Those friendships have carried throughout my professional personal life education, so I feel, and they were the ones you know, they're checking on me that night and coming to see me the next day. And. Yeah, and. And they're they're it listed in the acknowledgements. All wonderful people.

Daniel

Right. How important, if anyone is seeking MDMA therapy, how important is it to have those people around to support a a solid support network around them?

Rebecca

Look, I think it's one of the the three prerequisites to doing the work. You know, again it it again this is is all based on just my experience, but some reading and also some some time spent with the practitioners who are doing the legal MDMA work at the moment out of some of the hospitals and some of the people who are doing some of the. Clinical trial. Well, I mean, I think the first thing to recognise is that you have to be in a secure a a secure enough position of your life to be able to open things up. So Julia would also would say to me that you really have to be out of the immediate conditions of trauma, so. You know, if you're in the middle of a divorce or if you are uncertain about the roof over your head or all those kinds of things, this is not the time. There has to be a, a, A at least a modicum of stability in your life.

Speaker

Hmm.

Rebecca

I think that. Where this is being used effectively legally and in the clinical trials is what they call treatment resistant PTSD, particularly with MDMA. So what that means is there has at least been some treatment. So if you've never saw talk therapy or if you've never thought. Any any of kind of conventional therapies or we don't have a really good basis for understanding why you feel the way you do? I'm not sure that jumping straight into MTM is the best way to do it. I think you do need some kind of. Foundation. Whether that's talk therapy or working with a trauma specialist or whatever, that is critical. And then and then I think you do need a support network to. To be there for you in what they call the integration between session. So you'll be both professional care, but also people who. Are prepared to be around you even to do some, not even necessarily, to talk about what you want to talk about, but. To be there for the long walks and the swims and the, you know what I mean? And just the quiet times and to make sure that and to reinforce that connection. Love, friendship, the antidote part also part of the the the antidotes to trauma and to. To mental health challenges.

Daniel

When you go to the second or the third session. Do you develop or for you in your case, who can only speak about you? Of course. Do you feel like you had different memories or did you go deeper into the memories that you had in the first session? Or is it? Is it a continuation of the of the first session or the previous session? Or is it a whole new experience?

Rebecca

Yeah. Yeah, it's a real a really good point. I I think that there are in my 3 sessions there were very common themes that I kept coming back to and a lot of. Them. A lot of them did tend to be around. Birth and and, you know, and motherhood and connections between mothers and daughters. So my my connection to my mother. I kept returning to the birds that I had the live birds as well as some of the the other issues I had around. A still birth and miscarriages. So there was something about those that all. Float across all three of them. The first session was probably the most intense and the most kind of mind blowing in many ways. And it was 1 where some very beautiful memories about love and connection resurfaced. In the second one, and I'm not sure whether it was the context or other things that about how it's feeling. It made me feel like it was actually quite a hard and difficult 1A sense of a sense of feeling, incredibly isolated, incredibly alone. I was lucky enough to again have a lot of support from friends. On the phone the night of that, at that session and the next day. And the final one was again in my own home with friends downstairs there in case there was an issue. So I they felt very different. But I think they felt instead of while I didn't necessarily revisit the same memories, there were some very, very, very consistent.

Speaker

Hmm.

Rebecca

Means around. Around relationships between mothers and daughters. Connection alienation, love. Those kinds of things just kept coming up and up and up and.

Daniel

Up and up. I'm just going to change tack for a second here and and just talk about where we're at in Australia with MDMA. And I know that you're involved with some of the studies.

Speaker

Oh.

Daniel

In the trials and the professors, who were, you know, were doing this work at the moment.

Speaker

Yeah.

Daniel

Why is it so expensive? Am I? I mean, we're talking about, I don't know, 30,000 bucks or.

Rebecca

Yeah, right.

Daniel

Something like that.

Rebecca

Yeah, somewhere between 20 to 2530, depending on on where you're doing it, it's incredibly expensive. So there's a couple of reasons why it's expensive. First of all, you know it, it would be possible for some of the health insurers to cover this potentially that I know that some of them have been thinking about it, but. Separate from. One of the challenges is with the decision was made to to make MDMA and psilocybin available. It was probably, I wouldn't say it was made prematurely, but it was surprised. It surprised a lot of people. It was a world. 1st.

Daniel

Ohh look, I've been working with the TGA for oh I don't know since they came into existence in 1989 and this just blew me out.

Rebecca

So. I know, I know. Well, I think it was like, wow, OK, alright. That's happened like. And so I think it did take a lot of people by surprise and as a result, I mean perhaps not as a result. So it took a lot of people by surprise. Stop new sentence. The new sentence is to become a an authorised prescriber, so you there are. It's quite a a lengthy process and it's happening slowly. You know, the last time I checked in with the some of our people in this area, there was about, you know, in the late about 2728 people when Australia. There were authorised prescribers of this and some, you know, people are in the pipeline to be it. There's obviously there's lots of people who. Interested. To be that person, so to be able to dispense the drugs to clients, you have to be a psychiatrist and or and connected or being supervised by somebody who is doing one of the clinical trials. So you can't be a psychologist and so you can't be a psychologist, have to be a psychiatrist in particular. What? So when you're doing the session, you have to be have two psychiatrists with you for the whole 8 hours. You couldn't have a, for example, psychiatric nurse. You can't have a psychologist, so it's the the hours, the professional hours, that make it the challenge because you.

Speaker

Right.

Rebecca

Imagine I mean, what, how much does psychiatrist charge per hour in Australia without Medicare is what, 300 and 5300 some? Like that and then mandatory because the maps protocol that every that they tend to follow is a number of integration sessions which also take a while. So if you think about the numbers of hours that would take in a usual 3 course, 3 courses with psychiatrists sitting for the whole time. It is one of the things that could be useful to do, because we really do need a well trained workforce to actually make this more available to people who aren't like very, very wealthy.

Daniel

Yeah.

Rebecca

Is trying more psychologists. There's no necessarily and and have a more kind of robust and specialised workforce and hopefully that will start to decrease the costs. So that's mainly why it's so expensive. It's actually not the drug itself as.

Daniel

Yeah.

Speaker

Usual it's, you know.

Daniel

No, no, because the risk is if if the if it continues to be so restricted and so expensive.

Rebecca

Yeah.

Daniel

More and more people will continue to go underground for it. And.

Rebecca

That's already that's already happening. I think one of the yeah. One of the challenges about and and I did think about this in the book as well, there's so much interest in these therapies, there's now more and more stories, some of which are, you know, some of some. There's more and more clinical trials coming out with some really extraordinary results.

Daniel

OK. Yeah.

Rebecca

There's quite a lot of buzz one way or the other. There's also been some kind of really pretty horrible stories about some stuff that's happened with some practitioners, but largely people are hearing really positive things. And I just can't. A week wouldn't go by without somebody calling me or emailing me or and contacting me to say I can't. I don't have $30,000. But yeah, I really, really need this. So I think that's the challenge. And I thought about this. You know, there are risks going underground. I got lucky with a very, very experienced.

Daniel

Yeah.

Rebecca

And very ethical practitioner who didn't over promise, who wasn't like, hey, we're. I'm just going to give you 3 of these tablets, you know, every a couple of months apart and all your problems will be solved. So I think that I think yes, I think there's a massive underground in Australia. It will grow as the more that we make these therapies, much, much harder to access.

Daniel

Yeah, because I think for me and and please support me or tell me I'm wrong, but we are often trained in with Western medicine. Think. That a drug is the treatment, but in the case of MDMA, it is not the treatment it is, it is really just opening a door to get a better working relationship with a trained therapist of some sort.

Rebecca

Exactly.

Speaker

It's not correct.

Rebecca

Yeah, I totally agree. And no, no, you're absolutely right. And part of it, you know, part of what?

Daniel

Sure, that's lucky.

Rebecca

I I almost say every time I I. Talk about this is. It kind of doesn't matter whether you're talking about MDMA or Prozac or Lexapro. It. We have to get away from this idea that a pill is going to solve. Yeah, something that is a complex personal and familial and societal issue, right. So.

Daniel

Yeah.

Rebecca

For me, my trauma was largely familiar, but there will be people in Australia, particularly from First Nations communities or any communities where there's been. There's a collective trauma based in history and other kinds of issues. So the idea that you know, we're we're gonna any. You know, exciting new new drug or, you know, common garden SSRI that's been around is going to solve that as a problem. And the other thing that I was always engendered a lot of trust very early on with Julia as she said. You know the drug is the catalyst for the work that you're prepared to put in.

Speaker

Yes.

Rebecca

And your intention, if your intent if you if you've done the work and are prepared to do the work and your intention. Is of a particular kind. Then the drug will be helpful for you along that along that path.

Daniel

Yeah. OK. Well, in the last minute of this podcast, any advice or comments or final thoughts?

Rebecca

No, just thank you for reaching out. I'm so pleased you liked the book. I was very Adam. If I place you found it easy to read and engaging to read because nobody likes picking up a book that is like this and feels like you have to keep putting it down and going to have a drink and or walk because it's too heavy going so.

Daniel

Ohh I've I've recommended it to so many people and you come across so many people in your life and go you need to read this book. Timing was amazing cause I psychiatric medicines have just been so interesting over the last few years.

Rebecca

Thank you for for. All right.

Daniel

And your book was just so topical and so spot on. Just loved it. So you can get it on Amazon, I think.

Rebecca

Thank you so much. You can you can get it at at at all good bookstores. And and there's also an audio book that's. Very easy to listen to for.

Daniel

As well, are you the narrator?

Rebecca

No, I decided that I wouldn't do it justice. I have a fantastic woman who used to be on neighbours who's good? Good impersonation of me.

Daniel

OK. All right. Well, Rebecca, awesome. Thank you so much for your time. And I'm super, super grateful. And it was just such an honour for me. So thanks so much.

Rebecca

Thank you. Thank you.

Daniel

If you feel that this story could be a benefit to you or someone you know, please like it and share it. And as a reminder, in this podcast the information provided relates to the specific health requirements of an individual and may not relate to your health requirements or that of another person. Please do not make any changes to your treatment without consulting your health professional. Thank you.