Psychedelics are nowadays intensely researched for the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in war veterans. So far the research is promising, psychedelics, especially MDMA seem to be very helpful.
These positive results are after treatment in controlled clinical trials, to which few people have access. Yet many people suffer of post traumatic stress disorder not due to war, but to early childhood abuse and other traumas. Many take psychedelics on their own, or underground, with less experienced guides. Many consider psychedelics a magic bullet, which it is not.
Although psychedelics do seem magical, helping to heal different afflictions, the truth is that psychedelics not only can heal a trauma, but can be also very disruptive.
Two examples:
1) Odette.
Odette came to me two weeks after she took alone a full doses of Magic Mushrooms. She was frightened, anxious, confused, and tearful.
Her intention for the psychedelic experience was to learn something new about “the body,” as she was a sport trainer. She hoped that the Magic Mushrooms will reveal to her a new approach to the body, preferably one which will make her famous in the sport world.
Well, take care what you ask for when you embark on a psychedelic journey. Something about Odette: she was twenty three, single, sharing a flat with a female friend, who was not home during Odette’s Magic Mushroom trip, working in a sport school, an animal and outdoor lover, without psychological intricacies. Or at least, this is what she thought of herself, and the impression she made on first sight: nice, uncomplicated, perhaps a bit immature.
Well, under the psilocybin influence, she experienced being raped by her father in the cellar of their house. An event Odette had completely repressed. Odette’s mother died of cancer when Odette was almost thirteen. She was a single child, and just before she turned fourteen, her father brought her to her aunt, the sister of her mother, and left her there. The rape must have happened after her mother’s death and before her father brought her to her aunt. She grew up in the family of the aunt, with three younger cousins, on a farm, with many cows, and land to cultivate. Her aunt resembled her mother, which was for Odette a big consolation. Emotions were not shown in the family, but they cared for each other, it was a good home and she considered her childhood as happy. Shortly after dropping her at the farm, her father migrated to Canada. and she never saw him again. But he did sent money for her until she was eighteen. And now this. She could not believe it, she was very scared, of what she had experienced and of going crazy.
We met for one and a half year in which much more was revealed about Odette’s background. Eventually Odette recovered. We are now eleven years later. The last news from Odette are that she has finished her studies, she is now a biochemist, and lives together with her boyfriend.
2) Thomas
Thomas, a forty three year teacher at a lyceum. He had taken Magic Mushroom the year before, once when his wife was away for a weekend with friends. He told me that he cannot remember anything from the whole experience, yes, bright colours in the beginning, but nothing else. After the experience he must have fallen asleep. When waking up the next morning, he felt that something is wrong. Since then, somehow, he is not inhabiting his body. He feels as if he is next to his body. It feels as extremely unpleasant. Whatever he had tried, it did not help. This condition is called “depersonalisation” and belongs to a state of consciousness called “dissociation.” It happens when a frightening, menacing situation occurs. The only conclusion I could come to was that the psychedelic experience had shook Thomas quite badly. I guided him into a hypnotic trance to retrieve the experience under psilocybin influence. Nothing scary or threatening appeared. But he did work through biographical material which was burdening him. We met five more times. He was now residing in his body, which he also perceived as lighter. We said good bye, as Thomas felt great. He had cleaned much emotional garbage he had carried for decades. In our last meeting he declared:“I feel less the gravity of the earth.” Everything was thus fine, besides the mystery of his psilocybin experience, which was not solved. We laughed, and agreed to be content with the result of the therapy.
Two months later, his wife phoned and informed me that Thomas had died. A brain aneurysm had burst. His wife told me that a couple of days before his death, Thomas mentioned that he had remembered the psychedelic experience.
He said it lightly, en passant, she barely paid attention to it. The last days before his death he didn’t want to meet anybody, he stayed very close to her, was very sweet and loving to her. She felt that he knew he will go soon. And she suspected that he saw his death in the psychedelic experience.
Back to what I said in the beginning, that a psychedelic experience can not only heal a trauma, but can have first a disturbing effect, although if handled well, the disruption can eventually lead to healing. Under psychedelic influence Odette experienced a repressed trauma, and this helped her to heal it. If not, she may have become ill at a later date. Thomas has been traumatised by the psychedelic experience, yet it motivated him to solve painful aspects in his childhood and adolescence, and possibly helped him to accept his untimely death.
Published end 2020 on my YouTube channel
Disclaimer: I do not administer any psychedelic substances in my practice.
