Why aren't we doing MDMA with family?
Rolling with your mom seems like the Mt. Everest of personal development
What’s MDMA good for? You’ll get very different answers depending on who you ask.
A recreational user: “Dancing like you’ve never danced.”
A psychedelic therapist “Treating PTSD.”
A home-roller: “Connecting with friends.”
A meditator: “Accessing pure lovingkindness.”
We’re obviously touching different parts of the elephant here. The media has covered MDMA’s potential for PTSD treatment, since that’s where most of the research and political will has been focused. Yet the researchers and therapists who began working with this substance in the 1970s and 80s thought it had the unique potential to help with something else: relationships.
One researcher noted1 in 1980:
MDMA allows ordinary defenses against communication and closeness to relax, and permits those involved in its effects to deal with substantive issues. . . . .
Another 1986 paper2 concluded:
the single best use of MDMA is to facilitate more direct communication between people involved in a significant relationship. Not only is communication enhanced during the session, but afterward as well.
MDMA lets us connect in a way that is nearly impossible otherwise. Terence McKenna used to say that psychedelics break down walls, and MDMA seems to break down the wall that separates us from each other.
So why has the current therapeutic model focused almost exclusively on individual use?
Getting sane together
I know it’s hitting me when I feel the urge to poop. So I usually slink away from my friends and find the most remote bathroom in the house.
That means I usually come up on the toilet, which is its own fun adventure. But it also means that I return to the room with my friends in a very different state of mind than when I left it.
“Don’t worry, everyone,” I remember saying once upon reentry from my bathroom adventure. “It’s all going to be OK.”
There’s a lot to notice in the transition from normal consciousness to MDMA consciousness. Yes, there’s euphoria. And jitteriness. But the most interesting change to me is not what it adds to normal consciousness, but what it takes away: guardedness. It’s as though some internal watchdog that is constantly guarding me from vulnerability gets completely deactivated.
Most interestingly, I’m not aware of the watchdog until it’s gone.
Sam Harris describes the first time he took MDMA in his book Waking Up:
I was simply talking to my friend—about what, I don’t recall—and realized that I had ceased to be concerned about myself. I was no longer anxious, self-critical, guarded by irony, in competition, avoiding embarrassment, ruminating about the past and future, or making any other gesture of thought or attention that separated me from him. I was no longer watching myself through another person’s eyes.
Harris credits this first experience with upending his view of the human mind, and his connection to other people.
…I wanted him to be happy. That conviction came crashing down with such force that something seemed to give way inside me. In fact, the insight appeared to restructure my mind … It would not be too strong to say that I felt sane for the first time in my life.
(Emphasis this Sam, not that Sam).
The deactivation of this inner guardedness is the elephant we’re all touching. A raver is able to dance ecstatically because they stop giving a shit what other people think. A combat veteran is able to access the traumatic episodes of their lives because they’re no longer guarding themselves from the pain of it.
If MDMA downregulates guardedness, then what situations in life activate it and make it most difficult to feel vulnerable and connected? For me, the answer is easy: being with family.
“You had to build a wall to keep going …”
If you could repair any relationship in your life, which would it be? If that was a question on Family Feud I bet “Mom” would be the #1 answer (and that Steve Harvey would be very confused why the producers chose this question).
There’s a medium-length YouTube documentary about a mother and daughter working with MDMA to repair their relationship. I know it’s a lot to ask you to watch a 26 minute video in the middle of reading this, but skip around through it and you’ll get the idea:
I cried through almost all of it, even the annoying parts. (Why is the facilitator talking so much? Why the hell are kids there??) Nothing about the documentary should surprise anyone who has used MDMA. Nothing about it is unique to the relationship it portrays. Yet it has an almost mythical, archetypal power.
Duh.
Why aren’t we talking more about using MDMA to heal our family relationships? Yes, some of our parents are no longer with us. Some would never consider taking a substance like MDMA. But rolling with your mom seems like a Mt. Everest of personal development. Isn’t that what all those hours of therapy were about? Can we forgive our parents for the choices they made? Can we feel accepted by them now? Can we heal the necessary wound that happens when a new lifeform separates from its creator?
I’m not saying MDMA is the only way to heal this damaged relationships. Good old fashioned vulnerability and hard work can probably lead to more lasting change. But the trouble with family (in my experience) is that you need everyone to be vulnerable and motivated to heal at the same time, which is an extremely difficult situation to engineer under the conditions of day-to-day life. MDMA consciousness lets us pur our guards down at the same time. It’s like an emotional ceasefire.
And I say all this from a hypothetical place. I’ve never used MDMA with family, nor do I know anybody who has.
But it makes me wonder if our culture’s obsession with individual improvement has seeped into the way we use psychedelic medicine. Maybe it’s not all about eyeshades and inner work. Maybe these psychedelic tools can be harnessed to heal the fabric of our families and communities.
This is great Sam, thank you for this!
great post, instant click email headline and descrip