This is part two in a series titled How I healed my trauma. Read Part 1—Experimentation.

Through Tucker Max, I met my Guide, whom I’ll call Sally. When Sally and I first spoke, she suggested MDMA. More popularly known as Molly or ecstasy, MDMA is a synthetic psychoactive drug that acts as a stimulant. It can heighten your senses and boost emotions like empathy and compassion. I’ve never done MDMA recreationally, so I had no idea what to expect. So far, I’ve done four sessions of MDMA over a period of almost two years. Each session was different in almost every way, and each one was done in a hotel room or Airbnb location. The setting matters and affects your experience. Since there are usually fewer distractions away from home, most guides recommend a neutral setting.

Session #1: April 30, 2022

I didn’t feel anything after the first dose. (MDMA may be given in two doses.) After lying in bed for 50 minutes, Sally gave me the second dose. I did my best to go inward by wearing a mask and listening to music. The first physical sensation was heat. I began sweating, which isn’t normal for me. I felt so fucking hot until deep, severe chills came over my body. Then, I couldn’t get warm enough. My teeth were chattering. My legs were twitching. Eventually, my tongue became numb. For a long time, it was purely a physical experience.

Then something changed. I saw a Rolodex inside my head. A Rolodex of childhood memories. I was arguing with myself. Defending my childhood. It wasn’t that bad, I swear. Then the Rolodex, composed of metal, began flipping around, emitting a ticca, ticca, ticca sound. When it stopped, it showed me a childhood memory. Every time the medicine pushed back with a clear message: No one made you a priority. No one paid attention to you.

So many memories surfaced. About my parents, my cousin, my teachers, my childhood friends, and even the family dog. For years, I told myself that my childhood wasn’t awful. It could have been much worse. But it wasn’t happy either. I always had to take care of myself. While that self-sufficiency has helped me throughout life, it has also made me less trusting of people.

This session was all about my childhood.

Session #2: July 2, 2022

This time, I felt the medicine soon after taking it. A slow-burning heat began at my feet. It moved its way up my body, but it didn’t hurt. I don’t remember any chills. My teeth didn’t chatter as much though my jaw was sore the next day. The twitches started slowly. When I relaxed into them, they didn’t bother me.

So many images of my sister Adrienne flooded my mind. They were scattered. All over the place. In no particular order. Sally told me to give in to the medicine, so I did. Tears spilled down my cheeks as I silently wept. The images kept coming like a PowerPoint slideshow. As the grief left my body, Sally hugged me.

I don’t feel consciously guilty about being unable to save Adrienne. But perhaps subconsciously, I do. I know I did everything I could in my power to save her. But it wasn’t enough. My love was enough to give her a decent life, but it wasn’t enough to save her life. My persistence, my resourcefulness, and my determination (easily my best qualities) were not enough. I couldn’t save her. I saved her from our mother, but I couldn’t save Adrienne from cancer.

After buckets of tears, I lay back down. This time, I could feel resistance in my mind and body. I was doing my best to relax, to breathe deeply, to go where the medicine wanted to take me, but my ego was pushing back. Scenes with my ex-husband began popping up like those annoying pop-up ads on many websites. I didn’t feel anything. As the pop-ups kept coming, I became an observer. I knew they were my memories from my life, but I felt disconnected from them. Maybe I wasn’t ready to go there. Or maybe I was too emotionally and physically drained after crying over Adrienne.

Though my first session took me into my childhood, this session did not.

Session #3: September 17, 2022

I did this session the same week I recorded the audio version of my book, Better Off Bald: A Life in 147 Days. A medical memoir, Better Off Bald, chronicles my sister’s 147-day cancer journey as well as the seven years during my twenties when I raised her.

Though I took the full dose upfront, I had trouble relaxing and letting go. I felt the heat early on; it was a slow burn warming me up as the minutes passed. I sweated more, too, but fewer chills and no chattering teeth. The twitching started at my feet, but then it moved to my bladder, which annoyed me. I didn’t have to go to the bathroom, but the constant twitching distracted me.

When I finally relaxed enough, every memory I’ve ever had of Adrienne circled through my mind. I relived my book. I wept. And wept. And wept some more. Every bit of Adrienne flooded through me. The good times. The bad times. I mumbled, “I couldn’t save her” several times.

But the next day, I felt so good. For the first time in years, I fell asleep easily and slept well. I woke up on Monday morning feeling refreshed and rested, which never happens. Insomnia has haunted me my whole life. One of the many reasons I’m doing this work is to improve the quality of my sleep.

This session was all about Adrienne, as I expected it would be.

In October 2022, I was diagnosed with long COVID. (I had a terrible case that June.) I lost more than 10% of my body weight and struggled with fatigue and memory loss. My guide didn’t feel comfortable with me doing MDMA until my health improved, hence the ten-month gap between sessions.

Session #4: July 29, 2023

Receptive and open, my body eased into the medicine much quicker than in the past. I don't know if that's because I was no longer taking Wellbutrin or because I had done ayahuasca a few months prior. Within 20 minutes, my feet felt warm. This was the sweatiest session yet. I still had a pulsing sensation with my urethra, but I didn’t let the twitching distract me. By allowing and accepting the sensation, the experience was softer and smoother. I was very dizzy at one point, and my vision blurred, making it difficult to write things down.

Ballet came up right away, and I didn’t see that coming. (I began dancing at age five.) I wasn't good enough to be the kind of dancer that I wanted to be. I danced professionally in shows (i.e., every theme park in SoCal), but I wasn't a prima ballerina dancing in New York. My guide says ballet was an escape for me as a kid. It was always my happy place (until it wasn’t.) School was my happy place, too, until I got bullied in junior high. When I was thirteen, my mother and I moved to Alabama, where I attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts. During my junior year, I realized I wasn’t talented enough to reach my self-imposed high standards. My ballet teacher suggested I try acting. That’s how I ended up majoring in theatre at the University of Southern California.

After ballet, the medicine took me to different places for no logical reason or particular order. My ex-husband. My sister Adrienne. My mother.

After many fleeting memories, the medicine focused on my ex-husband. We were both damaged souls. We shared many similarities in our backgrounds. I’m the oldest; he’s the oldest. Of our siblings, I left home, and he left home. By age ten, we were both working. Addiction of many kinds runs in my family. Alcoholism runs in his family. We looked good on paper, but the reality was much darker.

My ex-husband has a superiority complex that results from deep insecurity. He thinks he knows what is best for other people. He wants to change everyone, including me. But he doesn’t want to change at all. He is the best gaslighter I’ve ever met. I don’t miss the mind games. Or the screaming matches. He fights dirty, saying mean, nasty things that are impossible to forget. He would argue until I gave up. During the last year of our marriage, I stopped fighting with him altogether.

I met my ex-husband one year after my sister died. If I hadn’t been grieving, I never would have gotten involved with him. A part of me wanted to be rescued from the constant pain and sadness. My ex is attractive — think Daniel Craig x Sting — but not my type. When we began dating, I enjoyed his company. He loves entertaining and showing people a good time. We had fun together, and we had so much in common. He made a decent living and seemed reliable. But I never emotionally connected with my ex-husband, and no amount of therapy can fix that problem.

Being Good Enough

My ego kept saying, “You were never good enough.”

• You were never a good enough dancer.

• You were never a good enough actress.

• You were never good enough at X, Y, or Z.

Then the strangest thing happened: the medicine showed me the truth. I am good enough. I was a good dancer and actress, good enough to get paying gigs but not great. However,

• I was a great director and producer. Most of the plays I staged were successful.

• I was a great parent. Not perfect. I made mistakes. But everyone knew, Adrienne was always my top priority.

• I am a great teacher; it’s a natural talent that I possess.

Every time my ego bashed me, the medicine corrected it: You are good at many things. And you are a great mentor, advisor, teacher, and parent. People trust you; they tell you their darkest secrets, knowing you’ll never betray them.

For the first time, I felt self-compassion. The medicine showed me I’m not an utter failure. I’ve always done the best that I possibly can. I even laughed when some happier memories of my sister Adrienne and my dog Winston came up.

Messages Received

1. You are your best friend.

2. Success does not make you strong; failure does.

3. The summer I was 15, I took care of Adrienne, who was a toddler. The summer she was 15, Adrienne was battling cancer. And I took care of her then, too.

My Personal Tips

1. Document your session right afterward. I’m often too tired to write, so I record my thoughts on my phone and transcribe the notes later.

2. Keep a journal next to you during the session. If it’s too difficult to write, ask your guide to jot things down for you.

3. Lie down and rest after the session. Ideally, do not get in a moving vehicle for several hours.

4. Do not work the next day. You need to rest—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually—and process the experience.

5. Do the integration sessions with your guide and, if possible, an outside therapist. Integration is 90% of the work.

Coming Up: How I healed my trauma: Part 3—Psilocybin and Ketamine

Resources

• Tucker Max: What MDMA Therapy Did For Me (article)

• From Serving Beer in Hell to Psychedelic Healing: How MDMA Therapy Treats Trauma with Tucker Max (video guest podcast)

• MDMA-assisted Therapy for PTSD (WebMD article)

• Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)—clinical trials with MDMA