The comments section on this article is illuminating beyond the story itself (as is frequently the case on Ars) and worth a look.
Anecdotal experience alert!
I’ve been dealing with treatment-resistant major depression since before the term existed. Presumably, this stems from events when I was 7 and younger which unfortunately informed preferences and decisions starting in college and to some extent continue to this day. My parents were also quite detached, adding in the need to find in adulthood the sort of safety and connection one is supposed to grow up having already felt and thus able to recognize abusive analogs in partners with better than 0% accuracy.
Net result has been a lifetime of self-medication, sometimes with the hope of improvement, but far more frequently some way to just kick the can down the road to avoid feeling those things right now.
My introduction to MDMA came unsurprisingly from the rave scene in 1999. On balance, that period of heavy use (within a year, I’d sometimes roll three times a week, which no one is going to suggest is a good idea) was a net negative, with the silver lining that I did get to feel fleeting connections, but that transitory nature made the reality in between seem that much comparatively worse.
Any amount of research into psilocybin will lead to the phrase “set and setting.” The first is short for mindset, the second obviously physical surroundings, including people. What I didn’t know back in college was this concept itself, let alone that it applies to any psychoactive substance. At the time, I liked to say that E was a mood enhancer because if I was already feeling low, it was a shovel. And boy, howdy, did I find bottom with a cocktail one night that started with E at a party and then led to intentional contraindicated choices once home.
After a long period away from MDMA, I first rolled again in 2016, this time with my newish girlfriend at my house with chill music and climate control. Wildly different experience. This led to the same sort of experience in 2019 and again in 2021.
By mid-2022, the double whammy of pandemic loneliness and the abysmal job market had led to hospitalizations and detox trips as I hit the point of having a 30-pack of beer delivered to my apartment almost daily. The final detox led to a job, finally, after meeting the owner of a company there, which in turn led to my first year-plus of sobriety by choice.
At which point I was ready to finally tackle some of my longstanding issues instead of brushing them under the rug. Soon after, I heard about Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind miniseries on Netflix, leading to learning to grow shrooms while doing a fuckton of further research into intentionality and realistic expectations.
My first trip removed the rumination – that constant background voice questioning every choice I made and even every thought – I’d been dealing with for decades. It was a difficult trip emotionally, though I was never afraid through ineffable reassurance that everything would be fine. On the other side, I was able to take the first step to being present in the moment.
Over several more months, well-spaced trips diminished the frequency and urgency of unwanted memories surfacing, culminating in acceptance that I had to let go to move forward. The final trip of that series also revealed where I wanted to go, and I blew up my life, buying, building out and moving into a van, followed by leaving the soul-crushing job of sending out bills.
After a circuitous path, I’ve landed. Absolutely no medical professional would suggest what I did, but there’s no accessible psychedelic-assisted therapy path I could have instead chosen, which is frankly intentional withholding of treatment. “SSRI’s not working? We have no alternative, so you get to suffer!”
Last weekend, I did MDMA in a party setting again for the first time since college. It wasn’t planned, but strange things happen in a gift economy with amazing people and music. After eating some shrooms the first night, I finally found my flow state, which I seem to have lost somewhere back in the '80s, allowing full presence.
Other than the inevitable serotonin crash Wednesday, I’ve felt amazing. Not manic, just happy with who I am and where I’m at and confident about my ability to continue finding my path forward.
After losing decades of my life, I don’t want to see anyone else go through that, so I keep tabs (no pun intended) on psychedelic studies, and these MAPS trials seem to be going backward for wider experiments I know can benefit millions. It is so frustrating to have experimental malfeasance from an organization seemingly wanting to move forward but unable to avoid things like sexual assault and other cultlike behaviour from the fucking researchers.
Hopefully, these will lead to further studies with far more ethical guardrails instead of closing the door again.