The Power of MDMA and Psilocybin for Mental and Emotional Healing

Psychedelics for healing trauma is all the buzz these days yet remains a mystery to so many of us.

I had my first psychedelic experience (guided ceremony with a healer) at the age of 52 (if you don’t count that ‘unbeknownst to me’ experience in university where I drank ‘tea’ at a party (I went to England for Uni, so it wasn’t weird to drink tea) and spent the whole night hiding in the bedroom under all the coats).

Fast forward 3 decades, when my life was so upside down and I felt out of alignment with who I was as a person, what I was meant to be doing and nothing felt good anymore. I was working all the time, and all the joy and happiness was zapped out of me, despite ‘having it all’.

I was invited to come to a retreat in Costa Rica by my client who raved about her experience with Ayahuasca. I had no idea what Ayahuasca was, no matter how much I googled it. My client showed me pictures of barf buckets and mattresses –still I did not connect the dots – probably a good thing. So, I went anyway, saying to myself: “How bad can it be?”

 That week changed my entire life despite using that barf bucket A LOT! I knew that week that I would be working with plant medicine.

As I explored the plant medicine world and all the various psychedelics over the following months and year, I fell in love with the power of plant medicine. I studied the medicines through a lot of experiential work and took an extensive training course on how to become a psychedelic guide.

But not everyone is adventurous (or crazy) enough to do Ayahuasca, especially for a first experience.

There are more gentle medicines one can work with and that would be MDMA and Mushrooms.

So, what are the healing benefits of MDMA?

MDMA is a beautiful medicine commonly known for treating PTSD in war veterans.

MDMA is known as the heart opener medicine because it shuts down the amygdala.

When we experience fear, or perceived fear (our brains don’t know the difference) it triggers a fear response in the amygdala, which actives areas involved in our brain for fight or flight. When we are ready for healing traumas or challenges, MDMA turns off the Amygdala so we can process the trauma in a loving and gentle container.

In our culture and day to day living, when something comes up (fears, doubts, challenging memories, grief, sadness etc) we supress and repress those feelings and emotions or try to distract ourselves from them because we don’t want to feel them. Why not? Because those feelings hurt and don’t feel good.  (we all just want to feel happiness!) Or we numb them with anti-depressants, alcohol, drugs.

But here’s the thing – the more we try and avoid those feelings the longer they stick around, and they live in our bodies. They show up as stress, anxiety, or disease.

For us to be free of these challenges, and traumas we need to be with them (not relive them!) but not supress them.

MDMA allows for easy processing of these emotions because we don’t feel fear, rather we feel love.

In the plant medicine world when something is coming up it is ready to be healed.

 During an MDMA ceremony those feelings we normally fear, are not fearful anymore. They are held in a loving container…they are processed out of our bodies and released… and healed.

What are the healing benefits of Psilocybin?

Mushrooms have been used by Indigenous tribes for centuries for healing.

Mushrooms provide very powerful insights and messages by working with our inner healer and works in our psyche, beyond our thinking mind. 

Most of us rely so heavily on our thinking mind that we forget we have our intuition, our heart, and our soul to help us process and heal trauma or challenges.

We have become such a ‘heady’ over thinking, over analyzing, need to be in control society and largely an under feeling, numbed out society.

Mushrooms shows us what is ready to be healed and released and never gives you more than you can handle. It can be firm, giving you what you need and not always what you want.

 It provides valuable insight and shares that insight with you – kinda like an honest friend who loves you dearly and wants nothing more than to see you happy but knows you need to hear the truth, vs the friend who gets sucked into your drama and tells you only what you want to hear. 

What are the benefits of these two medicines when working synergistically?

When these two medicines work in synergy, we are able to process the messaging and the insight from the mushrooms with a filter that the MDMA provides – the heart opening loving embrace – balancing out what we need to hear – the honesty of the messaging from the mushrooms – without the fear.

It is such a beautiful combination because you process, you heal, and you release your trauma all in one full swoop.

 Finally, I only recommend that you do this work with a trained facilitator in a guided ceremony vs recreationally. You want to embark on this journey in a safe and loving container with someone who is both experienced in doing their own healing work using medicine as well as trained in holding space for others.

For those of you that might be really ready, I have an up-and-coming retreat in Costa Rica –I encourage you to check it out, even if you aren’t ready.

I promise you; it will spark something in you!