Hey there, welcome to Healthy Ish. Thanks for joining us on the daily podcast from Body and Soul. I am for listening, Harley. MDMA therapy is now legal, yet still controversial. Author and social researcher Rebecca Huntley joins us in the studio today to discuss her experiences around taking the drug
as an unconventional form of therapy. It's important to note that only psychiatrists registered in Australia who have obtained permission from both a Human Research Ethics Committee and the TGA are able to prescribe MDMA to patients with certain mental health conditions. This podcast tells one person's story, It is
not proposing MDMA as a cure all. Now, we keep our Healthist episode short, so if you want to hear my full chat with Rebecca, listening to our sister pod and you can grab extra healthy Ish where we get your podcasts. Rebecca, Welcome to Healthy Ish.
Thanks for having me.
Nice to have you well in the studio. Yes, we talk a lot well on DMS. I think we do understand it to do that's right, But you're here to talk about MDMA. Now, I'd still bristle when I'm talking.
About you look like a police burst into the door.
It is legal, yet it's still controversial. Where are we at culturally with MDMA and taking it for therapy reasons.
So it's legal in a very kind of narrow way. So it's been it's now legal for prescribing psychiatrists. You have to be a psychiatrist and you have to be basically allowed by the government to prescribe it to clients. The moment is about twenty three psychiatrists in Australia who are well, not many through the process, so it's pretty
much illegal. But yeah, also to speak, so it's it's an emerging therapy, but there is an enormous amount of interest in so there's a there's a small amount of people who can do it growing and a huge amount of interest in it as a drug in the therapeutic setting rather than in the nightclub setting.
And what's been the response to you admitting and coming out in your book that you know you've taken it a few times for therapeutic reasons.
Look, I was very worried about it because you're worried that you're kind of people are going to judge you. You're worry that people are going to look at you differently, because up until this point I've got you know.
You've got some very very impressive credentials behind you.
Yeah. I mean, if people know me at all, they know me as somebody on the Q and A and the drama talking about you know what I mean, in the newspapers talking about politics and nment.
Yep.
So, but what has come out is not so much that lots of people have taken it for therapeutic reasons, but that the kinds of reasons I took it much more common than you would imagine. And actually it's been surprisingly positive, and perhaps because the negative people stay away, but it's been surprised, you know, it's been surprisingly positive. I did say that when a couple of days before the book came out, I said it felt like I was walking a tightrope naked over a mosh pit of
my ex boyfriends. That's how exposed for a fabulous description. That's hour it sounds like a nightmare, I know exactly. I was like, what everybody's going to be looking at me? But actually I've been really happy, and I just show it just shows that actually we're hopefully in a society, we're being vulnerable and talking about mental health. The return on investment for that is so much more than the attacks that you might get.
So for anyone thinking okay, why did you take it, give us a quick snapshot of why you took it, and then when you took it, Yeah, I.
Mean the origins are I kind of grew up in a household that for a lot of people look like very privileged, middle class household, and it was, but behind the closed doors, there was an enormous amount of violence all the way up until I was a teenager, and a very fraud relationship with my mother, and then in my early thirties, I had a stillbirth and two miscarriages very quickly, like in a very short period of time, and so a lot and you know, eating disorders, all
kinds of things in there. And I've been in therapy for thirty years, like I'd been doing all the things that you and I know and we google how do you maintain your mental health? I was doing them more eating well, not too much alcohol, time and nature exercise relationships. But at fifty, I felt like all of those things weren't really keeping a lead on my explosive, churning anger. And I really didn't want not that my children have ever been the target of my anger. But we carry
our parents. We carry the energy of our parents in our world, whether we like it or not. We carry their joy, and we can carry their anger and frustration and sadness. And I just didn't want my children to carry my anger into their lives, so I started looking for I didn't know at the time, but I was potentially searching for something else to help me.
You say that your experiences do you call what micro docing?
Is that what you? I had a macro dose. I had so much empty may two doses that I move for eight hours. So microdosing is a little bit like small amount of psilocybin or whatever. I was given a kind of hero dose and then after four hours another dose. So normally these sessions, I mean, some people move around, but I didn't. I lay on the couch and didn't move for eight hours.
And you barely move right that it cracked you open, I mean. And some people say that it almost gives words to emotions. Oh absolutely, what How what was the experience so transformative?
Well, the way MDMA works, and this is pure MDMA. I want to make sure that people know that if they go out and buy XSS or get ecstasy. It's hard to know how much actual pure MDMA is in. There could be all kinds of things, but mine was pure MDMA, no speed or anything. And what MMA does, in Layman's terms, is it kind of cloaks you're amygdala, which is part of your.
Brain that the fear fital flight.
Everybodies about that, and it kind of tucks it at a nice diner of serotonin, so it takes it offline. And because I had been living with the consequences of, you know, violence, even before memory, my fight or flight was just always on. I didn't even I didn't even know. I didn't know what it was like to be relaxed. And then suddenly what happens when you take that away is the things that you've been suppressing, pushing away, fighting
against and forgetting, they suddenly to flow. The doors fling open, and these things start to unravel and come out, and you confront them in a way in which you are actually feeling quite safe and secure. And so ideally it's to help your whole nervous system, your brain and everything process these emotions and these memories that you've only barely been able to look out at the side of your eye.
So that's what it does. And if you are well prepared and well resourced and prepared to put in the work, you are processing things that have held you back for decades. And that's what happened to me. And it still happens every now and then, even though it was a year or ago more since I did it. I'll be walking along and something will pop out, or I'll remember something in a particular way, but then I'm like, oh no, that's actually not what happened.
So how do you feel now, like what compared to before you went through? Like how would you describe how you feel as Rebecca? I feel.
I know this sounds like a really small thing. I am capable of getting up on a Sunday and not doing a lot and resting and not seeing resting as cheating or wrong or weird or strange in my body. I'm a lot less reactive, a lot less angry. I'm much more compassionate, you know, if something happens, I'm less likely to even when when there's some road rage, you know, when somebody's beeping me. But previously i'd be like you know what, I'd be a few now And now I'm
a lot better, not all the time. I'm not a saint of sitting back and just curiously thinking, Wow, that person is really angry. I wonder what happened to them, and I wonder what kind of day they're having. So that is really important. It's particularly important in my parenting. I think I'm just so much better at not letting myself get overwhelmed when everything piles on top of me. And I'm also a lot better at saying, oh, I don't want to do that, I don't want to do that,
and not feeling like I have to explain. So all of this is slowly, slowly inching my way towards some self compassion, which I probably have never had. You can only really have compassion empathy for other people if you can practice it for yourself. So I feel different. I actually feel like I'm in a slightly different body than I had before I did this work.
Interesting, So what are you hoping people will get out of your book and of you speaking out around your experiences.
Well, I think there's a growing and really important interest in trauma. More broadly, we're becoming a little bit more trauma informed in our approaches to things. Hence the really huge success of books like The Body Keeps the School, so I think that's really important. Understanding nature of intergenerational
trauma is particularly important in a place like Australia. So you can read the book and understand how trauma shows up as an adult in a way where you don't necessarily go away and think you want to try the therapy.
But I basically wrote the book because Australia is at the forefront of legalizing these therapies, where we've got numerous very exciting and interesting clinical trials around Australia looking at how MDMA might help with things like PTSD, eating disorders, consistent grief, all these kinds of issues that we spend an enormous amount of time, energy and money, let alone the pain of those people to try and address. So we're in this kind of very fragile, very important, globally
significant moment with these therapies. I had an amazing experience. I can see how they can be incredible, but also how they could go off the right el. So that's why I'm speaking out about something about things that are very still very sensitive and in some ways still painful.
Well, thank you for bringing your story to Healthy Action. Nice to have you.
Thank you for having me.
Listeners. If you are interested in more from re Becca, her book about love loss and MDMA therapy is out now. It is called Sassafras. I will leave a link to it in the show notes. And of course, if this brought up anything for you, lifeline is there twenty four seven one three one one one four anything else, head to body insoul dot com dot you follow us on socials.
You can DM me at Felicity Harley. If you have any thoughts or feedback, grab our print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper, and until tomorrow, stay healthy