Speaker 1: Hey there, welcome to Healthy Ish. Thanks for joining us
Speaker 1: on the daily podcast from Body and Soul. I am
Speaker 1: for listening, Harley. MDMA therapy is now legal, yet still controversial.
Speaker 1: Author and social researcher Rebecca Huntley joins us in the
Speaker 1: studio today to discuss her experiences around taking the drug
Speaker 1: as an unconventional form of therapy. It's important to note
Speaker 1: that only psychiatrists registered in Australia who have obtained permission
Speaker 1: from both a Human Research Ethics Committee and the TGA
Speaker 1: are able to prescribe MDMA to patients with certain mental
Speaker 1: health conditions. This podcast tells one person's story, It is
Speaker 1: not proposing MDMA as a cure all. Now, we keep
Speaker 1: our Healthist episode short, so if you want to hear
Speaker 1: my full chat with Rebecca, listening to our sister pod
Speaker 1: and you can grab extra healthy Ish where we get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Rebecca, Welcome to Healthy Ish.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Nice to have you well in the studio. Yes, we
Speaker 1: talk a lot well on DMS. I think we do
Speaker 1: understand it to do that's right, But you're here to
Speaker 1: talk about MDMA. Now, I'd still bristle when I'm talking.
Speaker 2: About you look like a police burst into the door.
Speaker 1: It is legal, yet it's still controversial. Where are we
Speaker 1: at culturally with MDMA and taking it for therapy reasons.
Speaker 2: So it's legal in a very kind of narrow way.
Speaker 2: So it's been it's now legal for prescribing psychiatrists. You
Speaker 2: have to be a psychiatrist and you have to be
Speaker 2: basically allowed by the government to prescribe it to clients.
Speaker 2: The moment is about twenty three psychiatrists in Australia who
Speaker 2: are well, not many through the process, so it's pretty
Speaker 2: much illegal. But yeah, also to speak, so it's it's
Speaker 2: an emerging therapy, but there is an enormous amount of
Speaker 2: interest in so there's a there's a small amount of
Speaker 2: people who can do it growing and a huge amount
Speaker 2: of interest in it as a drug in the therapeutic
Speaker 2: setting rather than in the nightclub setting.
Speaker 1: And what's been the response to you admitting and coming
Speaker 1: out in your book that you know you've taken it
Speaker 1: a few times for therapeutic reasons.
Speaker 2: Look, I was very worried about it because you're worried
Speaker 2: that you're kind of people are going to judge you.
Speaker 2: You're worry that people are going to look at you differently,
Speaker 2: because up until this point I've got you know.
Speaker 1: You've got some very very impressive credentials behind you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, if people know me at all, they
Speaker 2: know me as somebody on the Q and A and
Speaker 2: the drama talking about you know what I mean, in
Speaker 2: the newspapers talking about politics and nment.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: So, but what has come out is not so much
Speaker 2: that lots of people have taken it for therapeutic reasons,
Speaker 2: but that the kinds of reasons I took it much
Speaker 2: more common than you would imagine. And actually it's been
Speaker 2: surprisingly positive, and perhaps because the negative people stay away,
Speaker 2: but it's been surprised, you know, it's been surprisingly positive.
Speaker 2: I did say that when a couple of days before
Speaker 2: the book came out, I said it felt like I
Speaker 2: was walking a tightrope naked over a mosh pit of
Speaker 2: my ex boyfriends. That's how exposed for a fabulous description.
Speaker 2: That's hour it sounds like a nightmare, I know exactly.
Speaker 2: I was like, what everybody's going to be looking at me?
Speaker 2: But actually I've been really happy, and I just show
Speaker 2: it just shows that actually we're hopefully in a society,
Speaker 2: we're being vulnerable and talking about mental health. The return
Speaker 2: on investment for that is so much more than the
Speaker 2: attacks that you might get.
Speaker 1: So for anyone thinking okay, why did you take it,
Speaker 1: give us a quick snapshot of why you took it,
Speaker 1: and then when you took it, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Mean the origins are I kind of grew up in
Speaker 2: a household that for a lot of people look like
Speaker 2: very privileged, middle class household, and it was, but behind
Speaker 2: the closed doors, there was an enormous amount of violence
Speaker 2: all the way up until I was a teenager, and
Speaker 2: a very fraud relationship with my mother, and then in
Speaker 2: my early thirties, I had a stillbirth and two miscarriages
Speaker 2: very quickly, like in a very short period of time,
Speaker 2: and so a lot and you know, eating disorders, all
Speaker 2: kinds of things in there. And I've been in therapy
Speaker 2: for thirty years, like I'd been doing all the things
Speaker 2: that you and I know and we google how do
Speaker 2: you maintain your mental health? I was doing them more
Speaker 2: eating well, not too much alcohol, time and nature exercise relationships.
Speaker 2: But at fifty, I felt like all of those things
Speaker 2: weren't really keeping a lead on my explosive, churning anger.
Speaker 2: And I really didn't want not that my children have
Speaker 2: ever been the target of my anger. But we carry
Speaker 2: our parents. We carry the energy of our parents in
Speaker 2: our world, whether we like it or not. We carry
Speaker 2: their joy, and we can carry their anger and frustration
Speaker 2: and sadness. And I just didn't want my children to
Speaker 2: carry my anger into their lives, so I started looking
Speaker 2: for I didn't know at the time, but I was
Speaker 2: potentially searching for something else to help me.
Speaker 1: You say that your experiences do you call what micro docing?
Speaker 2: Is that what you? I had a macro dose. I
Speaker 2: had so much empty may two doses that I move
Speaker 2: for eight hours. So microdosing is a little bit like
Speaker 2: small amount of psilocybin or whatever. I was given a
Speaker 2: kind of hero dose and then after four hours another dose.
Speaker 2: So normally these sessions, I mean, some people move around,
Speaker 2: but I didn't. I lay on the couch and didn't
Speaker 2: move for eight hours.
Speaker 1: And you barely move right that it cracked you open,
Speaker 1: I mean. And some people say that it almost gives
Speaker 1: words to emotions. Oh absolutely, what How what was the
Speaker 1: experience so transformative?
Speaker 2: Well, the way MDMA works, and this is pure MDMA.
Speaker 2: I want to make sure that people know that if
Speaker 2: they go out and buy XSS or get ecstasy. It's
Speaker 2: hard to know how much actual pure MDMA is in.
Speaker 2: There could be all kinds of things, but mine was
Speaker 2: pure MDMA, no speed or anything. And what MMA does,
Speaker 2: in Layman's terms, is it kind of cloaks you're amygdala,
Speaker 2: which is part of your.
Speaker 1: Brain that the fear fital flight.
Speaker 2: Everybodies about that, and it kind of tucks it at
Speaker 2: a nice diner of serotonin, so it takes it offline.
Speaker 2: And because I had been living with the consequences of,
Speaker 2: you know, violence, even before memory, my fight or flight
Speaker 2: was just always on. I didn't even I didn't even know.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what it was like to be relaxed.
Speaker 2: And then suddenly what happens when you take that away
Speaker 2: is the things that you've been suppressing, pushing away, fighting
Speaker 2: against and forgetting, they suddenly to flow. The doors fling open,
Speaker 2: and these things start to unravel and come out, and
Speaker 2: you confront them in a way in which you are
Speaker 2: actually feeling quite safe and secure. And so ideally it's
Speaker 2: to help your whole nervous system, your brain and everything
Speaker 2: process these emotions and these memories that you've only barely
Speaker 2: been able to look out at the side of your eye.
Speaker 2: So that's what it does. And if you are well
Speaker 2: prepared and well resourced and prepared to put in the work,
Speaker 2: you are processing things that have held you back for decades.
Speaker 2: And that's what happened to me. And it still happens
Speaker 2: every now and then, even though it was a year
Speaker 2: or ago more since I did it. I'll be walking
Speaker 2: along and something will pop out, or I'll remember something
Speaker 2: in a particular way, but then I'm like, oh no,
Speaker 2: that's actually not what happened.
Speaker 1: So how do you feel now, like what compared to
Speaker 1: before you went through? Like how would you describe how
Speaker 1: you feel as Rebecca? I feel.
Speaker 2: I know this sounds like a really small thing. I
Speaker 2: am capable of getting up on a Sunday and not
Speaker 2: doing a lot and resting and not seeing resting as
Speaker 2: cheating or wrong or weird or strange in my body.
Speaker 2: I'm a lot less reactive, a lot less angry. I'm
Speaker 2: much more compassionate, you know, if something happens, I'm less
Speaker 2: likely to even when when there's some road rage, you know,
Speaker 2: when somebody's beeping me. But previously i'd be like you
Speaker 2: know what, I'd be a few now And now I'm
Speaker 2: a lot better, not all the time. I'm not a
Speaker 2: saint of sitting back and just curiously thinking, Wow, that
Speaker 2: person is really angry. I wonder what happened to them,
Speaker 2: and I wonder what kind of day they're having. So
Speaker 2: that is really important. It's particularly important in my parenting.
Speaker 2: I think I'm just so much better at not letting
Speaker 2: myself get overwhelmed when everything piles on top of me.
Speaker 2: And I'm also a lot better at saying, oh, I
Speaker 2: don't want to do that, I don't want to do that,
Speaker 2: and not feeling like I have to explain. So all
Speaker 2: of this is slowly, slowly inching my way towards some
Speaker 2: self compassion, which I probably have never had. You can
Speaker 2: only really have compassion empathy for other people if you
Speaker 2: can practice it for yourself. So I feel different. I
Speaker 2: actually feel like I'm in a slightly different body than
Speaker 2: I had before I did this work.
Speaker 1: Interesting, So what are you hoping people will get out
Speaker 1: of your book and of you speaking out around your experiences.
Speaker 2: Well, I think there's a growing and really important interest
Speaker 2: in trauma. More broadly, we're becoming a little bit more
Speaker 2: trauma informed in our approaches to things. Hence the really
Speaker 2: huge success of books like The Body Keeps the School,
Speaker 2: so I think that's really important. Understanding nature of intergenerational
Speaker 2: trauma is particularly important in a place like Australia. So
Speaker 2: you can read the book and understand how trauma shows
Speaker 2: up as an adult in a way where you don't
Speaker 2: necessarily go away and think you want to try the therapy.
Speaker 2: But I basically wrote the book because Australia is at
Speaker 2: the forefront of legalizing these therapies, where we've got numerous
Speaker 2: very exciting and interesting clinical trials around Australia looking at
Speaker 2: how MDMA might help with things like PTSD, eating disorders,
Speaker 2: consistent grief, all these kinds of issues that we spend
Speaker 2: an enormous amount of time, energy and money, let alone
Speaker 2: the pain of those people to try and address. So
Speaker 2: we're in this kind of very fragile, very important, globally
Speaker 2: significant moment with these therapies. I had an amazing experience.
Speaker 2: I can see how they can be incredible, but also
Speaker 2: how they could go off the right el. So that's
Speaker 2: why I'm speaking out about something about things that are
Speaker 2: very still very sensitive and in some ways still painful.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for bringing your story to Healthy Action.
Speaker 1: Nice to have you.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Listeners. If you are interested in more from re Becca,
Speaker 1: her book about love loss and MDMA therapy is out now.
Speaker 1: It is called Sassafras. I will leave a link to
Speaker 1: it in the show notes. And of course, if this
Speaker 1: brought up anything for you, lifeline is there twenty four
Speaker 1: seven one three one one one four anything else, head
Speaker 1: to body insoul dot com dot you follow us on socials.
Speaker 1: You can DM me at Felicity Harley. If you have
Speaker 1: any thoughts or feedback, grab our print edition which is
Speaker 1: out in your local Sunday paper, and until tomorrow, stay
Speaker 1: healthy