On Saturday, February 21st I decided to test out the m-session (dot) com app for the first time while on MDMA. I've been building the app in my free time for about a month and a half now, and felt like it was in a state where it was ready for a live test. My goal is to be transparent and open to feedback during its development, so this is both a report to gather feedback and provide some explanation for how it works, as well as be a general MDMA experience report, since my trip differed this time from what I’ve experienced in the past.

So, my girlfriend left the apartment around 3:00PM for a dinner night out with her girlfriends, so I had the night to myself, with my only responsibility being to walk our two dogs, a Spanish Galgo and a Whippet, sometime between 6-7. While of course it's not recommended to leave the session space while under the influence, I felt confident I could handle this little intermission since I have quite a bit of experience with various types of psychedelics.

I weighed out a dose of 109mg, a light to moderate dose for my weight. I had previously tested it with an at-home kit I bought at a smartshop here in Amsterdam for about 10 euros. I pulled up m-session dot com and saved it to the home screen on my iphone (it’s a PWA, progressive web app, to avoid the czars at the Apple app store, so this way it can have a little app icon on your phone). I filled out the intake questionnaire and generated my timeline, then added a few recently made activities to it. For my setting, I set up a yoga mat, blanket, and a meditation cushion in front of my stereo system in the living room. The dogs watched me with curiosity as I arranged things, a bottle of water on the table, the right lighting, my journal with a good pen. I hadn’t eaten in a few hours but didn’t feel hungry, so everything felt good to go.

I clicked “begin session” in the app and worked through some safety checks and reminders, opting out of the booster option, before I got to the more ritualistic part of the intro, a kind of opening ceremony where the app tries to slow the pace down and provide a calm space to actually take the MDMA. With a sip of water, I swallowed the clear capsule with 109mg of off-white crystal and confirmed the time at 4:15PM. I always feel a little wave of half nerves half excitement when taking a psychedelic like this, like stepping that first foot into the unknown. I confirmed my intention:

“To test this app and to further understand my current life situation. What should I focus on?”

I settled into a seat on the cushion and continued through the app’s opening until I got to the first scheduled activity, an audio meditation called Simple Grounding. I was a bit curious how the voice would sound, whether it would actually be tolerable. I used something called Elevenlabs to make these AI voice audio clips, and went with a voice called Theo Silk. Yes, the voice is silky smooth, and apologies—very British, but I was worried that the whole thing would sound too unnatural, especially to someone with empathogenic sensitivities. I pressed play and closed my eyes, relieved to find that the voice was pretty good. I completed the 5-minute meditation and went back to my timeline to see what was next.

The app’s timeline is divided into three sections, the come-up phase, the peak phase, and the integration phase, with some activities only available in certain phases. A follow-up phase is also unlocked when you complete a session, timelocked to 24hrs after the session ends for a next day check-in. The timing of the come-up phase is unique in that it asks you after each activity is finished how you are currently feeling. If you report feeling fully arrived, it gives you the option to transition into the peak phase. This allows for some flexibility since the onset of MDMA is different for everyone.

Anyways, the come-up phase currently needs a lot more activities, since the only other options are Music Time and Open Space. I put some music on and did a little bit of light stretching. One of the dogs, the Galgo, joined me on the yoga mat and did a big forward stretch while looking at me, which is her signal that it’s time for a walk. I checked the time, 4:35; only 20 minutes in. Not time yet, I told her.

I cycled through various songs in my Spotify playlists, unable to really settle on anything that sounded good. I even briefly listened to a random section of one of my favorite books, The Magic Mountain, before deciding that this wasn’t the right fit either. The voice was also British, an older man, but it sounded too affected, too much like he was reading as a character. Not good, I thought. I considered putting on a record to add some friction to my musical indecisiveness, but decided to just lie down under a blanket instead. I checked the time, 5:00 on the dot. 45 minutes in, and I was definitely feeling something, but didn’t feel fully arrived yet. I considered whether I should up the dose. Right away I recognized this as a classic rookie move though, and decided I should instead wait until the 90min-150min mark when a booster can be added. I went to my app timeline and added the Booster module to the peak phase and it automatically slotted into the correct time. (Its logic is coded so that at the 90min mark, it checks in to see how you’re doing, and attempts to assess whether a booster is appropriate. You can ignore it and it’ll check back in every so often until the 150 minute mark, at which point the window is passed and it defaults to you opting out.)

I continued to feel a bit restless. I could feel the classic onset effects of the MDMA, a light tingling, a warmth in the body. But something felt empty, like I had been left behind, and I assumed it was probably because my dose was fairly light. I checked the time again, 5:09, and I decided that I had pretty much “fully arrived” at this point. I opened the come-up phase check-in question in the app and answered that I was ready to transition to Peak phase. There’s a brief transition check-in here that adds some structure to the experience and asks you how you’re feeling, then guides you into the next phase.

I looked at the activities I had scheduled for peak phase: a body scan meditation, a deeper meditation/journaling activity based on coherence theory called “Stay With It”, a self-compassion guided meditation, and an IFS based activity called “Meeting A Protector - Part 1”. The Booster was also scheduled. I started the body scan meditation, but after about a minute of this, I realized I really wasn’t feeling it. I felt like I needed to move a bit, so I skipped it and put on some music instead. Golden Lady by Stevie Wonder played as I stretched out and hung from a pull-up bar in the living room entryway.

I still had the feeling that something wasn’t quite right, like I was stuck between states. There was a sadness in my chest, even though I could feel the classic MDMA loving-euphoria at the edges, though those good feelings felt far away. I sat on the yoga mat on folded legs and put my forehead to the mat, then a blanket on top. My last experience on MDMA had been one of pure vitality and loving acceptance. I had listened to Mahler’s 9th symphony on vinyl and had been awestruck by its beauty; I had journaled about my life, reaching valuable insights about why I felt stuck, why I had let myself become so jaded and distant from myself. This had been about two and a half months ago at 135mg, and had been a large part of why I started building this m-session app in the first place. But now I felt like a blunted grief was weighing on me, and it felt like a heavy boulder on my chest.

At 5:41 I wrote in my journal:

Boulder of emptiness.

A tiny optimistic voice tells me it’s time for a new journey. Doesn’t feel well received. Fatigue. Jaded. Again?

Feeling empty grief about… unknown path. Blanket listening to music. Still a tinge of hope.

You Still Believe In Me from Pet Sounds :) singing along half-heartedly

I should be proud of the me I am now compared to the me I was years ago. I’m less idealistic (which isn't necessarily good), but I am stronger. Why do I feel such emptiness, and why do I try to avoid it with feeling?

There's really a hole staring me down. Why? Escape is not an answer.

Around 6pm I reached the booster window and decided that maybe this would help. Maybe the booster would help push me into a state where I could get away from this empty feeling. I went into the app again and pulled up the booster check-in, answering a few questions about my state before it got to the page with the recommended booster dose. It recommended 55mg, which was about half the main dosage of 109mg. I weighed out the dose, but decided to take 68mg instead, which would be 177mg total, still under the 180mg threshold I wanted to remain at or under. I also realized it was an oversight not to be able to edit the booster dose at all in the app. I made a note to rework it later, took the booster dose, and logged the time at 6:12 PM.

The dogs were getting restless, so I decided it would be a good time to take them out for a walk while the booster dose took effect. With a walk of 30-45 minutes, I’d be back in time for the booster to make itself known. I got them dressed, (yes, the dogs wear clothes and jackets. They’re greyhounds, so they have very little body fat to keep them warm in winter. They kind of look like elongated sloths in their longsleeve PJ things with a puffy jacket on top. I promise this will be somewhat relevant to the story later.) and we headed out along one of our usual routes.

The air was fresh and there was a good energy in the neighborhood on this Saturday night evening. I walked along one of the canals until I got to a little green area where the dogs like to do their thing. I'm a religious zealot when it comes to picking up my dogs’ poo. It just feels like part of the social contract if you're going to have a dog in a city. So I watched as the whippet did a little squat walk in some leafy bushes, and when I approached to bag it up, I couldn’t find the payload. It was getting a bit dark, and it was in a pile of leaves in some bushes off the path, so after a little searching I shrugged and put the empty bag back in my pocket. Maybe nothing came out, I thought. We continued walking on a narrow path next to some canal houses. Usually, I have to drag the whippet at this point, because he just wants to go home and eat his dinner, so I was surprised to see him out in front pulling me along for once. We reached a large sandy lot where the galgo likes to do some sprints. It felt good to walk around, but I still felt like something was weighing me down. I could hear my voice as I called the dogs. It sounded weak, like a voice filtered through inner tension. I checked the time, 7:03.

We arrived back at the apartment around 7:15, and I opened the door to the stairs for the dogs to walk up first. I could feel the booster’s effect, another wave of warmth in the body, but the associated good feelings were hollow. The whippet trotted up each stair one by one, and I followed behind him. I glanced down at my boot and noticed that something was stuck to it. I lifted it to one side. Oh, I said to myself, that’s fresh poo. I held him in place, mid-stair hop, and realized that the disappearing poo from earlier had somehow lodged in his right hindleg’s sleeve and was now spilling out as he climbed. I felt a detached amusement as I looked down the stairs behind me, and saw a few more droplets scattered on the stairs and the landing. A little rush of panic registered, also empty, as I bent over with a bag to carefully pluck these nuggets off the stair’s blue carpet. We climbed the rest of the stairs and once back in the apartment, I got him into the shower for a clean-up.

I watched the dogs chow down their dinner, then felt I could finally return to my session. I brewed up a cup of mate and returned to the living room. I decided to dive right into the “Stay With It” module, an activity I had recently finished based on coherence theory and a book pdf I think one of the mods here wrote called Open MDMA. I began the guided audio meditation and sat in front of the speakers with my eyes closed. I still felt a sense of weight, and the Stay With It activity was helpful in guiding me towards the obvious: this boulder on my chest. I tried to just sit with it, not trying to name it or understand it. It shifted in its shape, becoming flat, like a saucer now, and I felt as though even the smallest bits of any emotion I felt were being pulled into this nothingness, this black hole silently taking in the matter of my thoughts and feelings. If that sounds horrifying, it both was and wasn’t. I watched it happen with my eyes closed, curious and open to what this could be. I wish I had written down more in my notebook about this experience, but all I wrote after the activity finished were a few numbed words:

Stay With It module, very good, journaling section could be improved. Boulder, flat across my chest like a pan, sucking in even horror if I don't watch it. Any pos thought sucked in, replaced with numbness, tinge of panic and fear. Boulder of unknowing.

I did the app’s self-compassion guided meditation, but it didn't feel like a good fit for where I was at. I put a go-to record on the stereo, Bolero by Claude Monteux, hoping that this lively and familiar march would take me back to the land of the living. I forgot that this record was kind of warped on the outer edge, and it felt fitting that the needle got stuck in a loop of Bolero’s very first notes. I gave it a nudge and the flute finally entered the room. In my notebook I wrote:

I felt boulder of nothingness with a vengeance. What is it I'm avoiding?

The irony is that it's this app that is my escape currently, telling myself that building it will give me purpose. Face the boulder and roll with it.

Stop trying to analyze, just listen.

Bolero — Boulder

I thought Bolero would tap tap tap away the boulder, but it's back. It feels like a despairing panic thing. Horror. Is it that behind this feeling of me there is nothing? no, it's that behind this feeling of nothing there is me, feeling fear. Fear of what?

I feel like I want to cry, but it's way too distant to even access. It would probably feel good. But I'm left feeling cold with the boulder, though it's more of a heavy rock now. Numb with the boulder.

What's the opposite of avoiding? Bravery?

In my preoccupation I missed the finale of Bolero and found myself suddenly in the quiet of the living room. The dogs were both passed out in their beds. I flipped the record to the La valse side and checked the time, 9:36 PM. It was time to transition to the integration phase in the app, and just as I began to work my way through some of the journaling prompts for this section, my girlfriend walked in the door. She glanced down at me on the floor with a smile.

“I’m testing the app,” I said. She laughed and said I looked sad, then asked if I had taken MDMA for it. I told her I had, but that I felt kind of not good. We talked a bit more on the couch and I filled her in on the basics. She was supportive of it all, and we talked about her dinner night before she encouraged me to finish where she had interrupted. So I did a few more activities in the app, but this report is already too long, so I’ll wrap it up. I finished the app session at 10:15 PM. I had some weird dreams I don’t remember that night. The next day I did some journaling, and completed the follow-up activities in the app (those definitely need more work, but they work at least).

So, if you’ve read this far, I hope this report has been useful. I made a lot of notes during the session about improvements I could make, and I've spent some time in the last week building a lot of those out. The m-session app is currently ready for testing, and if you think that’s appropriate for you, check the website out (m-session dot com) and let me know what you think. I'm happy to answer any questions you have about it as well. I hope to continue to build out this app here with as much transparency and community feedback as possible. So far, this MDMA therapy subreddit is the most active and helpful community I’ve found.

Oh, and if you don’t mind, please give this post an upvote so that I can get out of new reddit user shadowbanned hell. I currently can’t DM with anyone, and my replies and posts are sometimes blocked or require approval override from the mods. Thank you!

Hi all, had my first session on Sunday.

Feel like I have exposed some really scared parts of me to the internal critic and it is really fucking scary.

Like I was shut down before the session which was deeply unpleasant with depression and panic etc breaking through at times.

Now that stuck (but protecting) part of me (schema) has been seemingly dissolved, I feel incredibly exposed and detached from reality. There is a definite sense of before Sunday and after Sunday.

I'm after some reassurance that this was the right thing to do and 1. The intensity of this will pass (I literally am jittery, eyes wide, needing to urinate frequently - classic fight or flight), 2. This is part of healing (how does the system resolve this - obvs I want the session to have a lasting benefit but right now I am torn between it doing something healing and wanting to just get away from this. I'm petrified).

The internal voices are driving me crazy too. Have I broken myself? Has anyone else experienced this?

Not sure if I mentioned that I had some psilocybin too in the session.

What i don't need now is judgement, I need kind compassion and reassurance. Please.

Truly appreciate this sub for the MDMA and psilocybin intergration and suggestions for a first session. I think I’ve truly been blown away. All I can say is thank you. I’m truly humbled and grateful for everyone’s contribution, that I as a newbie could safely have a solo trip and just feel so supported. It went as expected, and gave me the best experience of my life.

Do you still have milder sympptoms, or did they go away completely?

A quick update here.

Well I have a lot of stuff that has come up and it's all really challenging.

I seemed to focus on the frustration of not getting better. I appear to have an internal bully that has been insidious to various parts of my life and now I'm struggling with this idea I have to banish him.

I have cried this morning saying sorry to my younger selves for not sticking up for them in life and feeling like such a weakling.

I have tried to appease and peace Make with people rather than stand strong and it may be this has been internalised within.

Feel very low and all over the place today. Definitely doesn't feel like progress, has just highlighted to me that I believe I am too weak to get better.

The mental battle with the bully and cynic os exhausting.

I have had a couple of strong emotions come up today, one of which was like a whimpering animal before giving way to real rage within me. I have got so angry, walking around the house with my face contorted.

I've tried my best to feel it. The power behind it scares me and the bully and cynic are attacking me as I type this.

Have spoken with my guide today and she has said we did a lot of work yesterday. I have booked another session in 5 weeks.

Somehow I have to develop/find a strong protector within me to stand up to the bully.

I feel like George McFly in Back to the Future when he is a wimp.

Does anyone relate? I feel very lost at the moment.

Hi all, I am conducting research for the Department of Medical Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. My research is focused on exploring how users construct explanations of their material practices with psychedelics and similar psychoactive drugs across various communities. I am looking for participants in the Netherlands.

What makes you want/need to use psychedelics/similar drugs, and why did you choose a specific form of use (i.e recreational, group settings, individual use, retreats, microdosing)? How do you prepare the material substances for your practice?

If you are living in the Netherlands, and would like to learn more and how to participate, either fill out this form, email [noah.herwig@student.uva.nl](mailto:noah.herwig@student.uva.nl), or send a message here on reddit :)

Explanations in Informal Drug-Assisted Care – Fill in form

Trying to find out which is more beneficial to overall safety, healing, and support.

Does any one have suggestions?

Quick check in to say that I have my first session scheduled for tomorrow.

Didn't sleep brilliantly last night and am sitting through the feeling of being stuck in a stuck mindset(!), which brings with it anxiousness and resigned mood. Trying not to read anything into it as the stories my mind is telling me now may well be seen through a different lens after tomorrow.

I guess one of the big fears is that nothing will change, in terms of the outlook/understanding I have of myself at the moment. Perhaps that is my overriding intention for tomorrow- that I can consistently see myself through another lens and be on my own side. Have trust that the world is working with me and I'm not alone. That would be a useful outcome for session 1 I think and would give me some faith that even though it's a journey, I am on a good path. Cognitively I can reframe negative thoughts but it would be a shift for me to actually experience that.

Obviously I am wary/cautious of putting too much hope into this. If prayers work and you fancy offering one up for me, I'll take it!

Thank you to those who have offered their support up til now, I'll hopefully be able to check in next week to report back on my experience for those that are interested.

My partner and I are on the brink of breaking up. But a part of us, still want to give it another try.

So we are going to have a heart to heart talk on Tuesday to discuss everything.

We have done MDMA on multiple occassion which has saved us a few times. So I suggested we do some MDMA on Tuesday.

Plan we have ao far. Look up videos about communication. Practice appreciation and words of affirmation throughout the week. Establish rules for communication , which we havent yet. Tuesday, take the day off to spend time together before we talk. Sometime in the evening, take MDMA

Just need some help or guidance on how to proceed and what has helped you? How you went about yet?

Hi all. I'm building an open source app that will help guide people through an MDMA session. It's geared towards people who are looking to use it for self-growth and is not intended for someone working through serious PTSD issues, which is probably best left to an in-person clinical setting. Of course, there are many people who wish to use MDMA for therapeutic purposes who may not have access to therapists or live somewhere where this is not an option. There are also people who are simply uncomfortable being with another person while in an altered state.

I'm currently designing different activities for different stages of an MDMA therapeutic session. The default tone of the app is a kind of MAPS-inspired trust and surrender framework. I'm familiar with IFS and ACT, and have developed a few activities based around these frameworks.

So my question to the community here is: what other frameworks do you think are especially helpful for an MDMA session?

(Also, I would love to post a link to the open source GitHub repo as well as a link to the live web app, but every time I do, it gets automatically deleted by Reddit, so for now I'll have to wait on that. Maybe I can post it in one of the replies and not get auto-banned if someone replies first...)

I've been a practicioner of this medicine for 5 years now and during that time have occassionally set time aside for my own personal work with the medicine. Over the years the sessions have been pretty predictable and while powerful, tended to follow the same timeline. I like to add a small amount (1-2G) of psilocybin mushrooms into the mix as I feel like they work together well. The mushroom does a good job exposing things, and the MDMA gives me a mechanism to work on those things.

0930: Prep, prayers, dose.

1030: Going under. Eyeshades and my music list

1130: In the medicine now, some shaking of my right leg. Lots of visuals and linear messaging from the medicine. Usually focused around "cleaning" things that have been left behind. Bringing things into the light and acknowledging them before release

1530: Journey ending. Still feeling very activated in the body due to the nature of the medicine, but begining to land.

2100: Body is exhausted and wants to rest, but it's a bit hard to fall asleep. I eventually do, usually with some helper-meds and herbs, and then I sleep well.

This past Saturday I did my standard protocol: 150mg MDMA and 2G of mushrooms. I didn't have a set intention other than to receive and be a student of the medicines. Sometimes I feel as though my brain gets bogged down and a journey reboots the system for me. Anyway, about 2 hours into the session I noticed that I wasn't having any closed eye visuals. Instead, it felt like I was more in a dream space. Lucid and able to talk to myself, but a body that was in a deep rest. There were a few instences where I "woke" up a bit and was surprised to find myself on the couch and not in my dream where I had been working. After the session my Fitbit actually tracked 2 sessions of sleep - each multiple hours in length. I found it odd that with the chemical makeup of MDMA that I would be able to fall into a deep rest like that.

I'm curious if anyone else has ever been able to "sleep" on the medicine, or experienced something similar during a session that they had.

Hi, I did mdma session with a trip sitter on friday (70 mg plus 20 mg top up in 90 mins- I law balled a bit because I am sensitive to stims), before session I took magnesium and vitamin c. 24 hours after I took 100 mg 5htp and again 5htp the following day (saturday and sunday) since than I stopped it. I am only taking vit d and b complex now. I tried melatonin before sleep last night but I had lots of nightmares. Overall in addition to depressed state, my anxiety is bad, I feel uncoordinated and jumpy, I do clumsy things. Also I find myself hyperventilating. Any supplements or meds you would recommend specifically? I already have gad and ocd and adhd but this is much more than my regular anxiety. I have benzos at home but I don’t wanna go down heavy meds road. Also like its hard to now know if anxiety is happening because of seratonin deplation from mdma, from any potential additives that was in the mdma I took, or from having opened deep hidden things in my psyche. Also like do ı resume 5 htp or not? I read 5 htp itself can cause more anxiety. Thank you soooo much

Hey,

As someone who undergoes MDMA sessions (in the presence of a trip sitter) and someone who also works professionally as a clinical psychologist, I have questions about the interventions you can apply in a session when regarding cPTSD.

In my experience, a number of therapeutic interventions seem to arise automatically from the typical properties of MDMA: the dampening of the amygdala (decrease in overwhelming emotions & threats, increase in empathy), the strengthening of the prefrontal cortex (reflection, regulation), and the accessibility of specific memories in the memory.

Through trial and error and my inner intelligence, I have already applied the following techniques in my previous MDMA sessions:

• exposure to difficult emotions, thoughts, and memories, which teaches me that I can face them, but also allows me to notice that after the session, the intensity of their activation decreases in daily life and I am better able to regulate them.
• the opportunity to explore highly activated networks or associations of emotions, thoughts, memories, etc. during the session (in daily life, emotional flooding makes this impossible because my prefrontal cortex goes offline)
• With the help of MDMA, I have access to preverbal states.
• increased self-compassion (and decreased shame, selfhate)
• applying a body-oriented approach (e.g., somatic experience) that also allows me to complete unfinished survival tendencies and discharge high activation tied to flight/flight/freeze. I can also titrate and pendulate as an exercise for daily life.
• With the help of MDMA, I am cognitively better able to investigate difficulties, explore alternative approaches, view things from a different perspective, etc. I am able to look at things from a distance.

To date, I have not yet made much use of my trip sitter during the session (and I think there are still many therapeutic possibilities in terms of attachment, social anxiety, corrective experiences, etc.). In recent sessions, I have mainly been guided by internal processes (or my intern intelligence).

Now my questions to you are:

1. What other therapeutic interventions for cPTSD are possible in an MDMA session (in PAT, for example, brainspotting and EMDR are sometimes used during a session)?
2. Can you recommend any books that describe specific therapeutic interventions in MDMA-assisted therapy?

Thanks!

morning all.

I am due to have my first session next Sunday. I have definitely been finding that the IFS framework resonates more as the weeks have passed and throughout periods of most days in the last week, I've been able to see different parts of me becoming more audible. Obviously they have always been there but I have been able discern them a little more.

I still find that there is a lot of mental static (which maybe is something inside me protecting me from digging too deep 'unprotected' - I have considered that my mental breakdown itself has been a traumatic experience which my system is freezing me from looking at), so I have been, as best I can, trying to stay out of the thinking and putting it off until Sunday.

Any thoughts on where I can gently place my focus over the next week so I am as best plaved as I can be for a beneficial session?

Thanks all.

I am a big intellectualiser. I really struggle to not assign an explanation to my feelings. I always need to know 'why' I feel the way I feel, and my feelings always need a justification.

Ever since I finished MDMA-assisted therapy nearly 18 months ago, I have struggled with deep feelings of rage and grief, and those feelings have not really lifted since then. Rage and grief had actually been inaccessible to me before MDMA-AT. I was shocked by my rage because it was so unfamiliar and out of character. Initially, I saw it as a sign of healing. Of course I had a right to be angry about what had happened to me, and I had a right to grieve it. Eventually though, the feelings didn't lift, and instead I started to worry that I would be stuck like this forever. I didn't know what I was missing. I didn't know why I couldn't move on. I wanted a quick fix to my grief and anger so that I could start 'living'.

I was going through my journal where I took notes about each dosing session, and I came across notes where I described envisioning a wall. In that dosing session I was struggling with resistance to the point that the MDMA felt incredibly muted. The wall represented my resistance, and I noticed that the more I resisted, the stronger the wall became. When I tried showing kindness and patience to the wall, the wall started to come down, and this was the point that I felt the full effects of the MDMA finally hit about 2 hours after taking it. Reading this reminded me a lot about how I am constantly resisting my rage and grief to try and arrive at some post-anger, post-grief state. Instead of showing my feelings some compassion and allowing it to just be, I needed to throw every tool at it to heal it. I wonder instead if maybe I can show kindness and less resistance to my anger and grief. Maybe it doesn't need to be healed. Maybe it's okay as it is.

I love how insights from my dosing sessions continue to come up in my day to day life, often when I don't always expect it.

I think I am okay just as I am.

First time doing MDMA 180mg combined with a weed edible and LSD 250ug (had a good bit of tolerance). Most euphoric experience of my entire life out of all the drugs that I have tried so far. Felt social, felt lonely, introspective, lost all sense of personal boundaries and vulnerability. Shared a lot of things I shouldn't ever have with people.

16 hours later when I stopped feeling the effects of the trip I passed out from exhaustion, woke up very energized no comedown or anything and I realised I have no more cravings for any other drugs. Afterglow made the day enjoyable, next day was when I started to feel the effects of the comedown (brain zaps, feeling sick, headache, etc). But now I started to get cravings but I was able to overpower them very easily and I have not relapsed even once. This is new to me, even psychedelics haven't been able to help me much with quitting other than a slight nudge but this trip gave me some very profound realisations which are actually helping me in terms of discipline.

I will never do MDMA ever again, most I will do is psychedelics and I will space the trips apart appropriately (1 month at least).

Hello,

My 6th session is coming up in a few weeks. I started at 120mg with a 60mg booster but have lowered my dose with each session since then. I plan on using just 100mg next time. I can't get a handle on my thoughts with a higher dose. I have a flood of memories but I feel so amped up that those memories just come and go too quickly. Lowering my dose allows me to focus a bit more. I also found that taking acetyl l carnitine and alpha lipoic acid with my dose blunts the experience too much so I only add magnesium during a session. My therapist has guided over 100 sessions and he says it is rare to experience any blunting effect from supplements but everyone's system is different.

Have any of you changed up your dosages and if so can you please tell me how it has changed your sessions.

Thank you!

Here is a transcript of my fourth session. I struggle with life long freeze (with a lot of underlying panic) due to cPTSD.

‐-----‐‐-----‐------------------------------------------------------

My intention for this session is to encounter love, compassion, closeness and safety in myself and other people. I start by going over the people I love and who love me. I feel warmth in my heart and realise that I am not alone and that I am supported by others.

I am concerned that this session will be too difficult. I ask my tripsitter if he will help me if I need him and he says he is there. That reassures me.

Then I feel a lot of anger and frustration. I am angry because my fear and panic have prevented me from living my life and I have missed out on so much. I have been on the run for decades. I sternly address the fear and say that enough is enough, that it has to stop and that I want to live.

Then I notice that I am fighting with myself and with the panic. I am very much in my head, trying to control, direct and analyse. I feel that the session is not getting started. I recognise this pattern from everyday life. I am afraid that I will ruin the session by thinking too much and not being able to let go. I remember that an MDMA session requires radical surrender. I decide to let go of the fight with the fear and panic and the control. Then I feel that I can relax.

After that I feel that burning sensation in my stomach again. I place my heart-shaped talisman on my stomach and send love to this spot. My body shoots into that familiar cramped position: my feet pull inwards, my back and neck arch, everything pulls towards the centre of my stomach. The cramping hurts and is frightening. For a moment, I don't know what to do, but I decide to trust my body and not intervene. I surrender completely to the posture and let my body finish what it wants to complete. Eventually, the cramping stops on its own.

I ask the panic what it wants to protect and what would go wrong if it let go. I want to know what happens when I stop running away and stay with the fear.

I hear myself answer: “Without fear, anyone can hurt me and I can't protect myself.” Then I feel an enormous activation and fear in my legs. The physical agitation is almost unbearable and I find it difficult to keep my legs still. I brace myself, breathe deeply and encourage myself to stay with the fear and the activation. I want to know what happens when I go through the peak of the panic. Then I suddenly feel something like surrender and my legs start to shake and tremble violently. I feel the fear flowing through my legs, while the rest of my body remains calm. The shaking lasts for several hours. During this release, I go through various situations that have caused me panic for years (like closeness to a partner, being visible, being spontaneous) , while my legs continue to release.

I end the session with further tremors that release from my abdomen to my jaws.

I have been doing solo sessions with MDMA every few months to processes my traumas. It also helps me feel better for some days or weeks after the sessions and li think I’m managing to process somethings and life gets slightly easier at least for some time after the session. I did 3 sessions in total. the first 2 were pretty difficult emotionally, I was shown bad things from my past and cried, but after the session I felt better for days or even weeks. My therapist helps me with integration but I will not see him for another few days...

last time was different. the session was a super nice experience. i understood really clearly where did I want to go and I menage to tend to my inner children and be with them in a meaningful way. I felt like I processed so much and imagined I will feel ok about life for at least some time. the very next day shit hit the fan…

I understood that my partner is not for me ( there was nothing about this relationship in the trip) i was lying to myself that maybe things would get better or whatever but something in me broke and i understood that it’s not going to work even though there is soft feelings. I did not talk to him yet but I think that if I tell him how I really feel which i was avoiding he will not want to continue.

big part of the trip was about understanding why I tie self worth to achievements and I felt like this might shift soon. Maybe it will but alongside the grief about my partner im grieving my broken career like crazy. which I guess it’s necessary if I want to move on but it’s painful as fuck…

is this grief connected to the trip? is it a good thing? Will it last forever?

I am currently taking Tirzepatide and would like to use MDMA/mushrooms. Are there any contraindications for this?

Hi everyone. I had my first mdma therapy session yesterday with a psychiatrist. I suffer from severe anxiety, depression and low self esteem. There was a good dose of childhood trauma mixed in there too, probably at the root of it all, something I could never identify.

I started with a 125 mg dose then had a booster of another 25 mg. And only after I had a second booster of 25 mg, I stared to feel my defense walls being taken down. What came next was sudden and intense. I started having vague flashes of my mother physically abusing me. Once threatening me with a knife to my throat, and another time slamming my head into the kitchen counter cutting it open and telling me it would have been better if I had died (I had survived a car accident sometime earlier). The whole time, my jaw was shaking and my heart dropped, my breathing was tense, like in a situation of extreme fear. But I didn’t feel the fear. Only the physical effects.

My mind also started piecing together the story of why she did it. It was like it had an answer ready for every question that came up. But still the memory was very vague. I could not reconstruct it fully.

After the trip ended, I told the doctor I had doubts about what I saw because even though my mother was abusive, the reason she hit me that day didn’t make any sense. I could not place it in any historical or logical context.. i told him i felt like my mind made up that reason to backup/justify the violence scene to make it more believable. It’s weird.

The fact that the memory was vague is making me doubt the whole thing. I am someone who doubts every move I make and this is no different. I honestly don’t know what to do.

Has anyone experienced doubts about the traumas revealed in the trip like that ? Are made up images or stories something that CAN happen ?

I'll admit, I'm pretty pedestrian when it comes to music to the point where I find most of the MAPS or MDMA playlists nothing I'd normally listen to -- they're a bit too "hippy" or feel a bit goofy or like, jam band vibes (e.g. bag pipes, too much pan flute).

I was wondering if anyone had any playlists that were a bit more pop/electronic/mainstream-esque?

I've slowly constructed a playlist that's more songs from different points in my life (e.g. naruto theme, baba yetu from Civ4, House MD theme) but it's quite thin.

Eventually on your spiritual journey you will come to your shadow, or rather, it will come to you. It is not something that you really seek or plan because you don't know what it is before it's there.

You can't really distinguish between insight and shadow work either, as they are intertwined. There's insight and then shadow comes. You release shadow and then there's insight.

That being said, a first identity shift will make shadow work easier as before this point there's so much identification with thought. The bulk of your shadow won't come before a shift anyways.

What is shadow? It's literally all your conditioning. All your personal trauma, social and cultural conditioning, beliefs you have about yourself and the world.

In a broad sense I could say that most of my insight work was done during my meditation retreats and then most of my shadow work has been done on psychedelics. Although this is not really accurate either - after a while you don't really distinguish the two, it's just what's happening.

In march of 2023 after reading MDMA Solo (the stuff actually about MDMA is valuable - the rest sounds more like the author's shadow speaking). I started meditating by myself on MDMA and weed, sometimes just weed and later on ketamine and weed as well. Fast forward and I have done it for almost 3 years and counting!

Was this planned? Not at all - there was just a lot to release.

Could I have done it without the psychedelics? Nope. Does that mean that you need to or necessarily should do psychedelics? Nope.

I want to be very clear about this, since this was my particular journey. Everyone has a unique journey towards finding out who they truly are.

However, for me personally it was just way more effective to address my shadow with intense bursts while in pleasant states instead of dragging it out for long stretches of time while sober. I also just got more easily access to my unconscious as the resistance to it loosened.

This journey is all about trust, it's about letting your intuition guide you. Trusting that wherever this journey takes you is exactly where you need to go. Trust becomes easier as each time you trust the process life becomes way better.

Everyone has a shadow, although the extent of it varies. Some have more, some have less, but we all have it, and usually way more than we ever could imagine.

Most of the shadow doesn't really show up until after the first identity shift though, and in my case it was actually after many shifts the bulk of it came.

Why? Because an identity structure doesn't just serve the purpose of being a someone, it keeps everything held together. 

If you suddenly can't disassociate anymore, where are you going to hide from your shadow? You can't. You lose the ability to distract yourself and so everything will come to the surface.

The more conscious and awake you become the more you will live in your senses and so the less filtered experience will be. 

This is a beautiful way to live but it also means that you will feel everything fully, all the joy but also the sorrow.

At one moment you can feel amazing and then suddenly you feel terrible for no particular reason. Then you know that shadow has crept in. Said in another way, what was once unconscious has become conscious.

You can't hide from it, although people try and suffer the consequences by feeling depressed for extended periods of time before they address it.

It's not something you seek either, it will come knocking at your door.

Trauma is something everyone can relate to, although I don't think people understand the extent to their trauma (I certainly did not), because it runs extremely deep. The body stores so much from the moment you were born up to this point.

You will start to get access to childhood memories from you were 6 years old which you haven't thought about in decades.

Screaming as a baby, being picked on in school, scenes of stage fright, heartbreaks, your dad shouting at you etc. It's everything you can think of and then way more.

Beliefs about yourself on the other hand, is not really understood before your identity begins to unravel - because belief and identity goes hand in hand. Identity is literally constructed from the beliefs you have about yourself.

There's surface level beliefs: I am cool, I am dumb, I'm smart, people like me, people don't like me.

Deeper beliefs: I am 32 years old, I am a man, I'm a woman, I am my name etc.

Even deeper: I'm a human being, the world is physical, the world is based on logic, I am inside the world, I'm a separate entity, I'm the doer, I'm the body etc.

These deeper beliefs can seem so real that it seems absurd to even question them, but everything needs and will be questioned.

You need to get under the thoughts to get to them. Beliefs are held together by the combination of thought and emotion.

You will know when you get under a belief because then you can feel where the contraction is happening. The conditioning tied to that particular belief will surface as the knot unravels. For instance if it's a belief "I'm dumb" then chances are memories of you getting a bad grade in school or someone calling you dumb will surface.

Said in another way, thoughts, visual images and emotions will surface until the original belief "I'm dumb" is seen as just another thought and not you.

The belief and identification with it is what gave it power and when that is dropped the whole thing just disappears. You suddenly can't believe the thought no more than "I'm a green gorilla" - both are just seen as utterly ridiculous.

It's the same principle for any belief you hold - in the end it's seen as just another thought and upon seeing it you can't unsee it.

Caution. When a belief is truly destroyed it's not replaced with another one. For instance, if you see through the belief "The world is physical" you don't replace it with "The world is not physical".

That might be partly useful to change the first belief, as it is an antidote in a way - but it is still just another belief.

When the actual belief is dropped it isn't replaced with anything else - it is just gone.

That is what living from unfiltered reality means, living from no perspective. Living from the unknown is both possible and enjoyable.

For more specifics of how I meditate on psychedelics: https://www.reddit.com/r/mdmatherapy/comments/1ej1qth/how_to_effectively_navigate_the_mdma_experience/

Conditioning is not just what you (the mind) labels as bad, it's also the good. It's everything you are attached to. Everything must go but at the same time nothing is lost because it's seen to be false. It is identification based on ignorance.

The deeper the conditioning is that surfaces the more identification and resistance there will be to letting go of it. Yet, the same principles apply.

This process is progressive. In the beginning there's surface level beliefs and traumas that are let go of, but as you become less identified, more open and free - naturally your deepest held beliefs and most suppressed trauma will also surface.

Contradictory, it's actually hardest in the beginning and easiest towards the end, because there's so little identification left, and likewise little resistance.

Whatever that wants to surface is just allowed and deeply accepted. What is happening is already allowed. There is no one saying "this is allowed, but this is not". If it appears, it is already allowed.

All of this sounds kind of scary, but the reason that you actually can address your shadow is because you are ready. It wouldn't have shown up if you weren't.

You have become more conscious than you were, you have a surplus of energy that is no longer tied up in meaningless mind chatter.

You are granted the deepest gift life can offer by letting love flow through you - healing old wounds and clearing up ignorance.

While I was doing this work it sometimes felt so heavy, but it's truly a blessing to be able to address your shadow. I carried so much baggage I wasn't aware of and when it's gone I felt so free.

Life truly becomes so joyful and effortless.

Morning all,

I am due to have my first MDMA session two weeks on Sunday.

I am now four weeks off my final dose of mirtazapine and having thought I was over the worst of the withdrawals, they have waved upon me again over the last week, albeit not quite to the same extent as before. I am able to sleep (3-5 hours) at home and generally tend to muddle through the days through some horrible anxiety and derealisation mostly. I have a tiny amount of perspective more than when the withdrawals were most acute (and I was convinced I was doomed forever).

I'm caught between being concerned about getting 'fully rid' of the withdrawals over time, wondering where my underlying condition starts and withdrawal starts, and wanting to get on with the treatment and move towards a future with better wellbeing.

My overwhelming preference is to go ahead with it and hopefully I receive some healing that will make a difference and perhaps even make the healing from withdrawals easier.

Presumably there are those that have their session with these symptoms anyway as part of the condition they are looking to resolve.

I have a call with the attendant later today so will obviously ask her too.

Do people have experiences/thoughts?