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MDMA for couples' therapy: 4/4 octopuses can’t be wrong

Ithell Colquhoun, ‘Song of Songs’ via Unit London

Can the inner healer mend a broken relationship?

Next up for MAPS therapy program designers Dr Michael Meithofer and his wife Annie AKA ‘Annie and Michael’ in spacespeak, is MDMA for couples’ counselling.

“We knew that MDMA was useful for communication… and some of the other anecdotal things about it,” Annie told none other than Professor David Nutt on the Drug Science podcast (where you can hear Dr Nutt, the David Attenborough of drugs, a UK national treasure say ‘Back to the show!’)

Annie collaborated on the initial research for a new era in MDMA couples’ therapy with Toronto’s Dr Anne Wagner. The Remedy clinic director has come up during further investigations into juicy subjects two weeks in a row (sync). Last week it was in a call for further research into psychedelic treatment for borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Yet Dr Wagner is not the only intrepid sailor of the soul cooking up excellent experiments using ecstasy. John Hopkins’ university neuroscience department, not to be outdone, gave E to octopuses. They’d noticed ‘that octopuses and humans had nearly identical genomic codes for the transporter that binds the neurotransmitter serotonin to the neuron's membrane.’

The California double-spot octopus is a solitary creature, barely interacting with others of its kind besides once a year, briefly, for mating. Even then the male uses a sex arm and it looks like mid-air refuelling. 

Would you believe though, that when researchers put the octopuses ‘in a beaker containing a liquified version of the drug’ according to National Geographic, they exhibited significantly more social behaviour?

‘Particularly telling, said scientist Gul Dolen, was that after being returned to their tanks at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, the octopuses went on to reproduce.’ 

During the Q&A after Annie and Michael’s lecture the pair were asked about giving MDMA to animals. After all, dogs are given anti-depressants. When I got my own chance to talk to them, I celebrated group ceremonial use of the ecstasy sacrament in the form of our rave culture then made a bad taste joke about giving MDMA to our pets hadn’t gone nearly as well. Now we know to shove them in a beaker of it.

’At no point did the octopuses ink, which would be a sign of stress,’ Dr Dolan told Nat Geo in response to all of our ethical concerns. 

Unconditionally loving cuddles: Yes or No?

Medical

What if the patient would benefit from a clasp of the shoulder or supportive hug? Easy tiger…

Ravers in east London

Don’t put it past anyone’s shadow self not to get off with a pilled-up patient.

That’s the message from therapy ethics expert, transpersonal psychologist and addiction counsellor Kylea Taylor.

I’d hate to wipe any glamorous, lifestyle magazine-sheen from the Vital Student Zine. Yet seeing as this is ‘The Ethics Issue’ of Unofficial Vital Student ‘Zine it’d be remiss of me not to mention the sordid revelations to have swept the psychedelic space of late. 

First fell Francoise Borat, the French figure fancied by many more than myself. Women like Maria Papasyrou, Adele LaFrance, Celia Morgan and Reanne Crane are tackling the least agreeable and most necessary areas of the psychedelic renaissance right now, and Borat pioneered that. Investigations showed she lived up to her femme fatale archetype.

The scandal also exposed the wellbeing industry’s appalling lack of oversight, from passing your email address on to cat charities to… not actually removing famous people from your public register after you’d struck them from the official register for shagging clients. The stink was mostly coming from Bourzat’s hubby Aharon Grossbard in the form of detailed and sustained allegations by counsellor, campaigner and award-winning blogger Will Hall.

“Have a safe word. Even if it’s just: Stop”

Next, just when you were thinking some boomers may be OK, MAPS therapist dyad Richard Yensen and Donna Dryer blotted the saintly org’s copybook during landmark 2015 trails. It’s worth watching the CCTV. Trial subject Meaghan Buisson, a PTSD sufferer who took the edge off her condition with a career in the tough sport of inline speed skating, then moved near the couple as her only option to continue treatment. Yensen and her slept together during the period.

In 2022, welcome to a world of headlines like A psychedelic therapist allegedly took millions from a Holocaust survivor, highlighting worries about elders taking hallucinogens. Campaigning website Psymposia which produced the Power Trip podcast with New York Magazine that brought many of these stories to a wider audience, does a sterling if militant job of sniffing out stuff like this.

Thing is, some patients really would like a hug during MDMA therapy. Recreational users might sympathise. Written and thoroughly discussed pre-agreements are the done thing, says Taylor. 

“Have the safe word, even if it’s just ‘stop’, and tell the patient, ‘Remember you can say stop’ even when you’re merely putting a blanket over them,” advises Taylor, “a lot of people are recommending a dual consent process involving a written agreement on touch, that is sacred and not changed in the middle of the session.” 

The subject should be fully felt through: “Explain the reasons why they might want it, and might not want it, and that if they say no now, they won’t get touched in the session,” says Taylor. California bioenergetics bodywork teachers have legal license to handle clients when required. 

Strictly unconditionally loving cuddles can be a productive part of emotional breakthrough, release and recovery, say many therapists.

“A third agreement is ‘If you do ask me to touch you in the session, I will’,” suggests Taylor, “If they do want that, then watch out for obvious gestures suggesting they might require physical comforting. If their body language suggests it, then you might – for example – touch the back of their hand, and read their reaction.”

It’s a jungle out there and not all accusations, unfortunately, carry complete legitimacy. Professionals in an area as unpredictable as psychology, let alone shamanism, expect accusation of some sort eventually according to Vital students in the field. Soccer players in the UK are advised to simply stay away from any form of ‘nightlife’ as it’s known in sporting circles, and most now do.

Peak sexual experience

Integration

DMT is possibly responsible for the female full body orgasm

Eternal Phoenix by Carolyn Mary Kleefeld

There’s a new emphasis on returning to the womb.

An intrepid Vital student asked Dr Strassman a very pertinent question, going forward: “I’m a sex therapist. Should I ever mix psychedelics with that?”

Dr Strassman does have something of the ‘unlikely sex symbol’ about him. A volcano festers within, and I can imagine bookish, imaginative girls becoming rather intrigued by the quietly uncompromising genius. 

This image is compounded by The Strass’ involvement in the science of women’s cervical ‘full body’ orgasms.

“I posted an interview about this on my Facebook page,” he coyly replies to my fellow psychedelic student, “and it got a ton of likes compared to everything else,” (He probably means the Old Testament stuff). 

The splendid Double Blind magazine were first on it. The psychedelic lifestyle leader matched the sterling work of Olivia Bryant’s Self:Cervix project to spread awareness of earth-moving sex, with sex therapists who link that cervix to the vagus nerve. If the ‘full body’ orgasm activates the vagus nerve, the part of our nervous system responsible for the ‘rest and digest’ state, swinging from the chandeliers would bring significant health benefits.

“You do hear reports of experiences with a sexual character during DMT states”

The article quotes one of Bryant’s students: “Time both expanded and stood still. I understood everything and nothing. I was both God and unborn. The micro and the macro. The purest form of ecstasy and surrender I could ever hope to experience.”

Writer Nicolle Hodges pointed out that in The Spirit Molecule Dr Strassman writes of DMT, “There is a powerful dynamic or tension between the two roles it may play—one spiritual and the other sexual.” Asked if the brain releases DMT during orgasm The Strass wouldn’t take the bait: “That’s not known,” he replies in the interview. ‘Is sexually-activated DMT production perhaps one of the major motivating factors in reproductive behaviour?’ comes the follow-up question. “It’s educated speculation,” he says. “We don’t know for sure one way or the other.”

Undaunted, Hodges hit up Imperial’s Dr Chris Timmerman. “You do hear about reports of people having sensual experiences, which have a sexual character to them during DMT states,” he conceded, “Maybe [orgasms] have not been reported as much because sex has a taboo connotation to it, and the same can happen when sex is associated with DMT and psychedelics in general.” 

Britain’s cannabis journal Leafie ran with the ball. Neuroscience graduate Bethan Finnegan pointed out that women with major spinal injury can still have cervical orgasms and the clitoral orgasm deactivates the pre-frontal cortex leading to miniature ‘ego death’, with French lingo for orgasm being le petit mort, ‘little death’.

Back in the Vital Q&A, Dr Strassman falls back to scientist mode. “You’d have to be methodical and incremental with your research! Study the DMT like properties of orgasm with psychedelic questionnaires, to make a cogent comparison. I think you’d find a relationship, strong correlation. Then you can look into how it occurs.”

He has some trade secrets for anyone carrying out cutting-edge research in mainstream science…

“Don’t worry about risk. Find some good mentors, keep your head on your shoulders, and do your research step by step in a Trojan Horse manner. That’s how I did mine.”

Dr Timmerman in Double Blind adds some London-based understatement: “You would need to collect blood samples when people are having these experiences to detect DMT levels in their bodies when this is occurring. This might be tricky to do in a lab environment for obvious reasons. But not impossible.”