Hi, my name is Alex Abraham, and this is my psychedelic story. So I’m 31 years old, I live in Austin, and I recently wrote a book called Trauma and Ecstasy, How Psychedelics Made My Life Worth Living, about how I use psychedelic therapy to sort of heal from childhood sexual abuse. And so while I think this is obviously a tough topic for a lot of people, my hope is by sharing my story and kind of talking about how I work through my abuse, I can help other people get more empathy for people who have been abused, help abuse survivors heal, and kind of just start a conversation around psychedelics and trauma and healing and therapy.
I’m coming up on four years since my first psychedelic session, which is really crazy to me because it was feels like yesterday when I started in some ways and other ways it feels like the last four years has been has been a lifetime in itself. But I was having a lot of physical issues. I was having pelvic floor dysfunction for a long time, and I didn’t know the source.
And so I kind of tried psychedelic medicine or MDMA therapy because I was anxious. And it turned out pretty quickly that unfortunately, I had been badly sexually abused by an authority figure when I was quite young. And that was sort of the source of all the pelvic issues I was facing on a day to day basis.
And so once I started realizing that was the problem, I really dug deep into psychedelic medicine and therapy and integration work and talk therapy and body work, kind of holotropic breath work, a men’s group for men who have been abused, and try to give a whole protocol around healing from my abuse, in addition to try to gain enough sleep, eating well, journaling every day, and just taking care of myself. So I think all that together has really helped me work through my abuse, and kind of hopefully go on to live a better life in the future. So I’ve mostly done a lot of MDMA therapy and psilocybin therapy, done a little bit of LSD and MDMA combined and a little bit of ayahuasca.
And those have all been very helpful, but I think MDMA and psilocybin is where I really started to sort of build almost the backbone of my healing journey. And I would say for me, I realized pretty quickly when I started doing psychedelics that a lot of self loathing, and kind of I didn’t really like myself, I think a lot of it was stemming from my abuse and other childhood trauma, and sort of the way my self-esteem was sort of broken down at that time. And so I think psychedelics really helped me work through, you know, why don’t I like myself? Is that really true? Can I sort of reset some of these thought patterns and limiting beliefs? But it was very difficult in the beginning, there was a lot of screaming, there was a lot of yelling, there was a lot of somatic release or body shaking, to sort of let go of old store trauma.
Because I think what happens to the kid when you have trauma is it sort of stays in your body and stores there, because kids don’t really know how to handle trauma. So you know, unfortunately, something like, you know, sexual abuse, it just sort of sits inside you. And that leads to a lot of somatic issues, whether that’s chronic pain, or disease, or sort of IBS, or irritable bowels, and all that stuff.
It’s just sort of an anger issue, and it leads to all sorts of problems as an adult. And so I think for me, psychedelics helped me really let go of all that store tension, and really helped me reset my nervous system and sort of my thought patterns. I’ve actually never really done much psychedelic therapy outside of a therapeutic setting.
It’s never really called to me like that. I did MDMA a couple times in college for fun, but it really wasn’t that helpful or that groundbreaking for me. But I think in the therapeutic setting with an eye mask, and sort of music, and the calm setting, it really can help bring stuff up inside you.
And that stuff can often be pretty unpleasant and pretty difficult. But I think if you can really work through that and move through that, it can really pay dividends down the road. So I think both of those compounds, for me, there was a lot to work through and a lot to sort of move past, but it’s really helped me over time kind of process my abuse.
I think MDMA is really gentle, and it’s usually always your friend. And it can sort of bring stuff up, maybe trauma, even sort of avoiding, because it feels so gentle and because it’s your friend, your brain sort of feels safe enough to sort of have trauma come up. I think your brain is always protecting you from trauma in certain ways, because it’s painful, right? And the brain wants to stay safe, and it wants to stay comfortable.
But in that setting with that sort of medicine, it almost tricks your brain to feeling safe and feeling like it can bring that stuff up. And so in the right setting, trauma, emotions that you push down, or kind of memories that you repressed, or places where you felt hurt, it can sort of come up in a safe way. And with a therapist or with yourself, you can sort of work through those traumatic memories and sort of reprocess them, and sort of almost re-experience them, but in a gentler way this time.
And by that, you can sort of let go of all those hurt feelings and sort of move on. So yeah, I wrote the book for a variety of reasons. I think as kind of a therapeutic tool for me to sort of make sense of what happened to me and my abuse.
I think to help others who are working through abuse or working, curious about psychedelic therapy. I think as kind of something that I could show maybe my family in the future about sort of what I went through and what this period of my life was like. And then my abuser is still out there.
I did go to the police, you know, I did go to, I wrote an open letter naming him, and he remains at a school today. So my hope potentially with this book was to kind of raise awareness, the fact that he’s still at a school. We’ll see if that actually happens.
But all four of those things were kind of reasons for me to write the book. And I think it was a very difficult experience. I’m not sure I’ll ever write another book.
And it’s not something I necessarily recommend to people unless they’re really all in on writing a book. But I did write one, and I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished there. And it was an important milestone for me.
I would say my biggest takeaway from my psychedelic experience is that healing is possible. I didn’t really believe that before psychedelics, and it never really, it never, I sort of felt like I was sort of locked into who I was. But I think these tools are so strong and the right context and the right environment with the right people around, you really can make fundamental change in your life, not just like incremental or 15 or 20% change, but like 50% change, 80% change.
And that’s really big for me and really transformational. And I think without psychedelic therapy, I could not have made those kind of big fundamental changes. But I do think they kind of open up the critical period, and at that point, you can really start to drive home new behaviors.
Something I’m always focused on myself is to be kinder to myself. And that would be something I would impart to the listeners as well.
