I'm here to talk about my daughter Mara's experience with
psychedelic therapy at the end of her life.
My daughter, Mara, experienced psychedelic therapy.
I believe that her story gives us a glimpse of what
psychedelic therapy might be in the future, in maybe 10 years,
when you don't have to commit a crime of compassion in order to do it.
But before I talk about that story, I want to give you a little background
in what mainstream medicine offered my daughter.
First, a misdiagnosis...
then many months of pain ...
Then finally, she bled out, went to an emergency room,
finally had the colonoscopy that she didn't have because it wasn't cost effective,
and her diagnosis at that point was advanced colon cancer.
She had major surgery,
and her prognosis, really, there was no chemotherapy that had
evidence that she would live one day longer.
It works like a lottery system,
so that a few people have their life extended
while the overwhelming majority have their quality of life maximally reduced.
Her first chemotherapy protocol had a
remission rate of only one third,
10% lived five years.
And yet, after that experience,
she was persueded, intimidated really,
to do another protocol and another and another.
So that within a few months, she was quite debilitated,
and mainstream medicine was unable to control her pain as well.
No patch or pill or injection,
even spinal nerve blocks that uses alcohol to inject in the spinal nerve,
didn't work.
An introthecal pump inserted in her abdomen that could
send fluids directly into her cerebral spinal fluid, that didn't work.
We were desperate.
Fortunately, I heard about a study at Harvard-McClain Hospital
for end of life patients
to help them reduce anxiety and depression,
or to find out if they could,
with MDMA, which is 'ecstacy' on the street.
My daughter was far too sick to enter any clinical trial
and the DEA was still making them go through hoops.
But knowing that there was something out there that might alleviate her pain,
sent me on a mission.
So, I sent out the word to anyone I knew
and eventaully found an incredibly knowledgeable
underground psychedelic therapist
who was willing to co-therapy wikth me
with my daughter.
So, over the period of the last three months of her life,
she had five different sessions
that, over time,
allowed her to finally begin to
open up conversation about death.
As you know, a young person is going to fight to the very end.
But, she was very very disturbed and worried about her dad
who could not accept her death.
Two days before she died,
when she was gasping for breath, her body ticking and spasming,
her choice at that point was,
"Do you want to be awake and in pain, or do you want to be numbed out and asleep?"
But she had an opportunity to take MDMA,
she knew that this was something that she could do.
And, in fact, in that state, it quieted her body,
it restored her humanity,
and at that point she said, "Call Dad."
So her father came over,
and she was able to say in his presence,
"How beautiful it is to die with both my mother and my father here."
She wanted music.
She wanted us to move her limbs that couldn't be touched before because they were in so much pain.
She had her last dance.
And two days later, the day she died,
She wanted MDMA again.
But she was so sick
and so close to death, that after she took the MDMA,
she just slept while her father and I
sat by her side and stroked her and told stories.
And then, about ten o'clock at night, I had this impulse to reach for a source of wisdom.
I opened up a book by Laura Huxley,
in a chapter about her experience with Aldus Huxley,
and she gave him LSD before he died,
and I was reading this little passage,
that talked about the importance of touch and voice
to alleviate the desperate loneliness of death,
and as I read those words, my daughter's hand came out from under the covers,
reached across, she put her hand in her father's palm,
turned her head to look at us,
with an expression of utter peace and joy ...
and died.
That was her gift to us.
And psychedelic healing is the gift to our family
that I now am offering to you as a possibility
for what may happen when we're able to offer more
to our loved ones who are dying than we've been able to do before.
Thank you.
Transcribed and Subtitled by Hunter Holliman