On MDMA Therapy

One morning a few weeks ago I walked through the cool air around Rushcutters Bay and buzzed myself up to my therapist’s apartment nearby. I hugged him when he opened the door and we chatted while he made me some green tea and put more in the fridge to chill for later. Making myself comfortable on his long sofa, I lined up my accessories on the coffee table beside me: headphones, a padded eyemask, a notebook, my water bottle, and a capsule containing 125mg of pure MDMA.

When I was ready, I handed him three handwritten pages of bullet point topics for discussion, and swallowed the capsule. For the next seven hours, when I wasn’t lying back on the couch with Tame Impala or Hindu chants in my headphones, I talked with him about the early childhood roots of my crippling depression and the blind terror that underpins it.