Welcome to Back from the Abyss. I'm Dr. Craig Hecock. This is a place for stories of hope and healing, recovery, and redemption.

As many of you know, the FDA recently refused to medicalize MDMA as a treatment for PTSD.

We've had a number of stories on the podcast that have explored how profoundly helpful MDMA can be in trauma treatment.

But interestingly, before MDMA was

criminalized in 1985, it was not primarily used for trauma treatment, but rather as a catalyst to deepen

and accelerate couples therapy. Today's story in some ways is the story of so many marriages,

starting off with hope and excitement,

then settling into careers and kids and unforeseen challenges, then emerging disenchantment

and mounting frustration, then maybe even reaching a breaking point where the marriage seems

unable to withstand all the stuff life is throwing in its

path. For Daniel and Mindy, their initial years of love and hope and adventure were slowly buried

by layers of physical and emotional pain, by Daniel's chronic and worsening depression,

by Mindy's frustration and anger and shame. Teetering on the edge,

they decided to begin working with MDMA, hoping to rediscover what they had somehow lost.

A couple of notes about today's story, MDMA is illegal in the U.S., and sourcing it involves

very significant risk, especially given the ubiquity of fentanyl.

Also, as I noted in my last solo episode, MDMA has very significant and even fatal reactions with some psychiatric and non-psychiatric medications,

and tapering off psychiatric meds in order to do MDMA can put people at risk of severe

psychiatric decompensation in addition to the fact that MDMA can worsen depression in some

people. And all that said, I think you will find this to be a very interesting and even delightful

story.

Well, we met on J-Date, which was the Jewish dating app.

...