Welcome to Back from the Abyss. I'm Dr. Craig Hecock.

One of my hopes when we started Back from the Abyss four years ago was that the process of sharing stories through this medium would be inherently meaningful for the storyteller, that somehow back from the abyss could be an antidote for shame, a way for people to own their darkness and not have it own them.

Today's guest really is, I think, a shining

example of storytelling as therapy. Stephanie wrote to me in the spring of last year when

we had already finished recording season three. Then she reached out to me again this fall,

saying that she had a story that she both wanted and needed to tell.

And after witnessing and recording her story, I think I now understand on a whole different

level why she needed to speak out publicly.

30 years ago, a 10-year-old boy was found stabbed to death in a park.

The same park where 18-year-old Stephanie and three young men were seen riding bikes the night before. Stephanie and the others

were repeatedly questioned. They became the prime suspects. Yet they, nor anyone, was ever

charged for the murder, and it remains unsolved to this day.

This is the story how one event can alter the course of your life, how so many possibilities

for the future can disappear overnight. This is the story of how after years of unhelpful

psychotherapy and medications, Stephanie was

finally able to uncover what lay beneath, with the help of an unusually perceptive therapist,

as well as ketamine and MDMA-assisted psychotherapy.

So I registered for my first semester of college, and I met my boyfriend, and we went to the police station.

We had gone on a bike ride the day before, and there was a murder in the park that night.

And apparently, they thought that we were involved and we did it.

We were covering it up or something or we knew something.

It is like it is in the movies.

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