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  • 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

I'm here to talk about my daughter Mara's experience with

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