Geral Blanchard, LPC, is a psychotherapist who is university trained in psychology and anthropology. Formerly of Wyoming and currently residing in Iowa, Geral travels the world in search of ancient secrets that can augment the art and science of healing. From Western neuroscience to Amazonian shamanism, he has developed an understanding of how to combine old and new healing strategies to optimize recovery, whether from psychological or physical maladies.
MDMA and Your Primary Relationship
Geral T. Blanchard • September 2, 2022
Repeatedly I have been asked if only one partner in a relationship explores the medicine will there be a significant risk that the two might become distant from each other.
Is it likely that one person will start to grow out of the partnership? While the prospects are quite broad and not perfectly clear, there are some familiar reactions. I will address some of them.
Occasionally, a partner will misconstrue ecstasy or Molly for 100 percent MDMA. With the public’s limited education on empathogens, and with the attention given to feverish raves, many uninformed people think the medicine escalates the sex drive. With that concern, the nonparticipating partner can fear his/her partner will no longer be satisfied with their sexuality and look for someone else. Quite simply, it doesn’t work that way. Empathy and compassion may increase, but this is not a libido escalating drug. Clinical grade MDMA is more like a love drug than a sex drug.
Another fear is that the relationship will end because only one partner is doing the work, at least for now. Yet, many times with the release of oxytocin (the “cuddle hormone”) and prolactin -- bonding and intimacy enhancing chemicals -- the attachment may actually get strengthened. What is likely to happen is that communication will be enhanced by the medicine, defenses will drop, and difficult subjects can be more easily surmounted. As was said in Through the Gateway of the Heart, the author wrote: “It [MDMA] facilitates the heart-felt, empathic, verbal, and postural expressions of emotional intimacy, without the slightest hint of sexual arousal or interest.”
But maybe my partner who has taken the medicine will become more confrontational because of my mistakes and that will further undermine our relationship? Again, from the aforementioned text there is this: “On the basis of studies, MDMA deactivates the amygdala (the seat of fear-rage emotional reactivity) and reciprocally activates prefrontal brain circuits (which underlie calm thinking).”
One person said this. “When someone fucks up, I now find that kind of endearing. I need to remember to apply that to myself. It’s so touching to see how all our egos experience similar struggles – your pain is my pain. We aren’t that different, even in the way we erect defenses. Because we are all fundamentally the same, this healing process is how we get to know each other better.”
Often the nonparticipating partner will shy away from a treatment thinking pure, clinical grade MDMA is addictive. It is not! If anything, it helps to quell addictive behavior. Three administrations of the medicine typically concludes treatment.
A female patient said this: “I have usually feared that abandonment was about to happen with the man I love, that he will find someone with whom he would rather be with than me, I have long experienced this pain and fear, like when he doesn’t call when he said he would, or when I don’t know where he is. I fear, like I did with my father, that I will never see him again. I now know that we have a special connection that will never be broken, even after we die.”
Another person discovered this: “I felt that my most compassionate aspect was in full control. I was able to see my partner’s actions from a totally neutral place, with an understanding feeling for them, even when the actions caused me pain. The sacrament [drug] seemed to bring out my gentlest nature and suppressed the more judgmental, critical aspects of my personality.”
Another person commented, “I felt my most compassionate aspects were now in full control. I was able to see and understand other people’s actions from a more detached place, with somewhat sympathetic feelings toward them even if they had hurt me.”
Very commonly, MDMA is regarded as a “truth detector.” Sometimes long denied emotional truths arise, intrapersonal and interpersonal, both the positive and the negative. But such facts are typically handled in a much more civil manner than previously characterized the couple’s past communication style.
While the medicine can create a spirit of forgiveness (for self and others), it doesn’t make people naïve. Self-examination and relationship examination is assured. If there was a trauma bond, it is unlikely to be sustained post-treatment. When the relationship has long been shown to be harmful to one or both partners, the medicinal patient may, with clear thinking and discernment, decide to pull back and no longer accept mistreatment, departing the relationship in a civil fashion.
Untreated partners who are unfamiliar with the medicine will, very understandably, be concerned about negative effects on the relationship. By and large, the fears are generally unwarranted.
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Other Topics
Basics of MDMA
Rituals and Ceremony
Brain and MDMA
Trauma
Heart
Energy Movement
Quantum Physics
Native Cosmologies
Nature
Spirituality/Enlightenment
Kogi Tribe
Books written by Geral T. Blanchard
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In recent years psychotherapists have become increasingly aware of the risk of transmitting trauma intergenerationally. By examining the impact of the Holocaust, or the experiences of Native Americans who were systematically abused by colonizers including the Catholic Church, it becomes obvious that indirect passage of depression, despair, anxiety, and damaged self-regard are but a few of the ancestral legacies of uninterrupted abuse. If, however, trauma can be passed from generation to generation without direct experience, could it also be possible for the reverse to happen?
Just as we have started to witness the reality of individual post-traumatic growth (PTG) – not just bouncing back after trauma but bouncing forward – could we entertain the concept of intergenerational growth (IG) – in other words, thriving from generation to generation?
There can be two levels at which trauma is processed. The first tier may be a time of quiet denial or the dissociation of nearly all thoughts of how painful the past was. The body feels it, but the mind does not speak it. On the second level a person awakens to the entirety of it, often an unpredicted and sudden onslaught of previously suppressed details with extensive associated pain. When trauma is reconstituted at the second level it often happens unwillingly. A person may be swept away by an awakening that seems very ugly. It feels like too much to absorb in its entirety. The result is often to feel afraid, even shattered – at first. Now with everything out in the open, what must be done with it?
At the second level of awareness, it is almost impossible to go on pretending that everything is fine. No longer can the visuals and emotions be kept submerged. One wonders, “Damn it, will I ever get better?”
Traumatized persons, with their pervasive pain, typically seek mood altering experiences. This can include ascetic restrictions, hedonistic over-eating, chemical dependency, sexual dependency, sexual anorexia or celibacy, romance addiction, relationship dependency, compulsive gambling, TV or movie binging, rock climbing, auto racing, reliance on antidepressants and/or antianxiety medications, religious addiction, and so much more that can serve to pacify, distract, and avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings. By thrill-seeking, the higher the risks being engaged, the greater mood alteration one can experience. It’s a big dopamine splash and more.
These are the adult versions of childhood thumb sucking, according to Dr. Harvey Milkman, the author of Craving for Ecstasy (the feeling of ecstasy, not the drug). Harvey pointedly said, “Growing up consists of finding the right substitute for your thumb.”
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It’s impossible to talk about projection without incorporating a discussion about Sigmund Freud and Donald Trump. In this article I will skip Donald but throw in a little Carl Jung. Freud, of course, named several distinctive defense measures – reality distorting strategies to keep us safe. Two of the big ones are displacement and projection.
First, a definition of projection: This is evident when an individual attributes their own unacceptable impulses onto others. For example, a person might accuse others of engaging in thievery when, in fact, they are swindling money from their employer. Some of the behaviors and thoughts we are most ashamed of could be called shadows. We can see them first in other people before we can “call them out” in ourselves. We are defending against humiliation and mortification lest we be exposed.
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So, could it be concluded that MDMA is a transcendent spiritual event -- a chemical event, or perhaps a neurological experience? By themselves, both seem unlikely. They can change activity in the brain, but enlightenment comes from hard work before and after their use. Entheogens and empathogens likely have a catalytic but not a primary casual effect in awakening.
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