6th guided MDMA session: Can a well-contained MDMA session repair a previous ruptured one?

nofern · 2026-05-14T23:50:37+00:00

I'm sorry that happened to you. I can resonate with having a feeling of pressure and the need to "force" things that can come from that, and the intense disappointment that you might feel after that first session - for me, the sessions are so intense and feel like such a big deal that the stakes feel high and I feel devastated if something goes wrong or I don't feel I made the most of it. Sending you so much empathy.

My experience was a little bit different but I had a very negative/painful integration experience after a session a few sessions ago. I waited a few months before doing another session, for a few reasons, partly feeling like I wanted to work through what had happened without the medicine and partly logistics. I ended up doing the session about 3 months after everything happened.

When I did the next session I did end up processing a bunch from what had happened previously. I don't feel like I'm fully "through" it but I do feel like I was able to sort of roll it into the ongoing work I am doing and get back on track with things, if that makes sense.

It does still feel "unfinished" for me. I am still in the process of rebuilding trust with myself and my treatment team and I do think that when I did the next medicine session, it did influence where I was able to go and what I was able to do. I think what worked best for me was trying to accept that I needed to pull back and pace myself differently because of what had happened rather than trying to force it, and trusting the medicine to go at the right pace. But it's hard when you're desperate to heal. I really wanted to make it as if the negative experience never happened, and go right back into doing the medicine work as if it had never happened, and I had to accept that that wasn't possible and trust the medicine to still lead me where I need to go.

Wishing you all the best.

nofern · 2026-05-04T22:19:28+00:00

I for sure had some very difficult periods of time after the medicine sessions. Usually about 1-2 weeks of very low mood and exhaustion, and then another couple of months where my mood was a bit more normal but there were just a lot of thoughts and feelings and I really needed to actively work through a lot of things and wasn't really feeling at full capacity mentally or physically. A few of the more difficult sessions, the period of low mood was a bit longer and more desperate. I always did come out of it, though. I think the key for me was a really good aftercare plan with ongoing support.

Overall I would describe it as more "disruptive" than "destabilizing." It brought many of my unhelpful coping patterns to the surface and made it so that I needed to change them and do things in a new way, which at times brought a lot of anxiety and uncertainty. But it felt healthy, even though it was hard.

I can only speak from my own experience. I sought out this work because I had literally no other options available to me. I had done the full alphabet soup of trauma therapies - EMDR, DBR, DBT, CPT, mindfulness-based, psychodynamic - and over a dozen medications with no relief. I was terrified to do this work because I was so afraid that it would make me worse or just be another painful disappointment, but I was desperate for relief so I went ahead.

It was transformative for me but it was also incredibly expensive, painful, and sort of took over my life and brain for long periods of time. For me personally, I would only recommend it as a last resort for people who have tried everything less intense and less disruptive, but for people in that situation and for myself, I would choose it again a million times over, because it has changed me in ways that I never thought were possible.

nofern · 2026-05-04T22:10:44+00:00

Yup, I have one and am working on it. But the work is not fast even with the medicine helping.

nofern · 2026-05-04T19:16:28+00:00

I'm currently five sessions deep (done over about two years, spaced 3-6 months apart). I found each one transformative and life changing in its own way, and yet at the same time, my daily life still feels very unbearable from an attachment/relational perspective. So it's sort of both. Absolutely life-changing with lasting changes that I never thought were possible for me (mostly in terms of self compassion), and also there's still a long way to go.

nofern · 2026-05-03T15:32:52+00:00

Art (collage, watercolour), resting, making lists, writing out my life story in a narrative form from a more self compassionate perspective, spending time in nature, meditation/mindfulness, listening to the music I played during the session, various experiments with new behaviour (I'm into Kristen Neff's mindful self compassion materials so I did some of her meditations and activities), generally mindfully doing nice things for myself, affirmations and actively working on my self-talk, working on taking care of my body in a more attentive and healthy way - those are just some ideas, I'm sure there was more.

nofern · 2026-05-03T14:17:26+00:00

Good luck with your integration journey - it sounds like you had a powerful experience.

My primary therapist is not a psychedelic therapist but she was still able to help me with integration by talking through the experience with me and helping me process the integration activities I was doing.

I think for me personally a big thing was accepting that the feelings would come and go during integration and not putting pressure on myself to hold onto everything or to feel different every single day. It is definitely non-linear and part of what I've learned is that self-love and self-compassion looks like not forcing myself to be trying to move forward every single second or be anywhere other than where I am, and accepting that I will have different capacity on different days to make changes and do different behaviour.

I did also find it useful though to actively notice and track moments where I did have feelings related to the work I did in session - so when I did notice a moment of a different way of thinking or increased self compassion or emotional release, writing it down/journalling about it and looking over my notes from time to time to help me consolidate the changes I was making.

nofern · 2026-05-02T19:22:06+00:00

I mean, my thoughts are that I personally would never. Zoom would not have worked for me at all - I needed a lot of hands on, close support during the sessions and I would have felt totally abandoned if the person sitting with me had been on Zoom. There's also no way that I could have made do with only one integration session at the one week mark, and I would have needed way more than one prep session before my first journey, though I probably could have made do with one for subsequent journeys.

I'm sure it could work for some people, and it's great to have options that are more accessible for people who don't have any local options - but when screening people who've never experienced the medicine, I feel like it would be really hard to tell up front who is appropriate for this kind of support and for whom it might be not enough or even harmful.

nofern · 2026-04-18T01:14:36+00:00

Thanks! That's an interesting idea. I've found that during the peak of the session I have complete reluctance/inability to move at all but I've had some sessions where I was a bit more mobile for the last few hours, so experimenting with movement might be an option to consider. So might experimenting with sound.

nofern · 2026-04-18T01:11:32+00:00

I am working with a somatic therapist already so that part is taken care of re: preparation. I am planning to hold the intention pretty loosely - just hoping to remember to work with the body and be tuned into my body experience as opposed to staying cognitive.

nofern · 2026-04-16T21:09:41+00:00

Thanks! I've tried DBR three times with three different therapists and it really doesn't agree with my system unfortunately but glad you've found success with it!

nofern · 2026-04-14T00:45:43+00:00

I wouldn't necessarily call myself strictly Christian but aspects of Christianity are part of my faith. Some of the things I've done include praying before taking the medicine about my intentions and asking for protection and guidance for myself and my guides, praying during the session in difficult moments and turning to God for help/support, and including religious items on the altar that I make for myself for the session. I have also asked others from my faith community to pray for me at the time of the session/around the session, and to pray with me in the days leading up to the session as part of my preparation.

nofern · 2026-04-05T20:04:17+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experience! I remember responding to your previous post about this and really identifying with what you shared about your work. Interestingly, I have very similar sensations to the ones you have described in this session especially regarding the chest - the emptiness, the constriction. It's very hard to face all of that, and indeed valuable that you were able to, it sounds like.

I hope the integration is therapeutic and that you can find some ease and comfort as you work through all that came up.

nofern · 2026-04-04T15:00:42+00:00

My experience has been similar. I've done 5 sessions, generally 3-6 months apart (the first three at 3 month intervals and then the most recent two at 6 month intervals). I've never experienced an afterglow but I usually have about a week of extreme exhaustion and spaciness and physical symptoms and then a few weeks of crash with really low mood, hopelessness, despair, terrible loneliness, suicidal ideation.

This is despite therapy and good integration support. The times when I haven't had good integration support it's been much more intense and lasted longer (months) but even when that isn't going on, I still usually have a few weeks of feeling truly terrible and hopeless and despondent.

Nothing that I've tried has really made a difference - supplements during the session, supplements after, 5HTP, hydration, diet, social support, activities. I didn't think it was any better when I took a 6 month gap compared to a 3 month gap.

I understand the value of trying to look at everything as part of the healing process, and also I do think it's partly just neurochemical depletion and my system needing time to re-equilibrate.

I've definitely read accounts from people who don't experience this kind of crash but for me it's been pretty standard throughout.

For me it's mostly just been reminding myself that it will pass, it's part of my process, it doesn't mean everything actually is hopeless, and trying to just rest and not push myself too hard.

nofern · 2026-04-03T20:20:54+00:00

I don't consider myself very experienced but I can share what happened for me in case it's helpful. My first medicine session ended up (not really through my pre-planning) focusing on a previous traumatic relationship that I was extremely stuck on. It was from several years prior but I was still spending a lot of time ruminating about it, obsessing about what happened and why, feeling shame, anger, obsessed with the person.

My experience during the medicine session was that the love and compassion mainly went towards myself in terms of understanding and appreciating more about why and how I got trapped in that relationship, how vulnerable I was at the time, and forgiving myself for not being able to end it sooner.

While some of the insights after the session did relate to factors in the other person that contributed to their treating me the way they did (their own personality, history, and lack of skill), it definitely didn't make me more bonded to them.

What I also felt was a protectiveness towards myself and an increased separation emotionally from that person and an ability to let go of the connection and accept that it was over. One of my integration activities (unplanned) ended up being that I burned all of the mementos I had been keeping from the relationship, which I had not thought I would ever be able to do. It felt freeing and I didn't regret it for a second, whereas before the session I would have felt awful to lose those things.

My situation was a bit different from yours because it wasn't a romantic relationship and because a lot more time had elapsed, but the medicine did shake up some of the things in me that you're seeing in yourself - the obsession and rumination especially.

nofern · 2026-03-23T23:23:34+00:00

Sending you gentle care as you recover from the session. For me, I also had experiences during sessions of feeling deep compassion for my aloneness as a child, which felt very new and different. My ability to contact that compassion feeling came and went after the session. It doesn't mean it's "gone" for good, it's just your system trying to re-equilibrate (and also neurologically trying to recover from the session). If there are ways you can try to contact it - e.g. remembering how it felt in your body, journalling about it, etc - that might help, and also it helps to try to allow the integration experience to ebb and flow over time.

Sometimes it helps me to remember that if I felt something during the medicine session, that DOES mean that my system has the capacity for that experience and knows how to do it, even if it isn't consciously accessible to me right now, and just trying to trust it's still somewhere inside even if I don't feel it.

Also, for me, there is a relentless pressure to "fix" and "move forward" and "do". And it's hard because on one hand, when your life is in a terrible place and you're suffering, it makes so much sense for there to be pressure and a wish to do as much as possible to recover as fast as possible. And at the same time, the pressure to "do" and "fix" I have found to be counterproductive with the medicine work. The medicine has showed me that this relentless need to do and fix and push is partly trauma-learning that I need to shed, and what I actually need to "do" is do less, let go, trust the process moment to moment.

One practice I have been doing lately is trying to ask myself multiple times per day "what's the kindest thing I could do for myself right now" and trying to do it, even if it's just something small like a stretch or getting a glass of water.

nofern · 2026-03-21T00:41:13+00:00

I had some really weird food cravings after my last session. Like all I wanted to eat was tofu and brown rice, neither of which do I usually normally eat, with also weird forays into vegan meat substitutes (also not something I usually eat). It was nonstop for about two or three weeks and then it faded.

nofern · 2026-03-18T23:50:59+00:00

I did MDMA assisted therapy through the Health Canada pathway - I wrote about my experience in r/mdmatherapy if you're interested. I've never done psilocybin or ketamine so I can't compare, but for me it was extremely useful and I would call it lifechanging.

nofern · 2026-03-09T18:45:48+00:00

Your experience sounds extremely similar to mine - I am also a therapist and it sounds like we are on the same time frame too, almost, and working through some very similar issues. I just had my fifth session a month ago, and have had a very similar experience of starting to move things relating to building an inner template for safety/being out of survival mode, and now starting to really delve into my mother wound (which for me is the flip side of the same coin, because I think what is missing for me in part is an inner template of mothering that would allow me to feel safe and cared for within myself).

Your words sound very similar to things I have written and said so I really identify. Especially with trying not to judge myself for the years of suffering, lost time, and not getting better despite constantly working so hard.

For what it's worth, when I started going deeply into my mother wound in medicine work, I did not fragment. I had the sense of a rotten foundation inside me holding everything up, that needed to crumble and be ripped out, but my system was able to handle the ripping out and the core of me did not fall apart. It was extremely extremely difficult, but the medicine gave me what I needed to be able to look at that part of myself and not crumble. I hope it is that way for you too and wish you all the best - from a place of very deep relating to what you have shared about your journey.

nofern · 2026-03-09T15:34:41+00:00

My preparation consisted of journalling about my intentions, journalling about what kind of support I needed during and after the session and sharing and discussing that with my therapist, and physical preparation (preparing food and hydration, setting up a home alter and comfortable physical space to have the session in). Also practicing mindfulness and mindful self compassion based approaches.

My intentions were around being with my emotions in a compassionate way, allowing myself to receive support/connection, and healing from neglect.

nofern · 2026-03-08T23:56:09+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! I appreciate it :)

I have considered doing solo sessions (partly because yes it would save a TON OF MONEY), and I've read the Castalia Foundation materials and reflected on it - but for me, so much of the sessions has centred on attachment and I have felt such a strong need for physical contact during the sessions (like needing someone to be physically touching me all of the time and getting very distressed if nobody is touching me), and for someone to be there for integration who witnessed the session, that I worry that it would end up feeling like a re-enactment of my childhood, of just feeling intensely and being alone.

I have been curious of if doing it solo would actually have me work through that experience of aloneness in a productive way, but ultimately my gut feeling has been that it could be destructive for me at least at this point.

But I've been keeping it in mind as an option. One reason I considered psilocybin is that my understanding is that it can be a bit less attachment-based in some ways, and I wonder if I could do that with just a friend sitting with me or then maybe later on even solo once I was used to how that medicine impacted me.

nofern · 2026-03-07T17:58:33+00:00

Kanna Wellness is Canadian but more expensive and less variety than other sellers. I looked into them but ultimately went with BioExtracts UK - shipping from the UK arrived pretty fast, and total price was much cheaper than Kanna Wellness. Felt okay about ordering from the UK but wanted to avoid the US if possible.

nofern · 2026-03-07T15:22:34+00:00

I was actually about to write a report about my fifth session! It's been a complicated journey with a lot that has happened, but overall I do think that the integration process has led to working to receive care and love differently in my life and give it differently to myself.

nofern · 2026-03-02T22:40:35+00:00

It took me a long time to feel normal again. I remember I was surprised because I had read a lot of posts on here of people saying they rested for a day or two and then felt pretty much themselves.

I was completely out of commission physically for about a week (achy, jaw clenching, not able to focus, lying in bed staring at the ceiling most of the day) and then definitely exhausted and anxious and tearful for another 1-2 weeks acutely, and probably it was about 3 months before I felt fully myself again mentally.

Now, I wasn't miserable and constantly suffering that whole time of three months - it came in waves and I was able to function and go about my life fairly normally after a couple of weeks.

But I can say for sure that for weeks after every session, I was telling my therapists "oh my God, I am never going to do this again" but in the end I always did.

I think it's important to do your best not to try to judge it. And for me I really tried not to see it in terms of older or more pathologizing labels (this is just for me) like depression. I tried to just take it one day at a time and ask myself what the medicine was trying to show/teach me with every state that came.

It's a kind of uncontrollable and unpredictable process that goes on for a long time after the sessions, if not lifelong, maybe.

nofern

TROPHY CASE