I experienced multiple traumas and abuses as a kid. I was sexually abused and beaten by both parents for years. I was also sexually and physically abused at school, in scouts and by members of the 'church'. Later in life I was depressed, suicidal and severely social anxious.

I came very close to killing myself many times and was, for a time, addicted to alcohol, which I used as self-medication to treat my anxiety and PTSD. If you look back through my posts on Steemit, you'll find more information on this.

This was me as a kid:

A sick society outlaws its own cure

I healed myself over three years using psychedelics in combination with traditional psychotherapy, massage, dance and yoga. I want to share how I did this, in the hope that my experience can help others fighting their way out of what society inflicts on so many children. And what most of us are pressured to forget, what we are taught to to depress in ourselves.

Here is an awake doctor talking about this phenomena:

Is MDMA psychiatry's antibiotic? | Ben Sessa | TEDxUniversityofBristol

I have now come to a point where I am not suicidal, and am actually happy and stable — and have been for over three years. I accept what happened and I'm working through the remaining memories of what they did to me, and so many other kids. I now have good friends, a gentle place to live, and think that in many ways I am more healthy than many people around me who never experienced PTSD. I am productive and alive. Here I am recently giving a talk on my experiences:

Living life as a sleepwalker

Most of us prefer not to face the cause of our depression. Society tells us that the cause is chemical. This is society's way of protecting itself from the anger and pain of what is done to people. We are asked to forget, and they dispense drugs to help us forget. They call these drugs anti-depressants, amphetamines and alcohol. All these substances aid in burying memories.

Our society legally dispenses the world's most dangerous drug, alcohol. This drug is a chemical depressant, and helps us to depress (push down) memories:

Source: The Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs

I was once a member of this modern 'society of chemically-regulated sleepwalkers'. Some of my memories of the causes of my CPTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder) were not immediately available to me before I entered therapy. I lived, like many others, as a sleepwalker. I didn't know myself. And I lived to forget.

Let's get free

I have outlined, below, the methods I used to access, process and integrate my traumatic memories and come to a place where I am at peace. I want a public record made of my journey, so that others can potentially benefit from a road-map of the way out. Each journey is our own, but here is what worked for me. And I mean it actually worked, unlike most options offered by care-providers today:

METHOD	DESCRIPTION
Traditional psychotherapy	I had several months of therapy with a broadly 'Freudian' analyst. This therapist just listened to me and hardly said anything. This is what I needed at first: To be heard.
Ayahuasca	I participated in 18 Ayahusaca ceremonies over two years. These were gruelling and difficult, but they allowed me to feel everything I experienced during the rapes and beatings in childhood — and to process it in a safe, supported context.
San Pedro	I experienced 15 San Pedro cactus ceremonies. These were lighter than the Ayahuasca ceremonies. They allowed me to process other memories and feelings.
LSD	To date, I have undergone around 8 LSD Therapy sessions. These were broadly in line with the structural protocol developed by Stanislav Grof. In addition to these full-dose sessions, I have taken sub-perceptual doses of LSD on some days to allowed me to observe, and change, the behaviours conditioned into me by my abusers in-situ. LSD micro-dosing can be like having a kind therapist on your shoulder for 11 hours.
MDMA	To date: Ten MDMA therapy sessions spaced over three years. MDMA therapy is an astonishingly powerful experience. It was important for me to be very cautious in spacing out the sessions and to use carefully sourced and measured doses with an experienced sitter.
Bodywork	Massage therapy; somatic experiencing; dancing and yoga: These all helped to reconnect me with my body. I was once severely dissociated, but now I can feel myself and the space I exist within.

It may appear to you that my therapy protocol was very drug-heavy. I don't consider this to be the case. What I think is a drug-heavy therapy is what the majority of people do to treat anxiety and complex PTSD in the general population. Most people drink alcohol and turn to 'success', materialism and self-alienation.

Instead, I chose a radical and cautious path. I discovered something that now seems obvious:

Mainstream doctors are probably not your friend

I slowly discovered that I was the product of a society that endorses child-abuse through denial and inaction. No society that caused my dysfunction would have any interest in actually solving my problem. Doctors are taught by our sick society to treat depression as a disease.

However depression is a symptom of having being abused or neglected, compounded over a lifetime of other adverse life-experiences. The medical community is a long way from accepting this. Most medical providers will put you back to sleep rather than help you face what you are depressing.

However, times are changing:

Attachment, Disease, and Addiction, by Gabor Mate

Yet, most of us still live in a society that still does not want to face what happens to so many children. And so, it has outlawed the means of its own cure. It does not want people to remember what happened to them. And sadly, like Albert Einstein said, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."

My journey to freedom has arguably taken me 25 years. But in terms of recognising the abuse I experienced, and healing it, it has taken three years of full-time self-investigation and multiple treatment protocols. Almost none of them are permitted by the society that hurt me. Coincidence?

I can legitimately say that I have gone from full-blown dissociation, suicidality, depression and CPTSD-sufferer to fully-functional adult human.

The most successful treatment methods are illegal

A society that abuses its children does not want this abuse made public. All our governmental and corporate systems of control rely on our childhood amnesia. If our society remembered the conditioning we were all subjected to as children, we would collectively overthrow the government, rich land-owners and most corporations within a week.

We would see the abuses that 'authority' subjects us to, rather than being blind to it. We would perceive the reflection of an abusive childhood in these structures and evolve beyond them. But, instead, many people choose to find what solace they can within these abusive systems, so that we do not have to recall the overwhelming childhood experiences that subjugated us to them.

Rather than remembering childhood, most of us choose to live lives of quiet desperation, in a world like this:

Living in an Unreal World, by Adam Curtis

Anyone who has worked extensively with psychedelics for trauma survivors knows that these are the most effective (perhaps only) tool that really gets to the root of the trauma and heals it.

And this is the very reason they are illegal: Governments are terrified of a population that is not wounded because we would disband them.

As soon as you realise that most governments are run by wounded trauma-victims compensating for a feeling of powerlessness is childhood by clinging to 'power' as adults, a lot of policies that seem crazy make a lot of sense. These people are scared of us.

Governmental drug policy reflects this fear. The purpose of drug law is to criminalise trauma survivors who are self-medicating so that society does not have to face its pain.

How did we forget cause and effect?

Most modern medical practitioners have abandoned cause and effect. They want us to believe that depression is an effect with no cause. But there is a cause: it's just that society does not want us to remember it.

In fact, many of us do not want to remember it either. Because it would expose everything we have done to compensate for our pain as a fraud: A decadent but essentially meaningless outfit of clothes, property and status, worn on top of the child we once were.

I don't endorse any of the psychedelic tools I used taken outside a structured therapeutic context.

I did not take any 'magic pill'. Each time I used these tools, I used them following established treatment guidelines (MAPS) with trusted sitters. These tools will be relatively useless unless used cautiously and in a safe and supported context.

I am still processing memories, and still have moments of fear. But I am as free as I have ever been, and more free than most.

This path was not an easy one. I was able to work while I went through this, but I was working for myself, so I had a lot of flexibility. However, I do think it would be possible to do this on weekends only.

San Pedro Cactus

I found San Pedro cactus particularly useful because it is so gentle, but still gets deep into things. However, I found all the traditional shamanic psychedelics tended towards the 'mystical' or 'symbolic' representations of what happened to me, where the MDMA was unique because it gave me access to the literal reality of my experiences.

San Pedro is legal to buy and own in every country (as far as I know). But preparing it is a grey area. Around 15cm of cactus is a dose I've found that is useful but not overwhelming. But you will have to experiment because mescaline content varies across species and even between plants of the same species. It's a very forgiving psychedelic, so over-estimating the dose shouldn't be a problem in terms of the effects.

Somatic Experiencing

I still have brief, anxious phases which pass quickly, followed by new memories, and then processing of those memories by spontaneous shaking of the body. This shaking makes a lot of sense in accordance with the theories of Somatic Experiencing developed by Peter Levine:

Child sexual abuse and relational trauma, by Dr. Peter Levine

The process of coming back to the body seems to happen fairly naturally. Climbing and dancing have also helped me.

Dancing, yoga, climbing

All of these things I do myself — I don't go to classes anymore. But it's not like I used these things to bring myself back to my body exactly. It's more like I was drawn to them out of the loosening of tension brought about by the psychedelic experiences.

I think psychedelics are a tool. And I want to be clear that I did several other things in conjunction with them and perhaps as a consequence of them.

More tools to get free

Here's some other stuff I did to process and integrate my childhood:

• Drawing random stuff that came to mind: Later this often turned out to be fragments of emerging memories.

• Writing down my dreams: A lot of the dream content was related to the trauma and my world view. Like messages from a hidden part of me.

• Walking in nature: This really helps to integrate things.

• Reading about the type of trauma I experienced: This helped me to understand what was going on in my head. For example, the book Dialogues with Forgotten Voices helped me a lot.

• Making contact with other people who had experienced the same trauma: This was really significant for me. I was lucky enough to make friends with open-minded survivors who had very similar childhoods and we helped each other make sense of the experience.

As for what works best, I think it might be a combination of all these things. But it was a lot of improvisation, and you might find you are drawn to other methods.

MDMA

I found MDMA was the most powerful means of accessing and processing trauma. However, it is also the most speculatively harmful of everything I used. There seems to be some debate over whether MDMA causes any physical harm. I could not find any meta-study that agreed with this idea, but I wanted to be careful. What I'm saying here is, I was very cautious in using MDMA rarely. It is the diamond-tipped drill of self-therapy. Over three years I have used it ten times with a supportive sitter and a safe space.

A trailer for 'MDMA The Movie'

LSD

LSD was excellent at putting me in a state of mind where I could roll, stretch, move around for hours — slowly releasing old tension from my body. Be aware that, during LSD sessions, your body may want to shake (for a long time) or make unusual movements. Allow this.

What I think is happening with the regime I've used is that the LSD allows the mind to relax and let the body shake out lots of old trauma encoded in the muscle structure. It also loosens up (I realise these are far from scientific terms. I'm describing the subjective experience) the brain's rigid patterning and defence mechanisms.

I would then have an MDMA therapy session every few months to integrate several LSD sessions.

I have a feeling that the weeks between the MDMA sessions were analogous to drilling lots of holes in a defensive wall with the low-dose LSD. Then, when the MDMA hits the wall, it is already prepared to crumble.

Psychedelics: Lifting the veil, by Robin Carhart-Harris

It's like dredging a lake

Another metaphor I've found useful is that the mind is like a huge lake. The LSD can be used to dredge loads of stuff up to the surface. Up come old feeling states, and experiences, but they're all covered in weed and dirt and can't be identified properly. Then, when I took the MDMA after a few months of 'dredging' with the LSD, it is like everything is scooped off the lake, cleaned of the muck, and I can really see, and let go of, all the painful experiences and fear.

Connection and sharing

It's essential to be able to share with someone during, or after, the MDMA experience. Mostly the therapy should be an internal process, but Stanislav Grof talked of traumas of commission (when something was done that should not have been) and traumas of omission (where something was not done that should have been done).

A trauma of commission can typically be healed through an internal process. But, to heal a trauma of omission, you will typically need to be held and supported by a trusted person.

Being held is healing

There were many times I needed to be held as a kid, after the abuse, but I was not. To revisit memories under the MDMA and be held by a loving friend was immensely healing. Finally, aspects of the past were healed.

Ayahuasca

To begin my exit from our social conditioning, I went to South America to spend time in the jungle and use the traditional healing plant brew: Ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca was profound, brutal (but effective) for severe trauma in my experience. But it is often used in a ceremonial context that is extremely vulnerable to interpersonal group dynamics and can be very messy. I'm not sure, even after 18 ceremonies, that ayahuasca was necessarily more effective than more modern techniques. I know, however, that it accessed some very deep, dark feeling states in me and cleared them out. I therefore value it immensely.

Metamorphosis — An Ayahuasca Documentary, by Keith Aronowitz

Occasional LSD microdosing for self-analysis

On some days that felt difficult, I microdosed a very small amount of LSD (20ug) and went about my normal day. This would bring very subtle insight into what I was doing in my everyday life and how the trauma effected this. It is such a low dose that you almost do not notice anything. However there are small and productive shifts in thinking.

Microdosing LSD or any Psychedelic, by Psyched Substance

Your family and community may not be helpful

Because trauma is often caused by the family, you will typically come into conflict with your family's version of events.

It is also often the case that, because the trauma that causes PTSD was so 'unthinkable' in its horror, it remains 'unthought', sometimes for a lifetime. Both by the individual and by society. But the trauma does not remain unfelt. Yet, to allow ourselves to think the unthinkable, and connect our present-day feelings to the original source, is a terrifying ordeal. It explains why abusers are so often surrounded by deniers.

Often, our family systems have caused our illnesses. This is very hard for people to accept, especially because it is taboo to leave a family system or to identify its flaws.

Getting my feelings back

In my experience, when I had PTSD, I existed stuck in the same state of anxiety as at the time of each rape and beating. But because each violation was unthinkable, it remained outside of conventional memory, 'unthought', in an ever-present now. But not unfelt. I walked around as an adult, stuck in childhood emotional states.

I felt it all the time. For decades.

And that was my PTSD. A series of unrelenting, destructive, overwhelming, anxious feelings without any corresponding memories to attach them to. Abstract flashbacks, alcoholism and broken relationships.

To let go, we have to remember

My healing journey was then this: The journey of attaching past memories to present feelings. And then letting the experiences retreat into the past where they belonged. Acknowledging the truth of all the traumatic childhood events I had hidden from myself for so long was the only way for my body to realise they were not happening now. To release the trauma.

To "remember" is semantically interesting, because structurally the word: re - member is from the latin roots of the word: 're' to do again, and 'member' meaning body parts. To rejoin the body parts.

And so: I got my body back.

By remembering.

By remembering what happened.

There was nobody to help me process or integrate the experience as a kid because almost nobody in our society is prepared to accept what happens to kids and really listen to them. When I approached adults for help when I was a kid, I was pushed away. And so, the abusers could not have had it any easier: All they had to do was abuse me and other kids in ways that were 'unthinkable', and they would not be 'thought' possible by any adult in a position to help. I would never be believed.
I had to wait until I was an adult to 're-member' myself.

The most difficult system of abuse to leave is a familiar one.

Familiar means: Of the family. In a way, many of us live in a personal North Korea, only we don't realise we do because our North Korea looks like something called a 'family'.

Families are held in high value in our culture. But they have many features in common with a cult, and we will probably evolve beyond them as we collectively wake up:

Marriage and Children, by OSHO

This is why I think traditional therapy is often a dead end. It doesn't matter how well-intentioned the therapist, they typically can't help you escape the familiar. The 'familiar' is, almost by definition, invisible to the 'patient' and the 'doctor' and will usually remain so.

Mainstream medicine is a dead-end

They call us patients.

We must be patiently patient while the doctor doctors.

Neither of us are going anywhere fast because the entire paradigm is wrong. No individual is sick. When one person is seriously sick, it's very likely that the whole society is. The game of doctor/patient has gotten old at this point. I think we're slowly waking up to a new medical model. One where we don't look at individuals separately from the context of their society.

But to realise this fully, we have to leave the familiar.

Did You Used to be R D Laing? — By Tougas, Shandel, and Feldmar.

As the media theorist, Marshall McLuhan said, “One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in.”

Psychedelics let me leave the water. The water of my family. The water of society.

Then I looked back in and saw what had happened to me. And to so many other kids.

We can only heal ourselves. We have to discover for ourselves the origin of our pain. For me, psychedelics were the key to engaging with myself and to stop depressing and start remembering what my depression was keeping away from my waking consciousness.

Priests, gurus, shamans, therapists. I was done with them all. Some of them I learned from, but in the end I walked through the forbidden doors alone.

Good luck!