Alex Abraham’s TRAUMA AND ECSTASY: How Psychedelics Made My Life Worth Living explains how he found that he was having problems in his pelvic region after a seemingly innocuous bike ride on holiday in Holland. Suspecting perhaps a pulled muscle, he waited for the trouble to pass. It kept getting worse. And then, as explained in a chapter titled, “The Day My Dick Stopped Working,” it got a lot worse. Soon he was having trouble urinating and was suffering with erectile dysfunction. He started getting depressed. All the doctors he saw couldn’t really help. With the black humor that sometimes flashes through this memoir, he recalls being prescribed a large dose of daily Viagra: “I am now a walking erection—except I have to look down to be able to tell I have one.”
After three years, and when all other avenues have been explored and brought no success, Abraham hears a podcast about psychedelics and therapy. Instead of the regular therapist that had been suggested by his doctor, he would try a session using psychedelics. The treatment would prove transformative: “When I get home, I am both exhausted and wired, mind still reeling, replaying the session in my head. I sleep horribly that night, but I wake up several times to myself saying the word ‘wow’ out loud.”
Soon Abraham is able to unlock the buried trauma of abuse at the hands of his music teacher. What initially appears to be a vivid nightmare is eventually revealed to be a suppressed memory of awful serial sexual abuse and manipulation from a supposedly respectable adult. By finally being able to locate the source of his trauma, Abraham is able to face it down.
Abraham’s success with micro-dosing and psychedelic therapy adds to the ever-growing list of anecdotal evidence that highlights this potentially groundbreaking method of improving mental health. Allied to these are the encouraging signs from numerous clinical trials that may soon usher in a new wave of treatments. As Abraham writes: “I believe with every bone in my body that psychedelics healing all kinds of trauma will be one of the positive stories of the twenty-first century.” If others are able to achieve the results the author details in TRAUMA AND ECSTASY, you would not bet against it.
Alex Abraham writes clearly and concisely in TRAUMA AND ECSTASY: How Psychedelics Made My Life Worth Living, unafraid to open up in this empowering story about using psychedelics to examine and overcome trauma. A moving memoir that ultimately points to a chink of light in all of its darkness.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader