Probably also important to point out that SSRIs don't seem to be much more than active placebo for the first few months for most people, and that most people's depression lifts without them. And that SSRIs are super addictive, so once they stop working you can't get off them easily without massive withdrawals and are usually given some other mix of drugs.

The "imbalance" model for depression / mental illness was a great hypothesis and was worth exploring. Unfortunately there really has never been any studies that really support it, but it's certainly a narrative big pharma loves when people repeat.

MDMA and other psychedelics on the other hand have been very useful in single doses (or short series) in effectively curing PTSD, depression, anxiety, bipolar, etc.

I know from first hand experience.

For me, my research led me to see the fragility of the main stream narrative and seek to understand other ways.

I found a model that suggested past cultural, developmental and shock trauma caused a freezing of the organism into a fight or flight response (which depending on the individual manifested in a number of ways), and that the way to "heal" that experience was to relax the ego enough (default brain network) to allow new information in. Dan Siegel calls this the "window of opportunity". Various therapies offer a gradual opening of this window, from Journaling for PTSD to the most effective I found, NARM.

When used in a therapeutic setting, MDMA allows for this relaxing and those unexperienced exoeriences (trauma) can be released -- this was experienced for me, and many, as a safe revisiting of the hardest moments in my life in an understanding way.

The human psyche even has its own reboot system to accomplish this, though like a psychedelic, if your culture lacks the understanding and set / setting, it can land you in a psyche ward.

This reboot process is called "psychosis" and it is induced internally when external stresses push the organism beyond its model of the world.

What happens is the default network relaxes and allows new information flows to come in -- this is identical to a psychedelic experience from my direct experience and if one can stay with it (and not end up having a 1st year psychiatric resident with no experience holding space for a psychosis to come to completion shoot you up with some anti-psychotic) you emerge, predicably, with a new sense of confidence and mission / message -- which is almost always directly related to the under represented values / conditions that existed in your environment that caused the stress.

People experience some version of this all the time, creativity is spurred by pain, people get stressed and then have an insight, etc.

Some cultures have identified the value of this experience fully completing and in integrating the wisdom from the sensitive person who is manifesting symptoms for the collective -- they are Shamanic Cultures, and they have a process and protocol for initiating folks, almost always with the use of non-ordinary states (plants, dance,fast, chanting, sweats) to heal and gain access to new views (non default network brain mode).

For me, it's been quite amazing because once those patterns unwound inside, all of my relationships took on this magical new quality of wholeness and safety, as I was no longer hiding from certain feelings.

As someone who was labeled everything from schizophrenic, schizo-affective, bipolar, depressed, anxious and has tasted the heights of mania and depths of suicidal depression, I can say that I'm without a doubt healed of the bulk of the trauma that was beneath the surface and it is due to using a variety of non-ordinary states of consciousness to create that window of opportunity (both medicine potentiated and non-medicine potentiated.)

My team says I'm no longer diagnosable with those and have been asked to compiling my research for a PHd program (which I may do). And I've gone to work to integrate the values & vision I came back from my experience with acrosss a wide range of industry (outer space, permaculture, education, politics, etc.)

In honor of Valentine's Day I should mention that Love is also a powerful psychedelic that requires the right set and setting (when we lack the right set and setting, the nature of the psychedlic is it can reveal an old trauma and if it's not addressed, it can retraumatize people or make them feel worse).. Ann Shulgin (wife of Sasha, the man who resiscovered MDMA) famously said "love is the psychedelic experience that all humans have access to in this lifetime, and they would outlaw that too if they could."

<shameless plug> I am actually co-leading a workshop in NYC tonight about how to use True Love as a psychedelic healing experience. My yogi girlfriend & I will demonstrate in real time how we use the psychedelic nature of love & conflict to access and heal our deepest parts so we can be more real and effective in the world.

The workshop is called Drama As Dharma, in NYC and we have a couple spots left, I'd be happy to comp anyone a VIP ticket ($60) if they'd like to check it out. 2/15, 6:30-9pm @ Reflections Center for Concious Living </shameless plug>

If anyone wants more info on how I handled this stuff or wants to come tonight, my email is anthony @ 175g . com

Thanks!
Anthony