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: Exogamous or Endogenous
Geral T. Blanchard • Dec 05, 2021
Please don’t let the words put you off. They are just scientific ways of saying arising from without or within.
MDMA is a concoction made outside the body that enables people to transcend a somewhat narrow existence of suffering or meaninglessness and rise to an elevated state some might call ecstasy. It is a medicine taken in capsule form. But the question before us is, does our united bodymind have the capacity to make a hormonal, chemical, and spiritual medicine, one that somehow is produced and developed without outside drugs coming into play?
Upon reflection, we know that a healthy microbiome (gut), alive with bacteria fed by prebiotics and probiotics added to a good diet, has an amazing capability. It can produce “medicines of wellbeing.” The intestines are designed to make enkephalins (like the amino acid methionine, or sam-e) and endorphins (opioid peptides), endocannabinoids (weed), serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, etc.
So, if we are a living and breathing pharmaceutical storehouse, can we also manufacture MDMA endogenously?
I think there is a good chance we might just do something much like that. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch given all the other medicines our body manufactures and distributes.
You may recall Abraham Maslow, the renowned psychologist, who long ago wrote about “self-actualization,” unfolding into our newest and best form, and “peak experiences” which can be regarded as transcendent moments with lasting power, not unlike the results of the empathogen MDMA and certain psychedelics. A light bulb comes on that lends deep meaning to many life questions and sets us on a new and more compassionate discovery of life’s meaning and purpose.
When I read the book Quantum Change (2001) by William Miller years ago, I was struck by all of his research participants who reported transcendent awakenings following very intense and long lasting nondrug experiences. I wondered, as did he, what precipitated such events that seemed to come out of the blue. Was it an internal emotional emergency, or what Stanislav Grof would refer to as a “spiritual emergency” that led to an emergent crystallization of a person’s life? Descriptions of the events were very similar to those of MDMA patients and Maslow’s peak experiences.
At the causal level quantum life changes were not immediately comprehensible to every person. Beyond some events initially being somewhat unpleasant and confounding, certain qualities, in the end, were reported: a) they were profoundly emotional, positive, beneficial, and soothing, b) events, and even material things, seemed more beautiful and brighter thereafter, c) nonjudgmental love swept over them and d) it was like they passed through a one-way door from which there was no turning back – life was unambiguously and positively changed forever. The world was now a bigger and more unified place. Kaboom! Like a clinical MDMA treatment, much of it defied verbal explanation; it was ineffable.
But was there some subtle internal shift going on that might help explain its origins? Maybe something bubbling up from the depths of the psyche and rising to surface awareness under pressure? Miller suggests there was often a hidden or denied crisis festering below conscious awareness. A breaking point was slowly approaching when the internal system had to manufacture a set of internal emotional, and therefore physical changes, to break through. Like a built in survival system, similar to our intestines, a “breakdown” in reverse occurred. It entailed sudden physical and emotional changes, and with it, an enlarged consciousness. Just when they thought they “lost it,” they “got it.”
For Christians it was often described much like a born again experience, or a religious conversion. Others who were more inclined to see themselves as spiritual, described the event as a reset or reboot, much like MDMA patients describe it. It was uniformly seen as a developmental shot forward. And most everyone seems to regard this eye opening experience as sacred because it holds so much personal meaning and offered a sense of deliverance. A new lease on life, a new lens on life.
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“Their [new] spirituality is not isolated, not separate from the rest of their life. Rather it becomes the lens through which they now perceive life.”
- William Miller
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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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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.”
There are many emotional reactions to a drug-free spiritual awakening experience and a ceremonial MDMA journey. While this article focuses on empathy – both the feeling and the cognitive component – it is obvious to those who have awakened from a spiritual emergency that a variety of related emotions arise.
It is one thing to imagine how another person feels. Psychopaths, despite what the general public believes, are very good at empathy on an intellectual level. Even criminal psychopaths can put themselves in another person’s position and understand their perspective. It is bigger, better, and far healthier when empathy, in its deepest sense, allows us to “feel with” other people by recognizing a sense of oneness with them, what’s called unity consciousness. To hurt others would be to hurt ourselves.
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.
Does this empathogen work in a similar manner as psychedelics, blasting us off to a sudden and dramatic awakening of the mind and soul? Not necessarily. Much like massive stress, psychedelics and MDMA can knock people off an unhealthy path and offer them an entirely different trajectory, but there is a lot of arduous individual work that must follow the use of these propellants.
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.
Many events in life can change us, some in profound ways, others somewhat superficially. Some positively, some negatively. Some temporarily, some permanently. Let’s break it down.
With the “help” of psychology and the diagnoses of PTSD and C-PTSD, an entire trauma industry has developed. Much help has been delivered and, unfortunately, in many instances the assigned labels stick like glue and there can be difficulty relinquishing the newly imposed identity of “breakage.”
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Many great minds have come out of India. Like countless spelling bee champions, Mahatma Gandhi, and Aurobindo Ghose who later took on the name of Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo became a highly regarded spiritual teacher and author in the twentieth century. His main insight was that what many humans experience during altered or higher states of consciousness are glimpses of the future of evolution. And, he contended, one day these states of expansion will be normal for the whole human race.
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Traditional Native American cultures have long believed that time is a circular phenomenon. Remotely like the movie Groundhog Day suggests, every day is very similar and reoccurring like the last. In indigenous worldviews, the sun rises and the sun sets, routinely; we always have a predictable reset of sorts, the start of what we call a “new day,” or what Arapahos called “sleeps,” both reflecting measurements of time.
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John Nelson, in Healing the Split, refers to a fleeting or ephemeral sense of a higher purpose, not fully conceptualized, but compellingly near the heart. It holds answers to life’s pain but isn’t quite within our grasp…at least until the dark clouds engulf us. Then, with great staying power and inexperience matched with trust, a spiritual emergence nears surface awareness. And it always happens, as psychiatrist Stan Groff defined it, around the time of a blurry spiritual emergency.