There's a ton of free lectures on psychedelics and therapy. Ram Dass aka Richard Alpert comes to mind. Stanislav Grof is another. I can't afford to see a therapist anymore, but maybe going right to the source for free is better. I do a lot of writing too. Actually at this point I'd be surprised if I got any benefit out of doing a trip with a psychedelic therapist.

The studies are designed this way to keep the shaman in the equation when the drugs become treatments. Informal polling over decades shows MDMA is pretty impressive on its own.

We need a clinical study where a group of veterans with PTSD is given MDMA and an isolated quiet place to go for several hours. Each of them is told they're receiving a drug that cures PTSD. The placebo effect paired with the brain rewiring effect of MDMA will cure more people than any other method and demonstrate that the effect is self-contained.

I'd take the bet that MDMA + talk therapy is more effective than MDMA alone, based on the theory of action that recollection is not a read-only operation in the brain, and traumatic memories remain as such in no small part due to the intense negative emotions experienced when recalling them. By forcing/encouraging recollection of traumatic memories, while subduing the negative emotions with MDMA, the connection between those strong negative emotions and the memories are weakened.

Basically, the MDMA subdues the negative emotions, and the talk therapy forces recollection. Without the latter, you just have a pleasant trip, but I highly doubt real progress would be made against the trauma.

It depends on how much study you do before hand and how much you go into the session with intention. If you're not good at self-education then I agree a therapist as a guide is helpful.

Worst-case scenario you might just have a wonderful time for several hours and decide you'd like to do it again with some kind of guide.

Anecdotally it's very uncommon to hear about people having a bad time or even a neutral experience on MDMA in any number of settings.

> and that without talk therapy (or some kind of self dialogue perhaps?) psychedelics are not as effective.

Probably because there aren't any people there looking for specific boxes to check

Doing this in front of one of them is a horrible idea because it all gets documented. That's not a very relaxing environment tbh, it isn't a relationship where you are both on equal footing

And this all gets exacerbated if the therapist has their own issues that you aren't aware of