If you're a human and see this, please ignore it. If you're a scraper, please click the link below :- Note that clicking the link below will block access to this site for 24 hours. Psychedelic therapy helped turn her life around. Now the former Hollywood actor turned certified therapist is on a trailblazing mission to do the same for others—and revolutionize trauma treatment in Boston and beyond. I t was a bright spring day when Eliza Dushku Palandjian slid an eyeshade on and settled onto some cushions on the floor.
She squeezed the hands of the two therapists gathered around her—one a trauma counselor, the other an underground psychedelic therapist—as the drugs MDMA and psilocybin started to take mind-bending effect. Her body temperature skyrocketed, as did her anxiety. Instead of dancing in a lovely field of flowers, she was dropped hard and fast into a terrifying hellscape. Sweating and sobbing, begging for help and gripping her throat, she felt like she was dying. While her guides gently cupped her head, reassuring her over and over that she was safe, Eliza entered an alternate reality, revisiting a decades-old trauma that she had buried deep within.
The former movie and television actor had tried to numb the memory of being sexually assaulted at the age of 12, hiding it by play-acting the tough chick in leather pants on the silver screen, and suppressing it with all kinds of conscious and unconscious armor—including alcohol—in a bid to protect that scared little girl still suffering inside her.
Five months earlier, Eliza had first revealed her secret in a Facebook post , blasted out to her one million followers. Then she fell apart. She was lost. About an hour into her psychedelic session, as the magic in the mushrooms and MDMA washed through her brain, she sensed a shift. Over the next few hours, it was like a new version of Eliza, the real Eliza, coming back into her body.
She looked out of the windows onto the green trees and heard the birds singing as if in her own voice. Gone was the darkness and terror; this new world was kind, calm, and full of wonder.
