What if we could listen to our heart more than our mind? Kevin and Niseema speak with Charley Wininger about his new book Listening to Ecstasy: The Transformative Power of MDMA. Charley Wininger, LP, LMHC, is a licensed psychoanalyst and mental health counselor specializing in relationships and communication skills. Recognized as The Love Doctor by the New York Times and Newsday, hes been treating couples and individuals in his Manhattan and Brooklyn offices for 30 years. "Wininger's book can throw open cosmic windows in even the most mundane reader", Tom Robbins, author of nine novels including Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Hosts speak with Charley Wininger about his new book Listening to Ecstasy: The Transformative Power of MDMA. Part 1 of II. Guest - Charley Wininger, LP, LMHC, is a licensed psychoanalyst and mental health counselor specializing in relationships and communication skills. Recognized as The Love Doctor by the New York Times and Newsday, hes been treating couples and individuals in his Manhattan and Brooklyn offices for 30 years. "Wininger's book can throw open cosmic windows in even the most mundane reader", Tom Robbins, author of nine novels including Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
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Kevin and Niseema
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Kevin O'Donghue and Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:00:24
Hi everybody. This is Kevin O'Donoghue Licensed Mental Health Counselor and I am Niseema Dyan Diemer Licensed Massage Therapist and trauma specialist. And this is The Positive Mind, where we bring you some ideas, concepts, and guests help you lead a more positively minded life. And if you have been paying attention you know that psychedelics are making a comeback. Yes, that's right they're making a comeback. Except this time they're doing it the official route: major universities like NYU, MIT, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, even Google companies are studying the effects of psychedelics to help treat certain mental health issues and increase an individual's creativity.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:01:11
The use of psilocybin is already having a tremendous impact on the treatment of depression, as well as ketamine. And the use of MDMA is scheduled to become a legally prescribed medication in the treatment for PTSD and other diagnoses by the year 2023. Our guest today is Charley Wininger, New York City psychotherapist and psychoanalyst for 30 years, who has written a book called Listening to Ecstasy The Transformative Power of MDMA where he talks about the responsible use of MDMA as a life enhancer, amongst other things, and as a way to feel connected to other people and a view life from the position of connection, rather than separateness.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:02:00
It is my pleasure to welcome Charley Wininger here to The Positive Mind. Hi Charley
Charley Wininger
00:02:06
Hello Kevin and Hello Niseema how are you?
Kevin O'Donghue
00:02:09
Hey, this is so exciting. This release of the book next week, I've had a chance to read it, and I have to tell you more than that, along with all of the great stories, the style of the writing is so engaging, so relaxing. It's not like taxing, it's not like a college text on MDMA. It's a relaxing, enjoyable read. I know it's a personal account. And so you're going to be telling us a lot of your personal experiences with this, but I wanted to start by asking you, as you've been "listening to ecstasy" the first question has to be, what is it that you hear?
Charley Wininger
00:02:53
Well, I hear many things and I'll tell you right now this week is speaking to me because as we all know, we're in the middle of a lot of news that's going on in the nation. And it's easy for somebody like me to get wrapped up in it and start coming up with all kinds of scenarios and possible problems. And you get hooked into every new headline and every political development.
Charley Wininger
00:03:33
Ecstasy or MDMA, which is a pure form of the drug Ecstasy tells me that it's all going to work out. As matter of fact, it's all been working out very well and that the basic trend, not only of my personal life, but the lives that we were all been living is a positive one. I mean, there's a lot of dramas and there's ups and downs, and there are things to pay attention to, but things are working out. And as a 71 year old man, who is also here to say that my life experience has borne that out and I have gone through many crises, whether they be social crises and cultural crises or a personal crises, and things have worked out for me and the world that I'm living in, we're all evolving and things are slowly getting better.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:04:37
Did it take you many times of doing MDMA to get to this sort of calm approach to life? Like, was there a time when you were anxious and you would be anxious for things that are going on in these days and because of your MDMA experiences that you're able to be, I'll call it sanguine, rather sanguine about life and everything that can happen in life?
Charley Wininger
00:05:05
And yes, and it's, well, you're asking me many questions
Kevin O'Donghue
00:05:12
I can help it Charley, it is such a good book!
Charley Wininger
00:05:16
Yes, and I've done MDMA now about 65 times over the past 20 years, and it does have have a cumulative effect. And of course I'm only using Pure MDMA. Only if I'm making sure that I'm doing it in a moderate dose and with the right proper attention to those two mindsets and the setting around me. But the cumulative effects are incredibly reassuring. And it is especially true for somebody like me, because I tend to in my own mind catastrophize and say, Oh my God, about all the things that are happening, I go look just observing this year and all of the things that are happening, and, you know, fear is a funny animal.
Charley Wininger
00:06:18
It has a function. It can tell you that things can go wrong and you needed to take action. And like with COVID, I needed to just take preventative action. And once I do, I can calm down and MDMA has taught me that my body has all of the ability that it needs to calm down. And my mind also has the ability and the skills, and I can learn to calm myself and ride through any storm
Niseema Dyan Diemer and Charley Wininger
00:06:49
Entirely. I'm really curious. What brought you to MDMA? How did you get there? Her name is Shelly,
Charley Wininger
00:06:59
My remarkable second wife. And by the time I met her in the year 2000, I had given up on MDMA. I did it in the nineties and the eighties a little, but I had given up on it, but she was out of a bad marriage, and she wanted to spread her wings. And she was 49 when we met and I was 51 and she learned that I had a history of experimenting with psychedelic compounds. She wanted to try it and to see her, which was the first time that it hit her, then MDMA, it doesn't really hit It just sort of bouys you up and bolsters you.
Charley Wininger
00:07:55
It was like she was coming out of a long sleep and she said it was like an awakening for her and in doing so she reawakened me to the potential of this chemical.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:08:10
So there is so much to talk about in this one area, I know that in the nineties or was it the two thousands, the New York Times called you the Love Doctor Oh yes. I did a few articles on you about that, but I mean, has it enhanced your merit? I assume that because Shelly had an awakening that you decided to experiment with this in your marriage and, and yes, you're together how many years now?
Charley Wininger
00:08:37
Yes, we have been together 20 years now and we decided to have it be a mainstay of our marriage. And that means we are using it about four or five times a year, as a way of reinforcing the foundations of our relationship. And in our case, the foundations were very unusual, it was really one of play, of fun and joyful celebration.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:09:10
What a concept for a relationship
Charley Wininger
00:09:12
What a concept for a relationship. In my first marriage it had taught me that the relationships have to be nothing but drama and struggle all the time. And thank God I got out of it in one piece. But with Shelley I learned that relationships can be joyful and playful and fun and MDMA, it was sort of the frosting on our cake and has helped us bond on a deeper level.
Charley Wininger
00:09:52
And so it added to the chemistry between us, with the chemistry of this medicine. And so we go to a very deep and joyful level together and we do that four or five times a year. And that, as I say, it has cumulative effects.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:10:13
It's a great, I always love to watch the two of you together. You compliment each other so much. And she was a big part of the book you talk about, but mostly I think Charley, as a counterweight to your natural sort of worrywart nature, and you know, if anybody's heard Shelley's voice, I mean, it's such a lovely voice that in itself can sort of calm and bring any worrying down. Yes.
Charley Wininger
00:10:38
All right. So the opposite of me in many ways and sees us as MDMA alike and that she has also taught me not to worry so much. And, and she has a giving me a sense of real support and reassurance so that I can rest assured in that love and then stand up and face the world and write provocative, controversial books like this one
Kevin O'Donghue
00:11:10
We all know about MDMA is the treatment for PTSD. And I want you to talk a little bit about that, but this concept I'm wondering if it can also be used in couples counseling couples therapy.
Charley Wininger
00:11:24
Well MDMA was used in couples counseling before it was made illegal in 1985, when it was first released in the late seventies and early eighties on the West Coast, therapists realized that they could use it for couples and they could do six or 12 months worth of couples therapy in a day using MDMA. And these days the only the couples work that's being done is being done underground, except that there is a study or two now using MDMA with couples where if one of the two people suffers from PTSD, from post traumatic stress disorder and one of the two people in the partnership has a trauma in their past They are having sessions where they are giving both partners MDMA and the partner with the trauma is going through a healing process while the other partner's there to support them.
Charley Wininger
00:12:31
And that's a very powerful transformative session for the two of them. There are often troubles between partners when one or both partners have trauma from their past. And so it's a very effective means of healing the trauma and doing good couples counseling.
Kevin O'Donghue and Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:12:52
You're listening to Charley Wininger here as our guest here on The Positive Mind talking about his book Listening to Ecstasy The Transformative Power of MDMA and it's going to be released on November 10th, 2020, and we recommend it highly it's a great, great read out again. And as I said earlier, because of the style and the rather informal way Charley takes us through his whole life and his experience leading up to taking MDMA, exploring it and really finding it and discovering it, in using it as a life enhancer. Now I want to emphasize Charley that you do not sell MDMA and you only talk in the book about the responsible use of MDMA, but this has to be discussed as an issue because I'm sure when people read the book and listen to our podcast they're going to want to try it.
Charley Wininger
00:13:49
Yeah. I mean, yes. And so at the point we brought this up Kevin, it's important to note that MDMA is still an illegal substance. And as I like to put it, the time span of its illegality was from 1985 to 2023. Because by 2023, it should be at the current rate of progress, being made into a prescription medication for the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder. But currently it is still illegal. The only way to obtain it is by finding somebody who has it, and it has to be used safely or not at all. You have to test it before you use it.
Charley Wininger
00:14:31
You have to have a close attention to a new set and setting, the mind set you have going in and the surroundings you have. And this is all outlined in the book, the last chapter as a guide to safe use. Yeah. It was a powerful psychoactive and you need to know how to use it or don't use it. Don't use it, please don't use it unless you use it right.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:14:58
Right. And you do talk about set and setting. And I think that's a really important thing to tell people, because it can influence the effect of the drug, but it's less than what may be eight hours, six to eight hours. So I don't want other people to be scared about taking this substance and then, you know, feeling like they're never going to be the same person, you know, like some of them
Charley Wininger
00:15:23
It's a four to six hours that are mostly, and if you do it right, it's actually very gentle, if you are expecting a psychedelic experience, like LSD or psilocybin mushrooms, and you're going to be disappointed because you're not going to get the visuals. It's not hallucinatory. It's very calming. It's a very soft ride where you feel completely in control if you were out and about, which I wouldn't suggest on a first outing but when for the first time you use, but if you were out and about people would just think that you were having a nice day. You're not going to act stoned and you're not going to be out of control.
Charley Wininger
00:16:05
It's a very gentle drug. Right.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:16:07
All right. So here's my fantasy. Here's my dream for the rest of our program today that we sort of enact an MDMA session right here, that we get into a Love space with each other. And I ask you some questions and you describe what happens with MDMA chemically to the brain and the body. And the part is like me, let's hug. You hugging through the screen. Yeah. That would be wonderful. Which is possible on MDMA. But I know seriously, I would like us to really get it, you know, give our audience a sense of what MDMA can feel like just by us talking about it.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:16:48
Since we've both been Explorers and know the effects of this. For one thing, what does it do to the brain and the mind and the heart?
Charley Wininger
00:17:00
Well, I can tell you chemically what happens and then what it feels like. So chemically, what happens is that it releases in the hormones that are already in your body, serotonin, mostly floods your body with serotonin, that's already in your body and oxytocin. So the result is that it bolsters you up. It's an amphetamine, although it's not exactly the same as Adderall or Ritalin. It's much gentler than that, but it gives you a profound feeling of safety and well-being.
Charley Wininger
00:17:41
And so, as somebody once described it, it's like the sun itself is in your heart.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:17:52
It was like, Oh, I remember what Picasso had said about Matisse. That Matisse had sunshine in his belly. And I can definitely account for that. The feeling of MDMA is like being home in your body, that there's nothing fighting with yourself in your body. It's a real, a soft experience of the body. So
Charley Wininger
00:18:14
The sexual experience, and then the feeling of true safety and wellbeing, which can be of course, very, very profound,
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:18:22
Well, and I'm really curious, and Shelley mentioned Adderall and Ritalin that are prescribed, like to the nth degree. Why, was MDMA taken off the potential schedule? I mean, because it sounds like it could be more intermediate, because I know a lot of people struggle with Adderall and Ritalin and their side effects and how intense they are. So, you know, it just seems like this could be a middle ground. I'm just really curious if you have any thoughts about that.
Charley Wininger
00:18:52
You mean, are you asking me why this is a vehicle? Yeah, well because people were abusing it. When it left California, he history is that when it left California and use of it, with psychotherapists in their therapy, it migrated to Dallas,dTexas and became a part of the club scene in Dallas. And people realized that this was a versatile chemical. It can also be used for dancing. And indeed a whole segment of Music called EDM or house music was made under the influence of MDMA for people who are dancing and you can dance all night on it, but they didn't know at the time about the protocols, the guidelines for safe use.
Charley Wininger
00:19:51
So people would be dancing themselves into a stupor. They weren't hydrating beNcause they didn't know about that. I think you need to keep yourself adequately hydrated during the experience. And some of them ended up in the emergency room. And of course, some of them were young, very young people and parents started getting concerned and spoke to the politicians and the politicians spoke to the regulatory commission. So that's how it became illegal.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:20:19
Yeah. It just seems like a real loss for people who maybe could have benefited from it.
Charley Wininger
00:20:24
It's a tremendous loss, but it's been underground all these years. And behind cannabis it's probably the most popular, underground recreational drug there is for people who are using it to enhance their lives. And I just want
Kevin O'Donghue
00:20:48
To emphasize the book is not about rave culture, club culture, although there are some festivals that Charley is going to talk about, that the book focuses on responsible use to enhance your life too, not just use it for a one night thing to meet with people and dance, but to really enhance your life, enhance your perception and enhance the process of your life. Charley
Charley Wininger
00:21:14
And it's for personal growth and for the healing. And some people who say it's recreational use. I like to have the better word to use is celebrational use. And, it definitely has enhanced my life in countless ways. It's helped me have a perspective on the events in the world and perspective on the events in my life. So it functions like meditation in that way, because meditation teaches me "Charley your mind is just creating all of these thoughts and they trip you up."
Charley Wininger
00:22:03
You don't have to believe everything that you think, and you should have some perspective on that. Well, MDMA, it actually can be one way to prepare the mind for meditation and they work hand in hand and one supports the other.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:22:20
I'm just thinking about how I operate in the world. I'm often, let's say, a single focused and driven for lengths at a time. And then, you know, something will come up organically for me, and I will somehow be able to let it go somehow. And I could see how MDMA by itself could be a substance that could bring me out of my driven, focused life and softened me in a way that can make me say, well, not necessarily the perceptions I'm seeing in my normal driven life, I can almost say a compulsive single focused life ,is necessarily accurate and true that when I'm in this altered state or in this softer place, I can see things more clearly and believe things more clearly than from that sort of hard driven, focused compulsive place.
Charley Wininger
00:23:15
Yes. It can take you, as Fritz Perls the innovator of Gestalt therapy that I was trained in said, lose your mind and come to your senses. Right.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:23:27
I love it. Why don't we tell everybody what that means.
Charley Wininger
00:23:31
In other words, what you were talking about, like being so involved and being driven and to doing this of the one's life into the beingness of one's life and to being in the moment, which is where we are, let's face it, which is the only place we really live. And for moment to moment, that's where we are. And it helps me get in touch with the moment and so instead of right this moment here with you thinking about what's the next thing that I'm going to say, and what's the next thing Kevin going to ask me, what's Niseema going to say and I can be concerned by that.
Charley Wininger
00:24:14
Just be in the moment with you right now in the flow of what's going on between us. And I'm realizing that I can be concerned. Am I getting all my points across? Am I saying things in the right way? Yes. Or I can just relax and say, you know what, I'm having fun right now. And I'm enjoying this. Yeah.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:24:40
Okay. So four or five times a year, what is it? Was there a time that you were taking it more often?
Charley Wininger
00:24:46
No, no. We were all, well at the end probably was that towards the beginning for Shelley and I, but we learned that can have diminishing results. So if you take it more often, and especially at our age, and like I say, now I'm 71 and if I take it more often than that, it won't have profound effects. And so a lot less is more.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:25:17
I am curious how, and I know I've experienced this when I've gone on meditation retreats or, you know, it's like you get that really good feeling and then you come home to your life and it's gone. And I'm just curious, how do you use support, the insights that you get and the experience you get to sort of filter into your life.
Charley Wininger
00:25:38
Thank you. That's a great question and it's really all about integration, isn't it? Whether it's a meditation retreat or a profound weekend workshop, or doing a strong medicine, like MDMA, it's about how to integrate it into your life. And there, again, going back to Listening to Ecstasy, and what it's telling me is that my connection to the people around me is what's really what really matters and what I can give them, how I can. It tells me that there is always something I can give to somebody at any given moment.
Charley Wininger
00:26:20
I have a lot to give, and it's always an opportunity to give something to someone. And that helps me integrate these experiences into my life and imbues my life with more meaning and a sense of purpose.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:26:36
I know on page 138, you say the only thing that matters is to be skillfully kind to others in this particular moment, and to create interactions and expressions that touch and hopefully serve others.
Charley Wininger
00:26:58
Whoever wrote that is a really good writer. I admire his talent.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:27:05
But it strikes me, Charley, as it is a philosophy, almost as a philosophy as a byproduct of taking the substance, you know?
Charley Wininger
00:27:16
Yes, its made me a more spiritual person in that way. I like to call MDMA "the chemical of connection" because it helps me connect with myself, with the people around me and the world at large, and helps me realize that I live in an illusion of separateness, which of course the culture enforces, you know, disillusionment of individualism and this culture of individualism that we were all raised to follow, it's an illusion. And we're really all connected, profoundly connected, whether we like it or not.
Charley Wininger
00:28:00
And that I have more in common with political people that I might oppose than I might care to admit, I have more in common with all kinds of people in the world and that I might feel comfortable with, but in reality, what I have in common with others is more important than the differences. And then if there are more similarities that I have and that we all have with each other, we're all really connected whether we want to be or not. Anyway, we might as well learn how to get along because if not the results could be quite, quite terrible.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:28:43
I know those are the words of Charley went into your talking to us here on The Positive Mind about his new book Listening to Ecstasy The Transformative Power of MDMA. We are going to take a break, a musical break and we'll be back then in a few moments
Kevin O'Donghue
00:30:05
Charley when we broke, you were talking about a way of accepting people whose opinions are different than yours. And it occurred to me that it sounds like the residual effects of MDMA can be like this interrupter in my mind, in my body and myself that will curtail, let's say an immediate reaction to what somebody is saying, somebody who has a different point of view and maybe makes me a little more receptive and tolerant and open to what they say. Is there like a before and after effect for you? That MDMA is sort of like an interrupter of, let's say a time when you might have been less tolerant?
Charley Wininger
00:30:53
Yes. It helps if they classify MDMA as a psychedelic, but it's also been classified as an empathogen because it helps develop one's sense of empathy, which is an underutilized human trait these days. And it's helped me become more empathetic. So when it comes to the half of the country that just voted in a way that I oppose I could, you know, easily get on my soap box and get all self-righteous about they are bad people or this and that, or I can use my ability to empathize and realize that now those people are not that much different from me.
Charley Wininger
00:31:48
And they have their own burdens, just like I have mine and they have their own fears, just like I have mine. And they are just as sincere as I am. And so it helps me to come down from my own self righteous throne and meet people where they are on their own level and realize that that's my level too, and see into their hearts because it's not much different than my heart.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:32:21
Hmm. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Charlie, in the book you talk about doing MDMA in a group and that there are exercises that you do with a certain set of people that you know and one of them was that you touch the heart of another person. Because you go into this experience with consciousness and intention, because it is going to have this kind of effect, it is going to make you empathic and that makes you want to feel connected to others. And sometimes words aren't necessarily what's needed that you can just see another person just totally get their essence and just in a nice setting, want to reach out and touch them.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:33:11
Yes. Can you talk a little bit about the setting where you do this with a group?
Charley Wininger
00:33:20
Well, I've been with groups of people, with very carefully chosen groups of people, because that's the setting and where we have gotten together for the day to just do MDMA and hang out together and see what develops. And it's a sensual, but not a sexual drug. So it's not like people don't end up making out, but they might end up in a spontaneous cuddle puddle and they might end up doing something like this exercise that is in the book, which is where your hand, sitting cross-legged facing each other, and your hand is on their heart and their hand is on your heart.
Charley Wininger
00:34:16
And just looking at each other in the eye and saying, "I see the light in you. And I recognize the light in you." And it can be very profound, not only because of the eye contact, but the touch. Yeah. I believe that touch is really real. I have a section of the book called "Sense of Touch" because it makes sense. It's like, somebody can reach me with their words, but when they touch me I come to, it takes me right out of my mind, right out of my head and right into the present moment and this connection with them.
Charley Wininger
00:34:56
And so doing it on MDMA is like hyper touch. You just, you know, it can go right. I feel like it was right into it, into my heart. And so it dissolves, temporarily dissolves, the barriers between me and the person I'm with, you know,
Kevin O'Donghue
00:35:17
And in a way, this is reality. This is more real than the separate me with my own separate political agenda, my own separate thoughts and compulsions and desires and focus that this is really somehow much more real, the real thing that's right.
Charley Wininger
00:35:38
MDMA has taught me, are you asking me what, why, when it teaches me, I'm listening to it, what does it teach? And it teaches me that I am an essence, not an I. I am an essence, a we. And that I'm part of a greater whole, a greater connection, to the connectivity, to the whole human race.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:36:06
Well, then it also speaks to what you were saying about touch because that's how we do experience that connectivity in a really direct way. And I feel like this would be a really important experience maybe for someone who is touch averse where touch has gotten all of these traumatic couplings with it. And it may be really helpful for someone who has trouble being touched. And, and maybe again, in a therapeutic setting, working with someone in a very titrated way to sort of open to that because touch communicates so much, and it is so important for the physiology of the body for, for a year or your own mental physiology.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:36:50
And that sense of connectedness.
Charley Wininger
00:36:52
Well, in the same way, I like where you're going with this. And I think you're on the right track, except that I want to put a caveat to that. That somebody who has such an aversion to touch because of past trauma they should probably first have a session with somebody who is sitting just for them through the whole MDMA experience, as a guide, a trained guide who can guide them through their trauma. This is why it's so useful for treating PTSD, as somebody I know who is an underground therapist put it, it's like helping people, the people who can relive that trauma, but it's for them, it's like watching a shark in a tank where they can go right up to the face of it, but not to be threatened, then not in danger.
Charley Wininger
00:37:43
And it shifts that whole experience of the traumatic event. So they're no longer run by it and ruled by it. And somebody would really have to go through that kind of healing session first before they might be more receptive to be touched.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:38:00
Yeah, that makes sense. And we know that it's largely used with war veterans, but it's also a particularly useful for victims of sexual abuse.
Charley Wininger
00:38:10
Correct as well. That's the part of the population that has been in the phase one, two and three trials are too are survivors of sexual violence. Yes.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:38:24
It strikes me as, is probably very useful for a socially anxious people like it's no surprise that it was used at parties.
Charley Wininger
00:38:32
Well, yes. And another aspect that a MDMA is being used for in the Research is for social anxiety. Yeah. And I know several people who report that one, a single MDMA experience gave them such a feeling of well-being that echoed forward into their lives when they were sober where they realize that, Oh, I don't have to be so afraid of people and they're not much different than me. And that probably they are afraid of me as I am of them.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:39:10
You know, it wasn't in the book, but it strikes me as an anchoring experience that you can go to a party once you've taken this and now I don't need this anymore. It's so it was available and fun. But in psychology we often talk about anchoring something, remembering something so that you can bring it up when you need it in a similar situation.
Charley Wininger
00:39:35
Yes. And the way to do that is of course physically somatically. So for me MDMA, and for a lot of people MDMA, is mostly felt physically in the chest as a warm feeling in the center of the chest, in the heart, radiating, outward radiating throughout the whole body. So what I will do sometimes is just take some time during the time that I'm high and get in touch with this wonderful reassuring, blissful feeling in my chest, this warm, loving feeling of wellbeing.
Charley Wininger
00:40:20
And just to put my hand on my chest and feel that and breathe into it. And then after I'm down and the weeks and months afterwards, I can recall that feeling by remembering that experience, putting my hand on my chest and breathing into that and and having this echo of this wonderful feeling of safety and wellbeing.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:40:52
And that sounds like how you would integrate this into your life. Like it needs to be really specifically done because it's not going to spontaneously show up for you. You have to integrate it without it too. Yeah. So that's really important and very interesting,
Kevin O'Donghue
00:41:14
You know, Charley, there is some part in the book where you talk about the difference between things that interest me and things that make me happy. I want to say to our audience that, you know, to find and follow things that are interesting and that you get interested in is all well and good. And it was terrific and wonderful, but sometimes you might want to step back and ask, is this making me happy? You know, sometimes our interest and curiosity, as you can get us into compulsive place where we are not really separated from it. And it can be a really hard driving and difficult and, or what I like to be in this part of the book was you talking about.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:41:55
Yeah. You know, there are plenty of things to be interested in the world, but I have a priority to follow things that make me happy. Yes.
Charley Wininger
00:42:03
As somebody who was always interested in the life of the Mind and I mean, I've been reading the New York Times every day since age 10, somebody who was always interested in
Kevin O'Donghue
00:42:14
That's a diagnosis by the way, there is no the diagnosis for a second,
Charley Wininger
00:42:18
And that's what's logical right there. And I find what's going on in the world interesting or fascinating. It's like watching a slow train wreck, you can't take your eyes away, but it certainly doesn't make me happy and find that also with my first marriage now that was interesting. It was all so full of drama and pain and struggle. And it fascinated me, but it certainly, it didn't make me happy. And that, by the way, that wasn't her fault.
Charley Wininger
00:42:59
I think that it was just the dynamic between the two of us. Where Shelly we don't have these fascinating conversations like I did with my first wife, but it was a revelation to me because she wasn't satisfying my need for drama. She wasn't satisfying my need for harrowing intellectual discussions about sexual politics. Well into the night, all she was doing was making me happy. And by loving me without reservation and really helping me realize that I could give to her without reservation and what a joy that is.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:43:43
Yeah. It's a very good part of the book. Again, were talking to Charlie Wininger author of the book, Listening to Ecstasy The Transformative Power of MDMA. And this section of the book is one of those places where you can really connect with how invested am I in following what interests me, but not making me happy. And how much do I want to flip that? And speaking of flipping you say, Charley that MDMA flipped a switch for you. It flips a switch and that any good, real psychedelic will flip a switch. Can you talk about the switch that got flipped?
Charley Wininger
00:44:22
It was a flip, it was a switch I didn't even know it was there. A switch from my mind to my body, from my anxieties and my "coulda,woulda,shoulda"s. And what I just didn't know what just happened or what might happen back to the now from right. And to the moment and helped me realize that the beauty and wisdom of being in the moment. So that's one of the switches. Yeah. And, and out of the sense of what's interesting to the sense of what the world of what can make me happy and what could make me happy?
Charley Wininger
00:45:12
Well music can make me happy, deep, meaningful conversations could make me happy giving to somebody, giving something to somebody or contributing to their lives thing and engaged with them can make me happy, feeling a part of the greater network of, of humanity can make me happy. Being in nature and being in the glory of nature can make me happy.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:45:38
I know this sounds like it goes directly against the American cultural idea of "you gotta stress through your life on some level." I can feel how it just hits up against, as you said earlier, that individualistic sort of cultural, the program that we get. What trance a trance. Yes. It is kind of a, and I can see why it might be a hard for some people to believe that it's possible to feel the way that you talk about, and you might feel some resistance to it. It might feel like it's utopian on some level.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:46:23
I don't know what my question is here, but
Kevin O'Donghue
00:46:25
And I have a question because you're making me think one of the one aspect of the book, he talks about his journey from his childhood, to being a grown up, a grown man and really growing up in your experience is Charley on the Lower East Side as a young man. But when you talk about aging and let's face it, you're a 71 year old man doing a psychedelic psychoactive chemical that makes you in a very small group, that makes you a rebel of some kind. And you say, at one point in the book, sometimes I feel lonely.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:47:03
Lonely because our mainstream culture is not this way. And I'm a holdout, you're a holdout. And unfortunately you're a holdout, but I mean, and you are going into your eighth decade with just the brilliant, beautiful attitude of enhancing your life, rather than the winding down of life. You're just getting going, you talk about aging as an achievement versus this youth centric culture that we're raised to believe in. And that was the point.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:47:43
That was the question I wanted to ask or talk about: aging as an illusion and how MDMA has enhanced this part of your life.
Charley Wininger
00:47:54
Well, I like to say that the real problem of getting older is not aging in itself, but ageism: this idea that the older we get, the less value we are. And unfortunately when you internalize those attitudes, they tend to be self fulfilling. If they had studied people and noticed that when people would expect that their lives are going to be one of slow demise and limited capacities, that's what tends to happen more. And then instead it can be a whole flowering.
Charley Wininger
00:48:33
I mean, I wake up every morning and realize, okay, I'm old and I have these aches and pains, but you know what I mean? I've never been here before. I have never, this is a whole new way of being, and it has its disadvantages because I can't do a 50 yard dash like I could when I was 18. And like, I can't perform in bed like I could when I was 18, but you know what? I have new abilities, a new perspectives and an accumulated wisdom that I didn't have. And when it comes to performance in bed, I actually have a better sex life now than I did when I was 18 or 25, because I'm taking my whole self to it, my whole body to it.
Charley Wininger
00:49:24
And my heart as well. So these years of full of awakenings and possibilities for Shelley and I, and MDMA helps keep me feeling young and optimistic.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:49:38
In the book, you have this Gestalt dialogue between your 70 year-old self and your 19 year-old self. Can you just say that?
Charley Wininger
00:49:48
And I'm a kind of appalled by the other side.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:49:51
That's right. I totally envied the 70 year old, more than the 19 year old, for sure. But to give our listeners a sense of that little dialogue there.
Charley Wininger
00:50:03
MDMA helped me get in touch with the fact that there's a 50 year old in me, a 40 year old in me, a 20 year old and me an 18 year old, or even an eight year old in me that's not too far beneath the surface because it helps me get in touch with that youthful vitality for four, five, six, seven hours, in a way that is right there. It's really available to me. I can walk around and feel like I'm half my weight and feel half my age. And so it's all available to me. So when I'm back down and I'm sober, I realize it's really all available.
Charley Wininger
00:50:46
And that the aging that's just a number in my head, but I can get speaking of trance, Oh, I'm old, I'm old, I'm an old, it's a self-induced trance or culturally induced trance. But so when I realized this, I realized that that, yes, there is a 19 year old alive inside of me that has something to say to me, and I have something to say to him. And so I wrote that out as a dialog in the book and the conversation that the two of them had and realized that each of them has something to say to the other, I can learn from my 19 year old, I can be reminded of how to be spontaneous and to have that sense of play that I might've lost as I've gotten older.
Charley Wininger
00:51:42
And this 70 year old or 71 year old in me, I can imbue the the younger man in me with the kind of wisdom that he so badly lacked at that time.
Kevin O'Donghue
00:51:55
All right. We are talking to Charlie Wininger author of the book "Listening to Ecstasy The Transformative Power of MDMA." You know, Charlie, I just wanted to read this from an article by Richard Doblin. And I want you to talk a little bit about MAPS and psychedelics in general, if you will. But the FDA, just designated MDMA assisted psychotherapy for PTSD, and psilocybin for treatment resistant depression as breakthrough therapies. We only have a couple of minutes left, and I do want to have you back to talk about MDMA in therapy amongst other things, but can you talk a little bit about now the progress in the legalization process of MDMA?
Charley Wininger
00:52:39
Well, from what I understand that's spearheaded by Rick Doblin and the MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies, they'd been funding the research into the use of MDMA to treat post traumatic stress disorder. And they've been having remarkable results so much so that somebody with treatment resistant PTSD, their therapies hadn't worked, and the antidepressants hadn't worked, nothing worked, and they would have a few sober sessions with the therapist, and they'd have an MDMA session reliving the trauma, and then they'd have integration sessions.
Charley Wininger
00:53:25
And then they'd have another MDMA session and more integration sessions. At the end of this process, they no longer met the criteria for PTSD about 66% of them. And a year later, after a year of total sobriety no more MDMA that figure went up. And 77% of the people in that study group no longer met the criteria for PTSD. So because of this, the FDA is trying to fast track it on the road to approval as a prescription medication that will save lives and enhance lives in the next couple of years,
Kevin O'Donghue
00:54:11
Beautifully said, this is where, Charley we're coming to the end of our show. Can you come back for a second show?
Charley Wininger
00:54:17
I would love to
Kevin O'Donghue and Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:54:18
All right. We are, again, talking to Charlie Wininger author of the book that comes out next week, November 10th, or very soon Listening to Ecstasy The Transformative Power of MDMA. We look forward to a second show with Charley. Right now we're going to list our sponsors. Well, yeah, we'd like to thank our affiliates who have been airing us, the Positive Mind: KSCR in Florence, Oregon, KAOS Olympia, Washington, KYGT in Idaho Springs, WGRN and Columbus, Ohio WRWK Richmond, Virginia. And we'd like to thank our producer, Connie Shannon, our chief engineer
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:54:57
Geoff Brady. You can contact us at tffpp.org. That stands for the Foundation For Positive Psychology.org, with questions, comments, or suggestions for the show. And I have a question. Why are we in Texas or are we, we should be in a radio station at Texas Charley. We're going to redeem that experience of MDMA in Texas, back in 85 and get it a Texas station tuning in to show the therapeutic benefits of MDMA. You have been listening to The Positive Mind. I am Kevin O' Donoghue and I'm Niseema Dyan Diemer, licensed massage therapist. Thank you for tuning in. If you have any comments about today's show, please send them to me at kevin@thepositivemind.com that's kevin@thepositivemind.com.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:55:52