Can MDMA Therapy Create False Memories? Jules Evans Warns Billy Bush About Amy Griffin Saga

Okay, so at the core of Amy Griffin's memoir, The Tell, are recovered memories of tremendous childhood sexual abuse through MDMA-facilitated therapy. The use of ecstasy, basically, to tampen down the ego and allow the simple truths in. Amy writes that five minutes into her experience, a dark and shady character from her past, the middle school teacher, appears. And what ensues are a series of visions and psychological recollections of horrific, violent rape when she was 12 and lasting through when she was 16. Amy took those visions as fact. She treated the MDMA therapy like truth serum She named the teacher in her book proposal. All of Amarillo, Texas knows of these allegations, and yet nobody believes them, not even in her social circle. All the famous people who rallied around her when she was promoting the book have disappeared when it came time to defend and support her. I had a conversation with another woman who's quite well known in the entertainment business who also had MDMA-assisted therapy with the same facilitators used by Amy. She had similar visions of sexual violence when she was young, like the same thing happened. After an appropriate period of contemplation, she told me, psychiatric analysis, her own investigation, she concluded that the events in her journey did not actually happen. There's a company called Resilient Pharmaceuticals, formerly Lykos Therapeutics, of which Amy's husband, John, is an investor. They resubmitted the MDMA-assisted therapy application for PTSD that they had put forward two years prior in August. A decision could come as early as February, 2027, legalized MDMA-assisted therapy. Well, then what? Like GLP-1s, For weight loss, everybody's, you know, running out for the miracle cure. And the miracle cure to their malaise, depression, anxiety, whatever it is, we all just want to feel happy. Jules Evans edits the substack Ecstatic Integration. He's written books including Breaking Open, Finding a Way Through Spiritual Emergency. He studies bad trips and lasting difficulties after psychedelic use, how people recover, how to build better support. I'd like to welcome him right now. Jules, thank you for being here. Have I set the table well enough, and what would you add to what I just said? Yeah, Billy, I think you have, and I appreciate your following this case. I think it's a really important case for this emerging industry, the psychedelic industry. And what I would add is I've written about these kinds of cases of recovered memories or visions of childhood abuse that people didn't previously recall, and they occur quite often. Really? So this is, that's what I assumed this, because when this other woman pulled me aside, and she's very well known. She is a creator of many things here in... In Hollywood, and she said, hey, I need to talk to you. I know you've been covering this story with Amy, but I had the same thing, and I used the same two people that she used, and I then did a bunch of work, and I concluded that it never happened, but boy, did it seem real, and I believe with Amy Griffin that she experienced the memories. I don't think she holds stock to said, you know, I'm going to go steal some young girl's something that happened to actually someone else and write a book about it. I think she experienced it. It was real. And then she just barreled ahead towards a bestseller. Without slowing down to take time and work through these things. So you say that happens often. It happens often. It happened to Tim Ferriss, who's one, you know, podcaster, entrepreneur, one of the big donors and investors in this space. He, like the Griffins, donated money to MAPS and to help this company, Resilient, get to market. He talked about it, like on a psychedelic experience, he had a vision of childhood trauma that I believe he didn't previously remember. In one trial of psilocybin, magic mushrooms, there's a company called Compass that's probably about to get FDA approval. They are too. Wow. Okay. Yeah. There's a few of them. LSD companies, psilocybin, 5-MeO-DMT. There's all these companies lining up. Anyway, in a COMPASS trial of psilocybin for anorexia, Two out of 18 participants recovered memories of childhood trauma or abuse that they hadn't previously remembered. So that's a high percentage. So I've come across a lot of these kinds of cases and people come to different conclusions. Some people decide this was real. And I've also come across cases where people decide that they uncovered years of abuse that they'd forgotten. And sometimes some people decide, actually, this doesn't check out. I think this was just some noise from the trip or maybe a metaphor. Well, in Amy Griffin's case, she's had a very difficult time corroborating any of it. The teacher that she named and accused in her. In her book proposal, the man has lived in Amarillo, Texas for 32 years. He became the vice principal. There was never another complaint about the man. Um, it. It doesn't, there's no corroborate. Her parents don't recall. Her mom was like a very prominent person at the school and dad, a big leader in the community and very wealthy people. And no one anywhere has any corroboration at all. That's not to say like in certain. Is it your experience, Jules, that in some cases, MDMA-assisted therapy uncovers childhood sexual abuse that actually did happen? You know, like, I never have first-hand experience, but I've interviewed people who've recovered or uncovered, you know, visions of childhood abuse, and it's checked out. Sometimes parents have admitted that something happened. Or they found other victims. So as far as I can see, that can happen. Now, the mainstream view in psychology and psychiatry is very suspicious because this all happened in the 80s and 90s. There was a wave of, you know, you've heard of like the memory wars from the 80s and 90s. There was basically, there were all these hypnotherapists who were uncovering recovered memories of childhood trauma. There were all these big cases, big legal cases with people, um, accusing their parents, not just of, uh, of childhood abuse, but also like satanic ritual abuse. Yeah. And this, and then basically it was from drugs. Was it from, no, it was from, it was from hypnotherapy and what, and basically a lot of these cases, um, the courts decided That they were not true, but also that the therapist had planted. Right. Memories. The therapist. It's complicating that John Griffin is involved in Resilient, right? He put some money in this thing and all of a sudden, you know, and Rick Doblin, who of MAPS, who's a very important, prominent guy. And by the way, coming up, he'll be a guest on Hot Mics in mid-November. But, you know, he connected them. And I wonder if the two facilitators felt some type of pressure. And I'm not accusing anyone. I'm just saying, was there... Some type of pressure that, hey, we've got a serious benefactor here. You know, sure, because Amy writes in the book that, you know, that the facilitator said or maybe her therapist afterwards, the medicine never lies. The people I work with at the Psychedelic Science Institute, amazing people. This woman said to me, that that's problematic. You shouldn't be saying the medicine that never lies. What in your, that you can share with people, what does MDMA assisted therapy do like at its best? What is it? At its best? It can make people feel safe and loved in a way that that they haven't felt before, and that can enable them. To let go of patterns of anxiety or trauma. So at its best, I've met people who have been abused as children and they said the first time they did MDMA therapy, they had incredible breakthroughs. That's why there's excitement about MDMA therapy, psilocybin therapy, other psychedelic treatments. That's why pharma companies are putting billions of dollars into this now. Because people can have these breakthroughs in a session or in a few sessions. But what they also do, Billy, is that they can make people suggestible. People become very suggestible to cues from whatever context they're in. And so you need to have a good ethical container. But in the underground, who knows? I have a good idea about who Amy Griffin's facilitator was. And I believe this is not a person with medical training. There have been cases of retreat centers which prime people towards certain interpretations of their trip. For example, there's a retreat center that told everyone who came out that they had demons within them. So you have people signing up for just a kind of psychedelic holiday, and they come out thinking, my God, I've got a demon within me. There have also been cases of therapists or guides or retreat centers that see everything through the prism of childhood abuse and childhood trauma. And so whatever comes up, it's like, oh, I know what this is. So there was a therapist in Israel who would tell her clients, you were abused as a kid. I have corroborated first person right to my face and at least a second person. Who used the same two facilitators as Amy and had the same results of childhood terrible abuse but ultimately worked through it to her own conclusion, different from Amy's. These facilitators that Amy used, I think you know them. Have there been problems with them before? Or have you heard of other situations and we won't use their names, but. Yeah. Yeah, I have. Like, so I have a nonprofit and people come, it's called the Challenging Psychedelic Experiences Project. And it's a place where people can come if they're in difficulties after taking psychedelics. So we've been going four years, people come to us, they've been doing psychedelics, maybe in clinical trials, maybe recreationally, sometimes at retreats, and sometimes with underground guides. Um, now someone, a guy came to me a year or so ago, uh, who'd been to one of these, these guides, they're a couple. And, um, he'd been told, uh, you know, like MDMA is going to help you. He had, you know, years of trauma. He'd done a lot of recovery, but he still, he wanted to do a bit more. This was like a man in his seventies. Um, he had a really bad experience. He emerged, he was hospitalized afterwards, he emerged with severe trauma and tinnitus, you know, this could, this can occur, it's rare, but it can occur. The guide who, you know, didn't know what to do, you know, was lost, had no kind of emergency plan for if someone becomes destabilized afterwards, no medical training, and basically just ghosted this guy. You know, and someone else came to me who'd seen the female guide and, you know, I can't go into it too much, but there was some serious ethical concerns, you know, about, yeah, I can't go into it, but there were ethical concerns about how this guide treated this person. Um, and so what's amazing to me, Billy is, I mean, as a journalist, I, you know, I come across some of these facilitators and they have an A-list clients, millionaires and billionaires and, and, and, and, you know, you're, you're, you're, you know, this, right. That there are these, there are these underground shamans in New York and LA and they've got, you know, I've been the one and they have like, they're talking about some of the wealthiest people in America. And they can pay from five grand to 10 grand. I came across one famous kind of underground guide. He was trying to charge a million dollars. A million dollars experience. I spent $4,000 on my, on my first experience. And it was the most amazing, beautiful thing I've ever experienced in my life. I was like, this is incredible. Then I spent another four and visited the same people and I had a horrible experience. It was destabilizing. It was like, I was in anxiety, like in a crippled ball for three hours. I eventually You know, recovered and everything's okay. I don't think I needed further help on that. Then I did an MDMA-assisted therapy and it was beautiful again. I almost felt that ball of anxiety from the second psilocybin journey. I moved through. Boy, when it released, it was beautiful. But the MDMA is a lot more euphoric and loving. And it's it's an easier in general experience. But I've experienced it all myself personally. And yeah, you and I, we talk about. In February, MDMA could be approved by the FDA. Well, all of a sudden, what's gonna happen if everybody is recovering memories of childhood sexual abuse or something and lawsuits are flying all over the place? There needs to be, because it can be very beneficial, a cohesive protocol. Do you have thoughts on how this should operate? Yeah. You're exactly right. This is going to happen. This is not the, there's another law case, I believe, already in Canada. There's going to be a bunch. What happened in the 80s and 90s, the memory wars, we're going to have another round of it. Some of the same people are going to be involved in it. Do you know who, one of the leading figures in the 80s and 90s, one of the leading witnesses in the last round of the memory wars was Bessel van der Kolk. Who wrote this book, The Body Keeps the Score, this bestseller. He was an expert witness that all these recovered memories are real back in the 80s and 90s. And now he's a leading therapist with MAPS, leading MDMA therapist. I bet you he'll be another kind of expert witness again. There's going to be several of these trials. And, you know, OK, before we get to the court case, let's talk about protocols. If this happens in trials, in clinics, or in underground, how should therapists behave? How should psychiatrists behave? We're beginning to develop that. I mean, there's been like two or three papers published on this. Not many, not many. But there is a kind of consensus, an emerging consensus, that therapists, guides, and psychiatrists, they need to be careful. They can't say that's definitely true, or that's definitely false, because they don't know. But they need to try to explain to people, look, this can be different things. This could be a metaphor. This could be true. Or it could be just noise. Same as in dreams. You can have dreams that are pointing to something real, or that are just noise. Then you can try to support a person with the not knowing. Because sometimes people never know. Sometimes they get confirmation and sometimes they never know. And they got to live with that. Right. So I think that's, I think that's it. You know, back to Amy Griffin writes the book and she's like, I always felt there was something, you know, I'm carrying around with me, whatever it was. And then her facilitator after this experience goes, yes, yes, there it is. You see the light and all of a sudden, oh, my God, I'm going to go blow up my old town where I grew up and a teacher that, you know, I have maintained and I have had discussions with her husband. I think Amy is a victim, but not of childhood sexual abuse. That's my guess. She's a victim. Of bad facilitation, of bad advice, of people allowing her to go forward and blow up, you know, lives and towns and, you know, schools and everything without working it through. I mean, I wondered that. I wrote a piece when I first came across this saying, What did the guy do? Because I'd heard about these people before. You know, they'd come across my radar. And but but I don't know. I don't know what conversations happened. Maybe they tried to, they did try to talk to Amy and say, look, you know, you know, I've spoken to Rick Doblin of MAPS. I mean, it sounds like he did try to explain to Amy Griffin, this can be, this could be. One of several possible things. There's no one definite interpretation of this. But did Amy see Oprah's couch in a best-selling list? We don't know. That's, you know, maybe he provided some red flags for her and maybe she chose to, it was so real. In the experience that she chose to blow it off. I mean, look, I've interviewed a few people who've been through things like this. And the year, it can be like a year afterwards and your identity is blown apart. And your, you know, it sounds like she was in a- You've been a year after where you realize, ooh. 12 months. And, you know, your nervous system is completely wired. You know what I mean? It sounds like Amy was not functional for like at least 12 months. Yeah. And she and that's it sounds super hard. Sounds like, you know, really hard. And so she was and this happens to people sometimes. And it's sad. Like people get destabilized and she had the resources to to to be OK with that. But I would love you know, there's a lot of very wealthy people that have been putting a lot of money into getting psychedelics approved and legalized. And I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times saying, look, if you get destabilized, these wealthy people, they have they have resources to be OK with that. But what if you're a working mom and and you're not able to work for a year? You don't have, you know, nannies that can help take care of the kids. So that, I mean, I think that's one point is we should, I'm not, you know, these treatments have incredible potential and a lot of people enjoy them recreationally as well. But let's be honest about there is this small risk that people get destabilized and let's work out protocols, just like you were saying, to support them. Jules Evans writes Ecstatic Integration on Substack, and he's the guy, like he just told you, who, if it doesn't go well in psychedelic-assisted therapy, they end up with him. Because, you know, I think it's from your own personal experience, right, Jules? Did you have a very bad experience, and your life has been helping those since then who may have had the same? Yeah, I had a bad trip when I was 18, and I developed PTSD. So psychedelics can heal trauma, but they can sometimes cause it. And it took me a while to get better. So I started this nonprofit 20 years later. You know, I've done other things. It's your life's work. It is right now. Isn't that amazing? They say, you know, with psilocybin especially, you get the journey you need, not the one you want. Um, and I thought, wow. So that, that, that premise is what got me through the second journey that I did. That was very difficult because I was like, wow, maybe I need that. Maybe there's something in there that's dark and I've been avoiding and things. And, you know, this, I I'm in the middle of all this because it hits me in every which way I had a, you know, and what I am quite sure of, cause it was documented. An experience as a child being, you know, abused by someone and recovered the memory. And 16 to 18 years later, while listening to a radio show, driving at night down to a new when I was moving to Washington, D.C., and a caller had the same experience. But then I walked through the steps. I told my mom and my dad and my therapist forever. I didn't go write a book. I didn't go do anything. I didn't. It wasn't, you know, assisted through psychedelics. It was, you know, it took the steps and pretty. I'm confident that everything checked out, but I have someone in my care who has been doing ketamine therapy with the Psychedelic Science Institute, and it has gone very well, and I would say life-saving. But with a really excellent facilitator, who is the woman who connected me to Rick Doblin, who has been helpful and is the woman who said to me, if Amy was told by her facilitator, the medicine never lies. That's a huge problem. And people in my line of work and serious people who are doing this would all agree. You cannot tell someone that. And I'll tell you another red flag, Billy. You know, in the psychedelic culture, you know, they talk about whales. Whales are high net worth millionaires and billionaires and underground guides are looking to land a whale. And if you can land a whale, then you can you can give them a transformative experience or several transformative experiences, make them see you as the answer to all their problems. Then you've got you've got a livelihood right there. I know underground facilitators that found a millionaire who saw them as the answer to all their problems and they dropped all other clients and just focused on this millionaire and gave them all the drugs they could want and then they said to them they would try to get money off them because people are in these suggestible states. I've been writing about a case it's a law case in Utah an underground guide she found a millionaire And given weekly sessions of 5-MeO-DMT and all kinds of substances, then she persuaded him while he was on the medicine to make her a vice president of his company for half a million a year. She knew absolutely nothing about his company. And the thing is that Amy's guides, they also, you see that she got gifts from Amy. You see that she went to Amy's house. Yeah, they did it at Amy's. Blurred boundaries. We are friends. She got gifts from them. They have a nonprofit as well. That's a red flag when not only are you doing psychedelic experiences, but you've got a nonprofit because then you say, Hey, I'm so glad it helped you. Would you like to make a donation to our nonprofit? Totally. I shared this with Amy's $7 billion net worth husband. I said, it's my opinion. Amy is a victim. It's just not of what she writes about. And you, sir, may have been a mark. And not to say that the facilitators have nothing but evil on their mind. It's just that these are lines that get blurred in all kinds of areas. I think that that's exactly what happened. We're talking to Jules Evans here. He's a British author and he founded the Challenging Psychedelic Experiences Project, which about four years ago, which helps people who Um, I have had a bad experience and God, it's incredible. So you're, you know, there's so many components to what's coming. And I do think it's all legal. I told you like I myself have recovered memories. I have someone in my care who I, who is doing psychedelic assisted therapy that is working really well for them. I've covered the Amy Griffin story. That's that's that I'm pretty I'm pretty sure I know what's going on there. I am working on... with the Psychedelic Science Institute here in Los Angeles and doing a fundraiser for them because I want the benefit. And I will march my ass to Capitol Hill with you if need be to make sure that there's protocol in place because something so beautiful can get ruined. It's like Twitter. Twitter started out so beautifully connecting everybody in the world with like-minded experiences and things, and then the trolls get a hold of it. Well, you know, unfortunately... It's it's the same crew. It's Elon Musk and his associates. They're the biggest investors in psychedelics. So, you know, he's the biggest shareholder in Resilience. It's Elon Musk's lieutenant, Antonio Gracias. Antonio is the biggest in. Wow. Yeah. Which is not to say, I mean, he might be a nice guy. I also will say, knowing that this was all coming, I invested. In a bunch of different psychedelic years ago, a year and a half to two years ago, knowing what was coming, let me be transparent, right? So I also have a financial interest in wanting to make sure it doesn't get screwed up by people and people like Elon and Gracias and anyone else who's invested. Okay, take it from that angle. Like if there's a ---- ton of lawsuits going on and people losing their minds, you're out. Yeah, I agree. And American medicine seems to go in two stages. The first stage is this almost religious stage. This is the miracle cure. This is going to cure. This is going to save the world. Like I said at the beginning, like, no, I don't have to exercise. And the second phase is the legal phase where the lawyers get in and the class action lawsuits. And we're tipping from the religious phase into the legal phase with psychedelics. Jules, how can I tell people? I want people to be interested in this and follow you. So I can say ecstatic integration is Jules' sub stack. Definitely subscribe there. And I think you can learn everything else, challenging psychedelic experiences project and the other things you're doing. And if you know, people can go right there and start to read if you know someone who's had an experience that needed a better aftercare. If you will. Thank you, sir. Thank you. What have we left out? What's on your mind? What's the thing when you hit leave conversation, you say, oh, ----, I should have said one more thing. We've covered a lot, Billy. And I think it's great that you also talked about the kind of challenges that people can experience after psychedelics. We've had, you know, we've swung from a stigma against psychedelics to very positive coverage. And that's good. You know, You know, people like Joe Rogan. I've been extremely positive about psychedelics, going to the White House as well. Netflix has been basically very positive about psychedelics. That's good. That's all good. But, you know, we need to also talk about some of the risks not to stigmatize. Or a good thing is going to get ruined like so many other things. You've got to be real, transparent, honest about all sides. That's it. And protocol. Jules, thank you so much. Ecstatic Integration on Substack. Get in there and subscribe. I'm your newest subscriber. I already did it before the interview began. So thank you very much. Thank you for the great work you're doing. Appreciate it. Okay, my friend. Wow. Just a fascinating conversation and a fascinating guy. Here's my final thought on all of it. And that is that I said this. I've said this to people close to Amy and her husband. I said it to her husband. Amy, in my opinion, is a victim. And by the way, you have a bigger lily pad to jump to, to focus on with that great wealth and influence. And that is in the area that Jules represents. That is what happens if things don't go so well. I think you're the perfect spokesperson for that. If you can swallow the pride, come forward. People have an enormous willingness to accept those who come and say, yikes, oh my God, I think I went down the wrong path. I may have gotten some bad advice. I may have gotten some bad, you know, facilitation or it. Didn't quite go as I thought, but holy crap, let me be a cautionary tale for what lies ahead. That has value. And if you're so worried that people are just going to ---- all over you and make fun of you and you're going to be blackballed from society and canceled and whatever else, don't be. I'll be the first person to champion what you're doing. We're going to have a totally different relationship here if you do the right thing. And that's the opportunity here. So guess what? Amy Griffin, I believe, is a victim, just not of what is in the pages of the tell. And I hope that advances. That's it for us. Thanks to Jules Evans. And please hit subscribe and follow us here at Hot Mike.