Seeing What Is There

For fans of Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary, a woman's personal journey unfolds in a historically documented and scientifically elucidated memoir of lifelong struggle to overcome CPTSD with the help of psychedelics. For those exploring psychedelics as treatment for trauma and CPTSD, Erica Rex's memoir provides readers with a narrative guide to healing. Through exhaustive scientific research and elucidation of the history of psychedelics as medicine, she provides readers a road map for their own recovery journey. Rex's story unfolds in 2009, when she finds herself spiraling into depression following a breast cancer diagnosis. Her participation in a groundbreaking clinical trial at Johns Hopkins University in 2012, where she is given two doses of psilocybin, reopens the emotional door to her childhood trauma: the violent abuse she suffers at the hands of her psychiatrist parents. Her ongoing struggle with anxiety in the years that follow inspires her to try more alternative modalities, including ayahuasca, MDMA, and 5-MeO-DMT. Rex's path intersects with the dark history of psychological experimentation, including the work of Harvard's Dr. Henry A. Murray, her mother's mentor, whose controversial research led to the psychopathology of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Seeing What Is There navigates the complexities of the psychedelic therapy movement, questioning its ethical pitfalls and profit-driven motives and demonstrating that healing requires more than just pharmaceuticals—it demands economic security, community, and social support. Nuanced and eye-opening, Rex's account of her journey is a powerful meditation on trauma, survival, and the potential for transformation.

Erica Rex is a journalist, essayist, and fiction writer published in The New York Times, Scientific American, Poets and Writers, and more. She speaks regularly on the Psychedelics Today podcast and advises the US Congressional Caucus on psychedelic therapies (PATH). Rex spoke at the NIH's psilocybin series and is an award-winning fiction writer. She is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, and Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. She contributes widely to discussions on psychedelics and their role in medicine and society. Rex resides in a village in Suffolk, UK, outside London.