Can Psychedelics Save a Marriage?

After years of talk therapy, we were still stuck. Then we tried something else.

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We were on our way to the grocery store when my husband said, apropos of nothing, “Amelia gave me the name of a great couples therapist.” My stomach churned. Here we go. I had no interest in more couples therapy. The ten years of it we’d already done had taught me my husband’s list of grievances was bottomless. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a few gripes scribbled on the back of the grocery list in his pocket. Drugs and alcohol were his obvious addictions, but feeling victimized—that was another biggie. No thank you.

Twenty years earlier, our marriage counselor had trained us in a communication technique called “mirroring,” where one partner listens and reflects back what they heard, without judgment or interpretation. At first, it was powerful. We felt understood in ways we hadn’t before. I learned a great deal about my husband’s inner world, the childhood stories behind his struggles—as he did about mine. Having grown up without healthy relationship models, we needed outside support to build what we’d never seen. For a while, mirroring helped us move from reactive loops to more conscious, compassionate dialogue.

Until Narcissus drowned in his own reflection.

I know how that sounds. There are more generous versions of this story—ones I’d eventually arrive at (see Casting the Lead in a Play Called Desire)—just not on that particular Tuesday.

Week after week, year after year, I’d faced a barrage of my husband’s criticisms and all the ways I was not meeting his needs—for affection, attention, and adoration. I started to dread our therapy sessions. Armor up, I told myself each time I prepared to hear him out for another round of complaints. Each time gritting my teeth and responding with some variation of:

“That makes sense…I can see how my response felt dismissive.”

Two inner voices battled for supremacy. One that shouted at him, Enough! Get over yourself! And another that shouted at me, Marriage takes work. Do the work, Girl!

I’d pushed through this empathy fatigue for years but it nauseated me now, just thinking about our old couples therapist’s office with its saggy, brown corduroy couch.

“So, would you be open to setting up a meeting with her?” my husband asked, sounding optimistic.

“I’m sure she’s great,” I said, wondering if Amelia’s therapist had a colorful afghan thrown over her saggy, brown couch. “But that’s just not where I am. It might sound selfish, but I’m focused on me right now,” I said. I was deep in sexological bodywork, and cracked open by my psychedelic-assisted therapy sessions. “I’m working to get myself whole.” You do you had become my policy. I was genuinely encouraged by my husband’s commitment to the 12 steps, his garden, and his new job. But the two of us were no we—only two amicable co-parents, temporarily cohabitating under a state of emergency.

I wasn’t just tired of the same repetitive talk—I was tired of words themselves. Language had come to feel like a grossly inadequate tool, like trying to pick a lock with a blade of grass. Words couldn’t capture my longing or discontent, nor could they hold the awe and wonder I felt while exploring new realms of sex and drugs. I needed different instruments. Musicians, it seemed to me, had a good thing going. If I took up the ukulele, I wondered, could a plucky little tune better express the tangled knot of reverence and despair inside me?

And yet, it did seem to me we needed some support—given the world’s uncertainty, the unclear path ahead, and my own ambivalence about the marriage. So, after some time and further reflection, and despite my aversion to couples therapists with brown couches, I approached my husband with an alternative.

Osha was referred to us as an expert in “consciously uncoupling”—California-speak for an amicable divorce. But, in actuality, she told us in our first session, “I make no assumptions about the outcome of any of my engagements.” She promised to help us find ways to overcome pain, let go of the past, and move forward with our lives—with or without one another. She also offered the option of psychedelic substances to support our work.

“Does that sound crazy?” I later asked my friend Sarah.

“No, not at all. It sounds like it could be amazing and powerful. But what about his drug history?” she asked, concerned.

“Yeah, we discussed that with her. She’s very experienced and has had clients with similar issues. We made a plan that we’re all comfortable with.” My husband would take only Psilocybin, which has a low potential for abuse as it doesn’t trigger the brain’s reward system in the same way as other substances. He had also discussed our plan with his AA sponsor. I would take a combination of 2C-B and Ketamine (already familiar to me from my therapy with Julane). The first leg of our journey would be individual and introspective, Osha explained, and then she’d call us together to talk.

It was late morning when we joined our therapist in Occidental at a small cottage surrounded by damp blackberry bushes. Inside, it smelled comfortingly of woodstove. Osha had a lean, almost angular frame, but her presence was soft. She carried herself with the same generous, non-judgmental quality I’d noted in Ava (with whom I did MDMA), Corina (with whom I did Psilocybin), and others who held space in psychedelic work. She served us our respective medicine in small silver dishes as we sat together on the floor and talked about the heavy rain falling outside. The effects came on quickly.

I slid under the blanket on the mat by the fire, listening as sitar music drifted across the room. My husband settled into the couch on the far side of the space, folding himself into its corners. For a while, I was aware of him and me, apart in the same space, just like our marriage.

And then he disappeared completely from my mind. I drifted, I flowed, I surged. I was water. Something oceanic moved in me, slick and oily, greasing rusted joints. Every nerve awakened and spread like wildfire, making my face flush with heat. My hips began to sway. Osha, noting my restlessness, came over to check on me,

“How are you doing?”

“I feel good,” I said, for lack of words to describe the primal, wild, and completely unapologetic beast circling inside me. It wanted to lick, claw, and devour. It was neither welcome nor unwelcome—just a fact.

After a period of time, Osha paused the music and called us back together. When I stood, my legs felt electrified. I crossed the room with purposeful intent. I had dropped my armor but drawn my sword. Something in me had shifted, sharpened. I wanted to cut him, my husband, that man.

“Where should we begin?” Osha asked.

I jumped right in. (It turned out I had my own shopping list of grievances.) I began recounting, in great detail, every lie and betrayal over the last twenty years that came to mind, and I did so with the determination of a witness before a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Let the record show, Commissioner, that this wife was wronged.

“I don’t know why I didn’t leave you years ago,” I seethed in a low murmur. As the words spilled from my mouth, my fury transformed into shame. As angry as I was with my husband for sabotaging the stability of our family, I was even angrier with myself for enduring it. Weak, pathetic, codependent, toxic: an addict myself. “If I were stronger, I would have walked away.” This insight burned me, and then collided with a raw, aching desire for freedom.

Osha, carefully attuned to the moment, treaded lightly with clarifying questions and interjections. She invited my husband to not just listen but seek to understand my experience. I kept expecting him to counter or defend, but he was only calm and attentive.

“Yes,” he said over and over, “you’re right,” until I had no fury left, and my monologue came, at last, to a sputtering stop.

There was a long silence before Osha commented: “Only our most intimate relationships can heal our deepest wounds. Sometimes we stay because some part of us knows that our lessons are not done. The question for each of you to consider is, Have you learned all that you’re meant to from this relationship?” Her words crept in, took hold, and shook me free from my indignation. “You can choose to do your lessons elsewhere, in another relationship, but the curriculum will be the same.”

I could feel the edge of my aggression, then, softening. I nodded my head, conceding to the possibility that every hardship serves a purpose in one’s unfolding journey. That nothing is wasted. There are no mistakes.

My husband looked at me searchingly, “I think we’re still in it for a reason. I think there’s more here for us.” His words dropped like stones in still water. I observed myself from outside of me, rocking in the ripples, looking up into his weary face. His eyes were soft, his mouth turned downward. A sudden well of empathy filled my chest. I had harmed him, too.

“I always loved you, but you always doubted it,” I said, looking for his reaction. His face betrayed none.

“Can you hear that?” Osha asked my husband, her voice cutting through the tension between us. He didn’t answer and stared steadily at me.

By this time, the room had gone dim and the woodstove fire, like the medicine in our systems, was dwindling.

“It’s time to move on,” he said, finally. “The past is in the past. I’m strong in my sobriety. There’s a lot of distance between that guy and me. I’m focused on the now. If you’re not interested in working on this marriage, I want a divorce. I’m going to move on with my life, with or without you.”

Just then, a surprising thought occurred to me: that a single shrug of my shoulders might send all these years of trading in resentments tumbling away. So I did that: I shrugged my shoulders. Then I shook them. Then I stood up and shook my legs like I was expelling the past by kicking it to the curb. I shook all over with my self-induced seizure as the wall between the past and the present broke free.

The shaking wasn’t just a release—it was a message. My body was done talking in circles. That day marked the beginning of a different kind of dialogue between my husband and me—less spoken, more felt. In time, we’d learn to know each other again through our hands, our breath, the language of touch.

People sometimes ask if I’d recommend that particular mix of medicines or that kind of session to other struggling couples. Maybe. As long as they realize that session with Osha was just one layer pulled back, one of many. There’s no shortcut. Just a long process of becoming more honest, more ourselves.

I love you.

Juliette