Seeing What Is There

My Search for Sanity in the Psychedelic Era

Erica Rex

• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Year: 2026
• eBook ISBN:
  9798896360377
• Subtopic: Alternative & Complementary Medicine

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter 1: The Doors of Perception
• Chapter 2: The Forest and the Path
• Chapter 3: Breaking Bad at Harvard
• Chapter 4: Neurotransmitters and the Fallacy of the Magic Pill
• Chapter 5: The Shattering
• Chapter 6: The Fate of Psycholytic Therapy in Europe
• Chapter 7: The Meaning of the Transpersonal
• Chapter 8: The Dark Side of Psychedelics
• Chapter 9: The Culture Is the Medicine / The Culture Is the Poison
• Epilogue: Seeing What Is There
• Endnotes
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author