When you know that you need help but conventional means have failed you, what is left is the unexpected.

MDMA is a drug made from the oil of the root of the sassafras tree. It is known as a party drug, taken by people who want to have a good time, to dance, to shed their inhibitions.

It has also, since early 2023, been authorised in Australia for use in treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder that has not responded to treatment. For those with PTSD, the goal is not to have a good time and dance: it is to come back to themselves. To the person they were before they were traumatised.

Around the same time, renowned author and social researcher Rebecca Huntley experienced her first of three illegal MDMA sessions, delivered by an underground healer from the Northern Rivers district of New South Wales. Rebecca wanted to stop the crushing cycle of intergenerational trauma not just for herself but for her children.

This treatment would do nothing less than change her life, impacting her personal and professional views of the world, the way she saw the past, present and future. It helped Rebecca see herself and the world around her with greater wisdom, compassion and awareness of the connections between humans and the natural world.

Sassafras is the story of a woman determined to confront her traumatic past head on. In doing so she discovered something that could be of great benefit to us all.