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Charley, age 70, and Shelley Wininger, age 68, were getting couples massages on the Maui beach when they found themselves peaking on MDMA. “Being massaged at the same time and knowing we were experiencing the same thing in the same chemically altered way was a very special way to celebrate our honeymoon,” remembers Charley Wininger, a clinical social worker and author of the upcoming book, Listening to Ecstasy: The Transformative Power of MDMA. Once or twice a year, Charley and his wife Shelley, a retired nurse, take MDMA, just the two of them, to share a joyful trip that keeps their relationship honest and fun.
The Winingers are just one couple taking advantage of “the love drug”, believe to have the ability to connect partners on new and profound levels. “It feels fully heart opening. The separation between us dissolves and we see each other more clearly as we are and love each other more profoundly,” says sex and relationships coach, Ashely Manta, of her and her partner’s MDMA date nights.
It’s said that MDMA was used by select therapists in couples counseling before the substance was criminalized in the United States in 1985, but the first clinical pilot trial giving MDMA to couples since prohibition was only published last year by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). The same non-profit organization that funds other trials on MDMA for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) dosed a couple, which included a PTSD patient, before participating in Cognitive Behavioral Conjoint Therapy (CBCT) in conjunction with two full-day MDMA sessions.
Dr. Anne Wagner, a clinical psychologist in Toronto, was one of four lead investigators on this trial along with her mentor Candice Monson and longtime MDMA-assisted therapy experts, Michael and Ann Mithoefer. Wagner explains MDMA is useful for couples because it creates a kind of “neurochemical safety net” where emotions and painful topics can be experienced and discussed rather than avoided, a “hallmark of PTSD”. She explains MDMA releases neurotransmitters and hormones associated with wellbeing, like dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, and oxytocin. Plus, activity in the brain’s fear center, also known as the amygdala, is reduced. The combined effect is that “empathogenic” (literally empathy increasing) feeling.
Couples in this trial, however, were “not feeling particularly ecstatic,” says Wagner. “It’s more that they’re able to sit with emotions that they’re having… And within a couple, they’ve often been avoiding lots of difficult things in their relationship.” Under the influence of MDMA, couples are able to say, hear, and understand things that they were hard to bring up before, and it’s changing the course of their relationships. “It’s really an unearthing of whatever is present,” says Wagner. “It could be things that are positive, things that are negative, old memories, things that have been simmering. But the ability to bring that forward is so important for couples, because when we’re doing couples therapy without MDMA, that’s what we’re trying to do the whole time. We’re trying to have honest, heartfelt conversations. To not be holding back or having secrets, but [to communicate] in a loving way.”
While this initial trial only worked with six couples, Wagner says a future study of 40 couples is in the works to start as soon as one year from now. And this time, Wagner is passionate about including all types of partnerships, unlike the first trial which only included six heterosexual couples. She wants to include more queer couples as well as non-romantic pairs, like close friends, roommates or family members where one partner has PTSD.
But beyond PTSD, couples have been taking MDMA together for decades, and many swear by rolling together once or twice a year to reconnect and strengthen their bond. Like Charley and Shelley Wininger, many couples like to bring MDMA along on vacation to really mark the occasion, and ingest the empathogenic substance at a fancy hotel or out in nature. However, staying home to roll together and just talk, cuddle, and listen to music is a popular choice too, especially because communication can be so much easier under the influence. “It makes it easier to talk about difficult subjects and to acknowledge our own faults without self judgement that is often projected onto the other,” says Tim* (who asked that we withhold his last name for privacy) of he and his partner’s bi-annual MDMA trips. Not only is admitting things to your partner easier while on MDMA, but hearing things without judgement and shame comes easier as well, along with acceptance of hard to broach topics.
We’re trying to have honest, heartfelt conversations. To not be holding back or having secrets, but [to communicate] in a loving way.
For this very reason, MDMA remains a popular choice in underground psychedelic-facilitated therapy sessions. In fact, an underground facilitator who asked to be called “MJ”, told Playboy it’s the only entheogenic substance he uses with couples. Unlike classic psychedelics like magic mushrooms or LSD where folks can have profound individual experiences and insights, MDMA is a more shared experience. In MJ’s underground sessions with couples, he explains after partners take their dose, they often start by “going inward”, which can look like listening to music with eyeshades on or meditating together silently. But once the drug is actively in their systems, he encourages couples to talk. While some pairs dive right in, others need some more guidance, and for them, MJ has a few activities he facilitates. For example, he encourages partners to go back and forth expressing appreciation for things the other does. Charley and Shelley Wininger tell Playboy they also do a similar activity while rolling together. They call it “expressing gratitude” and take turns sharing times they were especially grateful for one another.
Both MJ and the Winingers can take this exercise to a more difficult place and take turns apologizing for times they were less thoughtful of each other’s experience. “It’s very touching… It makes me feel very grateful,” says Charley of their apologies exercise. “It makes me feel heard,” says Shelley. “Either I hear him or he hears me and we know that we get it.” In MJ’s sessions, he explains this is often a time of tears, but it can be a real breakthrough moment for couples despite the sometimes challenging material that arises. MJ also has a third, similar activity he facilitates, where he holds space for partners to express things they’ve been withholding from each other. “That’s what this is all about,” explains MJ. “It’s all about reconnecting and resolving the differences that have been coming up between them.”
But Charley Wininger warns, don’t save up all your hurtful baggage for MDMA date night, because that’s not fair to your partner. As an example, he tells me the story of a client of his who revealed an affair to his partner during an MDMA experience. “It was really problematic regardless of how she responded in the moment… after the effects wore off, it put a sour note on the experience. It’s like, you fucking did what?” Charley and Shelley agree that an MDMA trip is a good time to disclose some hurt or resentment, but it’s not a time for “any big divulging.” If you’re considering this for you and your partner and not you’re sure if the types of resentments you want to reveal are too heavy, it may be cause to enlist a facilitator to help you through your journey.
However, one aspect of MDMA date night you will (probably) have to go without if you decide to enlist the help of an underground facilitator is the most intimate of shared experiences: sex on MDMA. There’s an old urban legend that says folks shouldn’t have sex on ecstasy because “it can ruin sex forever” but Charley and Shelley Wininger inform me that’s mostly BS. “You won’t ruin sex forever any more than rolling would ruin normal life forever,” says Charley. However, what is true for lots of couples is the inability to climax and difficulty getting and maintaining an erection for male partners. But the Winingers have a few tips on getting around that: Viagra and cannabis.
They clarify they don’t smoke cannabis at the beginning of the trip because it can make communicating a little harder. “I’ll be talking, starting a sentence, and then I’m like, what was I saying?” explains Charley. However, toward the end, when the time for talking is done and the only language left is touch, cannabis can help increase their pleasure tenfold, and even help both of them climax. Charley clarifies Viagra or Cialis helps to keep him hard, but it’s really the magic of a sativa-dominant strain that helps him orgasm. Shelley adds she personally prefers an indica-dominant strain, but the combination of MDMA and cannabis helps her have multiple, powerful orgasms. “She was almost permanently peeled to the ceiling,” says Charley of one such experience. “I had the best orgasm I ever had,” elucidates Shelley.
Other couples who partake in sex on MDMA say orgasm isn’t necessarily the goal of the act, that the intense connection and closeness they feel to their partner is its own type of intimacy. “[We don’t] always [have sex on MDMA], but when we do, it’s fantastic. All of the potential shame or discomfort connected to sex tends to melt away,” says Tim*. “The effects of these experiences can improve our sex life for months after the fact and give us a greater sense of agency and playfulness in our sex life.”
Lastly, couples who do partake every Valentine’s Day or on another special occasions can develop a routine or ritual to prepare, and that can help to set the mood or the “set and setting” for a positive, heartfelt journey together. For that same reason, some pairs like to set communal intentions before rolling, and going on a supply run together for things like chewing gum, Gatorade, and massage oil is a fun and practical way to start connecting over your shared psychedelic experience. The Winingers also recommend folks always test their substances for purity first, be sure to take the next day off to rest, and have the supplement 5-HTP on hand for the following day to help ease any crankiness. They also recommend having some dinner already made you can heat up after your roll, like a healthy soup, and Shelley warns not to mix MDMA with certain prescription medications, like SSRI anti-depressants.
While the Winingers look forward to their MDMA date nights, it’s not so much to dive deep into the hurts they’ve been holding back from each other. “We are this rare kind of couple who are unusually compatible. So we don’t have a lot of hidden stuff or deep stuff to work out,” they both agree. But when I ask if it’s because they have a perfect connection or because they’ve been using MDMA together since the early days of their relationship nearly 20 years ago, they say it’s both. They mostly just look forward to having fun, being playful, and enjoying that intimate chemically altered state together. “It was such a revelation meeting [Shelley] because my first marriage was all work, work, work. More work than anything else. And meeting Shelley I realized that we could bond on a level of fun, play, and joy. And MDMA became the frosting on our cake.”