Getting High on Memories

DEGENERATE GUIDES & ALTERED STATES COLUMN | ISSUE TWELVE | NOSTALGIA

Written by Isaac Tenzing | Drugs Columnist Illustrated by Tashi Donnelly (she/her) | @tashi_rd | Editor-in-Chief

“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime…”

In between heads full of mescaline and adrenochrome, Hunter S. Thompson would occasionally daydream about his so-called “main era”: the 1960s, a peak he proclaimed may never come back again, describing it as the “high-water mark” that broke the waves.

According to my parents, I’d be accustomed to believe I’m currently living this. “These are the best years of your life,” told ad-nauseum, these words flooding like rivers with no bank. Everyone keeps telling me these are the days I’ll remember whilst I’m literally doing fucking anything but the kind of thing that is memorable. 

My first megalomaniac manager, a 3am Denny’s run, the time I saw a half-naked gimp on a leash get walked down Queen Street on my first acid trip. These are all memories, and you never know which you'll end up nostalgic for until they’ve floated on by. After a bump or two, some are too numb to save their face, but for others gumming the last of your Laneway gear to ‘Only Girl’ by Rhianna was exactly what stuck. Some drugs make memories and some try their damn hardest to ensure there isn’t one. But what about a drug that can take those forgotten memories and make them nostalgic?  

With the recent aligning of stars, as of this month Medsafe just approved pingas assisted therapy (not a legal term) for qualifying adults with PTSD in Aotearoa. While in practice there are only two psychiatrists currently delivering this therapy (in Wellington and Auckland), this is a bloody good step in the right direction. Putting us alongside Australia's 2023 move, following Medsafe waving psilocybin through last year, this makes us only the second country in the world to legalize MDMA-assisted therapy nationwide at a systemic level. It feels as though the minotaur (FDA) chasing psychedelic assisted therapy through this hedge maze might just have an escape after all. Entrapped in that same maze, however, resides US’s Amy Griffin, controversial writer behind the now viral book, The Tell (2025).

Griffin’s memoir describes resurfaced memories of childhood sexual abuse, recalled under the influence of MDMA. The book received lots of blow back: the New York Times reported that Griffin’s husband had backed research pushing FDA approval of MDMA and had money in a company set to sell it. A former classmate then sued, claiming the abuse story was actually hers. This year Griffin sued and swung back claiming defamation, making this likely the first ever legal battle over who owns the rights to their own drug-induced memories.  

Now, I haven’t read her book, and I don’t think I ever will. I am not here to use my precious 800 words of my student drug column on whether Griffin’s memories are true. What interests me more is the discussion around this Eternal Sunshine-esque drug use and the possibility of Tesla-shaped party pills being able to recall forgotten memories or falsify one’s own nostalgia. 

I won’t be that bug-eyed, Adderall-fuelled moron reinventing the wheel at 3am. We’re well aware memory isn’t as reliable as you’d want. From your flatmate who insists he’ll pay you back for gas, to police who falsify evidence, inconsistency in memory is weaponised as often as sharp medieval weaponry. Source confusion (losing the origins of information in our mind) and the illusory truth effect (the notion that repeated information feels more truthful due to familiarity) in harmony represent an eerie separation between how we view the certainty of a memory vs the accuracy.        

Now let us circle back to pingas.

Psychedelic research has dug into the drug class’s pharmacology, detailing the neuroplasticity shifts during 5-HT2A agonism, and the memories left vulnerable during reconsolidation. That’s the fucking driest and nerdiest way I could have said it, but the anvil crafts a double-edged sword here. MDMA can un-wedge thoughts and allow a more fluid conversation around repressed or hurtful memories, but it might also fundamentally change how one views said memory, even adulterating the facts somewhere in the mix. In even more layman’s terms, people theorise that MDMA is actively performing Inception. 

Don’t misconstrue me as being a naysayer, quite the contrary. Imagine your memories like a scene from Julien Donkey-Boy. You perhaps don’t remember what some of it was exactly but you remember the feeling. It’s the same way you may not remember your exact wording in an argument but you remember the feeling. MDMA has the ability to un-wedge thoughts and allow for a more fluid conversation around repressed or hurtful memories. It also potentially might fundamentally change how one views this memory, for good or for bad, even adulterating facts along the way in a means to make them tolerable. 

In a more relatable sense: Two Door Cinema Club might remind you of being a teenager, a photograph of your beloved dog might transport you to a moment in time. That’s the harmless version of what this therapy’s trying to do on purpose. 

And perhaps that’s the strangest kind of high: not forgetting where you are, but becoming inebriated off your own memories. 

References

Aotearoa, R. T. R. I. (2026, September 4). Party drug MDMA gets official approval as PTSD treatment. RNZ. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/health/1256159/party-drug-mdma-gets-official-approval-as-ptsd-treatment

Hamilton Morris. (2026, May 26). Psychedelic False Memories with Hamilton Morris & Dr. Manoj Doss [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuszGenKaxc

MDMA: Australia begins world-first psychedelic therapy. (2023, June 30). BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-66049989

Medsafe approves new innovative PTSD treatment. (2026, September 4). The Beehive. https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/medsafe-approves-new-innovative-ptsd-treatment

Storm, M. (2026, March 12). Shock lawsuit against author of high-profile memoir ‘the tell’ over claims of stolen memories. Megyn Kelly. https://www.megynkelly.com/2026/03/12/woman-files-lawsuit-against-amy-griffin-over-memories-in-the-tell-memoir/

WTOP Staff. (2026, June 16). Author Amy Griffin sues woman who alleged she stole her stories of sexual abuse in memoir “the tell.” WTOP News. https://wtop.com/national/2026/06/author-amy-griffin-sues-woman-who-alleged-she-stole-her-stories-of-sexual-abuse-in-memoir-the-tell/