Gwyneth Paltrow is opening up about her “emotional” MDMA trip. During the first episode of her upcoming Netflix original series, The Goop Lab, the wellness guru and Goop founder explores how psychedelics can promote healing, prompting her to open up about her own experience using MDMA during a trip to Mexico with her husband, and then-boyfriend, Brad Falchuk.
“I never thought of MDMA as a psychedelic and when I took it, I didn’t hallucinate,” Paltrow said, according to the Daily Mail, explaining that she was encouraged to try the psychedelic after reading a case study in which a man used it to treat his post-traumatic stress disorder.
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“It wasn’t a rave, it was actually very, very emotional and I was with my then-boyfriend, who’s now my husband, and he’s a very empathetic, very profoundly wise person and he was able to help me through it,” she continued. “It does make me think there’s so much to unearth if I did it [for therapy purposes].”
Set to premiere on Netflix on Friday, Jan. 24, The Goop Lab is a “curiosity-driven exploration of boundary-pushing wellness topics,” including energy healing, psychic mediums, psychedelics, sexual health and more. The six-episode series, presented by Paltrow’s lifestyle site Goop, is already generating plenty of talk ahead of its premiere, including some criticism from healthcare professionals.
Reacting following the debut of the trailer, Dr. Jen Gunter, M.D., an OB/GYN and author of The Vagina Bible, told Bustle that the series appeared to be “classic Goop.”
“I think I have watched it twice and can’t stomach a third time, so I can’t give you a frame-by-frame takedown,” Gunter said. “This looks like classic Goop: some fine information presented alongside unscientific, unproven, potentially harmful therapies for attention, with the disclaimer of ‘We’re only having conversations!’”
“When you sell products, that means you are not a reliable source of information,” Gunter added. “Goop sells supplements and other quasi-medical products, gives vaccine-hesitant doctors a platform, and actively promotes ‘mediums’, so they cannot provide unbiased information about these topics.’
Speaking to CNBC, Paltrow said that 12-year-old Goop has had a science and regulatory team for one year and that “we’re very focused, of course, on backing up the things that we talk about with scientific claims when necessary, or being able to say, ‘Hey, this is just for your entertainment.’”
The Goop Lab premiered on Netflix on Friday, Jan. 24.
