Eliza Dushku Reveals She Traded in Acting to Become a Psychedelic Therapist

Eliza Dushku has been busy since stepping away from acting in 2017.

In a Boston Magazine profile published on Thursday, September 26, Dushku, 43, revealed she has become certified in psychedelic-assisted therapy and is working towards earning a master’s degree in counseling and clinical mental health. Additionally, she and her husband, Peter Palandjian, are funding clinical trials and research on the therapeutic use of psychedelics for trauma care.

“I had the means to shift directions and choose a course in my life that focused on healing myself so that I could help heal others,” Dushku told the outlet. “I would be remiss if I didn’t now share the transformation and the peace and the passion that I have. This is just absolutely so clearly my real calling, my real purpose.”

Dushku’s new passion sparked from using therapeutic psychedelics herself to recover from past traumas. “I found myself feeling so wholly unwell,” she stated. “So painfully vulnerable, raw, exposed — terrified and suffering from what was diagnosed as PTSD.”

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She described feeling “reborn into the world in this safe and loving way” after her psychedelic use experience, adding, “I finally surrendered and began to feel a release and a sense of peace and security and calm whooshing through me.”

Dushku revealed that she had secretly been battling alcoholism and addiction from a young age while speaking at the New Hampshire Youth Summit on Opioid Awareness in March 2017. One year later, Dushku accused stunt coordinator Joel Kramer of molesting her at the age of 12 on the set of 1984’s True Lies in a lengthy Facebook post.

“Through the years, brave fans have regularly shared with me how some of my characters have given them the conviction to stand up to their abusers,” Dushku — well known for her no-nonsense characters in projects such as Bring It On and Buffy the Vampire Slayer — wrote. “Now it is you who give me strength and conviction. I hope that speaking out will help other victims and protect against future abuse.”

Kramer, for his part, denied the allegations in an exclusive January 2018 interview with Us Weekly, stating, “This is all vile lies. I never molested this young woman, ever. Who in their right mind would do that and then still work with someone another six months or seven months or however long we had left to work together, wouldn’t that be a little weird?”

Later that year, Dushku was paid $9.5 million by CBS after she accused her Bull costar Michael Weatherly of sexual harassment. Weatherly issued an apology to his former costar in a statement to the New York Times.

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“During the course of taping our show, I made some jokes mocking some lines in the script,” he said in December 2018. “When Eliza told me that she wasn’t comfortable with my language and attempt at humor, I was mortified to have offended her and immediately apologized. After reflecting on this further, I better understand that what I said was both not funny and not appropriate and I am sorry and regret the pain this caused Eliza.”

Dushku’s character was ultimately written off the show, which she claimed was done as a result of “simply asking to do my job without relentless sexual harassment,” she told The Boston Globe.

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Today, she’s putting her focus into her work, which includes getting a question about the legalization of regulated therapeutic use of psychedelics on Massachusetts’ November 5 election ballot. “Everyone deserves access to therapeutic, healing modalities that could change their life,” she told Boston Magazine.

She added: “I just kept having these moments of thinking about where I’ve come from to where I am now. They say in 12-step recovery programs that if you get sober, you’re going to have this life beyond your wildest dreams. And it’s true. I have these moments where I’m like, ‘I really do.’”