Amy Griffin’s Novel Receives Praise From Figures Like Oprah Winfrey.
The recent release of a memoir that has received praise from public figures like Oprah Winfrey and a feature in Time Magazine has also inspired discourse about the ways survivors shape their narratives.
The Tell details Amy Griffin’s experience of recalling childhood sexual abuse while engaging in “psychedelic-drug therapy.” Although illegal, Griffin cites the use of MDMA as “the medicine” that aided her in recovering memories of brutal rape and abuse that began when she was 12 years old.
The Food and Drug Administration recently declined to approve MDMA for therapeutic use and debates continue regarding whether or not the drug truly “helps patients recover accurate memories.” While experts are unsure about the precision of these recovered memories, they agree that the recollections can be useful in a therapeutic setting regardless.
“Whether it’s real or not — meaning whether the incident actually happened — from a therapeutic perspective, it doesn’t matter,” said Rick Doblin, an advocate for the therapeutic use of MDMA. “A lot of times people will develop stories that help them make sense of their life.”
Growing up in Amarillo, Texas, Amy Griffin remembered her childhood fondly, describing her love of running and classic Southern upbringing throughout The Tell. As she moved to Virginia for college and began her adult life, Griffin began to feel a growing anxiety that became impossible to escape. This fear followed her throughout adulthood, even as she began her own company and invested in successful ventures like Gwyneth Paltrow’s brand, Goop.
After multiple sessions of psychedelic-assisted therapy and numerous recalled memories, Griffin felt that she owed it to herself and others to publish her story. “As high-profile friends in my network have reminded me,” she wrote in her book proposal, “I am fortunate to have a life this rewarding and abundant, yet to have held on to my privacy and my anonymity. Why would I jeopardize that by inviting the attention that publishing this book would bring? And yet, I know that I must. I can’t not write this book.”
Conversations about the memoir have revealed mixed opinions. Amarillo bookstore Burrowing Owl Books hosted an event for readers to discuss The Tell.
Attendees engaged in conversation for over two hours. One woman stated she believed Amy Griffin, yet still had questions. “If he brutalized her in those ways,” she said, “did she not have bruises? Did she not have hair missing?”
Another woman felt perplexed by the MDMA-facilitated sessions: “She’s the only one saying this, and it was under the influence of something.” She quickly added, “I believe her. I do not doubt her story.”
Sergeant Gordon Eatley, who appeared in The Tell as Sergeant Hank Jones, confirmed Griffin’s depiction of their conversations. “The story she gave, and the way she gave it, came across as very credible,” he said. “I was like, cool, this will be an interesting case to work.”
He was unaware that Griffin had taken MDMA until the memoir was published. “I was never told that it was a recovered memory,” Sergeant Eatley said. “I was just told she was finally willing to talk.”
Knowing this at the time, and if there had been no statute of limitations, he still would have tried to mount a case. Even so, the involvement of illegal drugs complicates the narrative, he said. “How do you determine what memories are hallucinations and which ones are real?”
Amy Griffin addresses possible skepticism multiple times throughout her memoir, seemingly in conversation with the reader and questions that might arise. She tackles the self-blame, doubt, and frustration that many survivors see within their own stories. Griffin also calls to those who question her use of psychedelics: “Held in the golden arms of the medicine, the compassion I felt for young Amy was absolute,” she writes.
Whitney Frick, Griffin’s editor at Dial Press, asserts that “book publishers are not investigators.” In the face of criticism and doubt, she says “This is Amy’s story. We trust her, and all of our authors, that they are recounting their memories truthfully.”
Authors: Andy Goldwasser and Alexis Kabat
