Bad news for fans of an icon. You probably won’t be seeing an Eliza Dushku comeback any time soon. Faith has left the building for the time being.
The Buffy The Vampire Slayer alum revealed in a Boston Magazine profile on Thursday that she quietly left Hollywood behind a while back — and has embarked on a surprise new career!
You may recall Eliza opening up at the dawn of the #MeToo movement, bravely coming forward with her awful experiences as a child actor. She also testified about harassment as an adult on the set of the series Bull. Well, it seems like she had enough all those years ago. The reason she hasn’t acted since 2017 is she’s found a different calling.
In the intervening years she’s gotten certified in psychedelic-assisted therapy and is working towards a master’s degree in counseling and clinical mental health. Yeah. She’s helping people heal through the use of psychedelics! WOW! Not only that, she believes in psychedelics in therapy so much she and husband Peter Palandjian have been funding clinical trials and research in that arena.
As she explained in a rare Instagram message about her magazine profile:
“I left a lot of pain on the table when I walked away from my career in Hollywood as an actress years ago.”
But psychedelic-assisted therapy worked wonders for her, and she wanted to pay that forward:
“By amplifying some of these healing tools that assisted in my life transitions and personal recovery over the last 5+ years, I aim to help be a voice in the mission to alleviate suffering.”
Elaborating to the magazine, she said:
“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. 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.”
Wow. We’ll obviously miss the Bring It On star from our screens, but we’re so happy she found this path. Especially as she was hurting far worse than anyone knew when she was in Tinseltown. She told the outlet:
“I found myself feeling so wholly unwell. So painfully vulnerable, raw, exposed — terrified and suffering from what was diagnosed as PTSD.”
PTSD from what? Well, we know Eliza suffered some things no child should — both violation by an adult AND retaliation in the form of physical pain. Back in 2018 she first revealed she was molested at just 12 years old by a stunt coordinator on the set of the action film True Lies. She was subsequently hospitalized from a stunt-gone-wrong after daring to tell someone about it — something she didn’t think was a coincidence.
These are experiences that could leave anyone with scars they wouldn’t know how to deal with — even 20 years later. Thankfully Eliza found what worked for her. She says she had a feeling “of being reborn into the world in this safe and loving way” after psychedelic treatments:
“I finally surrendered and began to feel a release and a sense of peace and security and calm whooshing through me.”
It was her first good sleep in six months. Amazing. And now she wants to help others dealing with the kind of trauma she had — that haven’t yet found the treatment that works for them. We LOVE this for her!
Read the full profile for more about what Eliza is doing HERE!
[Image via 20th Century Television/Hulu.]
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