I spent $350k on fertility treatments and was convinced I’d never become a mother. Then I tried a drug no doctor would ever recommend and saw life-changing results

Sonja Pototzki-Raymond had only been married a year but she had already begun to dread social occasions with her husband Kevin.

It meant facing the intrusive yet inevitable question from well-meaning family and friends: when are you going to have a baby?

‘We both wanted kids and had spoken about it from really early on in our relationship,’ Sonja tells Daily Mail Australia.

‘We’d started trying immediately after our wedding in 2018 but nothing was happening.’

Both in their early thirties, the couple hadn’t expected to have any issues becoming pregnant, so after six months of trying, they underwent fertility testing.

‘After receiving the results, we were told it would be a very difficult road for us to get pregnant,’ Sonja says.

Unsurprisingly, it was something she didn’t feel comfortable discussing at backyard BBQs.

‘After that, we carried on trying but every month when I got my period, I’d just plunge into depression,’ she adds. 

‘All our friends were getting pregnant. Every time I went online, it was baby announcement after baby announcement.’

Sonja ended up coming off social media and retreating into herself. ‘Some days I couldn’t get out of bed. [Trying for a baby] completely hijacked my life. I shut myself off from the world.’ 

Sonja was running her own business as a search engine expert and managed to hold things together by scheduling work with clients around the ups and downs she was experiencing.

But her marriage was suffering.

‘It made us question everything. “Are we even right for each other? Will we survive this?”‘ Sonja says.

‘We both retreated into our own worlds of pain and couldn’t be there for each other.’

In 2020, the couple underwent three rounds of IUI treatment, all of which were unsuccessful.

Alongside those treatments, Sonja was trying every holistic treatment she could think of to boost her fertility.

She explains, ‘I tried acupuncture, kinesiology, saw a naturopath, changed my diet, read every fertility book imaginable… You name it, I tried it.’ 

It wasn’t cheap. Throughout their journey, the couple estimate they spent $350,000 on fertility treatments and alternative therapies. 

‘I didn’t know what else to do,’ Sonja says.

‘I was starting to think I might never be a mother and the idea of that was just devastating.’ 

Then, in late 2020, Sonja got chatting to a friend of a friend at a barbecue: a man who had made the decision not to have children.

‘He told me he’d really struggled to find peace with his decision, but psychedelic drugs had helped him to do that,’ she reveals.

Sonja did her research. She learned that psychedelic therapy was an experimental form of treatment for depression, trauma and other ’emotional blocks’. 

A therapy session would involve taking a supervised dose of psilocybin – better known as magic mushrooms – in a clinical setting, which had the potential to change perception and mood around a particular issue.

Sonja decided to try the therapy, not in an attempt to ‘fix’ her fertility issues, but rather to find peace with the situation that was becoming emotionally all-consuming.

With Kevin’s full support, Sonja booked a session. ‘I cried all the way there. I was so scared,’ she says. 

At the session, Sonja was given a magic mushroom tea to drink then told to lie down. 

Within 30 minutes, she began her ‘trip’ with a therapist by her side to guide her through what she was experiencing. 

‘There was this internal dialogue going on that made me realise I always point fingers at others and have a “poor me” victim mentality. It told me that if I was going to be a mum, I needed to take more responsibility for my own actions,’ she says.

‘I needed to grow up.’

Sonja also believes she addressed unresolved childhood trauma during her trip. ‘I had to mother that child before I could even think about being a mum myself.’ 

For the five hours Sonja was under the influence of psychedelics, she was forced to confront many difficult truths.

‘When I left the session, I felt like a completely different person. I felt like I’d left years of baggage in that room,’ she tells me.

In January 2021, Sonja began IVF treatment. She had one failed egg retrieval and a silent miscarriage – when a pregnancy ends but there is no bleeding or other signs – then, in October that year, after a period of feeling ‘calm’ with ‘no anxiety’ about her fertility struggles, she found out she was pregnant after an embryo transfer. 

She and Kevin were overjoyed.  

‘I had a healthy, easy pregnancy and gave birth to my daughter Saige in July 2022,’ Sonja says.

She ‘100 per cent’ credits magic mushrooms with clearing the ’emotional blocks’ that were preventing her from falling pregnant. 

After deciding to try for a second baby, Sonja took magic mushrooms one more time before falling pregnant again in December 2023.

She gave birth to her second daughter, Willow, in August 2024.

Sonja, who wrote a book about her journey called The Search for Resilience, which you can pre-order here, believes ‘psychedelic treatment was definitely the missing piece of the puzzle’ and she ‘wouldn’t have wanted to become a mum any other way‘.

While there is no robust scientific evidence linking psychedelic therapy to overcoming infertility, the unconventional treatment may have had an indirect benefit for Sonja.

Stress and trauma can certainly impact fertility outcomes and there is some research to suggest stress reduction can improve IVF success rates.

Psilocybin, when prescribed by authorised psychiatrists, has been shown to benefit patients with anxiety, depression and PTSD. Some, like Sonja, report experiencing a ‘breakthrough’ or the feeling of being emotionally ‘unblocked’.

Lucy Lines, an independent embryologist and IVF patient advocate at Two Lines Fertility, is more wary of such treatments for women struggling to become pregnant.

‘I hear these kinds of things from my clients every day – will this help? Will that help? Infertility is so daunting and overwhelming that people will resort to anything that might give them the result they want,’ she Ms Lines says.

‘Whilst there is zero scientific evidence this kind of treatment would have any effect on someone’s outcomes of an IVF cycle, there is plenty of evidence that finding ways to manage the overwhelming emotions associated with IVF can help.

‘Whether that’s through gathering independent information, empowering yourself with education, finding your community or finding a new hobby – anything that relieves and manages stress can help the process.’