Pubdate: Sat, 08 Dec 2012
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2012 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Mireille Silcoff
Page: WP2

MDMA, PTSD AND ME

Recent Drug Trials Bring Up a Past Life

It was Heraclitus, or perplexingly, according to some Internet 
sources, Pocahontas, who said you can never step into the same river 
twice. I am experiencing some side of this truism with all the news 
about the use of MDMA in the treatment of post-traumatic stress 
disorder. The item has been all over: a small number of labs have 
been licensed to produce MDMA - 
3,4-methylenedioxy-methylampheta-mine, an illegal substance much 
better known by its usual street name, Ecstasy - for research 
purposes. A handful of therapists have been granted permission to use 
it. The results in patients suffering from PTSD have been nothing 
short of miraculous. The word has appeared: cure.

About PTSD, I know only what I have read. Post-traumatic stress is 
said to affect one in ten Canadians at some point during their lives. 
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is PTS in severe manifestation, highly 
associated with war and related to what in other eras was called 
shell shock, war neurosis or soldier's heart. That said, people 
suffering from PTSD are not just those who have seen combat, but also 
those traumatized by rape, violent crime, accidents, sudden 
catastrophic illness, or other nightmarish events. The symptoms 
include debilitating anxiety, nightmares, flashbacks, withdrawal, and 
can be entirely life-destroying.

And I don't know if it's one of those situations having to do with 
new names, or new classifications in psychological manuals, or simple 
awareness, but there seems to be more Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 
going around these days. Every era has its defining illnesses, and in 
our era, PTSD might be a contender.

I have a much more complete understanding of Ecstasy, because in 
another river, one I will title my youth, I co-wrote a book and then 
wrote many subsequent articles about the drug. At one point in the 
late 1990s, I spent most of my working hours writing, thinking and 
talking about so called "nightclub drugs," Ecstasy chief among them. 
It was my niche. My perspective on Ecstasy in those years can be 
summed up with this single, useful humblebrag: I was called by the 
Oprah Winfrey Show, to be featured on a program about the growing 
popularity of Ecstasy among youth at raves and nightclubs, but was 
nearly immediately deemed "too positive about the drug" for the 
purposes of their broadcast.

There have long been studies that have shown MDMA to be a very 
effective tool for treating issues like trauma-related anxiety. In 
the 1970s and '80s, when MDMA was still legal, interest in the 
substance's therapeutic powers was expanding among a growing group of 
U.S. psychologists and psychiatrists.

There were the psychedelic sorts, the descendants of Dr. Timothy 
Leary, but also more establishment types, like professor Lester 
Grinspoon, at Harvard Medical School.

The work of these therapists was 100% cut off in 1985, when MDMA was 
pushed through as a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency "Schedule 1" drug - 
as tightly illegal as heroin or cocaine - due to its growing 
popularity on the nightclub scene and on campuses, notably in parts 
of conservative, wealthy, future-leaders-of-America Texas. After 
that, it seeped quickly into the underground market, where it became 
a favourite on the burgeoning rave scene.

So I have been following what is being called breaking medical news 
about Ecstasy, a drug that mostly affects serotonin (the same 
neurotransmitter targeted by antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil or 
Zoloft), with great interest, if only because it's fascinating to see 
a scientific baton picked up a few decades after it was dropped.

In the Times, a husband-and-wife team of therapists in South 
Carolina, Michael and Ann Mithoefer, are featured in a Nov. 20 
article called "A 'Party Drug' May Help the Brain Cope With Trauma." 
The Mithoefers were given leave, by the DEA, to use MDMA 
experimentally to treat people suffering from severe post-traumatic 
stress. They recently published findings in the Journal of 
Psychopharmacology, writing that of 21 people treated in the early 
2000s, 15 are recovered, reporting nearly no symptoms today. On CNN, 
Rachel Hope, the Mithoefer's seventh patient, is interviewed. 
Physically abused and raped at age 4, she had suffered brutal, 
seemingly incurable post-traumatic stress for all of her adult life. 
She says that after eight sessions with MDMA, beginning in 2005, 90% 
of her symptoms are now gone.

The unanimous positivity surrounding this drug in therapy has been so 
unyielding, it's intriguing to me, especially when I look back at how 
draconian the methods for removing MDMA from the scientific table 
were in the '80s, when very similar research was going on.

So why, now, the panacea angle? I certainly believe Ecstasy is the 
right key for unlocking some of the clampdown of PTSD. But even I am 
taking the current claims with a grain of salt.

This, for two reasons: First, if you were a street drug, you could 
only have a worse reputation if you were heroin. So Ecstasy has a lot 
of bad rap to blow through in order to reach any sort of legality. A 
fast way to gain respectability is to make it absolutely bulletproof 
in its medical applications. If people like the Mithoefers are going 
to be allowed to continue with their work, the general public will 
need to believe they are not airy-fairy new age weirdos taking 
patients on some psychedelic placebo trip, but professionals involved 
in real, powerful medical treatment - treatment that works.

Second, I think there is some plain old red-blooded human hope 
coursing around here: In the U.S., there are seven million people 
living with PTSD. Since the start of the Iraq war in 2003, the 
syndrome has become an unimaginably big issue in the U.S. military. 
And in its treatment, good news is needed. Talk therapies, 
cognitive-behavioral therapies, hypnosis, nothing has proved 
overarching in its success. A soldier goes abroad for his country, 
and he comes back unable to leave his home. It breaks the heart in 
some urgent way. So when a treatment comes along that seems even 
anecdotally better than the others, the natural inclination might be 
to exaggerate the goodness. Because we all want it to be so.

But it might be worth going back to Timothy Leary for a moment. It 
was he who suggested that one's experience on drugs is affected by 
"set and setting," a term he coined, meaning one's mindset upon 
ingestion and one's setting for the experience. In the field of 
psychedelic therapies set and setting is a big concept, and in these 
stories about Ecstasy the Good, it's important to remember that the 
therapists, sitting with patients like the aptly named Rachel Hope 
for up to eight hours at a time, are doing a great deal of the work 
here. Because an Ecstasy experience can go many ways. You can use a 
chemical to open a Pandora's box: It can be the road to some form of 
enlightenment or a nightmare trip. But it's how you sort through the 
contents that will determine the rest of the story.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom