Pubdate: Sun, 01 Mar 2015
Source: Vancouver Magazine (CN BC)
Copyright: 2015 Vancouver Magazine
Contact:  http://www.vanmag.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3171
Author: Daniel Wood
Page: 20

AGONY VS. ECSTASY

A psychedelic response to post-traumatic stress

In an extraordinary project, local research scientists and therapists,
specializing in newly resurgent psychedelic medicine, are seeking to
confirm what others elsewhere have recently discovered. It appears
that highly illegal ecstasy-MDMA- helps people overcome the living
hell of treatment-resistant PTSD. In two studies done in Switzerland
and the U.S., it has been shown that pure MDMA, plus intensive
psychotherapy, can cure people whose lives have been shattered by
horrific traumas, ones that-even after years-keep returning in
flashbacks and nightmares.

Vancouver psychotherapist Ingrid Pacey, 70, has spent almost half her
life dealing with women on the Downtown Eastside; many are casualties
of childhood abuse, and later of chronic post-traumatic stress
disorder. Today, Pacey is principal investigator in a $500,000 study
run by the local chapter of the Multidisciplinary Association for
Psychedelic Studies (Canada). With MAPS Canada, she and a dozen health
scientists, psychotherapists, and volunteers aim to replicate findings
that show MDMA can produce, with psychotherapy, an almost
instantaneous cessation of PTSD. With just three MDMA/therapy
sessions, nearly 83 percent no longer qualified for a
treatment-resistant PTSD diagnosis. After relentless suffering,
including ineffective exposure to legal antipsychotic drugs,
addictions, and suicidal thoughts, it appears that ecstasy allows
people to finally escape the horror.

"There are many people who believe in the myths of illegal drugs,"
says Pacey, referring to the decades-long prohibition on psychedelics.
"But pure MDMA-not street MDMA, which is cut with a lot of
additives-is an 'empathogen.' It makes you feel like you love the
world. You can't feel danger: you can then talk about your fear
without your fear shutting you down." Pacey lists other psychedelic
drugs-all similarly illegal-that have recently been shown to help
resolve chronic addictions and fears: LSD has been successfully used
in the treatment of alcoholism; psilocybin gives great relief to those
suffering end-of-life anxieties; and ayahuasca and ibogaine appear to
halt life-destroying addictions. "Who knew?" she says, laughing.
Permission to use the drug required a Section 56 exemption from Health
Canada (the same legal wormhole that allowed Vancouver Coastal Health
to open Insite). It was, says Mark Haden, chair of MAPS Canada and a
UBC professor of population and public heal! th, "a journey of 1,000
emails." Approval for MAPS to receive a tablespoon-sized vial of pure
MDMA from Switzerland meant acquisition, he says, of a "bomb-proof
vault" at UBC and four years of negotiations.

Six clients from the Lower Mainland-all victims of chronic PTSD-are
subjects of the project, the first clinical psychedelic study in
Canada since the mid 1970s. In the double-blind study, running to fall
2016, some get the drug, some a placebo. (The ones getting the placebo
will be given MDMA after the initial study period.) Long-term
assessment follows. Three identical studies exploring ecstasy's
efficacy in PTSD treatment are also running in Israel and the U.S.

Interest in the results is huge. And controversy is certain. Like the
recent acceptance of medical marijuana, MDMA as a therapeutic medicine
would challenge those who have long championed the War on Drugs. What
if MDMA works? What if the use of therapeutic ecstasy or acid or
hallucinogenic mushrooms could significantly reduce the costs, pegged
at $46 billion a year, of North America's anxiety disorders/depression
epidemic?- Daniel Wood
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MAP posted-by: Matt