PSYCHEDELIC MEDICINE: MDMA, sometimes sold on the street as "ecstasy" (shown here), is showing promise in trials with war veterans in alleviating post-traumatic stress syndrome.
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SAN JOSE, California—Michael Bledsoe's story begins like that of many other Iraqi war veterans. In 2007, he was chasing insurgents through Anbar province when a roadside bomb exploded, breaking Bledsoe's back and both his feet. A former Army Ranger working as a security contractor, Bledsoe soon knew his high-paying military career was over.
Back home, Bledsoe (not his real name) felt angry almost constantly. Nightmares haunted him. He withdrew and became isolated. "It was a serious sense of loss," he says. His psychiatrist quickly diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Despite months of talk therapy, the nightmares continued, and Bledsoe grew desperate. Then "something almost miraculous" happened, he says. An online search brought him to a unique study of the banned drug MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine), well known as the street drug ecstasy. The 21-patient study, sponsored by the nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), launched in 2004 as the first U.S. clinical trial of a psychedelic drug in 35 years.
After several bond-building sessions with psychiatrist and study leader Michael Mithoefer and a co-therapist, Bledsoe swallowed a white tablet, donned eyeshades and reclined in Mithoefer's comfortable Charleston, S.C., office. Over the next eight hours, Bledsoe revisited the explosion and recounted the trauma to Mithoefer. After two more MDMA-assisted psychotherapy sessions, Bledsoe says his PTSD symptoms were "completely eliminated."
This weekend at a MAPS-sponsored meeting here, Mithoefer reported similar results for nearly all of the trial's participants. After two or three MDMA sessions, patients who received MDMA experienced huge drops in symptoms as measured by a standard PTSD scale. At baseline, study patients had an average Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) score of 79, but after MDMA-assisted therapy, CAPS scores dropped to 23.4 in the 13-person MDMA group, whereas an eight-person placebo group averaged a score of 60. (Later, seven of eight placebo patients chose to receive MDMA as well.)
The improvements appeared to endure, Mithoefer reported. After an average of 3.5 years, 13 of 16 patients remaining in contact with the researchers no longer met the criteria for PTSD. However, two of the patients "clearly relapsed," Mithoefer says. In addition, many of the patients returned to using antidepressants and other psychoactive medications, though the total number of prescriptions in the group was much lower than before.
Julie Holland, a psychiatrist in New York City who used to work at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx, says the data "look really great. It's amazing that when patients are done with therapy, they don't meet criteria for PTSD. I've never even seen that. It's a very big deal." If MDMA were legal, Holland added, she would "absolutely" use it in her practice.
Brain-imaging studies in healthy volunteers show that MDMA quiets the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure deep in the brain that some researchers call a “fear center” due to its central role in triggering strong negative emotions. MDMA also releases a flood of the brain messengers serotonin and dopamine while increasing blood levels of the hormones oxytocin and prolactin, which promote social bonding. This potent mix diminishes fear and defensiveness and boosts empathy and the desire to connect with others, says Holland, so “the therapy work goes faster and deeper.”
Veterans suffer very high rates of PTSD, according to surveys. One 2004 study in The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that up to 18 percent of Iraqi and Afghanistan combat veterans experience the disorder. "This is our way of trying to contribute to our moral obligations to our veterans," says MAPS founder and executive director Rick Doblin. He added that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has rejected overtures from MAPS to work together on five separate occasions.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been friendlier to the group. This month, the agency granted MAPS permission to continue testing MDMA in 16 additional veterans with PTSD. But the road to full FDA approval is long and expensive, and Doblin anticipates five to 10 years of additional trials. He envisions eventually building a network of psychedelic therapy centers.
A dedicated network of therapists experimented with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in the 1970s and 1980s before the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration banned the drug in 1985. The next year, Doblin launched MAPS to revive psychedelic research, a movement that's now gaining steam. A dozen human studies of MDMA, LSD, a powerful African drug called ibogaine and psilocybin, from so-called "magic mushrooms," are now under way, testing the once-stigmatized drugs as treatments for not only PTSD, but also cluster headaches and addiction, as well as anxiety and depression in cancer patients.
Charles Grob, a psychiatrist at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, dosed 12 end-stage cancer patients with psilocybin to test whether the experience could ease anxiety and help the patients cope with their diagnosis. Grob did not present his data, which are under review for publication, at the San Jose meeting, but the buzz on the results is positive. Grob and his co-investigators did offer snippets of letters and reactions from study patients. One said, “It feels like healing.” Similar studies of psilocybin in the terminally ill are now launching at New York University in New York City and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
However, the going has been slow, with Doblin carefully dotting every regulatory "i" to prevent a second backlash against psychedelics. "This isn't the '60s," he says. "We've learned the lessons of that era, and now we're trying to integrate ourselves into science, into medicine, into society."
At the San Jose meeting, dubbed "Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century," that integration was in full swing. Eleven hundred therapists, physicians, basic researchers and psychedelics enthusiasts gathered for three days of scientific and cultural talks, visionary art shows and late-night celebrations. The unlikely mix found conservatively dressed researchers from prestigious universities mingling with the heavily tattooed and the green haired.
As for Bledsoe, he's now a true believer. His MDMA sessions were "an almost sacred experience, a very special and uplifting experience," he says. After the therapy, he vacationed in Jamaica, began dating a local woman and bought a house on the island. "I'm happy and well adjusted now," he says. "It's a good fairy-tale ending. As soon as we get some little Bob Marley kids it'll be even better."
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24 Comments
Add CommentHow sad for Seldose. I think SA should also bring about the story od more than million murdered people in Iraq. A war which was imposed on Iraqis by CIA-Pentagon-Corporate media nexus. These evil forces masteminded a game in which millions of Iraqis were affected. As though PTSD in war vets is imposed by Iraq. Have you ever tried to look at PTSD in millions who lost loved ones in front of their eyes by American bombs. SA is truly representing western government prpaganda views and not a critical scientific point of view.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSounds like a peace drug should be the drug of choice for all world leaders.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's face it, Wild Turkey did nothing for world peace.
a few pills and a few sessions with a shrink and the VA will claim the vets are cured and reduce their compensation levels to a 0% SC and all will be well how soon before the VA attempts to force all 100% SC PTSD veterans to submit to this treatment or have their compensation reduced for failure to comply with medical directives? Will this be a forced or voluntary program, what about veterans in their late 50s and 60s that no one will hire due to their mental health history of the past 3-5 decades? How far will this be pushed to harm veterans with PTSD?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistestvet, I don't think the military would approve, a secondary effect of going trough MDMA self-analysis is too much empathy, no military would work with soldiers who can relate too much to the enemy to render them useless in violent situations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am more worried about the effect of disabled veterans than I am of the ability of the DOD to return men to the battlefield, if you are in your late 50s or in your 60s and the VA tells you that you must submit to this treatment or we will cut off your compensation checks and if you do submit to it and then 3 treatments later the VA declares you "cured" and cuts off your compensation checks and due to your past mental health hsitory no one will hire you what will those veterans do then? That is my worry. Wal mart can only hire so many door greeters
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPSTD is a serious disorder and not all victims of it were caused due to being in battle. Victims of rape and abuse suffer as well. I would suppose the posters would have had something to actually contribute rather than showcasing their selfish need to make political statements.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis may lead to the elimination of real suffering and I hope the results continue to be positive.
As I pointed out in one of my other posts my PTSD is from non-combat origins, and it is not selfish to wonder how a veteran aged 55-65 who is declared "cured" is supposed to find a career or a job with decades of mental health records that would prevent them from finding a "decent job" to replace their VA benefits, if that is selfish and greedy then there is a misconception there, it is a real problem that several hundred thousand veterans and their families may soon be forced to deal with, how can that be "over looked" yes, PTSD can be caused by many things, rape, car accidents, 9/11 caused many cases of PTSD, Hurricane Katrina caused hundreds of thousands of cases of PTSD, violent assaults cause PTSD (my own case) PTSD is not a military only problem and if it can be caught and helped with early onafter the cause of the problem I am all for it, but for chronic cases that for many were spent in denial before even seeking help for the "problem" due to the stigma related to being labeled "mental" by even being diagnosed as having PTSD, I have seen military careers ended by NCOs and Officers seeking metal health assistance during the 70s and 80s because they lost their security clearances, could no longer handle weapons etc, which means they were worthless as Infantry commanders, which actually forced them to not seek help at the time it might have been the most productive to lessening the impact of the mental cause of the stressor. I think the earlier the help can be obtained the greater chance the issue does not become a life long problem which has often been the case. I am also one of the "med vols" used at Edgewood Arsenal during the Cold War in one of the most infamous drug trials this nationhas ever come to learn about MKULTRA to this date these veterans have never been helped and the government is even fighting them in court to keep from providing them medical care or compensation due to these illegal and immoral human experiments that violated the Nurember Codes of 1947 and that ultimately led to the President in 1975 forcing the Army to stop all human experimentation by all agencies of the federal government the military branches and the CIA. Sometimes the truth is stranger than the fiction. This is the link to the federal lawsuit about this issue http://edgewoodtestvets.org/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVietnam Veterans of America, et al. v. Central Intelligence Agency, et al.
Case No. CV-09-0037-CW, U.S.D.C. (N.D. Cal. 2009)
The Complaint asks the Court to determine that Defendants’ actions were illegal and that Defendants have a duty to notify all victims and to provide them with health care going forward.
Interesting that this amphetamine analog is labeled as a 'peace drug' while its close cousin methamphetamine was used in wars for many of its shared properties
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistestvet, you need to understand that these are only pilot study's, with few subjects and are designed to provide introductory insight into the nature of the treatment, as well as to provide an objective look at the risks and benefits of administering MDMA as an adjunct to psychotherapy for people with treatment-resistant PTSD. While your fear may and well be reasonable about the possible implication of older veterans being 'forced' to 'submit' to this treatment due to remarkable results from later studies, as one of the quotes mentioned, this therapy is not likely to become fully legal (much less supported by the Federal Government, NIDA/NIMH, the DEA, the FDA, and certainly the VA - also mentioned that the research funders approached the Veterans Administration on 5 different occasions and were not met with interest) for another 10 years, and that will mostly be in private practice, where it would be very expensive and therefore not economical to spend millions of dollars on forcing retired veterans with PTSD to be treated in the hopes of being able to then cut off compensation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut you are focusing on such a narrow point of this article, you need to think of the promise that MDMA has for other indications as well. Once MDMA becomes an FDA-approved prescription medicine as an adjunct to psychotherapy, it will likely only be in patients with PTSD (and not just war-related trauma, but any other 'cause' of the diagnosis) until further studies are approved (i.e. MDMA also shows promise as an adjunct to therapy in stage IV cancer patients who have developed anxiety and depression over their situation, for adults with high functioning autism and asperger's syndrome to gain deeper insight into their emotions and social interactions than they've ever had before, couple's therapy), funded and conducted and yield good data that would warrant approval for said indications, we're talking about a substantial shift in the overall treatment of mental disorders, gearing more towards treatment of the underlying issues rather than focusing on symptoms and drugs with many side-effects taken daily for decades. A treatment you need to go through for maybe 3 months and you're cured?! This drug works with only 2 sessions in the overall treatment?! If I relapse a year later I can come back and do it again?! This is the reaction you should be having. Think about the quarter million young people (no more than 25-30 years old) that have been and will continue to, return home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq due to their PTSD. Let's start there.
I think the key here is that the drug causes you to quiet your fears while making you feel good, THEN gets you to remember the traumatic events. That way, when the memories are re-integrated, they are stored with less negative emotional baggage. PTSD and Anxiety sufferers tend to enter into self-enforcing cycles. Every time the memory comes up, the negative emotions are compounded onto the memory. By stripping you have some of your capacity to feel fear while making you feel happy and more socially connected, it seems like this stuff is helping people rewrite their memories.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey, I was part of the 'study, in the "mid 80s". Trust "ME"! Really, 'me'! I *know*!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhether the name be, ibogaine , psilocybin,"magic mushrooms", MDMA, LSD, or "methylenedioxymethamphetamine), street drug, Ecstasy" , How could any "intelligent" being, living on the Earth today, argue, something with 'effects' such as,diminishing fear and defensiveness and boosting empathy, and the desire to connect with others, could do ANYTHING to make matters any WORSE?
If You have not experienced this "Ecstacy", at least, in it's early days, don't be so quick to judge it. And yeah, blah, blah, with all the addiction 'crap'. You are on a computer! Get another addiction!
We are an addiction waiting to breed! We may as well be comfortable and peaceful while being addicted.
I don't participate in illegal drug use in my present life. But, I don't live in "La, La" land either. Trust me, if ecstasy were legal, and available in the form I experienced it, the one time I 'did'. I would be more than "happy" and " fear free", to pay whatever money, I had left over, after paying my 'basic needs', so that I could relieve, the "Traumatic Stress Syndrome", Life, imposes, Daily,to everyone. Not,'me',not "JUST" any particular 'person',persons', or group.
Face it people. Yeah, even all the " I Love Life" People!
LIFE SUCKS! REALITY SUCKS! DENY IT ALL YOU WANT, IT's STILL THERE.
Taking a pill may actually 'change' it. If, it begins with EVERYONE, swallowing at the same time.
Even the leaders of the 'Cult'. They are the source, after all.
They are the ones wanting all the power, causing all the 'fear', stress, and "Syndromes".
MDMA is not a psychedelic drug, but psilocybin, that's a trip!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnything to help our soldiers is a good thing, they go through hell, and don't get as much help as they should for all they give.
For MDMA to be used clinically it will need to go through trials to prove that it is safe. If it is proved to be safe then it does rather raise the question of why its recreational use is illegal. A bit of a problem for the "war on drugs" industry's vested interests!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSafe?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat's safe got to do with anything? Anything at all?
What part of 'reality' did you manage to step out of on the way into this article you entered as you accidentally stepped out of?
Prove safety of recreational usage? Uh, "beer", cigars, cigarettes, 'fake' sugars of the 'pink', 'blue' and 'yellow' color packaging variety, hmmm, "War"? , government for that matter, People all together?, should I even go on about what is considered to be "safe" and "legal" by "government" standards? Not to mention any "Clinics" or individuals, who may be attempting to "prove" through "trial" studies" ..Jeez!
It doesn't "raise the Question of why? It Screams the DEMAND OF an ANSWER and a JUSTIFIED REASON FOR A GUILTY PLEA, for that nonsense crap. "WAR on DRUGS" my butt! VESTED INTERESTS, INDEED! YOU BET there is a great deal Of VESTED INTERESTS in that WAR. Keep it ILLEGAL, and KEEP THE MONEY where It BELONGS, RIGHT?
Where it always does and always will. Hey, big bro! Wassup? I can always count on you for my health and well being.
Thanks for that much.
Wouldn't prevention be better than cure ? Perhaps those who order these criminal wars of aggression should be treated with a «peace drug» before sending young men and women in harm's way, as well as murdering millions of people in foreign lands ?...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHenri
I think Ibogaine is more important for Studies by the military, and or University research granting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisbcluver - you are a prime example of why mind altering drugs should not be easily available. The phrase "raving looney" comes to mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismhenriday - Would it not be better to simply make these leaders lead the combat in person. That way they will be among the first killed. I call that a win-win solution.
I'm truly astonished at many of the responses to this promising study. MDMA was already being used therapeutically until someone in Dallas turned it into a party drug in the 80's. Then, rather than controlling its use - by prescription - it was hastily and incorrectly scheduled as having no medicinal value.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSadly, that knee-jerk reaction (which, by the way, is what many of the comments here have been) has prevented this extremely useful medication from helping tens of thousands of people who struggle every day with psychological traumas that persist.
Of course, the pharmaceutical companies aren't interested. They would much prefer you to have to take their patented drugs for the rest of your life.
We are discussing the treatment of PTSD and other anxiety issues here. NOT the morality of war, or the failure of various world leaders. Please stay on topic and try to open your mind to ideas worth exploring.
I tell you IBOGAINE is ANSWER to Problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIBOGAINE, IBOGAINE, IBOGAINE! There I've said it again!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou know, I want to say that the March 1964 issue of SA has a very good article on LSD, Psylocibin, and Mecaline. Its waht got me interested in psychomimetics in the first place. But IBOGAINE is the culminative answer to all of the afore mentioned problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMDMA is not a cure for PTSD. It is only a tool that can be useful as part of a therapeutic process. Get preoccupied with the hammer, and the house will never get built.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for the great article. This research is very important and has the potential to help a countless number of patients. You can read about Johns Hopkins cancer psilocybin study by visiting their website at:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.cancer-insight.org
And you can read about the african anti-addiction psychedelic here:
http://www.ibogaine-treatment.com
Thanks
Thanks for the great article. This research is very important and has the potential to help a countless number of patients. You can read about Johns Hopkins cancer psilocybin study by visiting their website at:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.cancer-insight.org
And you can read about the african anti-addiction psychedelic here:
http://www.ibogaine-treatment.com
Thanks