Originally appearing at http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/08/can-ecstasy-treat-ptsd.html. Brian Anderson covers the push to get MDMA, or ecstasy, approved as a prescription medicine. MDMA’s effects typically manifest themselves 30-45 minutes after ingestion, so it doesn’t take long for rhythms to develop in Charleston. Sessions at the clinic oscillate between stretches of silent, inward focus, where the patient is left alone to process his trauma, and unfiltered dialogue with the co-therapists. “It’s a very non-directed approach,” Michael Mithoefer told me. This allows subjects to help steer the flow of their trip. They are as much the pilots of this therapy as their overseers. “Once they get the hang of it,” Mithoefer explained, “sometimes people will talk to us for a while and then say, ‘OK, time to go back inside. I’ll come report when I’m ready.’” Vaughan Bell sees a historical parallel: ‘Narcoanalysis’ was used widely in mid-20th Century where a range of drugs, from ether to sodium pentathal, were applied to patients with ‘war neurosis’ for exactly this purpose. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful and abandoned. So this is why the MDMA treatment is a gamble. All known effective psychological treatments for PTSD involve not only confronting the memories of what happened to make sense of them, but also re-experiencing the associated anxiety. A treatment with a drug that removes anxiety will, by current predictions, have limited effectiveness. But he maintains hope for the new study. Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Beast summarizes recent online media coverage of MAPS’ efforts to get MDMA-assisted psychotherapy approved as a treatment for chronic, treatment-resistant PTSD.
