Originally appeared at: http://www.dailynewstoday.info/?p=123 83% of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms were observed when a combination of psychotherapy and medication People who suffer from pain, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), one day find relief with ecstasy. A small clinical study found that 80 percent of the participants were treated with a combination of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and psychotherapy, are no longer signs of PTSD, without serious side effects. Three people have also said the disease has prevented them from getting to work was able to return to work after treatment. The study is the first completed clinical trials evaluating MDMA as an adjunct therapy when it was criminalized in 1985 because of the recreational use of drugs, known by its street name ecstasy. Twenty patients who had suffered from chronic PTSD for an average of over 19 years and had not obtained an exemption to both psychotherapy and psychopharmacology were randomized to two eight psychotherapy sessions with 12 subjects receiving the drug and eight received a placebo. Both groups also received psychotherapy before and after the drug was administered. The monitoring was conducted four days and two months after the meeting time each day. On all scheduled after time basis, a decrease in clinician-administered PTSD scale score was significantly higher for the group that received MDMA for the placebo group. Percentage of clinical diagnostic criteria for PTSD according to which provides DSM-IV-TR, was 83 percent of the active treatment group compared to 25 percent in the placebo group. The researchers did not detect high blood pressure and other symptoms of MDMA group. But there was no serious adverse drug-related adverse cognitive or clinically significant blood pressure or the temperature rises. Long-term follow-up evaluated the same subjects is ongoing. The authors noted that most of the participants accurately guessed that received placebo or MDMA, which has no psychoactive effects. The trial did not take into account gender or ethnic factors in the selection of the sample. The study authors acknowledge that today’s two sessions of therapy and every night in the clinic are not usual features of outpatient psychotherapy. But they believe that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy can be administered to patients with PTSD without evidence of damage, which were resistant to other treatments. The study, published today in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, was sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which by their MDMA Psychotherapy Research Fund, hopes to develop MDMA into a prescription drug approved by the FDA for therapeutic use in relation to PTSD. The tests were performed by Rick Doblin, PhD (MAPS President) a psychiatrist based in South Carolina Dr. Michael Mithoefer, and colleagues at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. “People who suffer from pain, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), may one day find relief with ecstasy. A small clinical study found that 80 percent of the participants were treated with a combination of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and psychotherapy, are no longer signs of PTSD, without serious side effects.” This article reports.