One morning in 2006, MAPS founder and executive director Rick Doblin, Ph.D., learned of a violent crime that had occurred a few houses away from the MAPS office in Ben Lomond, California. “I starting thinking about how traumatic it would be for a police officer to see the murdered body of a pregnant woman,” he recalls, “I experienced some compassion for the police.” Later that afternoon, Jeff Morley, with whom Rick had never previously spoken, called to ask him questions about MAPS’ ibogaine-assisted therapy outcome study at a clinic in Vancouver, BC. After they spoke for a few minutes, Morley said he was a psychologist working for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Primed by his experience that morning, he asked if any of the RCMP officers Morley worked with had PTSD. He replied that there were many. MAPS and Morley proceeded to develop a Memorandum of Understanding for a potential study of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD in Canadian RCMP officers.
