That a drug that is so clearly beneficial can’t even be legally researched for its potential uses:
An increasing number of researchers, scientists and therapists who recognize MDMA’s beneficial use are pushing to medicalize it, seeing it as a viable option for those suffering from PTSD. Yet the military is slow to catch on due to MDMA’s decades-old stigma as an illicit substance. (The only place MDMA is mentioned on the US Department of Veterans Affair’s website is under substance abuse for veterans with HIV.) Macie, among others, is pressing for the military to overcome its institutional fear of MDMA and opt for a drug policy that helps heal its veterans.
Emotional Reaction
While MDMA is widely associated with the global electronic dance subculture that swept the ’80s and ’90s, and the image of blissed-out ravers waving glow sticks, the drug has a longer history. Before MDMA was classified as a Schedule I controlled substance in 1985, it gained traction in therapy circles for what psychiatrists and psychotherapists saw as its most salient effect—not euphoria, but empathy.
“MDMA induces powerful empathetic states and in a therapeutic context, this is a strong, positive predictor of a therapeutic outcome,” said Charles Grob, director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Grob, a longtime researcher of hallucinogenic drugs, received the first FDA approval to conduct MDMA research in 1992.
Grob’s research was sponsored by Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies, the world’s only organization funding clinical trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. MAPS is undertaking an ambitious eight-year, $18.5 million plan to make MDMA into an FDA-approved prescription medicine by 2021.
“What MDMA seems to do is decrease fear and defensiveness, which helps sufferers connect with their feelings without being overwhelmed,” said Michael Mithoefer, a psychiatrist practicing in Charleston who specializes in PTSD. MAPS also funded Mithoefer’s trial.
Why would the military agree to give any of its soldiers anything that might cause them to feel some “empathy?” Millions were spent to train them to shoot first and then keep on shooting. Without thinking in between. “Empathy? What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again.”
imho nailed this one. Nothing more for me to say.