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California study begins screening for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD

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Re: California study begins screening for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD

#171

Post by standardUser »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #169
standardUser wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't think this stuff should be sold, say, in a gas station" You have two options- the drug can be sold legally or we can have an excess number of deaths from overdoses, impurities and black market violence. For some inexplicable reason, the majority of people continue to chose the option that guarantees the most human suffering.

> For some inexplicable reason, the majority of people continue to chose the option that guarantees the most human suffering. The problem is that we are asked to decriminalize drugs (like fentanyl) at the same time that we are asked to dedicated massive public resources for the rehabilitation of those people who then used those decriminalized drugs. I would be happy if it were one way or the other, but right now it s…

The money we spend to try (and fail) to stop drug production, trafficking, sale and use could instead be used to help cover the obviously colossal, multi-generational shortfall we have on mental health and addiction spending. Not to mention revenue raised from taxes.

Maybe there should be exceptions made for exceptionally deadly and addictive dugs, like fentanyl.

Re: California study begins screening for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD

#172

Post by [deleted] »

SpodGaju wrote: post #158
emteycz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a biological marker for the need of many drugs too - it develops over time with use (and then stays for a long time). Anyways, I agree with you w.r.t. many psychiatric drugs. Don't try to spread that into psychedelics though - completely different, it has enough of its own problems and it's not necessary to make up some non-existent on top of that.

> There is a biological marker for the need of many drugs too Not for psychiatric drugs, which is my only point. I am not against pharmaceuticals.

[deleted]

Re: California study begins screening for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD

#173

Post by striking »

SpodGaju wrote: post #162
pmoriarty wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Even if I do post from "trusted sources" no one takes it seriously." People would take you more seriously if you didn't come on with the attitude that you know everything and anybody who disagrees with you is an idiot.

I do not care if people take me seriously, I care if they take the facts seriously. I know I know more about psychopharmacology than the majority of people on HN. I do not need to prove that to anyone. I have been talking nicely about this stuff for years, it does not matter because the corporate propaganda for these meds is too powerful, so what you hear is a normal human response; frustration. I do not think most p…

> I have been talking nicely about this stuff for years, it does not matter because the corporate propaganda for these meds is too powerful, so what you hear is a normal human response; frustration.

I hear you, but you're not going to change minds with this kind of talk either. Sorry this has affected your life and those of your loved ones in the way that it has, but it's not helping your case.

I wish you had included even one citation in your first reply, because it would have gone a really long way, even accompanied with the frustration.

Re: California study begins screening for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD

#174

Post by more_corn »

jychang wrote: post #34
vmception wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, it should be sold next to the other poisonous stuff at the gas station that has disclaimers for the consumer to keep it away from children. The public itself needs to readjust its role with the government, where availability doesn't mean endorsement.

YOU might be an adult, but honestly in the past few years, it seems pretty clear that plenty of people who are age 18 or 21 or even age 40 can't seem to act like adults. And I say that as someone who is a proponent of MDMA legalization. It is well known that humans can't make rational choices. If refrigerators with CFCs were still legal to purchase alongside non-CFC refrigerators, I'd be willing to bet the ozone laye…

By that logic we should nerf everything in the world.

But you miss the point. Banning psychedelics prevents their use in psychotherapy.

Rolling back that ban do we can explore the possibilities is certainly sound.

Re: California study begins screening for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD

#175

Post by seanmcdirmid »

standardUser wrote: post #171
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For some inexplicable reason, the majority of people continue to chose the option that guarantees the most human suffering. The problem is that we are asked to decriminalize drugs (like fentanyl) at the same time that we are asked to dedicated massive public resources for the rehabilitation of those people who then used those decriminalized drugs. I would be happy if it were one way or the other, but right now it s…

The money we spend to try (and fail) to stop drug production, trafficking, sale and use could instead be used to help cover the obviously colossal, multi-generational shortfall we have on mental health and addiction spending. Not to mention revenue raised from taxes. Maybe there should be exceptions made for exceptionally deadly and addictive dugs, like fentanyl.

That money won't be enough. Those people are simply broken, most of them aren't being fixed no matter how many resources we throw at them.

Convincing us that we should let people do what they want with drugs and somehow...that it is also our responsibility to pick up the pieces for these people as a consequence, it sounds like hypocrisy. Deflecting that society was responsible for the drug abuse in the first place (by letting people be poor and closing the mental hospitals) isn't going to convince many people that we should allow drug abuse and pay for the consequences as well.

Re: California study begins screening for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD

#176

Post by ericmcer »

saiya-jin wrote: post #127
kilroy123 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. So you just laid there listening to music? No talking? No physical contact with anyone?

I did something similar with mushrooms some 15 years ago. Laid in the bed, run some nice shamanic music on endless loop, crawled under blanket, closed my eyes and experienced completely out-of-world experience, dissolving into mist of atoms, swirling in the music, and at the end re-composing myself and my senses atom by atom. At the very end it was even spiritual, which is funny since I am say agnostic and didn't hav…

Using mushrooms or MDMA as a late-night party/social drug seems increasingly crazy as I get older. With a close friend or partner or even alone they are a really meaningful experience, with a tranquil comedown. It almost feels wasteful to burn through them late into the night dancing to electronic music and then being completely wrecked the next day, I guess I enjoyed it when I was 19.

Re: California study begins screening for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD

#177

Post by pmoriarty »

SpodGaju wrote: post #113
smilespray wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people who write in such absolutes have Dunning-Kruger as their middle name.

What absolute? That MDMA increases serotonin in the synaptic cleft just like prozac?

If "All [MDMA] does is artificially increase serotonin.... just like prozac" then Prozac and MDMA would have the same effect. But they have radically different effects, so they must do at least something differently, despite sharing some similarities.

Re: California study begins screening for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD

#178

Post by pmoriarty »

tomatowurst wrote: post #140
sva_ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's... Disturbing. I'm surprised I didn't hear about this before. Honestly, fuck those people.

me too i was going to sign up for this but now im really afraid now. damn i was really looking forward to MDMA therapy to deal with PTSD stuff there needs to be harsh consequences and strong regulation. make sure people are going to trained and licensed practioners who will agree to recorded footage.

"i was going to sign up for this but now im really afraid now"

If you were seriously considering signing up for the study, I encourage you to contact the investigators who are running the study and/or MAPS and voice your concerns.

Not only would it help them understand what concerns prospective study participants have, but they may be able to answer your concerns to your satisfaction.

Re: California study begins screening for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD

#179

Post by csnover »

BossingAround wrote: post #24

If you're interested in MDMA sessions, and specifically MAPS (the pharma company that runs the trials), you might want to listen to the Cover story podcast, which deals with the MDMA/psylocybin culture of California as well as these trials. The first episode is at [1], the first episode dealing with maps is at [2]. These rape allegations are highly disconcerting and disheartening. [1] https://www.thecut.com/2021/11/c…

Since I listened to Cover Story recently, it was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this on the front page. I’m curious to hear from you and others who listened to the podcast about your impressions, because something felt really off to me about it.

I feel this way because of how the presenters initially introduced themselves as very pro-psychedelic, then over the course of the series made what seemed to be increasingly negative and misleading statements to lead listeners to the conclusion that all psychedelics research is garbage (because everyone involved is either an abuser or motivated by greed) and that these drugs are just too dangerous to be legalised or used in therapy (because they are too disinhibiting or because they break people). They started with ‘psychedelics are great and I love them and they really helped me in my life’ and ended with almost an entire episode of ‘I tell anyone who is interested not to do it’.

The serious and legitimate problems that they detailed are very worthy of investigation and remediation, but they also all seemed, to me, to be failures of: (1) individual practitioners who engaged in unethical/illegal behaviour; (2) study runners who didn’t know, or didn’t care, or even believed that these unethical behaviours were actually fine; (3) the drug war, which stopped reputable groups with stronger ethical standards from performing studies and created space for an underground movement led by sociopaths; and (4) the medical research apparatus itself which is too uncritical and accepting of garbage study designs and data.

Some other “problems” they raised just struck me as odd, like the claim that results couldn’t be legitimate because they were combined from multiple trial sites, or that MDMA-assisted therapy is uniquely bad because it is ‘like doing open heart surgery and then walking away’.

Regarding multiple trial sites: I’m not a medical researcher, but I’ve seen this many times when looking up trials on clinicaltrials.gov. So, either (1) it’s not actually a problem, or (2) they didn’t clearly explain why this study’s multi-site design was uniquely bad, or (3) it’s a problem not unique to the MDMA-assisted therapy trial and should’ve been framed as an industry-wide problem instead but wasn’t.

Regarding the ‘open heart surgery’ analogy: Limiting the number of follow-up sessions was clearly a terrible study design and never should have been allowed, and the practitioners who refused to help should almost certainly be—at a minimum—barred from practice, but basically all forms of therapy have similar risks[0], so it seemed misleading at best for them to frame it as some consequence unique to MDMA-assisted therapy. There was even an article here on HN in 2020 about risks associated with meditation and mindfulness[1].

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4219072/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24185710

Re: California study begins screening for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD

#180

Post by kodah »

There's an excellent writing somewhere in my favorites about how people go through stages of trauma and are often retraumatized by various causes that are non-sequitur to the original trauma. I imagine the role that psychedelics can play is moving a patient through the stages that are more vulnerable to this retraumatization.
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