"Ecstasy" may help PTSD victims get better

Source: NewsDaily

NEW YORK, Mar. 20, 2009 (Reuters Health) — The drug MDMA -- better known as the illegal recreational drug "Ecstasy" -- may help people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) recover, a Norwegian research team suggests.

They say the effect of MDMA should allow PTSD patients bond more easily with their therapists, take control of their emotions, and re-learn how to respond to past trauma.

People with PTSD "are usually running away from what they experienced as very scary, and then they never have this inhibition learning, this fear-learning," Pal-Orjan Johansen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim commented to Reuters Health. "When the clients are getting MDMA we believe it is easier for them. It becomes more bearable, it becomes easier to regulate, to be in the situation and not run away."

A couple of small studies in which people with PTSD were given MDMA in addition to standard therapy have had promising results, Johansen and his colleague Teri Krebs, a graduate student in neuroscience at the university, note in their report in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. Meanwhile, three controlled clinical trials of MDMA plus therapy are now underway.

Read more: http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre52i6v7-us-ecstasy-help-ptsd-victims-get-better/

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Interesting bit of news on how another illegal drug might prove to have a good therapeutic use.

If it checks out, the timing couldn't be better, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are inflicting many soldiers with PTSD.

But when the drugs are made illegal and allowed to turn into a black market free-for-all, that's quickly forgotten.

http://www.maps.org/research/

"Has no known medical use and a high potential for abuse"

The DEA, or whoever needs to seriously revisit the list of schedule I drugs. Cannabis is also obviously mis-scheduled.

and is illegal is essentially a Schedule I.

For instance, Cocaine is a schedule II -- because of its use as a type of anesthesia in some surgeries. The same with morphine (and derivatives) which are a major form of pain killer.

and should therefore not be Schedule I.

Hardly "breaking news"

I have Panic Disorder which is a stress based disorder and MDMA puts me into a 6-8 hour full blown panic attack. PTSD - maybe it effects that disorder differently - or it could be like Pot - depending on the type it either calms me or makes me stressed for a bit.

It will be interesting to find out what the results of the three trials bring - hopefully help for some if not all PTSD.

Your reaction could have been from the MDMA or it could have been from something else it was cut with.

Caffeine maybe.

I think it's dancesafe.org that lists different pills and what they're cut with.

And the effect you're describing might have been due to dosage or what it was cut with. I wouldn't try it again.

i wonder if something more natural like Psilocybin mushrooms or peyote would also work. Although Peyote would probably be overkill and way too strong.

I hope you're not taking meth for your PTSD!

wash down the peanut butter/banana sandwich I ate.

Good for Attention Deficit Disorder. The problem is, the dosage and delivery methods. Smoking really sends a jolt of the drug uncut to your brain. It magnifies the effects and increases greatly the likelihood and the strength of the addiction. It's mostly the same with injection.

was used by psychiatrists to facilitate opening up new ways of seeing and experiencing things in a controlled, therapeutit setting. Always kind of sorry I never got to try it that way.

and another that made them 'forget'. Hey, why not create a drug that stimulates a pleasure response when killing another human being? When there are no longer battles for a noble cause, or clear 'enemies' among civilian populations, then soldiers have simply become killing machines.
So I suppose as long as a soldier has psychological symptoms, then that means that there's still a human being in there grappling with his/her conscience and seeking to bring back some unquantifiable inner balance and connection with one's 'soul' that war often severs. If those symptoms disappear, if one can simply take a drug and change his chemisty, behavior, emotional responses....then it means we have a much more frightening scenario regarding our basic humanity.
While a drug might help with PTSD, lets not make it THE solution and forget to look at the root of the problem. These guys weren't born with PTSD afterall.

Hey, if reality sucks don't bother with fundamental change.
Just take a drug.

Memory drug:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100754665

Fearlessness:
http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/drugs-modern-soldiers-and-warfare/

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Recall Alice
When she was just small

When men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving slow
Go ask Alice
I think she'll know

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's "off with her head!"
Remember what the dormouse said;
"FEED YOUR HEAD"

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It's disturbing, and it would make medals for bravery moot.