A vote against using MDMA as part of therapy for PTSD has provoked a powerful backlash among researchers who study psychedelic drugs.
Some 13 million Americans struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Existing therapies only bring relief for a fraction of patients, and new treatments are sorely needed, according to psychiatrists wrestling with the scale of the problem. So, there was distinct disappointment when an advisory committee at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted earlier this month against a therapy that many had hoped could offer the first new treatment for PTSD in 25 years.
A number of experts who study psychedelics have since spoken out in support of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD and have sharply criticised the recommendations of the FDA's Psychopharmacological Drugs Advisory Committee. But some are still optimistic that the treatment might be approved when the FDA delivers its final decision in August.
Ahead of the meeting, FDA approval of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD seemed likely, says Sandeep Nayak, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, who investigates psychedelics as treatments for substance use and mood disorders. About two-thirds of people who received three sessions of MDMA and talk therapy no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis at the end of two Phase 3 clinical trials.
It's an outcome that is "almost double that of existing medications", says Gül Dölen, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who researches the mechanisms of how psychedelics achieve therapeutic effects. "What's more, [the treatment] led to durable improvements in these patients lasting at least six months."
I would love to know how many members of this board have stock portfolios in pharmaceutical companies that are currently collecting huge amounts of money from antidepressants being used to treat people with PTSD.
Antidepressants that really aren't effective in the treatment of PTSD but make the pharmaceutical industry a shitload of money.
Like most things, when we follow the money we learn why powerful people make the decisions they do. And I imagine this instance is no different.
Let them use psilocybin, which more effectively treats the same symptoms of PTSD for a longer time with simpler therapy schedules and no physiological risks or side effects, and let the researchers pursue MDMA as long as they want until they can figure out an effective therapy that isn't dangerous.
There's no reason to use a second solution to the exact same symptoms that a safe, simple and effectively solution already resolves.
You can choose your own therapy, but it's silly to tell people not to take the available, simpler, more effective proven solution in hopes that in the future a different solution will be available that might be as effective as psilocybin already is for these symptoms.
Both show promise though need further research to determine how they should be used most effectively and safely, they have similar legal hurdles, and different patients may respond better to one, the other, or possibly even a combination of both,
As much as I hate to say this, MDMA being used for treatment of mental illnesses might not be viable option because of it's negative effects. I do not know if short term severe depression and long term memory loss is worth a reduction in PTSD. Maybe as a last resort medication similar to how methamphetamine is prescribed for drug resistant ADHD.
Similarly, there's no reason to make people wait for a potential mdma medication while psilocybin is available, effective against the exact same symptoms, perfectly safe and has a simpler therapy regimen.
I did a deep dive into cluster headaches and that jaw nerve disorder that drives a lot of people to suicide, I really hope they do what psilocybin trial to relieve people of that.
Trigeminal neuralgia.
Yes 100%, people who have tried geminal neuralgia or any nerve damage and cluster headaches should probably try magic mushrooms.
Physiologically safe, rewires your brain in good ways in every study so far and a thousand anecdotal stories, why not try it?