Early Results of Mdma / Ptsd Study Prove Promising

Early Results of MDMA / PTSD Study Prove Promising

April 16, 2010 – San Jose, CA – Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century

By Jacob Curtis

Today at the Holiday Inn conference center in San Jose, CA, Dr. Michael Mithoefer, a psychiatrist from Charleston, S.C., presented findings from the Phase II clinical trail of using MDMA for treatment-resistant patients with PTSD. The talk that Dr. Mithoefer gave can be enlightened by the hypothesis of the study:

1. MDMA-assisted psychotherapy can be administered safely in a controlled setting

2. Patients will see improvement of their PTSD symptoms after MDMA-assisted therapy

The study was approved as a FDA Investigational New Drug program. MDMA, or course is not a new drug, it has been used as a therapeutic tool in the 1980’s before it’s prohibition, but for the current purposes MDMA is considered a new and untested drug. It has reached this level of human testing because the pre-clinical animal studies have taken place in the United States, Spain, and Switzerland. Since this is a FDA approved study, of course the toxicity of MDMA must be taken into account. Acute toxicity and poisoning is rare, so a 125mg dose has proven to be a safe level for therapeutic work. The direct assumption is that the conclusions of the Phase I and Phase II trails suggest a favorable risk/benefit ratio in a clinical setting.

For a layperson the technical jargon of modern psychiatry can be a bit overwhelming. There is talk of Double Blind, Placebo-Controlled trails. Some of the terms may be familiar: the purpose of the trail is to target folks with PTSD who are treatment resistant of SSRI’s and SNRI’s. Their level of traumatic stress may need medicine beyond Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors like Zoloft and Paxil. To give a bit of perspective, Dr. Mithoefer gave a sample demographic of the trail participants: mostly females with childhood sexual abuse, rape, or both as part of their PTSD.

Dr. Mithoefer talked of a Window of Tolerance: a place between hyperarousal and hypoarousal. This is the mind-space where the PTSD defenses are less tight and