Posted by PsychoSage on March 3, 2004, at 11:12:02
In reply to Re: h in e: truth., posted by scott-d-o on March 2, 2004, at 9:03:59
> > However, either way I would not be so keen in using the positive aspects of the experience of using it when discussing it as a tool for PTSD people. I think the energy behind any excitement for it as a therapeutic tool comes from the alleged harmlessness of using the drug occasionally in the recreational setting.
> >
> > Ecstacy would have a very tiny limited market if it were used in therapy in the beginning. Otherwise, it will become as mishandled as the prescribing of antidepressants by primary doctors if it were used for other therapy issues or mental conditions.
> >
> > i can envision an MDMA-like substance finding its way into the lives of mental health patients, but it would be analgous to the way amphetamine is given to children for productivity and symptom control. It would not be for fun or for a party night or a club/rave. It would be strictly for theraputic purposes, so the connotations with communing experiences and pleasurable massages and dancing til dawn should go out the door.
> >
> > There should and would not be any moral imperative to remove any reprehension that exists now for taking E and therefore, allow a child/teenager to take E in the future as a rite of passage and necessary experience for any young American since it has a meritorious use in theoffices of therapists. I think that if it finds its way to the market then a lot of people will think that it was a good thing all along, and it is as harmless as beer. Anyone who gets excited over the widespread sanctioned, free-flowing use of ecstacy has issues of drug use stigma and very little sincere support for PTSD people who could benefit from this.
> >
> > I guess I mean to be a joykill here, but i am skeptical of the value of MDMA for therapy. I would hate to see it become something that big corporations profit from the same way they profit from alcohol, cigarettes and many pharm drugs that are only partially effective.
> >
> > One experience might create a way to get in touch with feelings and events from the past, but long-term healing is something that can not happen in one trip. I think many patients would be too eager to want to do the experience again just like many recreational drug users would want to do a drug again because they would think it's their life or death right to break further ground. Where do you draw the line? Who cares? Doctors, therapists, and pharmaceuticals would make something out of this if 60% took it succesffully and 40% did not. That is how things seem to work these days. Many drug users eventually figure out that a drug that adds an experience to their life yields nothing utilitarian.
> >
> > Mentally and emotionally humans don't exist on the ecstacy plane of experience on a daily basis. The drug creates a product that is bound by that trip. The memory of the session in therapy is bound by that trip as well. How would a PTSD person be able to deal with talking and remembering on a non-ecstacy state of mind still?
> >
> > Let us take this idea: It's easy to admit things when you are drunk, but when you are sober you realize that the admission doesn't have as much weight because it doesn't have as much transformational power as a breakthrough while sober does.
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> I don't entirely agree with this sentiment. Many people use benzodiazepines for phobias and after continued exposure to these previously feared situations, many are able to taper off without a relapse of symptoms. Given, this occurs over the long-term and doesn't work if the individual is attributing the success entirely to the compound.
>
> Of course, MDMA could not be used in this way since tolerance develops so quickly (some people claim they only feel any different at all during their first trip.) However, I would argue that for people with a disorder like PTSD, the experience of being able to access certain areas of the brain, even for a brief time, which were previously unavailable even to themselves could be a life-changing experience. I think there is a possibility that MDMA or other psychedelic drugs could liberate the individual in this respect.
>
> I express some apprehension in MDMA specifically however, because I wonder what utility the amphetamine/stimulant aspects of the compound could serve. I don't have much personal experience with psychedelics but I wonder if mescaline would be better suited since it is a chemically related phenethylamine minus the stimulant.
>
> In the few experiences I've had with MDMA, I have never forgotten anything that has occured, and though a "breakthrough" while sober may have more "transformational power" than one while under the influence of a substance, that doesn't mean that experience carries no weight at all; and I'm sure there are many patients out there who will *never* be able to achieve that breakthrough in a sober state.
>
> I'm not even going to get into the politics involved in all of this and why it will surely never happen, at least not in the USA. I could ramble on for hours but will refrain from doing so.
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> scott
This is exactly the kind of false confidence that i was thinking would rear itself from the possible use of MDMA for therapy. First of all, benzodiazipines are not mind-manifesting. They do not have a positive effect in the sense they add something qualitatively different in a significant way.The word "trip" that is used above refers to exactly what the drug is used for recreationally. A trip is a vacation from reality.
There are other ways to find spiritual expansion. Many psychedelic drugs are not legitimate as a means toward spiritual transport because they are not a ritualistic exercise woven into the fabric of most people's lives. Drugs don't mean the same thing to those in the non-drug culture, so people won't be so philosophical about hallucinations or make attributes about the experience that kids with glowsticks do or trippers from the 60s did. They wouldn't even have a vocabulary for the feelings that would be without hard techno music and the visual stimulantion from gyrating sweaty bodies in a dark dance club. There would be no one to kiss or massage.On low doses, people can function on benzos. No one should be running around on maintenance MDMA therapy. That is what antidepressants are for. ADs hit the same neurotransmitters but they are not intended to cause an explosion in the head of a patient that leaves an impairing hangover. The effects of the drugs we talk about in here are supposed to be subtle and work over time relative to MDMA. ADs are supposed to have a uniform effect [not talking about side effects or adverse effects]
on a patient every second of the day. The medicine stays with you.Regardless of complicated and inconsistent politics regarding laws governing substances from alcohol and tobacco to marijuana, MDMA for therapy doesn't sound efficacious enough for enough people on its own merits or lack thereof. Marijuana may have medicinal value and be outlawed, but ecstacy is far more limited. If it ever got out there it would be third-line treatment instead of something celebrated to "liberate people's minds" which is more rhetoric from the drug-experimenting community who believe that they exist in some kind of legitimate cultural movement. It's not the 60s. The significance of LSD was in the context of something grander, and that is not happeneing with ecstacy now.
Using benzos for whatever reasons is something that has to be done repeatedly. To extinguish a phobia with or without anxiety reducing ADs or benzos requires continual treatment, and results are usually lost when the drugs are discontinued. This is a widely established pattern that you can find in any abnormal psych textbook. No one is going to be taking MDMA several times a week or even weekly to work out their troubles unless the substance becomes completely modified and innocuous. The properties and associations of street MDMA as an overwhelming hallucinogenic of vivid colors and emotionally resonant sounds have to go out the door. I guess I am pointing to a substance that is not even MDMA anymore but a much improved derivative that probably wouldn't inspire a political movement from the liberal, drug-permissive enclaves of society.
That derivative really has to extract the fun out of ecstacy and be made with economy and efficiency in mind to spare patients from any harm and society from any potential abuse.The experience of street MDMA is like a calm, loving manic, psychotic state. For anyone who knows psychotic mania without drugs, a nice episode isn't anymore compelling as a means toward psychological progress.
The desired theraputic state the researchers are trying to create is very obvious. I'd infer that they want a speedy, calm, trusting state that can evoke associative, free-flowing thinking. Those are the attributes of ecstacy they want to exploit. Perhaps those qualities can be generated by another similar new compund to be created, but something that is a lot less exciting than the love drug of the 90s: E.
I don't see this lack of use of MDMA or the delay in seriously funded research for it as a tool for therapy as being a cultural, political issue. In a practical way, MDMA as it exists today is not necessarily as compelling or positive in the same way it makes many recreational users happy and joyful for 4-6 hours.
poster:PsychoSage
thread:318258
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040228/msgs/319690.html