PTSD may be cured by ‘ecstasy’ therapy: breakthrough MDMA study

Ecstasy could soon step off the dance floor and into therapists’ offices.

Once a staple of rave culture and all-night dance parties, the illegal drug known as MDMA, ecstasy or molly may soon get approved for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

A new study, published Thursday in Nature Medicine, found that MDMA plus psychotherapy can treat PTSD so well that people no longer have symptoms of the disorder.

“It’s an important study,” Matthias Liechti, a psychopharmacologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, said in a news release. “It confirms MDMA works.”

The Food and Drug Administration usually requires two placebo-controlled trials before it will approve a drug for use — and this latest study is the second to find MDMA is safe and effective at treating PTSD.

The stimulant — currently a Schedule 1 drug with a “high potential for abuse” and no accepted medical use, per the Drug Enforcement Agency — could be approved by the FDA for treating PTSD as soon as next year.

The Aussies got there first, however: In July of this year, Australia became the first country to allow MDMA (as well as psilocybin mushrooms) to be used for treating PTSD as well as depression.

Each of the 104 participants in the latest study worked with a two-therapist team and got three 90-minute talk therapy sessions followed by three MDMA (or placebo) treatment sessions, spaced one month apart.

The results showed that over 86% of people in the MDMA group had a significant reduction in PTSD symptoms, and about 71% improved so much that they no longer even met the criteria for a PTSD diagnosis.

But of those who took the placebo, only 48% no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis.

Importantly, a significant percentage of the participants in the latest study were Hispanic, Latino or nonwhite, said lead author Dr. Jennifer Mitchell, a neuroscientist at the University of California San Francisco.

“We worked long and hard to get a study population that’s more in line with the general population with PTSD,” Mitchell told The New York Times. “This isn’t just privileged people with lots of time and resources.”

PTSD is a psychiatric disorder that occurs after a traumatic event or set of circumstances, according to the American Psychiatric Association, such as natural disasters, serious accidents, terrorist acts, war or combat, rape/sexual assault, violence or bullying.

The disorder affects up to 5% of US adults every year, and is notoriously difficult to treat. Conventional therapies and medications only help about half of patients.

One consistent challenge with psychedelic trials is the very nature of the drugs themselves: People are usually able to guess within minutes whether they’ve received a psychedelic drug or an inactive placebo, which may skew the study’s results.

Nonetheless, the possibility that a new, safe, effective treatment for PTSD would be nothing short of a breakthrough: “MDMA-assisted therapy would be the first novel treatment for PTSD in over two decades,” Dr. Berra Yazar-Klosinski, senior author of the study, told The New York Times.

“PTSD patients can feel some hope,” Yazar-Klosinski added.