Last summer I had a psychadelic-assisted therapy session with MDMA and a guide (along with integration session after the main experience). It was one of the more powerful experiences of my life, and has led to sustained positive change in my life.
The experience itself was at a hotel room I had booked. For just under six hours, I lay on the bed with an eye mask and headphones playing instrumental music picked by my guide. MDMA is commonly known as a party drug but under different settings and with different intentions, it had the power to turn to yourself examine yourself and your life in a state of love free of the fear and anxiety that we often feel in life. At least for me, this produced clarifying insights about myself and my life which have persisted long after the session.
Very excited to see progress being made for the use of MDMA to treat PTSD, and hopefully a broader class of people beyond that.
I did something similar with mushrooms some 15 years ago. Laid in the bed, run some nice shamanic music on endless loop, crawled under blanket, closed my eyes and experienced completely out-of-world experience, dissolving into mist of atoms, swirling in the music, and at the end re-composing myself and my senses atom by atom.
At the very end it was even spiritual, which is funny since I am say agnostic and didn't have any form of religious upbringing. This experience didn't change that, in fact it reinforced my opinion on religions and religious matters.
I know its a different type of drug and effect, but I think generally drugs give more inner insight when taken alone (or controlled uninterrupted env which crowd of people is definitely not).
Using mushrooms or MDMA as a late-night party/social drug seems increasingly crazy as I get older. With a close friend or partner or even alone they are a really meaningful experience, with a tranquil comedown. It almost feels wasteful to burn through them late into the night dancing to electronic music and then being completely wrecked the next day, I guess I enjoyed it when I was 19.
Nice. Thank you for sharing. I was just talking to someone about this, this past week.
I think most people (mentally stable people) should try psychedelics at least once in their lives. The people who need to do it the most are the people in positions of power. (Political leaders, CEOs, etc.)
Yes, that’s right. The guide was available if I needed anything but other than using the bathroom once a few hours in I just laid there.
I should note that everyone’s journeys are different, and even for a single person no journey will be the same as the last. But my experience at least demonstrated the power of MDMA to serve as a healing substance when used with a particular intention and in a particular setting. The preparation work prior to the experience as well as the integration work following the experience are also incredibly important for it to have a long-lasting effect.
Yeah, that's the approach I'm hearing the most positive reviews about - Taking it alone and leaving the therapist to talk about it after, hence the integration
Also see this account of MDMA helping someone with aspergers: [1]
In this case there wasn't even any music, and it still helped them.
That said, music is usually quite important in psychedelic therapy, and I've heard it said (by Mendel Kaelen, a neuroscientist who studied LSD's and music's effect on the brain) that "psychedelic therapy can be conceptualized as form of music therapy, but a drug-assisted or drug-enhanced form of music therapy."
If you're interested in MDMA sessions, and specifically MAPS (the pharma company that runs the trials), you might want to listen to the Cover story podcast, which deals with the MDMA/psylocybin culture of California as well as these trials. The first episode is at [1], the first episode dealing with maps is at [2].
These rape allegations are highly disconcerting and disheartening.
Agreed that they are not a pharmaceutical company, but the Phase 3 trial is being sponsored by MAPS PBC which is the for-profit subsidiary and I assume has some sort of revenue motive.
The for-profit subsidiary is 100% owned by the non-profit.
Here's what Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS had to say about this:
"MAPS has started the MAPS Public Benefit Corporation, which is for-profit corporation. It's 100% owned by the non-profit, but still we have a for-profit arm, and the goal of that is to sell MDMA at a profit and then whatever the profits are to fuel more research and more public education."[1]
Since I listened to Cover Story recently, it was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this on the front page. I’m curious to hear from you and others who listened to the podcast about your impressions, because something felt really off to me about it.
I feel this way because of how the presenters initially introduced themselves as very pro-psychedelic, then over the course of the series made what seemed to be increasingly negative and misleading statements to lead listeners to the conclusion that all psychedelics research is garbage (because everyone involved is either an abuser or motivated by greed) and that these drugs are just too dangerous to be legalised or used in therapy (because they are too disinhibiting or because they break people). They started with ‘psychedelics are great and I love them and they really helped me in my life’ and ended with almost an entire episode of ‘I tell anyone who is interested not to do it’.
The serious and legitimate problems that they detailed are very worthy of investigation and remediation, but they also all seemed, to me, to be failures of: (1) individual practitioners who engaged in unethical/illegal behaviour; (2) study runners who didn’t know, or didn’t care, or even believed that these unethical behaviours were actually fine; (3) the drug war, which stopped reputable groups with stronger ethical standards from performing studies and created space for an underground movement led by sociopaths; and (4) the medical research apparatus itself which is too uncritical and accepting of garbage study designs and data.
Some other “problems” they raised just struck me as odd, like the claim that results couldn’t be legitimate because they were combined from multiple trial sites, or that MDMA-assisted therapy is uniquely bad because it is ‘like doing open heart surgery and then walking away’.
Regarding multiple trial sites: I’m not a medical researcher, but I’ve seen this many times when looking up trials on clinicaltrials.gov. So, either (1) it’s not actually a problem, or (2) they didn’t clearly explain why this study’s multi-site design was uniquely bad, or (3) it’s a problem not unique to the MDMA-assisted therapy trial and should’ve been framed as an industry-wide problem instead but wasn’t.
Regarding the ‘open heart surgery’ analogy: Limiting the number of follow-up sessions was clearly a terrible study design and never should have been allowed, and the practitioners who refused to help should almost certainly be—at a minimum—barred from practice, but basically all forms of therapy have similar risks[0], so it seemed misleading at best for them to frame it as some consequence unique to MDMA-assisted therapy. There was even an article here on HN in 2020 about risks associated with meditation and mindfulness[1].
We're starting to see the beginning of the backlash that the psychedelic community has been dreading since the start of the so-called Psychedelic Renaissance about a decade ago.
Everyone in the field knows that there'll inevitably be some adverse effects among some (as far as we know, small minority) of participants in these studies and users of psychedelics as a whole. We also know that both the media and many media consumers love sensationalism and mud-throwing, whatever the facts may be.
So far the overwhelming majority of psychedelic studies have been enormously positive, but we also know that can't last forever and realistically speaking there are bound to be some negative effects. This was crystal clear long before the Psychedelic Renaissance even started.
We've been lucky that since the beginning of the Psychedelic Renaissance the media attention has been almost completely positive and curious. But that too will likely change. These Cover Story podcasts are a recent example of the start of this change.
The question is whether such negative media attention will derail the Psychelic Renaissance and whether we'll go back to the dark ages of complete prohibition and mainstream terror at the prospect of using psychedelics.
At this point that doesn't seem likely, and stories like this will probably just cause the scientists and organizations involved to get more serious about safety and the general public to stop (erroneously) regarding psychedelics and the people involved in the scene as panaceas that can do no wrong.
At the same time, I don't think we're at the peak of the hype curve, and as more people try psychedelics there'll be a lot more influencers and true believers who'll hype them to the sky. We might even get another Timothy Leary or Ken Kesey.
Do you know I believe this without even reading those articles? Because MDMA is nothing new. Really it’s not. All it does is artificially increase serotonin. This is not a change of paradigm, it’s the same old thinking that never ends up helping anyone. And the only people who package drug that does the same thing as an old drug that never helps anyone are sociopaths.
If "All [MDMA] does is artificially increase serotonin.... just like prozac" then Prozac and MDMA would have the same effect. But they have radically different effects, so they must do at least something differently, despite sharing some similarities.
Yes, it works more quickly. That’s the only difference. And it is more like the SNRIs, like cymbalta with some effect or encouraging the release of catecholamines.
But the effect is the same, more neurotransmitters in the synaptic cleft.
People abuse Prozac as well if that given you a clue on their similarities.
As someone who has spent a lot of time reading the science of these chemicals, as well as their cultural impact and the experiences of people that I know and have talked to, as well as many experiences I have read about online. I can say that this is such a bad take that it's almost funny.
It's like saying that a helicopter and a blender are the same device because they both have spinning blades. These two substances are completely different in just about every way that they affect people, aside from producing a mood boost (which is an effect also caused by things like morphine, cocaine, a few different psychedelics, alcohol, caffeine, nitrous oxide, and many many more substances which don't act via serotonin).
One of the main theories on the action of MDMA involves the sudden serotonin release inhibiting the amygdala and thus reducing fear response. Prozac certainly does not do this. MDMA's effects are not even all shared with other serotonin releasers such as fenfluoramine or MDAI. And Prozac's effects differ somewhat from other SSRIs too.
The neurotransmitters and receptors in the brain are not a set of dials where you can ratchet one and always expect a given psychological effect independent of the other receptors, or even independent of the way it's ratcheted, or even the timing of it. Also the effect of these drugs is highly dependent on context too. Believe it or not, MDMA can sometimes produce dysphoria and or unpleasant/unhappy mental state. It is uncommon, but I have seen it happen.
Sorry for the rant, it's just this type of oversimplification really strikes a nerve with me.
> One of the main theories on the action of MDMA involves the sudden serotonin release inhibiting the amygdala and thus reducing fear response. Prozac certainly does not do this.
{cough}
Fluoxetine Facilitates Fear Extinction Through Amygdala Endocannabinoids
Chronic fluoxetine prevents fear memory generalization and enhances subsequent extinction by remodeling hippocampal dendritic spines and slowing down systems consolidation
Have you actually talked with people who have taken these drugs? The way prozac affects people is clearly much much different from the way MDMA affects people.
Also, from your first link:
"In contrast to fluoxetine, citalopram treatment did not increase BLA eCBs or facilitate extinction."
And your second link:
"Importantly, other SSRIs such as citalopram have shown the opposite effect, disrupting acquisition and retention of fear extinction"
Yeah...
Plus "fear extinction" is not the same as immediate fear reduction/inhibition as seen with MDMA.
I think that we as humans like to believe that we know more than what we do about these sorts of things.
Edit: Your third link talks about anxiogenic effects of fluoxetine, i.e. increases anxiety; literally the opposite of what you are arguing.
OK, wait, let me call at my pharmaceutical buddies and have them do a study that shows that the New drug they wanna make billions of dollars from works just like Prozac but faster. I’ll get back to you in a minute.
The fact that people are even slightly amazed at an amphetamine will make people happier is amazing to me. Don’t you’ll realize you’re substituting Street dealers for dealers in suits?
MDMA is not a new drug. It was used for therapy as far back as the 1980's.
It doesn't merely "make people happier", but seems to actually help people face and let go of their trauma, forgive themselves and others, feel love and trust where they couldn't before, communicate with their loved ones more effectively, and has stopped some from killing themselves.
There is a lot of evidence that it effectively treats severe, treatment-resistant PTSD -- something no other type of treatment does even remotely as well, which is why it's likely to be fully approved by the FDA soon.
To compare its effects to other amphetamines, except at the most superficial level is ridiculous, as none of them have these effects.
As for dealers, I'd be happy if dealers (the street or suit kind) sold effective medication that improves people's lives. Of course the legal providers are better because then we can be assured of their medicines' safety and purity, and we won't have people thrown in jail and being killed in turf wars over something that helps people.
I applied to take part in a psilocybin study to treat major depressive disorder in Chicago as I lost my 8 month old baby to her battle with heart disease. I had a day of intake, interviews, medical exams, etc, but ultimately wasn't selected to take part in the study. During the intake though, I realised I probably have PTSD, more so than depression. So, this is great news! Or, it's definitely a step in the right direction at least.
I don't think this stuff should be sold, say, in a gas station beside the humpty dumpty peanuts... but it does have its place.
The mental health epidemic for returning veterans for example[1]:
"More than 45,000 veterans and active-duty service members have killed themselves in the past six years. That is more than 20 deaths a day — in other words, __more suicides each year than the total American military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq__."
"“One of the biggest battles is the military culture,” Ms. Ruocco said. “Seeking mental health treatment goes against everything they are taught in boot camp,” where service members are told “to push through pain, to think of everybody else before self, to solve problems with lethal force if necessary.”"
YOU might be an adult, but honestly in the past few years, it seems pretty clear that plenty of people who are age 18 or 21 or even age 40 can't seem to act like adults. And I say that as someone who is a proponent of MDMA legalization.
It is well known that humans can't make rational choices. If refrigerators with CFCs were still legal to purchase alongside non-CFC refrigerators, I'd be willing to bet the ozone layer would probably not exist right now. If leaded gasoline wasn't basically banned, I bet plenty of people will still drive around using leaded gasoline.
> YOU might be an adult, but honestly in the past few years, it seems pretty clear that plenty of people who are age 18 or 21 or even age 40 can't seem to act like adults.
That is because "acting like adult" is used as term of approval. It means "a theoretically ideal" behavior. It does not mean "average adult have that psychology" nor "average adult have that value".
That's like calling "getting a C- in a class so that you pass the class" or "not pissing your own pants" some sort of "theoretically ideal" behavior.
Yes, it's "ideal" in the sense that not everyone accomplishes that behavior (some people will fail a class or have bladder issues, obviously). But that doesn't mean "half the population failing Algebra I" or "half the population regularly pees their own pants" is an acceptable outcome in society.
Just because you can define "acting like an adult" as ideal rather than true in all real cases doesn't mean it shouldn't be an expectation.
Lysol doesn't directly interact with the brain's reward mechanisms, undermining rational thought processes (unless there's people out there huffing Lysol that I'm not aware of).
A car can kill you and all your children. Are you a proponent of allowing anyone to drive a car without restrictions (driver's licenses)? Slap a warning label on the steering wheel of a car "do not drive while drunk" and call it a day?
True, covid only proved the public health question can't be solved from the individualistic point of view. Many drugs have a big cost on society, not just individual who decides to take them.
That's clearly a bad argument. That's equivalent to saying that driving cars or flying planes should be available to everyone, without a driver's licence or pilot's license.
Don't strawman what I said. I didn't say psychedelics should be banned. I said that they shouldn't be sold in gas stations (aka easily available to the public).
I fail to see how that prevents prescriptions from being a viable option, or a "mdma license" similar to a driver's license that is issued only after a person proves that they can safely use it.
One might rather live in a world where MDMA (a far less addicting substance with more acute rather than chronic side effects) is endemic rather than those two.
You literally described what addiction is in reference to MDMA. And this is going to be the problem with the drug for treating mood disorders. Just like Prozac, it will stop working And you will need a larger dose for the same action.
Just because you don’t actively go out and seek for a drug does not mean you are not addicted (conditioned)to it.
The thing about MDMA is that it causes your brain to dump your serotonin reserves into your brain all at once. Doing that too often, without letting your serotonin rebuild, can cause serotonin syndrome.
I think psychedelics are safer in that regard. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever physically done "too much acid". Even some people who ingested tens of thousands of micrograms (thinking they were snorting coke) came out of it perfectly fine with appropriate care (since the amount was so high compared to the usual dosages, they did need medical care).
I think classical psychedelics are among the safest drugs, but honestly, how is that not "too much acid"? If they needed medical care, that implies that if they hadn't received that care they would not have been perfectly fine. Yes, it was an accident caused by irresponsible use, but let's not mince words. The point where a dose is "too much" should be (at the most) the point where you need medical attention, not the point where you suffer some permanent damage or death.
"Medical care" for psychedelics really just means "strap them down so they don't hurt themselves thinking they turned into an attack helicopter so they jump off a cliff, and feed them water so they're not dehydrated" and just waiting until it wears off.
You might need medical attention because you'd otherwise hurt yourself, not only because your body is hurt. Most likely, this guy simply picked up the other day and went home.
If you have never taken these medication you have never known what it is like to try to stop them. Heroin could be considered a life saving medicine in the same vein.
Prozac artificially increases serotonin as as a result your serotonin receptor density changes. So trying to stop the drug, not only do you end up with all these horrible side effect, but your depression will be much worse until your receptor density normalizes again.
There is a biological marker for the need of insulin. There is no such thing when it comes to prozac.
There is a biological marker for the need of many drugs too - it develops over time with use (and then stays for a long time).
Anyways, I agree with you w.r.t. many psychiatric drugs. Don't try to spread that into psychedelics though - completely different, it has enough of its own problems and it's not necessary to make up some non-existent on top of that.
I can’t speak for other states but my state does not allow gas stations to serve alcohol. Maybe beer at most, but that is tightly controlled and regulated via licenses, inspections, and tons regulations and liability on the licensee.
If you think Tobacco and Alcohol are as dangerous as MDMA you have no idea about drugs. It can escalate far far far more easily and I hate those comparison. I'm speaking from experience.
Alcohol is far more dangerous than MDMA, both in long-term usage and immediate effects. Especially when you consider how socially acceptable it is to drink alcohol, and thus the total consumption of alcohol is far higher. Tobacco is largely dangerous in the long term, the immediate damage from tobacco is much smaller.
> For some inexplicable reason, the majority of people continue to chose the option that guarantees the most human suffering.
The problem is that we are asked to decriminalize drugs (like fentanyl) at the same time that we are asked to dedicated massive public resources for the rehabilitation of those people who then used those decriminalized drugs. I would be happy if it were one way or the other, but right now it sucks.
The money we spend to try (and fail) to stop drug production, trafficking, sale and use could instead be used to help cover the obviously colossal, multi-generational shortfall we have on mental health and addiction spending. Not to mention revenue raised from taxes.
Maybe there should be exceptions made for exceptionally deadly and addictive dugs, like fentanyl.
That money won't be enough. Those people are simply broken, most of them aren't being fixed no matter how many resources we throw at them.
Convincing us that we should let people do what they want with drugs and somehow...that it is also our responsibility to pick up the pieces for these people as a consequence, it sounds like hypocrisy. Deflecting that society was responsible for the drug abuse in the first place (by letting people be poor and closing the mental hospitals) isn't going to convince many people that we should allow drug abuse and pay for the consequences as well.
"Deflecting that society was responsible for the drug abuse in the first place (by letting people be poor and closing the mental hospitals) isn't going to convince many people that we should allow drug abuse and pay for the consequences as well."
The question is: what's the alternative to allowing drug abuse?
We know the War no Drugs is a dismal failure that hurts most the people who need help the most, and their families, and (as knock-on effects) the rest of society.
The pessimist in me thinks it'll just continue, despite being so detrimental to our society as a whole, but there are signs (like the success of cannabis legalization, and the ongoing Psychedelic Renaissance) that we may be moving towards a more constructive future where people who need help aren't treated like criminals and attacked.
> We know the War no Drugs is a dismal failure that hurts most the people who need help the most, and their families, and (as knock-on effects) the rest of society.
When I was younger, I used to think the war on drugs was a dismal failure, but now seeing what happens when decriminalization is gone with instead, with junkies on the street camping in parks leaving their needles everywhere and the pervasive burnt peanut butter smell from smoking fentanyl on the buses. It might have just been the best of a bunch of bad solutions.
But I get that not all drugs are fentanyl or heroin, I'm totally ok with marijuana legalization. Also, since it is decriminalized in our city and not other places in our region, we probably attract much more of the problem just because our cops don't harass users or dealers.
So you can see how the War on Drugs is not a viable solution, and you can see how the half-assed, semi-decriminalized mess we have in some cities is not a viable solution. But you can't see how proactively spending all of this money helping people instead of marginalizing/imprisoning people might be a viable solution?
Either way, we're gonna keep spending untold billions on this problem. I'd like to stop throwing money at policies that destroy lives, violate civil liberties and have been proven by decades of evidence to be infective.
> But you can't see how proactively spending all of this money helping people instead of marginalizing/imprisoning people
Oh, we can spend an unlimited amount of helping people and it only lasts until they get out and get their next fix. How do you help people that don't really want help? And all of the "help" they want just goes to enabling the destructive behavior, the money we throw at the problem right now just allow them to do more drugs.
> instead of marginalizing/imprisoning people might be a viable solution?
So? The other approach is just enabling their behavior with compassion: let's make sure they have housing and open shelters so they can don't die while continuing to do their drugs? We are already spending untold billions on that, meanwhile ignoring petty property crimes (because junkies need legos for what?), and we only go OMG when they bash some poor girl's head in with a baseball bat because they are having a crisis.
Why have any sympathy for those people at all? So we are already spending around $60k/year/person on these people, how much higher do you want our one city to go? $200k/year? $1 million/year? How do you help people who don't really want help but will gladly take your money? Supply of those needing help (even if they just want drugs) is also basically unlimited since it is more of a national problem, while big cities are expected to provide compassion on their own.
You seem to have a very narrow and frankly uninformed opinion on addiction. It's unlikely you can be convinced that spending billions to arrest and imprison druggies is worse than spending the exact same billions to provide services and support if your beginning assumption is that addicts are lost causes.
After this whole debacle in Canada [1] where two therapists were doing some downright freaky cuddle puddle from hell with a blindfold on a traumatized person, I am more curious about what they're doing to screen the therapists. These people hardly met the guidelines that MAPS set for therapy, and as described quite ridiculously violated people's well being instead.
Drug 'em up, mask 'em up, make 'em face their darkest fears.
That's the enduring pattern of a lot of "coming of age" initiation rituals across many different cultures. I'm not shocked to see this is the approach an unaccredited drum-beatin' hippie looking couple in beautiful British Columbia tried to carry out.
Huh, that’s pretty much rape, no? He (not depicted in video but described in text) had sexual intercourse with the person in his care while the patient was on MDMA. Homie that is not kosher at all. That is sexual assault.
I am a huge fan of these drugs but this part of the world’s shame and puritan culture really shows this unexpected effect: it is not sufficient for something to be pleasant. It also has to be “medically necessary”.
The outcome is we get a bunch of things showing that these things are medically necessary. “There is some evidence that X helps Y”. Dude, with the current standard of science I can do that for arbitrary X and Y.
And you know what, the truth is that people heal and recover in all sorts of ways. But that’s not enough for us. We need to place everyone under the control of these gatekeepers. And then we find ourselves horrified at the outcome of the machine we have built where the power hungry abuse their power.
> He (not depicted in video but described in text) had sexual intercourse with the person in his care while the patient was on MDMA.
It sounds like there was “intimate contact” during the session (maybe the spooning?) but the sex was not during the session. Still massively not OK.
> Yensen has admitted to having sex with Buisson after the experimental sessions ended but while she was still enrolled in the clinical trial. In a 2018 lawsuit that has since been settled out of court, she alleged it was sexual assault, while Yensen claimed in his response that Buisson manipulated him and initiated the encounter.
me too i was going to sign up for this but now im really afraid now.
damn i was really looking forward to MDMA therapy to deal with PTSD stuff
there needs to be harsh consequences and strong regulation. make sure people are going to trained and licensed practioners who will agree to recorded footage.
"i was going to sign up for this but now im really afraid now"
If you were seriously considering signing up for the study, I encourage you to contact the investigators who are running the study and/or MAPS and voice your concerns.
Not only would it help them understand what concerns prospective study participants have, but they may be able to answer your concerns to your satisfaction.
Consider doing the drug solo or at a party with trusted friends first and then trying integration therapy. The truth is most professional (ideally accredited, so shit like this doesn't happen) facilitators aren't going to give you the stuff themselves because they aren't licensed to.
I think that's about to radically change in Canada without a lot of radical change in who gets to be a therapist or counsellor and that's pretty troubling, but so are a lot of really weird oversights in that country
Fascinating how the 2020's is turning into a rerun of the 1960's-1970's: riots, rising oil prices, supply shocks, rising inflation and now the same "wild west" mentality about psychedelics that killed all legitimate research back then.
You forgot the crime wave. From 2003-2021 I kept my gun in a safe at night. Now I take it out and put it next to my bed. I haven't changed. My threat assessment has.
It was safe as fuck before the pandemic. I grew up in Los Angeles and lived in East LA awhile; lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant two years; lived in the Tenderloin for a year (not the way it is now). I've also lived in Prague, Barcelona, Saigon, Bangkok, Sydney (King's Cross, before the fall of it). The total chaos and anarchy of Portland right now is hard to explain. Almost everyone I know has been attacked on the street, or a victim of random violence in the past two years. Every other city in America that had a meth or fentanyl problem gave their worst cases a one-way bus ticket to Portland, in part because "let the liberals deal with it". I was a die-hard liberal progressive two years ago, before I had savage children on drugs waging running melees with rocks and trying to rape each other's girlfriends in front of my house all night. Now I'm just waiting for the night I have to shoot someone coming into my house.
I think the only other place I sort of felt this way was Avignon. I lived on Rue des Teinturieres. It's a bit of a siege mentality when the drug dealers outside your window are blasting music so loud it sounds like they're standing over your bed at night.
At the start of the pandemic, Portland police announced they would no longer respond to any emergency calls unless a person's life was in danger. And the district attorney ran and won on the platform that he wouldn't prosecute anyone for any crime short of murder. The result is a free-fire zone. I showed up at my local bar a couple months ago and it was a crime scene with 30-40 bullet casings scattered under the table where I usually have a drink. My friend who had walked home from there a few nights prior had been jumped and had his leg broken because he was gay- by a man wearing full Joker makeup, who is still sitting and laughing to himself on the corner two blocks from my house. A boy and his girlfriend camped their van in front of my place and the boy beat their dog with a long metal pole, screaming and high on drugs. The neighbors tried calling animal services, the police wouldn't come, and this went on for days and nights, with the dog yelping in pain until I went in the street with a gun and told him it was time to leave. He got in their van screaming at me, and wrecked it into six parked cars around the corner. And finally he got arrested.
> I was a die-hard liberal progressive two years ago, before I had savage children on drugs waging running melees with rocks and trying to rape each other's girlfriends in front of my house all night.
I don’t understand this. It would make me more progressive if I saw that. What are the economic, political, social forces that are causing that? Is it that we are a fair country that treats people with dignity? Or is it that we are Country with a huge separation of wealth that doesn’t mind letting people suffer in homelessness.
It sounds like it’s not that scene, but your wealth, that made you less progressive, and wanted to protect it that caused you to become less progressive.
Where do you think the people causing all the crime come from? Why do people commit crime? I’m pretty sure people don’t commit crime when their lives are going great. And I’m sure it’s the same thing with drug addiction.
And the people that run Portland? They’re not progressive, not in the least.
Threatening a man who is beating a dog in your front yard with a gun does not make you conservative, it makes you caring. Don’t buy into the paradigm that if you own a gun you are suddenly conservative. That’s just propaganda both sides want to live inside of you.
When politicians run on a progressive platform, institute progressive policies on crime (no bail, avoid prison, no punishment for QOL crime) and then crime goes nuts, I'd think twice about voting for progressive policies too.
But I think your point is "no true progressive" - if the policy didn't work, then it's not progressive because progressive policies always work.
::eye roll::
I think my view now on progressive policies is: They sound super when you're rich and white and don't think whatsoever about the consequences. Then when those consequences come back around to bite you, you probably become a nazi and don't think too hard about that either. Here's the dirty secret of progressive politics: No one who actually came here as an immigrant is at all interested in being fetishized for their racial background or their "noble" poverty. That's not what progressivism was 15 years ago, but that's what it is today. A white power fetishization of nonwhite people that forcefully slots us into categories we're supposed to sympathize with.
Portland is socially progressive but they are not economically progressive. In the word, they’re neo liberal. And I hate to use that term because people don’t truly understand its meaning.
No - they're pseudo-progressive on both fronts. It's not really that. They're passive aggressive. The phrase that always goes through my mind in this city is ineffectual asshole.
"Passive-aggressive people regularly exhibit resistance to requests or demands from family and other individuals often by procrastinating, expressing sullenness, or acting stubborn."
Oh, ending homelessness is a stupid priority. Giving people the education to take care of themselves if they choose to is important, but what they do with it is only my problem if they make it my problem. I can't spend my life taking care of people who refuse to take care of themselves.
It strikes me that none* of these are "liberal policies" but rather realities that arose in a few West Coast liberal cities that simply couldn't handle the influx of people who came to SF, Portland, Seattle.
* Perhaps no bail, although I think in isolation that's unlikely to be an issue
These areas are always unique because transient and the homeless can live with some degree of year round comfort, so they will be naturally appealing to people who have uncertain housing prospects.
These are all liberal/progressive policies enacted across the West Coast - Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angelas.
Progressives believe in restorative justice not prison or punishment. They believe that justice is actually righting the wrong that caused people to behave this way in the first place. "The infinite perfectability of man". That's a core progressive belief. Thus they "catch and release" for non-violent (and sometimes violent) crimes. Reduce property crimes to misdemeanors, and generally tell law abiding citizens - "just put up with quality of life issues".
Suffice to say the experiment has failed entirely.
Lawlessness begets more lawlessness. Giving people a place to shoot drugs (without treatment options) just helps addict get their fix. Not prosecuting property crimes just encourages ever more bold property crimes.
And the funny part is, it's not poverty driving much of this. It's organized crime - easy pickings, low hanging fruit. It's not the single mom trying to feed her newborn milk that is stealing catalytic converters.
I keep saying this, but history repeats itself. Major urban cities saw mass out migrations in the 60-70s for this exact reason. Crime, lawlessness, rioting, general degradation of QOL. The "Death Wish" movie series about a vigilante taking on a lawless city wasn't popular because people enjoyed the genre. I could easily see it happening again, especially with WFH. Then the "law and order" types will get elected and we'll start the whole thing over again.
What you're saying is right. I still fail to understand whether "restorative justice" actually comes from love or from some desire to watch the world burn. But you're describing what I've seen with my own eyes in the past few years in PDX. A slow self-immolation. What's sort of nuts to me is: I'm an extremist for personal freedom and individual rights, I loathe authority but I believe in collaborative action, and I'm a leftist in terms of helping people get off the bottom and on their feet. I guess that's what "liberal" used to mean. But I'm morally offended by what progressivism stands for now. I can't see the reason in justifying terrorism against working people by people who refuse to work, and worse, clothing it in some kind of bullshit moral superiority. Because that's what it's become.
> Suffice to say the experiment has failed entirely.
You've described the justice systems of modern progressive countries and what would you know, they work fine. The US needs a firm hand because it's culturally savage. Folks think about themselves and corporate "culture" is enshrined as something good and expected. Everyone sees the exploitation of other human beings and denigration everywhere, is it any surprise that they cannot behave in a manner that has a little compassion for themselves and everyone else? The entire environment is fundamentally dehumanising. No amount of localised niceness is going to undo decades of absolutely brutal culture.
The people I know in progressive countries are shocked at the rampant violence that is tolerated and no prosecuted and punished in the US. It wouldn’t be tolerated in their countries.
Hell, the lefties I know in Europe look at the West Coast of the US and ask “what the fuck are you doing?”
> Progressives believe in restorative justice not prison or punishment.
I think this is a dramatic misrepresentation. The west Coast cities you're referencing are making these decisions because practically speaking they do not have the resources to deal with what's happening in their cities.
These things aren't happening in other "liberal" cities because they don't have those policies. I think you're confusing the egg for the chicken.
Why is the same thing not happening en masse in Austin, in NYC, in Boston, in Atlanta, in DC, in Tampa? These are liberal cities.
The answer is the underlying problem is bigger than liberalism.
Justice reform has been desperately needed for decades, but that's not what's happening here. What's happening here is underfunded cities being overwhelmed and largely giving up.
FDR got his pee-pee slapped down for trying to do a run around on the constitution.
But you keep working on your anarchistic utopia while the rest of get “exploited” and pay taxes that actually support the people who you claim to care about.
you know I can hold two thoughts in my head at the same time. I can be appreciative of taxes and the system that helps support others who are in need, and I can at the same time advocate for a system that doesn’t create peoples destitution.
>> It would make me more progressive if I saw that. What are the economic, political, social forces that are causing that?
[EDIT] TLDR: I never committed crimes or hurt people when I was poor as fuck.
When I was 20 I would've maybe thought this. I was a left anarchist, and my leanings are still in that direction. It's not wealth that made me less progressive. I wrote a novel when I was 24 that brought the world down on me; it was a satire that involved a rock band murdering Bush and Cheney at a gala at Bohemian grove. It got thousands of hits from .mil sites and I got police going through my trash cans, my apartment raided. I left the country for 15 years. And railed against the military/industrial complex.
It's progressives who made me less progressive. During my exile I worked, I created things. It was hard. But I never lost my dignity. I never acted like a savage. I did lots of drugs and drinking but I never blamed anyone else; I worked out what it was that I needed to do. I've worked every day since I was 15. I wasn't handed anything. My parents were born in complete poverty.
So when I see a 20 year old beating his dog and literally taking a shit on the sidewalk, and then screaming at me that "how dare you tell a homeless person he can't shit here unless you want me to use your bathroom", when the City of Portland and me put a porta-potty on the corner thirty paces from where he's shitting for him, what I see is an able-bodied guy with a facebook and instagram account who's LARPing as an anarchist and needs to go through some form of hardship which he's obviously not experiencing yet.
I don't blame anyone for anything I could reasonably - or unreasonably - see someone doing. Slapping someone for making fun of your wife's hair is bad but it's not incomprehensible. Beating a dog is outside the sphere of what I can understand, though. So is shitting on someone's porch.
I've started to think the main thing is that people in their early 20s are being told this is an acceptable form of rebellion. It's not the peaceful Drop out, tune out of old times. It's an aggressive attempt to assert rights to dominate everyone around them - to terrorize peaceable people - without any kind of understanding of what terror people like me went through to be here. The one thing you won't find among these Portland youth is any kind of understanding of the immigrant experience. Just (mostly white) entitlement, wrapped in a thin veneer of "woke" speech. With no thought behind it.
Social forces that drive it? Poor education, stupid parents, I don't know. They're a threat to the working order of society. I would say that even more if I were homeless; I say it as a homeowner.
[Edit] Two side thoughts: 1. Just announcing you're a homeowner in Portland is cause for being attacked these days. As if no one deserves to reap any reward for anything they've done. 2. Someone on Nextdoor here last week complained that she was sleeping on her kitchen floor because the same guy had broken into her apartment three times in a week and once started a fire in the bathroom; other people asked why she didn't call the police, and she had, but they didn't respond. Someone asked why she didn't have a baseball bat at least. She recoiled and said she didn't want to hurt anyone. Is that a way to live your life?
Fellow anarchist here who was the Hassled by the feds after 9/11.
So you’ve taken up the I’ve pulled myself up with my own bootstraps defense. I don’t demean that at all, but you did not grow up the same way as a 20 year old in your yard did.
To be a progressive, and I’m not talking about these progressives that you think you have in the Portland government, is to understand that we all don’t share the same life experiences.
You were lucky growing up in the time You did and probably you were lucky growing up in a time in Portland actually embrace community.
Tell me all these horror stories does not do anything to address the fundamental problems that are causing the horror stories in the first place.
Can you talk about this peaceful rebellion that took place in the past. What? What rebellion? Those people turned into the boomers that bought up all the property in Portland as investment vehicles. These people aren’t revolting in any positive or not coordinated way. Their revolt is more primal and therefore A true rebellion. It is an unconscious rebellion and that scares people into conservatives.
You know I just had an argument with three union reps at a bar tonight - basically around the idea that "you were lucky..." but the outcome as phrased by one of them was "individual thoughts don't matter, I have no interest in that. Everything is systemic".
I've staked my entire life on being an individual who won't support a team, a religion, or a social movement (beyond individual points I agree with). I happen to believe that if everyone acted this way, we'd have a lot fewer problems as a society. I refuse to take the side of a movement that claims some holistic righteousnes, just like I refuse to accept religion and race. So on a case-by-case basis, I decide what seems fair. I should note that before that dog-beating kid drove his van into six cars, I went out there with a gun and a six pack of beer which I distributed to his 17 year old homeless friends, who I sat around with while they told me he was a crazy shithead. I think that was what really drove him mental.
Individuals. That's how the world functions. Everything else is theory.
So my rebellion didn't work? It did. I was gassed in the street in 2004 protesting the Iraq war. Everyone hates neocons now and hates that war, don't they? Did I do nothing? An argument is ridiculous if it asks every person to pawn everything they ever did to the next struggle in the future. Portland is a shit show in the real estate market, but where isn't? It's by leaps and bounds the most progressive city in America.
The boomers' homeless and ultimately functional children grew up richer than I did. They need to come halfway and see that acting savage and refusing completely to partake in society is not an ultimately winning strategy. They're not going to win some revolutionary war where they suddenly abolish all private property - and if that's their goal, they've really got to become more coherent and stop doing so much heroin, because I can't even understand what they're saying.
[edit] my contention is that the 20-yo shitting in my yard's problem is that he is spoiled and rich, by every standard I've seen everywhere I've traveled in the world. And that's why I can't relate to the conditions that led to him, or sympathize with his plight.
> And please stop with the peacocking of how good of a person you are by trying to show off how you reach out to these people and all the protests you engaged in. It's just gross.
FWIW, such anecdotes help me understand the writer and where they're coming from. I don't think bringing a gun for self-defense and distributing some beer to a bunch of kids to figure out wtf is going on is "peacocking of how good of a person you are", it's just being a human being. Working with what you have.
No, I was not a savage. And you're not a savage. You're right, the world will act the way they're treated. I try to act kindly when possible. What's wrong with beering the homeless kids? But I don't think much of them.
This ain't about me being "good". It's about my right to exist and work and live whether some 18 year old is having a bad family life or not. It's about handling their problems, as I have had to handle my own. Funny. Sympathy only flows in one direction - towards the generation who were born of the richest fattest bulge of neocon shitheads in imperial american history. Who shit on my porch in the name of equity and social justice, literally, waving ipads.
You lost me at Ukraine. I don't see how that relates to this. But FWIW, you think it's gross that I explained both sides of my attempt to understand and my underlying dislike of the people outside my door? Cool, I'm not trying to be your friend. I'm explaining how I've chosen to deal with a world of spoiled shit spawn of boomers. Bit of carrot and stick.
[edit] also? >>they hate it because it is history now. They still love war
...is incredibly ignorant. We hated it because it was WRONG, the way Russians who protest now know that their war is wrong. This is recent and important history. The war just ended. It was the longest war in US history. It's a very good thing that people hated it. Because above all it happened for completely artificial reasons. Yes, this means you might have to admit that some wars are more artificial than others, but that one, for those of us who watched in horror when it started, was completely unjustified. So go ahead and shit on the people who were out in the streets protesting. You clearly know better.
The subtle psychology exposed in this sentence. You say you are an anarchist but here you are wanting to control others. You think you are smarter than these suffering people and will treat them like dogs with a treat to get them to do what you want.
> It's about handling their problems, as I have had to handle my own.
Again, you remain the individual. You think if everyone "lived like you" they would be fine. Not everyone can handle their own problems and some peoples problems are bigger and more complicated than yours were.
> So go ahead and shit on the people who were out in the streets protesting
I protested the Iraq war as well, so no idea what you are going on about here. I know it was useless because no one is protesting the U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine. Everything happening now, including all the propaganda, is the same as it was before the Iraq war.
If you want to know why Portland is failing, look in the mirror.
>> You say you are an anarchist but here you are wanting to control others.
No, I used to be an anarchist. Now I'm living in an anarchic state and dealing with it pragmatically. There's nothing about individualist anarchism that says you can't attempt to moderate the behavior of other people around you, btw.
>> Not everyone can handle their own problems and some peoples problems are bigger and more complicated than yours were.
You just implied I had no right to attempt to affect other people's behavior. But somehow it's still supposed to be my responsibility to pay for their bad decisions in life? How's that?
>> no one is protesting the U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine
We didn't invade Ukraine. We don't have troops there. Not all things are equal.
>>If you want to know why Portland is failing, look in the mirror.
Oh bullshit. Portland's failing because it stopped being a weird, Amsterdam-like open-minded, leftish libertarian blue collar town, and started being a destination for intolerant, spoiled children LARPing as anarchists and destroying public safety in the name of an incoherent political agenda.
Then again, my definition of "not failing" might be different than yours. I think not failing would be downtown reopening, not having trash amd vermin all over the streets, not hearing gunshots all night, and people not having to worry about stray bullets coming through their walls. I bet you think not failing would mean giving more free shit away to homeless drug addicts who ride in from out of town. But that's not helping anyone who lives here, and it's not helping it not to fail.
So may be the problem is you never understood Anarchism. Because what’s happening in Portland is nothing close to Anarchism. It’s anarchy, with a small a. Now I guess you would call yourself an anarcho capitalist? Please don’t get me started….
You got greedy, that’s all that happened. It’s nothing complicated. You LARPed an anarchist when you were a kid, you traveled around, then somehow made some money, and you were able to end up buying a house in Portland. And now, the very system you used to make that money is destroying Portland and you’re complaining about the people? I get complaining about the government, but you’re putting all this on the people? Do you think people are kids wanna grow up to be addicted to drugs?
Portland didn’t fail because the culture changed, Portland changed because of housing speculation and housing investments and a housing bubble. Portland’s failing because of capitalism.
And this is the reason why I said look in the mirror.
And you don’t have to invade country to instigate a war.
I don't know if you know about the residential infill project, but a vast amount of zoning in Portland has now been opened up for multi-unit development (including my block). The bubble grew in large part because a lot of people moved to Portland in the last 15 years. As far as me "taking advantage" of a system, I'm not a house-flipper or a real estate speculator. I think it's fair to work and save for 25 years and buy a house without being accused of being a greedy exploitative capitalist. It's also fair to want to live in peace without constant screaming outside your window.
>> you don’t have to invade country to instigate a war.
This is like saying Chris Rock instigated getting hit. To say that the US instigated it is ludicrous. By that logic, Saddam Hussein instigated the Iraq war, didn't he? Did America also instigate Russia's invasion of Georgia, or the flattening of Grozny? Did we make Putin drop chemical weapons in Syria? I get irritated when people somehow find a way to blame America for everything as if we're the only country capable of doing something egregious, and nothing bad would ever happen in the world if America didn't exist. Speaking of small-a anarchy, that is the natural state of affairs - and there are always people who want to terrorize or enslave others. If it wasn't America starting wars, it would be someone else; and in this case, it was someone else, so not recognizing that casts doubt on the seriousness of any more nuanced argument you might make about what Putin feels drove him to attack and bomb civilians in Ukraine. In this case I think it's pure victim-blaming to say Ukraine deserved it, or America instigated it. It's tantamount to saying that Russia is fighting a just war, which is insane considering you think war is unjust.
>> you don’t have to invade country to instigate a war. This is like saying Chris Rock instigated getting hit.
I am in no way condoning the death and suffering the Putin is causing. There is no such thing as a just war.
But really? Comparing "the slap" to all the complexities going on in that region of the world? Is that how simplistic you see life? You think resources have nothing to do with the war in Ukraine? Why was the US pudding for Ukraine too enter NATO? Why is the US involved at all in a country halfway around the world? It means we have an interest there. You know who also has an interest there? Putin. Hence, war. A proxy war.
> Saddam Hussein instigated the Iraq war, didn't he?
No. That happened because the US lied that Saddam had WMDs. (You protested the war in Iraq and you really said that????)
> Did America also instigate Russia's invasion of Georgia, or the flattening of Grozny?
No, Mikheil Saakashvili instigated that when he started working as a stooge for the United States.
> Did we make Putin drop chemical weapons in Syria?
Biden was not talking about Putins wife. He is working with NATO and Oil Companies to secure resources in a world where they are becoming harder to come by. I blame them BOTH for the war. I Balme the BOTH for lying and being psychopaths. I blame the both for the suffering of the Ukrainian PEOPLE. I blame them ALL for not trying more to work for peace.
Wy have you not brought up the war against the Donbas people in Ukraine? Why have you not brought up the war against the Palestinians? Or the war agains Yemeni? Do you think the CIA does not play a role in making countries unstable? Really?
You simply the war in Ukraine because it helps you cope with a complicated world.
Can you imagine what the US would do if Russia was as involved in Mexico and Canada as much as we are in Ukraine and Georgia? OF course to you, that would be a just war.
As another data point to anyone else reading this, I live in Portland smack dab in the most densely populated part of south-east, and go to downtown several times a week. Homelessness is a problem, but I've never experienced the post-apocalyptic wasteland this person is describing. My friends, many of whom were born and raised here, have never described being mugged or being witness to random acts of violence like this. I have been here for 5 years and even when there were the nightly BLM protests in downtown I never saw or experienced anything close to what this person describes.
I know quite a few people in PDX, some of who have lived there their whole lives. Not one of them has felt unsafe in the past few years. As a matter of fact my ex laughed and told me to stay away from the national news when I texted her and told her to be safe during the height of the PDX "anarchy."
btw - the TL isn't any more unsafe than it's ever been and I've lived in The City since 1972.
That sounds horrendous. I had a friend from Portland that I met kayaking and he made it sound like heaven on earth. I have friends from UK who moved to work at Google (in Washington I guess?)
Is there a great re-location of tech staff happening in the US right now? I heard that a lot of people are leaving California including a few friends of mine. Even Joe Rogan moved to Austin and he can handle himself!
Joe Rogan moved to Austin and he can handle himself!
Whatever reasons Joe Rogan had for moving had nothing to do with him fearing for his personal safety. He was almost certainly scared of taxes, not muggers (add joke about the IRS being the worst muggers, here)
Rogan is a true dipshit; it makes me feel bad that I'm adding to the negativity around Portland. I resisted doing that through the entire pandemic while everyone I knew was like "how are you still in that hell hole"... I have hope because Portland is one of the only places in America where you can still sit at a cafe and truly talk crazy political shit with people from the far left and far right at the same table, because it's also the city with the highest number of books and magazines bought per capita. You just can't do that in Dallas. So there's something to it. But it's like living in fucking Berlin, 1929. Who knows whether it'll cough out a Hitler or a Stalin.
Everyone in the US who formerly worked in an office is threatening to quit if they can't work remotely full time now. No one is going back to offices. Oregon is a beautiful place to move to. 99% of it is not the city of Portland.
also gang culture. I recall in the 90s and early 00s, my classmates would suddenly break bad and join gangs. it was sort of the thing to do. it did make me feel a bt lonely since i was neither bad or good but im glad i stayed out of it. even by association you could be attacked but i was young.... seems like a lot of them were minors when they joined so their records were wiped clean....since they work in tech now
What killed legitimate research was the FUD-informed Schedule 1 classification (or similar, outside the US) of the most promising agents in this field.
The point is that big pharma was pouring money into research of these chemicals to use them for treatment in therapy.
The cases of abuse that ultimately led to the stigmatization where blown up because that narrative served the view that the general public had of these substances anyway.
The same rhetoric people use today: "encryption should be forbidden because paedophilia|money laundering|<insert whatever upsets your target demographic most>"
> Not a huge factor really because schedule 1 DEA permits are available. I know a few academics with them.
What good is an permit if you don't have anyone to fund your research? And how do you get research funded for something that can't be brought to market because ... Schedule 1?
This a public announcement of additional information obtained regarding the conduct of former sub-investigators for a MAPS-sponsored clinical trial, initially publicly reported in 2019. We make this information public as part of our commitment to creating a culture of safety in psychedelic therapy and in alignment with our core value of transparency.
The initial ethics complaint was reported to MAPS in 2018 by the participant. The complaint specifically identified the unethical conduct as occurring after the active treatment sessions had concluded in 2015. Yensen and former sub-investigator Donna Dryer verbally confirmed that Yensen engaged in a sexual relationship with the participant. Sexual contact between therapy providers and participants is unethical conduct of sexual abuse in violation of Section 6 of MAPS Code of Ethics for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and generally accepted standards of care. In 2018, as a result of the ethical misconduct, Yensen and Dryer were barred from all MAPS-related activities and from becoming providers of MAPS-affiliated MDMA-assisted therapy if the treatment is approved.
On Saturday, November 6, 2021, MAPS staff were interviewed by a reporter who had viewed videos of clinical trial therapy sessions for the participant described in the original announcement below. Session video is made available to participants in MDMA-assisted therapy clinical trials for private review upon request. The reporter characterized former sub-investigator Richard Yensen’s behavior in at least one therapy session as “disturbing.” This characterization triggered a compliance review which was initiated Monday, November 8, 2021.
The reopened review of conduct during the trial period includes a review of previous documentation, all available videos of sessions from the sub-investigators, and information reported in media accounts of the participant’s experience. Though the review is ongoing, MAPS has provisionally determined that Yensen and Dryer substantially deviated from the MDMA-assisted Therapy Treatment Manual on several occasions during the treatment period.
MAPS has notified the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Health Canada, Ethics Committees, and relevant authorities that the review has been re-opened. We will continue to keep regulatory agencies, ethics committees, and relevant authorities apprised of any developments on this case. Changes to MAPS policies, practices, or materials made as the direct result of the review will be reported publicly at maps.org/safety."[1]
Also see MAPS's article on the Cover Story podcast regarding this issue here: [2] It contains a pretty informative FAQ in which MAPS addresses what it sees as misunderstandings in the media coverage of these events.
For my part I think they do really important work and that while some of the culpability lies on them not doing the trial in a part of the world where counsellors and therapist are properly licensed for sure... This REALLY isn't the kind of lesson we should all be learning the hard way while people already suffering take the brunt of the impact. Hopefully it shines a light on the very real problem of how incredibly messed up the mental health care framework in parts of Canada is.
Hopefully nobody thinks that therapists and counsellors without a properly regulatory framework in place aren't doing shady practices like this even without the drugs.
That is… really fucked up. Predators in the healthcare industry need to face serious punishment. Unfortunately, they largely don’t and get away with things.
Just a point of clarification: pure MDMA (what is used in the study) is often very different from "E", "Ecstasy", and other street preparations. The party drug formulations are often pressed into pills and contain other things (on purpose, to give a different effect). It's often MDA, methamphetamine, cocaine, caffeine[0].
Consider this difference when comparing personal experience or anecdata about pressed pills (or impure "molly") to what they're using here.
Just to add: pill form doesn't necessarily mean it's not pure MDMA; on the other hand, powder or crystal form doesn't mean it's pure MDMA. When buying illegal substances from unknown sources, the truth is you don't know what you are taking, period.
Correct, and to add on: Test kits are perfectly legal. There are also harm-reduction organizations like DanceSafe and Zendo that will help at festivals etc.
I've been keeping an eye, albeit not close, on this, and have mixed feelings erring happy that it's slowly trudging forward. I've had friends with PTSD for whom ketamine, as the most contemporary similar treatment that comes to mind, did wonders-- and others for whom it became a vice. In my experience PTSD tends to respond very well to that kind of 'break through' treatment; some people just need something to kick down their mental walls hard enough that they can start building roads out (ie. different behaviors, which later only need to be reinforced, not initiated). PTSD is deeply paralyzing.
I always thought a nontrivial % of HN users were on medications like adderall. The ambiguities-- the great potential good, likewise the great potential evil, and weighing them coldly-- of using a medication that can be therapeutically used or abused are pretty familiar to everyone I've known on any scheduled medication. Of course, the 'therapy session' nature of therapeutic MDMA and ketamine complicates that; you have to trust the therapist pretty much completely, and sadly any situation of total surrender is very easy to abuse, no matter how much it might have helped.
Given the DSM keeps CPTSD out in the latest version 5, no.
Frankly until it does mental healthcare in the US won’t move forward in a substantial way as they keep trying to treat people with trauma with CBT and medication. Still the PTSD dx works for those with CPTSD, so it’s not all lost. But it gets really tricky since so many diagnoses are almost subsumed with the concept of CPTSD.
Extremely hopeful for MDMA therapy though. It has huge potential.
“Renowned traumatologist, John Briere, is said to have quipped that if Complex PTSD were ever given its due – that is, if the role of dysfunctional parenting in adult psychological disorders was ever fully recognized, the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders used by all mental health professionals) would shrink to the size of a thin pamphlet.”. (http://www.pete-walker.com/fAQsComplexPTSD.html)
I take this as good news, also. CPTSD survivors need trust and safety over all other things, and properly-administered MDMA can be a shorter path to that.
There are a lot of mental disorders that are induced by neurological / physical things. I wish ADHD, ASD, Schizophrenia, SPD and more was just 'bad parenting'!!
So in some ways, this is your wish. Statistically, everything about many mental illnesses get worse in poor environments for children. There are many adults who might otherwise present with schizophrenia that don’t because they had a better environment.
Early childhood emotional attachment types are also relatively predictive of symptomology and psychosis in schizophrenics
It doesn’t invalidate the crux of your comment and I’m not attempting to say there are no neurological or genetic causes, but severity and prevalence would be categorically reduced in a world with better parental care.
Gave you an upvote. CBT has done so much damage and really is a step backwards for those with trauma. It's ridiculous how all the knowledge we have about trauma still hasn't hit the mainstream psychiatric institution yet and 9 out of 10 times with the average provider it comes down to "Have you tried CBT?" versus trauma informed treatments that actually work (somatic therapy, IFS, EMDR, ketamine/psychedelics, stellate ganglion block, etc)
The irony is you may not believe you're really traumatized if you've been spent 10 years in standard CBT being gaslit about your "cognitive distortions" and wondering why it's not working...
CBT by itself is inappropriately prescribed as a comprehensive treatment plan for ADHD-related insomnia when there's little evidence for its efficacy compared to CBT for other insomnias.
Yes, exactly. CBT can easily be retraumatizing for CPTSD survivors. It’s so common for it to fall into symptom whack-a-mole rather than understanding the true arising of the disorder and a useful path to healing.
CBT and meds are insurance friendly. Even if therapists don't like it, they're basically forced into it by the system, otherwise payments are more likely to get clawed back in an audit by the insurance company. And why does insurance like CBT and meds? CBT is time boxed in many ways and 'evidence based'. Psychoanalysis and other therapy types are effectively not, and insurance already doesn't like paying for mental health as it is. Meds are relatively cheap compared to therapy also.
It's also related to why it's pretty hard to find therapists that take insurance in some places.
Evidence based but yet wholly ineffectual for so many. The medical model of mental health treatment is designed to treat symptoms not heal causes very often. That the causes are varied and treatments don’t scale as easy as a pharmaceutical manufacturing line doesn’t mean it’s not one of the more important pursuits medicine is trying to tackle. Hoping the current medical generation will continue to move away from the “chemical imbalance” theory of the past, of which there are far far too many practitioners out there holding onto ineffective treatments.
CBT still costs a LOT of money and time, so there is an incentive towards finding more effective treatments, but managing symptoms is in some ways more preferable because the medical system needs people to be “sick” or else a treatment might be seen by puritanical society as somehow indulgent or hedonistic. What if a “cure” involves taking significant time away from work to work through trauma? They might be better and more productive in the end than a stopgap treatment, but society can’t necessarily tolerate the idea.
Probably not, we need more recognition but as of now it's not an official diagnosis :/ I don't meet the official criteria for PTSD because there wasn't just one event. It hasn't restricted me getting treatment so much but you can get misdiagnoses and have to advocate for yourself more. Once this is approved it would probably be available off label for anyone with trauma but I doubt they'd let people with CPTSD in the trial. I have been turned down for trials in my city due to this.
There's an excellent writing somewhere in my favorites about how people go through stages of trauma and are often retraumatized by various causes that are non-sequitur to the original trauma. I imagine the role that psychedelics can play is moving a patient through the stages that are more vulnerable to this retraumatization.
I did this drug in Europe when I lived there, it was quite popular with the club crowd. I can definitely see how it could be therapeutic for people with PTSD and other psychological traumas. Hopefully this will lead to effective treatments and end the prohibition surrounding this and other psychedelic/psychoactive substances.
Honestly the therapy we need right now is a 3 day ibogaine cure for opioid addiction. All wrapped in a pleasant, life-affirming trip, in lieu of a sickened withdrawal. If pharmacologists could engineer it into a single dose, it would mean the restoration of livelihoods and hollowed out cities across the globe ;)
I have always thought it is hysterical that there are street drugs (MDMA, Ketamine) that have an immediate impact on emotions, yet the global medical establishment only supports drugs that take 2-4 weeks to 'kick in' with a very slight change that a substantial amount of patients do not even get. What is going on when we measure competency that way.
I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but there's a difference between drugs that make you feel good by forcibly triggering your brain's happy paths for a few hours (often followed by severe depression of those paths), and therapies that try to jolt your brain into producing more happy-path-inducing chemicals naturally, without further assistance.
Without further assistance? Anti-depressants are notorious for developing tolerance in users and requiring larger and larger doses over time. We should hope for treatments that can yield results with less frequent dosage and lower chance for dependency.
That's a severe misunderstanding of how these compounds work
On one hand you have a single acute dose (in your words "jolting") which can profoundly 'rewire' synaptic connections
On the other hand you have a compound administered chronically to induce changes that may not last after removing the medication. The goal is the same rewiring but considering dropout rates and success rates of treatment its absolutely lacklustre
Generally speaking, the compounds that are illegal are more profoundly impactful because if their high affinity and specificity than compounds available for prescription
> This is not something only I have seen but also something one of the best psychiatrist ever had has seen.
This tone is off. This is the tone used politically for the last few years - the tone of: 'Trust me', 'The best people in the world think...' No citations, deliberately saying you won't share links. Or facts. Shame-inducing phrasing like "if you know anything..." Offering points for people who can agree with you?
It is possible that you know what you are talking about. But this tone make it look like you are practicing the style of political rhetoric that has caused so much damage recently, and does not inspire me to take you seriously.
Just in case you all still think they are on the right track with these methods of treating mood disorders, look at the data you are basing your claims on.
"Meta-analyses by industry employees were 22 times less likely to have negative statements about a drug than those run by unaffiliated researchers. The rate of bias in the results is similar to a 2006 study examining industry impact on clinical trials of psychiatric medications, which found that industry-sponsored trials reported favorable outcomes 78 per cent of the time, compared with 48 percent in independently funded trials."
And if you think MDMA treatment is not about money you are worse than ignorant:
Venture capital firms have taken notice—pouring money into startups developing psychedelic treatments for everything from PTSD to smoking cessation. A January analysis by Business Insider identified 11 venture capital firms (most of them founded in the past three years) that have collectively invested roughly $140 million in the psychedelics category. Funding accelerated after psychedelic startup Compass Pathways raised $146 million in its September 2020 initial public offering and an additional $144 million in a secondary offering in April 2021.
The point of MDMA therapy is not to pop it on a regular basis to have higher serotonin levels. There's a reason that MDMA is being used for PTSD and not Depression (although I think it would be useful for non-chemical based cases of depression, e.g. psychological based depression). The point of MDMA is to allow that individual to open up enough and bring down their walls enough such that healing through therapy can actually take place. At least, that is my understanding as a non-expert.
Anecdotally when I've taken SSRIs in the past they worked very quickly, what took 2-4 weeks was the side effects to set in. Everyone's response is so different though, I had a friend who was on an identical dose of an identical drug to me and it effectively and lastingly lifted a deep depression in them while it was the real-life equivalent of the Dementor's Kiss for me.
I'm glad these tools exist and do help people, though I do think the potential risks are downplayed in our society.
> I'm glad these tools exist and do help people, though I do think the potential risks are downplayed in our society.
I have been dealing with severe akathisia from medications I took for severe depression.
I have 2 rare immune mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system plus type 1 diabetes. None of this is even remotely as bad as the akathisia.
There are people who are cancer survivors, combat veterans, rape survivors, who all say that akathisia by far takes the cake in terms of traumatic experiences.
Please if you are going to be taking psych meds of any type, get genetic testing done:
Sorry man, I know several people who were injured by some of these meds. It is not talked about enough when they prescribe them.
Regarding Genomind, these are really limited in how much they will help. They test a limited amount of genes that "might" change drug efficacy. Even taking into account the CYP genetics, if someone is anemic these enzymes will function more slowly so emvironment will trump genetics.
"At this time, DTC advertisements are inappropriate, given the public's limited sophistication regarding genetics and the lack of comprehensive premarket review of tests or oversight of advertisement content."
And from the really the only study claiming that Genomind is effective, from their website:
Citation: Perlis RH, et al. Pharmacogenetic testing among patients with mood and anxiety disorders is associated with decreased utilization and cost: A propensity-score matched study. Depression & Anxiety. 2018;35(10):946-952. doi:10.1002/da.22742
"Dr. Imbens reports personal fees from Genomind, for experimental design related to the submitted work, and personal fees from Eli Lilly, outside the submitted work."
And if you look through all of those studies you will find they were funded by Genomind.
I mean, if you've actually taken MDMA you'll know exactly why it's problematic. In terms of a user, it has a week long comedown, and diminished effects when you take it again soon (about a month) after.
> The fact that I have to post this and that is not known for a drug that’s existed for this long is because People need to be spoonfed their sources.
> It’s hacker news, I’m not writing a research paper.
You are the one making claims. If you aren't going to take the time to back them up with trusted sources don't expect anyone to take your claims seriously.
Why does it matter? Even if I do post from "trusted sources" no one takes it seriously. Children continue to be prescribed prozac to this day, and now we have the next prozac; MDMA.
Get someone here with a degree in Psychiatry and they are a "trusted source" still giving out this medicine that doors not work for the vast vast vast majority of people.
I do not care if people take me seriously, I care if they take the facts seriously. I know I know more about psychopharmacology than the majority of people on HN. I do not need to prove that to anyone.
I have been talking nicely about this stuff for years, it does not matter because the corporate propaganda for these meds is too powerful, so what you hear is a normal human response; frustration. I do not think most people are stupid, I think they are ignorant.
This method of treating symptoms of mood disorders is at best, harmful.
> I have been talking nicely about this stuff for years, it does not matter because the corporate propaganda for these meds is too powerful, so what you hear is a normal human response; frustration.
I hear you, but you're not going to change minds with this kind of talk either. Sorry this has affected your life and those of your loved ones in the way that it has, but it's not helping your case.
I wish you had included even one citation in your first reply, because it would have gone a really long way, even accompanied with the frustration.
I was nice for 25 years. It didn’t change minds. Being nice doesn’t change their mind and neither does being angry. I’m just frustrated and I don’t care anymore. There’s too much money involved in all this for people to change their minds.
This information about the effectiveness of Prozac and most anti-depressants has been out for over 12 years now. What good is it for me to site this information? No one cares. And let’s see if more people started caring, don’t you think the interest, the money interest in these drugs will come back full force?
And whatever about references, references don’t change peoples minds either. Did you just see what happen with Covid? You can show people proof and fax all you want but everyone is in their own individual cult now.
You clearly do care. Otherwise you wouldn't have been so actively involved in the comments here.
Your argumentative, dismissive, downright rude attitude does more harm than good. Perhaps take a step back and think on things for a while before returning to discussions like this.
I meant I don’t care what people think of how I write or speak. I don’t care about being nice. My frustration stems from me caring about people. And caring about people who are being mistreated by doctors.
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The experience itself was at a hotel room I had booked. For just under six hours, I lay on the bed with an eye mask and headphones playing instrumental music picked by my guide. MDMA is commonly known as a party drug but under different settings and with different intentions, it had the power to turn to yourself examine yourself and your life in a state of love free of the fear and anxiety that we often feel in life. At least for me, this produced clarifying insights about myself and my life which have persisted long after the session.
Very excited to see progress being made for the use of MDMA to treat PTSD, and hopefully a broader class of people beyond that.