MDMA 'outperforms' expectations in trial as medicine for PTSD

BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY

Rob Waugh
·Contributor
Mon, 29 January 2024 

MDMA could soon be used as a medicine, researchers say (Getty)

MDMA is better known as the dancefloor hallucinogen Ecstasy, but it may have important uses as a medicine, a new study has shown.

The research found that - when paired with therapy - MDMA significantly outperformed therapy alone when it came to dealing with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).

The difference was particularly stark when it came to people dealing with traumas from early childhood, which are especially hard to deal with through therapy.


The researchers said: "MDMA may be particularly effective for enhancing treatment efficacy by improving a range of problems with self-experience that are associated with treatment resistance."

In particular, the drug may be able to help patients who have been traumatised during childhood confront their issues and deal with problems such as alexithymia - an inability to recognise emotions.

The study found people who took MDMA responded better to therapy. (Getty)

The researchers added: "Even though the MDMA-assisted therapy experimental sessions often occurred in relative silence as participants focus largely on their inner experience, MDMA-assisted therapy was associated with a significant improvement in emotional self-awareness and loss of alexithymia.

"This suggests that MDMA-assisted therapy can facilitate accessing painful memories and experiences that under ordinary conditions are too overwhelming and terrifying to confront, even in the presence of trained therapists."
Recommended reading

Scientists may have found how LSD treats mental illness (Daily Beast)


LSD might be good for us (Esquire)


Here's what LSD does inside your brain (Yahoo News)

How did the study work?

Speaking to Vox, researcher Bessel Van derk Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, Brain Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma, said he was initially reluctant to include people with childhood trauma in the study.

In the end, the study, which aims to legitimise the use of MDMA-assisted therapy, included 84% people with early childhood trauma.

The subjects were split into two groups, one of which had therapy, and one which had 36 hours of MDMA-assisted therapy.

Van der Kolk said: "We had the best outcome data here with MDMA that I’ve ever seen for any study."
Can psychedelic drugs really treat illnesses?

Research has shown that certain psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin (the ingredient in magic mushrooms) and MDMA can have an impact on problems such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

On LSD, the picture is less clear.

A small trial in 2018, funded by the Beckley Foundation and led by the 'first lady of LSD', Amanda Feilding, the Countess of Wemyss and March, saw 20 volunteers take the drug and fill in psychological questionnaires.

Feilding said: "I took it in the 1960s when it was legal and it improved my wellbeing."

A systematic review of studies into LSD in Frontiers in Psychiatry in 2020 found that the drug was a "potential therapeutic agent", with the strongest evidence around using LSD to treat alcoholism.
Will MDMA really be legal a medicine?

In 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration awarded the drug 'breakthrough status', so it could be fast-tracked as a potential treatment.

MDMA is often illegally sold on the street. (Getty)

Studies have shown that patients with PTSD – where it's difficult to deal with painful memories – can overcome their traumas, long-term, with the aid of MDMA.

Several successful trials have shown the drug's potential with PTSD, and some believe approval could come this year.

Polyamory:  Sex, Love and the Family

BY DAVID ROSEN

 FEBRUARY 1, 2024
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The picture shows three people in a polyamorous relationship. It was taken within a research project at the University of Vienna titling “Polyamory in media, social and identity perspective” – CC BY-SA 4.0

Since the nation’s founding, individuals, religious groups and radical communities have challenged conventional morality.  They have contested the dominant form of monogamous, heterosexual sexuality and the patriarchal nuclear family.

In 2021, only 18 percent – or 23 million — of U.S. households were “nuclear families” with a married couple and children.  This is a significant drop from nearly 60 percent during the 1970s.  According to one estimate, 19 percent of Americans have been involved in sexual threesomes and in 2019 “polyamory” was practiced by 4 to 5 percent of Americans.  In addition, 20 percent have attempted some kind of ethical non-monogamy relationship.  The term “polyamory” links the Greek poly to the Latin amor becoming “many loves,” and describes a variety of romantic or intimate non-monogamous relationships.

Traditional morality has long been challenged.  Often forgotten, between 1852 to 1890, about 20 to 30 percent of Mormon families, members of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint, practiced a form of polygamy they called “plural marriage.”  In addition, for much of the 19^th century, “free love” advocates and other sexual radicals battled with what was known as the “social purity” movement over sex and the nature of the family.

Among the most notable free love communities of the pre-Civil War era were: New Harmony, a secular utopian community in Harmonie, IN, founded by Robert Owen; the Brook Farm community in West Roxbury, MA, founded by George Ripley; the Oneida community in NY founded by John Humphrey Noyes; and the interracial Nashoba community in eastern Tennessee founded by Frances Wright, her sister, Camilla, and Robert Dale Owen.

A second wave that challenged traditional family values emerged during the 1920s. This threat was represented by the “new woman” who symbolized the modernization that threatened social purists. And the Prohibition-era speakeasy was the nexus of this new erotic experience.

Having a drink at a speakeasy was an act of transgression: One was committing a crime. When one entered a speak, one crossed the line between the socially acceptable and the illegal and, for many, the immoral. Prohibition also gave rise to the “sex circus,” infamous venues of alcohol consumption and sexual liaison, be it heterosexual and/or homosexual erotic indulgence.

The 1960s forged a counterculture that challenged – and changed! — American values. It was the decade characterized by the oral contraceptive pill, the mini skirt, rock-&-roll, long hair and the growing use of marijuana, LSD and other “psychedelic” drugs. It sparked a “sexual revolution” involving premarital sex and “free love,” often involving mate swapping, group sex and homoeroticism.

It saw the Sexual Freedom League host orgies at a home in Berkley, CA. One estimate found that between September 1966 and the League’s final 1967 Christmas Eve party, over 1,200 people attended their orgies. A second example of this insurgent sexuality was the Sandstone Retreat. Founded by John and Barbara Williamson in 1969, it was located in the hills of Topanga Canyon, just north of Los Angles. It was a unique experiment in erotic exploration that drew a fairly wide and often distinguished following among “free love” advocates.

By the 1970s, with the passage of Civil Rights legislation, the end of the Vietnam War, the rise of the new Christian right represented by Phyllis Schlafly’s defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the ‘60s counterculture dissipated. However, its challenge to traditional monogamous sex and marriage persisted among the “polyamorous.”

Polyamory emerged in New York in the 1950s when John Peltz “Bro Jud” Presmont formed the polyamorous religious community, Kerista. It embodied the notion of “polyfidelity,” non-monogamous romantic relations among equal partners. During the 1960s, Kerista-inspired storefronts and communal houses operated in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. It drew admiration from Allen Ginsberg, among others.

Kerista groups consisted of up to twenty-four people dubbed “best friend identity clusters” (B.F.I.C.); discouraged romantic attachment and possessiveness; and two people slept together in a shared bed, but on a rotational sleeping schedule, insuring equal bonding time among B.F.I.C. members of the opposite sex.

Other key figures of the evolving polyamory movement included Oberon (Timothy) Zell (aka Otter G’Zell and Zell-Ravenheart) who founded the Church of All Worlds (CAW), a neo-Pagan group, and the publication, Green Eggs, that promoted polygamous relationships based on the notion of personal divinity. Fred Adams established Feraferi (i.e., “Celebrate Wildness”), a neo-Pagan community that began in Southern California into Goddess worship. In time, CAW partnered with Feraferi to form the Council of Themis and, by the late-70s, some thirty groups were members.

Two women who kept the movement’s spirit alive over the last few decades are Ryam Nearing and Deborah “Taj” Anapol.  Nearing lived outside of Eugene, OR, with her two “husbands.” In ’86, she established Polyfidelitous Educational Productions, a nonprofit group that hosts a conference (i.e., pepcon), “a networking weekend filled with workshops, films, games, dancing, and discussion groups.”  Anapol was a “polyamorous clinical psychologist,” who advocated of erotic spirituality. She co-founded (with Nearing) the magazine, Loving More in 1994. She is the author of Polymore: The New Love Without Limits (1997) and Polyamory in the 21st Century (2010), among other works.

Polyamory has gotten a good deal a media attention, including print and TV/online stories.  To learn more about the polyamory movement, check out The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy (1997), a sex-positive guide colloquially known as “the poly bible”; Elizabeth Sheff‘s The Polyamorists Next Door (2023); and Christopher Gleason, American Poly: A History (2023).

David Rosen is the author of Sex, Sin & Subversion:  The Transformation of 1950s New York’s Forbidden into America’s New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015).  He can be reached at drosennyc@verizon.net; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com.

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79% of Canadians support the therapeutic use of psilocybin for people at the end of life

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITÉ LAVAL

Québec City, January 23, 2024—Nearly 4 out of 5 Canadians believe that the use of psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms, is an acceptable medical approach to treat existential distress in patients suffering from a serious and incurable disease. This is the main conclusion of an online survey of 2,800 people conducted by a research team led by Michel Dorval, professor at Université Laval's Faculty of Pharmacy and researcher at the CHU de Québec-Université Laval Research Center. The results have just been published in the journal Palliative Medicine.

The main objective of the survey was to measure the degree of social acceptability of this intervention when delivered by healthcare professionals. “Studies have already shown that psilocybin, combined with psychotherapy, produces rapid, robust and lasting anxiolytic and antidepressant effects in patients suffering from advanced cancer, reminds Professor Dorval. This substance can bring about a profound awareness that leads the patient to view existence from a different perspective. Treatment with psilocybin, combined with psychotherapy, can produce relief for up to six months.”

Canadian law currently prohibits the production, sale or possession of psilocybin. Since January 2022, however, a special access program has made it possible to obtain an exemption from Health Canada for medical or scientific reasons. A doctor can apply on behalf of a patient if psychotherapy, antidepressants or anxiolytics have failed, or if the patient's condition requires urgent intervention.

Researchers surveyed 1,000 residents of Québec and 1,800 residents of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia to find out their opinion on the potential easing of rules surrounding the medical use of psilocybin. Analysis of their answers shows that 79% of respondents consider psilocybin-assisted therapy a reasonable medical choice to treat existential distress in patients at the end of life.

“Our results seem to indicate that the social acceptability of this intervention is high in the Canadian population," comments Professor Dorval. If we consider only Québec respondents, the acceptability rate is similar to the national average.”

Support for psilocybin is higher among respondents who have already been exposed to palliative care. "Having been close to loved ones at the end of life, or having witnessed their distress, could explain this openness to new approaches designed to help people at this stage of their life," suggests Dorval.

Support is also higher among respondents who have already used psilocybin. “There are still many prejudices against psychedelic substances, says the researcher. Familiarity with these substances probably helps to better understand their true effects as well as their therapeutic potential.”

This study was carried out as part of Louis Plourde's doctoral research at Université Laval's Faculty of Pharmacy. Researchers from McGill University, Université de Montréal and UQAR co-authored the article published in Palliative Medicine.
 

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JOURNAL

Palliative Medicine

DOI

10.1177/0269216323122243 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Social acceptability of psilocybin-assisted therapy for existential distress at the end of life: A population-based survey

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Jan-2024

European Union funds groundbreaking research into psychedelic therapy

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITAIR MEDISCH CENTRUM GRONINGEN

 

IMAGE: 

PROFESSOR ROBERT SCHOEVERS AT A THERAPEUTIC SESSION

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CREDIT: UMCG

The randomised controlled trial (RCT) PsyPal, coordinated by the University Medical Centre Groningen in the Netherlands, and in collaboration with HumanKindLabs, marks the first-ever European grant to fund clinical research into psychedelic-assisted therapy. The trial will investigate whether psilocybin therapy can help ease psychological and existential distress in patients suffering from one of four different progressive diseases: the lung condition chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), multiple sclerosis (MS), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as MND), and atypical Parkinson’s disease (APD).

Commencing in early 2024, the PsyPal study will launch with the aim of treating over one hundred patients across four distinct clinical sites where each focuses on a specific condition: COPD at the University Medical Centre Groningen (UMCG) in the Netherlands, APD at the Champalimaud Foundation in Portugal, MS at the National Institute of Mental Health in the Czech Republic, and ALS, jointly at the University of Copenhagen and the Bispebjerg Hospital in Denmark. Participants will undergo two therapy sessions, receiving psilocybin (the active ingredient in psychedelic or ‘magic’ mushrooms) or a placebo. Previous pilot studies have shown substantial reduction in depressed mood and anxiety in people living with a terminal cancer diagnosis, with sometimes persistent benefits. PsyPal marks the first clinical trial studying the safety and effects of psilocybin in non-oncology palliative care patients. Robert Schoevers, head of psychiatry at the UMCG and principal investigator of PsyPal notes: “We are eager to see if we can ease the suffering of these patients whilst also examining longer-term patient and family outcomes of this treatment, something that often gets overlooked but that is of enormous importance.”

European funding

This first-of-its-kind clinical trial is fully funded by Horizon Europe, the European Union's key funding program for research and innovation. Horizon Europe aims to foster collaboration, bolster the impact of research and innovation, and address global challenges through the facilitation of EU policies. Schoevers says, "We are absolutely thrilled that the EU is supporting this ambitious collaborative study. There is growing recognition that psychedelic treatments may help patients for whom alternatives are not effective, and I am very glad we are receiving support from this highly prestigious funding program. It really helps to strengthen the collaboration between researchers from different countries and disciplines, focusing on potentially transformative interventions for severe, currently treatment-resistant mental disorders.

Psychological and existential distress

All four diseases are incurable and profoundly life-altering, leading to a loss of autonomy and severe psychological distress. Studies indicate that depression and anxiety symptoms affect 34% to 80% of individuals across these conditions, emphasising the pressing need for innovative interventions. The impact of life-limiting or life-threatening illnesses on one's physical, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being is profound. While some experience personal growth, others are confronted with a multitude of existential struggles, such as loss of hope and meaning, changes in family and societal roles, and feelings of burden. Consequently, depression, anxiety, demoralisation, and decreased quality of life are highly prevalent among these patients. Conventional interventions often fall short for these palliative care patients. This necessitates the need for innovative and effective treatments, such as psilocybin therapy.

Innovative therapeutic approach

Recent research in psychedelic science, particularly centred on psilocybin, has demonstrated promising therapeutic outcomes for individuals grappling with depression and spiritual distress due to incurable illnesses, such as cancer. Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, which integrates the use of psilocybin in a secure setting alongside professional psychological support, is introducing an innovative therapeutic approach that addresses not just symptoms of depression and anxiety but also promotes spiritual well-being and quality of life in palliative care patients. PsyPal combines psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy to address these deep-seated human needs in these terminal conditions. Beyond immediate clinical outcomes, it targets sustained well-being for patients and their families post-psilocybin treatment. Using peer support and online tools, the project aims to enhance coping mechanisms and alleviate distress as people approach the end of their lives.

Collaborative and interdisciplinary consortium

This pioneering approach results in not just a clinical trial, but an interdisciplinary partnership consisting of 19 collaborating European organisations from 9 different countries. The consortium brings together a wide variety of specialists, including psychiatrists, palliative care physicians, psychologists, and experts in psilocybin therapy, alongside researchers focusing on spiritual care and representatives from religious institutions.

PsyPal Partners

The following organisations are part of the PsyPal consortium (listed alphabetically): 29k, A+ Science, Bispebjerg Hospital, Champalimaud Foundation, European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC), European Federation of Neurological Associations (EFNA), European Psychiatric Association (EPA), HumanKindLabs, IESE Business School, Lung Alliance Netherlands, Madopa, National Institute of Mental Health in the Czech Republic, Norrsken Mind, OPEN Foundation, University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), University of Copenhagen, University of Groningen, University of Stockholm, Uppsala University. In addition, the PsyPal consortium will be also actively engaging with PAREA (the Psychedelic Access and Research Europe Alliance).

The partners in the research consortium are committed to upholding the highest ethical standards in clinical and research practices, as laid out in the Horizon Europe regulation. Furthermore, the consortium will adhere to any requirements or recommendations from ethics committees and the regulatory authorities.

 

Disclaimer - PsyPal is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Health and Digital Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.