PTSD? Try X

[Jason]

All clear for the decisive trial of ecstasy in PTSD patients

One of the main targets in the war on drugs could well become a drug to treat the scars of war. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), better known as the illegal drug ecstasy, a "breakthrough therapy" for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a status that may lead to faster approval.

The agency has also approved the design for two phase III studies of MDMA for PTSD that would be funded by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a nonprofit in Santa Cruz, California. MAPS announced the "breakthrough therapy" designation, made by FDA on 16 August, on its website today; if the group can find the money for the trials, which together could cost an estimated $25 million, they may start next spring and finish by 2021.

That an illegal dancefloor drug could become a promising pharmaceutical is another indication that the efforts of a dedicated group of researchers interested in the medicinal properties of mind-altering drugs is paying dividends. Stringent drug laws have stymied research on these compounds for decades. "This is not a big scientific step," says David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London. "It’s been obvious for 40 years that these drugs are medicines. But it’s a huge step in acceptance."

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/ ... d-patients

[Brian Peacock]

MDMA was already 'a promising pharmaceutical' when legislators got the hump about young people enjoying themselves too much and not spending enough money on alcohol.

[rainbow]

MDMA was already 'a promising pharmaceutical' when legislators got the hump about young people enjoying themselves too much and not spending enough money on alcohol.

MDMA has killed far fewer people than Viagra.

[Rum]

..which hardly makes it therapeutic!

LSD was seen as a potential cure for psychotic illness back in the early to mid 60s. Frankly my experience was that it was something of a cause rather than a cure!

[Brian Peacock]

RD Lang maintained that LSD could have therapeutic benefits for certain kinds of mental illness as part of a talking cure. His idea was that the LSD experience can be so intense that it could be used to re-order thinking if the patient was given the right guidance, effectively allowing them to re-build their mental and conceptual landscape from a disordered state. He was reputed to have had some success with some patients, but research in that area was curtailed when the substance was categorised as a prohibited Class-A drug.

The euphoric effects of MDMA could encourage patients with stress disorders to be more receptive to other forms of therapy, such as CBT. As with LSD, the criminalisation of the substance itself has been a bar to further research.

[Rum]

Like many lefty liberals I was a big fan of Laing. In retrospect and having read a lot more around the subject when studying to become a so called 'approved' social worker under the mental health act, I concluded that for the most part, especially his ideas about family paradoxes and the like causing schizophrenia, he was a dangerous quack.

I would not rule out LSD as a mind fuck of such proportions that it could shake one out of psychosis, but that was sort of the reasoning used to blast people with electricity to get them out of depression.

[mistermack]

MDMA was already 'a promising pharmaceutical' when legislators got the hump about young people enjoying themselves too much and not spending enough money on alcohol.

MDMA has killed far fewer people than Viagra.

What could be the reason? Viagra is taken mostly by older people. Often combined with other prescription drugs. MDMA mostly by younger healthier people. How could there possibly be a link?

[Brian Peacock]

Or the reason could be that MDMA isn't that harmful and/or that some people have been taking Viagra who shouldn't have.

[pErvinalia]

All clear for the decisive trial of ecstasy in PTSD patients

One of the main targets in the war on drugs could well become a drug to treat the scars of war. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), better known as the illegal drug ecstasy, a "breakthrough therapy" for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a status that may lead to faster approval.

The agency has also approved the design for two phase III studies of MDMA for PTSD that would be funded by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a nonprofit in Santa Cruz, California. MAPS announced the "breakthrough therapy" designation, made by FDA on 16 August, on its website today; if the group can find the money for the trials, which together could cost an estimated $25 million, they may start next spring and finish by 2021.

That an illegal dancefloor drug could become a promising pharmaceutical is another indication that the efforts of a dedicated group of researchers interested in the medicinal properties of mind-altering drugs is paying dividends. Stringent drug laws have stymied research on these compounds for decades. "This is not a big scientific step," says David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London. "It’s been obvious for 40 years that these drugs are medicines. But it’s a huge step in acceptance."

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/ ... d-patients

Ketamine is getting close to being an approved treatment for some cases of strong and acute depression.

[pErvinalia]

Like many lefty liberals I was a big fan of Laing. In retrospect and having read a lot more around the subject when studying to become a so called 'approved' social worker under the mental health act, I concluded that for the most part, especially his ideas about family paradoxes and the like causing schizophrenia, he was a dangerous quack.

I would not rule out LSD as a mind fuck of such proportions that it could shake one out of psychosis, but that was sort of the reasoning used to blast people with electricity to get them out of depression.

Perhaps it's a case of dosage. Electric 'shock' therapy is a fairly standard approach to certain depressive disorders. The shocks aren't really shocks. They are a mild current these days.

[mistermack]

My mum was a psychiatric nurse for forty years, going back to the 1940s.
She reckoned that electric shock really worked for some patients, when there was nothing else out there that helped them.
Some of those people were in a terrible state that most of us can only imagine. She reckoned that it brought them real relief, and the change was amazing in some.

It's only anecdotal, and from my memory, but it's not as clear-cut awful as some people imagine.

[Rum]

Well memory is one of the issues. The degree of shock used a few decades ago had the unfortunate side effect of causing partial and sometimes quite extensive memory loss. Perhaps worth it for some. Not so much for others.

[pErvinalia]

Interestingly, the previous (and possibly (too early to tell yet) the current) antidepressant I was on totally destroyed my memory. Like wiped sections of it totally. I'm not talking major events. But stuff I'd normally remember having written/done when someone mentioned it. The real eye opener was on facebook when they send you those 1-year ago today you blah blah and they show you your post from one year ago. There was continually stuff that I have literally zero memory (totally no recognition at all) of having ever written. It's quite an unsettling thing to happen..

[mistermack]

Interestingly, the previous (and possibly (too early to tell yet) the current) antidepressant I was on totally destroyed my memory. Like wiped sections of it totally. I'm not talking major events. But stuff I'd normally remember having written/done when someone mentioned it. The real eye opener was on facebook when they send you those 1-year ago today you blah blah and they show you your post from one year ago. There was continually stuff that I have literally zero memory (totally no recognition at all) of having ever written. It's quite an unsettling thing to happen..

Is that why you haven't paid me back that thousand quid I lent you?
No pressure. In your own time.

[Rum]

I'm not sure if there is any equivalence between what electric shocks to the brain and current anti-depressants do. But of course there may well be. Both do seem to be pretty blunt hit or miss therapies. One day we may well see both as pretty primitive.