Comments on: Ecstasy And War Resistant PTSD

By: leftfield

leftfield — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:15:17 +0000

Well said, Nifty.

BTW, Mike – I love the picture with this piece.

By: mike_brewer

mike_brewer — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:38:06 +0000

Thank you Nifty. Very thorough. This why we Blog, to draw out qualitative levels of truth.

By: mike_brewer

mike_brewer — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:29:54 +0000

Both were correct. The CIA wanted it to solicit temporary amnesia for interrogation purposes. But when we found out the Ruskies thought they could produce a superior warrior with its periodic controlled use, we had a little clandestine “Sputnik” going on in the consciousness game. Leary used to speak often of, “set and setting.” An uncanny similar scenario that the Army tried to replicate. Don’t tell Fort Buckley this! He is too young to know anyhow.

By: nifty

nifty — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 03:24:25 +0000

Hi, I came across this post while looking for followup on the original report of the PTSD study. I am not military, I don’t have PTSD so I can’t speak to those experiences. I have suffered from serious anxiety, depression, and alcohol problems and I have used ecstasy (just so you know where I’m coming from).
I can completely understand your skepticism. But I think if you read more closely the history of this drug (you’ve obviously done some research concerning LSD for example) you might be inclined to rethink that skepticism a bit. I think we should be cautious in hailing some “miracle cure”, but open the way for more, better studies.
It’s true that Leary and others made some pretty broad claims about LSD when they first started to try to popularize it. But i think the culture around that drug was different from the beginning, and I think there was more of an effort on the part of its evangelists to gloss over many people’s negative experiences, damaging their credibility as we look back on them now.
In the case of ecstasy, it’s really the government who has way way way twisted the reality of this drug. The propaganda campaign about the purported damage done to our brains and that led to the drug being prohibited was mostly based on a now almost completely debunked experiment. The scientist in charge of that study even published a retraction. The jury is still out on long term effects, but the science does not point to it being any real danger. Its all politics.
There’s a great piece that ABC did about it linked here:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/ecstasy-rising/
It’s not exactly recent but it gives great background, and starts to demonstrate, since you make the comparison, that similarities to LSD’s “discovery” are fairly superficial.
Specifically, I’d like to question your assertion that people using ecstasy in combination with therapy (or even those who promoted LSD, though I probably know less about that than you it seems) are promoting a “blank slate” effect. That may have been the goal with LSD (and again, I’m not familiar with it), but I certainly can’t imagine what that would have to do with ecstasy. Amnesia is not a sought after effect of ecstasy, in fact, I’ve never even heard of it mentioned as a possible one (though my knowledge is far from exhaustive on this).
The sought after effect from ecstasy is a lowering of anxiety and fear, and a general feeling of universal empathy. The latter follows from the former really: you feel more empathetic and connected towards those around you because you no longer fear them as “the other”, the social anxieties we live with constantly drop away. Quite a dramatically different experience to that of a hallucinogen like LSD. They are planets apart.
I just hope that this study will open the doors a bit to legalizing for therapeutic uses. @Dana Morgan, I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand either because a) it’s an “illegal street drug” – a classification that is largely unjustified from a scientific or public health standpoint, or b) because it’s being used in the hands of the VA. Who’s using it and who’s decided to call it “unsafe” doesn’t change it’s chemical properties, which are, on the whole, benign.
And on a completely “just fun to read” note: an interesting essay in Granta a while back for whoever’s interested:
Confessions of a Middle-Aged Ecstasy Eater
http://www.granta.com/Magazine/74

By: leftfield

leftfield — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 01:22:37 +0000

Working a lot, Mike. It’s no small job working to overthrow the government. All those back and forth messages to Fidel and what not.

I may be wrong as all I know is what is in the public arena, but I never got the impression that either the CIA or the military had plans to look into the potential consciousness-expanding uses of LSD, only how to use it against an enemy. A gift from the universal vibration is not to be trifled with and LSD was not something to be taken lightly by anyone. “It aint no party, it ain’t no disco”.

By: mike_brewer

mike_brewer — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:03:19 +0000

Yo, leftfield, where have you been in the land of Veritas? You are so correct. And the oddity of all, is that is what Timothy Leary and Department of the Army Research said in the 1950’s!

By: leftfield

leftfield — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:40:43 +0000

Unfortunately, once drugs are consigned to Schedule I, it is darn difficult to move the bureacracy to allow research into their possible therpeutic uses. Anyway, once permission is obtained, the potential uses for this drug is something for the medical community to investigate and not for the public or politicians to decide. Such investigation should take place without prejudice for or against.

By: Dana Morgan

Dana Morgan — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:53:54 +0000

What makes an illegal street drug safe in the hands of the VA?

By: Dana Morgan

Dana Morgan — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:56:14 +0000

Certainly the relationship between broken hearts and broken souls is critical. No pills and a group where you can trust the others does more that drugs which only mask symptoms in most cases that I have seen. Lose the trust and then you are worse off than before. Good job Mike.