Psychedelic advocate nears goal of legal ecstasy to treat PTSD
WASHINGTON — Growing up amid the tumult of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War, Rick Doblin says he became convinced that humanity was “crazy” and “inherently destructive.” As a teenager, he came to see the mind-expanding effects of psychedelics — including LSD and magic mushrooms — as the antidote to mankind’s inner demons.
He set out to prove it. And now, after 32 years of false starts, setbacks and regulatory hurdles, he has brought MDMA — the illegal, all-night party drug also known as ecstasy — to the brink of medical legitimacy.
The Food and Drug Administration has labeled the drug a potential “breakthrough” for post-traumatic stress disorder and cleared late-stage studies of up to 300 patients. The studies are to be conducted by Doblin’s nonprofit group dedicated to promoting mind-altering drugs, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS. Researchers will begin screening patients this month.
The goal is to win FDA approval by 2021. MDMA would become the first psychedelic drug — currently in the same ultra-restrictive category as heroin and cocaine — to make the leap to prescription medicine.
Doblin does not plan to stop there. His aim is the legalization of all psychedelics for recreational use by 2035.
“Psychedelics have been used for thousands of years for healing and spiritual purposes,” says Doblin, 64. “I thought my contribution would be to bring them back.”
MAPS’ work is part of a resurgence of interest into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, a field that captivated researchers in the 1950s and 1960s before the government ban on LSD and other hallucinogens slammed the door shut in 1970.
“This field was so taboo it was essentially erased from the history books,” says Stephen Ross, a New York University psychiatrist who is studying psilocybin, the ingredient in magic mushrooms, for depression and alcohol addiction.
Ross and other researchers are largely funded by the Heffter Research Institute, the other psychedelic nonprofit in the field. But Heffter executives adamantly oppose recreational use of psychedelics. They say the drugs are too risky to be used without professional supervision.
Funding MAPS and the MDMA studies has meant relentless fundraising, more than $70 million over the years from by a wide array of wealthy backers.
MDMA was discovered in 1912 by a German drugmaker researching chemicals to control bleeding. A chemical cousin, MDA, became a drug of abuse in the late 1960s, producing a combination of hallucinations and intensified emotions. Users dubbed it the “love drug.”
MDMA was largely forgotten until a handful of psychotherapists reproduced it in the late 1970s to enhance therapy sessions.
The current standard of care for PTSD includes antidepressants and several forms of therapy. But only about a third of patients recover after treatment.