July 27, 2019 • 41 mins
Some of you have tried the ecstasy. Others have merely heard about the drug on a TV sitcom, or heard about it in a news report. Either way, MDMA's power resonates through our culture -- and sometimes it's hard to distinguish the truth form the misinformation. But what exactly is this psychoactive agent? Where does it come from and what sort of effect does it have on the human experience? Join Robert and Christian as they explore the origins and properties of MDMA. (Originally published Dec. 17, 2015)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Time to go into the vault. Now, this time we're
going to check in with part two of the episode
that you did with Christian about m d m A
way back in December. That's right. Uh, yeah, we figured
since we did those psychedelic episodes, made sense to re
(00:26):
air these m d m A episodes. Again, these are
from so you know, they're a few years old, and
the research into m d M A and its potential
therapeutic uses has continued, so these do not reflect like
the cutting edge of the research by any means. Uh.
And likewise, you know, we've we've re aired, We've re
aired a number of episodes featuring Christian. I just want
(00:47):
to remind everybody that Christian is alive and well in
the world, and you want to check out his his
ongoing podcasting adventures. He is still very much the co
host of super Context, which is like a pop culture autopsy.
I believe they describe it as such. Yeah, definitely worth
checking out. All right, Well, let's venture once more into
(01:07):
the vault. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from
how Stop works dot com. Hey, wasn't discussed tobow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager. So
we are in part two of our M d M
(01:28):
A Spectacular, and the last episode we talked primarily about
what m d M A is, when it was invented,
who invented it, and what its physical effects on the
body are, right UH. And so if you haven't listened
to that and you want a little bit more background,
I recommend that you go back and listen to it.
But what we're gonna focus on here today is primarily
(01:48):
how it's being used in studies, or how it's been
used really for the last thirty or forty years UH
in studies on how to treat people for various things,
from everything from mental problems to PTSD to answer yeah
and UH. As As we set up in the last episode,
you're basically dealing with two different phases, right. So the
substances UH is first synthesized in the early twentieth century.
(02:10):
It's not until UH generally the what the sixties, seventies
and eighties that you see it used therapeutically. You see
people experimenting with its uh, the potential potential benefits outside
of a recreational environment. But then it becomes enemy number one, right,
it becomes caught up in the culture. Last episode, it
(02:31):
was immediately placed on like the most restrictive drug list,
so scientists couldn't even use it in their labs to
study its. And this goes for various psychedelics as well,
such as a psilocybin. But then in recent years we've
seen a resurgence. You've seen You've seen psilocybin, you've seen
m D M A, all these substance coming back into
the lab and uh and and professionals are able to
(02:54):
actually explore them some more, look at these undeniably potent,
powerful substances and say what what he or can we use?
What can we change? What? What can we just try
to to use in a proper environment and and out
of it all generate some sort of positive effect. Yeah.
And so before we get into the real, you know,
(03:15):
boiled down details about this, I want to remind everybody
that the podcast isn't the only way that you can,
you know, interact with us or see the things that
we're looking at this week. We also are always writing
on stuff to blow your Mind dot com. There's galleries,
there's articles. At least once or twice a week we're
putting stuff up there, and videos as well. So there's
(03:36):
all the old stuff to blow your own videos. But Robert,
for instance, is currently working on the How Stuff Works
Now series and as much as possible, we try to
share those videos as well. Uh, and they're very stuff
to blow your mind related topics, right, yeah, yeah, very
much weird science that sort of thing. And hey, uh,
I know a lot of you listen to us on
various aggregated programs, various apps and whatnot, but but there
(03:59):
are certainly iTunes users out there getting us on iTunes
and listen us to listening to us on your iPhones.
If you get us through iTunes, show some love their
help the algorithm and that's a great way to support
the show without spending a dime. So all right, let's
get into the pharmacological healing properties of m d M
A and this brings us back to Shulgun. Yeah. So
(04:20):
Alexander Shulgan, who we talked a lot about in the
last episode, also known as Sasha Shulgin, the Godfather of Ecstasy, uh,
was also primarily responsible for bringing to the psychological community.
Uh In in particular um his wife Anne. My understanding
was that she was a therapist and she used m
(04:41):
d m A and some of her therapy sessions with
her patients. But he also uh introduced it to a
guy named Leo zef in N seven who started using
it in psychotherapy and introduced other therapists to it. And
so my understanding is that there is this kind of
underground network of therapists who were using it in their
research and in their studies. And this is before it
(05:02):
was tremendously legal. Yes, obviously it's one of the areas
you see mentioned a lot. Is it's used in couples
therapy because ultimately, as as we try to drive home
in the last episode, this idea that m d m
A and ecstasy produce, this feeling of ecstasy is is
a buitiness leading it's more empathy and sympathy. It's more
(05:23):
a feeling of openness. Again, I like to think of
it as the self becomes permeable to the world and
so it's able to improve emotional communication skills. So that
was and boost empathy. So this is where psychotherapist would
use it to say you have two individuals that they're
having marital problems, they're having communication problems, they have all
(05:43):
this stuff bottle up inside. Well than in these cases,
perhaps m d m A can be used to open
the two up, to get them to talk about things
that they're not talking about. So it's not a situation
where like you having marital problems, take two of these
and commy in the morning. It's like, let's let's have
a rap session and let's take this. You will take
(06:04):
this first, and this will enable the sort of open
communication we need. Yeah, I can't emphasize this enough. For
all of these psychotherapeutic uses that we're talking about here,
they have to go hand in hand with actual sit
down in the chair, talk to a therapist counseling. Right. Definitely,
it's not like you just take the m d m
A and call them in the morning. Right, Like as
we just said, it's it's got to be in conjunction
(06:26):
with building trust with somebody that you can talk to
objectively about whatever the issues. It's the m d m
A assisted psychotherapy, not psychotherapy assisted m d m A usage.
And and we'll get into this more, especially with the
PTSD stuff, but basically what it does The argument is
is that it allows you to increase your trust for
people if you have trouble trusting people, and it reduces
(06:48):
your fear and anxiety levels. So it's particularly good as
I you know, as you just mentioned, for something like
couples therapy where there's communication issues, if you have fear
of not communicating something or you need to trust your
partner more. That that's where the ideal lies in its usage. So, yeah,
it was being used as early as the seventies, and
(07:09):
you know, probably up until the mid eighties, right around
the time that it was made illegal in the United States. Uh,
but you know that that was primarily like an underground thing.
It wasn't like it wasn't like a man dated. It
wasn't like in the D S M for whatever came
out in the seventies, right, and so, uh, it wasn't
(07:30):
until a more modern time, really, right around the two thousands,
I want to say, where we started seeing M d
M A show up again in psychotherapy trials. That's right.
And though the primary player here is an organization known
as MAPS that's Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and they're
they're concerned not just with M d m A but
(07:52):
with psilocybe and other substances. Um, And they continue to
explore quote whether m d m A assisted psychotherapy can
help heal the psychological and emotional damage caused by sexual assault, war,
violent crime, and other traumas. So this is this is
one of the huge areas of exploration here. And oh
(08:12):
and just to give a little more background on maps, um,
they're it's a. It's They are operating in several different
countries I think five right now, Canada, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, Israel,
and in the US. Yeah, there are trials being done
in the US. And I think I mentioned this at
the end of last episode, but it bears repeating here.
It is super expensive to research system. Not only because
(08:33):
of all of the restrictions that have to be placed
on the facilities in which you are holding the m
d m A for these trials, right, Like you have
to build like like super like heavy door frames, right
or like security systems that you normally wouldn't have for
these places. But the medical grade m d m A
is also quite expensive. It can cost up to a
(08:55):
hundred and seventy dollars or seventy five dollars per dose.
So and that's like, as we were saying last episode,
one dose is like a hundred, two hundred and fifty milligrams. Yeah. Again,
think back to the fact that one of the reasons
that it was shell for so long is that it
was expensive to study. So even in the you know,
the early twentieth century German chemisicists looked at it and uh,
(09:17):
and they realized, oh, it has some sort of interesting properties,
but who has the budget to explore it? So before
we dive deeper down to the psychotherapy thing, I think
an interesting way to approach this is to add the
criticisms up first, so then as we go through it,
we can sort of say, okay, we're those criticisms valid
or not. Uh. And in the research, one of the
major M d M A researchers who's published a lot
(09:40):
of literature on this is a guy named Andy Parrott,
who's i believe, out of the University of Swansea, and he,
you know, has done a great paper that's on sort
of just the the general twenty five years of empirical
history of chemistry, right that the chemistry behind M d
M A UM. But he does acknowledge that there's been
some criticism U and mainly that it's not safe for
(10:01):
clinical use. Uh. And some proponents say that it needs
to be used repeatedly for more than one or two
sessions or otherwise it won't produce gains in those situations, right. Uh.
And remember from the last episode, m d M AS
effects are short lived, and uh, it doesn't exactly work
like that. You know, as we said before, there's a
chronic decline over time. The more you use it, the
(10:24):
less positive effects are and the more the negative effects are.
So there's some concern about that with the tolerance levels.
But there's also acute effects of m d M A
that are unpredictable, which we talked about as well last time.
They can both be positive or negative, right like that,
for instance, that there's both positive and negative emotional responses,
or or that there's some undesirable experiences during the sessions,
(10:48):
and sometimes these undesirable experiences can last up to two
weeks long. So that's kind of parrots argument is, you know,
let's let's stop before we do this. But Uh, there's
also the idea of the neuro chemical depletion the serotonin
uh and can lead to feelings of depression, anger, and
paranoia anyways. Uh, and it's especially bad for those who
(11:09):
have pre existing depression, and it could even predispose people
who like, for instance, we're already depressed but had um
you know, dealt with that issue, to a recurrence of
their previous psychological disability. So these are all of his
essential like criticisms of I don't know that we're quite
there yet for the psychotherapy thing. And he presents us
(11:32):
with two scenarios in which he thinks that that this
isn't going to particularly work out. And I'll read through
the first one and we can respond to these as
we go through the benefits of the psychotherapy and see
if see if his criticisms are right. Yeah. So if
we don't launch into picking them apart right away, understand it.
That's the reason. Yeah, Okay, So parents, first scenario is
(11:54):
that you have a Special Air Force soldier who's discharged
from the army because he has PTSD is traumatic stress disorder.
His therapist says, let's try this m d M A
assisted therapy. Oh, but the drug stimulates the re emergence
of the soldier's unpleasant war experiences, and this includes feelings
of aggression. The soldiers trying to control these while he's
at the clinic. However, later that evening, this is the scenario,
(12:17):
mind you, he violently attacks a stranger in the street.
Following his arrest, his lawyer argues that this aggressive act
has been triggered by the m d m A assisted
therapy session. So okay, so so sorry. Parrot is basically saying, Okay,
this guy could potentially go out and assault somebody due
to the negative feelings that get dredged up by this
therapy induced m d m A session. Okay, I have
(12:40):
so many responses to that. I'm gonna clear for a minute,
all right. The second scenario that he lays up is
called involves a hypothetical case of a female rape victim. Uh.
He says. After the first m DUMA assisted therapy session,
the client feels much better, but the games do not
injure over time. Following a second session this m d
(13:00):
m A assisted again, there's a brief period of of relief,
and then a third session is requested, but the therapist
explains that she can't clinically recommend it to the client.
Now Quote seeks out their own illicit supplies that ecstasy
slash m d M A. The only time she feels
good is when she is on m d m A,
and she becomes an habitual user. However, with reducing efficiency
(13:23):
and increasing midweek blues, her chronic anxiety, depression, and low
self esteem steadily worsens. M M Yeah, so I don't know.
I mean, that seems counterintuitive even in and of itself, right,
and the idea that this person would become a habitual
user given what we know from Parrot's own discourse about
(13:43):
m d M A and that most people don't use
it more than ten times. Everything we discussed in the
first episode seems to to poke holes in that argument
and a lot of the research for that game in
Parrot's own writing. So I'm not quite sure about this,
but let's let's see if it matches up as we
go along. Okay, Now, this is the thing that ties
into a criticism of scenario one, but also just important
(14:04):
to to look at going forward is that when it
comes to the treatment of PTSD, there is and there
is an urgent need for better treatment methods. So this
is just this isn't just a situation of a bunch
of scientists or even an organization saying hey, we've got
to find a way to make m d M a
practical This is not what you Harrelson wearing a jacket around, right.
(14:24):
This is this is there a professional saying, hey, we
need a better tool here, we need a better methods,
and we need need better drugs to help these individuals.
There's a potential answer here, let's explore it. So to
piggyback on top of that, I think it's important that
we sort of just quickly prime and established what PTSD is, right, Like,
(14:44):
it's a term a lot of us throw around, and
I've heard people say before like, oh, I have PTSD,
you know, And Uh, this is what PTSD is. Uh,
is a manifestation of trauma physically in your body. It's
common in victims of war and abut it involves shaking, sweating, crumbling,
anxiety and flashbacks. And basically what we're looking at here
(15:07):
is the psychological scars having physical repercussions. Right, So they're
physically affecting a person's body. So that's what we're talking
about here for treatment is being able to get get
them to integrate past that physical trauma rather mental trauma
manifesting physically. So here a couple of quick points that
(15:29):
come directly from MAPS about m d m A assisted psychotherapy,
they said. They say an Indie May assisted psychotherapy INDIEMA
is only administered a few times, unlike most medications for
mental illnesses, which are often taken daily for years and
sometimes forever. UH and MAPS is undertaking a roughly twenty
million dollar plan to make m d m A into
(15:50):
a Food and Drug Administration approved prescription medicine by one
now Here are just a few up pointers as well
that come from Ingrid Pacy, who I mentioned earlier. There's
a fabulous bit with her on the CBC radio show
Ideas again their three part series A High Culture, which
(16:11):
I highly recommend for anyone who's interested in just the
overall uh re emergence of psychedelic research over the past
a few decades and in some of the you know,
the the the concerns they're in. But Ingrid Percy is
a psychiatrist. She's a lead investigator of mb m A
assisted therapy for treatment resistant post traumatic stress disorder at
(16:31):
the University of British Columbia. So she points out that
from phase one studies around the world, we know that
m d m A seems to lower fear, particularly for
treatment resistant PTSD creating a window. And it's interesting she
says window because because references a window at that I
believe was the hundred milogram YEA creates a window during
(16:54):
which the trauma can be considered and discussed without the
associated fear getting in the way. So it's about sort
of allowing the monster to come out so you can
look at it and deal with it and and and
perhaps exercise it. Right. According to pascy M d m A,
psychotherapy usually begins with feelings of relaxation, easing of muscles,
and among PTSD patients you often see the flashes of
(17:17):
the past trauma that then emerge and it can even
be a strong bodily experience. So we mentioned this in
the last episode about how how taking ecstasy can produce uh,
these very strong negative feelings can can pull those out
of an interce. So that's where I assume Parrot is
getting his scenario to of which the soldier has experienced
(17:39):
such a negative emotions being recalled. Yeah, and that but
that what where I can't I'm having difficulty following him
is the logical extension of that to going out and
assaulting a person on the street, right, because he's saying, well,
you're gonna pull You're gonna pull the monster out of
the closet, and then the monster could win. Well, yeah,
but part of what are you gonna do? Just leave
it in the closet. I mean, the idea here is
(18:01):
we've got to we've got to face these traumatic experiences, right,
and that m D MAY assisted psychotherapy can potentially allow
us to do so in a safer way with reduced
fear um and and during all of this, the therapist
or monitoring vital signs. Umah. Really, it's kind of the
best case scenario to be doing m d m A
(18:22):
in right, because you're not like, like we talked about
last episode, like the some of the bad side effects
like the overheating or the chewing on your teeth. They're
running about music. Yeah, all of that kind of stems
out of the dance culture, not because of the drug,
but because of the environment that you're in. Right. Yeah,
So you know this is again it's about using it
(18:42):
therapeutically with a therapist, using it as a way to
open that window, to to gain access to things that
are normally going to be too too buried or or
to fear ridden to tackle and this is this is
really key here. Again. One of the major issues is
that there we need better tools, we need better medications
(19:02):
to treat PTSD. And according to two percy um you
see about a thirty success rate for conventional multi year
PTSD therapy, but so far with m d m A
PTSD therapy you've seen they've seen an eight five percent
success rate. Wow, okay, well that backs up some of
(19:23):
the other stuff that I read, which said that there
were significant gains found on There's a there's a scale
that's used to measure somebody's level of PTSD. It's called
the PTSD scale. And after using that, after using m
d m A in therapy, using the PTSD scale, they
found that there were great gains over time. And in fact,
(19:44):
when they did placebo trials telling people that they were
doing m d m A when they weren't, they found
less games. So the the evidence does seem to show
that this works. Um it also, you know, the aim
here is is to help these people with their debilitate symptoms.
It's it's when they haven't responded to other therapies, and
it's this isn't like oh, let's just try this, you know,
(20:07):
this is this is a situation where it's resistant to
their last resort. Yeah. Uh, you know. The other treatments
are anything from talking, to exposure therapy, to the things
that cause the PTSD to all these daily medications that
we could be using. Uh. One therapist says that they
think that it works because of m d M as
unique properties. And we talked about this last time. It's
(20:28):
both a stimulant and a psychedelic, right, so they said, quote,
the stimulant gives people confidence and the psychedelic allows people
to reflect on themselves and their experiences in a different way.
This combination helps them confront painful memories. And then in
two thousand nine there was an article by a Norwegian
psychologist named I Believe this is palurine Yo Hansen, and
(20:50):
he argued that it works through several mechanisms. Basically, the
m d M A is increasing the levels of oxytocin
in your body. And this is the call it the
cuddle chemical. Um. I think you guys might have talked
about this previously on the episode It's released during breastfeeding,
not in the episode on the show and stuff to
blow Your Left at five years one of yeah, the
(21:12):
most frequently mentioned uh, properties of the body. I feel,
So it increases our oxytocin and what that does it
prevents the brain's emotional processing center from overpowering our higher thoughts,
so it quells fear and it encourages trust, just like
we were talking about earlier. So, um, you know we
mentioned m d m A has to occur in conjunction
(21:33):
with psychotherapy. You aren't just taking m d m A.
And it's not like you immediately go into therapy and
you're taking m d m A with the therapist. You
need to establish trust with this therapist through a series
of sober sessions before you do these m d m
A sessions. And usually at the most I think it's
like three sessions, which kind of makes sense along the
lines of what we know about people taking m d
(21:54):
m A, its effects and their efficacy. But then also,
you know the uh contradicts. I want to say, parents
first example of of the potential UH subject where this
wouldn't work for them, right, and that they've become sorry
it was their second example where the girl becomes an addict, right, Um,
(22:16):
so they only use it for three sessions at the most.
All right, we're gonna take a quick break and we
come back. We're gonna we're gonna roll through some other
potential uses. M d m A as a cancer fighting agent.
Uh is potential uh aid in couples therapy and even
away to ease an individual uh to the death point.
(22:44):
All right, we're back. So we set up for this
a little bit in the in the previous episode. The
potential for for e m d M A to help
us fight cancer, which is this is one of the
this is an area of m d m A research
that is uh. He kind of stands up part from
the rest because it's so it's not attached to the
most apparent properties of the drug. Right. In fact, So
(23:06):
the funny story, yesterday I was getting my hair cut
and as the first time I was getting my haircut
by this particular hairdresser. She asked me what I did
for a living and what I was working on right now,
and I told her was researching empty m A uh
and and she said, oh, that's fascinating, And I said
it can be used to help people with cancer. And
her immediate thought was, oh, yeah, that makes sense, like
if they're in pain, it would make them feel happy.
(23:28):
And I was like, oh no, I mean yes, there
are instances where they've been using it therapeutically that way.
But no, like let's recap from last episode, there's that
apotosis effect in which programs cell death actually attacks the
cells in your liver and retina when you take M
d M A. H. So let's remember that that's what
(23:48):
they're using here to try to take take cancer out there,
trying to kill the cells and cancer. It's not just
as like a you know, sort of like a pain
reducer kind of thing. Yeah, So we've known since around
two thousand six that ecstasy, M D M A and
antidepressants such as prozac have the potential to stop cancer
cells the catches. Then, in order to kill the cells,
(24:11):
who have to drop an absurd amount of ecstasy as
in a highly lethal dose. Um. Like just to refresh,
we were talking in the previous episode about how you're
talking about, uh, the average dose being in in then
like a hundred hundred and fifty, right, and if you
get into one or one point five grams, you're getting
into into a deadly amount, potentially deadly amount. So in
(24:34):
two thousand eleven, researchers from the University of Birmingham and
the University of Western Australia UM looked into this. They
were they were basically looking to ways at ways to
tweak ecstasy, uh, to tweak m d m A at
the atomic level, swapping out some of the atoms in
its chemical composition to increase its cancer fighting power by
a factor of a hundred. So to put that in perspective,
(24:55):
that means that you could have a single tablet of
modified ecstasy, they would have as much cancer fighting power
as a hundred tablets without boosting the unwanted effects of
the drug. So because because the amount of this is
my understanding, the amount of m d m A needed
to start attacking the cancer cells is like a hundred grams, right,
(25:16):
and so to that would totally kill you. Yeah. Yeah,
that's like a hundred times as much as would be
a hundred times a very strong dosage. Yeah, So they
need to make it more powerful so you can take
less of it to attack the cancer but not have
the negative side. Yeah. So basically taking the synthetic substance
and tweaking it even more to encourage the properties you
(25:38):
need and discourage the properties that are going to kill
the patient. And this is exactly the kind of thing
that Alexander Shulgin would have promoted and wanted I think
his his his studies of these psychedelic compounds to be
used for going forward, you know. I mean his hope
was that they would be studied educationally so that we
(25:59):
could find these kinds of uses for the Yeah, exactly,
to go back to the roadmap scenario, it's saying, hey,
there's this road and uh, you didn't know it, but
there's a little turn here to the left, and it
leads to a potential cure for cancer. So when you
get into exactly how this works, uh, you really get
bogged down rather quickly in the chemical and biochemical details.
(26:21):
But the basic explanation, as rolled out in that paper
is the theory behind it is the drug is attracted
to the fat in the membranes of cancerous cells, and
it makes the cells quote a bit more soapy, which
can break down the membrane and kill the cell. Unfortunately,
cancerous cells are more susceptible. So again they hope to
(26:46):
hope to refine this. Last the most recent stat I
saw was they're hoping to make it possible by But
again that was that that that was when they were
rolling up that particular it said they thought they're about
a decade away. I'm curious where they're at with it
right now as Yeah, hopefully we'll get an update in
(27:07):
the near future. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if we
see something come out in the next year or so. Yeah.
So yeah, So, all right, we've covered PTSD cancer. What
else can we use this for. Well, we already mentioned
couples therapy and about how it was rolled out with
apparently some level of success in the eighties, But there's
actually a two thousand fifteen study that was published in
(27:28):
the Journal of Psychopharmacology, and they set out to examine
how m d m A might be used to improve
communication about a spouse in therapy. So this is interesting.
It seems to be the key key here. That's not
about as much about oh here, you both take MDMAIN
will also together, but it's about getting an individual to
share their own feelings and open up about what's bothering them.
(27:49):
So yeah, I could imagine based on the stereotypes surrounding
m d m A again, people hearing this and going
oh okay, so they take ecstasy and it makes them
want to have X, which was subsequently or they want
to love each other, they feel more open, they feel
more sympathetic. That's not again, ecstasy is a misnomer. Uh.
And this isn't all sexual. This is more about communication. Yeah,
(28:12):
and you know, I I do have to say that,
you know, it's it's it's totally believable that you would
have two individuals who have a connection with each other
while they're on m d m A and then afterwards
they realize, well, as my normal self even with the
inside of what I had conversing with this individual, I
no longer feel that connection. But again, this entails a
therapist being present and using the information that you bring forth.
(28:36):
So yeah, right, we don't recommend that like couples just
do this in their kitchen together. Yeah, certainly not the kitchen.
Um So, so we've discussed m DMA's ability to increase sociability.
The drug alter speech production and fluency as well, and
according to the study, it may influence speech content. So
what they did is they rounded up thirty five healthy
individuals with prior in d m A experience UH completed
(28:59):
UM to session with UH within subjects double blind study
during which they received one point five milligrams of oral
m d M A and they also had a tiney
that's a very small amount one point five that is,
so then they would after the substance had taken hold
(29:20):
um whatever limited hold it would have given the dosage.
They engaged in five minute standardized talking tasks during which
they discussed a close personal relationship, and they found that
both analytic methods that they employed revealed that m d
m A altered speech content relative to pulci abou. The
drug increased use of social and sexual words, consistent with
(29:42):
reports that m d m A increases willingness to disclose. Okay,
so that lines up with what we know from the
PTSD thing, right, It makes me trust people, it makes you,
you know, you're more permeable, yourself is more permeable. And
using the machine learning algorithm that receichers, researchers found that
m d m A increased use of social words and
words relating to both positive and negative emotions. So, in
(30:04):
other words, it helped them open up about how they
felt about this other individual, what the problems might be.
And and and that is why it seems like it could
be very useful in indima assisted psychotherapy. So I guess
like the big problem here though, is how illegal it
still is, and that it's really difficult to conduct trials
(30:27):
like this, especially in a place like the United States. Right. So,
but some of the articles that I was reading about
both the PTSD thing and the cancer studies were saying
that they think that that there's going to be m
d m A approved by the f d A, the
Federal Drug Administration again, like maybe in the next ten
years or so. Yeah, and it seems like the same
prognosis with Canadian law. This is just me here, but
(30:51):
my my worry here is that what happens when this
gets beyond peer reviewed publications, science journalism and and you know,
and radio programs and podcast What happens when this becomes
a political football and we have individuals saying, oh, well,
you're about to allow our psychotherapists to start giving ecstasy
to people. What happens? Then? It kind of reminds me
(31:14):
of another stuff to blow your mind related thing, when
you did that video last week about the god helmet,
and there's a lot of response on social media when
we posted that video. I got the impression that a
lot of people just read the headline and didn't watch
the video, but they were basically I give a primer
on what the god helmet is. Well, this was basically
we're talking about cranial electromagnetic stimulation affecting various portions of
(31:37):
the brain. If very basically turning things in your brain
on and off in order to see how they affect.
Electrical stimulation, slide electrical stimulation to see how it affects
your experience of reality. Right, And uh, there was some
research involving this that's saying that you know, by changing
the way that you perceive reality, it might be able
to help people overcome racism, for instance, right. Uh. And
(32:01):
both the responses to that on our our social media channels,
a lot of people were very angry because they saw
that as kind of like mind control, right, almost like
in a fascist kind of sense. So I could see
the same thing happening with M D m A. Right,
It's like, oh, these these therapists, you know, they're the
activist therapists are going to try to reprogram our brains,
so we're just like them. Well, I mean the thing
(32:22):
is that both of these situations, whether you're talking about
you know, electrical stimulation of the brain or pharmacological stimulation
of the brain, you're dealing with a psychedelic effect. You know,
you're you're taking your normal consciousness experience and you're tweaking
it a bit, you're changing it. You're changing your perception
of self, uh and reality in at least a very
(32:46):
limited way. And that that can be frightening, that can
be illuminating, And that's that's the whole that's psychedelia as
a whole door for a lot of experiences and a
lot of emotion. Think of it like sort of along
the lines of um drawings. Okay, so let's say like
you're looking at a drawing, and if you know what
one point perspective is, it's kind of how Wes Anderson
(33:06):
shoots a lot of his movies, right, Like, you've got
a center point and everything stems out of that center
point coming at you. But then you can switch to
two point perspective or three point perspective, where you're looking
at multiple angles, or you're looking up or down from
like a skyscraper or something like that, right, And that's
like a very basic metaphor for what's going on here.
(33:26):
It's just changing the perspective with which you can look
at the world with. Yeah, I mean, one might be
heard to say something along the lines of I've never
thought about myself that way before. I've never thought about uh,
this individual in this particular way before. And again, this
isn't us condoning like go out and do m d
m A right now, or us saying don't do m
(33:47):
d m A right It's it's neither of those things.
But I do think that it's interesting within a restrictive environment,
using it in conjunction with therapy, and especially uh, you know,
in a clinic like this, where there's somebody on hand
in case like you have a bad reaction or whatever,
right rather than being in a farm in the middle
of the woods where there's a secret rave going on. Now.
(34:09):
The final example of m d m A therapy and
m d m A research that we want to mention
here is the possibility of using m d M A
to treat individuals who are having a hard time with
with their with their impending death, with with with fatal
life you know, fatal conditions, life threatening illnesses, uh as
(34:33):
they approach the death point. And there have been some
other studies that involve pocybin and it's use magic mushrooms
psocybin as as a way to help people deal with
that scenario. It's not just the pain we're talking about here.
We're talking just gravity of understanding your aiality, Yeah, thinking
about yourself and the grappling with mortality and the basic
(34:56):
heavy human stuff. So the the main individual here is
uh San and sell Most psychiatrist Phil Wolfson, and he's
currently studying the use of m d m A assisted
psychotherapy to ease anxiety in eighteen adults diagnosed with life
threatening illnesses. Now, all of these individuals have a prognosis
life expectancy of at least nine months there can they
(35:18):
currently have severe anxiety related to life threatening illness. So
his goal here is to see whether patients suffering from
crippling anxiety, fear, or depression over a terminal diagnosis can
confine relative peace via m d m A assisted psychotherapy sessions.
So it's kind of the same scenario we've talked about
with these previous psychotherapy examples, helping them open up about
(35:41):
what's happening, help them gain a little perspective on what's happening,
and in doing so, perhaps find a place of peace. Right,
see it from a different angle, one with less fear. Yeah,
But again, Wolfson's study is just getting off the ground here.
UM just started up this year, so hopefully we'll we'll
hear more of the details in the years to come,
(36:01):
and you know, some of the core findings, and there's
clearly got to be a lot of more research done
in all of these areas before we're just doing this,
you know, casually, especially in the sense of like predicting
that the f d A is going to approve m
d M A for these ride public use. And I think,
I mean casual is a good thing to mention because
(36:22):
I think the underlying truth here is that it's such
a potent and powerful substance that it should never believe,
never be done casually. Like I would argue that even
in a recreational environment, it's not something to take lightly. Yeah,
I mean the research that needs to be done right
now is on all kinds of things, like why individuals
(36:44):
have such strong physiological ab reactions to it, right, Like
we talked about the first episode, there's very occasionally individuals
who have like cardiac arrest or seizures or something that's
not a common side effect of this, But why is
it happening to these some individuals? Right? Other things like
why is there such a variance in the mood reactions.
Why for some people is at all positive, but for
(37:04):
other people there's positive and negative, or others it's just negative.
You know what's going on there? How do other drugs
in conjunction work with m d M A right, especially
like when you think about UM PTSD patients who are
already taking daily medication for their PTSD, how's that interacting
with the m D I mean, even Sasha Shulgin in
(37:25):
his research parties would tell his his friends, Look, don't
take any medication for like three to five days before
you come over here. And then you know, we just
need to figure out the chronic tolerance development as well,
to like nail that down. Why is it that when
we take m d M A human bodies basically over time,
probably like between one dose and ten doses, over time
(37:49):
the positive effects lesson in the negative effects get worse. Indeed,
How to close out here, I just want to throw
out a quick quote. This comes to us from from
Alan Watts the late British Buddhist and Encounter Culture um icon.
I'd say um wrote a lot spoke a lot about
about Buddhism and h and also a certain amount about
(38:12):
about about other other modes of religion, and also about
a lot of the counterculture of stuff that was happening
at the time time he was alive. This particular quote
comes from nineteen seventy and he's he's probably commenting more
directly on on overt psychedelics PS, psilocybin and LSD. But
I think this holds true for a lot of what
we've talked about regarding m d m A. He says,
(38:35):
psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight,
but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by
the various ways of meditation, in which drugs are no
longer necessary or useful. If you get the message hang
up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments like microscopes, telescopes,
and telephones. The biologist does not sit with I permanently
(38:58):
glued to the microscope. He goes is away and works
on what he has seen. And I think that that
matches up rather nicely with the with the goals of
m d m A assisted psychotherapy. I do, yeah, And
I kind of have always thought of Alan Watts as
being sort of contemporary of Sasha Shulgin's as well, to
the kind I wonder if those guys ever met, but
they're kind of like on the same team, Yeah, exactly
(39:20):
them and the two of them in Timothy Leria here
on the Psychedelic Avengers. Uh. So, I think that's about
you know, what we've got here on M D M A.
But I'd really like to hear from you the audience
some more about this because I'm sure there's a lot
of things we didn't cover. The literature in this is
dense and two days studying all this stuff leading up
(39:42):
to it, and I there's no way we could even
touch the surface. You know, there's just so much that's
being studied in it right now. So I'd love to
know if there's things that we missed, or there's things
in particular that you you know about that are in
trial right now or being studied right now that we
would be in interested in coming back to in a
future episode. Get in touch with us over social media.
(40:04):
That is one of the best ways to let us
know about these things. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
and don't forget that you can always talk to us
on periscope every Friday at noon. Yeah, and if you
would like to hear us take This approach is sort
of one to approach with with other substances such as
h such as marijuana. We've ever done any content on
marijuana and medicinal marijuana that would probably be h an
(40:26):
interesting topic. Let us know if you'd like to hear afect.
The idea for this episode came out of us talking
about the instances of synthetic cannabis in the news. Yeah,
and hey, you want to get in touch with this directly,
you want to cut out stuff to blow your mind?
Dot com and all the social accounts, you can just
email us at and blow the mind at how stuff works?
(40:46):
Got so more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works? Ya about two four four
(41:15):
four four first five fo
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Time to go into the vault. Now, this time we're
going to check in with part two of the episode
that you did with Christian about m d m A
way back in December. That's right. Uh, yeah, we figured
since we did those psychedelic episodes, made sense to re
(00:26):
air these m d m A episodes. Again, these are
from so you know, they're a few years old, and
the research into m d M A and its potential
therapeutic uses has continued, so these do not reflect like
the cutting edge of the research by any means. Uh.
And likewise, you know, we've we've re aired, We've re
aired a number of episodes featuring Christian. I just want
(00:47):
to remind everybody that Christian is alive and well in
the world, and you want to check out his his
ongoing podcasting adventures. He is still very much the co
host of super Context, which is like a pop culture autopsy.
I believe they describe it as such. Yeah, definitely worth
checking out. All right, Well, let's venture once more into
(01:07):
the vault. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from
how Stop works dot com. Hey, wasn't discussed tobow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager. So
we are in part two of our M d M
(01:28):
A Spectacular, and the last episode we talked primarily about
what m d M A is, when it was invented,
who invented it, and what its physical effects on the
body are, right UH. And so if you haven't listened
to that and you want a little bit more background,
I recommend that you go back and listen to it.
But what we're gonna focus on here today is primarily
(01:48):
how it's being used in studies, or how it's been
used really for the last thirty or forty years UH
in studies on how to treat people for various things,
from everything from mental problems to PTSD to answer yeah
and UH. As As we set up in the last episode,
you're basically dealing with two different phases, right. So the
substances UH is first synthesized in the early twentieth century.
(02:10):
It's not until UH generally the what the sixties, seventies
and eighties that you see it used therapeutically. You see
people experimenting with its uh, the potential potential benefits outside
of a recreational environment. But then it becomes enemy number one, right,
it becomes caught up in the culture. Last episode, it
(02:31):
was immediately placed on like the most restrictive drug list,
so scientists couldn't even use it in their labs to
study its. And this goes for various psychedelics as well,
such as a psilocybin. But then in recent years we've
seen a resurgence. You've seen You've seen psilocybin, you've seen
m D M A, all these substance coming back into
the lab and uh and and professionals are able to
(02:54):
actually explore them some more, look at these undeniably potent,
powerful substances and say what what he or can we use?
What can we change? What? What can we just try
to to use in a proper environment and and out
of it all generate some sort of positive effect. Yeah.
And so before we get into the real, you know,
(03:15):
boiled down details about this, I want to remind everybody
that the podcast isn't the only way that you can,
you know, interact with us or see the things that
we're looking at this week. We also are always writing
on stuff to blow your Mind dot com. There's galleries,
there's articles. At least once or twice a week we're
putting stuff up there, and videos as well. So there's
(03:36):
all the old stuff to blow your own videos. But Robert,
for instance, is currently working on the How Stuff Works
Now series and as much as possible, we try to
share those videos as well. Uh, and they're very stuff
to blow your mind related topics, right, yeah, yeah, very
much weird science that sort of thing. And hey, uh,
I know a lot of you listen to us on
various aggregated programs, various apps and whatnot, but but there
(03:59):
are certainly iTunes users out there getting us on iTunes
and listen us to listening to us on your iPhones.
If you get us through iTunes, show some love their
help the algorithm and that's a great way to support
the show without spending a dime. So all right, let's
get into the pharmacological healing properties of m d M
A and this brings us back to Shulgun. Yeah. So
(04:20):
Alexander Shulgan, who we talked a lot about in the
last episode, also known as Sasha Shulgin, the Godfather of Ecstasy, uh,
was also primarily responsible for bringing to the psychological community.
Uh In in particular um his wife Anne. My understanding
was that she was a therapist and she used m
(04:41):
d m A and some of her therapy sessions with
her patients. But he also uh introduced it to a
guy named Leo zef in N seven who started using
it in psychotherapy and introduced other therapists to it. And
so my understanding is that there is this kind of
underground network of therapists who were using it in their
research and in their studies. And this is before it
(05:02):
was tremendously legal. Yes, obviously it's one of the areas
you see mentioned a lot. Is it's used in couples
therapy because ultimately, as as we try to drive home
in the last episode, this idea that m d m
A and ecstasy produce, this feeling of ecstasy is is
a buitiness leading it's more empathy and sympathy. It's more
(05:23):
a feeling of openness. Again, I like to think of
it as the self becomes permeable to the world and
so it's able to improve emotional communication skills. So that
was and boost empathy. So this is where psychotherapist would
use it to say you have two individuals that they're
having marital problems, they're having communication problems, they have all
(05:43):
this stuff bottle up inside. Well than in these cases,
perhaps m d m A can be used to open
the two up, to get them to talk about things
that they're not talking about. So it's not a situation
where like you having marital problems, take two of these
and commy in the morning. It's like, let's let's have
a rap session and let's take this. You will take
(06:04):
this first, and this will enable the sort of open
communication we need. Yeah, I can't emphasize this enough. For
all of these psychotherapeutic uses that we're talking about here,
they have to go hand in hand with actual sit
down in the chair, talk to a therapist counseling. Right. Definitely,
it's not like you just take the m d m
A and call them in the morning. Right, Like as
we just said, it's it's got to be in conjunction
(06:26):
with building trust with somebody that you can talk to
objectively about whatever the issues. It's the m d m
A assisted psychotherapy, not psychotherapy assisted m d m A usage.
And and we'll get into this more, especially with the
PTSD stuff, but basically what it does The argument is
is that it allows you to increase your trust for
people if you have trouble trusting people, and it reduces
(06:48):
your fear and anxiety levels. So it's particularly good as
I you know, as you just mentioned, for something like
couples therapy where there's communication issues, if you have fear
of not communicating something or you need to trust your
partner more. That that's where the ideal lies in its usage. So, yeah,
it was being used as early as the seventies, and
(07:09):
you know, probably up until the mid eighties, right around
the time that it was made illegal in the United States. Uh,
but you know that that was primarily like an underground thing.
It wasn't like it wasn't like a man dated. It
wasn't like in the D S M for whatever came
out in the seventies, right, and so, uh, it wasn't
(07:30):
until a more modern time, really, right around the two thousands,
I want to say, where we started seeing M d
M A show up again in psychotherapy trials. That's right.
And though the primary player here is an organization known
as MAPS that's Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and they're
they're concerned not just with M d m A but
(07:52):
with psilocybe and other substances. Um, And they continue to
explore quote whether m d m A assisted psychotherapy can
help heal the psychological and emotional damage caused by sexual assault, war,
violent crime, and other traumas. So this is this is
one of the huge areas of exploration here. And oh
(08:12):
and just to give a little more background on maps, um,
they're it's a. It's They are operating in several different
countries I think five right now, Canada, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, Israel,
and in the US. Yeah, there are trials being done
in the US. And I think I mentioned this at
the end of last episode, but it bears repeating here.
It is super expensive to research system. Not only because
(08:33):
of all of the restrictions that have to be placed
on the facilities in which you are holding the m
d m A for these trials, right, Like you have
to build like like super like heavy door frames, right
or like security systems that you normally wouldn't have for
these places. But the medical grade m d m A
is also quite expensive. It can cost up to a
(08:55):
hundred and seventy dollars or seventy five dollars per dose.
So and that's like, as we were saying last episode,
one dose is like a hundred, two hundred and fifty milligrams. Yeah. Again,
think back to the fact that one of the reasons
that it was shell for so long is that it
was expensive to study. So even in the you know,
the early twentieth century German chemisicists looked at it and uh,
(09:17):
and they realized, oh, it has some sort of interesting properties,
but who has the budget to explore it? So before
we dive deeper down to the psychotherapy thing, I think
an interesting way to approach this is to add the
criticisms up first, so then as we go through it,
we can sort of say, okay, we're those criticisms valid
or not. Uh. And in the research, one of the
major M d M A researchers who's published a lot
(09:40):
of literature on this is a guy named Andy Parrott,
who's i believe, out of the University of Swansea, and he,
you know, has done a great paper that's on sort
of just the the general twenty five years of empirical
history of chemistry, right that the chemistry behind M d
M A UM. But he does acknowledge that there's been
some criticism U and mainly that it's not safe for
(10:01):
clinical use. Uh. And some proponents say that it needs
to be used repeatedly for more than one or two
sessions or otherwise it won't produce gains in those situations, right. Uh.
And remember from the last episode, m d M AS
effects are short lived, and uh, it doesn't exactly work
like that. You know, as we said before, there's a
chronic decline over time. The more you use it, the
(10:24):
less positive effects are and the more the negative effects are.
So there's some concern about that with the tolerance levels.
But there's also acute effects of m d M A
that are unpredictable, which we talked about as well last time.
They can both be positive or negative, right like that,
for instance, that there's both positive and negative emotional responses,
or or that there's some undesirable experiences during the sessions,
(10:48):
and sometimes these undesirable experiences can last up to two
weeks long. So that's kind of parrots argument is, you know,
let's let's stop before we do this. But Uh, there's
also the idea of the neuro chemical depletion the serotonin
uh and can lead to feelings of depression, anger, and
paranoia anyways. Uh, and it's especially bad for those who
(11:09):
have pre existing depression, and it could even predispose people
who like, for instance, we're already depressed but had um
you know, dealt with that issue, to a recurrence of
their previous psychological disability. So these are all of his
essential like criticisms of I don't know that we're quite
there yet for the psychotherapy thing. And he presents us
(11:32):
with two scenarios in which he thinks that that this
isn't going to particularly work out. And I'll read through
the first one and we can respond to these as
we go through the benefits of the psychotherapy and see
if see if his criticisms are right. Yeah. So if
we don't launch into picking them apart right away, understand it.
That's the reason. Yeah, Okay, So parents, first scenario is
(11:54):
that you have a Special Air Force soldier who's discharged
from the army because he has PTSD is traumatic stress disorder.
His therapist says, let's try this m d M A
assisted therapy. Oh, but the drug stimulates the re emergence
of the soldier's unpleasant war experiences, and this includes feelings
of aggression. The soldiers trying to control these while he's
at the clinic. However, later that evening, this is the scenario,
(12:17):
mind you, he violently attacks a stranger in the street.
Following his arrest, his lawyer argues that this aggressive act
has been triggered by the m d m A assisted
therapy session. So okay, so so sorry. Parrot is basically saying, Okay,
this guy could potentially go out and assault somebody due
to the negative feelings that get dredged up by this
therapy induced m d m A session. Okay, I have
(12:40):
so many responses to that. I'm gonna clear for a minute,
all right. The second scenario that he lays up is
called involves a hypothetical case of a female rape victim. Uh.
He says. After the first m DUMA assisted therapy session,
the client feels much better, but the games do not
injure over time. Following a second session this m d
(13:00):
m A assisted again, there's a brief period of of relief,
and then a third session is requested, but the therapist
explains that she can't clinically recommend it to the client.
Now Quote seeks out their own illicit supplies that ecstasy
slash m d M A. The only time she feels
good is when she is on m d m A,
and she becomes an habitual user. However, with reducing efficiency
(13:23):
and increasing midweek blues, her chronic anxiety, depression, and low
self esteem steadily worsens. M M Yeah, so I don't know.
I mean, that seems counterintuitive even in and of itself, right,
and the idea that this person would become a habitual
user given what we know from Parrot's own discourse about
(13:43):
m d M A and that most people don't use
it more than ten times. Everything we discussed in the
first episode seems to to poke holes in that argument
and a lot of the research for that game in
Parrot's own writing. So I'm not quite sure about this,
but let's let's see if it matches up as we
go along. Okay, Now, this is the thing that ties
into a criticism of scenario one, but also just important
(14:04):
to to look at going forward is that when it
comes to the treatment of PTSD, there is and there
is an urgent need for better treatment methods. So this
is just this isn't just a situation of a bunch
of scientists or even an organization saying hey, we've got
to find a way to make m d M a
practical This is not what you Harrelson wearing a jacket around, right.
(14:24):
This is this is there a professional saying, hey, we
need a better tool here, we need a better methods,
and we need need better drugs to help these individuals.
There's a potential answer here, let's explore it. So to
piggyback on top of that, I think it's important that
we sort of just quickly prime and established what PTSD is, right, Like,
(14:44):
it's a term a lot of us throw around, and
I've heard people say before like, oh, I have PTSD,
you know, And Uh, this is what PTSD is. Uh,
is a manifestation of trauma physically in your body. It's
common in victims of war and abut it involves shaking, sweating, crumbling,
anxiety and flashbacks. And basically what we're looking at here
(15:07):
is the psychological scars having physical repercussions. Right, So they're
physically affecting a person's body. So that's what we're talking
about here for treatment is being able to get get
them to integrate past that physical trauma rather mental trauma
manifesting physically. So here a couple of quick points that
(15:29):
come directly from MAPS about m d m A assisted psychotherapy,
they said. They say an Indie May assisted psychotherapy INDIEMA
is only administered a few times, unlike most medications for
mental illnesses, which are often taken daily for years and
sometimes forever. UH and MAPS is undertaking a roughly twenty
million dollar plan to make m d m A into
(15:50):
a Food and Drug Administration approved prescription medicine by one
now Here are just a few up pointers as well
that come from Ingrid Pacy, who I mentioned earlier. There's
a fabulous bit with her on the CBC radio show
Ideas again their three part series A High Culture, which
(16:11):
I highly recommend for anyone who's interested in just the
overall uh re emergence of psychedelic research over the past
a few decades and in some of the you know,
the the the concerns they're in. But Ingrid Percy is
a psychiatrist. She's a lead investigator of mb m A
assisted therapy for treatment resistant post traumatic stress disorder at
(16:31):
the University of British Columbia. So she points out that
from phase one studies around the world, we know that
m d m A seems to lower fear, particularly for
treatment resistant PTSD creating a window. And it's interesting she
says window because because references a window at that I
believe was the hundred milogram YEA creates a window during
(16:54):
which the trauma can be considered and discussed without the
associated fear getting in the way. So it's about sort
of allowing the monster to come out so you can
look at it and deal with it and and and
perhaps exercise it. Right. According to pascy M d m A,
psychotherapy usually begins with feelings of relaxation, easing of muscles,
and among PTSD patients you often see the flashes of
(17:17):
the past trauma that then emerge and it can even
be a strong bodily experience. So we mentioned this in
the last episode about how how taking ecstasy can produce uh,
these very strong negative feelings can can pull those out
of an interce. So that's where I assume Parrot is
getting his scenario to of which the soldier has experienced
(17:39):
such a negative emotions being recalled. Yeah, and that but
that what where I can't I'm having difficulty following him
is the logical extension of that to going out and
assaulting a person on the street, right, because he's saying, well,
you're gonna pull You're gonna pull the monster out of
the closet, and then the monster could win. Well, yeah,
but part of what are you gonna do? Just leave
it in the closet. I mean, the idea here is
(18:01):
we've got to we've got to face these traumatic experiences, right,
and that m D MAY assisted psychotherapy can potentially allow
us to do so in a safer way with reduced
fear um and and during all of this, the therapist
or monitoring vital signs. Umah. Really, it's kind of the
best case scenario to be doing m d m A
(18:22):
in right, because you're not like, like we talked about
last episode, like the some of the bad side effects
like the overheating or the chewing on your teeth. They're
running about music. Yeah, all of that kind of stems
out of the dance culture, not because of the drug,
but because of the environment that you're in. Right. Yeah,
So you know this is again it's about using it
(18:42):
therapeutically with a therapist, using it as a way to
open that window, to to gain access to things that
are normally going to be too too buried or or
to fear ridden to tackle and this is this is
really key here. Again. One of the major issues is
that there we need better tools, we need better medications
(19:02):
to treat PTSD. And according to two percy um you
see about a thirty success rate for conventional multi year
PTSD therapy, but so far with m d m A
PTSD therapy you've seen they've seen an eight five percent
success rate. Wow, okay, well that backs up some of
(19:23):
the other stuff that I read, which said that there
were significant gains found on There's a there's a scale
that's used to measure somebody's level of PTSD. It's called
the PTSD scale. And after using that, after using m
d m A in therapy, using the PTSD scale, they
found that there were great gains over time. And in fact,
(19:44):
when they did placebo trials telling people that they were
doing m d m A when they weren't, they found
less games. So the the evidence does seem to show
that this works. Um it also, you know, the aim
here is is to help these people with their debilitate symptoms.
It's it's when they haven't responded to other therapies, and
it's this isn't like oh, let's just try this, you know,
(20:07):
this is this is a situation where it's resistant to
their last resort. Yeah. Uh, you know. The other treatments
are anything from talking, to exposure therapy, to the things
that cause the PTSD to all these daily medications that
we could be using. Uh. One therapist says that they
think that it works because of m d M as
unique properties. And we talked about this last time. It's
(20:28):
both a stimulant and a psychedelic, right, so they said, quote,
the stimulant gives people confidence and the psychedelic allows people
to reflect on themselves and their experiences in a different way.
This combination helps them confront painful memories. And then in
two thousand nine there was an article by a Norwegian
psychologist named I Believe this is palurine Yo Hansen, and
(20:50):
he argued that it works through several mechanisms. Basically, the
m d M A is increasing the levels of oxytocin
in your body. And this is the call it the
cuddle chemical. Um. I think you guys might have talked
about this previously on the episode It's released during breastfeeding,
not in the episode on the show and stuff to
blow Your Left at five years one of yeah, the
(21:12):
most frequently mentioned uh, properties of the body. I feel,
So it increases our oxytocin and what that does it
prevents the brain's emotional processing center from overpowering our higher thoughts,
so it quells fear and it encourages trust, just like
we were talking about earlier. So, um, you know we
mentioned m d m A has to occur in conjunction
(21:33):
with psychotherapy. You aren't just taking m d m A.
And it's not like you immediately go into therapy and
you're taking m d m A with the therapist. You
need to establish trust with this therapist through a series
of sober sessions before you do these m d m
A sessions. And usually at the most I think it's
like three sessions, which kind of makes sense along the
lines of what we know about people taking m d
(21:54):
m A, its effects and their efficacy. But then also,
you know the uh contradicts. I want to say, parents
first example of of the potential UH subject where this
wouldn't work for them, right, and that they've become sorry
it was their second example where the girl becomes an addict, right, Um,
(22:16):
so they only use it for three sessions at the most.
All right, we're gonna take a quick break and we
come back. We're gonna we're gonna roll through some other
potential uses. M d m A as a cancer fighting agent.
Uh is potential uh aid in couples therapy and even
away to ease an individual uh to the death point.
(22:44):
All right, we're back. So we set up for this
a little bit in the in the previous episode. The
potential for for e m d M A to help
us fight cancer, which is this is one of the
this is an area of m d m A research
that is uh. He kind of stands up part from
the rest because it's so it's not attached to the
most apparent properties of the drug. Right. In fact, So
(23:06):
the funny story, yesterday I was getting my hair cut
and as the first time I was getting my haircut
by this particular hairdresser. She asked me what I did
for a living and what I was working on right now,
and I told her was researching empty m A uh
and and she said, oh, that's fascinating, And I said
it can be used to help people with cancer. And
her immediate thought was, oh, yeah, that makes sense, like
if they're in pain, it would make them feel happy.
(23:28):
And I was like, oh no, I mean yes, there
are instances where they've been using it therapeutically that way.
But no, like let's recap from last episode, there's that
apotosis effect in which programs cell death actually attacks the
cells in your liver and retina when you take M
d M A. H. So let's remember that that's what
(23:48):
they're using here to try to take take cancer out there,
trying to kill the cells and cancer. It's not just
as like a you know, sort of like a pain
reducer kind of thing. Yeah, So we've known since around
two thousand six that ecstasy, M D M A and
antidepressants such as prozac have the potential to stop cancer
cells the catches. Then, in order to kill the cells,
(24:11):
who have to drop an absurd amount of ecstasy as
in a highly lethal dose. Um. Like just to refresh,
we were talking in the previous episode about how you're
talking about, uh, the average dose being in in then
like a hundred hundred and fifty, right, and if you
get into one or one point five grams, you're getting
into into a deadly amount, potentially deadly amount. So in
(24:34):
two thousand eleven, researchers from the University of Birmingham and
the University of Western Australia UM looked into this. They
were they were basically looking to ways at ways to
tweak ecstasy, uh, to tweak m d m A at
the atomic level, swapping out some of the atoms in
its chemical composition to increase its cancer fighting power by
a factor of a hundred. So to put that in perspective,
(24:55):
that means that you could have a single tablet of
modified ecstasy, they would have as much cancer fighting power
as a hundred tablets without boosting the unwanted effects of
the drug. So because because the amount of this is
my understanding, the amount of m d m A needed
to start attacking the cancer cells is like a hundred grams, right,
(25:16):
and so to that would totally kill you. Yeah. Yeah,
that's like a hundred times as much as would be
a hundred times a very strong dosage. Yeah, So they
need to make it more powerful so you can take
less of it to attack the cancer but not have
the negative side. Yeah. So basically taking the synthetic substance
and tweaking it even more to encourage the properties you
(25:38):
need and discourage the properties that are going to kill
the patient. And this is exactly the kind of thing
that Alexander Shulgin would have promoted and wanted I think
his his his studies of these psychedelic compounds to be
used for going forward, you know. I mean his hope
was that they would be studied educationally so that we
(25:59):
could find these kinds of uses for the Yeah, exactly,
to go back to the roadmap scenario, it's saying, hey,
there's this road and uh, you didn't know it, but
there's a little turn here to the left, and it
leads to a potential cure for cancer. So when you
get into exactly how this works, uh, you really get
bogged down rather quickly in the chemical and biochemical details.
(26:21):
But the basic explanation, as rolled out in that paper
is the theory behind it is the drug is attracted
to the fat in the membranes of cancerous cells, and
it makes the cells quote a bit more soapy, which
can break down the membrane and kill the cell. Unfortunately,
cancerous cells are more susceptible. So again they hope to
(26:46):
hope to refine this. Last the most recent stat I
saw was they're hoping to make it possible by But
again that was that that that was when they were
rolling up that particular it said they thought they're about
a decade away. I'm curious where they're at with it
right now as Yeah, hopefully we'll get an update in
(27:07):
the near future. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if we
see something come out in the next year or so. Yeah.
So yeah, So, all right, we've covered PTSD cancer. What
else can we use this for. Well, we already mentioned
couples therapy and about how it was rolled out with
apparently some level of success in the eighties, But there's
actually a two thousand fifteen study that was published in
(27:28):
the Journal of Psychopharmacology, and they set out to examine
how m d m A might be used to improve
communication about a spouse in therapy. So this is interesting.
It seems to be the key key here. That's not
about as much about oh here, you both take MDMAIN
will also together, but it's about getting an individual to
share their own feelings and open up about what's bothering them.
(27:49):
So yeah, I could imagine based on the stereotypes surrounding
m d m A again, people hearing this and going
oh okay, so they take ecstasy and it makes them
want to have X, which was subsequently or they want
to love each other, they feel more open, they feel
more sympathetic. That's not again, ecstasy is a misnomer. Uh.
And this isn't all sexual. This is more about communication. Yeah,
(28:12):
and you know, I I do have to say that,
you know, it's it's it's totally believable that you would
have two individuals who have a connection with each other
while they're on m d m A and then afterwards
they realize, well, as my normal self even with the
inside of what I had conversing with this individual, I
no longer feel that connection. But again, this entails a
therapist being present and using the information that you bring forth.
(28:36):
So yeah, right, we don't recommend that like couples just
do this in their kitchen together. Yeah, certainly not the kitchen.
Um So, so we've discussed m DMA's ability to increase sociability.
The drug alter speech production and fluency as well, and
according to the study, it may influence speech content. So
what they did is they rounded up thirty five healthy
individuals with prior in d m A experience UH completed
(28:59):
UM to session with UH within subjects double blind study
during which they received one point five milligrams of oral
m d M A and they also had a tiney
that's a very small amount one point five that is,
so then they would after the substance had taken hold
(29:20):
um whatever limited hold it would have given the dosage.
They engaged in five minute standardized talking tasks during which
they discussed a close personal relationship, and they found that
both analytic methods that they employed revealed that m d
m A altered speech content relative to pulci abou. The
drug increased use of social and sexual words, consistent with
(29:42):
reports that m d m A increases willingness to disclose. Okay,
so that lines up with what we know from the
PTSD thing, right, It makes me trust people, it makes you,
you know, you're more permeable, yourself is more permeable. And
using the machine learning algorithm that receichers, researchers found that
m d m A increased use of social words and
words relating to both positive and negative emotions. So, in
(30:04):
other words, it helped them open up about how they
felt about this other individual, what the problems might be.
And and and that is why it seems like it could
be very useful in indima assisted psychotherapy. So I guess
like the big problem here though, is how illegal it
still is, and that it's really difficult to conduct trials
(30:27):
like this, especially in a place like the United States. Right. So,
but some of the articles that I was reading about
both the PTSD thing and the cancer studies were saying
that they think that that there's going to be m
d m A approved by the f d A, the
Federal Drug Administration again, like maybe in the next ten
years or so. Yeah, and it seems like the same
prognosis with Canadian law. This is just me here, but
(30:51):
my my worry here is that what happens when this
gets beyond peer reviewed publications, science journalism and and you know,
and radio programs and podcast What happens when this becomes
a political football and we have individuals saying, oh, well,
you're about to allow our psychotherapists to start giving ecstasy
to people. What happens? Then? It kind of reminds me
(31:14):
of another stuff to blow your mind related thing, when
you did that video last week about the god helmet,
and there's a lot of response on social media when
we posted that video. I got the impression that a
lot of people just read the headline and didn't watch
the video, but they were basically I give a primer
on what the god helmet is. Well, this was basically
we're talking about cranial electromagnetic stimulation affecting various portions of
(31:37):
the brain. If very basically turning things in your brain
on and off in order to see how they affect.
Electrical stimulation, slide electrical stimulation to see how it affects
your experience of reality. Right, And uh, there was some
research involving this that's saying that you know, by changing
the way that you perceive reality, it might be able
to help people overcome racism, for instance, right. Uh. And
(32:01):
both the responses to that on our our social media channels,
a lot of people were very angry because they saw
that as kind of like mind control, right, almost like
in a fascist kind of sense. So I could see
the same thing happening with M D m A. Right,
It's like, oh, these these therapists, you know, they're the
activist therapists are going to try to reprogram our brains,
so we're just like them. Well, I mean the thing
(32:22):
is that both of these situations, whether you're talking about
you know, electrical stimulation of the brain or pharmacological stimulation
of the brain, you're dealing with a psychedelic effect. You know,
you're you're taking your normal consciousness experience and you're tweaking
it a bit, you're changing it. You're changing your perception
of self, uh and reality in at least a very
(32:46):
limited way. And that that can be frightening, that can
be illuminating, And that's that's the whole that's psychedelia as
a whole door for a lot of experiences and a
lot of emotion. Think of it like sort of along
the lines of um drawings. Okay, so let's say like
you're looking at a drawing, and if you know what
one point perspective is, it's kind of how Wes Anderson
(33:06):
shoots a lot of his movies, right, Like, you've got
a center point and everything stems out of that center
point coming at you. But then you can switch to
two point perspective or three point perspective, where you're looking
at multiple angles, or you're looking up or down from
like a skyscraper or something like that, right, And that's
like a very basic metaphor for what's going on here.
(33:26):
It's just changing the perspective with which you can look
at the world with. Yeah, I mean, one might be
heard to say something along the lines of I've never
thought about myself that way before. I've never thought about uh,
this individual in this particular way before. And again, this
isn't us condoning like go out and do m d
m A right now, or us saying don't do m
(33:47):
d m A right It's it's neither of those things.
But I do think that it's interesting within a restrictive environment,
using it in conjunction with therapy, and especially uh, you know,
in a clinic like this, where there's somebody on hand
in case like you have a bad reaction or whatever,
right rather than being in a farm in the middle
of the woods where there's a secret rave going on. Now.
(34:09):
The final example of m d m A therapy and
m d m A research that we want to mention
here is the possibility of using m d M A
to treat individuals who are having a hard time with
with their with their impending death, with with with fatal
life you know, fatal conditions, life threatening illnesses, uh as
(34:33):
they approach the death point. And there have been some
other studies that involve pocybin and it's use magic mushrooms
psocybin as as a way to help people deal with
that scenario. It's not just the pain we're talking about here.
We're talking just gravity of understanding your aiality, Yeah, thinking
about yourself and the grappling with mortality and the basic
(34:56):
heavy human stuff. So the the main individual here is
uh San and sell Most psychiatrist Phil Wolfson, and he's
currently studying the use of m d m A assisted
psychotherapy to ease anxiety in eighteen adults diagnosed with life
threatening illnesses. Now, all of these individuals have a prognosis
life expectancy of at least nine months there can they
(35:18):
currently have severe anxiety related to life threatening illness. So
his goal here is to see whether patients suffering from
crippling anxiety, fear, or depression over a terminal diagnosis can
confine relative peace via m d m A assisted psychotherapy sessions.
So it's kind of the same scenario we've talked about
with these previous psychotherapy examples, helping them open up about
(35:41):
what's happening, help them gain a little perspective on what's happening,
and in doing so, perhaps find a place of peace. Right,
see it from a different angle, one with less fear. Yeah,
But again, Wolfson's study is just getting off the ground here.
UM just started up this year, so hopefully we'll we'll
hear more of the details in the years to come,
(36:01):
and you know, some of the core findings, and there's
clearly got to be a lot of more research done
in all of these areas before we're just doing this,
you know, casually, especially in the sense of like predicting
that the f d A is going to approve m
d M A for these ride public use. And I think,
I mean casual is a good thing to mention because
(36:22):
I think the underlying truth here is that it's such
a potent and powerful substance that it should never believe,
never be done casually. Like I would argue that even
in a recreational environment, it's not something to take lightly. Yeah,
I mean the research that needs to be done right
now is on all kinds of things, like why individuals
(36:44):
have such strong physiological ab reactions to it, right, Like
we talked about the first episode, there's very occasionally individuals
who have like cardiac arrest or seizures or something that's
not a common side effect of this, But why is
it happening to these some individuals? Right? Other things like
why is there such a variance in the mood reactions.
Why for some people is at all positive, but for
(37:04):
other people there's positive and negative, or others it's just negative.
You know what's going on there? How do other drugs
in conjunction work with m d M A right, especially
like when you think about UM PTSD patients who are
already taking daily medication for their PTSD, how's that interacting
with the m D I mean, even Sasha Shulgin in
(37:25):
his research parties would tell his his friends, Look, don't
take any medication for like three to five days before
you come over here. And then you know, we just
need to figure out the chronic tolerance development as well,
to like nail that down. Why is it that when
we take m d M A human bodies basically over time,
probably like between one dose and ten doses, over time
(37:49):
the positive effects lesson in the negative effects get worse. Indeed,
How to close out here, I just want to throw
out a quick quote. This comes to us from from
Alan Watts the late British Buddhist and Encounter Culture um icon.
I'd say um wrote a lot spoke a lot about
about Buddhism and h and also a certain amount about
(38:12):
about about other other modes of religion, and also about
a lot of the counterculture of stuff that was happening
at the time time he was alive. This particular quote
comes from nineteen seventy and he's he's probably commenting more
directly on on overt psychedelics PS, psilocybin and LSD. But
I think this holds true for a lot of what
we've talked about regarding m d m A. He says,
(38:35):
psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight,
but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by
the various ways of meditation, in which drugs are no
longer necessary or useful. If you get the message hang
up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments like microscopes, telescopes,
and telephones. The biologist does not sit with I permanently
(38:58):
glued to the microscope. He goes is away and works
on what he has seen. And I think that that
matches up rather nicely with the with the goals of
m d m A assisted psychotherapy. I do, yeah, And
I kind of have always thought of Alan Watts as
being sort of contemporary of Sasha Shulgin's as well, to
the kind I wonder if those guys ever met, but
they're kind of like on the same team, Yeah, exactly
(39:20):
them and the two of them in Timothy Leria here
on the Psychedelic Avengers. Uh. So, I think that's about
you know, what we've got here on M D M A.
But I'd really like to hear from you the audience
some more about this because I'm sure there's a lot
of things we didn't cover. The literature in this is
dense and two days studying all this stuff leading up
(39:42):
to it, and I there's no way we could even
touch the surface. You know, there's just so much that's
being studied in it right now. So I'd love to
know if there's things that we missed, or there's things
in particular that you you know about that are in
trial right now or being studied right now that we
would be in interested in coming back to in a
future episode. Get in touch with us over social media.
(40:04):
That is one of the best ways to let us
know about these things. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
and don't forget that you can always talk to us
on periscope every Friday at noon. Yeah, and if you
would like to hear us take This approach is sort
of one to approach with with other substances such as
h such as marijuana. We've ever done any content on
marijuana and medicinal marijuana that would probably be h an
(40:26):
interesting topic. Let us know if you'd like to hear afect.
The idea for this episode came out of us talking
about the instances of synthetic cannabis in the news. Yeah,
and hey, you want to get in touch with this directly,
you want to cut out stuff to blow your mind?
Dot com and all the social accounts, you can just
email us at and blow the mind at how stuff works?
(40:46):
Got so more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works? Ya about two four four
(41:15):
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