March 15, 2023 • 33 mins
MDMA therapy gained a following among psychiatrists in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Some psychiatrists believed that it allowed their patients to achieve unique insights into their mental health problems. It was also during this time that MDMA started becoming more widely available on the street. It gained a foothold as a ‘party drug' under the names Ecstasy and Molly. Then, in 1985, the DEA declared an emergency ban on MDMA, placing it on the list of Schedule I drugs, meaning it had no medical use and a high potential for abuse. Today, guided MDMA therapy is on the verge of being approved by the FDA. This revolution in therapeutic treatment, mostly of PTSD, is largely because of the decades-long effort of one organization: MAPS (short for Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). Clayton and Greg are joined by Ismael Ali, Director of Policy and Advocacy at MAPS to discuss the science and history of MDMA therapy.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
MAPS: https://maps.org
MAPS Clinical Trials: https://maps.org/take-action/participate-in-trial/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right, Greg, when are illegal drugs good for your
mental health? Thought we already talked about this. We might have,
but we got more to talk about. A new study
published in Nature Medicine shows that for people suffering with
severe PTSD, the benefit of talk therapy could be greatly
improved with an unlikely drug, MDMA, popularly known as ecstasy.
(00:24):
Everyone said PTSD can't be cured. I'm leaving proof that
that isn't truth. MDMA itself, best known as the active
ingredient in ecstasy, wasn't actually criminalized until the mid nineteen eighties.
This morning, the Drug Enforcement Administration is announcing its intention
to place the drug known as m DMA under emergency
controls and Schedule One. Fact, there was a gay club
(00:46):
in Nollas, Texas that was kind of really well known
for kind of being the hub of culture in the
mid eighties, and as you can probably imagine, a representative
from Texas heard about this kind of freakeda in Dallas,
hidden federal drug and four agency cameras were rolling for
the first designer drug bust following an emergency fan on
the substance known as ecstasy. Dallas Police, a federal drug agencies,
(01:10):
the total of four thousand tablets, but in estimated street
value of one hundred thousand dollars. It sounds like if
what you just said was it was a gay club
in Dallas during the eighties where they were doing ecstasy.
That's all the things Texas is afraid, though, Do you
understand what I'm saying? Like these cowboys are having way
too much fun and then like we gotta shut this down.
(01:38):
I'm Greg Glad, I'm Clayton Engle, and this is the
war on drugs. Greg. How are you doing, man? I'm
doing great, Clayton. Yeah, good, good day. Yeah, beautiful day
in Atlanta today, having a good time. I'm liking your city. Yes, Atlanta,
I hope it's been treating you right. I know the
uber ride was a little you know, traumatizing. Yeah we can,
we won't get in there, but yeah it was. He
(01:59):
did most of a drift. I've been looking back at you. Yeah,
a lot of picture sharing, um looking at me and
just bumper to bumper Atlanta traffic a little a little
little death to fine. But yeah, yeah we're good now.
I already know what we're talking about today, but I'm
gonna ask you before you know, we get anybody here. Okay,
you ever been to you know, a rave, like a
(02:20):
real rave, like one of them in the warehouse, dabbled, Yeah,
I've been to. I've been, really I want to go.
I've been to some events that felt ravesh yeah, but
they weren't right. So did you do the whole thing?
Did you participate? Did you take any substances? Well, you
were there. I don't want to get you in trouble. No,
I don't know, because you know, I'm they just assume
(02:42):
I do everything. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, No, I I gotta
keep the key clean cut profile here. Um I'll say no, Um,
did not participate. And I'd think, you know, we're talking
about like molly and ecstasy and yeah, yeah and things
like that. But I know I've you know, there's definitely
always been curiosity just working in this field on effects,
and there's definitely people and around me looks like they're
(03:03):
having a good time. Yeah, some people do. Yeah, some
people do. Is I've done. I've done a few things before, yea,
and yeah the closes I've been to a rabe was
a comic book convention, Yeah, and I was I might
have ate some mushrooms, some mushrooms might have ate me,
who knows? Who knows at this point, right, it's cool
(03:24):
because it's like nerd mardy girl. And it's also like
that thing they told you, like, you know, when you
do drugs, you're gonna see all the cartoon characters and
they're gonna come. That's the closest you're ever gonna get
to it because their cartoon. Everybody's dressed up in these
in these like the Joker was the DJ at the party.
It was the coolest thing ever. Like Batman wasn't even
trying to break his neck like Batman was like had
(03:46):
a little oh man fits pumping. That's crazy. Like yeah, no,
So I've had some good experiences with some of those things.
But I think, you know, uh, our guest today is
gonna tell us about a whole other way of maybe
some of these same substances being used for you know,
the benefit, not that I didn't benefit from that night.
(04:08):
Had a good time. Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Writer took home poison ivy or something. Yeah, no, might
smoke some poison. Yeah, man, she would be a great
weed smokers girl. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, she seems very right
or dye plans grow bigger. Yeah, immediately love her. But yeah,
(04:30):
I mean, yeah, they're not just for that, and that's
kind of you know, they've been stigmatizing that way that
you know, kind of psychedelics Molly MDMA, that they're only
for just like partying and the overdoses that have occurred
from it and all this other stuff. But yeah, our guest, um,
you know, Ismael Alie is you know, going to talk
to us. He works at MAPS, which is a organization
(04:50):
that specialized multidisciplinary association for psychedelic studies. So yeah, I'll
go with MAPS on that. But yeah, no, but yeah,
we had to get the Christian name out. Yeah, because
you know, I'll say it and then you know, because
I learned so much stuff from you. Yeah, but I
don't learn all of it. Like I'll learn the name
(05:12):
like MAPS, and then somebody I'll talk about it in
the real world, somebody like what's that stand for it?
I'm like, lick man, Just listen to what else I'm
saying about that. Yeah, you can google it later. Yeah,
you know, I need flash cards to keep up with
some of this stuff. It's yeah, it's it's a lot.
I do love this stuff though, because it's so funny,
like bringing the stuff that you're just interested about, like
(05:33):
in life, and that you hear here about like this,
and how they're using like the same stuff that you
know is the rave scene to potentially cure PTSD. I
mean that's nuts and all these other things with you know,
severe depression and anxiety and all the other uses for it.
It's it's fascinating, um. And then you read about how
we were getting so close to maybe being able to
(05:54):
use lize this in a medical feel like in the seventies,
and then just like everything else, you know, the War
on drugs kind of just overtakes it and instead of
a couple bad things happen where you have an overdose
here or something else there, or an ABC News report
comes out, and then everyone's just terrified of this stuff.
And the first inclination is just criminalize it, make the
penalties really strong, and you know, just it cuts off
(06:16):
every medical use. And now you're learning the stuff that
MAPS is doing potentially curing PTSD, particularly combat veterans and
other people, and you just think, like how many lives
could have been either saved you know, literally or just
like you know, metaphysically, where they're just like gone through
depression their whole life through this, and we have just
decided this substance is no longer going to be able
(06:38):
to be utilized with this. So the fact that they're
doing this stuff and hopefully moving towards being able to
use this in a clinical you know, field, would be amazing.
I mean, just the fact that you're saying being able
to cure PTSD, yeah, because I don't know if I
don't know if I've ever even heard people talk about
curing it like you know, this keep you know, you
(06:59):
can get your little medicine or something and just try
to subdue it, but like curious. Yeah. With that being said,
grote enough from us, let's hear from Ismael himself. Let's
get it it, Smile. I cannot wait to dive into
everything that we're going to talk about today. But thanks
for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. I'm
(07:21):
so glad to be here and I'm looking forward to
having this conversation with you guys. Ye're glad to have you, Smile.
You know, I'm very familiar with what MAPS does. I'm
really excited to talk to you today about everything that
y'all are doing. But for our listeners, you know, talk
a little bit about the history of maps. What's your
core vision and goals and what do you all know?
What do you'all do? Yeah, it's it's helpful to know
about kind of some of the basic history of the
(07:42):
War on Drugs to understand the history of maps. So
many people are familiar with the passing of the Control
Substances Act in the early nineteen seventies and then the
calling of the War on Drugs. What fewer people know
is that MDMA itself, best known as the active ingredient
in ecstasy, wasn't actually criminalized until the mid nineteen eighties.
It was sort of rediscovered in the lab in the
late seventies and then kind of utilize in the underground
(08:04):
in a semi unregulated context as an adjempt to therapy
for couples and other people in the late seventies and
early eighties. And it wasn't until MDMA kind of you
could say, broke out of the therapist office in the
mid eighties and started getting sold in clubs that the
kind of criminalization actually started. And in fact it was
it was a club in Dallas, Texas, a gay club
(08:24):
in Dallas, Texas that was kind of really well known
for kind of being the hub of ecstacy culture in
the mid eighties, and as you can probably imagine, a
representative from Texas heard about this, kind of freaked out
and then kind of petition the DA to emergency schedule
m DMA. So after a couple that was in nineteen
eighty four, nineteen eighty five, perhaps it was actually founded
(08:44):
in nineteen eighty six as a response to what was
eventually the Schedule one kind of placement of MDMA after
this emergency scheduling process. Literally, Clayton, it feels just like
deja vu. Like every we've talked about, you know, marijuana, cocaine,
all these the things. It's like some bad things happen
where people, you know, abuse the substance experts come out
(09:05):
and suggest like one way to do something about it,
like hey, we should make it a Schedule three there's
certain things, or we should decriminalize, and then the government
just says, ah, fuck that we know better than you all.
Let's just make it a crime and increasing somebody's really possible.
Somebody gets scared. And it sounds like if what you
just said was it was a gay club in Dallas
(09:27):
during the eighties where they were doing ecstasy. That's all
the things Texas is afraid of, exactly. Do you understand
what I'm saying? Like these cowboys are having way too
much fun and then like we gotta shut this down.
And actually it's funny because I had a friend who
was at some of those clubs in their early eighties.
I found out recently. I've known her for years, and
she was like, yeah, they used to sell it over
the counter in nineteen eight Wow. Imagine being able to
(09:50):
go up to a bar just good ecstasy, not cut,
you know, not the stuff that you find now on
the street, but like really anyway, that's right. It's like
two vaka, so us let others have and let's let's
because you know, you know, I feel like black people
didn't know about ecstasy until about the two thousands. I
feel like from my group of people, we saw white
(10:12):
people going crazy. We didn't know what was going on.
We saw y'all with Vick's vapor rub on your face,
or you know, they might be rolling blade with glow
sticks and we were like, what that doesn't look like weed. Yeah,
what are they doing? And then around two thousand we
were like, oh, that's what they were doing. Well, it's
my kind of on that what we see also, it's
(10:33):
just communities and people that could really benefit from these
substances are essentially left out in the dark because they're
either you know, they're criminally in force. And then also
the research aspects of it, and so I think people
really do think of you know, MDMA and other psychedelics
like that as just party drugs, things that people just
want to do because they you know, want to have
a good time and has nothing to do with any
treatment or health. A lot of that's because of the
(10:55):
rhetoric and fear that we've been put into. I remember
the just say no to drugs commercials and all this
other stuff, Like I remember being scared. I'd see those things.
Someone would take a tab and then five minutes later
be dead in the street, and you know, it's like, well,
this is what the remember they used to say taking
ecstasy puts holes in your brain. Yeah, that was that
was actually a claim made I think on Oprah's show
in two thousand and one. There were some there there
(11:17):
was i would say misinterpreted uh scans of the brain
and there are actually two things that were happening at
the same time. One there was a really well known
kind of scandal in the early two thousands where it
became clear that a bunch of the studies that were
supposedly using MBMA were actually using that competitive meum. And
exactly as you said, there was another study that showed
where the activity of the brain was when something was happening,
(11:38):
and they interpreted that as it took ice cream scoops
out of the brain because certain parts of the brain
were shut off. Now, ironically, we know that shutting off
some of those parts of the brain when the substances
in your system is actually one of the ways that
it has a therapeutic benefit. Yeah, what does therapy look
like for this? Do think people just have that perception
that you know, you take it and you sit in
(11:58):
some room and you to think about some stuff and
dance and listens to some great music and then just
trying to figure things out. But obviously there's it's it's
not that. And so can you talk a little bit
about you know, some of the therapy either with MDMA
or ketamine that we've been hearing about just kind of
like thirty thousand foot what does that actually look like
in and what are some of these benefits that we're seeing. Yeah, sure,
so I'll talk, I'll talk really broadly, and now i'll
(12:19):
get a little bit more specifics. So, first off, with
respect to psychedelic therapy in particular, one of the ways
that it's helpful to characterize psychedelic therapy, so that's any
therapeutic intervention with any of these psychedelic substances, psychedelics being
LSD and mushrooms and DMT and in the slightly less
obvious definition drugs like MDMA and ketamine. Generally, the way
(12:40):
they tend to work has to do less with symptom management,
which is the way a lot of other psychiatric psychiatric
medications work, where they're trying to adjust different levels of
certain receptors in the brain to kind of neutralize or
mitigate certain extreme or highly limited emotional reactions. That's a
whole lot like SSRIs work. A lot of the current
(13:02):
kind of psychological pharmaceutical interventions that we have now tend
to work through a symptom management framework, and that works
well for some people, it really doesn't work well for others.
But but it's you know, this isn't to say that
those never work or they're not good they just work
for a limited number of people in a certain number
of cases. Right, the way that psycho therapy tends to
work is kind of the opposite it actually, it kind
(13:22):
of opens up channels internally within the psyche to have
more contact with the thing that's happening, whether that's a
trauma or a depression. In some ways, it's almost like
an exposure therapy for the mind, where it's saying, like, Okay,
it's going to change the way that your mind approaches
a certain problem. It's going to put certain guardrails in place,
(13:43):
and it's going to allow you to look directly at
the problem and work with the problem in a way
that kind of reduces or removes the underlying issue instead
of just trying to manage the symptoms at the top.
And the reason that's important is because it's a little
bit more I don't like to compare to surgery necessarily,
but it's a little bit more of a procedure. It's
not just like you take a pill every day and
(14:03):
you do it. It's more like you have the intervention
and it allows you to get really deep into the
trauma or the particular issue that you're dealing with, and
then kind of see it, you know, how to heal
it at the root, and with MDAMA therapy in particular,
kind of going back to the ice cream scoop thing,
it actually completely significantly reduces the activity in the amygdala,
which is the part of the brain that regulates fear.
(14:25):
So what it does is it puts the brain into
a state of having less fear or not being able
to feel the same kind of fear that it might be.
Some people call it fear extinction. And as a result
of that, it allows people to kind of relate to
what might be a very traumatic memory and memory that
their brain has otherwise created all kinds of ways to
get around and to avoid in a way that doesn't
(14:46):
feel the same fear, and then rebuild the pathways to
that memory so it doesn't have the same traumatic effect.
Some people call it as a colloquialism, memory reconsolidation. It's
a way to think about how do you rearrange your
relationship with your memory. Of course, that's a really hard process.
I like to remind people, especially when I'm in my
advocacy role, that psychedelic therapy, whether it's with MDMA or
(15:08):
other drugs, is actually not that fun. And it's actually
very hard because it's actually well it does. You know,
you do have the support from the substance and from
the therapist that are with you to kind of be
there with that memory. It's still hard to deal with
your own trauma, and it's still a hard, difficult process.
But as a result, people often not always, but often
feel like when they go through that process it's actually
(15:28):
more empowering because it's them working through their own work
with some support to come out on the other side
in a way that allows them to kind of live
their lives in a different way. I'm glad you said
that it's work and it's it's not easy because I think,
you know, when most people probably hear it, I think
some of the people are going to think automatically, like
you said, celebratory party drug, what benefit could it be?
(15:51):
And I think other people are like, oh, all I
gotta do is take m DMA and I'm gonna be good.
It's like, no, you're gonna have to deal with those
things and everything that you kind of may say it
made sense about, like it extinguishes fear. It does that
in a party setting too. You know, you'll you'll start
talking to people you would never talk to before you
(16:12):
dancing your ass off. You know what I'm saying. Like,
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(17:18):
percent of adults are experiencing mental health challenges in Utah,
where the suicide rate is also one and a half
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(17:39):
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(18:02):
to Stand Together dot org. Okay, so you kind of
explain the overview of what the therapy, what the goal is,
and what you're trying to do. But what is it like,
what does it look like once you're in there with
(18:25):
the therapists and you're tripping. I don't know if that's
the right word, but yeah, yeah, Like how does the
MDA therapy treatment? How long does it last? Like, yeah,
I'm curious about that too. Yeah, Clayton tripping is actually
the scientific term that we do, so is it if
I did not see that in any scientific paper. So
(18:47):
the way that the MBMA assisted therapy works, and I'll
clarify now that the indication that we are currently researching
it for his post traumatic stress disorder, and practically speaking,
that means that a lot of the people that we
were working with, of course, have been better ends who've
been to who've dealt with both war and moral injury,
as well as people who've survived physical or sexual assault
(19:07):
or accidents or kind of other related things. So the
way that it works though is right now, our protocol
has it's about twelve to fifteen sessions, only two to
three of which actually utilize m DUMA. So you have
three preparatory sessions, which are basically normal talk therapy sessions
in which you know a person is building a relationship
(19:28):
with a therapist. And in the case of the MDAMA
therapy mobility specifically, there's actually a two therapist team, a
co therapist team, so the two people who are collaborating
on the care of this particular person. There's three sessions
that the two of them have and then they'll have
a six to eight eight hour long session that's with
the medicine and in that situation. In that case, it's
(19:49):
usually what we call a self directed process. The therapists
are not imposing their own world views on you. They're
not trying to like they might, like you know, ask
questions or based on the first few sessions, help you
deepen your own relationship to whatever the issue is that
you want to work on. But the reason we kind
of focus on self directed therapy in the sense that
we kind of the therapists are kind of there to
(20:12):
reflect the empathy that comes out of the MBAMA back
toward you, so you can then kind of utilize that
compassion and empathy on yourself, which is a huge part
of especially trauma treatment. A lot of that it often
looks like self forgiveness and other things like that. So
they'll have the three preparatory set three or four preparatory sessions,
they'll have the medicine assistant sessions, and then they'll have
a couple or a handful of integration sessions, and those sessions,
(20:34):
again are short normal one hour long sessions where the
patient is then talking through what they've learned in that
longer session with the medicine to integrate that into their
lives and see what can they learn from that, how
do they grow from that, where were they stuck, etc.
And then they might do that whole process again and
then maybe maybe one more time. Right now, our Phase
three protocol only has up to three MDMA assistant sessions
(20:58):
with the pre and post kind of prep and integration
sessions that occurring before and after. So what that basically
looks like is a two to three months long procedure
where you have multiple sessions, only a couple or a
few of which are you know, have medicine assisted as
part of the those sessions, and the therapists are really
there to kind of guide your process into yourself. What's
(21:21):
the efficacy of this treatment compared to you know, current
you know therapy, you know, particularly for treating PTSD. You
had mentioned that you guys are doing studies right now.
Just talk through a little bit about that if you could. Yeah. Yeah,
So the Phase two trial that we did, which was
published at the end of twenty sixteen, showed a sixty
(21:42):
two percent that's sixty two percent of the people who
went through the trial no longer qualified for having PTSD
at the end of that trial. And what I thought
was really interesting about that is that the one year
follow up that number actually increased to sixty eight percent,
which to me, I think show is really the effectiveness
not just of the drug, but of the empowerment and
(22:02):
of the value that the experience has for people to
then make changes in their own lives. And I think
that's a key piece here where we're not trying to
get people dependent on another drug. We're really trying to
make sure that people can figure out how to empower
themselves to make the decisions that they need. So that
that's that's one teacher man at a point, Yeah, exactly exactly.
And you can kind of like put some sale in there,
(22:24):
you know, put some win in their sales, sale in
the right, a win in their sales to kind of
move them forward and support them and kind of building
their own life independently of like having to be dependent
on anything necessarily. And that, if I'm not mistaken, our
Phase three result there was a similar efficacy. I think
it was sixty six percent from that one, So it's
it's pretty it's pretty impressive compared to other modalities, especially
(22:47):
because it's not like an ongoing thing, and I think
that's partially a testament to the mechanism that it works.
Of course, that doesn't mean that people come out like
totally healed and cured. People still struggle, people still have
a lot of issues that they have to deal with
because life is happening. But there's no question that for
a good number of people, when they're working with a
particular trauma, they do tend to benefit from that modality
(23:09):
in a way that's different from the way they mind
from other kinds of modalities. Wow. Yeah, I think I'm
reading from the study that two months after the final session,
about two thirds of people who received MBMA assisted therapy
no longer met the diagnosic criteria for PTSD, compared with
one third of those who received the PLACEDO. So that's
on that third trial that you're talking about, which is amazing. So,
(23:31):
you know, we we've talked about it in kind of
the PTSD realm. What other you know, therapeutic uses do
you see either that have been studied or do you
feel like would translate very effectively. I remember, like Clay
were actually we're talking about it before. Like I don't
know if it's just like TV shows and things like that,
but I felt like therapist back in like the sixty
seventies would give it to like married couples to like
sort out their stuff during like counseling and things like that. Yeah,
(23:54):
like marriage, because I used to always say about MDMA,
like nobody needs to feel that good. If you feel
that bad, maybe you do need to feel that good
to get you brought out of however you feel is
so yeah, but we were talking about like counseling before.
But yeah, yeah, that's that's hilarious actually because you know,
(24:15):
I kind it kind of depends on you on your
framework too, because it's like, you know, like is that
okay that people feel good. We also, as kind of
a side note, we have we have a bit of
a fear of pleasure in our country. That's another kind
of another part of the pure ten thing where it's like, oh,
people aren't allowed to feel good, Like don't don't think
that your healing can feel good. It has to be
hard to work, and people are it's hard for people
to imagine they can be both hard work and feel
(24:36):
good at the same time I have that it's like
something taste too good or something like that. I'm like, well,
this is this this guy. Yeah, it's not gonna work. Yeah,
it's gotta beat yes. Um. So yeah, to answer your question,
so there's a couple of what I'll do maybe right
now is list off some of them the different indications
that not the MDMA but also other psychedelics are being
(24:57):
steadied for. Um. And you know, it's important to clarify
that people are studying these that doesn't necessarily mean that
it's effective for all these things. So you're absolutely right
by the way. First off, so MBMA itself was totally
utilized for couples counseling in the late seventies and early eighties.
That was one of the first kind of indications or
first kind of methods that it was used to bring
(25:18):
in to treat people in the underground or like in
the kind of preregulated era you could say. And today
there's probably a dozen different indications that MDMA itself is
being studied for. I know that cities that we've conducted
include end of life anxiety, social anxiety for adults with autism,
and I think that with psychedelics more broadly, including psilocybin LSD.
(25:42):
You're also seeing treatment for alcoholism, various forms of depression,
various forms of anxiety. I think that one of the
most interesting things that I've seen so far is the
use of certain psychedelic substances, including psilocybin for example, but
also I begain and others, as a treatment for different
(26:04):
forms of addiction and dependency. So there's a few really
well known studies about psilocybin for smoking cessation to bacco
smoking cessation, which I think is quite interesting. And just
for listen, mushrooms exactly, pilocybon being the active ingredient mushrooms.
And I think that that that's something that really breaks
people's brains, the possibility of using drugs to get people
off of drugs'. There's this meme that's basically like, eventually
(26:27):
you get to the point where it's not just your
parents or society telling you to stop doing drugs, it's
the drugs that are telling you to stop doing drugs.
And I think that's funny because because like it really
is about this kind of perception that when you do
deep reflective work with yourself, when you have access to
your own kind of spiritual or emotional body that what
you get told by yourself is how to be in
(26:48):
better balance. And balance looks like a lot of different
things for different people, but ultimately balance is a kind
of wholeness or holisticness. Is a way that people look
at how I be less dependent on things? How do
I use fear of coping mechanisms. Another way that people
are looking at this is through the frame of group therapy.
Not everyone heals and then one on one context, so
(27:09):
bringing in group therapy, community therapy. I myself have done
some really deep work with certain medicines with my family,
with multiple members and generations of my family. After my
mother passed away in twenty thirteen, I've been doing work
with my family for the last almost ten years to
really work through our grief as a collective. Yeah, I
love the family therapy Aspecyah. My family therapy was always
(27:30):
just huck it deep down inside and never speak about
it again and then just lash out randomly at people
you love for no apparent reason. Very healthy, incredibly healthy.
I'm a good old fashioned American Irish light there. Yeah,
this has been absolutely amazing. I've really really enjoyed this talk,
(27:51):
and you know, yeah, like you said, the only thing
that's I mean, it's just like that, you know, I
think we were almost at a point to get this
so much further along, and the fact that we're still
kind of in this trial stages. It's probably very frustrating
you as well seeing the efficacy of it. But hopefully,
I mean, the worth that ye all are doing is
is the only reason that this is really hopefully going
to get out there and we can get this to
a larger scale as this time. Yeah, right of severe PTSD.
(28:15):
That's big, It's amazing. That's Steph. Sorry, that's Steph Curry
on a great night. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So thank you again.
This has been terrific and we hope to speak you soon.
Thank you so much. Really appreciate you our questions on
my time with you guys. Clayton wasn't cheap to get
so we had to cut a couple of commercials. We'll
be right back. Somebody gotta pay me, Clayton. We love
(28:49):
origin stories on this show, hey man. This show is
one big origin story. Yeah. Yeah, so I have the
origin story of mdma um kind of the modern day
use of it. So it was made like in the
nineteen tens or that far back. Yeah, they didn't really
know what to do with it. And then finally this
man who's known as like the godfather of ecstasy, he
(29:11):
was the first person to kind of like figure out, um,
like the kind of the therapeutic uses of it. So
nineteen twelve is when it was actually invented, but no
one could really do anything with it, and they probably
wasn't fun in nineteen twelve. It wasn't no glow sticks. Now, like,
you know, there's a lot of stuff that they you know,
they probably don't even have vapor rub like that. Yet
suppose some guy in the violin you're vibe into it,
(29:32):
like I don't know, it doesn't hit the same way,
no bass dropping. Yeah, yeah, and so yeah, An Sholgan
and Alexander Shulgan they were the first people to fit.
They didn't invent ecstasy, but they were the first people
to figure out like this could be used in therapy
and very effectively either PTSD, couples, counseling, things like that.
Like they did all this so extasy at this point
(29:52):
is legal, um, and so they're doing these things. But
also on the side, they were inventing new drugs, old
break that down for people, so kind of like moving
around a certain molecule of taking something out is how So. Yeah,
they would develop like literally invents and experiment with hundreds
of psychedelic drugs that you know, he and she would
concoct in their laboratory in California. It's pretty remarkable. They
(30:17):
call themselves psychonots. They would have like little doses of
these things that they concocted, and then they would like
bring their friends over, not bad friends, to have good friends.
Most friends come over and use up your drugs, right,
and if they're inviting you over to try new drugs, like,
that's crazy that they just whip up drugs and triumph
on their friends. Yeah, it's nuts. I think they said
(30:38):
that she's done like two thousand, you know, psychedelicturs in
her life, and their husband did four thousand. That seems
like a pretty big fish. Will Chamberlain numbers. Yeah, when
did you have time? My psychedelic trips last for hours.
You must have been like on a double yeah, clocked in.
He literally ninety five years. Like inventing new psychoactive drugs
(30:59):
is composing new music, that's what he said, you know.
And so these people were on the cutting edge of
what they're doing, and then it was you know, banned.
In nineteen eighty five, they finally made extasy schedule one drug,
and a lot of that research and a lot of
that development from a therapeutic use was just it's gone
um kind of up until you know, MAPS have been
(31:20):
able to do what they're doing with a very narrowed exception,
you know, through that, So the treatment and therapy that
we're seeing again in that medical setting like literally cure
people of severe PTSDA. So I'm you know, I'm happy
Anne was able to see, you know, the world. I'm
sure she was aware of the work that MAPS was
doing and so like before she passed to actually see
like this start to come back, and like hopefully she
(31:42):
she passed with hope that a new generation could potentially
kind of see her and her husband's life work. Yeah, man,
shout out to Anne, and I hope you left some
of them recipe somewhere, Like I don't know, maybe her
tombstone has a recipe on it. Make sure you followed
War on Drugs podcasts so you don't miss any new
(32:03):
episodes or any of our quick vics bonus content, and
we'll be back next week with another episode of War
on Drugs. Until then, thank you for listening. Executive producers
for War on Drugs are Jason Flam and Kevin Wordis.
Senior producer is Michael Epstein, Editing by Nick Massetti and
Michael Epstein, Associate producer and mix and mastering by Nick Massetti.
(32:26):
Additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Anna mcinteem. Be sure
to follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at
Lava for Good. You can follow Greg on Twitter at
Greg Glode and you can follow Clayton English on Instagram
at Clayton English. The War on Drugs is a production
of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company
(32:47):
Number One. I'm your host, Clayton English, and I'm Greg Glode,
and thanks for listening to the War on Drugs podcast.
All right, Greg, when are illegal drugs good for your
mental health? Thought we already talked about this. We might have,
but we got more to talk about. A new study
published in Nature Medicine shows that for people suffering with
severe PTSD, the benefit of talk therapy could be greatly
improved with an unlikely drug, MDMA, popularly known as ecstasy.
(00:24):
Everyone said PTSD can't be cured. I'm leaving proof that
that isn't truth. MDMA itself, best known as the active
ingredient in ecstasy, wasn't actually criminalized until the mid nineteen eighties.
This morning, the Drug Enforcement Administration is announcing its intention
to place the drug known as m DMA under emergency
controls and Schedule One. Fact, there was a gay club
(00:46):
in Nollas, Texas that was kind of really well known
for kind of being the hub of culture in the
mid eighties, and as you can probably imagine, a representative
from Texas heard about this kind of freakeda in Dallas,
hidden federal drug and four agency cameras were rolling for
the first designer drug bust following an emergency fan on
the substance known as ecstasy. Dallas Police, a federal drug agencies,
(01:10):
the total of four thousand tablets, but in estimated street
value of one hundred thousand dollars. It sounds like if
what you just said was it was a gay club
in Dallas during the eighties where they were doing ecstasy.
That's all the things Texas is afraid, though, Do you
understand what I'm saying? Like these cowboys are having way
too much fun and then like we gotta shut this down.
(01:38):
I'm Greg Glad, I'm Clayton Engle, and this is the
war on drugs. Greg. How are you doing, man? I'm
doing great, Clayton. Yeah, good, good day. Yeah, beautiful day
in Atlanta today, having a good time. I'm liking your city. Yes, Atlanta,
I hope it's been treating you right. I know the
uber ride was a little you know, traumatizing. Yeah we can,
we won't get in there, but yeah it was. He
(01:59):
did most of a drift. I've been looking back at you. Yeah,
a lot of picture sharing, um looking at me and
just bumper to bumper Atlanta traffic a little a little
little death to fine. But yeah, yeah we're good now.
I already know what we're talking about today, but I'm
gonna ask you before you know, we get anybody here. Okay,
you ever been to you know, a rave, like a
(02:20):
real rave, like one of them in the warehouse, dabbled, Yeah,
I've been to. I've been, really I want to go.
I've been to some events that felt ravesh yeah, but
they weren't right. So did you do the whole thing?
Did you participate? Did you take any substances? Well, you
were there. I don't want to get you in trouble. No,
I don't know, because you know, I'm they just assume
(02:42):
I do everything. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, No, I I gotta
keep the key clean cut profile here. Um I'll say no, Um,
did not participate. And I'd think, you know, we're talking
about like molly and ecstasy and yeah, yeah and things
like that. But I know I've you know, there's definitely
always been curiosity just working in this field on effects,
and there's definitely people and around me looks like they're
(03:03):
having a good time. Yeah, some people do. Yeah, some
people do. Is I've done. I've done a few things before, yea,
and yeah the closes I've been to a rabe was
a comic book convention, Yeah, and I was I might
have ate some mushrooms, some mushrooms might have ate me,
who knows? Who knows at this point, right, it's cool
(03:24):
because it's like nerd mardy girl. And it's also like
that thing they told you, like, you know, when you
do drugs, you're gonna see all the cartoon characters and
they're gonna come. That's the closest you're ever gonna get
to it because their cartoon. Everybody's dressed up in these
in these like the Joker was the DJ at the party.
It was the coolest thing ever. Like Batman wasn't even
trying to break his neck like Batman was like had
(03:46):
a little oh man fits pumping. That's crazy. Like yeah, no,
So I've had some good experiences with some of those things.
But I think, you know, uh, our guest today is
gonna tell us about a whole other way of maybe
some of these same substances being used for you know,
the benefit, not that I didn't benefit from that night.
(04:08):
Had a good time. Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Writer took home poison ivy or something. Yeah, no, might
smoke some poison. Yeah, man, she would be a great
weed smokers girl. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, she seems very right
or dye plans grow bigger. Yeah, immediately love her. But yeah,
(04:30):
I mean, yeah, they're not just for that, and that's
kind of you know, they've been stigmatizing that way that
you know, kind of psychedelics Molly MDMA, that they're only
for just like partying and the overdoses that have occurred
from it and all this other stuff. But yeah, our guest, um,
you know, Ismael Alie is you know, going to talk
to us. He works at MAPS, which is a organization
(04:50):
that specialized multidisciplinary association for psychedelic studies. So yeah, I'll
go with MAPS on that. But yeah, no, but yeah,
we had to get the Christian name out. Yeah, because
you know, I'll say it and then you know, because
I learned so much stuff from you. Yeah, but I
don't learn all of it. Like I'll learn the name
(05:12):
like MAPS, and then somebody I'll talk about it in
the real world, somebody like what's that stand for it?
I'm like, lick man, Just listen to what else I'm
saying about that. Yeah, you can google it later. Yeah,
you know, I need flash cards to keep up with
some of this stuff. It's yeah, it's it's a lot.
I do love this stuff though, because it's so funny,
like bringing the stuff that you're just interested about, like
(05:33):
in life, and that you hear here about like this,
and how they're using like the same stuff that you
know is the rave scene to potentially cure PTSD. I
mean that's nuts and all these other things with you know,
severe depression and anxiety and all the other uses for it.
It's it's fascinating, um. And then you read about how
we were getting so close to maybe being able to
(05:54):
use lize this in a medical feel like in the seventies,
and then just like everything else, you know, the War
on drugs kind of just overtakes it and instead of
a couple bad things happen where you have an overdose
here or something else there, or an ABC News report
comes out, and then everyone's just terrified of this stuff.
And the first inclination is just criminalize it, make the
penalties really strong, and you know, just it cuts off
(06:16):
every medical use. And now you're learning the stuff that
MAPS is doing potentially curing PTSD, particularly combat veterans and
other people, and you just think, like how many lives
could have been either saved you know, literally or just
like you know, metaphysically, where they're just like gone through
depression their whole life through this, and we have just
decided this substance is no longer going to be able
(06:38):
to be utilized with this. So the fact that they're
doing this stuff and hopefully moving towards being able to
use this in a clinical you know, field, would be amazing.
I mean, just the fact that you're saying being able
to cure PTSD, yeah, because I don't know if I
don't know if I've ever even heard people talk about
curing it like you know, this keep you know, you
(06:59):
can get your little medicine or something and just try
to subdue it, but like curious. Yeah. With that being said,
grote enough from us, let's hear from Ismael himself. Let's
get it it, Smile. I cannot wait to dive into
everything that we're going to talk about today. But thanks
for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. I'm
(07:21):
so glad to be here and I'm looking forward to
having this conversation with you guys. Ye're glad to have you, Smile.
You know, I'm very familiar with what MAPS does. I'm
really excited to talk to you today about everything that
y'all are doing. But for our listeners, you know, talk
a little bit about the history of maps. What's your
core vision and goals and what do you all know?
What do you'all do? Yeah, it's it's helpful to know
about kind of some of the basic history of the
(07:42):
War on Drugs to understand the history of maps. So
many people are familiar with the passing of the Control
Substances Act in the early nineteen seventies and then the
calling of the War on Drugs. What fewer people know
is that MDMA itself, best known as the active ingredient
in ecstasy, wasn't actually criminalized until the mid nineteen eighties.
It was sort of rediscovered in the lab in the
late seventies and then kind of utilize in the underground
(08:04):
in a semi unregulated context as an adjempt to therapy
for couples and other people in the late seventies and
early eighties. And it wasn't until MDMA kind of you
could say, broke out of the therapist office in the
mid eighties and started getting sold in clubs that the
kind of criminalization actually started. And in fact it was
it was a club in Dallas, Texas, a gay club
(08:24):
in Dallas, Texas that was kind of really well known
for kind of being the hub of ecstacy culture in
the mid eighties, and as you can probably imagine, a
representative from Texas heard about this, kind of freaked out
and then kind of petition the DA to emergency schedule
m DMA. So after a couple that was in nineteen
eighty four, nineteen eighty five, perhaps it was actually founded
(08:44):
in nineteen eighty six as a response to what was
eventually the Schedule one kind of placement of MDMA after
this emergency scheduling process. Literally, Clayton, it feels just like
deja vu. Like every we've talked about, you know, marijuana, cocaine,
all these the things. It's like some bad things happen
where people, you know, abuse the substance experts come out
(09:05):
and suggest like one way to do something about it,
like hey, we should make it a Schedule three there's
certain things, or we should decriminalize, and then the government
just says, ah, fuck that we know better than you all.
Let's just make it a crime and increasing somebody's really possible.
Somebody gets scared. And it sounds like if what you
just said was it was a gay club in Dallas
(09:27):
during the eighties where they were doing ecstasy. That's all
the things Texas is afraid of, exactly. Do you understand
what I'm saying? Like these cowboys are having way too
much fun and then like we gotta shut this down.
And actually it's funny because I had a friend who
was at some of those clubs in their early eighties.
I found out recently. I've known her for years, and
she was like, yeah, they used to sell it over
the counter in nineteen eight Wow. Imagine being able to
(09:50):
go up to a bar just good ecstasy, not cut,
you know, not the stuff that you find now on
the street, but like really anyway, that's right. It's like
two vaka, so us let others have and let's let's
because you know, you know, I feel like black people
didn't know about ecstasy until about the two thousands. I
feel like from my group of people, we saw white
(10:12):
people going crazy. We didn't know what was going on.
We saw y'all with Vick's vapor rub on your face,
or you know, they might be rolling blade with glow
sticks and we were like, what that doesn't look like weed. Yeah,
what are they doing? And then around two thousand we
were like, oh, that's what they were doing. Well, it's
my kind of on that what we see also, it's
(10:33):
just communities and people that could really benefit from these
substances are essentially left out in the dark because they're
either you know, they're criminally in force. And then also
the research aspects of it, and so I think people
really do think of you know, MDMA and other psychedelics
like that as just party drugs, things that people just
want to do because they you know, want to have
a good time and has nothing to do with any
treatment or health. A lot of that's because of the
(10:55):
rhetoric and fear that we've been put into. I remember
the just say no to drugs commercials and all this
other stuff, Like I remember being scared. I'd see those things.
Someone would take a tab and then five minutes later
be dead in the street, and you know, it's like, well,
this is what the remember they used to say taking
ecstasy puts holes in your brain. Yeah, that was that
was actually a claim made I think on Oprah's show
in two thousand and one. There were some there there
(11:17):
was i would say misinterpreted uh scans of the brain
and there are actually two things that were happening at
the same time. One there was a really well known
kind of scandal in the early two thousands where it
became clear that a bunch of the studies that were
supposedly using MBMA were actually using that competitive meum. And
exactly as you said, there was another study that showed
where the activity of the brain was when something was happening,
(11:38):
and they interpreted that as it took ice cream scoops
out of the brain because certain parts of the brain
were shut off. Now, ironically, we know that shutting off
some of those parts of the brain when the substances
in your system is actually one of the ways that
it has a therapeutic benefit. Yeah, what does therapy look
like for this? Do think people just have that perception
that you know, you take it and you sit in
(11:58):
some room and you to think about some stuff and
dance and listens to some great music and then just
trying to figure things out. But obviously there's it's it's
not that. And so can you talk a little bit
about you know, some of the therapy either with MDMA
or ketamine that we've been hearing about just kind of
like thirty thousand foot what does that actually look like
in and what are some of these benefits that we're seeing. Yeah, sure,
so I'll talk, I'll talk really broadly, and now i'll
(12:19):
get a little bit more specifics. So, first off, with
respect to psychedelic therapy in particular, one of the ways
that it's helpful to characterize psychedelic therapy, so that's any
therapeutic intervention with any of these psychedelic substances, psychedelics being
LSD and mushrooms and DMT and in the slightly less
obvious definition drugs like MDMA and ketamine. Generally, the way
(12:40):
they tend to work has to do less with symptom management,
which is the way a lot of other psychiatric psychiatric
medications work, where they're trying to adjust different levels of
certain receptors in the brain to kind of neutralize or
mitigate certain extreme or highly limited emotional reactions. That's a
whole lot like SSRIs work. A lot of the current
(13:02):
kind of psychological pharmaceutical interventions that we have now tend
to work through a symptom management framework, and that works
well for some people, it really doesn't work well for others.
But but it's you know, this isn't to say that
those never work or they're not good they just work
for a limited number of people in a certain number
of cases. Right, the way that psycho therapy tends to
work is kind of the opposite it actually, it kind
(13:22):
of opens up channels internally within the psyche to have
more contact with the thing that's happening, whether that's a
trauma or a depression. In some ways, it's almost like
an exposure therapy for the mind, where it's saying, like, Okay,
it's going to change the way that your mind approaches
a certain problem. It's going to put certain guardrails in place,
(13:43):
and it's going to allow you to look directly at
the problem and work with the problem in a way
that kind of reduces or removes the underlying issue instead
of just trying to manage the symptoms at the top.
And the reason that's important is because it's a little
bit more I don't like to compare to surgery necessarily,
but it's a little bit more of a procedure. It's
not just like you take a pill every day and
(14:03):
you do it. It's more like you have the intervention
and it allows you to get really deep into the
trauma or the particular issue that you're dealing with, and
then kind of see it, you know, how to heal
it at the root, and with MDAMA therapy in particular,
kind of going back to the ice cream scoop thing,
it actually completely significantly reduces the activity in the amygdala,
which is the part of the brain that regulates fear.
(14:25):
So what it does is it puts the brain into
a state of having less fear or not being able
to feel the same kind of fear that it might be.
Some people call it fear extinction. And as a result
of that, it allows people to kind of relate to
what might be a very traumatic memory and memory that
their brain has otherwise created all kinds of ways to
get around and to avoid in a way that doesn't
(14:46):
feel the same fear, and then rebuild the pathways to
that memory so it doesn't have the same traumatic effect.
Some people call it as a colloquialism, memory reconsolidation. It's
a way to think about how do you rearrange your
relationship with your memory. Of course, that's a really hard process.
I like to remind people, especially when I'm in my
advocacy role, that psychedelic therapy, whether it's with MDMA or
(15:08):
other drugs, is actually not that fun. And it's actually
very hard because it's actually well it does. You know,
you do have the support from the substance and from
the therapist that are with you to kind of be
there with that memory. It's still hard to deal with
your own trauma, and it's still a hard, difficult process.
But as a result, people often not always, but often
feel like when they go through that process it's actually
(15:28):
more empowering because it's them working through their own work
with some support to come out on the other side
in a way that allows them to kind of live
their lives in a different way. I'm glad you said
that it's work and it's it's not easy because I think,
you know, when most people probably hear it, I think
some of the people are going to think automatically, like
you said, celebratory party drug, what benefit could it be?
(15:51):
And I think other people are like, oh, all I
gotta do is take m DMA and I'm gonna be good.
It's like, no, you're gonna have to deal with those
things and everything that you kind of may say it
made sense about, like it extinguishes fear. It does that
in a party setting too. You know, you'll you'll start
talking to people you would never talk to before you
(16:12):
dancing your ass off. You know what I'm saying. Like,
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(17:18):
percent of adults are experiencing mental health challenges in Utah,
where the suicide rate is also one and a half
times of national average. Psilocybin, the psychoactive substance naturally found
in mushrooms, is considered by some of the most renowned
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(17:39):
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Our neighbors who have not found hope with current treatments
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(18:02):
to Stand Together dot org. Okay, so you kind of
explain the overview of what the therapy, what the goal is,
and what you're trying to do. But what is it like,
what does it look like once you're in there with
(18:25):
the therapists and you're tripping. I don't know if that's
the right word, but yeah, yeah, Like how does the
MDA therapy treatment? How long does it last? Like, yeah,
I'm curious about that too. Yeah, Clayton tripping is actually
the scientific term that we do, so is it if
I did not see that in any scientific paper. So
(18:47):
the way that the MBMA assisted therapy works, and I'll
clarify now that the indication that we are currently researching
it for his post traumatic stress disorder, and practically speaking,
that means that a lot of the people that we
were working with, of course, have been better ends who've
been to who've dealt with both war and moral injury,
as well as people who've survived physical or sexual assault
(19:07):
or accidents or kind of other related things. So the
way that it works though is right now, our protocol
has it's about twelve to fifteen sessions, only two to
three of which actually utilize m DUMA. So you have
three preparatory sessions, which are basically normal talk therapy sessions
in which you know a person is building a relationship
(19:28):
with a therapist. And in the case of the MDAMA
therapy mobility specifically, there's actually a two therapist team, a
co therapist team, so the two people who are collaborating
on the care of this particular person. There's three sessions
that the two of them have and then they'll have
a six to eight eight hour long session that's with
the medicine and in that situation. In that case, it's
(19:49):
usually what we call a self directed process. The therapists
are not imposing their own world views on you. They're
not trying to like they might, like you know, ask
questions or based on the first few sessions, help you
deepen your own relationship to whatever the issue is that
you want to work on. But the reason we kind
of focus on self directed therapy in the sense that
we kind of the therapists are kind of there to
(20:12):
reflect the empathy that comes out of the MBAMA back
toward you, so you can then kind of utilize that
compassion and empathy on yourself, which is a huge part
of especially trauma treatment. A lot of that it often
looks like self forgiveness and other things like that. So
they'll have the three preparatory set three or four preparatory sessions,
they'll have the medicine assistant sessions, and then they'll have
a couple or a handful of integration sessions, and those sessions,
(20:34):
again are short normal one hour long sessions where the
patient is then talking through what they've learned in that
longer session with the medicine to integrate that into their
lives and see what can they learn from that, how
do they grow from that, where were they stuck, etc.
And then they might do that whole process again and
then maybe maybe one more time. Right now, our Phase
three protocol only has up to three MDMA assistant sessions
(20:58):
with the pre and post kind of prep and integration
sessions that occurring before and after. So what that basically
looks like is a two to three months long procedure
where you have multiple sessions, only a couple or a
few of which are you know, have medicine assisted as
part of the those sessions, and the therapists are really
there to kind of guide your process into yourself. What's
(21:21):
the efficacy of this treatment compared to you know, current
you know therapy, you know, particularly for treating PTSD. You
had mentioned that you guys are doing studies right now.
Just talk through a little bit about that if you could. Yeah. Yeah,
So the Phase two trial that we did, which was
published at the end of twenty sixteen, showed a sixty
(21:42):
two percent that's sixty two percent of the people who
went through the trial no longer qualified for having PTSD
at the end of that trial. And what I thought
was really interesting about that is that the one year
follow up that number actually increased to sixty eight percent,
which to me, I think show is really the effectiveness
not just of the drug, but of the empowerment and
(22:02):
of the value that the experience has for people to
then make changes in their own lives. And I think
that's a key piece here where we're not trying to
get people dependent on another drug. We're really trying to
make sure that people can figure out how to empower
themselves to make the decisions that they need. So that
that's that's one teacher man at a point, Yeah, exactly exactly.
And you can kind of like put some sale in there,
(22:24):
you know, put some win in their sales, sale in
the right, a win in their sales to kind of
move them forward and support them and kind of building
their own life independently of like having to be dependent
on anything necessarily. And that, if I'm not mistaken, our
Phase three result there was a similar efficacy. I think
it was sixty six percent from that one, So it's
it's pretty it's pretty impressive compared to other modalities, especially
(22:47):
because it's not like an ongoing thing, and I think
that's partially a testament to the mechanism that it works.
Of course, that doesn't mean that people come out like
totally healed and cured. People still struggle, people still have
a lot of issues that they have to deal with
because life is happening. But there's no question that for
a good number of people, when they're working with a
particular trauma, they do tend to benefit from that modality
(23:09):
in a way that's different from the way they mind
from other kinds of modalities. Wow. Yeah, I think I'm
reading from the study that two months after the final session,
about two thirds of people who received MBMA assisted therapy
no longer met the diagnosic criteria for PTSD, compared with
one third of those who received the PLACEDO. So that's
on that third trial that you're talking about, which is amazing. So,
(23:31):
you know, we we've talked about it in kind of
the PTSD realm. What other you know, therapeutic uses do
you see either that have been studied or do you
feel like would translate very effectively. I remember, like Clay
were actually we're talking about it before. Like I don't
know if it's just like TV shows and things like that,
but I felt like therapist back in like the sixty
seventies would give it to like married couples to like
sort out their stuff during like counseling and things like that. Yeah,
(23:54):
like marriage, because I used to always say about MDMA,
like nobody needs to feel that good. If you feel
that bad, maybe you do need to feel that good
to get you brought out of however you feel is
so yeah, but we were talking about like counseling before.
But yeah, yeah, that's that's hilarious actually because you know,
(24:15):
I kind it kind of depends on you on your
framework too, because it's like, you know, like is that
okay that people feel good. We also, as kind of
a side note, we have we have a bit of
a fear of pleasure in our country. That's another kind
of another part of the pure ten thing where it's like, oh,
people aren't allowed to feel good, Like don't don't think
that your healing can feel good. It has to be
hard to work, and people are it's hard for people
to imagine they can be both hard work and feel
(24:36):
good at the same time I have that it's like
something taste too good or something like that. I'm like, well,
this is this this guy. Yeah, it's not gonna work. Yeah,
it's gotta beat yes. Um. So yeah, to answer your question,
so there's a couple of what I'll do maybe right
now is list off some of them the different indications
that not the MDMA but also other psychedelics are being
(24:57):
steadied for. Um. And you know, it's important to clarify
that people are studying these that doesn't necessarily mean that
it's effective for all these things. So you're absolutely right
by the way. First off, so MBMA itself was totally
utilized for couples counseling in the late seventies and early eighties.
That was one of the first kind of indications or
first kind of methods that it was used to bring
(25:18):
in to treat people in the underground or like in
the kind of preregulated era you could say. And today
there's probably a dozen different indications that MDMA itself is
being studied for. I know that cities that we've conducted
include end of life anxiety, social anxiety for adults with autism,
and I think that with psychedelics more broadly, including psilocybin LSD.
(25:42):
You're also seeing treatment for alcoholism, various forms of depression,
various forms of anxiety. I think that one of the
most interesting things that I've seen so far is the
use of certain psychedelic substances, including psilocybin for example, but
also I begain and others, as a treatment for different
(26:04):
forms of addiction and dependency. So there's a few really
well known studies about psilocybin for smoking cessation to bacco
smoking cessation, which I think is quite interesting. And just
for listen, mushrooms exactly, pilocybon being the active ingredient mushrooms.
And I think that that that's something that really breaks
people's brains, the possibility of using drugs to get people
off of drugs'. There's this meme that's basically like, eventually
(26:27):
you get to the point where it's not just your
parents or society telling you to stop doing drugs, it's
the drugs that are telling you to stop doing drugs.
And I think that's funny because because like it really
is about this kind of perception that when you do
deep reflective work with yourself, when you have access to
your own kind of spiritual or emotional body that what
you get told by yourself is how to be in
(26:48):
better balance. And balance looks like a lot of different
things for different people, but ultimately balance is a kind
of wholeness or holisticness. Is a way that people look
at how I be less dependent on things? How do
I use fear of coping mechanisms. Another way that people
are looking at this is through the frame of group therapy.
Not everyone heals and then one on one context, so
(27:09):
bringing in group therapy, community therapy. I myself have done
some really deep work with certain medicines with my family,
with multiple members and generations of my family. After my
mother passed away in twenty thirteen, I've been doing work
with my family for the last almost ten years to
really work through our grief as a collective. Yeah, I
love the family therapy Aspecyah. My family therapy was always
(27:30):
just huck it deep down inside and never speak about
it again and then just lash out randomly at people
you love for no apparent reason. Very healthy, incredibly healthy.
I'm a good old fashioned American Irish light there. Yeah,
this has been absolutely amazing. I've really really enjoyed this talk,
(27:51):
and you know, yeah, like you said, the only thing
that's I mean, it's just like that, you know, I
think we were almost at a point to get this
so much further along, and the fact that we're still
kind of in this trial stages. It's probably very frustrating
you as well seeing the efficacy of it. But hopefully,
I mean, the worth that ye all are doing is
is the only reason that this is really hopefully going
to get out there and we can get this to
a larger scale as this time. Yeah, right of severe PTSD.
(28:15):
That's big, It's amazing. That's Steph. Sorry, that's Steph Curry
on a great night. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So thank you again.
This has been terrific and we hope to speak you soon.
Thank you so much. Really appreciate you our questions on
my time with you guys. Clayton wasn't cheap to get
so we had to cut a couple of commercials. We'll
be right back. Somebody gotta pay me, Clayton. We love
(28:49):
origin stories on this show, hey man. This show is
one big origin story. Yeah. Yeah, so I have the
origin story of mdma um kind of the modern day
use of it. So it was made like in the
nineteen tens or that far back. Yeah, they didn't really
know what to do with it. And then finally this
man who's known as like the godfather of ecstasy, he
(29:11):
was the first person to kind of like figure out, um,
like the kind of the therapeutic uses of it. So
nineteen twelve is when it was actually invented, but no
one could really do anything with it, and they probably
wasn't fun in nineteen twelve. It wasn't no glow sticks. Now, like,
you know, there's a lot of stuff that they you know,
they probably don't even have vapor rub like that. Yet
suppose some guy in the violin you're vibe into it,
(29:32):
like I don't know, it doesn't hit the same way,
no bass dropping. Yeah, yeah, and so yeah, An Sholgan
and Alexander Shulgan they were the first people to fit.
They didn't invent ecstasy, but they were the first people
to figure out like this could be used in therapy
and very effectively either PTSD, couples, counseling, things like that.
Like they did all this so extasy at this point
(29:52):
is legal, um, and so they're doing these things. But
also on the side, they were inventing new drugs, old
break that down for people, so kind of like moving
around a certain molecule of taking something out is how So. Yeah,
they would develop like literally invents and experiment with hundreds
of psychedelic drugs that you know, he and she would
concoct in their laboratory in California. It's pretty remarkable. They
(30:17):
call themselves psychonots. They would have like little doses of
these things that they concocted, and then they would like
bring their friends over, not bad friends, to have good friends.
Most friends come over and use up your drugs, right,
and if they're inviting you over to try new drugs, like,
that's crazy that they just whip up drugs and triumph
on their friends. Yeah, it's nuts. I think they said
(30:38):
that she's done like two thousand, you know, psychedelicturs in
her life, and their husband did four thousand. That seems
like a pretty big fish. Will Chamberlain numbers. Yeah, when
did you have time? My psychedelic trips last for hours.
You must have been like on a double yeah, clocked in.
He literally ninety five years. Like inventing new psychoactive drugs
(30:59):
is composing new music, that's what he said, you know.
And so these people were on the cutting edge of
what they're doing, and then it was you know, banned.
In nineteen eighty five, they finally made extasy schedule one drug,
and a lot of that research and a lot of
that development from a therapeutic use was just it's gone
um kind of up until you know, MAPS have been
(31:20):
able to do what they're doing with a very narrowed exception,
you know, through that, So the treatment and therapy that
we're seeing again in that medical setting like literally cure
people of severe PTSDA. So I'm you know, I'm happy
Anne was able to see, you know, the world. I'm
sure she was aware of the work that MAPS was
doing and so like before she passed to actually see
like this start to come back, and like hopefully she
(31:42):
she passed with hope that a new generation could potentially
kind of see her and her husband's life work. Yeah, man,
shout out to Anne, and I hope you left some
of them recipe somewhere, Like I don't know, maybe her
tombstone has a recipe on it. Make sure you followed
War on Drugs podcasts so you don't miss any new
(32:03):
episodes or any of our quick vics bonus content, and
we'll be back next week with another episode of War
on Drugs. Until then, thank you for listening. Executive producers
for War on Drugs are Jason Flam and Kevin Wordis.
Senior producer is Michael Epstein, Editing by Nick Massetti and
Michael Epstein, Associate producer and mix and mastering by Nick Massetti.
(32:26):
Additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Anna mcinteem. Be sure
to follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at
Lava for Good. You can follow Greg on Twitter at
Greg Glode and you can follow Clayton English on Instagram
at Clayton English. The War on Drugs is a production
of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company
(32:47):
Number One. I'm your host, Clayton English, and I'm Greg Glode,
and thanks for listening to the War on Drugs podcast.
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