Medicinal Ecstasy

Cannabis based drugs on sale at the local pharmacy?  There’s no doubt that this will become a fact of life over he coming few years because researchers have proved that the cannabinoid extracts from the plant really do have genuine medicinal properties.  We all of us see this as a good thing, secretly, because we’ve nearly all smoked dope at some stage and come away unscathed.

Cannabis never was a drug that had a universally bad name, unlike Ecstasy today but perhaps our views on E are too clouded by the horror stories involving teenagers with which we’ve all become familiar in recent years.  After all, reports of a ‘fun’ drug that causes brain and liver damage as well as psychotic behaviour are hardly reassuring.

How is it then that in November 2001 the US Food and Drug administration approved a clinical trial of ecstasy for the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD)?  A study at the University of South Carolina using E and psychotherapy in combination is about o get the final OK while a similar trial is already in progress at the Psychiatric Hospital of Madrid in Spain.

MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine) or E was first synthesized and patented in 1912 by German pharmaceutical giant Merck in an effort to create a new ‘styptic’ medication for stopping bleeding.  It was briefly investigated by the Us Army Chemical Center in the 50’s for potential use in ‘brainwashing’ operations but it wasn’t until 1976 that a West Coast chemist with an interest in psychedelic drugs began to make serious quantities of it.

Californian psychotherapists latched on to it quickly at the Esalen Institute, wanting to exploit the potential of a drug that acts as both anti-depressant nd amphetamine by working on the brain chemicals serotonin and dopamine.  In the early 80’s up to 4,000 therapists in the US and Switzerland were using MDMA and referring to it as ‘penicillin for the soul’.

A 1990 survey found that 75% of therapists believed the drug had ‘great psychological value’.  Past president of the Association of Humanistic Psychology Dr Rick Ingrasci said that the drug ‘seemed to heal fear, to give people the opportunity to open up emotionally and to communicate their inner feelings in ways that were really useful.’