Medicinal Ecstasy

The trials currently ongoing in Madrid is aimed at treating victims of sexual assault and one New York writer – Marcella Ot’Alora –underwent treatment using MDMA in 1984 for  PTSD incurred through a series of brutal rapes when she was just 19 years of age.  After years of being close to suicide, she began an intensive course of treatment.  At 43 she is now largely cured and says that the MDMA experience is ‘like a year of therapy in only two hours.’

English research is pointing to the drug being useful in treating Parkinson’s Disease as well as having possible benefits for those suffering from terminal cancer, drug addiction and even alcoholism but the recreational use of E is the most worrying aspect of it for many.

It was 1985 when the US Drug enforcement Agency placed it in the most restricted category of controlled substances but that only seemed to encourage the use of it by partygoers and teenagers.  It’s believed that up to 20 million tablets are taken each weekend in the US and the misuse of it is what causes all the wrong headlines to appear.

E has a bad public image and that needs to change in some respects.

There is an organization called MAPS (the multi-discipinary Association for Physchedlic studies)  that funds research into the beneficial aspects of E.  He says that bad publicity about the rave drug shouldn’t rule out research into its therapeutic benefits.  Dr Rock Doblin is a founder and it is his persistence that has finally got FDA approval for the trials.

A big supporter is the famous author Andrew Weil, founder of America’s National Integrative Medicine Council.  Weil has had eight international best sellers including Eight weeks to optimum Health and argues that MDMA ‘is a unique pharmachological agent that, with minimal attention to dose and setting, creates a uniform state of great relaxation, non-defensiveness and empathy in which meaningful communication is easy.’

Doblin predicts that while MDMA could be licensed as a therapeutic drug within five years it will never be a take-home drug like Prozac but only applied in controlled environments.  All the same, for those unfortunates who currently can find no lasting treatment for their psychological problems this brings light to the end of the tunnel.

For them, freedom from their mental burdens would be a blessed release indeed.  While we are right to condemn the unscrupulous dealers who endanger our kids by selling tablets of E like sweets, perhaps we ought to give a thought to those very benefits which we may one day need ourselves.  Proper use can mean real ecstasy for some people.  Let’s spare a thought for them.