The Economist magazine's end of year issue has several in depth articles on topics that would not get covered during the course of the year. One of those, Agony and ecstasy, is about the medical potential of ecstasy in the treatment of PTSD.
The article has many interesting facts including this one: while we hear a lot about soldiers with PTSD, the majority of suffers are women who have been victims of abuse either during their childhood or from their spouse.
5% of American men suffer from PTSD at some period in their lives. For American women, the rate is double that, mostly from exposure to such crimes as domestic violence and sexual abuse.
more below the fold
I have never taken this drug, but I do wonder about its effects. The crash is supposed to be very bad, and I wonder whether it might cause chemical depression. I assume (but don't know) that the mechanism that causes some (google search for suicide+antidepressants) antidepressants to make people suicidal is the crash after the high.
Medical marijuana is also a good idea. It is a relatively harmless appetite stimulant for people who are in pain and dying from diseases like MS. Recreational marijuana, however, can have awful effects on short term memory. A friend of mine had this problem, and you have to see it to understand it. But that should not prevent people suffering from MS from obtaining marijuana as medicine.
MDMA is being studied
The article says that for some sufferers of PTSD, no current treatments work. Treatment involves having the person remember the accident, and by definition, PTSD events are too painful to remember.
A security contractor whose vehicle was blown up in Iraq was able to remember the event while under the influence of ecstasy's chemical, methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA.
The contractor tells the article's author, "It helped me put the pieces of the puzzle together. I was blown 15 feet through the air in a vehicle, and I forgot the ride upwards. It made me remember it."
But MDMA is banned worldwide
MDMA was first synthesized in the 1960s, the article says, but in the 1980s, while still unregulated, entered the mainstream as a recreational drug. The DEA's response was to class it as a schedule I drug.
The article explains:
the most restrictive category for drugs with "a high potential for abuse" and "no currently accepted medical use".
Schedule I also includes marijuana, LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and heroin (though rules vary widely: heroin, for example, is available by prescription in Britain and some other countries). Cocaine, amphetamines, opium, morphine and others are in Schedule II and can be prescribed by doctors under DEA supervision. Although 500,000 doses of MDMA had by this point been used in therapeutic settings, the compound was thereafter banned worldwide.
Now there are Phase II studies (does someone know what that means? it has to do with the size of the study?) underway and Phase III studies are planned.
My message is this: I am not arguing that ecstasy should be freely available, but that the medical establishment should have access to it and that U.S. businesses should, monitored by the DEA, be allowed to manufacture MDMA and grow marijuana.
There's hope: one of the top questions at Change.gov's open for questions feature (in the additional issues category) is in favor of medical marijuana. The issue has support.
We should start to talk about this issue because it highlights the fact that drugs have valid uses. Too many people believe that all drugs are poison with no valid use. Marijuana and ecstasy can help people who are suffering.
This diary doesn't cover medical marijuana. Here's google's list of dailykos diaries that do:
ttp://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22medical+marijuana%22+site%3Adailykos.com&btnG=Google+
Search&aq=f&oq=
Update: Kossack Compound F reports that ecstacy has been shown to change brain temperatures in a way that's not understood. Compound F is particularly eager for any recreational users to be aware of this hazard. Presumably, trials will include doctors who could handle the problem -- and decide whether the problem makes medical ecstacy a risk too great. Google lists many articles on the subject. Here's one:
http://www.mdma.net/...
Also, Kossack SERMCAP would like added to the poll a response like: Are you kidding? The side effects of most legal drugs are worse than the side effects of many of those that are banned!