Pubdate: Mon, 05 Feb 2001
Source: Wired News (US Web)
Copyright: 2001 Wired Digital Inc.
Contact:  660 3rd Street, 4th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107
Fax: (415) 276 8499
Website: http://www.wired.com
Author: Kristen Philipkoski
Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n221/a06.html
Note: The audio of the conference, from TLC-DPF, http://www.drugpolicy.org/ 
is available here 
http://boss.2.navisitestreaming.net/real/2/freeland/dpf/16_dpf010202.smi
Cited: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies 
http://www.maps.org/
DanceSafe: http://www.dancesafe.org/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)

LEGAL ECSTASY IN FIVE YEARS?

Ecstasy, or methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), will be available
for use with psychotherapy in as little as five years according to one
expert.

It's a goal that people like Sue Stevens are working toward by telling
the world about their experiences. At the State of Ecstasy Conference
in San Francisco on Friday, Stevens shared a passionate and moving
account of how taking MDMA helped her and her husband cope with his
terminal cancer.

Stevens said she gained years of quality life with her dying husband
by using MDMA. This was her first public speech, but she has been
written up in various publications including Time magazine and
appeared on 48 hours and MTV, hoping to convince the mainstream that
MDMA is a valuable psychotherapy tool, not just a party drug.

"In one night with six hours worth of an MDMA therapeutic session, we
managed to cure every emotional problem we had that was associated
with the cancer," Stevens said.

When her husband Shane was diagnosed with liver cancer when he was 22
years old, the couple began to fight visciously on a daily basis. They
didn't consider that the disease and their fear of his imminent death
might be causing their problems, but a close friend suggested that
could be the case and pointed them in the direction of MDMA therapy.

"The cancer was the problem. We couldn't open up to each other. He did
everything in his power to avoid making me cry, and I did everything
in my power to avoid making him angry," which she says put them at
arm's-length and made them miserable.

While taking MDMA guided by a therapist, Stevens said she and her
husband spent six hours confronting every fear they had and listened
to each other more closely than never before.

"After this one night I can honestly say we never got into another
fight," she said.

Stevens pleaded with the researchers present never to give up trying
to bring MDMA through clinical trials and get FDA approval. They
clearly had no thoughts of quitting the fight.

MDMA can move through U. S. Food and Drug Administration approval in
five years on a budget as small as $4 million, said Rick Doblin, a
psychedelics researcher and founder and director of the
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

MDMA works with psychotherapy, can get FDA approval on the cheap, and
can be regulated -- all of which will pave the way for the drug's
broader legalization, he said.

Doblin mourned the fact that since MDMA was made a Schedule 1 drug by
the Drug Enforcement Agency 15 years ago, only one clinical trial
using the drug was approved by the FDA from 1992 to until 1999, when
one more study was approved to look at the drug's effects on the
psyche of terminal cancer patients.

"The loss will take at least five more years to get MDMA through
clinical trials, and the benefits will be substantially dwarfed by the
lost benefits not achieved in that period of time," he said.

Nevertheless, he believes the FDA will do the right thing and approve
the drug for use in psychotherapy.

If researchers can show good data, the FDA will approve it, said
Katherine Bonson, a pharmacologist with the Controlled Substances
staff at the FDA.

She didn't address MDMA specifically but referred instead to "Drug
X."

"The government isn't as opposed to the drug as you may think. You
give us data that makes it look like a good drug and we'll approve
that drug," Bonson said.

That's exactly what Doblin and his colleagues hope to do.

Even if the FDA approves a drug, the Drug Enforcement Agency or even
Congress can always step in the way, but researchers hope their data
will be compelling enough to stick.

An MDMA therapy program has begun in Madrid, Spain, addressing
post-traumatic stress disorder.

Marcela Ot'alora is a therapist with the program, and reported that
although the program is in its very early stages, preliminary results
are positive.

"I will never forget the look on one of my client's faces when she
realized so humbly that she had been in love with her pain, and that's
why she held onto it," Ot'alora said at the conference.

She said she hopes that soon MDMA therapy will also be available in
the United States.

"The government's job is not to take away but to provide therapeutic
resources and as much information as possible," she said.

Call it touchy-feely, but those in the audience who had experience
with MDMA -- and odds are that number was high -- clearly empathized.

Emanuel Sferios, founder of DanceSafe, a nonprofit organization that
promotes health and safety at raves and in nightclubs, asked for a
show of hands of those in the audience who had never used an illicit
drug. Not a single hand went up.

Empathy, coincidentally, is MDMA's defining therapeutic effect,
advocates say. The drug releases serotonin and dopamine, causing
feelings of empathy and pleasure.

Hardcore scientific research on the physical effects of MDMA is hard
to come by, mainly because it's illegal and studies require government
approval. The most prominent researchers in the field presented their
results.

The big argument is whether MDMA is "neurotoxic," i.e., whether it
permanently damages serotonin brain cells and can cause permanent
brain dysfunction.

Some researchers, like Dr. Charles Grob doubt that it does. Grob is
the director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at
Harbor-UCLA School of Medicine, and the only researcher to date to
have performed an FDA-approved clinical trial on MDMA.

Others, like George Ricaurte, believe MDMA is too dangerous to give to
humans under any circumstances. Ricaurte works in the department of
neurobiology at John Hopkins University School of Medicine, and has
published research showing monkeys still showed damaged serotonin
axons seven years after they were given MDMA.

While Grob is waiting to begin his next study, other researchers are
proceeding with animal studies.

The body's apparent inability to regulate its temperature while under
the effects of MDMA according to many press reports in the past
several years has sent many "ravers" to the emergency room with
symptoms of dehydration and hypothermia.

So Jessica Malberg at Harvard University gave MDMA to rats and studied
them for the same symptoms.

Since simply handling a rat can change its body temperature and
invalidate the study, Malberg and her colleagues devised a
temperature-controlled box out of a dorm room refrigerator.

Next, they built an AM radio device about the size of a jelly bean,
and implanted it in the rats. The radio signal beamed the temperature
of the rat to the researchers.

As expected, the researchers found that in cold temperatures, the
rats' body temperatures decreased significantly under the effects of
MDMA, and in warm temperatures it went up.

Ultimately, many of the conference attendees hope for broad
legalization of MDMA.

"I hope it will be like the Berlin wall, and it will come down in a
big crash and it will be a whole new world," said an elderly man at
the conference.

Doblin of MAPS agreed.

"People should be able to decide on their own to take these risks," he
said. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake