MDMA Therapy is a treatment that optimizes the benefits of psychotherapy through supplementation with MDMA.
When ingested under safe, controlled circumstances by someone who has been given explicit instructions on how much should be taken, MDMA can produce an extremely beneficial effect such as alleviating symptoms associated with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), anxiety disorders, including social phobia and OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), and depression.
Clinical trials also show that MDMA-assisted therapy is beneficial for autistic adults who suffer from PTSD, depression and social anxiety.
MDMA gained popularity as a street drug in the 1980s and remains listed as a Schedule 1 narcotic according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) due to its high potential for abuse, harm, or addiction. That said, MDMA therapy has been designated as a “breakthrough therapy” by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States.
Currently, MDMA-assisted therapy is being tested in large randomized controlled trials sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS.
But because MDMA shows significant promise as a supplement to psychotherapy, particularly in individuals with PTSD, in 2018, it was predicted that MDMA would be approved by the FDA this year. However, due to clinical trials slowing down because of COVID-19, MDMA’s approval by the FDA for therapy has been pushed back to 2023.
Apart from clinical trials demonstrating significant improvement in the PTSD of individuals after only three sessions, one reason why this approval is so likely to occur is that there has only been one serious adverse reaction among thousands of human subjects.
Plus, MDMA only needs to be administered a handful of times in a therapeutic context, whereas the only FDA-approved treatments for PTSD – SSRIs sertraline and paroxetine – require patients to take them for the rest of their lives!
