RECONSIDERING MDMA

Post-traumatic stress disorder can be one of the most debilitating
psychological conditions, but sufferers - expected to increase as a result
of Sept. 11, anthrax and the war in Afghanistan - eventually could find
help from the much-disparaged drug Ecstasy.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration now has approved the first study of
MDMA use on people suffering PTSD, 16 years after the Drug Enforcement
Agency criminalized Ecstasy as a Schedule I drug, like heroin and marijuana.

Until the DEA clampdown in 1984, MDMA was used primarily by psychiatrists
and psychotherapists on their patients, mostly to good effect. But despite
pleas for research into the drug's potential therapeutic benefits, this is
the first study that allowed use of the drug on actual patients.

The new study still needs approval from the research review board at The
Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Assuming it proceeds,
researchers will administer MDMA twice to 12 assault survivors and placebos
to eight, with all receiving 16 hours of therapy over three months.

The hypothesis is that MDMA reduces fear and anxiety so a person can
experience a catharsis by revisiting the cause of trauma.

Alas, many users of Ecstasy today are young people buying illicit, tainted
versions of the drug. The pharmacological component of pure MDMA has a far
different effect, physically and psychologically, than does the dangerous
street drug often purchased by youth.

Yet public perception has focused on young people at raves abusing
who-knows-what substances in risky environments, sometimes suffering
hyperthermia and water intoxication. The public remains fairly oblivious to
the positive therapeutic effects that psychiatrists and other therapists
have recorded.

The South Carolina study has the potential to change not only public
perception, but also worldwide research. In Israel, for example,
researchers have refrained from proceeding with a PTSD study for survivors
of war and terrorism until seeing whether the FDA would approve the study here.

We salute the FDA for allowing researchers to pursue the enormous
potentials of a drug that has been often misunderstood and
mischaracterized. If the study shows that MDMA can help sufferers of PTSD,
its benefits to society could be enormous.