Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your Mind from housetop work
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, wasn't discussedable in your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Seger. So we are
Speaker 1: in part two of our M d M A Spectacular,
Speaker 1: and the last episode we talked primarily about what M
Speaker 1: d M A is, when it was invented, who invented it,
Speaker 1: and what its physical effects on the body are, right yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so if you haven't listened to that and you
Speaker 1: want a little bit more background, I recommend that you
Speaker 1: go back and listen to it. But what we're gonna
Speaker 1: focus on here today is primarily how it's being used
Speaker 1: in studies, or how it's been used really for the
Speaker 1: last thirty or forty years, uh, in studies on how
Speaker 1: to treat people for various things from everything from mental
Speaker 1: problems to PTSD to cancer. Yeah, and uh, as as
Speaker 1: we set up in the last episode, you're basically dealing
Speaker 1: with two different phases, right. So the such stence is uh,
Speaker 1: his first sin the size and the early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: It's not until uh, generally the what the sixties, seventies
Speaker 1: and eighties that you see it used therapeutically, you see
Speaker 1: people experimenting with its, uh, the potential potential benefits outside
Speaker 1: of a recreational environment. But then it becomes enemy number one, right,
Speaker 1: it becomes caught up in the culture episode. It was
Speaker 1: immediately placed on like the most restrictive drug list, so
Speaker 1: scientists couldn't even use it in their labs to study its.
Speaker 1: And this goes for various psychedelics as well, such as
Speaker 1: a psilocybin. But then in recent years, we've seen a resurgence.
Speaker 1: You've seen you've seen psilocybin, you've seen in d m A,
Speaker 1: all these substance coming back into the lab and uh
Speaker 1: and and professionals are able to actually explore them some more,
Speaker 1: look at these undeniably potent, powerful substances and say what
Speaker 1: what he or can we use? What can we change? What?
Speaker 1: What can we just try to to use in a
Speaker 1: proper environment, and and out of it all generate some
Speaker 1: sort of positive effect. Yeah. And so before we get
Speaker 1: into the real, you know, boiled down details about this,
Speaker 1: I want to remind everybody that the podcast isn't the
Speaker 1: only way that you can, you know, interact with us
Speaker 1: or see the things that we're looking at. This week.
Speaker 1: We also are always writing on stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. There's galleries, there's articles. At least once
Speaker 1: or twice a week we're putting stuff up there, and
Speaker 1: videos as well. So there's all the old stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your own videos. But Robert, for instance, is currently
Speaker 1: working on the How Stuff Works Now series and as
Speaker 1: much as possible we try to share those videos as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they're very stuff to blow your mind related topics, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: very much, weird science that sort of thing. And hey, uh,
Speaker 1: I know a lot of you listen to us on
Speaker 1: various aggregated programs, various apps and whatnot, but but there
Speaker 1: are certainly iTunes users out there getting us on iTunes
Speaker 1: and listen us to listening to us on your iPhones.
Speaker 1: If you get us through iTunes, show us some love
Speaker 1: there helped the algorithm and that's a great way to
Speaker 1: support the show without spending a dime. So all right,
Speaker 1: let's get into the pharmacological healing properties of m d
Speaker 1: M A and this brings us back to Sholgun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Alexander Shulgan, who we talked a lot about in
Speaker 1: the last episode, also known as Sasha Shulgin, the godfather
Speaker 1: of ecstasy. UH was also primarily responsible for bringing to
Speaker 1: the psychological community uh in in particular UM his wife Anne.
Speaker 1: My understanding was that she was a therapist and she
Speaker 1: used M d m A and some of her therapy
Speaker 1: sessions with her patients. But he also UH introduced it
Speaker 1: to a guy named Leo Zef in ninety seven who
Speaker 1: started using it in psychotherapy and introduced other therapists to it.
Speaker 1: And so my understanding is that there is this kind
Speaker 1: of underground network of therapists who were using it in
Speaker 1: their research and in their studies. And this is before
Speaker 1: it was tremendously legal. Yes, obviously it U One of
Speaker 1: the areas you see mentioned a lot is it's used
Speaker 1: in couples therapy. Because ultimately, as as we try to
Speaker 1: drive home in the last episode, this idea that M
Speaker 1: D m A and ecstasy produce, this feeling of ecstasy
Speaker 1: is is a bitness leading. It's more empathy and sympathy.
Speaker 1: It's more a feeling of openness. Again, I like to
Speaker 1: think of it as the self becomes permeable to the world,
Speaker 1: and so it it's able to improve emotional communication skills.
Speaker 1: So that was a boost empathy. So This is where
Speaker 1: psychotherapist would use it to say, you have two individuals
Speaker 1: that they're having marital problems, they're having communication problems, they
Speaker 1: have all this stuff bottle up inside. Well than in
Speaker 1: these cases, perhaps m d m A can be used
Speaker 1: to open the two up to get them to talk
Speaker 1: about things that they're not talking about. So it's not
Speaker 1: a situation where like you're having marital problems, take two
Speaker 1: of these and commy in the morning. It's like, let's
Speaker 1: let's have a rap session and let's take this. You
Speaker 1: will take this first, and this will enable the sort
Speaker 1: of open communication we need. Yeah, I can't ephasize this enough.
Speaker 1: For all of these psychotherapeutic uses that we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: they have to go hand in hand with actual sit
Speaker 1: down in the chair, talk to a therapist counseling. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not like you just take the m d m
Speaker 1: A and call them in the morning. Right Like as
Speaker 1: we just said, it's it's got to be in conjunction
Speaker 1: with building trust with somebody that you can talk to
Speaker 1: objectively about whatever the issues. It's the m d m
Speaker 1: A assisted psychotherapy, not psychotherapy assisted m d m A usage.
Speaker 1: And and we'll get into this more, especially with the
Speaker 1: PTSD stuff. But basically what it does, the argument is
Speaker 1: is that it allows you to increase your trust for
Speaker 1: people if you have trouble trusting people, and it reduces
Speaker 1: your fear and anxiety levels. So it's particularly good as
Speaker 1: I you know, as you just mentioned, for something like
Speaker 1: couples therapy where there's communication issues, if you have fear
Speaker 1: of not communicating something or you need to trust your
Speaker 1: partner more. That that's where the idea lies in its usage.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was being used as early as the
Speaker 1: seventies and you know, probably up until the mid eighties,
Speaker 1: right around the time that it was made illegal in
Speaker 1: the United States. Uh, but you know that that was
Speaker 1: primarily like an underground thing. It wasn't like it wasn't
Speaker 1: like a man dated. It wasn't like in the D
Speaker 1: S M for or whatever came out in the seventies, right,
Speaker 1: and so, uh, it wasn't until a more modern time really,
Speaker 1: right around the two thousands, I want to say, where
Speaker 1: we started seeing m d m as show up again
Speaker 1: in psychotherapy trials. That's right. And uh, the primary player
Speaker 1: here is an organization known as MAPS that's Multidisciplinary Association
Speaker 1: for psychedelic studies, and they're they're concerned not just with
Speaker 1: m d m A, but with psilocybin other substances um.
Speaker 1: And they continue to explore quote whether m d m
Speaker 1: A assisted psychotherapy can help heal the psychological and emotional
Speaker 1: damage caused bi sexual assault, war, violent crime, and other traumas.
Speaker 1: So this is this is one of the huge areas
Speaker 1: of exploration here. And oh and just to give a
Speaker 1: little more background on maps UM there, it's as they
Speaker 1: are operating in several different countries I think five right now, Canada, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, Israel,
Speaker 1: and in the US. Yeah, there are trials being done
Speaker 1: in the US. And I think I mentioned this at
Speaker 1: the end of last episode, but it bears repeating here.
Speaker 1: It is super expensive to research system. Not only because
Speaker 1: of all of the restrictions that have to be placed
Speaker 1: on the facilities in which you are holding the m
Speaker 1: d m A for these trials, right, Like you have
Speaker 1: to build like like super like heavy door frames, right
Speaker 1: or like security systems that you normally wouldn't have for
Speaker 1: these places. But the medical grade m d m A
Speaker 1: is also quite expensive. It can cost up to a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy dollars or seventy five dollars per dose.
Speaker 1: So and that's like, as we were saying last episode,
Speaker 1: one dose is like a hundred, two hundred and fifty milligrams. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: think back to the fact that one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that it was shell for so long is that it
Speaker 1: was expensive to study. So even in the you know,
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century German chemicists looked at it and uh,
Speaker 1: and they realized, oh, it has some sort of interesting properties,
Speaker 1: but who has the budget to explore it. So before
Speaker 1: we dive deeper down to the psychotherapy thing, I think
Speaker 1: an interesting way to approach this is to add the
Speaker 1: criticisms up first, so then as we go through it,
Speaker 1: we can sort of say, okay, we're those criticisms valid
Speaker 1: or not. Uh. And in the research, one of the
Speaker 1: major m d m A researchers who's published a lot
Speaker 1: of literature on this is a guy named Andy Parrott,
Speaker 1: who's i believe, out of the University of Swansea, and he,
Speaker 1: you know, has done a great paper that's on sort
Speaker 1: of just the the general twenty five years of empirical
Speaker 1: history of chemistry, right that the chemistry behind m DM
Speaker 1: UM but he does acknowledge that there's been some criticism, uh,
Speaker 1: and mainly that it's not safe for clinical use. Uh.
Speaker 1: And some proponents say that it needs to be used
Speaker 1: repeatedly for more than one or two sessions or otherwise
Speaker 1: it won't produce gains in those situations, right. Uh. And
Speaker 1: remember from the last episode, m d M AS effects
Speaker 1: are short lived, and uh, it doesn't exactly work like that.
Speaker 1: You know, as we said before, there's a chronic decline
Speaker 1: over time. The more you use it, the less positive
Speaker 1: effects are and the more the negative effects are. So
Speaker 1: there's some concern about that with the tolerance levels. But
Speaker 1: there's also acute effects of m d M A that
Speaker 1: are unpredictable, which we talked about as well last time.
Speaker 1: They can both be positive or negative, right like that,
Speaker 1: for instance, that there's both positive and negative emotional responses,
Speaker 1: or or that there's some undesirable experiences during the sessions,
Speaker 1: and sometimes these undesirable experiences can last up to two
Speaker 1: weeks long. So that's kind of parrots argument is, you know,
Speaker 1: let's let's stop before we do this. But uh, there's
Speaker 1: also the idea of the neurochemical depletion the serotonin. Uh,
Speaker 1: and can lead to feelings of depression, anger, and paranoia anyways. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's especially bad for those who have pre existing depression,
Speaker 1: and it could even predispose people who like, for instance,
Speaker 1: we're already depressed but had um you know, dealt with
Speaker 1: that issue, to a recurrence of their previous psychological disability.
Speaker 1: So these are all of his essential like criticisms of
Speaker 1: I don't know that we're quite there yet for the
Speaker 1: psychotherapy thing. And he presents us with two scenarios in
Speaker 1: which he thinks that that this isn't going to particularly
Speaker 1: work out. And I'll read through the first one and
Speaker 1: we can respond to these as we go through the
Speaker 1: benefits of the psychotherapy and see if see if his
Speaker 1: criticisms are right. Yeah. So if we don't launch into
Speaker 1: picking them apart right away, understand it, that's the reason. Yeah. Okay, So, parents,
Speaker 1: first scenario is that you have a special Air Force
Speaker 1: soldier who's discharged from the army because he has PTSD
Speaker 1: post traumatic stress disorder. His therapist says, let's try this
Speaker 1: m d M A assisted therapy. Oh, but the drug
Speaker 1: stimulates the re emergence of the soldier's unpleasant war experiences,
Speaker 1: and this includes feelings of aggression, the soldiers trying to
Speaker 1: control these while he's at the clinic. However, later that evening,
Speaker 1: this is the scenario, mind you, he violently attacks a
Speaker 1: stranger in the street. Following his arrest, his lawyer argues
Speaker 1: that this aggressive act has been triggered by the m
Speaker 1: d m A assisted therapy session. So okay, so so sorry.
Speaker 1: Parrot is basically saying, Okay, this guy could potentially go
Speaker 1: out in assault somebody due to the negative feelings that
Speaker 1: get dredged up by this therapy induced m d m
Speaker 1: A session. Okay, I have so many responses to that.
Speaker 1: Stick clear for a minute, a right. The second scenario
Speaker 1: that he lays up is called involves a hypothetical case
Speaker 1: of a female rape victim UH. He says. After the
Speaker 1: first m DM assisted therapy session, the client feels much better,
Speaker 1: but the games do not injure over time. Following a
Speaker 1: second UH session, this m d m A assisted again.
Speaker 1: There's a brief period of of relief, and then a
Speaker 1: third session is requested, but the therapist explains that she
Speaker 1: can't clinically recommend it to the client. Now Quote seeks
Speaker 1: out their own illicit supplies of ecstasy slash m d
Speaker 1: m A. The only time she feels good is when
Speaker 1: she is on m d m A, and she becomes
Speaker 1: an habitual user. However, with reducing efficiency and increasing midweek blues,
Speaker 1: her chronic anxiety, depression, and low self esteem steadily worsens.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, so I don't know. I mean, that
Speaker 1: seems counterintuitive even in and of itself, right, and the
Speaker 1: idea that this person would become a habitual user given
Speaker 1: what we know from Parrot's own discourse about m d
Speaker 1: m A and that most people don't use it more
Speaker 1: than ten times. Everything we discussed in the first episode
Speaker 1: seems to to poke holes in that argument and a
Speaker 1: lot of the research for that game parrots own writings.
Speaker 1: So I'm not quite sure about this, but let's let's
Speaker 1: see if it matches up as we go along. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: this is something that ties into a criticism of scenario one,
Speaker 1: but also just important to to look at going forward
Speaker 1: is that when it comes to the treatment of p
Speaker 1: E s D, there is and there is an urgent
Speaker 1: need for better treatment methods. So this is just this
Speaker 1: isn't just a situation of a bunch of scientists or
Speaker 1: even an organization saying hey, we've got to find a
Speaker 1: way to make m d M a practical This is
Speaker 1: not what you Harrelson wearing a hip jacket around, right.
Speaker 1: This is this is here a professional saying, hey, we
Speaker 1: need a better tool here, we need better methods, and
Speaker 1: we need need better drugs to help these individuals. There's
Speaker 1: a potential answer here, let's explore it. So to piggyback
Speaker 1: on top of that, I think it's important that we
Speaker 1: sort of just quickly prime and established what PTSD. It's, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's a term a lot of us throw around, and
Speaker 1: I've heard people say before like, oh I have PTSD,
Speaker 1: you know, And uh, this is what PTSD is. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is a manifestation of trauma physically in your body.
Speaker 1: It's common in victims of war and abuse. It involves shaking, sweating, crumbling, anxiety,
Speaker 1: and flashbacks. And basically what we're looking at here is
Speaker 1: the psychological scars having physical repercussions. Right, So they're physically
Speaker 1: affecting a person's body. So that's what we're talking about
Speaker 1: here for treatment is being able to get get them
Speaker 1: to integrate past that physical trauma rather mental trauma manifesting
Speaker 1: physically So here a couple of quick points that come
Speaker 1: directly from MAPS about m d m A assisted psychotherapy.
Speaker 1: They said, they say an Indie may assisted psychotherapy India
Speaker 1: is only administered a few times, unlike most medications for
Speaker 1: mental illnesses, which are often taken daily for years and
Speaker 1: sometimes forever. UH and MAPS is undertaking a roughly twenty
Speaker 1: million dollar plan to make m d m A into
Speaker 1: a Food and Drug Administration approved prescription medicine by one
Speaker 1: now Here are just a few up pointers as well
Speaker 1: that come from Ingrid Pacy, who I mentioned earlier. There's
Speaker 1: a fabulous bit with her on the CBC Radio Ideas
Speaker 1: again their three part series A High Culture, which I
Speaker 1: highly recommend for anyone who's interested in just the overall
Speaker 1: uh re emergence of psychedelic research over the past a
Speaker 1: few decades and in some of the you know, the
Speaker 1: the the concerns they're in. But Ingrid Percy is a psychiatrist.
Speaker 1: She's a lead investigator of MBAM a assisted therapy for
Speaker 1: treatment resistant post traumatic stress disorder at the University of
Speaker 1: British Columbia. So she points out that from phase one
Speaker 1: studies around the world, we know that m d m
Speaker 1: A seems to lower fear, particularly for treatment resistant PTSD,
Speaker 1: creating a window. And it's interesting she says window because
Speaker 1: because Hulkin references a window at that I believe was
Speaker 1: the hundred neogram creates a window during which the trauma
Speaker 1: can be considered and discussed without the associated fear getting
Speaker 1: in the way. So it's about sort of allowing the
Speaker 1: monster to come out so you can look at it
Speaker 1: and deal with it and and and perhaps exercise it right.
Speaker 1: According to pay see M d M. A psychotherapy usually
Speaker 1: begins with feelings of relaxation, easing of muscles, and among
Speaker 1: PTSD patients you often see the flashes of the past
Speaker 1: trauma that then emerge, and it can even be a
Speaker 1: strong bodily experience. So we mentioned this in the last
Speaker 1: episode about how how taking ecstasy can produce uh, these
Speaker 1: very strong negative feelings can can pull those out of
Speaker 1: an interet. So that's where I assume Parrot is getting
Speaker 1: his scenario to of which the soldiers experienced such a
Speaker 1: negative emotions being recalled Yeah, and that but that that
Speaker 1: what where I can't I'm having difficulty following him is
Speaker 1: the logical extension of that to going out and assaulting
Speaker 1: a person on the street, right, because he's saying, well,
Speaker 1: you're gonna pull You're gonna pull the monster out of
Speaker 1: the closet, and then the monster could win. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but part of what are you gonna do? Just leave
Speaker 1: it in the closet. I mean, the idea here is
Speaker 1: we've got to we've got to face these traumatic experiences, right,
Speaker 1: and that m D MAY assisted psychotherapy can potentially allow
Speaker 1: us to do so in a safer way with reduced
Speaker 1: fear um and and during all of this, the therapist
Speaker 1: or monitoring vital signs. Uh uh. Really, it's kind of
Speaker 1: the best case scenario to be doing m d m
Speaker 1: A in right, because you're not like like we talked
Speaker 1: about last episode, like the some of the bad side
Speaker 1: effects like the overheating or the chewing on your teeth,
Speaker 1: running about music. Yeah, all of that kind of stems
Speaker 1: out of the dance culture, not because of the drug,
Speaker 1: but because of the environment that you're in. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you know this is again it's about using it
Speaker 1: therapeutically with a therapist, using it as a way to
Speaker 1: open that window, to to gain access to things that
Speaker 1: are normally going to be too too buried, or or
Speaker 1: to fear ridden to tackle and this is this is
Speaker 1: really key here. Again. One of the major issues is
Speaker 1: that there we need better tools, we need better medications
Speaker 1: to treat PTSD. And according to two percy um, you
Speaker 1: see about a thirty percent UH success rate for conventional
Speaker 1: multi year PTSD therapy, but so far with the m
Speaker 1: d m A PTSD therapy you've seen they've seen an
Speaker 1: eight five percent success rate. Wow, okay, well that backs
Speaker 1: up some of the other stuff that I read, which
Speaker 1: said that there were significant gains found on there's a
Speaker 1: there's a scale that's used to measure somebody's level of PTSD.
Speaker 1: It's called the PTSD scale. And after using that UH,
Speaker 1: after using m d m A in therapy, using the
Speaker 1: PTSD scale, they found that there were great gains over time.
Speaker 1: And in fact, when they did placebo trials telling people
Speaker 1: that they were doing m d m A when they weren't,
Speaker 1: they found less gains. So the the evidence does seem
Speaker 1: to show that this works. Um. It also, you know,
Speaker 1: the aim here is is to help these people with
Speaker 1: their debilitating symptoms. It's it's when they haven't responded to
Speaker 1: other therapies, and it's this isn't like oh, let's just
Speaker 1: try this. You know, this is this is a such
Speaker 1: watrotion where it's resistant to the last resort. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the other treatments are anything from talking to
Speaker 1: exposure therapy, to the things that cause the PTSD to
Speaker 1: all these daily medications that we could be using. Uh.
Speaker 1: One therapist says that they think that it works because
Speaker 1: of m d M as unique properties. And we talked
Speaker 1: about this last time. It's both a stimulant and a psychedelic, right,
Speaker 1: so they said, quote, the stimulant gives people confidence and
Speaker 1: the psychedelic allows people to reflect on themselves and their
Speaker 1: experiences in a different way. This combination helps them confront
Speaker 1: painful memories. And then in two thousand nine there was
Speaker 1: an article by a Norwegian psychologist named I Believe this
Speaker 1: is paliurine Yo Hansen, and he argued that it works
Speaker 1: through several mechanisms. Basically, the m d M A is
Speaker 1: increasing the levels of oxytocin in your body and this
Speaker 1: is the we call it the cuttle chemical. Um. I
Speaker 1: think you guys might have talked about this previously on
Speaker 1: the episode it's released during breastfeeding, not in the episode
Speaker 1: on the show and Stuff to Blow your mind at
Speaker 1: five years one of yeah, the most frequently mentioned uh
Speaker 1: properties of the body. I feel. So it increases our
Speaker 1: oxytocin and what that does It prevents the brain's emotional
Speaker 1: processing center from overpowering our higher thoughts. So it quells
Speaker 1: fear and it encourages trust, just like we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier. So, um, you know we mentioned m d
Speaker 1: m A has to occur in conjunction with psychotherapy. You
Speaker 1: aren't just taking m d m A. And it's not
Speaker 1: like you immediately go into therapy and you're taking m
Speaker 1: d m A with the therapist. You need to establish
Speaker 1: trust with this therapist through a series of sober sessions
Speaker 1: before you do these m d m A sessions. And
Speaker 1: usually at the most I think it's like three sessions,
Speaker 1: which kind of makes sense along the lines of what
Speaker 1: we know about people taking m d m A, its
Speaker 1: effects and their efficacy. But then also, you know this
Speaker 1: uh contradicts. I want to say, parents first example of
Speaker 1: the potential uh subject where this wouldn't work for them, right,
Speaker 1: and that they've become sorry it was their second example
Speaker 1: where the girl becomes an addict, right, Um, so they
Speaker 1: only use it for three sessions at the most. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and we come back.
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna roll through some other potential uses
Speaker 1: of m d m A as a cancer fighting agent.
Speaker 1: Uh is potential uh aid in in couples therapy and
Speaker 1: even away to ease an individual uh to the death point.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're back. So we set up for this
Speaker 1: a little bit in the in the previous episode. The
Speaker 1: potential for for e m d M A to help
Speaker 1: us fight cancer, which is this is one of the
Speaker 1: This is an area of m d m A research
Speaker 1: that is uh, it kind of stands apart from the
Speaker 1: rest because it's so it's not attached to the most
Speaker 1: apparent properties of the drug. Right. In fact, so funny. Sorry.
Speaker 1: Yesterday was getting my hair cut and as the first
Speaker 1: time I was getting my haircut by this particular hairdresser.
Speaker 1: She asked me what I did for a living and
Speaker 1: what I was working on right now, and I told
Speaker 1: her was researching m d M UH and and she said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's fascinating. And I said it can be used to
Speaker 1: help people with cancer. And her immediate thought was, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, Like if they're in pain, it would
Speaker 1: make them feel happy, And I was like, oh no,
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, there are instances where they've been using
Speaker 1: it therapeutically that way, but no, Like, let's recap from
Speaker 1: last episode, there's that apotosis effect in which programs cell
Speaker 1: death actually attacks the cells in your liver and retina
Speaker 1: when you take M D M A. Uh so let's
Speaker 1: remember that that's what they're using here to try to
Speaker 1: take take cancer out there, trying to kill the cells
Speaker 1: and cancer. It's not just as like a you know,
Speaker 1: sort of like a pain reducer kind of thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we've known since around two thousand six that actual
Speaker 1: c M D M A and antidepressants such as prozac
Speaker 1: have the potential to stop cancer cell the catches. Then,
Speaker 1: in order to kill the cells, who have to drop
Speaker 1: an absurd amount of ecstasy, as in a highly lethal dose. Um. Like,
Speaker 1: just to refresh, we were talking in the previous episode
Speaker 1: about how you're talking about, uh, the average dose being
Speaker 1: in in then like a hundred hundred and right, and
Speaker 1: if you get into one or one point five grams,
Speaker 1: you're getting into into a deadly amount, potentially deadly amount.
Speaker 1: So in two thousand eleven, researchers from the University of
Speaker 1: Birmingham and the University of Western Australia UM looked into this.
Speaker 1: They were they were basically looking to ways at ways
Speaker 1: to tweak ecstasy, UH, to tweak m d m A
Speaker 1: at the atomic level, swapping out some of the atoms
Speaker 1: in its chemical composition to increase its cancer fighting power
Speaker 1: by a factor of a hundred. So to put that
Speaker 1: in perspective, that means that you could have a single
Speaker 1: tablet of modified ecstasy, they would have as much cancer
Speaker 1: fighting power as a hundred tablets without boosting the unwanted
Speaker 1: effects of the drug. So, because because the amount of
Speaker 1: this is my understanding, the amount of m d m
Speaker 1: A needed to start attacking the cancer cells is like
Speaker 1: a hundred grams, right, and so to that would totally
Speaker 1: kill you. Yeah. Yeah, that's like a hundred times as
Speaker 1: much as would be a hundred times a very strong dosage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they need to make it more powerful so you
Speaker 1: can take less of it to attack the cancer but
Speaker 1: not have the negative side. Yeah, So basically taking the
Speaker 1: synthetic substance and tweaking it even more to encourage the
Speaker 1: properties you need and discourage the properties that are going
Speaker 1: to kill the patient. And this is exactly the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that Alexander Shulgin would have promoted and wanted
Speaker 1: I think his his his studies of these psychedelic compounds
Speaker 1: to be used for going forward, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: his hope was that they would be studied educationally so
Speaker 1: that we could find these kinds of uses for the Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: to go back to the road map scenario, it's saying, hey,
Speaker 1: there's this road and h you didn't know it, but
Speaker 1: there's a little turn here to the left, and it
Speaker 1: leads to a potential cure for cancer. So when you
Speaker 1: get into exactly how this works, uh, you really get
Speaker 1: bogged down rather quickly in the chemical and biochemical details.
Speaker 1: But the basic explanation, as a rolled out in that
Speaker 1: paper is the theory behind it is the drug is
Speaker 1: attracted to the fat in the membranes of cancerous cells
Speaker 1: and it makes the cells quote a bit more soapy,
Speaker 1: which can break down the membrane and kill the cell. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: cancerous cells are more susceptible. So again they hope to
Speaker 1: hope to refine this. Uh. Last the most recent stat
Speaker 1: I saw was there hoping to make it possible by
Speaker 1: one but again that was that that that was when
Speaker 1: they were rolling up in that particular, and it said
Speaker 1: they thought they're about a decade away. I'm curious where
Speaker 1: they're at with it right now as Yeah, hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: get an update, uh in the near future. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised if we see something come out in
Speaker 1: the next year or so. Yeah. So yeah, so all right,
Speaker 1: we've covered PTSD cancer. What else can we use this for. Well,
Speaker 1: we already mentioned couples therapy and about how it was
Speaker 1: rolled out with apparently some level of success in the eighties.
Speaker 1: But there's actually a two thousand fifteen study that was
Speaker 1: published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, and they set out
Speaker 1: to examine how m d m A might be used
Speaker 1: to improve communication about a spouse in therapy. So this
Speaker 1: is interesting. It seems to be the key key here.
Speaker 1: That's not about as much about oh here you both
Speaker 1: take m DMAIN will also together, but it's about getting
Speaker 1: an individual to share their own feelings and open up
Speaker 1: about what's bothering them. So yeah, I could imagine based
Speaker 1: on the stereotypes surrounding m D m A again, people
Speaker 1: hearing this and going oh okay, so they take ecstasy
Speaker 1: and it makes them want to have sex, which would
Speaker 1: subsequently they want to love each other. They feel more open,
Speaker 1: they feel more sympathetic. That's not again ecstasy is a misnomer. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this isn't all sexual. This is more about communication. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, I do have to say that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's totally believable that you would have two
Speaker 1: individuals who have a connection with each other while they're
Speaker 1: on m d M A and then afterwards they realize, well,
Speaker 1: as my normal self even with the inside of what
Speaker 1: I had conversing with this individual, I no longer feel
Speaker 1: that connection. But again, this entails the therapist being present
Speaker 1: and using the information that you bring forth. So yeah, right,
Speaker 1: we don't recommend that like couples just do this in
Speaker 1: their kitchen together. Yeah, certainly not the kitchen. Um. So,
Speaker 1: so we've discussed m duma's ability to increase sociability. The
Speaker 1: drug alter speech production and fluency as well and U
Speaker 1: and according to the study, it may influence speech content.
Speaker 1: So what they did is they rounded up thirty five
Speaker 1: healthy individuals with prior in m d M A experience
Speaker 1: UH completed UM two session with UH within subjects double
Speaker 1: blind study during which they received one point five milligrams
Speaker 1: of oral m d m A, and they also had
Speaker 1: a tiny that's a very small amount, one point five
Speaker 1: that is, so then they would after the the substance
Speaker 1: had taken hold um whatever limited hold it would have.
Speaker 1: Given the dosage, they engaged in five minutes standardized talking
Speaker 1: tasks during which they discussed a close personal relationship, and
Speaker 1: they found that both analytic methods that they employed revealed
Speaker 1: that m d m A altered speech content relative to
Speaker 1: pill see about the drug, increased use of social and
Speaker 1: sexual words, consistent with reports that m d m A
Speaker 1: increases willingness to disclose. Okay, so that lines up with
Speaker 1: what we know from the PTSD thing, right, It makes
Speaker 1: me trust people, it makes you, you know, you're more permeable,
Speaker 1: yourself is more permeable. And using the machine learning algorithm,
Speaker 1: the Receichers researchers found that m d m A increased
Speaker 1: use of social words and words relating to both positive
Speaker 1: and negative emotions. So, in other words, it helped them
Speaker 1: open up about how they felt about the other individual,
Speaker 1: what the problems might be. And and that is why
Speaker 1: it seems like you could be very useful in m
Speaker 1: DM assisted psychotherapy. So I guess like the big problem
Speaker 1: here though, is how illegal it still is, and that
Speaker 1: it's really difficult to conduct trials like this, especially in
Speaker 1: a place like the United States. Right. So, but some
Speaker 1: of the articles that I was reading about both the
Speaker 1: PTSD thing and the cancer studies were saying that they
Speaker 1: think that that there's going to be m d M
Speaker 1: A approved by the FDA, the Federal Drug Administration again,
Speaker 1: like maybe in the next ten years or so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it seems like the same prognosis with Canadian law.
Speaker 1: This is just me here, but my my worry here
Speaker 1: is that what happens when this gets beyond peer reviewed publications,
Speaker 1: science journalism and uh and you know in radio programs
Speaker 1: and podcast what happens when this becomes a political football
Speaker 1: and we have individuals saying, oh, well, you're about to
Speaker 1: allow our psychotherapists to start giving ecstasy to people. What happens? Then?
Speaker 1: It kind of reminds me of another stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind related thing, when you did that video last
Speaker 1: week about the god helmet, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: response on social media when we posted that video, I
Speaker 1: got the impression that a lot of people just read
Speaker 1: the headline and didn't watch the video, but they are
Speaker 1: basically if give a primer on what the god helmet is, well,
Speaker 1: this was basically we're talking about cranial electromagnetic stimulation affecting
Speaker 1: various portions of the brain, if very basically turning things
Speaker 1: in your brain on and off in order to see
Speaker 1: how they affect. Electrical stimulation. Slide electrical stimulation to see
Speaker 1: how it affects your experience of reality, right, and uh,
Speaker 1: there was some research involving this that's saying that you know,
Speaker 1: by changing the way that you perceive reality, it might
Speaker 1: be able to help people overcome racism, for instance, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the responses to that on our our social media channels,
Speaker 1: a lot of people were very angry because they saw
Speaker 1: that as kind of like mind control, right, almost like
Speaker 1: in a fascist kind of sense. So I could see
Speaker 1: the same thing happening with M D m A. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, these these therapists, you know, they're the
Speaker 1: activist therapists are going to try to reprogram our brains,
Speaker 1: so we're just like them. Well, I mean the thing
Speaker 1: is that both of these situations, whether you're talking about
Speaker 1: you know, electrical stimulation of the brain, or pharmacological stimulation
Speaker 1: of the brain. You're dealing with a psychedelic effect. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're taking your normal consciousness experience and you're tweaking
Speaker 1: it a bit. You're changing and you're changing your perception
Speaker 1: of self uh and reality in at least a very
Speaker 1: limited way. And that that can be frightening, that can
Speaker 1: be illuminating, And that's that's the whole that's psychedelia as
Speaker 1: a whole door for a lot of experiences, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them think of it like sort of along
Speaker 1: the lines of um drawings. Okay, so let's say like
Speaker 1: you're looking at a drawing, and if you know what
Speaker 1: one point perspective is, it's kind of how Wes Anderson
Speaker 1: shoots a lot of his cookies, right, Like, you've got
Speaker 1: a center point and everything stems out of that center
Speaker 1: point coming at you. But then you can switch to
Speaker 1: two point perspective or three point perspective, where you're looking
Speaker 1: at multiple angles, or you're looking up or down from
Speaker 1: like a skyscraper or something like that, right, And that's
Speaker 1: like a very basic metaphor for what's going on here.
Speaker 1: It's just changing the perspective with which you can look
Speaker 1: at the world with yeah, one might be heard to
Speaker 1: say something along the lines of, I've never thought about
Speaker 1: myself that way before. I've never thought about uh, this
Speaker 1: individual in this particular way before. And again, this isn't
Speaker 1: us condoning like go out and do m d m
Speaker 1: A right now, or us saying don't do m d
Speaker 1: m A right It's it's neither of those things. But
Speaker 1: I do think that it's interesting within a restrictive environment
Speaker 1: using it in conjunction with therapy, and especially uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in a clinic like this, where there's somebody on hand
Speaker 1: in case like you have a bad reaction or whatever, right,
Speaker 1: rather than being in a farm in the middle of
Speaker 1: the woods where there's a secret a coming on. Now.
Speaker 1: The final example of m d m A therapy and
Speaker 1: m d m A research that we want to mention
Speaker 1: here is the possibility of using m d M A
Speaker 1: to treat individuals who are having a hard time with
Speaker 1: with their with their impending death, with with with fatal
Speaker 1: life you know, fatal conditions, life threatening illnesses, uh as
Speaker 1: they approach the death point. And there have been some
Speaker 1: other studies that involve psilocybin and it's use magic mushrooms
Speaker 1: psilocybin as as a way to help people deal with
Speaker 1: that scenario. It's not just the pain we're talking about here, right,
Speaker 1: We're talking just gravity of understanding your yeah, thinking about yourself,
Speaker 1: and the grappling with mortality and the basic heavy human stuff.
Speaker 1: So the the main individual here is uh San and
Speaker 1: sell Most psychiatrist Phil Wolfson, and he's currently studying the
Speaker 1: use of m d m A assisted psychotherapy to ease
Speaker 1: anxiety in eighteen adults diagnosed with life threatening illnesses. Now,
Speaker 1: all of these individuals have a prognosis life expectancy of
Speaker 1: at least nine months there can they currently have severe
Speaker 1: anxiety related to life threatening illness. So his goal here
Speaker 1: is to see whether patients suffering from crippling anxiety, fear,
Speaker 1: or depression over a terminal diagnosis can confine relative peace
Speaker 1: via in d m A assisted psychotherapy sessions. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of the same scenario we've talked about with these
Speaker 1: previous psychotherapy examples, helping them open up about what's happening,
Speaker 1: help them gain a little perspective on what's happening, and
Speaker 1: in doing so, perhaps find a place of peace. Right,
Speaker 1: see it from a different angle, one with less fear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but again, Wilson's study is just getting off the ground here.
Speaker 1: UM just started up this year, so hopefully we'll we'll
Speaker 1: hear more of the details in the years to come.
Speaker 1: Uh And you know, some of the core findings, and
Speaker 1: there's clearly got to be a lot of more research
Speaker 1: done in all of these areas before we're just doing this,
Speaker 1: you know, casually, especially in the sense of like predicting
Speaker 1: that the f d A is going to approve m
Speaker 1: d M A for these public use. And I think,
Speaker 1: I mean casual is a good thing to mention because
Speaker 1: I think the underlying truth here is that it's such
Speaker 1: a potent and powerful substance that it should never never
Speaker 1: be done casually. Like I would argue that even in
Speaker 1: a recreational environment, it's not something to take lightly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the research that needs to be done right
Speaker 1: now is on all kinds of things, like why individuals
Speaker 1: have such strong physiological ab reactions to it, right, Like
Speaker 1: we talked about the first episode, there's very occasionally individuals
Speaker 1: who have like cardiac arrest or seizures or something that's
Speaker 1: not a common side effect of this, But why is
Speaker 1: it happening to these some individuals right, Other things like
Speaker 1: why is there such a variance in the mood reactions?
Speaker 1: Why for some people is at all positive but for
Speaker 1: other people there's positive and negative or others it's just negative.
Speaker 1: You know what's going on there? How do other drugs
Speaker 1: in conjunction work with m d M A, right, especially
Speaker 1: like when you think about UM PTSD patients who are
Speaker 1: already taking daily medication for their PTSD, how's that interacting
Speaker 1: with the m D I mean, even Sasha Shulgin in
Speaker 1: his research parties would tell his his friends, Look, don't
Speaker 1: take any medication for like three to five days before
Speaker 1: you come over here. And then you know, we just
Speaker 1: need to figure out the chronic tolerance development as well,
Speaker 1: to like nail that down. Why is it that when
Speaker 1: we take m d M A human bodies basically over time,
Speaker 1: probably like between one dose and ten doses, over time
Speaker 1: the positive effects lesson in the negative effects get worse. Indeed, Now,
Speaker 1: to close out here, I just want to throw out
Speaker 1: a quick quote. This comes to us from from Alan
Speaker 1: Watts the late British Buddhist and encounter culture um icon.
Speaker 1: I'd say UM wrote a lot spoke a lot about
Speaker 1: about Buddhism and h and also a certain amount about
Speaker 1: about other other modes of religion, and also about a
Speaker 1: lot of the counterculture of stuff that was happening at
Speaker 1: the time time he was alive. This particular quote comes
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy and he's he's probably commenting more directly
Speaker 1: on on overt psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD. But I
Speaker 1: think this holds true for a lot of what we've
Speaker 1: talked about regarding m D m A. He says, psychedelic
Speaker 1: experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but
Speaker 1: a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the
Speaker 1: various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer
Speaker 1: necessary or useful. If you get the message hang up
Speaker 1: the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments like microscopes, telescopes,
Speaker 1: and telephones. The biologist does not sit with I permanently
Speaker 1: glued to the microscope. He goes away and works on
Speaker 1: what he has seen. And I think that that matches
Speaker 1: up rather nicely with the with the goals of m
Speaker 1: D and assisted psychotherapy. I do, yeah, And I kind
Speaker 1: of have always thought of Alan Watts as being sort
Speaker 1: of contemporary of Sasha Shulguns as well to kind I
Speaker 1: wonder if those guys ever met, but they're kind of
Speaker 1: like on the same Yeah, exactly, that them and the
Speaker 1: two of them in Timothy Lyric here on The Psychedelic Avengers.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I think that's about you know, what we've
Speaker 1: got here on M D M A. But I'd really
Speaker 1: like to hear from you the audience some more about
Speaker 1: this because I'm sure there's a lot of things we
Speaker 1: didn't cover. The literature in this is dense. I mean,
Speaker 1: we spent two days studying all this stuff leading up
Speaker 1: to it, and I there's no way we could even
Speaker 1: touch the surface. You know, there's just so much that's
Speaker 1: being studied in it right now. So I'd love to
Speaker 1: know if there's things that we missed, or there's things
Speaker 1: in particular that you you know about that are in
Speaker 1: trial right now or being studied right now that we
Speaker 1: would be interested in coming back to in a future episode.
Speaker 1: Get in touch with us over social media. That is
Speaker 1: one of the best ways to let us know about
Speaker 1: these things. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
Speaker 1: and don't forget that you can always talk to us
Speaker 1: on periscope every Friday at noon. Yeah, and if you
Speaker 1: would like to hear us take this approach, this sort
Speaker 1: of one to approach with with other substances such as
Speaker 1: h such as marijuana. We've ever done any content on
Speaker 1: marijuana and medicinal marijuana that would bush an interesting topic.
Speaker 1: Let us know if you'd like to hear eisdesfect. The
Speaker 1: idea for this episode came out of us talking about
Speaker 1: the instances of synthetic cannabis in the news. Yeah, and hey,
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with this directly, you
Speaker 1: want to cut out stuff to blow your mind dot
Speaker 1: com and all the social accounts, you can just email
Speaker 1: us at and below the mind at how stuff Works
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com. D foy thot about
Speaker 1: the