A friend of mine recently tried MDMA after suffering for many years with trauma and other issues and it quite literally changed their life after a single dose. Many things were remembered that had been suppressed and the pain associated with these memories was severely lessened afterwards (not entirely). It was night and day talking through things with them that they couldn’t bring up previously without breaking down.
What if all drugs are a little of both? Who is to say that SSRI antidepressants simply correct brain chemical imbalance to healthy levels rather than letting one substitute a chemical high for real life changes? Who is to say that booze or opiates do not help by providing at least a temporary escape from otherwise unbearable misery. Yes, there are extremes, like people who would be vegetables or harm themselves without psychiatric drugs. But if it comes to that and mainstream prescription drugs do not work, I would not begrudge them trying MDMA or even cocaine to have at least some quality of life some of the time. Equally, some individuals can normalize using prescription drugs or cope using social connections, creativity, nature, physical exercise, meditation, religion, military service. Isn't a chemical fix depriving them and society of deeper achievements that may have made them feel allright?
Heroin initially stopped me from killing myself. Even addiction gave me a reason to “live”, such as a was, a routine (albeit a broken painful one) that I was missing prior.
Still a horrible outcome of course; opioid dependence sucks. The Buvidal injection is a life changer for me.
Congrats on making it through and getting the injection. I did Suboxone for a couple years, the Sublocade injection for a few more, and then I stopped my Sublocade ~5 months ago.
My total clean time is almost 7 years now. I wish more people knew about Sublocade and Buvidal. I always tell people that opioid addiction pretty much has a cure these days but they are so hesitant to start the injections because they never heard of it.
Congrats to you! Yeah it’s literally a miracle drug as far as I’m concerned. I was on Suboxone/Subutex for 8ish years, relapsed for a few weeks despite years of compliance on the program over the hell time that was COVID lockdowns, and so finally pulled the trigger and swapped to the injection.
It’s infinitely better not waking up every morning in mild withdrawals. It’s a godsend, and everything I’ve heard is coming off it is pretty easy, well as easy as it could really be anyway.
Super easy. I took Imodium for a couple of days at the 3 month mark for some very minor digestive symptoms.
The "worst" part of quitting Sublocade so far was the one day, also around 3 months, when I felt a little tired and my emotions came back. I felt like I had the most mild cold ever, but what bothered me was the intense fear that I was about to go into legitimate withdrawal.
8 hours later I felt fine and have felt fine since.
Heck yeah. They might switch me onto Sublockade as they have more experience with the long term pharmacokinetics of stopping, but we’ll see. Might just stick with Buvidal, much more comfortable injection
If the US and state governments really wanted to solve the opioid crisis, getting Buvidal/Sublockade to anyone who asks for it, for free, would go a very long way.
It’s free for me paid for by my state government here in Aus, and it changed my life.
It’s more that my crippling untreated depression as a 16-17 year old (plus some pretty brutal trauma) lead to me taking risks with little regard for the consequences, and one of those was opiates and heroin. It really did give me some measure of “purpose” and it really did keep my suicidal thoughts at bay. Not worth the long term consequences of addiction/dependency, but it wasn’t pure hedonism as the reason I was using it either.
MDMA also is also subjectively the best feeling the best on that list apart from MDA, have friends who have dabbled in designer chems but always go back to MDMA. Used the others to cycle tolerances
Since they all cause serotonin dumps, I kind of doubt (uneducated guess) that this would be effective, is there any reason to believe that they should create the same tolerance?
My good friend is a big fan of his. Listens and cites many of his episodes. He frequently shares his learnings with me. I haven’t given him much of a listen because everything my friend has shared with me I already knew, lots of things I remember thinking “I learned that in high school.” But if Huberman is an accessible voice and helps educate people I’m all for it.
> Who is to say that SSRI antidepressants simply correct brain chemical imbalance to healthy levels rather than letting one substitute a chemical high for real life changes?
SSRIs do not result in anything resembling a "high". Neither do tricyclic antidepressants, lithium salts for bipolar disorder, and so on.
I have long since lost it, but many years ago a friend of mine wrote down his experience of temporarily stopping his bipolar medication in order to do a burst of work during the hypermanic phase. It made it very clear that, for him, _not_ taking the drugs resulted in a dramatic and sometimes hazardous high/low cycle with a frequency of days, in a way that resembles the experience other people have with recreational drugs.
> SSRIs do not result in anything resembling a "high".
In my experience taking sertraline, years ago, it actually did feel like a very mild sort of high. I remember noticing that colors seemed to have literally become brighter, and physical sensations were more pleasant in general. If it were possible to microdose MDMA, I imagine that might feel similar.
Well, yes, but that's kind of the point - it's just a chemical change in the brain which results in changed perception. Whether you think of that process as therapeutic or recreational depends on the context and your worldview.
i think it doesn't matter what is therapeutic and what is recreational. i think that's also not something the state can really decide, either? nor should it make this decision every time someone puts something into their body.
that we should just give people the capacity to do what they are going to do either way, safely properly and teach them how to reduce their self-harm and societal harm with what they are doing!
Actually a concept that I live by, having tried enough actual "drugs" (all legally ;-) thanks Amsterdam! ) and having done a lot of meditation and similar things. It's all the same.
Thats a very broad statement to make. there are plenty of drugs where the last thing you want to take is that drug again anytime soon and yet have therapeutic effects on your mental health.
Having/using a temporary escape from otherwise unbearable misery is unfavourable for one's chances of finding and working towards a proper escape, so that's a dubious positive.
Ah, a variant on good old fanatical christian trope that suffering is good, helps get through purgatory blah blah blah. 'Mother' Teresa would vehemently agree with you.
How can you gauge other people's suffering? It can easily be completely crippling, not unlike extreme poverty is so stressful that it effectively blocks people from working themselves out of it.
I am not just bashing you, I went through something similar, the worst breakup in my life was the motivation for me to start working out in the gym, lean even more on cool extreme sports, start running etc. But I know people in similar situation that simply couldn't move, stuck in vicious circle of self-pity, grief, self-harm in various ways, and more regrets.
What we should do as society be tolerant, humble and accept that nobody, especially politicians with actual power know everything. Give people tools, explain or even guide them, be helpful, give a hand if needed, but otherwise let people be. You can't protect stupid from their own stupidity anyway, not through regulation.
>Ah, a variant on good old fanatical christian trope that suffering is good, helps get through purgatory blah blah blah.
You couldn't be further from truth. Suffering sucks, trying to quench it with booze and opiates increases suffering in the long game (perhaps except acute pain right after severe injury, surgery or some such).
> How can you gauge other people's suffering?
Corresponding professionals developed meaningful tools to measure both physical pain and mental distress.
>It can easily be completely crippling, not unlike extreme poverty is so stressful that it effectively blocks people from working themselves out of it.
Fair enough. You being unhappy with my comment however suggests that drinking and doping helps these people in any way.
>I am not just bashing you, I went through something similar, the worst breakup in my life was the motivation for me to start working out in the gym, lean even more on cool extreme sports, start running etc.
Good on you.
>But I know people in similar situation that simply couldn't move, stuck in vicious circle of self-pity, grief, self-harm in various ways, and more regrets.
What does that prove? Would you recommend that they drink or dope?
>What we should do as society be tolerant, humble and accept that nobody, especially politicians with actual power know everything.
Sure should. We also should be blunt about things we do know, such as that alcohol and opiates do not help against poverty, depression, loneliness and pretty much any other adverse condition - this is what I wrote earlier and I don't understand why you'd object to that.
>You can't protect stupid from their own stupidity anyway, not through regulation.
Yes you can, at least you can prevent the kind of stuff going on in China around Opium Wars. (And don't you dare pull Rat Park on me).
Movies and games are a temporary escape as well. Should we not use those?
Who are you to say what is proper? Sure, most things they say not to use at all - but at the same time, many drugs aren't really going to harm you if you are using occasionally for a fun escape.
And I don't know if you know this, but some folks simply aren't going to escape their misery. Being just above poor for many years just sucks, for example. Having physical pain sucks. Past trauma sucks. Boredom sucks, and is absolutely miserable for some folks.
Heck, I don't view my own life as bad, and I find some things as a positive escape that I just can't get anywhere else. It is more akin to finding different flavors of life. When I was miserable, I was also always sober save for nicotine and caffeine... the sobriety wasn't the cause of the misery though.
It just isn't for you - not with that attitude, and perhaps you've not met folks with a decent attitude for it. And that's OK.
Without agreeing or disagreeing with either view, 100% of recovering drug addicts used drugs prior to seeking treatment for a drug addition - it’s not like people go into a total freeze while using drugs to escape, they may well come out with more problems than when they became addicted, but it’s not as binary as drugs do or don’t help.
It might not be a total freeze, but it's pretty binary - opiates and booze never help get out of poverty, homelessness, depression or pretty much anything else.
> It might not be a total freeze, but it's pretty binary - opiates and booze never help get out of poverty, homelessness, depression or pretty much anything else.
Your statement is factually incorrect. Opiates are used frequently in clinical settings with significant positive outcomes.
Quite a lot of successful, famous people have had coke addiction phases. You'd get some surprising results if you did random drug testing in white collar workplaces.
True and then you find out these people were incredibly shitty and destructive but at least they made some nice songs that are now used for car commercials so the universe balanced itself out, right?
Then all drugs are too be banned. Intoxicants should never be given a green light.
It is sad that libertarians are trying to argue for live and let live in the case of drugs. Did they not learn from tobacco companies that commerce does not live and let live. They persuade petulantly until everyone is a customer. Nevermind if it is healthy.
I'm going to be down voted by the drug loving crowd, but I won't stop fighting for people to see and understand that drugs should never be a commercialized enterprise.
Where do you draw the line then? Caffeine? St Johns Wort?
People take drugs, and they're going to do so whether they're legal or not. People have addictions and control issues with food too, we're not talking about banning MSG or sugar. The majority (not all) of the harm comes from the illegal market they exist in. A controlled environment can only make things safer for people, and provide a basis for supporting people with issues. This works everywhere it's been tried.
It's much harder to start using drugs if they are illegal. I, for example, have no idea where to buy heroin in my city. But buying alcohol and cigarettes is not a problem - just go to the nearest grocery store.
Illegality creates some friction, but removes others. In some areas, it would be easier for a minor to access illegal drugs than it would be to access legal ones. Nobody is going to openly sell alcohol or tobacco to kids at a retail establishment, they'd instantly lose their license. While I won't go so far as to say that every illegal drug dealer would be willing to sell to minors, it's a much smaller leap from "I'm already breaking the law by selling drugs, so what's one more law to break?" versus "I own a legitimate retail establishment, which is in jeopardy if I break this particular law".
Drugs themselves should be entirely outside the scope of law enforcement. Plenty of the things that are brought up by prohibitionists would still be illegal under a host of other laws, outside of possession and use itself. Rob someone to get your next fix? Congrats, robbery is still illegal, off to jail with you.
The history on this is pretty clear. Drug prohibition has caused more harm than it has protected people from. It can also springboard into discussion of historical (and current) racial disparity, as such laws almost inevitably affect the disenfranchised and downtrodden disproportionately.
Drugs are not a criminal issue. They are a public health issue. Harm reduction policies work.
>Also straw purchasing a legal substance is much easier than finding a dealer of an illegal one.
You say that as if it's a given, but it really isn't. It's region-specific, if anything. I live in Tennessee, and I would guess that it might be easier for a teen to acquire meth than alcohol. That depends on who the particular teen happens to know. Don't forget, there is also straw purchasing of illicit substances too, people who know someone who knows someone, but don't have the direct access to the one with the substance, they're also straw purchasing.
I don't know where to buy heroin, but I sure know that there's a sketchy dude hanging out near the toilets in a lot of bars who will sell cocaine to anyone who asks.
As for it being harder to start - tell that to the 16 year olds who get their hands on alcohol. It certainly never stopped me.
> Or you can simply go to a grocery store and buy as much alcohol as you want.
Depending on where you live, of course. Saudi Arabia doesn't allow alcohol. Sweden limits the purchase of high ABV drinks to state run stores, as do some states in the US. Dry counties exist in the US too, and those places have _massive_ issues.
This is a very real problem that people keep presenting actual evidence about drug harm, and it keeps getting ignored. The MMJ people argued correctly for decades that it was less harmful and addictive than prescription opiates and had valid uses for pain relief, and this made no difference to policy.
(e.g. David Nutt on the British advisory council for misuse of drugs)
I see you're also pretty much arguing for criminialization of alcohol, which very definitely and spectacularly failed. Although I will agree that it's probably the most harmful substance that still allowed to be regularly consumed.
Paracetamol (acetaminophen) is the other substance that's been grandfathered in. Its surprisingly low lethal dose would not meet modern safety standards.
Do you have any data you can reference to? Not every method to alter your mind is harmful.
And hypothetically, if there was a way to improve mental health at the expense of physical health, what is the right call here? Is there one globally optimal call? Who better to make this decision than the individual?
I'm very supportive of decriminalization of drug use, but calling MDMA not "extremely addicting" is just false and irresponsible. The first experience is especially great, so people usually start chasing after it. At least in a club setting. Of course there is a learning curve and most people get that you can have a profound experience only maybe once or twice a year.
I think it’s different being 'addicted' to taking MDMA when in a club setting than other drugs where people addicted to them take them every day.
MDMA is much too intense of an experience to integrate into the daily life of most people and there isn’t really a craving to take more once it has worn off.
This type of reductionist, binary thinking is not productive. Especially since there is no single standard for "intoxication". Case in point - I have smoked cannabis for close to thirty years at this point. I was also diagnosed with ADD (now usually referred to as ADHD) at the age of eight. Cannabis doesn't really intoxicate me at all at normal, common doses when smoked. If anything, it increases my focus control and helps me stay alert, especially with a strain that tends to have more THC than CBD. However, I also personally know people who could take two hits from the exact same weed and be completely out of it. When the range of effects are so wide, how can you even begin to have an objective standard? Either you set the threshold too low, and people like me are considered legally "intoxicated" despite the additional alertness, or you set the threshold too high and you have people who are not considered legally "intoxicated" but are out of their mind.
You’re demonstrating absolutely zero critical thinking. Even if we put aside any health benefits (mental or otherwise) of a drug that also can be said to intoxicate you, what is inherently wrong with intoxication?
Permanent reduction of brain cells? Accidents? Disproductivity?
Of course you would try to stretch that effect on to lots of causes. And then argue for the same treatment to those elements. But you got to know that is a logical fallacy.
neurotoxicity can be a thing (excitatory neurotoxicity too! is also dose dependent.), but that regards research of the substance and so on. these are measurable things.
with drug use, harm reduction in the modern era is essential. pushing it away from the legal sphere means that people will not manage to reduce their harm as much.
all of this authoritarian shit doesn't stop people from doing things, it just stops them from doing it safely and getting help without being arrested.
diet sodas have aspartame which contains phenylalanine which can increase dopamine levels in the brain.
in this argument, tea, alcohol, diet soda, everything like that gets illegalized.
there's nothing wrong with intoxication, just being irresponsible with it and not reducing the harm you cause or suffer yourself through intoxication.
furthermore, amphetamine does the opposite of "lost productivity". so we should make that OTC by this merit? :p
everything meaningful is going to contain chemicals including those of a psychoactive nature or a nature that changes biochemistry, nothing will stop being chemicals.
Point isn’t about whether tobacco can be consumed in other forms. Point is that when there is an industry that revolves around the consumption of an item that industry will try to promote that item, even if it causes harm. Tobacco is one industry. oil is another.
In such cases, why would you legalize intoxicants? you would only promote intoxicants that way.
Nicotine or tobacco even are not intoxicants, strictly speaking.
Also what you’re proposing seems like an extremely slippery slope. What’s the issue with intoxicants? They are harmful? Well a lot of things are.. why don’t we ban sugar, saturated fat, maybe all the things that encourages sedentary behavior? Television, sofas, comfy beds? All illegal.
It was meant as first aid for treating scratches and similar not serious traumas.
It makes blood curdle faster. So instead of applying plaster you just press pencil along scratch and bleeding stops
Exact quote: "Mithoefer and his team plan to submit an application to the FDA this summer".
Shortly speaking, Mithoefer, some enthusiast that practice MDMA "trips" for women for decades (and only for women, what the hell???), only plans to do something in the future. It does not mean that he will do it in the future. It does not mean that FDA will accept his application. It only means that he continually feeds the media with rumors that his experiments in drugging abused women with currently illegal drugs will allegedly gain some kind of legitimacy in the future.
Agreed. It’s one of the best experiences you can have, IMO. And it really does bring people closer together. If you test your drugs and stay hydrated, you’re set for a great time.
It's true but I feel things do have a golden era, and for the rave seen, that era has passed, I'm sure there are other cool things happening, but the time I am describing is no more. There are new awesome things, just not that same vibe. One thing I'd say about it, and this is true, it was about the last thing I remember experiencing before smart phones become ubiquitous. People were fairly present and weren't distracted.
I thought 50s rock 'n' roll was cool and the whole scene around that, by the time I was 20, there was no way I was going to drive a El Dorado convertible to a milk bar and do the twist while watching Elvis perform hound dog. Times just change.
For some reason this reminds me of an encounter with a guy called "Dave" who used to frequent the more, er, bohemian end of Chapel Street in Melbourne way back in the day. He was clearly struggling with something but he was nice, and we had a friendly acquaintance.
Anyway, one day he comes right up to me and says, apropos of nothing:
"They never used to let me have fun... but they do now"
This is a surprisingly light summary of Revolver... which did not come to be called "Revs" until well after my days there were past. Reading about parties in 2018 makes me feel quite old.
So many memories... that cannot be shared in public.
On a technicality I can truthfully state that I once DJ'd at Revolver in 1998.
(It was an acquaintance's 21st birthday party on a Mon or Tues night in the front room, attended by about 50 people, and I was terrible. The friend I was helping became a pro DJ a bit later. I certainly didn't).
One of my most giggle inducing experiences at Revolver was a guy who’d bought a whole huge bunch on bananas from the fruit shop downstairs on a Sunday morning. I watched him shimmy and dance his way past the couches and decks, handing out bananas as he went. As he approached the bar all he had left was the one he was eating, so he put the last piece in his mouth and gave two guys leaning against the bar his empty skin.
They must’ve been on LSD, because it seemed like the most amazing thing they’d ever seen. The spent minutes holding up and gazing at it in wonder. Before dropping it on the floor and taking it in turns trying to slide on it like a cartoon character would (but barely moving a centimetre). Two trippers just having the absolute time of their lives while the rest of the chaos continued around them, everyone oblivious to it.
This is a bit of a limited view on how this clubbing goes down in practice. I'd even dare say it can on occasion work out just as well as therapy. The effect it has on how one experiences, feels, gets drawn into, the music is hard to describe, but for that experience alone it's not wasted in my opinion. Apart from that there's way more to 'clubbing' on MDMA than just being in the club. People more often than not go outside or to a quiet(er) space to just talk (easier on outdoor parties/festivals/warehouse-type raves etc but you get the piont). In fact this switching between partying and talking just makes the whole thing a lot better, the partying gives you a break of the deep conversations. The bonds formed with friends or strangers who become friends by shared thoughts there are pretty much for life.
Clubbing is its own therapy, as has been MDMA's use during it. It's a human ritual of shared empathetic expression that modern society attempted to "civilize" out of us. Chanting, rhythmic drumming, inducing an altered state of consciousness and dancing to firelight has been done for tens of thousands of years. It's as natural as the spring birds singing.
I'm not a club goer, but the people I know who do come back feeling energized and refreshed. They understand something about themselves that I don't, and I'll always envy that.
Based on what I've heard as well, couples that take it consensually and safely (by doing hours and hours of research on it), they seem draw closer to each other when they both do it.
It can be both, it can be beautiful in its own ways for both, I don't get why there is a need to say it's a waste in one instance, recreational drug use is not meant to be efficient, it's not meant to be "get the best out of the experience by doing this". It's fun in clubs, it's fun with a loved one on a quiet day, it's fun with close friends in an evening.
The real waste is trying to gatekeep experiences, or closing oneself to experiences because you deem there's just "one right way" to do it.
A similar source has told me that it’s not a waste at all in a music/dancing setting either. I would say it’s great if you want to get to and not away from somewhere.
I think my comment come of as too literal. It wasn't meant to imply that there is nothing of value to the club experience, but rather that a busy and loud environment like a club may over-highlight the stimulant aspects of the drug and tone down its more exceptional empathogenic traits, reportedly.
Couldn't disagree more (about it being wasted). It can definitely open your eye up to music you wouldn't have made yourself available to and let you enjoy it in ways you've never experienced.
Not wasted on raves at all. It’s an amazing experience out at a show. But it’s also equally amazing in a quieter environment with close friends / loved ones. It significantly increases empathy, allowing for opening up and connecting with others in a really special way
So what I’m wondering is how people in these trials deal with the depressive effects after it wears off. Or are the dosages so low it doesn’t matter? I see no mention of this in the article.
This is covered in the actual studies, which are quite readable if you're curious. The metric of concern is suicide attempts, and the rate is about the same between placebo and control groups. Long term followup data will be informative, particularly as they attempt to scale up the treatment.
Depressive effects aren't typically the greatest concern with this population. The risk to manage is traumatic material and sensations coming on more strongly afterward and overwhelming the person's capacity to regulate. This is one of the reasons the trauma informed psychotherapy aspect of the treatment is important.
Look at the research done by psychotherapists in the 1970s, there is a web of connections between Alexander Shulgin, the Boston Group, and a few psychotherapists of the time before MDMA was banned. It was quite promising at the time, unfortunately the War on Drugs completely destroyed those advances for the past 40 years.
So the question is not so much "does it fix something?" as it's been already answered at the time, the question is more "how to be the most effective with this type of treatment" which more research is needed for. PTSD seems to be a prime candidate for the effects of MDMA, if you've ever taken MDMA recreationally you understand how the openness it enables to talk about your feelings could be therapeutically used, what's needed to be honed down is the method to do it clinically consistently.
It doesn’t, therapy does. When you take it suddenly - within an hour - you find yourself in a very different mindstate where you don’t feel shit, maybe for the first time in your life. This experience can shorten the time you need to process, it can make the therapy shorter. It’s not the drug doing its thing, it’s you and the therapist together doing the thing.
I've done therapy very infrequently for the past 19, 20 years; and "big pharma" wasn't involved. Well, if one doesn't look at CZ producers as big pharma, haha.
MDMA was first synthesised and patented by Merck in the 1910s as a chemical precursor. It was researched by various people mainly in animals as an analogue to dopamine/noradrenaline at various times between then and the 60s. Very limited recreational use already started happening, possibly in the late 60s, certainly by the early 70s. Shulgin tried it mid 70s and also made and shared the drug with some of his friends. Some of those were interested in using the drug therapeutically.
>MDMA was first synthesized by German pharmaceutical company Merck KGaA in 1912 as an intermediate in the synthesis of another compound. Its psychoactive effects were not noted until the early 1960s. In the 1960s and 1970s, the drug was used in psychotherapy, although it was not an approved drug and no clinical trials had been performed. The drug was studied in Switzerland for use in individual, couple, and group therapies until 1993, when the Swiss Ministry of Health withdrew permission to use MDMA and LSD by psychiatrists due to concerns about lack of research methodology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6435835
>In 1986, MDMA was classed as a Schedule 1 drug by the United Nations according to its Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 due to its high potential for abuse, and most research was stopped. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7218633
I didn't say you were wrong, just adding more information, and I was doing it from memory. Looks like I did OK, but also missed a bunch of stuff. I have a really good memory but I trust it way too much some times.
But thanks for the further information! I actually didn't know Switzerland kept it going until 90s. I thought all research ended in the 80s
There's actually a mistake in that wiki article though. If you look at the source, it does in fact say Shulgin's friend Zeff was the first to start using it therapeutically since 1976. It says nothing about therapeutic use in the 60s, though it does mention LSD, which was used in the 60s before it was banned.
