TRAUMA | +60 articles

[mr peabody]

Using psychedelics to heal from sexual trauma

by Sophie Saint Thomas | DoubleBlind | 29 Jan 2020

Psychedelics are promising tools to help survivors reprocess their experience and heal from PTSD.

Psychiatrists diagnosed me with so many different conditions after I was sexually assaulted that I don’t remember them all. What was wrong with me? Suggestions included generalized anxiety disorder, insomnia, ADD, panic disorder, and depression. It turned out that I had PTSD, which is an insidious monster with many arms that do indeed manifest as everything from insomnia to flashbacks to depression. What I really wish is that someone had told me: “You were raped. That's awful, and life is going to be a bit harder now. But you are strong, and you will be okay.”

While I took SSRIs and went to therapy, my first memory of real healing was through cannabis. It took away nasty flashbacks getting in the way of my sex life. But while cannabis currently may be the most mainstream medicine in the psychedelic community, it’s far from the only one helping sexual assault survivors heal from trauma.

“I think that psychedelics can be used as tools to help people access greater embodiment and safety around reprocessing their trauma and, in the words of sex therapist and psychedelic integration therapist Dee Dee Goldpaugh, experiencing a ‘compassionate recasting’ of ourselves in the story,” says activist Leia Friedman, host of The Psychedologist: Consciousness Positive Radio. “MDMA is probably the most commonly used medicine for treating sexual trauma, but I have heard from different people that ayahuasca, psilocybin, ketamine, LSD, and mescaline-containing cacti were all helpful, as well.”

Years after my assault, when that asshole, depression—a side effect of PTSD—showed up again, I began Ketamine intravenous therapy, which has been shown to help both PTSD and treatment-resistant depression. It worked better than anything I had ever tried.

For those like Alexandra Evers, 30, psilocybin intervened. The Detroit-based graphic designer had been in an emotionally, physically, sexually and financially abusive relationship for six years. Against her abuser’s wishes and behind his back, she took shrooms with her best friend. “It was a transformative experience for me, and I believe I would be dead today if I hadn’t gone through with it,” Evers says of that first trip. “I was able to step outside of myself. I saw my life from a wholly different point of view that my inhibitions and denial hadn’t allowed me to see.” Later, alone in her apartment, a realization hit Evers: “I was suddenly overcome with the knowledge that he would kill me. It was a shining moment of perfect clarity that I had never experienced before and haven’t since. I knew that he would murder me if I didn’t pack up and leave. So I left.”

Evers’ experience demonstrates the unique power of psychedelics to provide a lightning bolt of realization. “Psychedelics like mushrooms help you access a shift in self-consciousness,” says Michelle Janikian, author of Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion: An Informative, Easy-to-Use Guide to Understanding Magic Mushrooms. Evers survived the abusive relationship she was in, but her departure from it was not uneventful. “Two months later my abuser shot himself in the head with a shotgun in that apartment,” she says. “I know that if I had been there, he would have killed me too. I am absolutely sure of it.” Today, Evers continues to use psilocybin on her own with people she trusts to guide her through working on her trauma.

Perhaps a reaction to such a cruel violation, perhaps because survivors who come forward are often called liars, but it’s beyond normal to blame yourself after sexual assault or abuse. Psychedelics, however, may be uniquely poised to treat PTSD stemming from sexual abuse because they help the survivor step outside their traumatized minds and see themselves compassionately. Ketamine works behind the scenes, restoring structure and anatomy, stimulating the dendritic and synaptic growth that was disrupted through childhood trauma. You experience relief about ten hours after the IV infusion (in my experience, a dissociative high is mostly a pleasant side effect), other medicines treat trauma through the trip itself.

“Using the psychedelic psilocybin and the empathogen MDMA can both create psychic spaces within individuals to gain a deeper sense of self,” says psychologist and sexologist Dr. Denise Renye. “MDMA can help an individual recollect a sexual assault without the PTSD symptoms of freeze, flight or flight. MDMA can also allow for the survivor to have a sense of empathy for their self that went through the assault, thus alleviating some of the self-judgement that sometimes accompanies it.”

Research shows that PTSD causes changes in the hippocampus, amygdala, and medial prefrontal cortex, which leads to alterations in memory. Psychedelics can help survivors see their experience the same way we’d view an assault that happened to our best friend—with compassion rather than self-blame.

Of course, there is one glaring, deplorable elephant in the room: Most psychedelics are illegal. While this doesn’t prevent survivors from obtaining them, it does make it tricky to do so in conjunction with therapy. “Integration is greatly important. This can be done with a therapist who understands the healing potential of plant medicines and empathogens,” Renye says.

Integration, as the name suggests, refers to integrating wisdom learned from a psychedelic experience into your day-to-day life. It’s wonderful to feel deeply compassionate to yourself during a trip, but speaking therapeutically, it doesn’t matter much if that feeling isn’t harnessed, nor those lessons maintained. “If proper integration is not done mindfully, it will just be a trip and the journey aspect of it will be lost,” Renye says. “It is a journey from feeling broken to experiencing one’s self as whole.” Proper integration, she adds, can be done with a therapist one-on-one, or in a group setting.

"Integration is an ongoing process that may include meditation, conscious body movement, mindful walking in nature, and sound healing," Renye says. She also recommends keeping a journal after the journey, as it might be easy to forget the transformations that occurred.

Cities such as Oakland and Denver are decriminalizing psilocybin, and researchers are conducting trials on MDMA, ketamine, and more for PTSD treatment. The future looks hopeful but we—survivors of sexual assault—have a long road ahead of us. For now, if you’re a survivor considering psychedelics, remember how important setting and integration are. “I do not advise recreational use for the purposes of healing a sexual trauma,” Renye says. “I also do not advise doing this sort of experience without the guidance of someone who is trusted and trained. If set and setting are not taken into consideration, there is potential for a deeper level of trauma to occur.”

At the very least, it’s a good idea to have a trusted friend with you to act as a “sitter.” “Before the journey, talk with the sitter about ways to ask for support, such as physical contact like a hand to hold or a shoulder to lean on,” says Leia Friedman. “It’s important to also discuss how to stop physical contact both verbally and non-verbally, and both people must agree that there will be no sexual contact during the session.” Some professionals warn against using psychedelics for trauma without the aid of a trained therapist, because there is a risk of opening old wounds.

I can’t emphasize enough the relief I felt after I found ketamine. It was as if I had been swimming in choppy waters (and acting like it) and suddenly I could stand calmly on land. “How the hell, did I not know this option existed earlier?” I thought over and over. I continued to see a therapist and take my SSRIs, but psychedelic medicine provided a massive change. If you’re a survivor reading this story, until you find your medicine, let me remind you: It’s not your fault.

Using Psychedelics to Heal from Sexual Trauma | DoubleBlind

Sophie Saint Thomas used ketamine to heal the trauma of rape; other survivors of sexual assault have also turned to psychedelics. Read more at DoubleBlind.

doubleblindmag.com

 

[mr peabody]

How psychedelics freed me from childhood trauma and taught me to accept my past

reset.me | May 28 2019

Putting the pieces together. May love be with you.

I grew up in a small village in the eastern countryside of Germany. Around the age of five, my father started to sexually abuse me. My mother, struggling with borderline syndrome, was neither able to protect nor rescue me.

Even though my mom knew about the sexual abuse, she would call me a liar, penalize and threaten me. To my mom I was the ugly, bad and unwanted child, while my sister became her second man in command to support my banishment.

These circumstances created a situation where my father was the only person I could in some way rely on as a child. He became the only person that would give me in some way the feeling of love and acceptance. At the same time, this created a symbiosis between us where he crossed all borders and abused me sexually until the age of 12. I was never allowed to show any feelings and always under the pressure to function as perfect as possible. There was not much love, just judgment, anxiety and punishment.

I divided and concurred myself, created a robot-version of myself and lived an awake dream, purely to survive – deeply believing I have a perfect family and grew up in the best circumstances and have the best parents. Not remembering a day of my childhood before I turned 12.

Many years later, I escaped of a very abusive and consumptive relationship, finding myself in the middle of a deep manic-depression with a desire to just die. I was only sleeping a couple of hours per night, working 15 or more hours per day, drinking lots and lots of alcohol, experiencing panic attacks a few times per day and severely depressed. I was very close to committing suicide but still had a tiny small inner belief that there must be help somewhere.

The next two years I sought help through behavior oriented therapy until much later I found out that I was suffering from a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The behavior therapy was an extremely important first step back into life and helped me to survive and get myself organized on a healthy schedule. Even so, I was still suffering from all my PTSD symptoms: panic, anxiety, eating disorders, unstable relationships, depressions, dissociations, all kinds of physical pain, nightmares, paranoia, a life outside of my body. To cut it short, it felt like a wild roller-coaster ride through hell that would never stop.

One year later I felt ready, to dig deeper into my past and joined a trauma therapy program, mostly working with EMDR, hypnotherapy and IADC. All of this work helped me a lot of work, understand what a trauma is and what my trauma in particular is about, why I am having panic attacks, what is triggering me, why I struggle so much with healthy relationships, how I can access my feelings and how to cry and to trust.

All of this was extremely important groundwork, guiding me to that day, where I read “Miss America by day” from Marilyn Van Derbur. This shifted my mindset and for the first time I could see how all my different battles I was fighting tie into a bigger in a bigger picture. I could “feel,” in the bigger scheme of things, why I was reacting the way I did and why I was so all over the place. I was so splintered, like a broken mirror. Still, it was not possible for me to feel myself. I started to understand and to remember but I could not access any feelings or my body.

In the meantime, I met the most wonderful, strongest and loving human being on earth, who became my partner and my best friend. He not only showed me what unconditional love is about, but also helped me on every step on my journey to heal. He also introduced me to the fascinating world of therapeutic psychedelic treatment.

After doing lots of research and not getting further in my therapy, I found psilocybin as a possible next step to open my inner door. I felt that all my feelings were stashed, deep down under a blanket of cement and I would need an atomic bomb to open this door. I started with a first test trip on magic mushrooms. Light dose, more to explore myself, the effect and also my reaction to it. The mushroom treated me well. I got shaken a bit and felt this might be a good door opener.

The second journey I took on 5grams of magic mushrooms at home, in bed, with closed eyes and headphones. I wanted to travel deep inside of myself. So far, so good, but there was one thing I hadn’t reckoned with. I am a perfect runner and hider. My inner SWAT team is trained to do whatever needs to be done to not allow me to connect with my feelings. What happened is that, I more or less passed out or dissociated. I “woke up” after three hours not remembering much and being truly convinced the trip was over. I learned that in the future I need a trip-sitter, who sits with me and is holding me back from escaping.

The next trip I planned was out in the nature together with my trip-sitter. It started in a little hut and ended with a walk at night, in nature. Heading out at night, in the dark back then was one of the scariest things I could imagine doing.

I took magic mushrooms (psilocybin), sat down and started to meditate. Every time I was on my way to escape, he would carefully hold me back. It was amazing! I transformed into sound and explored my body the first time without pain and discovered my feet.

I was able to connect to my inner child at the age of five. It brought me back to all of the wonderful feelings of my true-self and helped to realize who I am. The luggage that resulted was from my trauma. It gave me so much energy to continue my journey back to my true self and it also gave me the hope that I am so much more than just a broken mirror. It opened a door that I would have never been able to open without this magic treatment.

I continued my psychotherapy for another year and learned that working with trauma needs a lot of different strokes; meditation, a good therapist, safe home, art therapy, somatic body experience and love only to name a few.

Over time it became more and more clear that I was suffering the most from anxiety. Many, many years later after the incidents of my childhood, I was still not able to fully touch the ground because my anxiety was so deeply planted in me that I just couldn’t get through it. By the time, I discovered the wonderful work of psychotherapist Friedericke Meckel, learning that MDMA can be used to let go of anxiety.

I started my first journey with MDMA on 100 micrograms at home after a very adventurous day, with guitar music and a cozy blanket. I did not explore a trip in that sense, but all my anxiety was blown away and the first time in my life I could relieve my feelings. I could just cry it all out, for hours, without panic or anything else. Really just let it go. For me, knowing only a life in deep anxiety and the constant fear of punishment and dying, this was mind-blowing relief. A state whereI could never have imagined to getting to.

After this deep and healing experience, I went on two a second MDMA journey, but this time with a higher dose of 150 micrograms. I went out to the nature and found myself in high fascination for the world and deep inner peace. This experience really helped my body and my inner control team, to understand that it s ok, to let go and that I can survive without anxiety. A few days after this trip, I experienced a deep inner healing. It was as if all the pieces of the puzzle could now connect back together. I was finally able to reconnect to my old feelings. Feeling how it was to be abused for me as a child, not be loved, not be protected and never to be safe. And, it was ok – no panic. For people like me, with a heavy panic disorder, this opens a whole new world! I was able to feel myself and also my old feelings.

My third trip on MDMA (all with some weeks in between) was in a club. I had the intention to feel it out in public and have a good time. But, it surprised me again in a very different way than before. It struck me from the back and I felt for the first time that I missed my Mom. With all the hate, anger, disappointment and pain there was never room for the little girl just poorly missing her mommy.

Now I could feel deeply, how much I missed her and how sad I am that I in a way never had a mom. Also that as an adult women I needed to figure out everything myself without having someone (carrying the wisdom of womanhood) to be with me. I had never been able to cut the cord because the little girl in me was missing her so so much and still hoping that one day she would accept me as her daughter, just the way I am. It was there, for the first time that I could accept this as being part of me.

One year after my last magic mushroom trip, I went on to my annual winter-forest-hut-vacation. I had experimented in the last months with micro-dosing and explored some interesting outcomes. Mushroom micro-dosing helped me in daily life to stay in my body, made me braver but also more humble in the bigger scheme of the universe. Even so, I was not sure if I was ready for another full journey. There is this funny thing with mushrooms, the less you want them the more important it is that you take them. So I went on a 6 gram mushroom journey, in the valley of love, somewhere in a Polish nature reservation park. It blew me away.

The preparation with MDMA and helping me to understand my anxiety but also to not run away anymore made it an incredible experience. When I was at the peak, I looked into the deepest, darkest, dirtiest shit I was carrying with me. The stuff I usually avoid, I cannot. I must except it as part of myself even though it scares me so much that I start to run. I sat, in the eye of a thunderstorm, without body, just pure feelings and saw all the darkness.

I survived it. It is in me and that’s ok too. It felt as if the universe sucked me, chewed on me, puked me out into another universe and beamed me to a frozen hell. It feels like I was born anew in that night, finally landing on planet earth as one whole person. Thank God for my trip-sitter. I was later also able to explore the other side of yin-yang. I recalled happy memories, deep feelings from and for my mom. The feeling of her warm skin on my baby skin, her smell, her body and me being close to her. The feeling of her rubbing down my back after a bath. I came back to the point where I still had a mom. Not for long and not steady, but I had had a mom. I’ve experienced this unique love. And I am so thankful that I had the chance to feel it again and bring it with me to the present.

A mushroom journey is never an easy one – there is always darkness that comes with the light, there is always a yin to the yang. But, it helps so much to not only see the world in black and white.

I’ve always been split in many pieces and could barely accept my own story or my own past. It has always been one of the biggest battles to keep the good separated from the bad. The mushrooms (and MDMA) helped me to see myself fully as one person and also to allow myself to be this person and forgive myself. Traumatized people have the tendency to only see good or bad and nothing in between. On the journey of healing it is important to put both pieces together. Finally, I “felt” as though I am no longer alone, the stars will always be with me.

How Psychedelics Freed Me From Childhood Trauma and Taught Me To Accept My Past - Reset.me

Putting the pieces together. May love be with you. I grew up in a small village in the eastern countryside of Germany. Around the age of 5 my father started to sexually abuse me. My mother, struggling with borderline syndrome, was neither able to protect nor rescue me. Even though my mom knew...

reset.me

 

[mr peabody]

Treating the effects of trauma with cannabis

Michelle Thiessen and Sarah Daniels | CHACRUNA

We are all impacted by experiencing or witnessing traumatic events such as violence, accidents, and the death of loved ones. As we struggle to find ways to deal with the symptoms that can persist in the aftermath of experiencing trauma, cannabis is increasingly being hailed as a potential solution. Nearly 90% of adults in the USA have experienced a traumatic event severe enough to meet criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Of those of us who experience such a trauma, nearly 10% go on to develop full-fledged PTSD, a disorder that involves difficulty recovering from the traumatic event, and includes feeling irritable and jumpy, avoiding reminders of the trauma, intrusive memories, nightmares, insomnia, anxiety, and a pervasive sense of doom. In some cases, people may even feel as if the traumatic events are happening again. The symptoms of PTSD are severe on their own but are often made worse as sufferers may withdraw from family and friends, engage in problematic substance use, and experience suicidal impulses. Sadly, a sizeable portion of people who have PTSD do not respond to frontline treatments such as medication and psychotherapy. Due to the severity of PTSD, and the lack of effective treatment for many of those who suffer, the potential for cannabis to treat PTSD has been met with much hope and enthusiasm. Although we are not yet at the point where we can decisively say that cannabis is helpful for treating PTSD, research that can help answer this question is underway. As we wait for further results, a number of interesting findings have led scientists to believe that cannabis may help some people who struggle with the aftermath of trauma. In this article, we will take a look at some of the science behind the claims that cannabis can help treat PTSD.

People with PTSD using more cannabis

One way of understanding whether cannabis might help with PTSD is to examine naturally occurring cannabis use among people with PTSD. Surveys clearly show that individuals living with PTSD are more likely to use cannabis than those without the disorder. The behavior of people with PTSD involves efforts to cope with the disorder, and as such, elevated rates of cannabis use may suggest that these people feel that cannabis is helping to relieve their PTSD symptoms. Veterans are more likely than the general public to experience a traumatic event due to the nature of their work, and report using cannabis to help deal with the after effects of military-related PTSD. One survey found that more than half of veterans surveyed reported using cannabis, and one in ten said they used cannabis specifically to relieve symptoms caused by their trauma. Another study of veterans found that those experiencing less symptom recovery from traditional therapies were more likely to use cannabis, and that higher levels of PTSD symptoms are associated with more cannabis use, which may suggest that cannabis is being used to treat more persistent symptoms. Individuals with PTSD also report using cannabis to help with PTSD symptoms such as problems with sleep and mood. Taken together with the many informal reports from organizations that support people with PTSD in using cannabis therapies, the use of cannabis by people with PTSD suggests that cannabis therapies deserve careful examination as potential PTSD treatments.

Cannabinoids and PTSD: Evidence from inside and outside the human body

The cannabinoids most of us are most familiar with are the molecules produced by the cannabis plant, such as THC and CBD. However, our bodies are also equipped with a specialized system that produces its own cannabinoids. That system is called the endocannabinoid system, and it helps to regulate things like sleep, appetite, and our ability to handle stress. Differences in the endocannabinoid system that are associated with PTSD symptoms can help us to understand how plant-based cannabinoids might help with PTSD. While it is not clear whether a disruption in the endocannabinoid system is a result, cause, or combination of both with regard to PTSD symptoms, people who develop PTSD after experiencing a traumatic event have been found to have differences in their endocannabinoid systems compared to those who experience similar events but don’t develop PTSD. For example, an important study of individuals who were in New York during the 9/11 attacks found that those who went on to develop symptoms of PTSD had lower levels of the body’s self-made cannabinoid, anandamide, in comparison to those who did not develop PTSD. Interestingly, anandamide resembles the THC found in herbal cannabis, which suggests that using external cannabinoids like THC may help to supplement the body’s own internal cannabis system.

What do studies with animals tell us about cannabis and PTSD?

Animals also possess an endocannabinoid system and have their own ways of responding to trauma and stress. Studies of cannabis and stress in animals can provide some clues as to how cannabis use may impact stress response and learning in humans. After exposure to trauma, animals exhibit symptoms similar to those seen in PTSD, such as an amplified startle response and an impaired ability to unlearn conditioned fear responses. Previous studies have found that giving a cannabinoid to animals after exposing them to trauma can relieve these symptoms.

How does cannabis help with PTSD?

One of the key ways that cannabis may help people with PTSD is by improving sleep. Cannabis use can impact dreaming, and among those with PTSD, it may help to reduce the frequent and disturbing nightmares that are among the most distressing symptoms of the disorder. A study of incarcerated men found that nearly three-quarters of inmates with PTSD who took an oral capsule of THC had their nightmares reduce or stop entirely. Reducing nightmares may be particularly important for improving the quality of life of people with PTSD, as better sleep can help to equip people to deal more effectively with other stressors, and may help them be more active in treatment, and with family and friends. In addition to improving sleep and decreasing nightmares, cannabis may help those with PTSD by more generally reducing anxiety and improving mood. However, regular cannabis use can also lead to withdrawal symptoms when cannabis use stops. Symptoms of cannabis withdrawal can include irritability, anxiety, and nightmares. Because symptoms such as these may already be problems for people with PTSD, starting and then stopping cannabis use might ultimately make PTSD worse rather than better. Helping people with PTSD who use cannabis manage their use and potential withdrawal is an important challenge that may play a big role in determining if and how cannabis medicines can be effective treatments for PTSD.

Active studies and the future of research on cannabis and PTSD

Clinical trials are an important method of establishing the effectiveness of a treatment, and completing such clinical trials will be necessary before cannabis can become a recognized treatment for PTSD. There are currently two clinical trials underway in Canada and the United States that, together, will include almost 200 participants with chronic, treatment-resistant PTSD. Both are double-blinded studies using a crossover design and different CBD/THC ratios of cannabis, including a placebo containing only a trace amount of THC. Neither the researchers nor the participants know what potency they are receiving. Both studies also have a six-month follow-up after the active participation has concluded. It is hoped that results from these trials will be available by 2020, if not sooner. Although these results may go a long way toward telling us how cannabis might be helpful for treating PTSD, information from other sources, such as following people with PTSD who use cannabis over the long term, and examining different types of cannabis—and different types of PTSD—will also be needed to help us understand how this complex plant might play a role in treating this complex disorder. Given the prevalence of PTSD, and the lack of effective treatment for many who suffer, such research is very much warranted, particularly in light of preliminary evidence that suggests that cannabis may help with some of the most troublesome symptoms of PTSD.

Using Cannabis to Treat the Effects of Trauma

We are all impacted by experiencing or witnessing traumatic events such as violence, accidents, and the death of loved ones. As we struggle to find ways to deal with the symptoms that can persist in the aftermath of experiencing trauma, cannabis is increasingly being hailed as a potential...

chacruna.net

 

[mr peabody]

The role of trauma in treating addiction

by The Fix | 15 Oct 2020

People who have suffered trauma often need to address its lasting effects before they can get a handle on their substance use.

The word trauma is used today more than it ever was ten years ago. While some people might feel like the word is overused, many mental health professionals would say that we’ve just become better at recognizing the lasting impact that events — from losses to abuse — can have on our psyches.

Many people with substance use disorder have trauma in their backgrounds. Trauma causes residual lasting mental pain. If you don’t address the trauma, you might find yourself self-medicating to escape the mental pain. Although that might work for a moment, using drugs or alcohol to cover your mental pain will just cause more difficulties in the long run. That’s why it’s so important to find a treatment center that understands the interplay of trauma and addiction.

Understanding trauma

The American Psychological Association (APA) defines trauma as an emotional response to a terrible event. What constitutes a terrible event varies from person-to-person. An event that is traumatic for one individual might not cause trauma for other people, even if they experience the very same event. Anything from abuse to a natural disaster to an accident can cause trauma.

It’s normal to experience some psychological distress after a major event. Consider the stress that we all experienced early on during the pandemic. But, for most people, the stress gets better with time. If you find that your stress continues to interfere with your life, you might have trauma. Symptoms of trauma can include flashbacks, headaches and nausea.

Sometimes, trauma can evolve into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is characterized by lasting effects of trauma that impacts life. People with PTSD might have flashbacks or nightmares; they might avoid certain situations that remind them of the traumatic event.

The connection between trauma and addiction

There’s a close connection between trauma and addiction. A 2019 study compared people who were getting treatment for opioid abuse disorder with healthy individuals. It found that the people in treatment reported more severe traumas and more instances of trauma in their lives. The study found that the more trauma people experienced, the more likely they were to experience addiction.

The connection can be particularly strong for people who experience trauma as teens or children. Among teens who needed addiction treatment, 70% reported trauma in their backgrounds. In addition, 59% of teens with PTSD go on to develop a substance abuse problem.

Research like the ACEs study — which looked at adverse childhood experiences — have solidified the connection between trauma and addiction. Even seemingly minor ACEs, like growing up with divorced parents, can increase the risk for substance use disorder later in life.

Treatment for trauma

If you have experienced trauma or ACEs, and particularly if you believe you may have PTSD, you need to access a recovery center that is trauma-informed. Trauma-informed treatment centers have knowledge about the ways that trauma impacts the brain. They are able to help you address your substance abuse disorder, while also helping to control your trauma.

Of course, it is also a great idea to get specific treatment to help you overcome PTSD, if you are experiencing that condition. EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — is a type of therapy that is particularly effective for treating PTSD. During EMDR, you recall your traumatic event while doing to back-and-forth eye movements. Scientists don’t understand exactly why this is so effective at reprocessing the traumatic event, but research shows that people make huge improvements in just a few sessions.

The takeaway

Trauma is extremely common: up to 70% of American adults have experienced a traumatic event in their lives. Some people recover on their own, while the trauma lingers for others. Too often, people use drugs or alcohol to try to numb or escape the trauma.

Oftentimes, people need help to overcome trauma in their lives. Finding and utilizing a treatment center that has a trauma-informed approach to treating substance use disorder can help you understand the role that trauma plays in your addiction. Then, by addressing the underlying cause of your addiction, you’re better able to stay sober long-term.

The Role of Trauma in Treating Addiction | The Fix

People who have suffered trauma often need to address its lasting effects before they can get a handle on their substance use.

www.thefix.com

 

[mr peabody]

Dissolving childhood trauma through psychedelic therapy

by Michael Causton

In this presentation, I will detail my experience of the power of psychedelic therapy in dissolving the effects of childhood trauma. While subjective, I hope to provide some useful feedback on MDMA/Psilocybin therapy for therapists and patients. Treating childhood sexual and other abuse is notoriously hard. Conventional therapies are many but treatment is, in my experience and talking to several hundred other survivors over the years, rarely more than a partial success.

In my own case, conventional therapies allowed reduction in self-blame and an increased trust in relationships. However, the level of understanding and integration remained largely intellectual with little emotional depth. As a result, the core problems of complex PTSD, depression and self-rejection remained.

MDMA and psilocybin therapy made it possible to connect in real-time with the traumatic events of the past in a safe way (not so much cinematic, more like time travel). The result was an incredible experience of emotional release and then integration. This made it possible to "return home" to myself and, over time, become whole. The crippling problems of PTSD and depression dissolved. In my case, the deep-seated effects of childhood trauma could not be treated head on but through re-integration of the whole person.This was only possible through psychedelic therapy.

Michael was born and raised in the UK and has Masters degrees in Philosophy and Japanese from Cambridge and Stirling Universities. Married with two children, his day job is running a small business research company about Japan while also trying to pursue his passion for researching and writing up best practices for recovery from childhood abuse – and the rest of the time trying to keep up, unsuccessfully, with his sons on basketball and tennis courts.

He was assaulted and abused from aged 10. He tried many forms of therapy with highly qualified clinical psychologists over a 10 year period with partial recovery. Five years later he sought help again leading to MDMA-based therapy and then psilocybin with unqualified success.

Europe's Largest Psychedelic Conference Breaking Convention 2019

Europe’s largest psychedelic conference Breaking Convention (BC) is returning this August (16-18) to Greenwich, London, for its three day extravaganza.

psypressuk.com

 

[mr peabody]

MDMA and the Trauma of life threatening illnesses*

by Phil Wolfson, MD | psychedelic.support | 24 Nov 2020

Thanks to the success of modern medicine, more people are surviving life threatening illnesses (LTIs) than ever before. This also means more people are living with trauma that results from surviving these conditions. Join Dr. Phil Wolfson as he explores the results of an MDMA-assisted clinical trial for people with life threatening illnesses, and how psychedelic therapy could help treat, and even prevent, PTSD-LTI.

Modern medicine is producing a vast and rapidly increasing population of survivors of life threatening illnesses (LTIs) due to its successes. Unfortunately, for many the cost of survival may well be trauma to mind as well as body. From its difficult commencement, the impact on patients may well be harmful–with the shock and life change of diagnosis, the ensuing treatment which may well be arduous and diminishing of capacities both physical and mental, through often long term treatment, and then recovery. The nature of the traumas induced vary in depth, and symptomatology, on spirit and relationships.

Our experience with 18 subjects with life-threatening illnesses who enrolled in an MDMA-assisted clinical trial led us to the conviction that it is essential for prevention of this trauma that beginning with diagnosis of the LTI there be implementation of psychosocial strategies. Support for patients and their dear ones during the course of the illness and its medical treatment extending through the recovery period needs to be provided.

It is just not enough to focus our medical skills on interventions for illness and to leave on the sidelines the impact on the human experience. Our study delineated the breadth and variety of the traumatic reactions which we have defined as a new Post Traumatic Stress Disorder—PTSD-LTI. Delineation of the plethora of symptoms that make for this diagnosis has been described as well as criteria for diagnosis.
​

…we with our subjects were able to have significant impact on their traumatic residues, their fears for relapse and death…​

MAPS sponsored our unique Phase 2 study of anxiety as the primary marker for those with LTIs and a life expectancy of at least one year. Based on what may well be the most intensive psychotherapy with subjects who have trauma from life-threatening illnesses (LTI), with MDMA experiences as a fundamental part of the process, we with our subjects were able to have significant impact on their traumatic residues, their fears for relapse and death, and their struggle to make recoveries with full resumption of lives that had moved on—morphed from before their diagnosis and the sudden threat of protracted illnesses and death itself.

MDMA-assisted psychotherapy is a reciprocal process and as much as our subjects responded and changed, so did we as practitioners. In fact, we experienced profound changes in our awareness of illnesses multiplicity of manifestations, the causation and breadth of trauma and our own self concepts.

Over the course of the three years of this intensive and intense study, we experienced a progressive revelation of the traumatic nature of this diagnosis and its aftermath, and its various manifestations in cognition, motivation, affect, spirit, meaning, relationships, and view of self. Exposed to our subjects’ suffering and impacted ways of being and to their tension with potential recurrence of illness and death, we grew to be a unit for exploration and healing.

So many of our sessions were marked by strong emotions and we often experienced a unity with our subjects’ suffering and liberation from it. For the mind, heart and spirit are inseparable and the MDMA experience carries this at its center. There is joy in this work, meaning and connection that is far more possible to achieve in the long and deep sessions of MDMA work.
​

MDMA-assisted psychotherapy is a reciprocal process and as much as our subjects responded and changed, so did we as practitioners.​

While anxiety was our primary marker for enrollment in our program and for measuring its outcome, trauma in its impact on our subjects, was the predominant cause of the suffering they experienced. And while our focus was on the specific causation of the LTI and its aftermath, earlier trauma also was an inevitable part of the work.

We used the STAI Trait measure in conformity with other studies of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. But if I were to do it again, and we are in the process of preparing a ketamine-assisted psychotherapy study of LTIs, I would and will pursue using assessments of trauma as the primary measure.

In the best sense of developing clarity about suffering with LTIs (and other forms of suffering) coming to the PTSD-LTI designation continues the expansion of psychology’s reclamation of trauma to its true status as the overwhelming cause of human distress and dysfunction. Sadly, that realization remains incomplete.

Near attitudinal blindness continues to the effects of traumas to humans caused by prejudice and culturally embedded formats–such as racism, sexism, caste, and class that are forms of domination; to war; refugee displacement; poverty and to illness. That myopia remains and limits our evolving view. Prevention of trauma remains the abiding issue for developing a healthy population instead of a wounded population—as per the World Health Organization.
​

Prevention of trauma remains the abiding issue for developing a healthy population instead of a wounded population.​

Our view of trauma from within psychiatric diagnostic categories such as those for depression and anxiety tends to be only partially reflective of lives lived and affected by past and ongoing trauma. Focusing on limiting clusters of symptoms, diagnoses can be constraining conceptual structures that prevent clear views of the complex matrix of existence and the fullness of the expressions of suffering in their myriad aspects.

It is essential to turn to a comprehensive and phenomenological view of suffering–its prolongation beyond the intruding traumas that are immediately afflictive; an awareness of prolonged traumatization; developmental trauma; its diverse expression in diverse beings.

This enables the therapeutic conversations that give forth recognition and validation to trauma victims in need of understanding themselves and for being understood. This does and will engender the conscious connections that are healing in themselves and lead to the alleviation of suffering–to the extent we are able; and to the prospect for better caring of those who have been afflicted with traumas.
​

What makes this so appealing has been the demonstration of efficacy in small Phase 2 studies with MDMA in PTSD; with psilocybin for LTIs, and now, ours, the first to test MDMA as a treatment for this indication.​

While attention to the experience of those facing death from LTIs has become a more prominent part of palliative care and hospice consciousness and there have come to bear a variety of psychotherapies, it is only in recent years that it has been possible for a resumption of clinical interest in the potential for psychedelic medicines–provided in an assisted psychotherapy format-to address PTSD-LTIs.

What makes this so appealing has been the demonstration of efficacy in small Phase 2 studies with MDMA in PTSD; with psilocybin for LTIs, and now, ours, the first to test MDMA as a treatment for this indication. Prior studies with psilocybin have demonstrated the value of peak experiences on PTSD-LTIs and reduction of anxiety and depression. MDMA as less of a hallucinogen and operating through a variety of means to promote empathic connection to oneself and others, offers a different modality for psychotherapy.

With its wide variety of manifestations, the treatment of PTSD-LTI is an individualized matter. Yet, clusters of concerns emerge from personality, family, history, morality, religiosity, culture, gender, class, ethnicity and more. ‘Taking stock’ as life is threatened is one common path. So too is ‘denial’, even until the very end. So too is the great fear of cessation and non-being. As well as: who we are; who we feel ourselves to have been; peace or dissatisfaction; love or rage; or the mishmash of it all. Confusion is common to us and it comes and goes.

The compassionate non-judgmental work of being a therapist in such a crucible is many sided—moving, frustrating, loving, opening, patient, persevering, available, self-reflective, resonant, orchestrating, social working, family system conscious, and above all respectful of the differentiation of each of us. It relies on assisting in the access to each of our own desires for healing, connection, and realization.

In essence, for PTSD-LTI patients, there is a relatively specific set of treatment outcomes that are desirable and are relevant to the diagnosis. These can be clustered as follows with ratings provided subjectively:​

• Did your experience help you with recovery from the emotional effects of being diagnosed and treated for a life-threatening illness?​
• Do you feel more vital?​
• Are you able to feel more pleasure?​
• Do you have a greater sense of peace?​
• Did your experience help you to connect and integrate with the important others in your life?​
• Did your experience help you with your fears of death and dying?​
• Did your experience help you think about and plan for what you consider your remaining life span?​
• Have you been able to find and give meaning to your remaining life?​
• Do you feel you have made peace with the possibility of having a limited future?​
• Have you been held by or found a spiritual or religious path?​
• Have you been helped in planning for future treatment options and for your ultimate death?​
• Do people in your life notice a difference in you in these ways and other ways?​

While the improvements as expressed by the assessment measures used in our study certainly indicate these issues being addressed, it was in the therapeutic work with our subjects over the many days of contact in which these concerns were delineated and assistance rendered. Our study highlights the need for more sensitive measures that reflect the manifestations of PTSD-LTI and allow for assessment of the benefits of treatments for this difficult state.

It also supports the benefit of an intensive psychotherapeutic approach applied within a brief therapy context. The six-month follow-up assessment and psychotherapy session validated the continuing impact of our MDMA-assisted psychotherapy and is in contrast to the usual 8-week evaluative period for antidepressant trials. It argues for the intensity of contact between therapists and subjects as a cost-effective process.
​

It argues for the intensity of contact between therapists and subjects as a cost-effective process.​

MDMA-assisted psychotherapy provides a unique approach to conscious work with patients. With the prolonged sessions that last 6-8 hours, therapists are more available to patients and must present as human beings in greater fullness than in conventional work. Trained to be cautions of countertransference and working dyadically, interaction is more alive and fruitful. The therapeutic crucible is based on the reality testing that is forthcoming from this contact.

Under MDMA’s particular influence, an open mind ensues with the possibility of letting go of persistent traumatic embedded attitudes caused by the LTI impact. While MDMA is not significantly hallucinogenic, it is powerfully trance and reverie inducing.

Mind moves in both recollection and imagination and is freed from its usual constraints and inhibitions. It opens the floodgate of compassion for self and others and suffering is realized, contextualized and expressed. By reducing the alarm system’s traumatically induced hypervigilance and self-protective mechanisms, MDMA balanced with the presence of therapists and the nest that has been constructed with its down lining of the assurance of safety—unlocks the fear-shut awareness of suffering and its causes. The ensuing rush of the spring waters of healing and balancing a new gush forth.

Each person, in their particular idiosyncratic fashion, may well experience the restructuring of self and an awakening of view leading down new paths and resulting in the ripening of the fruit of new life. As if there has been an inherent internal force awaiting its liberation, its resumption of being the guide to life lived ethically and passionately, creatively and in connection.

Rarely do psychiatrists and therapists write or speak of the exhilaration of having the opportunity to work intensively with their patients. The success of our study is reflected in the deeply moving experience of working with our subjects as well as in the outcome measures.

To succeed in psychotherapy, therapists must find compassion, respect and understanding for their patients—at least to some extent. MDMA-assisted psychotherapy brought us into intimate contact with the deepest of life’s struggles. While maintaining a therapeutic stance, we also participated in the intimacy of a shared human experience that touches us all.


Evan Sola, PsyD, MDMA therapist in LTI study talks about his experiential training

MDMA-assisted psychotherapy has this particular nature to it. It does not work in this manner for everyone—no therapy is universally successful or applicable to all the ways in which humans are dilemma-d. So, as we build the psychedelic psychotherapy toolbox, our potential for administering a broader range of experiences adds to our hopeful success rate in alleviating and ameliorating suffering.

The work with psilocybin for LTIs has demonstrated its utility in providing a hallucinogenic experience that benefits those suffering with PTSD-LTI. This occurs with a different therapeutic construction that is deeply experiential in its inner liberation, and not primarily of a psycholytic nature as is the case with MDMA. The nest is built, the therapeutic relationship is supportive and the experience/experiencer interaction does the liberating rectification relying on the ‘mystical experience’ of the journey. This is the elegantly performed process initiated decades ago with mushrooms and LSD.

Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy available as presently the only legal psychedelic is of yet another nature. It can be psycholytically applied at low doses that reduce defensiveness and create access somewhat in the same vein as MDMA, or with more robust doses creating a time-out from ordinary mind, ego dissolution and access to realities of new construction.

Freed from obsessions, daily concerns and debilitating moods, the journey is liberating and on return enables a reconstruction of self and the recognition that not all is suffering, despair and inevitable. Ketamine is a profound hallucinogen which when embedded in its particular format for therapeutic work is beneficial for all sorts of human predicaments. And marijuana deserves its place and the practice of marijuana-assisted psychotherapy is growing and as it is legal now in most states can be amalgamated with ketamine or stand on its own.
​

All psychedelics tend to move a person into a spaciousness of mind that is meditative in nature given our separation from constraints, usual attitudes and prejudices.​

The intent of all psychedelic psychotherapies is to result in a reduction of out mental attachments and enable freedom to explore our lives without being so encumbered. All psychedelics tend to move a person into a spaciousness of mind that is meditative in nature given our separation from constraints, usual attitudes and prejudices.

Psychedelic experiences tend to enhance one’s ability to imagine, be fresh and creative. Integrated with daily practices and the active realization of our connectedness to all things and all beings, they tend to bring a person closer to each other and ourselves for lives lived in gratitude, sharing, love and community. It is up to us to realize their potential as we build our practices and learn the potentialities for the therapeutic application of psychedelic medicines.

In the psychedelic gladiator’s arena, confusion arises. A tendency to extol the virtues and superiority of one medicine over another conforms to the ‘ownership’ of the psychedelic pharma development of their uses for prescription. Money, fame, and first to the finish line motivation all create mystification.

In fact, all psychedelic medicines have potential for broad effects and broad applications. Head-to-head studies may occur but seem frivolous. The realms for the therapeutic applications of our medicines as they become available are nurtured by our understanding of our patients, their particularities, personalities and struggles and our knowledge of the best practices and the therapeutic prospects emerging form our work together. This is the best way to proceed!

*From the article here :

MDMA and Life Threatening Illnesses - A Commentary to Our Study

Join Dr. Phil Wolfson in exploring MDMA-assisted therapy for people with life-threatening illnesses and how psychedelic therapy helped.

psychedelic.support

 

[mr peabody]

MDMA could revolutionize care for trauma, a social worker’s perspective

by Courtney Hutchison | Feb 19, 2019

In my role as a social worker and psychotherapist, I see so many clients suffering from the repercussions of trauma—experiences of abuse, neglect, and discrimination—that have left them struggling to feel safe on a fundamental level.

Healing from these traumas invariably focuses on helping these clients overcome feelings of disempowerment and disconnection, rebuilding interpersonal trust and intimacy in the context of the therapeutic relationship.

At the same time, there is growing recognition in the mental health field that we must address trauma across multiple levels: not only interpersonally or psychologically, but physiologically. We must also heal the way trauma inscribes itself on the brain and body, leaving survivors hijacked by nervous systems that vault into fight, flight, or freeze at a moment’s notice.

That is why it is imperative that social workers, and all mental health professionals, take notice when a new promising treatment comes along that seems to treat trauma across these multiple levels: the limited, adjunctive use of MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) in psychotherapeutic treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) presents just such a treatment.

MDMA-assisted therapy as a breakthrough treatment

Research on MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD has been growing over the past 15 years, showing remarkable success in clinical trials. The FDA granted it “breakthrough therapy” status in 2017 based on these strong results.

For example, a 2011 study found that 83% of those receiving a combination of supportive psychotherapy and two MDMA-assisted psychotherapy sessions no longer met criteria for a PTSD diagnosis after treatment, compared to only 25% of those who received the same supportive psychotherapy and a placebo.

Moreover, these studies were working with the hardest-to-treat cases—clients whose PTSD had failed to respond to other treatments, such as prolonged exposure therapy, other cognitive behavioral therapies, or pharmaceutical medications. Follow-up studies have shown that the majority of those helped are still PTSD-free nearly four years later.

These striking findings led me and my colleague, Dr. Sara Bressi, to explore the potential of this treatment, especially given the stigma often attached to MDMA as being the primary ingredient in the recreational drug “molly” or “ecstasy” (though substances found in recreational settings are rarely observed to be pure MDMA).

This article is a summary of the findings from our recent paper on this topic, including: why mental health professionals are in dire need of better treatment for PTSD, how MDMA-assisted psychotherapy works, and how important a treatment like this could be for addressing the immense burden of trauma in vulnerable communities, especially communities of color and low-income communities.

Treating PTSD is an uphill battle

For those with PTSD, past traumatic events intrude upon their daily life through flashbacks, nightmares, and pervasive anxiety and hyper-vigilance that makes it difficult for them to engage in day-to-day life, and can make it especially difficulty to talk about or reflect on their traumatic experiences.

In an attempt to minimize their symptoms, individuals with PTSD often avoid anything that could trigger them, and begin to isolate themselves from the world and others—consequences that tragically cut them off from the potentially healing effects of relationships, both within their personal lives and within the context of therapy.

Existing PTSD treatments try to reduce these symptoms in a few different ways: psychiatric medications try to change brain chemistry to reduce anxiety; exposure therapies try to de-link trauma triggers from the strong fear response; skills-focused therapies target areas such as emotional coping and interpersonal skills; other trauma-informed approaches try to create a sense of safety in session that rebuilds trust over time and extends outside of the therapy room.

Unfortunately, these treatments often have mixed results and do not meet the needs of all people with PTSD: studies in veterans, for example, show that more than 70% of those engaging in PTSD treatment do not see significant improvement.

How does MDMA-assisted psychotherapy work?

In MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, the MDMA acts as a catalyst for the therapeutic process, working synergistically with regular psychotherapy sessions. Biochemically, MDMA releases chemicals that increase a sense of well-being, enhance empathy and feelings of closeness to others, and dramatically reduce fear and anxiety.

A potentially key ingredient in this process is oxytocin, sometimes called the “love hormone” because we release it when we bond socially, when we are with people we care about, and even when we cuddle with our pets.

In a course of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, traditional talk therapy is interspersed with two or three medicated sessions. These medicated sessions occur over 6-8 hours (the drug’s duration plus a few hours), under medical supervision, and consist of periods of quiet introspection and client-led discussion of traumatic material, facilitated by two therapists.

Non-drug psychotherapy sessions then help process and understand what came up for client while on the drug. After treatment, which generally occurs over 8-15 weeks, the majority of participants are not only PTSD-free, they report an “increased self-awareness,” “increased ability to feel emotions,” and “improved relationships in general.”

Though research on why MDMA is such a powerful catalyst is still new, in our paper we hypothesize that MDMA’s fear-reducing and pro-social affects work together to help clients tap into their capacity to heal, allowing them to engage in therapy faster and more profoundly than they could otherwise.

The fear-reducing effects help clients think and talk about their trauma without being as hijacked by flashbacks or panic symptoms, allowing them to gain perspective on what happened to them and integrate it into a larger narrative of their lives.

The pro-social effects help clients trust and bond with their therapists and “take in” the support and empathic attunement they provide—a task that is especially difficult for those who have had their trust violated through interpersonal trauma and abuse.

Moving forward: How this treatment could be a game-changer

That MDMA-assisted psychotherapy has worked so rapidly, and so effectively, in many people who have not responded to existing treatments is a powerful testament to its potential—especially for low-income communities and communities of color who disproportionately experience trauma.

At the same time, it is unclear what access to this treatment will be like for these populations. Given that people of color and low-income individuals already face the dual hurdle of being more likely to experience trauma, and less likely to have reliable access to health care, it will be essential that social workers be attuned to these potential barriers and be fierce advocates for access to this breakthrough treatment.

First and foremost, trauma survivors have experienced ruptures in trust—trust in others, in the safety of the world, and in their own inherent value. Too often, these ruptures are then tragically re-experienced in relationships with loved ones, clinicians, and institutions.

If MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, in helping clients move toward spaces of empathy and trust, can facilitate and accelerate repair of these ruptures, its use will have repercussions far beyond the treatment of PTSD symptoms.

It could enable clinicians to more readily, more consistently, and more profoundly tap into what psychotherapy at its best offers: a pathway toward more fully, authentically, and lovingly engaging with themselves and their lives.

https://psychedelic.support/resources/mdma-assisted-psychotherapy-trauma/​

 

[mr peabody]

Ibogaine and the treatment of trauma

by David Dardashti | CISION | 9 Mar 2021

The most effective means for a person to deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is to internalise and relive the events in the past. In doing so they are confronting repressed emotions associated with feeling associated with the trauma. Research suggests that Ibogaine Hydrochloride helps people gain an introspective experience of past endeavors. In doing so people are able to understand how the events in their lives have contributed to their present situation. It also suggested that Ibogaine helps with the personality defects associated with trauma by distributing a balance among cerebral hemispheres in the brain. A Clinical study done on special forces soldiers from 2015-2017 displayed a high reduction in symptoms relating to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with the therapeutic treatment of Ibogaine.

The mind body problem suggests a conception of thought processes that can be perceived in a similar manner to a computer and its operating system. In other words, the functionality of the brain can be perceived as a concrete entity similar to hardware of a computer (For example an HP). On the other hand the mind can be perceived as the abstract software used to execute programs on a computer (E.G. Microsoft). It is essential to understand psychological complications through both a biological and neurological standpoint. One of the most difficult struggles mankind faces is post traumatic stress disorder. Ibogaine hydrochloride can help a person recover from the emotional turmoil from their past. Previous research suggests that this holistic approach will aid a person in recovery on both a neurological and psychological level.

It is essential to begin an understanding of the neurological benefits of ibogaine hydrochloride in relation to post traumatic stress disorder. Studies have shown that ibogaine influences the chemicals in the brain which influence rapid eye movement during sleep. (Maps). One of the main issues associated with trauma are night terrors. This dilemma empairs a person to enter one of the most vital sleep cycles. A cycle which is responsible for restoring a person's natural chemical makeup responsible for happiness and serenity. The ibogaine helps this process by activating systems in the emotional part of the brain, which is most active during early infancy. Aside from restoring the physical entities impaired as a result from the trauma this begins to establish a therapeutic approach to ibogaine treatment for post traumatic stress disorder.

Moving on to the therapeutic benefits of ibogaine hydrochloride in the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder. It has been suggested that the ibogaine helps a person remember the events associated with their trauma without having the emotional strain that occurred during the event (erowid). Essentially, the person enters an introspective state of mind that allows them to internalise the events from their past. In doing so they are able to grasp the various life outcomes resulting from these tragic events. Unlike other hallucinogenic drugs, ibogaine does not cause any distortions in reality or thought disturbances (erowid). What the person experiences during the treatment are thoughts and feelings that come from within, without any outside influence. This allows for an uninterrupted reality based therapy without any distortions. The person gains perspective on their past, present, and future. This perception is not influenced by environmental factors that cause distortions. A recent study involving veterans struggling with PTSD has helped elaborate on this framework.

The therapeutic benefits of ibogaine had been speculated to aid veterans who had witnessed ongoing trauma during wartime. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7359647/)

The introspective experience of the ibogaine would be crucial to these trauma victims, since they have experienced so many events that they do not even know which ones have caused them the most pain. Through the introspective experience of ibogaine, the person is able to relieve their past, knowing which events have caused them the most pain and find an internalised solution to this problem. These experiments showed exceptional success as more than 80 percent of the participants reported. Significant decreases in levels of depression and anxiety for months after the treatment.

In conclusion, ibogaine hydrochloride shows promises of success on both a biological and psychological level. This is essential in the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder, since both the mind and brain suffer disturbances as a result of trauma. Ibogaine helps rewire the chemical makeup of the brain to a pre traumatic state. While this is occurring, the mind is influenced to the point where a person received an internalised form of therapy via introspection. Everyone deals with trauma in their own way. The ibogaine treatment provides a solution geared towards an individual person's particular needs.

Ibogaine Treatment for Trauma

/PRNewswire/ -- The most effective means for a person to deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is to internalise and relive the events in the past. In doing...

www.prnewswire.com

 

[mr peabody]

Can MDMA help heal grief? ​

by Charley Wininger | LUCID | 3 Mar 2022

It was a serene day by our secluded spot by the lake in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, but my wife Shelley was sobbing uncontrollably. Clutching the framed picture of her handsome, smiling son (my stepson), she knew he was finally free.

It was a moment none of the forty of us in the midst of an MDMA experience would ever forget.

MDMA, or Methelenedioxymethamphetamine, commonly known as Ecstasy or Molly, is the still-illegal drug that recently demonstrated significant results in Phase 3 clinical trials providing profound and apparently lasting relief for sufferers of intractable cases of PTSD.

Shelley and I hoped that this medicine (we prefer the term to “drug”) would help us heal our grief. Now in our early seventies, we’ve taken it together four or five times a year ever since we met over twenty years ago. Each experience has been either healing, bonding for us as a couple, or simply joyous.

Certainly this is in part due to our caution. We know at our age that if we did a powerful substance like MDMA irresponsibly, it would knock us on our butts. And Shelley, a retired nurse, is conscientious about our health. So we always test it for purity; weigh the powder to the milligram; stay adequately hydrated the entire time; and replenish our bodies with plenty of sleep, 5-HTP, and healthy food for days afterwards.

For us, the scientific revelations of this “party drug” as a therapeutic medicine have simply confirmed our lived experience. So much so, we long ago decided to start hosting annual group gatherings for our friends (who bring their own medicine), and these have become increasingly popular.

Nine days before that occasion, I awoke to the sound of blood-curdling screams coming from our living room. I bolted in to find Shelley, her phone flung across the room, pounding the couch and bursting with horror as if she were witnessing her heart being ripped from her chest.

“It’s Scott.”

Shelley’s son Scott had just moved into a house with his new girlfriend, his two cats and her little dog. Earlier that morning, his girlfriend had found him dead and slumped over on their couch. He was 39. (We are still awaiting the autopsy results.)

We both knew that our grieving process, especially Shelley’s, would take a long time. Not being religious, she wasn’t exactly sure where to begin. She did know that nine days later we were scheduled to participate in the group experience. Though devastated, neither of us doubted for a moment that we’d be attending.

So on that day in Prospect Park, we gathered with our friends – of all ages, from all walks of life, and from all over the country. Earlier in the week, while sharing the news of her loss with those who would be coming, Shelley had requested a healing circle at some point during the day, for herself and anyone else who needed it. We were therefore expecting a healing experience of some sort. But what happened that day startled the both of us.

It turned out that many of us in this time of pandemic, fear and isolation had something to grieve. One, a fellow boomer, spoke of losing his mom in just the past week. He said he felt like he needed to scream in anguish. To be honest, at that moment I thought, Oh my God, please don’t scream here in the park!

Shelley, however, threw him a cushion and told him to just do it. (I thought, “I’m a psychotherapist. Why didn’t I think of that?”) Three times he let loose into the cushion, to his great relief, and to ours on his behalf.

After everyone who wished to had spoken, Shelley unwrapped a photo of Scott that a friend had enlarged and framed, and which she couldn’t look at until that moment. She showed it to the group and started to weep. She spoke of how her son had been in pain all his life – great mental anguish, and, the past few years, great physical pain as well, due to a back injury.

At this point, I needed to speak up. “What I haven’t shared with you until now, Shelley, is that the day Scott died, I felt his presence there in our living room. He was sending us his love, and seemed to want to reassure us."

“He was smiling. ‘I’m free,’ he said.”

It was then that Shelley burst like a dam, erupting into deep, cathartic sobs. And all at once, everyone seemed moved to huddle all around her, with those closest placing their hands gently on her head, legs, and arms. The rest of us reached out to touch someone touching her, until it felt as if we’d become one organism sending healing energy to the part of us that needed it.

When Shelley lifted her head and opened her eyes, she felt this swelling human wave of love washing over her, flooding her with the healing intention of forty friends. It was a communal heart-tipped arrow that seemed to pierce her agony. Her crying seemed to shift from pure pain to a kind of surrender, acceptance, and peace.

Several days later, a participant wrote to us, “I never want to go to a traditional wake or funeral again, now that I’ve seen this alternative!”

Now, nine months later, Shelley still speaks of how that day profoundly alleviated her grief. And watching this happen for her helped heal me as well.

Our healing process is going to take some time, of course. But while Shelley will always start to weep whenever the subject comes up, she seems neither broken nor debilitated by this great loss.

Grief is an eccentric companion, peculiar to each individual. For us, MDMA helped. Due to its ability to increase empathy in those under the influence, our tragic loss will forever be associated with an unabashed outpouring of love, caring and connection that reverberates to this day. And due to the MDMA-spurred release of serotonin, which enhances feelings of wellbeing, Shelley felt safe enough to lower her defenses, bare her soul, and allow that turbo-charged gush of love to enter and serve as a balm to her raw and wounded heart.

That day made us wonder what it would be like to live in a world where people would gather when tragedy strikes, use MDMA to connect with those most bereft, and directly participate in their healing. Indeed, it was the combination of community and this remarkable medicine that was so consoling. Together they seemed to work with tragedy and loss like light works with shadow.

Who can imagine the applications for this uncanny compound still to be discovered? We recognize that our experience is purely anecdotal. We look forward to solid research involving MDMA and grief.

Can MDMA Help Heal Grief? - Lucid News

A psychotherapist describes how MDMA, used in a private gathering with friends, can help heal grief.

www.lucid.news

 

[mr peabody]

Why some therapists are risking arrest to heal trauma using psychedelics

by Aaron Ernst | Al Jazeera

For years, Andreas struggled to let go of the childhood physical and emotional abuse he suffered at the hands of his father. For him, the verbal abuse was the worst.

“I would have taken a beating any day than to be told that, ‘You’re a piece of s—t,’” said Andreas, who asked we not use his last name. “A punch heals; words don’t. Words stick with you for a long time.”

Years of conventional talk therapy did little to help. And as time passed, the traumatic memories became more and more intrusive.

“I found myself in self-destructive patterns – drug abuse, just not taking care of myself,” he said. “I had violent outbursts that would happen a lot, too.”

Then, one of the therapists he was seeing made a surprising suggestion: Andreas would perhaps get more out of therapy if he was under the influence of drugs, specifically psychedelics. He gave Andreas a number to call.

“I set up an interview, sat down, talked, and decided that this is something I wanted to pursue,” he said.

Andreas had stumbled into an underground world of therapists and self-described healers who are treating traumatic memories with the help of drugs, like MDMA, LSD and psilocybin. After just a few sessions of treatment with MDMA, Andreas says the anger and resentment he’d felt towards his father for decades just melted away.

“You realize that you're not that scared kid anymore. All those defense mechanisms that you built up when you were a child, you don't need that anymore,” he said.

“You're not under threat from your father anymore. You haven't even seen your father in 40 years, what are you scared about?”

Andreas says the therapy changed his life, and that he is no longer trapped in the past.

“No matter what can get thrown at you, you realize that it's really not that big of a deal,” he said. “As long as you're breathing, it's OK.”

Building a connection

While Andreas’ sessions have been life-altering, what he is doing could land him in jail. Decades ago, the government placed psychedelics in the same category as heroin and meth — drugs with a high potential for abuse and no legitimate medical purpose.

New research, however, is beginning to call the government’s hard line into question.

“It’s education that is important,” said Neal Goldsmith, a psychotherapist who helps to organize the annual “Horizons” conference, a gathering of scientists who are doing research into the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics.

One prominent attendee at the most recent “Horizons” conference was Rick Doblin, founder of MAPS, an organization that has poured tens of millions of dollars into psychedelic research.

“Psychedelics are a way to build a connection with others, to build empathy, to build spiritual experiences,” Doblin said.

A flurry of recent clinical trials done by MAPS and other institutions, such as NYU and Johns Hopkins University, have shown psychedelics to be effective in treating a broad range of neurological disorders, from depression and addiction to anxiety and even autism.

And unlike antidepressants, patients given psychedelic-assisted therapy don’t need to be medicated for an extended period of time.

“It’s not meant to be like a daily medication that changes people’s biochemistry,” Doblin said. “People only get MDMA three times in our treatment process. People only get psilocybin or LSD a few times. The goal is to actually cure the problem.”

One of the most promising applications is one familiar to trauma survivors like Andreas: the use of psychedelics and therapy to take the sting out of traumatic memories.

“The results have been extremely promising in terms of outcomes,” Doblin said. “In fact, so promising that some of the people that have looked at the data said that it’s too good to be true.”

In one study funded by MAPS, war veterans with treatment-resistant PTSD were given MDMA along with psychotherapy. After just a few sessions, 83 percent of participants no longer fit the criteria for PTSD.

In the case of PTSD, Doblin says that psychedelics appear to work by allowing a patient to recall the painful past, while excising the visceral fight-or-flight reaction that normally accompanies traumatic memories.

“They reconsolidate, or restore the memory, in a different way so that it's not connected to the fear,” he said.

‘The beast is there’

Doblin is hopeful that the FDA-approved clinical trials currently underway will lead to the legalization of psychedelic-assisted therapy in the coming decade. He understands why some therapists have chosen to incorporate psychedelics into their practice though the drugs remain illegal.

“I’m not going to recommend the practice, but I’m not going to condemn it either,” he said. “I think it’s a point of conscience that everybody has to say, ‘I think the laws are immoral. The laws are wrong. We should have been able to do this research 30 years ago.’”

It took several weeks of searching and multiple conversations with an intermediary, but a self-described healer who uses psychedelics to treat trauma in his clients finally agreed to speak with America Tonight about his practice. The healer, who we’ll call Simon to protect his identity, says he uses the drugs to help those suffering traumatic memories caused by everything from combat to childhood abuse.

“A vet that I’ve worked with has had four sessions. And now, I never hear from him … ’cause he’s going to Mets games with his son,” he said. “I’ve seen examples like that over and over. I don’t use the word ‘miracle’ because it’s so loaded, but it is close.”

Simon says he uses the same protocols as those in the FDA-approved clinical trial for treating PTSD with MDMA. While he is not a licensed therapist, Simon uses his training as a spiritual psychologist to help clients revisit their trauma, and with the help of the drug, move past it.

“It’s like looking at a shark in a tank at an aquarium,” Simon said. “The beast is there. It’s only feet away, but it’s not going to touch you.”

Word of his success has spread quickly by word of mouth. He says he’s seen hundreds of trauma sufferers and that the intake of new clients is relentless. He remains acutely aware that what he’s doing is illegal, but as someone who struggled with trauma in his youth, he says it’s worth the risk.

“I am breaking the law, I totally understand that,” he said. “But it seems to me that with the greatest respect, there are some laws that are so foolish, so misguided and so based on out-of-date information. That’s the tragedy.”

It will be years before the government decides whether to legalize psychedelic-assisted therapy. Until then, this underground movement of therapists, and their clients who have experienced the healing power of psychedelics first-hand, will continue to quietly use the drugs.

For Andreas, he hopes his decision to speak on camera about his experience will help to make the use of psychedelics by others wrestling with the same feelings, more acceptable.

“This needs to be out there,” Andreas said. “All this trauma and all this PTSD and all these problems are going to keep getting passed down. The ripple effects are quite huge.”

Why some therapists are risking arrest to heal trauma using psychedelics

As psychedelics show promise in treating addiction and PTSD, underground therapists can't wait on the laws to catch up

america.aljazeera.com

 

[mr peabody]

Soldiers, who have been traumatised by active service, are using psilocybin
to treat their flashbacks and anxiety.

Magic mushrooms could help ex-soldiers overcome trauma

by Jamie Doward | The Guardian

As more troops self-medicate with psychedelic drugs to help with PTSD, a group of experts lobby for proper clinical trials.

A growing number of soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder are turning to “magic mushrooms” and LSD to treat their condition. But drug laws make it almost impossible to establish whether they work.

Now a new body, the Medical Psychedelics Working Group, a consortium of experts, academics, researchers, policy specialists and industry partners, is to begin lobbying for a change in the law so that scientists can conduct clinical trials.

“This is something that’s been developed by veterans,” said Professor David Nutt from Drug Science, an independent scientific body which calls for an evidence-based approach to the legislation and is part of the group.

“Three years ago if I was asked the question would psilocybin work for veterans, I would have said it would be quite dangerous to relive the trauma when tripping. But so many vets are doing it now that I’m convinced it can work.”

It is estimated that 17% of people who have seen active military service report symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, depression, grief and anger.

Earlier this year a team at the Medical University of South Carolina reported on clinical trials which found that PTSD sufferers who used magic mushrooms as part of their therapy showed greater levels of improvement compared with patients who did not receive the drug.

But such clinical trials are difficult in the UK because LSD and magic mushrooms, which were legal until 2005, are classed as Schedule 1 drugs.

The classification means it costs around £3,500 for a licence from the Home Office to conduct tests using the drugs, and the application process can take a year. Scientists face prison sentences if the drugs fall into the wrong hands.

“But when ex-servicemen and women in the UK are reporting how their own use of psychedelics is having a marked effect on PTSD symptoms, we need to restart our studies,” Nutt said. “It could be that these substances can improve the lives of countless people who are suffering with debilitating and life-diminishing mental health conditions.”

Guy Murray, an infantryman with the 4th Battalion The Rifles, served on a long tour of Helmand Province, Afghanistan where his best friend and many other colleagues were killed by the Taliban. He was diagnosed with PTSD in 2017, after suffering from suicidal thoughts, anxiety and severe depression for several years.

After watching a Ted Talk about psilocybin and depression, he began experimenting with magic mushrooms, and then, under specialist supervision, was given LSD.

“It allowed me to address things which I was not open to addressing and it has honestly changed my life,” Murray said. “I believe I left my PTSD behind in those sessions. I am no longer destructive or closed off. I have my life back.”

Crispin Blunt, Conservative MP for Reigate, who served with the 13th/18th Royal Hussars, said that Murray’s experiences were common among the armed forces.

“About a third of veterans with PTSD from recent conflicts, estimated by some to be 2,400 individuals, have the condition so seriously as to be beyond recovery from current treatment practice,” Blunt said.

“We need to provide a safe, professional and lawful route of access to novel treatments such as psilocybin, collecting evidence and calling for our drug laws to be evidence based so our servicemen and women are not forced to travel to other countries, go underground or break the law to obtain treatment that works.”

Magic mushrooms could help ex-soldiers to overcome trauma

As more troops self-medicate with psychedelic drugs to help with PTSD, a group of experts lobby for proper clinical trials

www.theguardian.com

 

[mr peabody]

MDMA proven to help those with trauma

by David Nutt | The Independent

When MDMA (later known as ecstasy) was discovered by Shulgin in the 1950s, he noted that it had very special properties of calmness, clarity and empathy that set it apart from the many other chemically related amphetamine-like drugs. He then told this to his wife, who was a psychotherapist and who agreed and suggested that these properties were ideal as a medicinal adjunct to psychotherapy.

She shared this knowledge and the drug to many therapists in the west coast of the US. They concurred with her analysis: MDMA was a real breakthrough in treatment, the first drug that could augment psychotherapy in which it was called “empathy.” It was especially useful in couples counselling where the empathy-enhancing effects could break down the years of tension and irritations with the partner that often build up in marriages and slowly crust over the early love and desires.

All was well until the MDMA was recruited by the rave scene as a “dance drug” and renamed ecstasy. This led to a backlash from the media who hated the idea of young people becoming ecstatic, and developed a campaign of moral panic to get it banned. Horror stories of brain damage were invented and the few deaths massively publicised in relation to the harms of MDMA compared with other drugs such as alcohol. This campaign worked and ecstasy was banned across the globe at the end of the 1980s, despite eloquent and compelling protestations from the many therapists that had used it and patients who had benefited.

MDMA is still illegal today despite the supposed scientific evidence of harm being largely discredited. Schedule 1 drug research with MDMA is hugely difficult and expansive but there is growing evidence of therapeutic value and neuroscience studies, such as the new Gabay et al. paper, revealing that there is a strong scientific rationale behind its use.

A coalition of therapists in the US under the banner of MAPS has fought for more than 30 years to keep the therapeutic potential of MDMA alive. They have raised charitable funds to allow MDMA to be evaluated in its use treating people with resistant post-traumatic stress disorder. Several studies have been commissioned that cover both war and other causes of trauma. They show that just two psychotherapy sessions with MDMA as part of a psychological treatment course can massively improve PTSD – often resulting in a full recovery in patients who had to that point been resistant to other conventional forms of treatment such as the SSRI antidepressant medicines and cognitive behaviour therapy.

In light of these successes we have begun to treat people who have become alcohol dependent with MDMA in an attempt to deaden the mental pain of prior traumas. Such individuals are very common, indeed the norm, in alcohol treatment services and have a massively high failure rate with conventional abstinence-based treatments. Less than a quarter stay dry for three months, while those who carry on drinking for the rest of their lives have their life expectancy cut by 20 years. So far we have treated five people with the standard Maps protocol of two MDMA sessions two weeks apart, as part of the standard post-detox follow-up sessions. Up to this point all have stayed abstinent for the duration of the trial, which is still recruiting and will finally report next summer.

So how does a dance drug have such a powerful therapeutic effect? The answer, we believe, is because of its unique pharmacology that leads to its special psychological effects. MDMA releases serotonin, the neurotransmitter that we now know is involved in social bonding as well as in reducing anxiety and lifting depression. MDMA also releases dopamine, which is why it can be used to give energy for all night raves, but this is a secondary and lesser action. In the quiet of the therapeutic treatment room the dopamine release may help keep patients motivated and engaged with the therapist, but it’s the ability of the serotonin to overcome fear and anxiety that’s critical.

The current best treatment for PTSD involves reliving the trauma and gaining mastery over the emotions that emerge. For many severely traumatised individuals this is not easy: the memory can invoke such severe anxiety that the person can’t cope and leaves the room or they dissociate so can’t engage with the therapist. Our own brain-imaging study showed that MDMA dampens down the anxiety circuit of the brain and so reduces the impact of reliving negative memories.

This new study shows it enhances trust, which is vital in the therapeutic situation where the therapist is asking the patient to re-engage with memories they would rather forget. Together these neuroscientific advances give a firm rationale for the use of MDMA in PTSD therapy and support the call that I and many others have been making that it should be taken out of the controlled drugs list and put back into the medicine cabinet.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voice...d-trauma-trust-david-nutt-gabay-a8643031.html​

 

[mr peabody]

Understanding anger in addiction recovery

by Seth Blais | The Times Record | 24 Feb 2020

I locked my anger up in solitary confinement with my other emotions during a decade of drug use. Letting it back into the world has proven challenging.

For a long time, I used drugs to snuff out my emotions. I’d utilize any tool I could find to achieve this, but heroin seemed to work the best for me. I would do anything to avoid feeling pain and being honest with myself. Avoidance is a response that I learned through experiences in my childhood, and it has affected me negatively in my adult life. You can read more about this in my previous article.

I no longer use heroin to deal with painful emotions. This dramatic change has left me scrambling to learn new ways to manage these feelings and my response to them. One response to the emotional pain that I’ve struggled with, is anger.

My anger has exploded on co-workers, loved ones, strangers. Sometimes the anger was justified, but it was never helpful. I’ve spent hours inside my own head thinking about how someone has wronged me or caused my anger, only to make the feelings intensify.

Beneath all of our anger lies hurt. Have you ever stubbed your toe on a piece of furniture and then instantly became angry? You placed the furniture where it stands and you’re in control of your feet, so who are you angry with? It’s a response to the pain you felt. It works the same way with emotional pain.

Almost everyone who suffers from addiction has trauma in their past and struggles with how to process the pain from those events. Not everyone with trauma struggles with addiction, but many people, including myself, do. Struggling to navigate feelings of anger are common in addiction recovery.

Anger doesn’t just disappear when we suppress it. Anger suppression has always caused me to build up like a pressure cooker until I explode. Instead, I’m trying to understand it differently as a secondary emotional reaction, so I can make better decisions in emotional situations.

I locked my anger up in solitary confinement with my other emotions during a decade of drug use. Letting it back into the world has proven challenging.

Understanding anger as a secondary emotion

What is the emotion that’s being overshadowed by my anger?

This is one question that has recently helped me take a step back and think about why I feel the way that I do. Typically, another emotion, like fear or sadness, can be found underneath the anger. Fear includes things like anxiety and worry, while sadness comes from the experience of loss or disappointment.

You may fear something or someone, but more often the greater fear is that of having your ego damaged or of being abandoned. Understanding the root causes of anger is the first step to addressing them in a better way.

I recently experienced something personally that would have normally sent me into a rage. My first impulse was to become angry, which is normal and maybe even justifiable in this situation. The problem is that when I allow anger to take the wheel, it can be almost impossible to regain control. I will burn the entire house down while I’m still standing inside of it. The consequences of my anger are almost always worse than the reason causing it.

Instead of completely letting anger take control, I asked myself the question above. What emotion is being overshadowed by my anger? I realized that I was covering up sadness and my ego was damaged. I wanted to blame another person for causing me to feel the way that I did.

In the year 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas engaged in seven political debates aptly referred to in our history books as the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Douglas was up for re-election in the United States Senate and Lincoln hoped to defeat him. These debates happened a few years before Lincoln would become President, and slavery was a very hot political topic.

During their first debate, Lincoln passionately expressed his hate for slavery and even expressed his hatred for the attitude of being indifferent towards such injustice. He then paused and made a statement regarding Southern people who supported slavery at the time.

“They are just what we would be in their situation,” he said.

Lincoln realized that sometimes the actions of people are merely the result of their own circumstances. I’m not trying to compare the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 and my personal daily struggles, but this one sentence has stuck with me. It’s helped me to look beyond anger, being strict with my own emotional responses while being forgiving of other people.

The hard truth is that your circumstances don’t care how you feel about them, and sometimes people in your life don’t either. As that old and seemingly not attributable saying goes: Holding onto anger is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. Every situation is made better with a calm mind. Without the ability to control your anger, you become a prisoner to it.

Understanding anger in addiction recovery

I locked my anger up in solitary confinement with my other emotions during a decade of drug use. Letting it back into the world has proven challenging.

www.pressherald.com

 

[mr peabody]

Why understanding Inherited Trauma is critical, and what it means for our kids

by Kelly Hoover Greenway | Washington Post | 19 Jul 2021

In the weeks leading up to the birth of his second child, Britain’s Prince Harry spoke about his mental health struggles, which in part led him to step down as a working member of the British royal family. He discussed on the “Armchair Expert” podcast wanting to “break the cycle” of trauma in his family, suggesting that even when parents are mindful of their past trauma, “there’s a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on anyway.”

That idea, what researchers call “inherited trauma,” is far more complicated a concept than his declaration would have us believe. The research is relatively new, but many experts think what it suggests is that inherited trauma is our biology looking out for us, even if it may not appear that way at first.

While not many of us can relate to Prince Harry’s royal life or the trauma he endured after his mother’s death when he was 12 years old, it’s estimated that more than two-thirds of children experience at least one traumatic event by age 16. Abuse, violence, national disasters, severe illness and neglect are examples of trauma that researchers think could play a role in how future generations respond to their surroundings.

Bianca Jones Marlin is an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience and principal investigator of the Marlin Lab at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute. She said that inherited trauma is not about traumatic life events being able to change our DNA (or that of our children), but rather “a memory of a traumatic event in our ancestors living on in us.” Exactly how it lives on, and for what reason, is what researchers aim to discover.

The seminal study on the matter centers on the “Dutch Hunger Winter” of 1944-45 during World War II, when Nazis occupying the Netherlands restricted food transport as punishment for the Dutch government’s support of the Allies. A harsh winter and bad crops left the population with rations of less than 900 calories per day for months. Twenty-two-thousand people died.

Decades later, scientists began researching the offspring of women who were pregnant during this time. What they found, in part, was that they were heavier than average, had higher levels of triglycerides and LDL cholesterol, and were more prone to obesity and diabetes. Even though there was no longer a risk of starvation for these offspring, it appeared that the “memory” Marlin mentioned was trying to protect their bodies from a land with no food.

The pandemic is traumatic for kids like mine. I have no idea how to help them.

Scientists have also looked at the existence of inherited trauma in groups such as the children of Holocaust survivors, Native American communities and the sons of Civil War prisoners of war, to name a few. And though the findings seem to support the idea that trauma did, in fact, lead to changes in future generations, critics have noted small sample sizes, exaggeration of causality and media sensationalism as reasons to doubt them.

Marlin, who conducts her research on mice, supports making sure the “science is rigorous” and acknowledges issues with data from others in the past. However, she said that “if I take a step back from being a scientist and am just a fellow human in society, we see inherited trauma playing out in many instances across the world; it makes sense. Now we need to identify the biology behind this inheritance, which will help us better understand and navigate the stresses of our world today.”

Experts said that studying inherited trauma is not meant to disempower or blame parents for things they cannot control. “When we think about inheriting trauma, we think of something that is not good, but really what we’re saying is that our bodies are resilient and trying to offset any potential traumas by allowing us to survive, and ultimately to thrive,” says Courtney Bolton, a Nashville-based child and family psychologist. “The issue becomes when those modifications to our genes no longer serve us.”

From a clinical perspective, Bolton thinks the research can lead to more targeted interventions and treatments for clients. “Let’s say, hypothetically speaking, inherited trauma created a gene mutation that made children more sensitive to noise as a defense mechanism. If you were prepared for that early on, then you could proactively provide intervention to help with anticipating noises, regulating anxiety and, ultimately, being able to tolerate loud noises. The more we understand how genetics influence our interaction with the environment, the better we can create behavioral interventions to offset that.”

For parents and caregivers who believe past trauma may be playing a role in their children’s lives, Bolton emphasizes establishing a safe and secure environment, with soft, physical touch playing a critical role. “As adults, we can mentally soothe ourselves by rationalizing or planning, but for young children, hugs, rubbing backs and snuggling can help them regulate their emotions. If we can use safe, loving touch to help children bond, regulate emotions and ultimately overcome inherited anxieties, then we can shift developmental trajectories in really positive ways.”

Bolton also notes that when it comes to seeking therapy for your child, it’s important for parents to be forthcoming about their history — whether they recognize certain events as “traumatic” or not.

I learned the impact of prolonged exposure to stress from my foster child

Currently, scant researchers are dedicated to this field of study — “a few brave souls,” as Marlin refers to them. One is Moriah E. Thomason, associate professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. Thomason’s drive comes from wanting to find earlier interventions for children who are suffering. “The fact that children are struggling from developmental disorders and challenges achieving landmarks that humans need to achieve is devastating,” she says. “As a scientist, I’m looking at a child’s symptoms, but I’m trying to get to the core. What is the purest representation of a developmental disorder?”

Her most recent work, a study she co-authored in 2020 exploring the potential impact of maternal childhood trauma on child behavioral problems, looks at certain brain activity as a possible indicator of how inherited trauma biologically presents in children.

Beyond helping to understand and treat individual cases of mental health more effectively, better understanding inherited trauma could also lead to more significant changes in society regarding groups of people who have experienced trauma because of systemic oppression, such as those affected by colonization (in this case, the descendants of the Indian Residential Schools system in Canada), slavery and racism. Thomason is most passionate about this aspect of the work. “To get economic and government support to help break these cycles of trauma, you’ve got to know that there’s a cycle, and you have to show it to people,” she says. “There’s a socio-demographic story here, and there are individuals at greater risk. We have to do this work for them. It’s critical.”

Kelly Hoover Greenway is an Austin-based television producer and writer whose work focuses on parenting and relationships, women’s health, and personal essays.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/07/19/inherited-trauma-family-kids/

 

[mr peabody]

Scott Ostrom has suffered from PTSD since 2007.

MDMA passes big test for PTSD treatment*

A new study shows that MDMA can bring relief when paired with talk therapy to those with severe PTSD.

by Rachel Nuwer | New York Times |3 May 2021

In an important step toward medical approval, MDMA was shown to bring relief to those suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder when paired with talk therapy.

Of the 90 people who took part in the new study, which is expected to be published later this month in Nature Medicine, those who received MDMA during therapy experienced a significantly greater reduction in the severity of their symptoms compared with those who received therapy and an inactive placebo. Two months after treatment, 67 percent of participants in the MDMA group no longer qualified for a diagnosis of PTSD, compared with 32 percent in the placebo group.

MDMA produced no serious adverse side effects. Some participants temporarily experienced mild symptoms like nausea and loss of appetite.

“This is about as excited as I can get about a clinical trial,” said Gul Dolen, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research. “There is nothing like this in clinical trial results for a neuropsychiatric disease.”

Before MDMA-assisted therapy can be approved for therapeutic use, the Food and Drug Administration needs a second positive Phase 3 trial, which is currently underway with 100 participants. Approval could come as early as 2023.

Mental health experts say that this research — the first Phase 3 trial conducted on psychedelic-assisted therapy — could pave the way for further studies on MDMA’s potential to help address other difficult-to-treat mental health conditions, including substance abuse, obsessive compulsive disorder, phobias, eating disorders, depression, end-of-life anxiety and social anxiety in autistic adults.

And, mental health researchers say, these studies could also encourage additional research on other banned psychedelics, including psilocybin, LSD and mescaline.

“This is a wonderful, fruitful time for discovery, because people are suddenly willing to consider these substances as therapeutics again, which hasn’t happened in 50 years,” said Jennifer Mitchell, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, and lead author of the new study.

Jennifer Mitchell, a neuroscientist at the UCSF

But some mental health experts urged restraint. Allen James Frances, a professor emeritus and the former chair of psychiatry at Duke University, who was not involved in the new study, warned that "new treatments are never as wonderful as first they seem.”

“All new treatments in medicine have always had a temporary halo effect by virtue of being new and by promising more than they can possibly deliver,” Dr. Frances said.

Unlike traditional pharmaceuticals, MDMA does not act as a band-aid that tries to blunt symptoms of PTSD. Instead, in people with PTSD, MDMA combined with therapy seems to allow the brain to process painful memories and heal itself, Dr. Mitchell said.

Critically, MDMA taken in isolation, without therapy, does not automatically produce a beneficial effect.

“It’s not the drug — it’s the therapy enhanced by the drug,” said Rick Doblin, senior author of the study and director of MAPS, a nonprofit research group that sponsored and financed the clinical trials.

For this process to work, a person must be primed to engage with their trauma. Participants first undertook preparatory sessions with two trained therapists. Then in three sessions of eight-hours each, spaced a month apart, they received either an inactive placebo or MDMA. Neither the participants nor the therapists knew which. While most participants correctly guessed whether they received a placebo or MDMA, this did not undermine the study’s results or its methodology, which was agreed to in advance by the F.D.A.

Scott Ostrom, who participated in the study, had suffered from PTSD since returning home from his second deployment in Iraq in 2007. For more than a decade, he experienced debilitating nightmares. “Bullets would dribble out of the end of my gun, or I’d get separated from my team and be lost in a town where insurgents were watching me,” he said.

Mr. Ostrom’s days were punctuated by panic attacks, and he dropped out of college. He pushed friends and family away, and got into an unhealthy romantic relationship. He was charged with assault and attempted suicide. Therapy and medication did not help.

But after participating in the trial, he no longer has nightmares. “Literally, I’m a different person,” he said.

During his first of three sessions in early 2019, lying on a couch with eye shades, and in a lucid dreamlike state, Mr. Ostrom encountered a spinning, oily black ball. Like an onion, the ball had many layers, each one a memory. At the center, Mr. Ostrom relived the moment in Iraq, he said, that “I became the person I needed to be to survive that combat deployment.” Over the next two sessions, Mr. Ostrom engaged with “the bully,” as he calls his PTSD alter ego, and asked permission for Scott to return.

Mr. Ostrom, 36, now works steadily as an HVAC specialist and owns a home near Boulder, Colo., which he shares with his girlfriend, Jamie Ehrenkranz, and his service dog, an English lab named Tim.

“The reason I like calling this medicine is it stimulated my own consciousness’s ability for self-healing,” Mr. Ostrom said. “You understand why it’s OK to experience unconditional love for yourself.”

Rick Doblin

Merck pharmacists invented MDMA in 1912. But the compound was largely forgotten until 1976, when Alexander Shulgin, a well-known psychedelic chemist, synthesized MDMA and tried it himself. Realizing that his discovery could have therapeutic value, Dr. Shulgin shared MDMA in 1977 with Leo Zeff, a psychotherapist who introduced it to other mental health professionals. Over the next eight years, hundreds of therapists and others administered an estimated half a million doses of MDMA. Some reported that, in just a few sessions with the medication, patients achieved an amount of progress that normally took years.

In the early 1980s, however, MDMA escaped from the clinic to the dance floor, where it became known as Ecstasy. In 1985, the Drug Enforcement Administration criminalized MDMA as a Schedule I substance, defined as having “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

Some mental health professionals continued to administer MDMA-assisted therapy underground, but most stopped. The numbers of scientists who pursued studies with MDMA also dwindled. But a few individuals continued to push strongly on behalf of MDMA research, including Dr. Doblin, who founded his association in 1986 to focus on developing MDMA and other psychedelics into medications approved by the F.D.A. It took nearly two decades to overcome alarmist claims about Ecstasy’s dangers, including that it ate holes in users’ brains, to finally gain approval to begin studies. Research in animals and humans confirms that MDMA produces no neurotoxic effects at the doses administered in clinical trials.

MDMA, on the other hand, can be adulterated with other potentially dangerous substances, and users may take far higher doses than are safe. In 2011, MDMA accounted for 1.8 percent of all U.S. drug-related emergency department visits, according to a database maintained until that year by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. In Europe, MDMA was responsible for 8 percent of drug-related emergency visits to 16 major hospitals in 10 countries from 2013 to 2014.

Scientists still do not fully understand the source of MDMA’s therapeutic effects. The substance binds to proteins that regulate serotonin, a neurotransmitter that can, among other things, lift mood. Antidepressant medications like Prozac bind to these same proteins and block their reabsorption of serotonin, but MDMA takes this process further, causing the proteins to pump serotonin into synapses, strengthening their chemical signal.

MDMA also elevates levels of oxytocin, dopamine and other chemical messengers, producing feelings of empathy, trust and compassion.

But its primary therapeutic effect may come from its seeming ability to reopen what neuroscientists refer to as a “critical period,” the window during childhood when the brain has the superior ability to make new memories and store them. Evidence from a mouse study published in Nature in 2019 indicates that MDMA may return the adult brain to this earlier state of malleability.

An estimated 7 percent of the U.S. population will experience PTSD at some point in their life, and as many as 13 percent of combat veterans have the condition. In 2018, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs spent $17 billion on disability payments for over one million veterans with PTSD.

For the approximately half to one-third of people who do not find relief through treatment, PTSD can become chronic, lasting years or even a lifetime.

The 90 participants who took part in the Phase 3 trial included combat veterans, first responders and victims of sexual assault, mass shootings, domestic violence or childhood trauma. All had severe PTSD and had been diagnosed, on average, for more than 14 years. Many had a history of alcohol and substance use disorder, and 90 percent had considered suicide. The trial included data collected by 80 therapists at 15 sites in the United States, Canada and Israel.

Albert Garcia-Romeu, a psychopharmacology researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said that "additional research is needed to explore the therapy’s efficacy for people of diverse races and ethnicities, because three-quarters of the trial participants were white. This limitation also underscores," he said, “the importance of accessibility of these types of treatments to people of color and folks with lower socioeconomic status, who already suffer from health disparities and high rates of trauma.”

"But, overall," Dr. Garcia-Romeu said, "the findings make a clear case for medical approval - something that represents a sea change that could revolutionize health care.”

Nathan McGee, 43, is another example of a patient who benefited from the drug. Since he was a teenager, he has been in and out of therapy and on and off medications for depression and anxiety.

“I was always angry, without cause,” he said. In 2019, Mr. McGee was diagnosed with PTSD stemming from an event that happened when he was 4 years old.

As a trial participant, he first thought that he had received the placebo. But about an hour into his initial session at a study site in Boulder, Colo., a calm awareness settled over him and he felt himself moving inward.

Under the influence of MDMA, and guided by his therapists, Mr. McGee was able to revisit his traumatic memory through the eyes of his 4-year-old self, unclouded by stigmas, adult interpretations or heavy emotion.

“This allowed me to accept myself and recognize who I am,” he said.

Since taking part in the trial in early 2020, he is less easily angered and more able to enjoy the moment.

“I’m continually discovering new things and improving,” Mr. McGee said. “It’s made me really understand what the feeling of joy is.”

*From the article here :

A Psychedelic Drug Passes a Big Test for PTSD Treatment

A new study shows that MDMA, known as Ecstasy or Molly, can bring relief when paired with talk therapy to those with severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

www.nytimes.com

 

[mr peabody]

Psychedelic medicine comes to the VA

A clinical trial using MDMA-assisted therapy to treat veterans with PTSD is coming to a veterans hospital in the Bronx

by Marc Gunther | The Psychedelic Renaissance | 13 Sep 2021

A hundred years ago — before anyone put together the initials PTSD — a public hospital in the Bronx, NY, began to care for World War I soldiers who suffered from “mental and nervous disorders.”

Shell shock, it was called. It was notoriously hard to treat. PTSD remains so.

That hospital, now known as the James J. Peters Medical Center and run by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, will soon try a new approach: It will offer combat veterans talk therapy assisted by MDMA, an illegal drug better known as ecstasy that has shown great potential for alleviating the suffering caused by PTSD.

Dr. Rachel Yehuda, who has spent decades treating veterans with PTSD, will lead a clinical trial at the Bronx hospital. Dr. Yehuda, who is director of The Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research and a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, is careful to say that much remains unknown about MDMA and how it works.

But, after reading the science and trying MDMA herself, Dr. Yehuda says she is “hopeful and optimistic” that it will make a difference.

“This could be a real game changer for men and women who have served our country,” she tells me, via Zoom.

Dr. Yehuda’s work marks the first time that the VA has gone on record supporting research into MDMA, which remains a Schedule 1 drug. (That classification is reserved for drugs that, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, have no approved medical use and a high potential for abuse.) In a press release, Margaret O’Shea Caplan, director of the James J. Peters facility, says the hospital has been “at the forefront of testing evidence-based approaches to the treatment of combat veterans with PTSD.”​

Billionaire donors​

The research is being funded, not by taxpayers, but by two colorful billionaires. The foundation of Bob Parsons, the founder of GoDaddy.com and PXG (Parsons Extreme Golf), and his wife Renee will give $5 million to Mount Sinai, they announced. Steven A. Cohen, the hedge fund founder and owner of the New York Mets, and his wife Alexandra, will give $2.1 million to support the upcoming clinical trial, their foundation said.

For both men, the issue is personal. A combat veteran of Vietnam, Parsons has talked about his own struggles with PTSD for years; he found relief from psychedelic treatment. “It’s a game changer,” he said. Cohen became a major supporter of veterans’ causes after his son, Robert, served as a Marine in Afghanistan, he says.

Both donors contributed to the Capstone Challenge to fund research into MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD being led by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Research, or MAPS. MAPS aims to secure FDA approval for the treatment. Through his foundation, The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation also funded a small clinical trial of MDMA-assisted at a veterans hospital in Loma Linda, CA, that began quietly last summer, while the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation has been a major donor to the world-renowned Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University.

Via email, Jeanne Melino, executive director of the Cohens’ foundation, told me that they believe that “psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy may hold the key to combating treatment-resistant mental health conditions and addiction” including PTSD.​

A Burning Man connection​

Dr. Yehuda came to psychedelic medicines via an unusual path. On a trip to the Burning Man festival with her husband, she met Rick Doblin, MAPS’ executive director. Through its Zendo Project, MAPS provides support to people who are having difficult experiences with psychedelics at events like Burning Man.

Dr. Yehuda and Doblin bonded over their shared interest in treating people with PTSD. She went through a training program in Israel run by MAPS for clinicians who want to practice MDMA-assisted therapy; as part of the FDA-approved training, she took MDMA under clinical supervision. The drug is intended to promote trust, empathy and introspection, all of which enhance the sessions of talk therapy that come before and after MDMA sessions.

Dr. Yehuda said later:​

It really taught me a lot about psychotherapy. It just taught me about the power of an altered state of consciousness and helping identify things that we usually just don’t allow to come to the surface. Things that we all bury because we don’t think any good will come of bringing them up. And the power of being in a room with two therapists who are helping hold your process and helping you understand and make connections between various events in your life. I mean, to me, it felt like in eight hours what one might do in the course of 10 years in psychotherapy.​

In the upcoming clinical trial, Dr. Yehuda and her associates plan to compare the effectiveness of two versus three sessions of MDMA-assisted therapy to help combat vets. MAPS’ current protocol uses three sessions; if two work equally as well, that will reduce treatment costs and broaden access.

With the Parsons foundation grant, Dr. Yehuda plans to develop a protocol using group therapy. For many veterans, the opportunity to share experiences with others “is itself very healing,” says Laura Mitchell, executive director of The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation. “Bob first found relief from his own PTSD when he was reunited decades later with his Vietnam platoon.” The Parsons grant will also enable Mount Sinai train therapists who have experience treating PTSD in the use of MDMA.

Dr. Yehuda has been a pioneer of trauma treatment since studying the brain chemistry of PTSD as a postdoctoral fellow at Yale Medical School in the late 1980s. The daughter of a rabbi, she later studied the biomarkers of Holocaust survivors and their offspring in the suburbs of Cleveland where she grew up.

Psychedelic medicine comes to the VA

A clinical trial using MDMA-assisted therapy to treat veterans with PTSD is coming to a veterans hospital in the Bronx

medium.com

 

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Psychedelics might reduce internalized shame and complex trauma symptoms in those with a history of childhood abuse

by Eric Dolan | PsyPost | 30 Sep 2021

The use of psychedelic drugs is associated with lower levels of complex posttraumatic stress symptoms and internalized shame in adults who suffered maltreatment in childhood, according to new research published in the journal Chronic Stress.

“There’s an abundance of clinical studies of the therapeutic effects of psychedelics, but few studies have examined the therapeutic potential of psychedelic use in naturalistic (non-clinical) settings,” said study author CJ Healy, a PhD student at The New School for Social Research.

“Most of the people in the world who are healing themselves with psychedelics are taking them in naturalistic settings — in nature, with friends, at home, at a rave — and so I wanted to study empirically whether this naturalistic, therapeutic use of psychedelics is also showing benefits in terms of symptom reduction and improvements in self-concept, particularly among people with histories of complex trauma in childhood.”

The researchers surveyed 166 English-speaking adults regarding childhood maltreatment, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and internalized shame. The survey also asked: “Have you ever used a psychedelic/entheogenic/hallucinogenic substance (including, but not limited to: psilocybin ‘magic’ mushrooms or truffles, LSD/’acid’, ayahuasca/yagé, mescaline/peyote/San Pedro, DMT, MDMA/ecstasy, ketamine, or 2 C-B) with the intention of healing or processing childhood trauma?”

Approximately 93% of participants scored in the severe range on at least one of the childhood maltreatment type subscales (physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect), while approximately 31% reported a history of intentional therapeutic psychedelic use.

The researchers found that child maltreatment was associated with higher levels of both PTSD symptoms and internalized shame. Those with a history of intentional therapeutic psychedelic use, however, tended to report less symptoms associated with disturbances in self-organization, a cluster of complex trauma symptoms that is comprised of affective dysregulation, negative self-concept, and disturbances in relationships.

Importantly, the researchers also found that reporting more than five occasions of intentional therapeutic psychedelic use weakened the relationship between emotional abuse/neglect and disturbances in self-organization.

"These findings suggest that using psychedelics with therapeutic intentions, even in non-clinical settings, may help reduce internalized shame and complex trauma symptoms in people with histories of complex trauma in childhood,” Healy told PsyPost.

“Moreover, these benefits might be more pronounced with repeated use; in this study, the group that reported the overall lowest levels of internalized shame and complex trauma symptoms was the group that had used psychedelics with therapeutic intent more than five times.”

Like many psychedelic studies, the current research is still in a preliminary stage. The findings come with some important caveats, which could be addressed in future research.

“As is often the case with cross-sectional, survey-based studies such as these, causality can’t be determined: we can’t say whether the psychedelic use is causing the symptom reduction or, for instance, that people with lower symptoms are for some reason more likely to take psychedelics,” Healy explained. “To more robustly and causally demonstrate the efficacy of therapeutic psychedelic use in naturalistic settings, future studies will need to have a longitudinal design, meaning they will need to do assessments (e.g., of complex trauma symptoms) before the participants use the psychedelic, then follow up with them later to assess what, if anything, has changed or gotten better.”

“Another problem is that the sample of this study was predominantly White,” Healy added. “It’s a longstanding problem in psychedelic science that people of color, especially Black people, are dramatically underrepresented in study samples. More research needs to be done using samples higher in racial and socioeconomic diversity in order to represent the experiences of oppressed and marginalized peoples in our findings.”

The study, “Using Psychedelics With Therapeutic Intent Is Associated With Lower Shame and Complex Trauma Symptoms in Adults With Histories of Child Maltreatment“, was authored by C. J. Healy, Kellie Ann Lee, and Wendy D’Andrea.

Psychedelics might reduce internalized shame and complex trauma symptoms in those with a history of childhood abuse

The use of psychedelic drugs is associated with lower levels of complex posttraumatic stress symptoms and internalized shame in adults who suffered ...

www.psypost.org

 

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MDMA therapy achieves astounding 76% success rate for treating PTSD

by Rich Haridy | NEW ATLAS

Newly published results from a Phase 2 clinical trial into the efficacy of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have revealed striking success, with 76 percent of subjects not meeting the standard clinical criteria for PTSD 12 months after receiving the treatment.

This latest study is one of six key Phase 2 clinical trials that were used to last year convince the FDA to grant the landmark MDMA-assisted treatment a Breakthrough Therapy Designation. This particular trial, sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), was conducted in Boulder, Colorado and led by psychotherapist Marcela Ot'alora.

The trial comprised 28 subjects, all with clinically diagnosed PTSD that had persisted for an average of almost 30 years, despite attempts with other conventional treatments, including drugs and psychotherapy. The structure of the treatment resembled the model established by MAPS in other trials: two day-long MDMA treatment sessions followed by integrative therapy sessions. A third MDMA session was also offered to evaluate whether that improved long-term responses compared to two sessions.

Responses to the treatment were evaluated using the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS-IV), the current best standard for PTSD assessment. Here the results were nothing less than spectacular. On enrolment the average CAPS-IV score of each participant was 92, and at a follow-up 12 months after the final MDMA session, the average CAPS-IV score was just 31. A remarkable 76 percent of participants, after 12 months, did not meet the clinical diagnostic criteria for PTSD.

These impressive results bode well for the long-term staying power of the treatment, with the average CAPS-IV score dropping an additional 9.6 points from the point the treatment finished to the 12-month follow-up.

The final stage before MDMA for PTSD can become an FDA-approved treatment is expansive Phase 3 trials. These trials kicked off in September 2018, after a slight delay in producing and encapsulating the MDMA needed to conduct the experiments. Encompassing between 200 and 300 subjects across 16 different sites in the US, Canada and Israel, it should take up to two years to complete this final stage, with ultimate FDA approval on track for sometime in 2021 if all goes well.

https://newatlas.com/mdma-ptsd-successful-trial-results/57074/​

 

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Are psychedelics the answer to veterans’ PTSD?

In 2014, former British Para Keith Abraham flew to Peru to see if he could cure his PTSD with a dose of the psychedelic drug, ayahuasca. He returned a changed man and is now on a mission to extend access to other members of the armed forces and beyond​

by Kevin Perry| Men's Health | 24 Sep 2021

Keith Abraham never expected to find himself deep in the Peruvian jungle drinking a powerful psychedelic brew from a dirty Coca-Cola bottle.

A former member of the elite British Parachute Regiment, he had enlisted after 9/11 to, as he puts it, “hunt down the bad guys”. After a relatively uneventful tour of Iraq, in 2008 he was sent to fight in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, one of the world’s deadliest battlegrounds. Early on, his unit were ambushed and in the first burst of gunfire he saw two close friends die. Like so many other soldiers, Abraham eventually returned home to Britain wracked with a debilitating cocktail of grief, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

After leaving the Paras he attempted to start a new life with a high-flying city job at JP Morgan, but he knew he was falling apart. He would sit in his office with sweat pouring from his hands and face. His hair fell out in his sleep. He could never escape the feeling that his body was being held in a stress position. Conventional antidepressants just made him feel worse, so when a friend suggested he travel to South America to try ayahuasca - a traditional plant medicine containing the psychedelic DMT - he figured he had nothing to lose. He flew to Lima in April 2014 and claims he returned a changed man. “Psychologically, I knew that I’d been healed,” he says.

Abraham’s story is one more case study to add to the growing mountain of evidence that psychedelic drugs such as DMT, psilocybin and MDMA can provide real and lasting treatment for severe mental-health disorders, including PTSD. The idea is becomingly increasingly mainstream. In 2019, Imperial College London opened the world’s first centre for psychedelic research, and in November last year Oregon became the first US state to legalise psilocybin for therapeutic use.​

Evidence suggests that psychedelic therapy works best when a patient is guided through the experience by a trained therapist, but for Abraham, sitting in a tiny wooden hut deep in the rainforest, the drug itself was his guide. After arriving in Lima he flew to the Amazonian city of Tarapoto before travelling upriver by boat. After a few days of almost total isolation he was visited by a local shaman, an ordinary-looking man in jeans and a T-shirt carrying a blackened Coca-Cola bottle. “It looked like he’d dumped it in a muddy puddle,” remembers Abraham. “It looked awful.”

At the shaman’s instruction, Abraham took his first shot of ayahuasca and remembers having a psychedelic experience that made him feel as if he could see and understand the workings of the universe, and even time itself. A couple of days later he had a second dose, and it was then that his healing really began. “This voice came out of the darkness and said: ‘Have you finished playing?’” he remembers. “I recognised it as the voice of authority, because I went there for a purpose. I wasn’t there just to have a trippy experience, so I said: ‘Yes, I’m ready.’”​

"Over the course of the next six or seven hours, Abraham relived difficult and traumatic experiences from throughout his life."​

Abraham then saw himself in a room that he describes as looking like a “Dickensian classroom.” He was the only student, while in front of him was an “old lady, who I recognised as the spirit of the plant. She was ayahuasca.” Over the course of the next six or seven hours, Abraham relived difficult and traumatic experiences from throughout his life while his ‘teacher’ guided him as to how he could respond to these incidents in a healthier way. “At the beginning of my education that might be as simple as taking a breath before reacting to something,” he explains, “If I managed to do it, I would pass and go on to the next lesson. I had lifetimes of lessons and tests. I failed many times, but I’d just go back and we’d rerun it. It was profound, that’s the only word.”

Because psychedelic drugs have been illegal since the early 1970s, it is only recently that neuroscientists and psychopharmacologists have begun to really understand how they work in the brain. Psychedelic drugs act on receptors for serotonin, a neurotransmitter that affects mood, appetite, sleep regulation and other high-level brain functions. There is evidence to suggest that psychedelics enhance the brain’s “neuroplasticity” and help users escape from rigid patterns of thought. The receptive state the drugs confer opens the door to fresh ideas.

As James Bunn from Drug Science, the UK’s leading independent scientific body, explains, even recreational users of drugs like MDMA may have experienced some of these effects. “If you've ever been on a night out when someone takes maybe too much MDMA, you'll know that they’ll start talking to you about everything in their life, really pouring their heart out,” he says. “So if you've been repressing something for a long time, your brain has learned to switch off anytime it thinks about that certain thing. If you're given a drug that floods your brain with emotion, you're going to have to confront those in a very immediate space of time.”​

"Changing the laws around psychedelic therapy could have far-reaching implications for how a whole host of mental health conditions are treated."​

Abraham’s life was so transformed by his ayahuasca experience that he now runs the British arm of Heroic Hearts, a charity dedicated to widening access to psychedelic therapy for former soldiers and frontline emergency services workers. The organisation has plans to take a group of British military veterans to an ayahuasca retreat in Peru later this year, although one more established than the local shaman Abraham himself visited. A second group of veterans who suffered traumatic head injuries will travel to the Netherlands for psilocybin therapy to see what effect the drugs can have on the physical brain, alongside the hoped-for mental-health benefits.

The reason it’s necessary for Heroic Hearts to take veterans overseas to receive this sort of treatment is that psychedelic therapy remains illegal in the UK. Abraham has already made some powerful allies in the fight to change this, including Crispin Blunt MP, a trustee of Heroic Hearts who is also the first Conservative to co-chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform. “The first thing we’ve got to do is to get the law and the regulations in a better place, and I'm frustrated it hasn’t been done already,” says Blunt.

Blunt recently submitted a paper to the drugs minister, Kit Malthouse, seeking a change in the scheduling of psychedelic drugs from schedule one to schedule two, which would mean they can be legally prescribed, possessed and supplied by pharmacists and doctors. “That would significantly open the path to more research and the prospect of wider trials,” Blunt explains. “We need to get these daft regulations put in a more sensible place so that we can proceed properly on the evidence. We would be in a much better place if we’d done that for the last 40 or 50 years.”

Changing the laws around psychedelic therapy could have far-reaching implications for how a whole host of mental health conditions are treated in Britain, from severe PTSD through to more common depressive disorders. After so many years of misinformation and stigma it will be a long, hard journey to legalise and normalise the use of psychedelic drugs as medicine, but - as Abraham can attest - it’s a trip worth taking.

How One Soldier’s Experiments With Ayahuasca Could Change the Way PTSD Is Treated

In 2014, former British Para Keith Abraham flew to Peru to see if he could cure his post-traumatic stress disorder with a dose of the psychedelic drug, ayahuasca. He returned a changed man and is now on a mission to extend access to other members of the armed forces and beyond

www.menshealth.com

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Video game with biofeedback helps kids and teens regulate stress, anger*

Boston Children’s Hospital | Neuroscience News | 5 Oct 2021

Summary: RAGE-Control, a video game system that utilizes biofeedback to regulate heart rate, reduces stress, oppositional behavior, and aggression by training children to stay calm during stressful and frustrating situations.

Source: Boston Children’s Hospital

A video game with biofeedback — aimed at keeping heart rate low during fast-paced play — can help youth learn to regulate their anger, finds a small randomized trial at Boston Children’s Hospital. If the game is further validated in larger studies, the researchers hope it would reduce the need for psychiatric medications and help children and teens who cannot immediately access psychotherapy.

Findings of the pilot study were published 9/1 in Frontiers of Psychiatry.

The game, called Regulate and Gain Emotional Control (RAGE-Control), was developed at Boston Children’s about a decade ago. It trains kids to stay calm during stressful or frustrating situations. In the game, players try to shoot virtual asteroids while avoiding friendly craft, while a pulse oximeter on their wrist monitors their heart rate. If they remain calm and keep their heart rate down, they do better in the game. If their heart rate goes too high, they lose their ability to shoot.

“Emotions like anger and anxiety that increase arousal also increase heart rate. Techniques that bring the heart rate down, like taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, are calming,” says Joseph Gonzalez-Heydrich, MD, a senior attending psychiatrist at Boston Children’s Hospital and senior author on the paper. “So we hypothesized that if children learned techniques to lower their heart rate and thus their arousal while playing a challenging game, then they would be able to use these techniques during conflicts at home and school.”

Study design and findings

To test RAGE-Control, the researchers enrolled 40 children aged 10 to 17 who were attending an outpatient psychiatry clinic and had significant problems controlling their anger. All received a standard cognitive-behavioral intervention called Anger Control Training. At the end of each psychotherapy session, half the children, chosen at random, played RAGE-Control with heart-rate feedback. The other half played the game and wore the heart rate monitor, but their heart rate did not impact their game.

The study tracked anger and oppositional behavior in several ways. The children completed a 35-item anger questionnaire. Parents completed a 5-point aggression scale and an 8-item scale to evaluate disruptive behaviors. Finally, clinicians rated the participants’ overall anger severity on a 7-point scale. Players, parents, and clinicians did not know which form of the game the child was playing.

In children playing RAGE-Control with heart-rate feedback, heart rates during play fell over time. Additionally, after 10 sessions, their parents reported greater improvements in aggression and oppositional behavior than did parents of children who played the game without biofeedback. Clinicians also reported significantly reduced anger severity in the children who received biofeedback. The greater the decrease in heart rate, the more the children’s behaviors improved.

“Changes in children’s own ratings of their anger were not significantly different between the two groups,” notes Gonzalez-Heydrich. “So the biofeedback-based game did not make the children any less angry, but it did help them have more control of the expression of their anger.”

Boston Children’s Hospital owns the RAGE-Control technology. In 2016, based on earlier research, the hospital spun off a company called Neuromotion Labs that offers emotional-regulation training technologies under the brand name Mightier.

*From the article here :

Video Game With Biofeedback Helps Kids and Teens Regulate Stress and Anger - Neuroscience News

RAGE-Control, a video game system that utilizes biofeedback to regulate heart rate, reduces stress, oppositional behavior, and aggression by training children to stay calm during stressful and frustrating situations.

neurosciencenews.com