• 🇳🇿 🇲🇲 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 🇦🇺 🇦🇶 🇮🇳
    Australian & Asian
    Drug Discussion

    Welcome Guest!
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
  • AADD Moderators: Tronica

New York Times Article: MDMA Therapy in Australia Shows Results, but the Cost Is Limiting Access

That article said:
With an average cost of $20,000 for up to three dosing sessions and 40 hours of counseling, MDMA therapy is largely out of reach for the estimated one million Australians who suffer from PTSD...

Much of the cost is related to the extensive counseling component. Another issue is access. Fewer than 50 psychiatrists are authorized to prescribe the drugs in a country of 28 million people, and most practice in a handful of coastal cities.

Advocates say complex licensing requirements dissuade participation in the program, which is administered by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, Australia’s counterpart to the F.D.A. The licensing process, which includes approval by an ethics panel, can take six months.
Click to expand...
wtf! $20,000! Fucking prohibitionist tightfisted bureaucracy... so like $500 / hour basically, I read later in the article it requires THREE psychiatrists to be on site during the MDMA sessions so, oh wait no, the counselling is separate.

So there's 3 x 6-8 hour sessions of MDMA with 3 psychiatrists onsite but just one actually guiding the treatment I guess. Then 40 hours counseling. I mean regardless obviously the cost is horrific. Although I guess, in a way I don't want to admit, I can kinda see how the cost spirals like that for the treatment offered when it's just a few hopefully highly specialized and sought after professionals currently authorized to do it. Still though, god forbid we make it too easy for people who are suffering to get the help they need, can't be too careful with these scary dangerous druggie drugs, oh no... :rolleyes:

On the flipside though I confess to being pretty ignorant of the state of medical use of psychedelic or traditionally "recreational" substances in Australia prior to reading that article so, baby steps I guess... hopefully this will lead to some positive outcomes and the barriers to access will start coming down ASAP, in Australia and everywhere else in the world...


Edit: Lol apparently, I'm not done ranting, just re-read this bit -
The licensing process, which includes approval by an ethics panel, can take six months.
Click to expand...
..."Ethics panel"... lol... not that ethics panels aren't good and necessary in theory, ideally, for lots of stuff, but, forgive my cynicism, wonder what the demographic of the ethics panel is, and what kind of discussions they have that take that long... :mad: ...just infuriating to think about.
 
hopefully this will lead to some positive outcomes and the barriers to access will start coming down ASAP, in Australia
Click to expand...

I too would love to see barriers come down, but whatever does happen I can pretty much guarantee it won't be ASAP. When it comes to Australia and changing policy around illicit substances, there are only a couple of speeds of change: dying snail and glacial. There's a powerful, conservative core in Australian governance which likes to make things technically available but, in practice, out of reach to most people.

Still though, god forbid we make it too easy for people who are suffering to get the help they need, can't be too careful with these scary dangerous druggie drugs, oh no..
Click to expand...

yeah. What sounds like a good idea which shouldn't be too onerous to conduct quickly turns into <quoting from the article>

Other rules also contribute to the program’s high costs, like requiring the prescribing psychiatrist to remain on site during the six-to-eight hour dosing sessions along with two psychologists who sit with the patient.
Click to expand...

only patients who failed to experience significant improvement with conventional psychiatric interventions are eligible for psychedelic therapy
Click to expand...

So I assume you have to run the gamut of 'conventional psychiatric interventions', which would mean taking at least a couple of types of anti-depressants and undergoing a certain number of hours of counselling and/or talk therapy. Trying different anti-depressants - going on and off them in compressed time frames - can be a horrible experience, and I haven't seen a single GP that has given solid advice when it comes to tapering or switching SSRIs / SNRIs. They always suggest tapering off way too fast, or not tapering at all but instantly dropping one med and starting the other right away, or other things which are potentially highly dangerous. A personal example: When I was taking desvenlafxine extended release and wanted to get off them, the GP suggested tapering over 5 days and part of this process was to break the tablets into halves and quarters (and thus removing the extended release coating). That SNRI is well-known for having a nasty withdrawal from abrupt cessation, and that's not even considering the idea of breaking the extended release mechanism so the dose entering and exiting your body is sped up.

patients must halt their existing psychiatric medication before the first session
Click to expand...

A massive undertaking for some people, and especially for the target of this particular MDMA trial which is, according to the article, people with PTSD who are often at high risk of suicide.

Oh yeah, and

With an average cost of $20,000
Click to expand...

The idea of introducing substances which the medical world has seen as taboo (because they're associated with partying) and using them for healing has lots of promise and, apparently, there's ever growing evidence to support that these things (e.g. MDMA, psilocybin, esketamine) can have genuine, lasting, and importantly, near instant effects is exciting. But a good chunk of that excitement gets whittled away when the actual process and practical details are revealed.
 
Ethics panels LOLOLOL.

I have a good idea for ethics panels, but I won't discuss it here because it's very off-topic to what we are discussing at hand. But it IS a "medical" thingamajig. I can say with absolute authority that it does require an ethics panel, though, and to give up a clue - it's not abortion either. Something else, I guess I'd describe it as a sexual "lobotomy", so I'll let the inquiring minds wonder.

As for the treatment, nope, it doesn't always work. There are a few failures, and there is a lot of discussion around the long-term effects of MDMA sessions and the effective doses that are taken. At $20k for treatment, I'd tell them to fuck off, I can get the best hearing aids on the planet for that amount of money (even though hearing aids are fucking useless for the type of hearing loss I are dealing with because distorted sound stays distorted no matter how much you amplify it).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top