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MDMA as a treatment for Psycho/Sociopathy?

EvS

EvS

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Nov 26, 2007
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There's a great article on the website Damn Interesting called "The Unburdened Mind" about psychopathy: http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=936#more-936

The psychopaths, for their part, will never know things any other way. Most experts agree that the condition is permanent and completely untreatable. It’s been theorized that their situation is the result of a kind of inherited learning disorder: without dread or anxiety to deter them, psychopaths are unable to make the associations between behavior and punishment that make up the building blocks of a normal conscience. That being the case, it is questionable whether a description such as “evil”—which is not uncommon in both the popular and scientific literature—can really be applied to individuals incapable of understanding what it means.
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It just makes me wonder.. what effect would an empathic drug have on a psychopath? Would it bring out any repressed/latent empathic ability, or would it have no effect on a broken mechanism?
 
Interesting idea...my guess is it would force them into some kind of pseudo-empathy, not the deep connections we feel, but something much more shallow.

But yeah, I think MDMA as a treatment for those conditions is a great idea! Imagine the kind of rehabilitation into society that would be possible with that sort of tool at a psychologist's disposal!
 
I think the less stimulating empathogens would be a better route than MDMA, but certainly someone at a university should at least do preliminary testing of the basic idea...though i guess the main issue is that for someone to administer a drug as a therapy they have to want to do so in the first place and a sociopath has no interest to be altered in such a way...even for someone as 'broken' and potentially harmful to others as a sociopath we can not simply mandate drug treatment upon diagnosis
 
Surely you can do something for convicted criminals though. That article says that up to 50% of people in federal prison for violent crimes are sociopathic. If prisons can give medical treatment and psych. help for drug addiction, etc, why not empathogens for sociopathy?
 
Would be interesting to see how they respond to psychs too. This would surely be under investigation if they were legal, and i guess lots of people in prison generates a substantial profit for some.

Surely you can do something for convicted criminals though.
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Most likely. Prison is obviously completely ineffective for rehabilitation (in a lot of cases detrimental), it's worth trying other things.
 
I as well have always pondered what would happen in a situation like this (but with psychedelics rather than MDMA)? That is, take a sociopathic person and administer a large (mindfuck) dose of a psychedelic (e.g. 750-900 mcg LSD) and expose them to intensely negative stimuli likely to induce a bad trip--'forcing' them to deal with (or at least face) some of their psychical demons. Akin to the mental 'reprogramming' of a Clockwork Orange, but lacking the Skinner-style behavioral cue conditioning.

Back on topic: since the sociopath is utterly lacking any sort of empathy--or even the fundamental concept of empathy--I wonder if MDMA would not simply act like speed or 'silly speed?'
 
EvS said:
Surely you can do something for convicted criminals though. That article says that up to 50% of people in federal prison for violent crimes are sociopathic. If prisons can give medical treatment and psych. help for drug addiction, etc, why not empathogens for sociopathy?
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Sociopathy & psychopathy, as far as I understand, are due to faults in the wiring of the brain and are pretty much refractory to any sort of cognative type treatment. As psychopaths & sociopaths are generally reasonably intelligent (they have to be to survive and not stand out from everybody else), chances are it just gives them another way of manipulating people if they get a better understanding of empathy.

As far as 'evil' goes, I'd say that a lack of remorse or such like after comitting horrific acts is pretty much a description of what eveil is ie no possibility of learning not to repeat it because of internal psychological sanctions
 
great replies..

i still have many scenes from clockwork orange floating around in my grey matter, even though it's been almost 30 years since I last saw it! I did a lot of work on antidepressants and antipsychotics, and just have to say that if you have medication compliant patients you're usually OK, but depressives commit suicide and psychotics commit homicide (or some other very strange and nasty antisocial behaviors) when they go off their meds. The reason that they go off their meds are many, some think that they are cured, bipolars miss the "high's", many feel a social stigma, but like ALL people with imbalances in endogenous ligand production and utilization, help comes in the form of a pill that they almost always have to take for life. That is why it is useless to persecute "substance users" of all classes, chances are they are only making up for imbalances in their natural brain chemistry, imbalances that are "put right" by using their substance of choice. It is amazing how many people I know who just don't get the use of drugs, they feel that they are superior, because they "don't get anything" from drugs that they have tried. Give them a drug which , say would throw their SERT system out of whack, and they felt the pangs of suicide, then give them the pill that abated the feelings and i'm sure that most of them would get the hint.
"One pill makes you bigger, and one pill makes you small, and one pill dosen't do anything, anything at all"
 
I've often wondered about this myself...

Although I don't believe that MDMA/emphathogen/DMT/psychedelic - based treatments would have a 100% success rate in helping all psychopaths and sociopaths, I certainly do believe that such treatments hold massive potential, even to the point of being capable of totally curing some.

One major problem, however, is that most such prisoners are involuntarily loaded up on SSRIs, antipsychotics/neuroleptics, and mood stabilizers. All of these drugs partially or completely block the desired effects of most empathogens and psychedelics, and would have to be discontinued for several months in order for the magic of MDMA or the like to work correctly. The discontinuation of such drugs would never be permitted by government appointed psychiatrists, as this would violate their contracts with Big Pharma and Bealzebub.
 
If you can feel the tortured persons pain,is that empathy?And when it gives you joy,is it still empathy?
 
empathy is being able to relate to feelings of others so it is both and actually i am not sure if MDMA is more pro-social than truly empathogenic as such
 
I watched this guy with man boobs go wild after my friend wouldn't allow him into his house because he weighed too much. He was taking xtc at the time & it had clearly affected his psychiatry.
 
Most drugs....

...act differently on different people. Because our receptorology is such an ill-defined mechanistic approach to CNS disease, what's good for the goose ain't neccessarily good for the gander.
 
Sociopath

I'm a Sociopath although i might not fit in i have one small thread of humanity left and am trying to hold onto it as i know what i am capable of doing should i lose that thread and i don't want to be locked up again if there are any doctors you know that might want to take a chance in alternative therapy I would be willing to work with you and give you all rights to publications if any positive results or breakthroughs:o
 
Bradley Wolfe5373 said:
I'm a Sociopath although i might not fit in i have one small thread of humanity left and am trying to hold onto it as i know what i am capable of doing should i lose that thread and i don't want to be locked up again if there are any doctors you know that might want to take a chance in alternative therapy I would be willing to work with you and give you all rights to publications if any positive results or breakthroughs:o
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aya.
 
well leik everyone else said its interesting shit but i think sum old fashion neuroleptic combo would still better lol

i cant imagine those ppl hugging each other yaying and become plur monsters:p
 
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