MDMA therapeutic use

[Red Dragonfly]

Since childhood I'm suffering from intrusive thoughts and obsessions. I maybe have some form av OCD while never diagnosed. I've tried CBT but the effect of it didn't really last.
Reading about MDMA therapy makes me curious about taking MDMA once in order to try to relieve this problem. Though I haven't access to do it clinically with a professional therapist it would be at home alone, using strategies I've learnt from a self help book after exposing myself for the thoughts.
Does this sound like a bad or a good idea? Any advises if it could be worth trying? I also wonder if 72 mg sounds like a too small dose for this project, cause this is what I have left from my last MDMA session. My sweet spot recreational dose is 100-120 mg.

My biggest worry about trying this is to defile the free zone that MDMA is for me, by letting my anxiety enter it.

 

[Pissed_and_messed]

Well yeah I've found molly helping me with OCPD, so there is that.

I've just talked with my trip company. I have done few rolls on my own too. I have never tried meditation or any structured exercise.

 

[maoriwarrior]

I can't advise you, but can only say that from my own long term (almost 20 years) moderate use, it's been good for me. Good luck I hope you find what you are looking for, therapy wise.

 

[Red Dragonfly]

Thank you for your answers. Does someone have any opinion on dosing for this purpose? Recreational with friends I would prefer around 120 mg. When I tried around 70 mg at a rave once, I just felt relaxed and went in a light mood that lasted for some days. So maybe that dose would be better for therapeutic purpose? I don't want to waste a whole dose on being alone at home, if not neccessary. But does full therapeutic potential urge a full dose maybe?

 

[maoriwarrior]

Thank you for your answers. Does someone have any opinion on dosing for this purpose? Recreational with friends I would prefer around 120 mg. When I tried around 70 mg at a rave once, I just felt relaxed and went in a light mood that lasted for some days. So maybe that dose would be better for therapeutic purpose? I don't want to waste a whole dose on being alone at home, if not neccessary. But does full therapeutic potential urge a full dose maybe?

I think dose is largely body-weight dependant, so for me at 230lbs a gentle dose (my normal dose) is around 120mgs. If 70mg had a nice relaxing effect for you then I'd start there.

 

[Phobos]

Since childhood I'm suffering from intrusive thoughts and obsessions. I maybe have some form av OCD while never diagnosed. I've tried KBT but the effect of it didn't really last.
Reading about MDMA therapy makes me curious about taking MDMA once in order to try to relieve this problem. Though I haven't access to do it clinically with a professional therapist it would be at home alone, using strategies I've learnt from a self help book after exposing myself for the thoughts.
Does this sound like a bad or a good idea? Any advises if it could be worth trying? I also wonder if 72 mg sounds like a too small dose for this project, cause this is what I have left from my last MDMA session. My sweet spot recreational dose is 100-120 mg.

My biggest worry about trying this is to defile the free zone that MDMA is for me, by letting my anxiety enter it.

I think there is good potential.
It is an experiment worth doing, my advice would be to not have any expectations for your first few experiences, you'd basically be trying things out in order to define a method or protocol for using MDMA therapeutically on your own.
I advice you to take notes with timestamps throughout the experience so you can later evaluate what happens at what stage.

I also advice you to buy a quantity that will allow you to have multiple experiments all from the same bag, so you will be 100% sure that the purity will always be the same throughout a number of experiences.

Take care of optimising your nutrition before and during the sessions, finding which room of your house is ideal, if you should be listening to music and if so, which music, how loud, is headphones or loudspeakers better, etc?
Also find out which clothes will be ideal, should you take a warm shower as you come up, do you want aromas in the room? Should you sit down, lie down, have your eyes open or closed? Should you stay in the dark, have a coloured light, or just normal light?

Basically work at establishing a routine/ritual that will be conducive to you being productive in your sessions.

In regards to your worries about feeling anxiety while on MDMA while you are on a self therapy session, I think that it is mostly up to how much MDMA you take.
MDMA has a marked anti anxiety effect that can be felt even with a mild dose, so make sure that you have taken enough to suppress it but not too much in the sense that it becomes harder to focus on a specific train of thought.

IME I would advise against taking other drugs together with MDMA, even alcohol and/or weed as I think they diminish the therapeutic potential of MDMA.
An exception to this would be if you are a daily user of something and by not taking it you would somehow not feel right.
In that case take the minimum dose that you think would make you feel ok.

Please don't hesitate to ask any more questions and also please update us on how your sessions go, I think it would be useful for both you and the community.

 

[Red Dragonfly]

OK, here is finally an update!

Sadly I didn't get the chance to try my idea the way I wanted. But I can tell what happened instead and my conclusions from it so far.

I realized that I needed some more MDMA to try my idea fully, but when contacting the dealer they didn't have any MDMA left and after that I lost contact with them. Instead I unexpectedly got some LSD from another source. I had never tried LSD before this and didn't have any plans to do so either. But I had been curious about trying microdosing shrooms and now I could try microdosing psychedelics with LSD. So I divided the tab into 4 pieces. The tab was properly dosed so 1/4 wasn't an actual microdose, rather minidose. But I couldn't divide the tab into smaller pieces as it already was very tiny. Anyhow I got noticable effects from the 1/4 dose and it felt really therapeutic in the way of freeing my thinking and uplifting my mood and creativity.
So came the idea to mix MDMA with LSD to boost the little MDMA that I had left. I've written about the experience this lead to in a several other threads here on BL if you want to read about it. So all I say here is that the experience wasn't so comfortable... Not in the way that the intrusive thought problem got worse afterwards. If so, I guess that it rather was my fear of having destroyed my mental health including the intrusive thoughts that made the problem seem worse, than an actual increase of the intensity of the intrusive thought problem.

I can tell you what gave me the idea to try to treat my intrusive thoughts with MDMA from the beginning. Last time I used MDMA on its own 8 months ago, I got one of my most painful intrusive thoughts on the come-up. Then I peaked and the peak killed it. I don't know if it's a temporary effect but that specific thought still haven't come back to the same level as before. So the erasing effect was really powerful and that's why I wanted to repeat it with the other most painful intrusive though that I've had, but this time intentionally. My plan was to only expose myself to the intrusive thought on the candyflip if I was feeling good after ingesting both LSD and MDMA. And I did feel good- at first. So I exposed myself to the thought and it was even uplifting and fun. But then started this bad comedown... The roll before I didn't have a comedown but an afterglow so maybe that could be the key why the effect of weakening the intrusive thought became lasting after that roll. I don't know if it was the influence of LSD that made the outcome different this time. It's possible that the outcome could be depending on more variables than that. So my answer on the question: "Can MDMA cure intrusive thoughts?" only based on the very little experience I have about this is: "It's possible but it depends, it can be unpredictable".

Maybe I got other therapeutic benefits from the candyflip than the intentional, but benefits that could be more valuable in the long run. I realize that I need to take it very easy with drugs for a long time to recover. Right now I almost get nervous only by having dilated pupils for "natural" reasons. Then I want to check if they shrink when looking into light so I know for sure I'm sober haha. Therefore I've stopped experimenting on my own and instead going to professional therapy for the intrusive thoughts.
Maybe the LSD uninvited came into my life for a reason. LSD can be really honest to you. It was like it showed me what the root of my issue really is rather than neither erasing nor worsening the intrusive thoughts themselves. So maybe I'll continue with therapy for that root issue. The MDMA just reminded me of why my worst intrusive thought got that specific theme.

I wish psychedelic drugs to be legalized so you don't experiment with things you aren't ready for or strong enough for, because of unpredictable access to substances. And for better access to a therapist if experimenting. It could be regulated and never sold commercial. The feeling of having to break the law because of psychedelics as a possible solution of long lasting mental health problems, is also very stressful. Why denying people access from potentially healing experiences. Or experiences that are just simply beautiful and enriching. Isn't deciding what people put in their own bodies violating human rights.
Information of drugs should be correct and nuanced. Neither misleading antidrug propaganda nor success stories only.

Good advice to me to not mix drugs!