i for one would like to see more come out of the treatment of ptsd with mdma esp with the soldiers that are coming back from the wars. i have a buddy who was over there and he has shown signs of it. I might pull up some articles that have been done and show him there have been some really good results.. the gov needs to address this. esp with the amount of soldiers that have been committing suicide.
This is a point I made much earlier in this thread. I don't think anything I have said is profound enough to prompt people to backtrack and see what lead to my current posts, but it's interesting to see this because it crossrefeferences perfectly with the whole reason I got myself in to this thread to begin with. This was one of my earlier responses to a post I made in defense of MDMA in conjunction with Psychotherapry:
"Ok to the 20 people who have flipped out on me about suggesting the "MDMA+Psychotherapy every 6 to 8 weeks in as a different approach to treating depression." Please calm down. 6 to 8 weeks was just a random number, what I supposedly should have said was "Periodically" in order to loosen everyone's panties a little bit. The POINT of that was saying, drugs like MDMA and other fast acting serotonin antogonizing chemicals are simply a different approach to treating depression than the long-term medications that inhibit the reuptake mechanism, and as SOME (not all) studies show, in many patients these same drugs are believed to cause long-term, irreversible damage. I do not believe that MDMA is the answer to depression or anything else for that matter. I'm just saying, I believe it was a mistake to make it illegal and villify it so much before we were able to properly test it and find out what its benefits, if any, actually are.
I personally beleive the apparent "fear diminishing" effect of MDMA are fairly unique to that drug. For specific disorders like PTSD and other disorders that can arguably be pinpointed to specific tragic events that subjects experienced in the past and have trouble addressing in a normal state-of-mind, I think that MDMA could have some profound potential. Even if it's one or two serious therapy sessions in which the drug is used simply to break down the emotional barrier. If nothing else it could help the doctor understand what the patient actually needs to deal with.
You're right - MDMA every 6-8 weeks no matter what the circumstances are is excessive. That timeframe was a mistake on my part, I was simply throwing out the idea and didn't carefully review the post before i submitted it.
Psychotherapy is an extremely inexact science, and it's my belief that it is one of the few areas that MDMA MAY have some actualy medical validity in."
-- I have received some input since this post that made me reconsider my position... at least the "pureness" I orginally thought my position was backed by. THere are tons of contradictory arguments to wath i said here, and they all have a great amount of validity and scientific backing. But I still hold that my contention is one to be strongly considered.
Let's consider suicide for a minute.. or let's call it what it is - A loss of the will to survive.
I think that depression is just that - a loss of the will to survive.
Why have humans made it this far? Because, above all else, we have an incredibly strong will to survive. As does every other species that has overcome the environmental odds over the geological version of "time". I'm not talking about one or two lifetimes, I'm talking about millions of years. Watch one of those Oprah Winfry narrated specials on Animal Planet and you'll see what I'm talking about.
So many species haven't reached the evolutionary stage that even allows them to fuck with chemicals in a lab and alter brain chemistry. In all of these species we see one overwhelming consistency - an insatiable will to survive. I think that in human beings, the onset of depression and the loss of will to survive is a staggering phenomenon and is one that is being addresed, but in an unfortunately unifacted way. Instead of focusing on pure "happiness".. I think we should be more concerned with getting people back to the point where they will ferociously pursue survival.
Too many of us are caught up in this temporary desire to be euphoric. In fact, even in all of these threads with so many intelligent, conscientious arguments... so often happiness and euphoria are used interchangeably. They are not the same thing. Ask any legitimately depressed person if someone came in to their house and held a gun to their head, would they even think to fight back? Probably not. And this is because they don't actually WANT to be alive. In essence, someone else taking their life would simply lift the burden they would create by taking their own. Again - I am talking about extremely clinically depressed individuals... not just you average Joe who had a bad break up.
I think instead of trying to make everyone eupohric and ecstatic all the time, we should focus on simply making people WANT to live. I completely understand the romance of euphoria ; I seek it every day. But from a medical standpoint, I think that the emphasis of neuropathy is being placed on the wrong end-goal.
I know it seems ironic, but I think that MDMA could be essentailly instrumental in the process of people rediscovering their will to survive. I know it makes you falsely euphoric and "invincible", but I think most people underestimate how cripplingly depressed many people are. Many people haven't had a single, solitary positive moment in their lives in YEARS. It's these subjects I think could benefit from MDMA based therapy. Not just your average person who wants to be euphoric all the time.
This presents an incredibly complex problem when it comes to who qualifies as a legitmate subject for MDMA therapy... but certainly someone who has given his or her life in defense of country should be moved to the front of the line. I doubt any of us fully understand the complexities of WHAT that really means. What we see on Television is NOT what these people go through. It is much more gruesome and mentaly disturbing that you or I probably care to imagine, let alone experience.
