5 ms·

If you're interested in MDMA sessions, and specifically MAPS (the pharma company that runs the trials), you might want to listen to the Cover story podcast, whi

If you're interested in MDMA sessions, and specifically MAPS (the pharma company that runs the trials), you might want to listen to the Cover story podcast, which deals with the MDMA/psylocybin culture of California as well as these trials. The first episode is at [1], the first episode dealing with maps is at [2]. These rape allegations are highly disconcerting and disheartening. [1] https://www.thecut.com/2021/11/cover-story-podcast-goes-into-world-of-psychedelic-therapy.html https://www.thecut.com/2021/11/cover-story-podcast-goes-into... [2] https://www.thecut.com/2022/03/cover-story-podcast-open-heart-surgery.html https://www.thecut.com/2022/03/cover-story-podcast-open-hear...

SpodGaju 5y ago
Do you know I believe this without even reading those articles? Because MDMA is nothing new. Really it’s not. All it does is artificially increase serotonin. This is not a change of paradigm, it’s the same old thinking that never ends up helping anyone. And the only people who package drug that does the same thing as an old drug that never helps anyone are sociopaths.
- smilespray 5y ago
  The only people who write in such absolutes have Dunning-Kruger as their middle name.
  - SpodGaju 5y ago
    What absolute? That MDMA increases serotonin in the synaptic cleft just like prozac?
    - pmoriarty 5y ago
      If "All [MDMA] does is artificially increase serotonin.... just like prozac" then Prozac and MDMA would have the same effect. But they have radically different effects, so they must do at least something differently, despite sharing some similarities.
      - SpodGaju 5y ago
        Yes, it works more quickly. That’s the only difference. And it is more like the SNRIs, like cymbalta with some effect or encouraging the release of catecholamines. But the effect is the same, more neurotransmitters in the synaptic cleft. People abuse Prozac as well if that given you a clue on their similarities. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8093133/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8093133/ https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.150.12.1898?journalCode=ajpWe https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.150.12....
        pmoriarty 5y ago
        "it works more quickly. That’s the only difference" I'd like to see a paper from a reputable journal saying that MDMA is just a quicker working version of Prozac.
        SpodGaju 5y ago
        OK, wait, let me call at my pharmaceutical buddies and have them do a study that shows that the New drug they wanna make billions of dollars from works just like Prozac but faster. I’ll get back to you in a minute. The fact that people are even slightly amazed at an amphetamine will make people happier is amazing to me. Don’t you’ll realize you’re substituting Street dealers for dealers in suits?
        pmoriarty 5y ago
        MDMA is not a new drug. It was used for therapy as far back as the 1980's. It doesn't merely "make people happier", but seems to actually help people face and let go of their trauma, forgive themselves and others, feel love and trust where they couldn't before, communicate with their loved ones more effectively, and has stopped some from killing themselves. There is a lot of evidence that it effectively treats severe, treatment-resistant PTSD -- something no other type of treatment does even remotely as well, which is why it's likely to be fully approved by the FDA soon. To compare its effects to other amphetamines, except at the most superficial level is ridiculous, as none of them have these effects. As for dealers, I'd be happy if dealers (the street or suit kind) sold effective medication that improves people's lives. Of course the legal providers are better because then we can be assured of their medicines' safety and purity, and we won't have people thrown in jail and being killed in turf wars over something that helps people.
clsec 5y ago
MAPS is not a pharmaceutical company! MAPS stands for Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. It is a non-profit 501(c)(3). https://maps.org/about-maps/ https://maps.org/about-maps/
- sjburt 5y ago
  Agreed that they are not a pharmaceutical company, but the Phase 3 trial is being sponsored by MAPS PBC which is the for-profit subsidiary and I assume has some sort of revenue motive.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    The for-profit subsidiary is 100% owned by the non-profit. Here's what Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS had to say about this: "MAPS has started the MAPS Public Benefit Corporation, which is for-profit corporation. It's 100% owned by the non-profit, but still we have a for-profit arm, and the goal of that is to sell MDMA at a profit and then whatever the profits are to fuel more research and more public education."[1] [1] - From about 54 minutes in to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZxRxJrSSPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZxRxJrSSPg
csnover 5y ago
Since I listened to Cover Story recently, it was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this on the front page. I’m curious to hear from you and others who listened to the podcast about your impressions, because something felt really off to me about it. I feel this way because of how the presenters initially introduced themselves as very pro-psychedelic, then over the course of the series made what seemed to be increasingly negative and misleading statements to lead listeners to the conclusion that all psychedelics research is garbage (because everyone involved is either an abuser or motivated by greed) and that these drugs are just too dangerous to be legalised or used in therapy (because they are too disinhibiting or because they break people). They started with ‘psychedelics are great and I love them and they really helped me in my life’ and ended with almost an entire episode of ‘I tell anyone who is interested not to do it’. The serious and legitimate problems that they detailed are very worthy of investigation and remediation, but they also all seemed, to me, to be failures of: (1) individual practitioners who engaged in unethical/illegal behaviour; (2) study runners who didn’t know, or didn’t care, or even believed that these unethical behaviours were actually fine; (3) the drug war, which stopped reputable groups with stronger ethical standards from performing studies and created space for an underground movement led by sociopaths; and (4) the medical research apparatus itself which is too uncritical and accepting of garbage study designs and data. Some other “problems” they raised just struck me as odd, like the claim that results couldn’t be legitimate because they were combined from multiple trial sites, or that MDMA-assisted therapy is uniquely bad because it is ‘like doing open heart surgery and then walking away’. Regarding multiple trial sites: I’m not a medical researcher, but I’ve seen this many times when looking up trials on clinicaltrials.gov. So, either (1) it’s not actually a problem, or (2) they didn’t clearly explain why this study’s multi-site design was uniquely bad, or (3) it’s a problem not unique to the MDMA-assisted therapy trial and should’ve been framed as an industry-wide problem instead but wasn’t. Regarding the ‘open heart surgery’ analogy: Limiting the number of follow-up sessions was clearly a terrible study design and never should have been allowed, and the practitioners who refused to help should almost certainly be—at a minimum—barred from practice, but basically all forms of therapy have similar risks[0], so it seemed misleading at best for them to frame it as some consequence unique to MDMA-assisted therapy. There was even an article here on HN in 2020 about risks associated with meditation and mindfulness[1]. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4219072/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4219072/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24185710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24185710

SpodGaju 5y ago

Do you know I believe this without even reading those articles? Because MDMA is nothing new. Really it’s not. All it does is artificially increase serotonin. This is not a change of paradigm, it’s the same old thinking that never ends up helping anyone. And the only people who package drug that does the same thing as an old drug that never helps anyone are sociopaths.

smilespray 5y ago
The only people who write in such absolutes have Dunning-Kruger as their middle name.
- SpodGaju 5y ago
  What absolute? That MDMA increases serotonin in the synaptic cleft just like prozac?
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    If "All [MDMA] does is artificially increase serotonin.... just like prozac" then Prozac and MDMA would have the same effect. But they have radically different effects, so they must do at least something differently, despite sharing some similarities.
    - SpodGaju 5y ago
      Yes, it works more quickly. That’s the only difference. And it is more like the SNRIs, like cymbalta with some effect or encouraging the release of catecholamines. But the effect is the same, more neurotransmitters in the synaptic cleft. People abuse Prozac as well if that given you a clue on their similarities. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8093133/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8093133/ https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.150.12.1898?journalCode=ajpWe https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.150.12....
      - pmoriarty 5y ago
        "it works more quickly. That’s the only difference" I'd like to see a paper from a reputable journal saying that MDMA is just a quicker working version of Prozac.
        SpodGaju 5y ago
        OK, wait, let me call at my pharmaceutical buddies and have them do a study that shows that the New drug they wanna make billions of dollars from works just like Prozac but faster. I’ll get back to you in a minute. The fact that people are even slightly amazed at an amphetamine will make people happier is amazing to me. Don’t you’ll realize you’re substituting Street dealers for dealers in suits?
        pmoriarty 5y ago
        MDMA is not a new drug. It was used for therapy as far back as the 1980's. It doesn't merely "make people happier", but seems to actually help people face and let go of their trauma, forgive themselves and others, feel love and trust where they couldn't before, communicate with their loved ones more effectively, and has stopped some from killing themselves. There is a lot of evidence that it effectively treats severe, treatment-resistant PTSD -- something no other type of treatment does even remotely as well, which is why it's likely to be fully approved by the FDA soon. To compare its effects to other amphetamines, except at the most superficial level is ridiculous, as none of them have these effects. As for dealers, I'd be happy if dealers (the street or suit kind) sold effective medication that improves people's lives. Of course the legal providers are better because then we can be assured of their medicines' safety and purity, and we won't have people thrown in jail and being killed in turf wars over something that helps people.

clsec 5y ago

MAPS is not a pharmaceutical company! MAPS stands for Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. It is a non-profit 501(c)(3). https://maps.org/about-maps/ https://maps.org/about-maps/

sjburt 5y ago
Agreed that they are not a pharmaceutical company, but the Phase 3 trial is being sponsored by MAPS PBC which is the for-profit subsidiary and I assume has some sort of revenue motive.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  The for-profit subsidiary is 100% owned by the non-profit. Here's what Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS had to say about this: "MAPS has started the MAPS Public Benefit Corporation, which is for-profit corporation. It's 100% owned by the non-profit, but still we have a for-profit arm, and the goal of that is to sell MDMA at a profit and then whatever the profits are to fuel more research and more public education."[1] [1] - From about 54 minutes in to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZxRxJrSSPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZxRxJrSSPg

csnover 5y ago

Since I listened to Cover Story recently, it was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this on the front page. I’m curious to hear from you and others who listened to the podcast about your impressions, because something felt really off to me about it. I feel this way because of how the presenters initially introduced themselves as very pro-psychedelic, then over the course of the series made what seemed to be increasingly negative and misleading statements to lead listeners to the conclusion that all psychedelics research is garbage (because everyone involved is either an abuser or motivated by greed) and that these drugs are just too dangerous to be legalised or used in therapy (because they are too disinhibiting or because they break people). They started with ‘psychedelics are great and I love them and they really helped me in my life’ and ended with almost an entire episode of ‘I tell anyone who is interested not to do it’. The serious and legitimate problems that they detailed are very worthy of investigation and remediation, but they also all seemed, to me, to be failures of: (1) individual practitioners who engaged in unethical/illegal behaviour; (2) study runners who didn’t know, or didn’t care, or even believed that these unethical behaviours were actually fine; (3) the drug war, which stopped reputable groups with stronger ethical standards from performing studies and created space for an underground movement led by sociopaths; and (4) the medical research apparatus itself which is too uncritical and accepting of garbage study designs and data. Some other “problems” they raised just struck me as odd, like the claim that results couldn’t be legitimate because they were combined from multiple trial sites, or that MDMA-assisted therapy is uniquely bad because it is ‘like doing open heart surgery and then walking away’. Regarding multiple trial sites: I’m not a medical researcher, but I’ve seen this many times when looking up trials on clinicaltrials.gov. So, either (1) it’s not actually a problem, or (2) they didn’t clearly explain why this study’s multi-site design was uniquely bad, or (3) it’s a problem not unique to the MDMA-assisted therapy trial and should’ve been framed as an industry-wide problem instead but wasn’t. Regarding the ‘open heart surgery’ analogy: Limiting the number of follow-up sessions was clearly a terrible study design and never should have been allowed, and the practitioners who refused to help should almost certainly be—at a minimum—barred from practice, but basically all forms of therapy have similar risks[0], so it seemed misleading at best for them to frame it as some consequence unique to MDMA-assisted therapy. There was even an article here on HN in 2020 about risks associated with meditation and mindfulness[1]. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4219072/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4219072/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24185710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24185710