MDMA for therapeutic use?

There were a couple news items about another study being done on the use of MDMA for psychological therapy. There is a problem with MDMA. Yes, for a time it has the effect of a pleasant “high” with feelings of goodness, warmth, even intense spirituality.

But the other side of it is dark: Feelings of being low, coldness, blocked, depression. In the coming-down phase – which can stretch for days after its use – a person is as much or more prone to negative feelings as they were to positive ones during the relatively short time that they were experiencing the “high”.

There’s a further problem with it however which concerns me the most: I believe that one of the effects of MDMA use, one of the types of damage it inflicts, is that it damages emotional resilience. Emotional resilience is a critical aspect of psychological health and well-being. It is the ability to easily handle even difficult or stressful situations.

But one of the effects of MDMA is that it messes up emotional regulation and resiliency. Even relatively small experiences can trigger highly negative emotions, even months or perhaps years after taking it. Another way to put this is to say that use of MDMA makes one crash-prone. By crash I mean emotional crash.

To be clear, what I mean is that the use of MDMA changes something physiologically in the human brain whereby the response to stress is permanently altered. This physiologic change has psychological consequences, but the change is physiologic, not simply psychological.

If you pay very close attention to your emotional states not just during and in the weeks immediately after using MDMA, you will notice that there is a lingering, long-term effect of weakened emotional resilience in which it is more easy to crash emotionally. This is the real price paid for using MDMA, not the “crash” phase of the immediate aftermath which is obvious. It is this subtle, long-term damage to the way the psyche handles things which is a real problem.

While there is a lot of focus on the “high” and the come down from MDMA, I think the focus should be on long-term emotional resiliency.

I believe that it is possible for the brain to recover but not easily and only after a long time. My guess is that most people who have used it will never fully recover their emotional resiliency to what it was before they ever used the drug. But yes, depending upon how much of it was used, how well one maintains ones health, and other factors, it is perhaps possible to mostly recover.

I would NOT recommend trying to use MDMA for therapeutic reasons. There are far, far better options. There are states that can be attained relatively easily through meditation which far exceed the “high” from MDMA and which not only does not cause damage, it actually strengthens the psyche and the soul.