Ecstatic breakthrough: MDMA research.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Citings - Brief article

IN 1985 the Drug Enforcement Administration banned MDMA, a.k.a. Ecstasy, because it had become popular as a party drug, despite protests from psychotherapists who said their clients found it useful. A quarter of a century later, researchers finally have completed the first study of MDMA's therapeutic potential to be allowed by the U.S. government. Their findings, announced in July, lend support to those early reports.

The researchers, led by the South Carolina psychiatrist Michael Mithoefer, randomly assigned "twenty patients with chronic posttraumatic stress disorder" to receive either MDMA or a placebo while participating in two eight-hour "experimental psychotherapy sessions." As measured by a "Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale," 83 percent of the subjects who received MDMA showed statistically...