Ecstasy - 'non-neurotoxic'; USA research restarts

Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk at the Camaldolese Hermitage in Big Sur, California, reports that the drug MDMA (Ecstasy) facilitates the search for the 'awakened attitude' all monks seek. 'It's like climbing all day in the fog and then suddenly briefly seeing the mountain peak for the first time,' he said.

Dr Samuel Widmer, the administrator of an MDMA and psychedelic therapy research project in Switzerland, reports more soberly:

'In our work with MDMA in psychotherapy so far, we have not observed any negative effects, either of a psychological or physical kind. No addictions to MDMA have been observed after the use of MDMA. To the contrary, we have been able to confirm that other addictions (alcohol, medical drugs, heroin, etc) were greatly reduced by MDMA-supported therapy.'

And a recent and still unpublished study by George Ricarte at the University of Chicago, found no evidence of neurotoxicity when normal human doses of MDMA were administered to primates every two months.

In July '92, the American FDA's Drug Abuse Advisory Committee decided that research into the medical uses of MDMA and other 'hallucinogens' warranted the risk of conducting such research; and they provided guidelines for the first sanctioned study with MDMA, with Dr Charles Groeb at the University of California at Irvine as investigator. This will be a two-part study, firstly training therapists as well as assessing the risk of neurotoxicity in humans; and secondly, looking at the impact of the MDMA experience on the mental perspectives of individuals waiting to die.