News Ecstasy... A Possible Treatment For PTSD

[bright_morning]

It is like marijuana, you can tell me how good it is for you until your black and blue in the face, but the HUGE fact many miss, is that marijuana is a hallucinogen, and with PTSD, that actually re-traumatizes you over and over, knowingly or not. So whilst you get a relief in one aspect, your symptoms will get progressively worse over the years due to the re-traumatization that is occurring when getting high in the first place.

Old thread I know, but...

How can you even know this about marijuana? There is only one published study involving veterans and marijuana where symptoms seem exacerbated or prolonged and it was only recently released. This idea of re-traumatization is a sensitive one anyway because when repressed memory is released, things often feel as if they are happening again anyway.

If you have research over this "marijuana = retraumatization" I'd really like to see it as I am always looking for new information in my recovery.

 

[anthony]

If you have research over this "marijuana = retraumatization" I'd really like to see it as I am always looking for new information in my recovery.

I could not possibly take the time to list them all. Go to Google Scholar and do a search for, marijuana ptsd trauma, and you will find studies going back a long time...

This is not new information that marijuana is a hallucinogen and causes retraumatization. Also not new that it becomes a depressant. PTSD already has depression... add marijuana, now you are more depressed. There is nothing new about any of this. Add cigarettes, now you added a stimulant into your equation. Add coffee, same thing. If you do all or many of these things, you are literally putting your body into a upper downer constant cycle. Many with untreated PTSD do this exact thing. Alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, coffee, etc.

All empirically validated and cited in relation to trauma, anxiety and depression. Search scholar and you will have all your answers.

 

[bright_morning]

I could not possibly take the time to list them all. Go to Google Scholar and do a search for, marijuana ptsd trauma, and you will find studies going back a long time...

This is not new information that marijuana is a hallucinogen and causes retraumatization. Also not new that it becomes a depressant. PTSD already has depression... add marijuana, now you are more depressed. There is nothing new about any of this. Add cigarettes, now you added a stimulant into your equation. Add coffee, same thing. If you do all or many of these things, you are literally putting your body into a upper downer constant cycle. Many with untreated PTSD do this exact thing. Alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, coffee, etc.

All empirically validated and cited in relation to trauma, anxiety and depression. Search scholar and you will have all your answers.

I have read quite a few studies about marijuana and emotional conditions, perhaps 45-50 or so. I will search at your suggestion. I will confess I don't have much time to dedicate to this. Since marijuana is often discussed in the press as a possible help for PTSD, it would be nice if this site had a handy set of resources to immediately dispel the possibility marijuana could be helpful.

I have Google Scholar up now and am not readily finding the studies you to which you refer? Should they be easy to find?

So far though, it seems that the claim that it causes re-traumatization implicitly is very much new information, as in there was a *hint of that in a study only just published in January, I think.

I can find a lot of studies on marijuana, and a lot of studies on trauma, but none so far that indicate that marijuana is directly linked to trauma symptoms other than in correlation with the substance abuse so commonplace with PTSD sufferers.

Anyway, I'll let the discussion rest since its off-topic in this thread. Sorry for that.

 

[anthony]

Should they be easy to find?

You will have to read in the studies to find all relevant information about pro's and cons, not simply the abstract information.

 

[freefloat]

I have a long response to hashi, i am just correcting for grammer, that i will post later.

I Googled scholar and didn't come up with anything. Anthony: Id like a link to what you are refering to.

Exposure therapy and EMDR are retraumatising aren't they? Do we throw them out for that one aspect of the treatment? Again i don’t see the link between pot and retraumatisation. If it does exist; how prevalent is it, how significant is it? Has the data been duplicated?

Pot is a depressant and a hallucinogen? Also heard it harms your chromosomes as well. But wait the professors at Cornell that published the chromosome study were fired for falsifying those results. There has been so much bad data on drug issues it boggles the mind. If something is a CNS depressant its doesn’t mean it induces mental depression. Theses old classifications need to be thrown out, not thrown around as truths that are stated as relevant to all use, at all levels, for all people. That’s just false, leads to more damage and are subject to political and other manipulation.

Many people treat depression by using pot. Can it depress some? I believe so but at what occurrence in the population? At what occurrence do we state the drug has no therapeutic/recreational value? I don't react that way to it. Someone could say to some you have depression look at the pot issue and draw a false causal relationship. The person may be poor and malnourished but the pot is whats causing the depression (they smoke 2 joints a week). The person may have had clinical depression prior to smoking pot but now they due its the cause. They may be depressed as they are using pot to mange chemo side effects. But its not having cancer it's the pot that is depressing them?????

There are some studies that show heroin causes: low birth weight, small head circumference and lower scores at birth. When a child is born to a woman that is heroin dependent. However when the data is looked at the mothers also had poor nutrition, smoked, poor or no no-natal care. But nope it was the opiates that caused those indicators of a new born health to be low. Rubbish!

The preliminary results for the use of MDMA for the use of TREATMENT RESISTANT PTSD is very encouraging. Due too the hysterics and bad science how many people have missed that opportunity for that treatment and lived in constant agony or suicide as a result? From a drug that cannot kill!!!! Who is winning here?

We have all heard that LSD has no therapeutic value. It induces insanity. Yup, in extreme doses it's not safe. They would restrain people in mental hospitals give them many times the recreational dose/therapeutic and derive their facts from those peoples response. The CIA was doing this to mental health patients in my country(Canada)!!!!!! Yet the 'facts' derived from those inhumane studies exist to this day and effect drug laws. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA from that:

On the Senate floor in 1977, Senator [DLMURL="https://www.ptsdforum.org/wiki/Ted_Kennedy"]Ted Kennedy[/DLMURL] said:

The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an "extensive testing and experimentation" program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens "at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign." Several of these tests involved the administration of [DLMURL="https://www.ptsdforum.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide"]LSD[/DLMURL] to "unwitting subjects in social situations." At least one death, that of [DLMURL="https://www.ptsdforum.org/wiki/Frank_Olson"]Dr. Olson[/DLMURL], resulted from these activities. The Agency itself acknowledged that these tests made little scientific sense. The agents doing the monitoring were not qualified scientific observers.[DLMURL="https://www.ptsdforum.org/c/#cite_note-9"][[/DLMURL]​

The current drug laws in western society are almost 100 years old. This is another case of the facts desperately looking for validation rather than the validity stemming from the facts.

It's inherently problematic to draw conclusions by attempting to isolated the human existence by isolating one aspect in a complex system. It's like taking your car, that won't start, to a mechanic who only works with heating systems and accepting it won't start cause your heater doesn't work. He's the expert.

We need to evolve into an stasis where critical thinking is the norm. Where we are taught and developed to make clear rational decsions for ourselves. To do so without the threat of incareration as the government says that's in our best interest. At a hospice in Santa Cruz, CA, a few years ago, the DEA went in a literally drug people out of bed arrested them charged them shut down the hospice as they were smoking illegal pot. In the best interest of ??????? It's insane!

 

[anthony]

Anthony: Id like a link to what you are refering to.

Ok, go research marijuana in scholar first, and the affects it has on the brain. Then scholar PTSD and learn about what areas of the brain are specifically affected by PTSD and trauma. Then further your research by reading the other studies used in other studies to compile them.

There is no one scholar article, as stated, you have to read and research the topic overall.

Yes, marijuana has medicinal purposes, such as elderly who are in hospices. This is quite proven. The controlled MDMA tests under psychiatric control have also shown good results for therapy.

None of that has anything to do with using marijuana to help with PTSD. Research the topics above, and then you will understand. There is also no point in researching some pro-marijuana site who performs their own studies, because they are only ever going to release positive effects. That is like reading a study on a pill by a pharmaceutical company... only positive effects get released, all the negative studies get buried and released 20 years or more later from subpoena or such when someone questions something enough.

There is no point in trying to debate with someone who uses marijuana to treat PTSD, that it is actually causing them more harm with their trauma and the effects produced upon their brain. It is like telling an alcoholic or heroin addict the shit is bad and they need to stop... they don't care because it feels good.

I have not yet heard a single negative story to date, from a person with PTSD who once off marijuana and into more positive therapy treatments, could honestly tell me that they actually didn't now feel much better and can now fully understand just how much marijuana was actually making their situation worse.

Again though, a useless debate with anyone on marijuana, because all anyone using it will do it try to justify how great it works for them, without any actual knowledge of the other side of the fence, being active positive therapy treatments without the use of marijuana to uniquely compare their experience with. As stated, every single person (big claim) to date, with PTSD, who has gone this route, not one yet has gone back to using it because they can fully understand and accept just how much it was screwing with them and keeping them down.

 

[freefloat]

Hashi:

DARE is the program they give kids in North America. One of the things they state is that pot is a gateway drug; all addicts started on pot therefore it is causal. Thing is 95% of the people that smoked pot never did anything else. The kids see the lies. Then they doubt and disregard things that are correct in the presentation. I'm not sure why cops are funded to give lectures on health issues far beyond the qualification and understanding of their profession.

Yes the word all is problematic when discussing anything relating to human experiences. I should have clarified but as i was speaking in the context of the individual. Yes others are harmed by what the drugs/ETOhethyl alcohol) can bring about in certain people. Being legal or illegal doesn't define that as a characteristic. If one person can use substance 'X' without any adverse reaction and the next uses 'X' and it makes the act in evil ways then the issue is with the person.

I am not aware of any substance that turns all people(or the majority) to harm others. Why does it effect one differently from the other is beyond the scope of this forum. I am aware in myself that there are certain substances i can't tolerate. Just as some I can't. I have my issues as do others. My father was NPD and when he drank(every day) it was brutal. Very brutal, sick etc, etc, etc. It wasn’t the ETOH per se but how it effected him. I can drink and never turn into that. Legality doesn’t speak to the harm nor damage of a substance it speaks to the legality of it. Legality mostly based in moral condemnation by those that condone things I find immoral. Subjective morality has no place violating peoples rights as human beings. Human nor civil rights.

With the right knowledge people will make the right choices or at least better ones. But we are constantly bombarded with false and misleading information. There is reasonable use and irresponsible use. It is irresponsible to use around kids. It is irresponsible to use substances that has adverse reactions to you. To drive impaired. Etc Etc Etc. Yet no one is calling for a ban on ETOH as people do use it responsibly. Should we criminalize those that do?

What I mean by education is giving people the ability to make a clear choice in full knowledge of the drugs possible effect on them. To have a process that is one of learning if they chose to try those drugs. This is what legalization would look like when we educated people on the effects and use of drugs. In recovery this is part of what people are taught. This is part of how people recover. With knowledge.

I never met an addict that started out wanting to be one. Never met one that had full knowledge when they picked up for the first time. I've assessed approx 1,200 heroin addicts and known about 1,000 more in my career. I'd get kids snorting heroin thinking that they couldn’t get addicted that way. Wrong. I knew others that thought you have to use for months to get dependent. Wrong. Other that were presented with 'education' that pot was no more dangerous than heroin. Wrong. I doubt they would have used if they had fully understood what they were getting themselves into.

Use about $40 worth of heroin, daily, nasally for 10 days and your hooked. Now we have a strong bio logical complication in treating that person. They are underground and due to the legalities separate themselves from society. In that separation they become subject to more bad information from the other users. The social pull is great and isolates them further. Further from their family, old friends and help. They are now stigmatized by the law and misunderstanding. If they survive they may become fully functional but most don't. The ones that benefit the greatest are the dealers and lawyers.

No proponent of legalization with a valid position recommends uncontrolled distribution. That would be chaos. It's an intervention to prevent harm to the users, those around them and society. Controls would be in place to monitor for abuse, addiction and harm to the person. They have resources to deal with under lying issues that cause them harm to themselves or others. The drugs would be pure and therefore posses lower risk of harm. If someones use got out of hand that could be treated before it go to bad. If mental health issues were underlying the abuse/addiction then that would be addressed. The cost of the drugs would be low as to make resorting to crime/sex trade unnecessary. Organized crime would, as we know it, longer exist.

In recovery we look at a persons biological, psychological, social and spiritual issues. Find deficiencies in an infinite number of combinations of the severity of the deficiency in one of those areas. AA and NA deal with the social and spiritual issues. At times to the expense of bio and psycho. Point being you can't use just one intervention. The cart is before the horse in our current strategy(if their even is one).

Address those issues before peoples use becomes problematic. De-stigmaise drugs and those that use them. Get the outlaw appeal, that young people will glorify, out of the equasion. Have a way to allow those that use to discuss their experinces to help them use responsibly or look at the reason why they can't. Help them, don't push them to the margins of society or into jail.

Legalisation is preventative treatment.

Legalisation won't remove all harms. Nothing will. But nothing else brings us closer to a humane and cost effective way of dealing with peoples natural desire to alter their state of mind.

 

[anthony]

Agreed, legalisation is a whole other kettle of fish. Lets face facts, there are more legal drugs that cause harm than what illegal drugs cause if administered in dosage amounts, not un-responsibly like is presently occurring. Alcohol and cigarettes are the leading top two killers of drugs in the world, both of which are legal.

Then the other flipside to such a debate is, legally prescribed drugs are being abused and killing people worse than illegal drugs are. So if you legalise illegal drugs, will they not do more damage than already occurring?

A debate within itself IMO, probably outside the scope of this thread.

I respect the MDMA trials for trauma therapy, because they have removed the active ingredients from the otherwise ingredients that cause harm, to purely serve a purpose of short-term relaxation in order to allow a person to be more open to discussion for a brief period of time. They are a tablet, not snorting the stuff or such... they are scientifically formulated for a specific purpose and very small dose, not cooked up in some backyard lab with who knows what in it that could kill you in one dose.

Titles that use "Ecstasy" or such are really quite misleading, as Ecstasy, the drug, is not even close to MDMA by itself.

 

[freefloat]

So you are saying studies are biased yet draw a scientific inference from blending two to draw your own conclusions? So there is no study that directly compares the two(PTSD and pot)? It's an unproven hypotheses from a lay person. What you state is a personal opinion.

I've had PTSD since 1966. Times when I smoked pot and times when i didn’t. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. At times deep in therapy at times not. I never thought it was harmful or a detriment one way or another. For I years I was un or mis-diagnosed. I know pot helped me keep it together at times.

If the system was one of legalization people could be screened and treated for the underlying issues.

20 years ago no one thought there was any medical benefit of pot. Only through those weirdos on the pro-pot web sites was it researched and found effective. The same weirdos and hippies as at MAPS.ORG, etc. that got the MDMA studies going. Their hypothesis, anecdotal information and initial studies are now valid and accepted. But you say don't consider the studies at the pro-pot sites. But accept their findings on MDMA? How about the data at the anti-pot sites.

There is no existing theory of addiction that is or analogous to 'it feels good'. It doesn’t work that way.

Heroin addicts don't use cause it feels good nor do alcoholics. It's a compulsion. A chemical dependance that leads them to use. Most heroin addicts don't even get high. It normalizes their system only when the dose exceeds their tolerance in a significant quantity will the euphoria hit. Most barley get what they need to be straight. Same with those chemically dependent on ETOH. You can't put pot in that category, its clinically incorrect. Pot can't meet the DSMIV diagnosis of dependance. Furthermore, by your logic someone in CBT can't understand any other options because that’s what feels good to them? Or EMDR people can't validate CBT? AA people see that as the only way. Rational Recovery people see controlled use as the only way. Blah, blah, blah. Cognitive dissonance is all around us and in us.

Keeping drugs illegal supports peoples irrational view point to reject them. As they may 'go on a bad trip' or 'it would be a nightmare' or 'it may kill me' or 'it will make me crazy'. As the laws induced the spread of misinformation in seeking validity where none exists. It deters people through irrational arguments from making an informed decision. They don’t seek the knowledge but regurgitate anti-drug propaganda. All contrary opinion is deemed subversive and by wackos. It deters people from what could be an effective treatment. No very responsible. This is why I feel that the legality of drugs and hysteria is important to those with treatment resistant PTSD. They should be free of intentional false information as to its effects.

The range of drugs and the magnitude of what is prescribed would never be reached by legalizing what are now illicit drugs. Huge difference in demand. It's not due to them being legal that creates the lethality. We are talking legalizing less than 10 drugs. With known side effects and risk profiles. People would be advised of this in the legalization model. So no there would be much less harm than what is occurring. They have had legalized heroin in some European countries with a dramatic decrease in harm including death.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal

[DLMURL="http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/546253"]http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/546253[/DLMURL]

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/heroin-and-cocaine-now-legal-in-mexico-ndash-in-small-doses-1776792.html

and on and on.

Don’t even need a back yard to make drugs:

http://somechicksblog.com/make-meth/shake-and-bake-or-one-pot-meth-making

BTW. MDMA burns like hell if you snort it. The dose of 125mg used in the trial is equivalent to one typical recreational dose. You mis-chareterise the effects of MDMA when describing the experience. It's not a tranquilizer. It's a hallucinogenic-stimulant.

It will be years before MDMA therapy is widely available in that time I hope people can have better information to base their decision to use that adjunct to their therapy. To make an informed rational decision. To benefit if they chose that route to be respected cause they didn’t. At least lets have the proper information for people.

 

[anthony]

So you are saying studies are biased yet draw a scientific inference from blending two to draw your own conclusions? So there is no study that directly compares the two(PTSD and pot)? It's an unproven hypotheses from a lay person. What you state is a personal opinion.

No, not my opinion. The effects on the brain regions do not change, regardless how you attempt to spin it. Science clearly cites the affects on the specific regions of the brain in a vastly negative impact for marijuana use. The exact same areas within PTSD are affected, which are tested in studies with anxiety already, and comorbid depression. There is nothing new about this... this is not new science how marijuana negatively affects the brain and memory, or its relation to psychosis, trauma, etc.

Just put the right terms into the scholar advanced search, and out come the results.

marijuana brain
marijuana anxiety
marijuana depression
marijuana cannabinoids
the list goes on and on...

 

[Middle of Nowhere]

I have never tried E but I am a pot smoker. I toke because if I don't I get sick to my stomach. I am hoping someday that it will be a choice for me not a medication.
If there is something that helps a person they should weight it against the risks. I think that about Tylenol too.

 

[anthony]

Pot is a very normal coping mechanism for those with PTSD... it isn't doing you any favours, but then most coping mechanisms aren't, hence coping mechanism. When people become reliant upon negative coping mechanisms, that is when the problems compound for them. Coping mechanisms have a time and place, and if you use them for a few years until you accept you want more, to live life without such things, etc... then they serve a purpose.

Everyone has their own unique point where they choose to really help themselves, by committing to healing trauma and recovering, then getting back into life bit by bit. It takes years for severe PTSD, a decade even, but it can be achieved... I still have mates, a decade on now, still using their negative coping mechanisms to get by, still having constant troubles and issues in their lives... but they simply aren't ready to change or just don't want to. They are happy in and out of relationships, one night stands, in and out of job after job, working, not working, drinking until they pass out, etc. That is their choice and they have that right to make it for themselves. They will die early though, without question, and they are hurting themselves and lots of others along the way... that is the real problem, they still hurt others due to their negative coping mechanisms.

Still... a choice.