Why Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
In choosing the patient population to study, one of the criteria was that the unique properties of MDMA-enhanced psychotherapy needed to be matched to a patient population in which MDMA therapy could offer a dramatic benefit. Ideally, this benefit would require only from one to three drug sessions to produce significant, measurable and long-lasting clinical progress. Alternative medications for this patient population should be relatively ineffective, at least in some subpopulation of patients. The patient population should also be a group that the general public feels compassion towards, in order to help overcome resistance to the idea of the therapeutic use of psychedelics. The core of the MDMA experience has been described by one of the pioneering psychiatrists who worked with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in terminal cancer patients as “reducing the fear response to a perceived emotional threat.” When used therapeutically, MDMA is administered as an adjunct to psychotherapy on an int
