news
Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.
Rules:
-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --
-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --
-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --
-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today/ . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --
-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--
-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--
-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --
-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --
view the rest of the comments
Fair warning this article opens up with a still image from the therapy video. In the still image the patient is supposedly being restrained (by the person she was later cuddled and spooned and allegedly sexually assaulted by) but given the context it’s a bit creepy.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-mdma-therapy-videos-1.6400256
A longer form exploration is from what that article references (cover story by New York magazine). The link in the article is dead but it is still available:
https://www.psymposia.com/powertrip-2/
I can’t get the page to load on my phone so I don’t know which specific episode it is but there are a few. The general theme of the series is “there are people that think psychedelic assisted therapy is so important that they’re willing to overlook terrible things” and honestly the reality appears to be exactly that when it comes to MAPS. I don’t disagree with their mission at all but I very much disagree with rushing things immensely in a way that puts patients and the entire trial at risk because you are so desperate to see it through as soon as possible. The more I’ve read the more it appears they recruited only therapists primed for expectancy bias with little training to counter for this, not enough screening for risk, etc.
https://icer.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/PTSD_Draft-Report_For-Publication_03262024.pdf
_this was the first report that came out summarizing the MAPS (by then called lykos) trials and studies by an independent body. It’s lengthy but dives right into the issues. This came out a few months before the expected fda ruling
https://downloads.regulations.gov/FDA-2024-P-2148-0001/attachment_2.pdf
This is the citizens letter, given to the fda shortly after the above where a number of people outlined similar issues
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02565-4
And the clinical trial itself, for reference
Thank you. I appreciate it. That you typed and linked all this on a phone is impressive, but I'm fucking old and I probably don't know how to phone XD.
I think what MAPS is doing is a worthy pursuit. I just think we need to have standards and competent medical professionals administering the studies. But here in
that's not possible (I know the linked study was carried out in Canada.) If these drugs are so illegal that they can't even be tested, then how are we supposed to test them? It just frustrates me to no end. I was born with severe clinical depression. It runs in my family. It's genetic. One of the most therapeutic things I can do is every year or so I tell everyone to fuck off and leave me alone, take a big hit of mushrooms, and just think about stuff... and things, and also stuff. Somehow that staves off the massive depression for a year or so. I haven't done a double-blind study. I just know that it's something I need to do every year or two so I don't destroy myself. For me it's just a survival mechanism.
I would love it if we could research things like this though. One dose every year or two. But of course we won't ever do that. We need you eating these pills every fucking day, and we need these pills to be extremely expensive. Your health and well-being is secondary to the bottom line. Selling cures is for chumps. We want you sick forever.
Therein lies the problem. I get it, we need novel treatments, and we need them yesterday. I work in the field and I have tons of people with treatment resistant mental health problems that I would love to cut loose to a novel treatment that actually works. It’s frustrating on both ends to just endlessly be stuck (though admittedly it’s worse for the person experiencing discord, obviously).
But that’s the real frustrating part of this. MAPS/lykos had a unique position to study this stuff and while they knew it was an uphill battle thanks to the legal status and perception of mdma they rushed, likely out of the perceived necessity of getting the treatment out to as many people as possible as soon as possible. I get that but you have to shove that fire down when you’re dealing with these kind of regulatory processes and do things meticulously. Because look where it got them. Now the perception is damaged a bit more and more importantly it will have to complete another stage 3 clinical trial which will take at least two more years to achieve approval. If the goal was to get approval asap this is obviously counter to that and likely pushes back other project timelines (lykos/maps is not just mdma but psychedelic assisted therapy research).