US soldiers offered Ecstasy for post-traumatic stress

The Guardian: Ecstasy trials for combat stress

The US food and drug administration has given the go-ahead for the soldiers to be included in an experiment to see if MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, can treat post-traumatic stress disorder...

The South Carolina study marks a resurgence of interest in the use of controlled psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs. Several studies in the US are planned or are under way to investigate whether MDMA, LSD and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, can treat conditions ranging from obsessive compulsive disorder to anxiety in terminal cancer patients.

I'd wondered how long something like this would take after the revelation in late 2003 that much of the bedrock research on the harmful effects of Ecstasy use was founded on misrepresentation and sloppy scientific work. We're talking sloppy as in overdosing monkeys on methamphetamine and blaming the resulting brain damage and fatalities on Ecstasy. Sloppy as in using a control group with 50 times the normal levels of seritonin so that test subjects looked like they had depleted levels by comparison—a study whose images found their way into discredited and retracted national drug institute materials that claimed Ecstasy caused "holes in the brain."

Both articles discuss the use of MDMA in psychotherapy as a way to allow people to overcome mental blocks and connect emotionally to other people or even to the notion of their own personal safety.