I was in the MAPS MDMA for PTSD study
For decades, there has been a near complete effective block on medical research for certain classes of drugs. Timothy Leary and that kind of 60’s stuff chilled legitimate science. Only recently have small changes started to happen, to the point the government, the flipping FDA, has started to think Ectasy (MDMA) might be a viable treatment for some of our most horrible mental illnesses.<p>So many people wonder when science will let us do things. When will we land on the moon, when will we cure cancer (most cancer anyway, a handful have been effectively cured), when will all of mankind benefit from the next great insights? We ask this yet in a lot of ways, we won’t even open our minds enough to give it our best shot.<p>How much can x, mushrooms, ketamine et al really change devastated lives for the better under the right conditions? We may never know.<p>I fully respect the opinion of people who say these drugs shouldn’t ever be used, or that disagree with me on any issue in general. But I will never respect someone who doesn’t want to know the answers and the data.<p>It happens with drugs, gun control, so many political issues, people actually do not want, and even work against collection of, objective data. Of course of any given data set can be biased or flawed, and that has nothing to do with getting the best data you can, iterating, and improving it.<p>If we are opposed to something, it’s ostensibly for a reason right? Why would we ever not want to strengthen our argument, or discard it, based on better understanding of our “reason”?