FDA grants Breakthrough Therapy designation to MDMA for treatment of PTSD
I know MDMA is frequently defended as being a "safe" drug insofar that there's no physiological health risks (e.g. alcohol's liver damage, cocaine's cardiotoxicity) but I understand the MDMA is neurotoxic (e.g. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28801175" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28801175</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16499508" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16499508</a> ) - much like methamphetamine and amphetamine, which are both similar drugs, chemically and psychoactively. I've never taken MDMA but I know people who have - who describe how they refuse to take it more than once every six months to prevent said neurotoxic damage, as well as taking dietary supplements that allegedly mitigate damage - which corroborates what I've read on Erowid.<p>Obviously for certain classes of PTSD sufferers the tradeoff would be worthwhile (similar to how the negatives of stimulant therapy for ADD are a trade-off if it enables an otherwise healthy and productive life) - so I'm hoping this will enable further research into the negative side-effects of stimulant therapy for PTSD - as well as better research into supposed damage-mitigation techniques - so far a lot of published research on stimulants has been only performed on rodents whose CNS are considerably different compared to our own.<p>Anecdotally, I have comorbid ASD and ADD with an anxiety disorder and I found that amphetamine-based drugs prescribed for my ADD (Adderall, Vyvanse, et cetera) have worked wonders for my anxiety issues - which surprised my psychiatrist because typically worsening anxiety is a side-effect of amphetamine.