Enlightenment on PTSD from the 2023 MAPS Conference
This month I discuss my recent “enlightenment” on post traumatic stress disorder. In late June I attended the 2023 MAPS Conference in Denver. That’s the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies. It’s not that I had run out of mushrooms but rather a long-time friend and PhD biochemist invited me to join her at the meeting. While this newsletter is largely on more severe brain injury, the progress in treating PTSD was quite astounding, and I thought there would be no better tour guide to the subject than a biochemist who knew the subject intimately, so I hopped on a plane and met her there.
The meeting, in part, was a step back in time for me in that it reminded me of other occasions when politics trumped science and common sense. In 2001, with pressure from the religious right, research on many stem cell lines was banned and set the U.S. contribution in this field back by a decade until it was reversed in 2009.
Closer to home, in 2003, after political contributions from a lobbying group, the Governor of Pennsylvania reversed the helmet requirement for motorcycle riders. Though the lobbyists cited reports that wearing helmets don’t decrease fatalities, those of us working in TBI know it’s the survivors that sustain the most costs. It’s just common sense. As a snowboarder, I can remember more than once catching an edge that slammed my body down on an icy slope. One time it cracked my helmet, fortunately not my head.
So back to mushrooms. The 2023 MAPS Conference opened my eyes to the medicinal value of psychedelic drugs and the roadblocks to progress the U.S. created in 1971 with its War on Drugs. Drugs were out of hand back then. I lived through this period and had friends who died of overdoses or who were never the same after a bad experience. But, by the numbers, there were far more deaths from alcohol and tobacco.
Looking back, most agree it was a war on the threat of the post Vietnam War culture that challenged the integrity of the U.S. government. Disturbingly, it became a war on minorities and filled the prisons with minorities. As a result, for decades it became nearly impossible to study the medicinal properties of these drugs.
Though the conference had its share of drum circles, psychedelic swag, and attendees dressed as mushrooms, it was a highly legitimate conference of over 13,000 attendees with talks from Johns Hopkins, University of Cambridge, Columbia, Harvard, and Stanford. We heard progress about the long struggle to get MDMA therapy approved by the FDA. What nailed the legitimacy of the 2023 MAPS Conference for me were the discussions I had with veterans who suffered from PTSD and were cured by psychedelic assisted therapy.
The common story was depression, abusive behavior towards their family, and strong suicidal tendencies. We heard time and again how psychedelic-assisted therapeutic sessions “released the demons” and returned them back to their families as who they were before the trauma. Many were upset that they had not heard of this therapy years before.
Sadly, I learned the larger group of those suffering from PTSD are not soldiers, but rather abused women. A session at the MAPS meeting highlighted the mother who brought down the NXIUM cult to save her daughter who lived with PTSD as a result of her abuse. They tried traditional therapies but psychedelic therapy was the one that “brought her home”. Check out the movie.
I did a podcast that includes a range of interviews on PTSD including patients, organizations, and technologies. The podcast reflects my optimism for the use of psychedelics in therapeutic settings from PTSD to terminal cancer and my caution for other uses. You can find the video below.
The Use of Psychedelic Therapy for PTSD:
Interviews at Psychedelic Science 2023
(Check out more of our interview archives here!)
