Pure MDMA used in a few sessions will most definitely not be very harmful to you. 100% definitely it will not make your teeth fall out, you would need to go on a huge binge to achieve that. A binge of probably hundreds or thousands of doses over a considerable time span.
MDMA has been studied on a couple of occasions earlier, for treating
PTSD-like trauma states, and has been found to work well - anecdotal evidence is found by the heaploads as well. Some of the exaggerated dangers can be blamed on mr. Ricaurte, who gave rats methamphetamine and claimed it was MDMA - probably to up the scaremongering on behalf of the DEA. He was later caught on this and admitted the falsifying of the research -
http://www.mdma.net/toxicity/washpost.htmlAlso, not to say it is harmless. It is not, it has certain risks, namely overheating of brain tissue causing neural damage etc., but most of the risks are associated with impure substance, unknown or excessive dosage, and excessive physical activity combined with too little liquid intake leading to body temperature problems. MDMA itself is not neurotoxic, but the state it causes in the brain leads to free radicals causing oxidative damage to neurons.
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/mdma/mdma.shtml Some basic info...
I dislike reading about treating war vets with anything, simply because US soldiers have been fighting wars of aggression and conquest, just like the israeli ones. Never mind that many soldiers probably didnt have all the facts, they killed or witnessed gruesome events, and trauma is what they got for taking part in it. They should not have gone to war in the first place. As long as the causes for war remain untreated, research like this is simply aiding in the continuation of the atrocities - not to say that sufferers shouldnt be helped, but what needs a cure is our society, not just the individual victims of the system.
That said, cannabis has also helped some with
PTSD -
http://www.mikuriya.com/cw_ptsd.htmlSnippet:
...and in the 10 years since California physicians have been approving cannabis use by patients, I have found myself appreciating and confirming Mill’s insight with every report that cannabis has eased symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
PTSD As a Dissociative Disorder
PTSD—a chronic condition involving horrific memories that cannot be erased—is a dissociative identity disorder. The victims’s psyche is fragmented in response to contradictory inputs that cannot be resolved.
Dissociative identity disorders are expressed in bizarre or inappropriate behaviors with intense sadness, fear, and anger. Repression or “forgetting” of the experiences may develop as a coping mechanism.
When traumatic or abusive experiences cannot be integrated into normal consciousness —as in the case of the Jekyl-Hyde behaviors of abusive parents or caregivers— creation of separate personalities or identities may occur.
For example, the woman who was molested by a family member may have both superfically-compliant and repressed-raging identities. The persona that’s presented to the world can be swept away when a stimulus calls forth the overwhelming rage.
Such fragmenting of the individual personality causes tremendous stress. The psyche is incomplete because of repression and denial. The person tries to appear normal and logical but in fact is in turmoil, angry and depressed. The inability to deal directly with emotional issues results in ongoing splitting and compartmentalization of the personality —and in extreme cases, multiple personalities, hysterical fugue (a separate state of consciousness that the individual may not recall), blindness, paralysis, and other functional disruptions.
In 1994 the term “Multiple Personality Disorder” was replaced with the more widely applicable “Dissociative Identity Disorder.” As an article (by Foote et al) and editorial (Spiegel) in the April 2006 American Journal of Psychiatry attest, it is only relatively recently that PTSD has been characterized as a dissociative disorder.
Easement by Cannabis
Approximately eight percent of the >9,000 Californians whose cannabis use I have monitored presented with PTSD (309.81) as a primary diagnosis. Many of them are Vietnam veterans whose chronic depression, insomnia, and accompanying irritability cannot be relieved by conventional psychotherapeutics and is worsened by alcohol. For many of these veterans, chronic pain from old physical injury compounds problems with narcotic dependence and side effects of opioids.
Survivors of childhood abuse and other traumatic experiences form a second group manifesting the same symptoms —loss of control and recurrent episodes of anxiety, depression, panic attacks and mood swings, chronic sleep deficit and nightmares.
The brief case reports in the box at the right of this page, unique though the subjects may be, typify two different forms that PTSD takes, both of which are eased by cannabis. The recurrent nightmares from the vet’s traumatic episode took on a life of their own, causing nocturnal turmoil and dread. The repressed memories of the sexually abused and beaten woman were symptoms of a fragmented, dissociative response to the disorder.
Easement by cannabis helped both —the vet by toning down his reaction to the nightmares and restoration of his sleep, the woman by modulating her emotional reactivity and permitting her to process and integrate the experience and give up the fragmented, dissociative defense mechanisms, which in due course she no longer needed.
Repression and suppression are defense mechanisms that break down when the victim is fatigued and/or hurting and subjected to triggering stimuli. With cannabis, vegetative functions necessary for recovery, growth and repair are normalized.
Cannabis relieves pain, enables sleep, normalizes gastrointestinal function and restores peristalsis. Fortified by improved digestion and adequate rest, the patient can resist being overwhelmed by triggering stimuli. There is no other psychotherapeutic drug with these synergistic and complementary effects.
Practical Treatment Goals
In treating PTSD, psychotherapy should focus on improving how the patient deals with resurgent symptoms rather than revisitation of the events. Decreasing vulnerability to symptoms and restoring control to the individual take priority over insight as treatment goals. Revisiting the traumatic events without closure and support is not useful but prolongs and exacerbates pain and fear of loss of control. To repeat: cathartic revisiting of the traumatic experience(s) without support and closure is anti-therapeutic and can exacerbate symptoms.
Physical pain, fatigue, and sleep deficit are symptoms that can be ameliorated. Restorative exercise and diet are requisite components of treatment of PTSD and depression. Cannabis does not leave the patient too immobile to exercise, as do some analgesics, sedatives biodi-azapenes, etc. Regular aerobic exercise (where injury does not interfere) relieves tension and restores control through kinesthetic involvement. Exercise also internalizes the locus of control and diminishes drug-seeking to manage emotional response.
The importance of sound sleep
PTSD often involves irritability and inability to concentrate, which is aggravated by sleep deficit. Cannabis use enhances the quality of sleep through modulation of emotional reactivity. It eases the triggered flashbacks and accompanying emotional reactions, including nightmares.
The importance of restoring circadian rhythm of sleep cannot be overestimated in the management of PTSD. Avoidance of alcohol is important in large part because of the adverse effects on sleep. The short-lived relaxation and relief provided by alcohol are replaced by withdrawal symptoms at night, causing anxiety and the worsening of musculoskeletal pain.
Evening oral cannabis may be a useful substitute for alcohol. With proper dosage, the quality and length of sleep can be improved without morning dullness or hangover. For naïve patients, use of oral cannabis should be gradually titrated upward in a supportive setting; this is the key to avoiding unwanted mental side effects.
I recommend the protocol J. Russell Reynolds M.D., commended to Queen Victoria: “The dose should be given in minimum quantity, repeated in not less than four to six hours, and gradually increased by one drop every third or fourth day, until either relief is obtained, or the drug is proved, in such case to be useless. With these precautions I have never met with any toxic effects, and have rarely failed to find, after a comparatively short time, either the value or the uselessness of the drug.”
The advantage of oral over inhaled cannabis for sleep is duration of effect; a disadvantage is the time of onset (45-60 minutes). When there is severe recurrent insomnia with frequent awakening it is possible to medicate with inhaled cannabis and return to sleep. An unfortunate result of cannabis prohibition is that researchers and plant breeders have not been able to develop strains in which sedative components of the plant predominate.
Modulation, Not Extinction
Although it is now widely accepted that cannabinoids help extinguish painful memories, my clinical experience suggests that “extinguish” is a misnomer.
Cannabis modulates emotional reactivity, enabling people to integrate painful memories —to look at them and begin to deal with them, instead of suppressing them until a stimulus calls them forth with overwhelming force.
The modulation of emotional response relieves the flooding of negative affect. The skeletal and smooth muscle relaxation decreases the release of corticosteroids and escalating “fight-or-flight” agitation. The modulation of mood prevents or significantly decreases the symptoms of anxiety attacks, mood swings, and insomnia.
While decreasing the intensity of affectual response, cannabis increases introspection as evidenced by the slowing of the EEG after initial stimulation. Unique anti-depressive effects are experienced immediately with an alteration in cognition. Obsessive and pressured thinking give way to introspective free associations (given relaxed circumstances). Emotional reactivity is calmed, worries become less pressing.
Used on a continuing basis, cannabis can hold depressive symptoms at bay. Agitated depression appears to respond to the anxiolytic component of the drug. Social withdrawal and emotional shutting down are reversed.
The short-term memory loss induced by cannabis that may be undesirable in other contexts is therapeutic in controlling obsessive ideation, amplified anxiety and fear of loss of control ignited by the triggering stimuli.
Easement Effects of Cannabis
In treating PTSD, cannabis provides control and amelioration of chronic stressors without adverse side effects. Mainstream medicine treats PTSD symptoms such as hyperalertness, insomnia, and nightmares with an array of SSRI and tricyclic anti-depressants, sedatives, analgesics, muscle relaxants, etc., all of which provide inadequate relief and have side effects that soon become problematic. Sedatives, both prescribed and over-the-counter, when used chronically, commonly cause hangovers, dullness, sedation, constipation, weight gain, and depression. See chart at right.
Cannabis is a unique psychotropic immunomodulator which can best be categorized as an “easement.” Modulating the overwhelming flood of negative affect in PTSD is analogous to the release of specific tension, a process of “unclenching” or release. As when a physical spasm is relieved, there is a perception of “wholeness” or integration of the afflicted system with the self. For some, this perceptual perspective is changed in other ways such as distancing (separating the reaction from the stimulus, which can involve either lessening the reaction, as with modulation, or repressing/suppressing the memory; walling it off; forgetting).
The modulation of emotional response relieves the flooding of negative affect. The skeletal and smooth muscle relaxation decreases the sympathetic nervous reactivity and kindling component of agitation. Fight/flight responses and anger symptoms are significantly ameliorated. The fear of loss of control diminishes as episodes of agitation and feeling overwhelmed are lessened. Experiences of control then come to prevail. Thinking is freed from attachment to the past and permitted to fix on the present and future. Instead of being transfixed by nightmares, the sufferer is freed to realize dreams.
Based on both safety and efficacy, cannabis should be considered first in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. As part of a restorative program with exercise, diet, and psychotherapy, it should be substituted for “mainstream” anti-depressants, sedatives, muscle relaxants, tricyclics, etc.
I guess many of the benefits MDMA gives to
PTSD sufferers are related to the relaxation, both physical and mental, in a similar way as cannabis', described above, that allow the person to process the memories in a calm space, free of the fear and anxiety regularly easily triggered when trying to approach the problematic memories, or triggered by some sensory cue. One of the notable effects of MDMA is the softening of the "body armour" ie. unconscious clenching of musculature, related to feelings of anxiety.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/may0 ... e_5707.phpOregon Toxicologist Says Treatment for
PTSD Should Include Cannabis
http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/03/10 ... /4642.htmlhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_a ... 850302.ece"At last the incurably traumatised may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And controversially, the key to taming their demons is the ‘killer’ drug Ecstasy"
http://www.mdma.net/therapy/ptsd.htmlA clinical plan for MDMA (Ecstasy) in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (
PTSD): partnering with the FDA
by
Doblin R.
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies,
Sarasota, Florida, USA.
rick@maps.orgJ Psychoactive Drugs 2002 Apr-Jun;34(2):185-94
and became a drug trafficking business associated with Israeli mafia. 
