...for Sustaining Health, Happiness and Sanity
By April M. Short
Photo Credit: MAPS
April 26, 2013
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Lagging behind are Rick Doblin, founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS),
and a gaggle of dinner attendees who hover around Doblin in hopes that
they might share a few words with the man of the hour. MAPS is the
non-profit research and educational organization behind the conference,
and works to develop psychedelics and marijuana into legal prescription
drugs.
It’s nearing midnight when the crowd finally
dissipates and Doblin can be sequestered for an interview. As he speaks
it becomes clear that this unprecedented conference, which brought more
than 1,800 ticket-holding attendees, is the result of a labor of love
into which Doblin has poured more than 20 years of his life.
“MAPS
was founded based on adjusting to a major failure,” Doblin says. The
year was 1982, and many psychiatrists, marriage counselors and
therapists were using the not-yet-illegal substance to enhance the
therapeutic process. In light of its increasing popularity, Doblin and
fellow psychedelic therapists anticipated that the Drug Enforcement
Administration would move to criminalize MDMA.
“I knew
that there was going to be a crackdown because it was already being sold
both as a therapeutic drug, and also some people were selling it as
ecstasy,” he says. Ecstasy is the name given to the recreational street
drug that comes in a pill-form cocktail that usually includes MDMA.
Doblin
and fellow therapists formed a non-profit group called Earth Metabolic
Design Laboratories (EMDL) to bolster awareness of the therapeutic use
of MDMA.
The DEA had announced its intention to
designate MDMA as a Schedule I substance in 1984. This categorization
meant overt restriction and regulation of the drug's availability, and
indicated that it had high abuse potential and held no accepted medical
use. EMDL organized the scientific and medical communities to petition
the DEA for a scheduling hearing in which the group argued that MDMA
belonged in the Schedule III category, which would permit the
continuation of MDMA’s use in psychotherapy. The decision to place MDMA
in Schedule I was reached following appeals in 1988 after the DEA
overruled a DEA administrative law judge's recommendation that it be
placed in Schedule III.
“Once the DEA rejected that
recommendation, we won in the appeals court, and then we lost, so MAPS
was founded as a different kind of response, and a long-term one,”
Doblin says.
Today, in addition to other psychedelics
and cannabis, MAPS continues to study the healing potential of
MDMA-assisted psychotherapy on psychological and emotional damage caused
by sexual assault, war, violent crime, and other traumas.
The
small Santa Cruz-based organization is undertaking a 10-year, $15
million plan to make MDMA into an FDA-approved prescription medicine,
and is currently the only organization in the world funding clinical
trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. For-profit pharmaceutical
companies are so far uninterested in developing MDMA into a medicine
because the patent for the drug has expired, and because it is only
administered a limited number of times, unlike most medications for
mental illnesses, which are often taken daily for years.
Doblin says this year MAPS Psychedelic Science Conference ran more smoothly than ever.
“It’s
not so much that we’ve done anything we haven't done before, but we’ve
learned from what we've done before and we've done it at a higher
level.”
By the looks of things inside of the Marriott,
aside from unusually colorful getups, the conference could have been any
number of scientific meet-ups. Researchers relayed PowerPoint
presentations from their podiums to large meeting halls full of
notebook-scribbling listeners, and academics roamed the halls in
feverish discussion. Inside of lecture halls, the conversations were
almost strictly scientific.
“We’ve had debates over
whether to include policy discussions along with the science, and I
would have preferred more policy, but I was wiling to let that go in
order for us all to be together,” Doblin says. “I think having the
community together really was the reason the conference was able to be
such a success.”
Planting Seeds for Psychedelic Studies
While
Doblin was intent on MAPS as a long-term means of fighting for
psychedelic drug research, he says he never anticipated that it would
grow the way it has.
“I had no idea how long it would
take, how much it would cost, how hard it would be, and if I did maybe I
wouldn't have taken this course,” he says. “So, I’m glad I wasn’t quite
clear on all of tha t.... One thing I’ve learned now that I’m almost 60
is that time speeds up when you get older,” he says. “In MAPS I see all
the time now seeds that were planted 20, 30 years ago that are now
coming into play.”
For example, MAPS met at the Pentagon
with the assistant secretary of the Navy and the Navy surgeon general
to discuss their proposal to work with active duty soldiers in the
treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“To
my utter surprise the assistant secretary of the Navy was a classmate of
mine at the Kennedy School [when I was] getting my [masters’ degree],”
says Doblin. “We hadn't seen or talked to each other in 22 years but we
were friends at school, and he remembered I had talked about MDMA
therapy back then. So, when it came around he thought I was a
trustworthy, friendly person, he saw that this was a long-term mission,
and he saw it as legitimate and genuine. Those things start to happen.”
The
smile on Doblin’s face as he described his perilous journey from the
foundation of MAPS to this conference, which he proclaimed “an
overwhelming success,” embodied a feeling that hung in the air
throughout the affair. Wandering the hotel lobby and hallways during
Psychedelic Science 2013 meant hearing more than one passerby exclaim
that this conference harkened a renaissance in the world of psychedelic
drugs.
The psychedelic science topics under study ranged
from the potential uses of various psychedelic Schedule I substances to
treat afflictions like heroin and smoking addiction, to the treatment
of chronic illness and pain therapy at the end of life, to the moral and
spiritual impacts of psychedelics on humans and society.
Three
separate lecture halls were full at any given time during the
conference, each dedicated to a specific theme, or track. There was a
clinical track dedicated to the presentation of raw scientific and often
psychiatric data, an interdisciplinary track that covered a range of
lecture topics from spiritual experiences to clinical data, and an
ayahuasca track.
The Ayahuasca Track
An
entire track of this year’s conference was dedicated to research
conducted on ayahuasca, a brew of various psychoactive decoctions
prepared with the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, originally employed for
spiritual and healing purposes by the people of Amazonian Peru. The vine
is usually mixed with leaves containing the psychedelic compound
dimethyltryptamine (DMT). The first academic discussion of the brew came
from Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes in the early 1950s.
Among
the most talked-about portions of the ayahuasca track was a lecture by
Gabor Mate, a medical doctor from Vancouver, British Columbia, titled
"Unlocking the Unconscious: From Cancer to Addiction." Mate has worked
with psychedelic medicine among aboriginal people, as well as in
contemporary, non-indigenous healing circles. He contends that therapy
assisted by psychedelics, and ayahuasca in particular, can untangle
complex, unconscious psychological stresses. He says these stresses
underlie and contribute to all chronic medical conditions, from cancer
and addiction to depression and multiple sclerosis.
In the Marriott lobby, following his lecture, Mate spoke to AlterNet on the importance of an integrative healthcare model.
“The
traditional practices of aboriginal peoples, as in traditional Chinese
medicine, have always assumed mind and body are inseparable,” Mate says.
“That has now been validated by modern science, but modern medicine
still ignores that reality. So, practices that incorporate a holistic
understanding of a human being, where we don’t see the individual as
separate from the environment, and we don’t see the mind as separate
from the body, are essential to a complete understanding of human
beings. Not as alternatives, but as part of a much more complete
understanding of what it takes to heal people, and what it takes to stay
healthy.”
When asked for an example Mate did not skip a beat.
“Imagine
if I pulled a gun on you right now,” he says. “Your whole physiology
would change. I didn't touch you, but your hormones would change, your
nervous system would change, your heart rate would speed up, cortical
adrenaline would be shooting out of your adrenal gland, and your brain
would be in a different state.”
That is how the mind affects the body, he says.
“And
that happens 24/7,” he continues. “Maybe not in such a dramatic
fashion, but it happens all the time. So, in chronic illness you see the
long-term effects of mind on body and vice versa, body on mind. The
point is not that these are connected; you can’t separate them, they are
one entity.”
While Mate is an outspoken advocate of
psychedelics as one possible route to health, he says that in discussing
publicly the potential benefits of psychoactive substances, it is
important not to be evangelistic about it.
“We mustn't
be trying to convince anybody; it is not a cause,” he says. “It’s simply
a great potential modality for healthier, wholer people. We need to
present the evidence for it seriously and humbly, and we have to expect
that some people will be drawn to that, and some people will not be. We
have to be clear that it isn’t the panacea, that we're not offering the
solution to the problems of the world or the healing of every ailing
person on the planet. All we are saying is here is a modality, there is a
lot of research behind it, a lot of human experience behind it, why
exclude it from the conversation?”
Cannabis and Conversation
Spurring
conversation and communication was a theme that ran throughout the
weekend. According to Doblin, organizers intentionally set up numerous
opportunities for people to meet and converse.
““There’s
lots of time for people to talk to each other,” he says, pointing down
the hall toward the enormous indoor marketplace, where art exhibits,
impromptu tea houses, holistic vendors and a musical performance/book
reading stage were open until 2am.
An example of the
perpetual conversation came around 3am, following the Psychedelic
Science dinner on April 20, as conference-goers gathered in the “smoking
area”--made up of four parking spaces in the Marriott garage converted
into a cozy nook by way of Persian-style rugs, colorful hanging lamps, a
couch and pillows. A circle of students, journalists and attendees
engaged in a 4/20-appropriate discussion of the war on drugs and illegal
substance policy in the US.
While the conference’s
focus was on psychedelics rather than cannabis, it fell on the holiday
that celebrates the herb, and the question of legalization was a
prominent topic.
MAPS is the only organization that
works to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of botanical marijuana as a
prescription medicine for specific medical uses to the satisfaction of
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. So far, MAPS’ efforts to initiate
medical marijuana research have been hindered by the National Institute
on Drug Abuse and the DEA since their founding. For more than a decade,
MAPS has been involved in legal struggles against the DEA to end this
situation.
Now the nonprofit is seeking regulatory
approval to conduct a study of smoked and vaporized marijuana for
symptoms of PTSD in veterans of war.
Looking into the
future, Doblin says MAPS would like to enroll the first police officer
who has PTSD caused by work, in order to solidify the point that MDMA
therapy can potentially benefit anyone. In addition, he says he plans to
“hand the [Psychedelic Science] conference over to the Swiss” so that
MAPS can focus on its research for a while.
“I’d also
like to start an MDMA cancer study, I’d like to figure out what to do
about marijuana, and I'd probably like to um—well, this conference has
been so great, and volunteers and staff have done such an incredible
amount of work that I’d like to get a jacuzzi for the office.”
In
a timely coincidence, the Obama administration announced a change to
its drug policy just two days after the MAPS conference ended. The White
House spoke of a new direction in the war on drugs, in which stopping
drug use before it starts and treating drug addiction as a health issue
will be the new priorities. What this means for the world of psychedelic
science, only time will tell.
April
M. Short is an award-winning Bay Area journalist dedicated to social
justice reporting. A lifelong storyteller, Ms. Short aims to bring
underexposed legal and ethical issues into the public eye.
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