Name: Rick Doblin on Treating PTSD with MDMA Therapy
Uploaded: 2021-06-04T17:20:21.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Rick Doblin on Treating PTSD with MDMA Therapy' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-06-04. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Rick Doblin on Treating PTSD with MDMA Therapy' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-06-04. Transcript available.

I think one of the problems from the 60s was this idea of you know one dose
miracle cure that's all you need yeah and I think what we've come to understand
is that it's not that way occasionally it can be but mostly it's not and you
need this support afterwards and you need to integrate it and what we've also
learned from neuroscience is that you're actually neuroplasticity that
these psychedelics help you rewire your brain in new ways but you have to
reinforce that it's just not yeah automatic it's not about the drug it's
about the therapy that the drug helps make more effective and people have
placed undue confidence you could say in the drug itself yeah you need a new
pathway once you've gotten off of your old pathway the psychedelics jolt you
into
this new realm but if you don't have a new pathway then you you panic and
people
fall back into their comfort zone and if your comfort zone is alcohol abuse and
doing the same things you've done before and ruining your life and taking pills
and
you're gonna go right back to that yeah there's one example of one person where
it was like a one dose miracle cure it's really rare but I'll just explain a
bit
he was a veteran and had PTSD I talked about Tony Macy during my TED talk but
he
had this sense that he had been disabled with PTSD for years because of friends
of
his that had been killed all the violence that he saw when he was in Iraq and
under the influence of MDMA he had this realization that there was something
good
about the PTSD he was getting a benefit from it which was it was the way that
he
showed loyalty to his friends who had died that he was connected to their
memory
and that he was suffering and it was a way to be bonded still with them but
then he
was able to kind of see himself from the eyes of his friends who had died and
to
realize that they wouldn't want him to squander his life they didn't have life
anymore they would want him to live as fully as possible and he realized there's
another way to honor his friends which is to to live and he thought what am I
gonna
do with the rest of my life and in that moment he cured himself of PTSD then he
said I'm taking opiates for pain but I don't really think I'm taking it for
pain
I'm thinking more about it as an escape I don't need the opiates anymore and
then
he said I don't need this MDMA anymore either I'm done I want to drop out of
the
study this was his first of what was gonna be three MDMA sessions and he
dropped out and we said sure it's all voluntary but if you will just do the
outcome measures that would help us and he agreed to do that and at the two-month
follow-up no PTSD and then around 11 months when we have the 12-month follow-up
he
started thinking well maybe I'd like another MDMA experience I said well we
can't quite do that if you're out of the protocol you've dropped out but at
least
it's only for PTSD this study let's see what your scores are at the 12 months
and
no PTSD and that was about nine ten years ago I've been in touch with him
recently he's doing great but it was this realization that he was able to make
under the influence of one experience of MDMA that enabled him to reinterpret
the
way he could be loyal to his friends who had died that's amazing and it makes
sense it completely makes sense that that would be one of the reasons why a
soldier would have PTSD as you talk to soldiers that experience combat duty one
of the things they say is that there's this insane profound connection with
their
fellow soldiers yes and when one of them is killed and they survived they have
this survivor syndrome the survivors guilt yeah and it haunts them you know and
if
they could honor the fallen soldiers by living their best life and not being in
constant trauma it'd be better for everybody catch new episodes the Joe Rogan
experience for free only on Spotify watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify
including clips easily seamlessly switch between video and audio experience on
Spotify you can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and
can
download episodes to save on data cost all for free Spotify is absolutely free
you
don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes you just need to
search for the JRE on your Spotify app go to Spotify now to get this full
episode of the Joe Rogan experience