June 12, 2020

Psychedelic Breakthroughs, $10M Bets, Treating PTSD with MDMA | Rick Doblin on The Tim Ferriss Show

Check out The Tim Ferriss Show Episode Page & Show Notes

Rick founded MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) as a non-profit organization in 1986 to raise awareness and understanding of psychedelic substance
56% of patients no longer required treatment for PTSD after two months of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy
- “Most subjects received just two to three sessions of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy” – Tim Ferriss
  - The average patient in the study suffered from PTSD for 17.8 YEARS before being treated and healed with MDMA
Taking MDMA releases the association of trauma to a negative memory and makes people feel safer when they recall that incident again
- “The next time that you remember the incident, you remember the incident with a different emotional tone and that can be encoded in new neural pathways in your brian” – Rick Doblin
You need MDMA and therapy to get the most effective treatment for PTSD
- “It’s not really MDMA, it’s psychotherapy facilitated by MDMA” – Rick Doblin
MDMA brings unconscious thoughts to the surface, but if you’re not prepared for that you could have a breakdown instead of a breakthrough

Rick Doblin, PhD, (@rickdoblin) is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)
Host: Tim Ferriss (@tferriss)

From the mid-1970s to the ‘80s, about half a million doses of MDMA were legally used as a therapeutic drug by psychiatrists and psychotherapists
- Rick supported the 1980s movement to make MDMA a level three drug which would allow it to be used as a prescriptive medicine, but Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) rejected that recommendation
  - Rick founded MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) as a non-profit organization in 1986 to raise awareness and understanding of psychedelic substance

What is MDMA?
- MDMA is a synthetic molecule and was invented in 1912 by Merck Pharmaceuticals
  - In 1953, the US military was looking for mind-control drugs and tested a series of drugs, including MDMA, on animals
A chemist named Sasha Shulgin independently synthesized MDMA
- If you’re interested in learning more about psychedelics, Tim recommends reading PiHKAL (Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved): A Chemical Love Story and TiHKAL (Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved): A Continuation by Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin
- The books The Secret Chief: Conversations With a Pioneer of the Underground Psychedelic and The Secret Chief Revealed by Myron J. Stolaroff talk about the underground psychedelic movement
  - Around the mid-1970s, Leo Zeff helped train psychologists and psychotherapists in the use of MDMA
    - “It’s there that its therapeutic potential was both discovered and expanded on” – Rick Doblin
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that MDMA was a therapy drug before it became a party drug under the name ecstasy” – Rick Doblin
Benefits of MDMA:
- People are able to better express themselves
- People become better listeners
- It’s used quite a lot in couples therapy
  - “It’s got an enormous wide range of applications and it can be used for post-traumatic stress disorder” – Rick Doblin

Who is Jon Lubecky?
- He’s a veteran who served in Iraq, suffered from PTSD, and attempted suicide on multiple occasions
  - Out of desperation, he volunteered from an MDMA study. MDMA treated his PTSD and greatly improved his life.
    - Now he works as a consultant for MAPS
In one study, 56% of patients no longer required treatment for PTSD after two months of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy
- After 12 months, 68% no longer had PTSD
  - “Most subjects received just two to three sessions of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy” – Tim Ferriss
    - The average patient in the study suffered from PTSD for 17.8 YEARS before being treated and healed with MDMA
When you take MDMA, you’re actually rewiring your brain
- When mice take MDMA, their brains release oxytocin which helps stimulate new neural connections in pro-social areas of the brain
In humans, taking MDMA releases association of trauma to a negative memory and makes people safer when they recall that incident again
- “The next time that you remember the incident, you remember the incident with a different emotional tone and that can be encoded in new neural pathways in your brain” – Rick Doblin
You need MDMA and therapy to get the most effective treatment for PTSD
- “It’s not really MDMA, it’s psychotherapy facilitated by MDMA” – Rick Doblin

Tim Ferriss and several friends have come together to raise $10 million (Tim put in $1 million of his own money) towards MAPS’s goal of $30 million
- If you’d like to get involved, you can donate to MAPS here
  - “If you’re looking for a very high leverage asymmetric payoff possibility, this is an excellent place to put money and I do think that a dollar now is worth ten dollars, five years from now” – Tim Ferriss
The funds will push MDMA to get approval from the FDA in the US, the Israeli Ministry of Health, and health authorities in Canada
- MAPS currently has 15 phase-three sites
  - 11 in the US
  - 2 in Israel
  - 2 in Canada
$30 million may seem like a lot of money, but pharmaceuticals companies usually spend hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to get a drug approved
- “In fact, the latest numbers is roughly $2 billion to make a drug into a medicine” – Rick Doblin
Once MDMA is a legal drug, MAPS will sell it as a public-benefit corporation and profits will get reinvested into the mission of MAPS
If MDMA, it will likely open up the rest of the psychedelic field up to research

MDMA and MDA are similar, but MDMA is more gentle
- A high MDA dosage can cause heart problems and even death
MDMA brings unconscious thoughts to the surface, but if you’re not prepared for that you could have a breakdown instead of a breakthrough
For decades, studying MDMA and psychedelics was considered career suicide for scientists
About 20 veterans commit suicide every day
- About 50,000 people commit suicide every year in the US alone
  - “And we need to help them” – Rick Doblin