Charley, like others, stresses that MDMA is not an absolute antidote to suffering, nor is it a replacement for the societal-level transformations needed to address things like global warming and inequity. But as he also notes, “extraordinary times call for extraordinary pleasures.”21 If a critical mass of people begin thinking and acting in new

An estimated 237 million men and 46 million women10 around the world have alcohol use disorder, according to the WHO. In 2016 alcohol was to blame for three million deaths worldwide, representing 5.3 percent of total lives lost that year and making the condition among the top five causes of years of life lost11 for people aged fifteen to

Maté said: no one has ever found a gene or set of genes that decisively determine whether someone will develop a particular mental health condition.

Doblin, for one, has not wavered from this original goal. By 2035 he hopes to see licensed legalization of MDMA for adult use, and by 2050 he envisions the drug helping to usher in a “spiritualized humanity”1—one that recognizes and celebrates commonalities and connection, and acts accordingly. “So many of the problems of the world today are

It’s not just the drugs, though, that produce the healing effect. Through Sebastian’s personal psychedelic explorations and field research conducted in more than forty countries, he came to see sound as being just as important as the supplements themselves, if not more so. “In the end, it’s about harmony and acoustics,” he said. “That’s the reason

The presence of their friends, in other words, was important for unlocking MDMA’s ability to help them acquire new, rewarding memories of social encounters.

In simplified terms, PTSD occurs when a person’s nervous system becomes “stuck,”21 as though they are still experiencing a threatening event in real time. Like a deeply buried splinter that becomes infected, it’s the body’s reaction to the trauma rather than the traumatic

Doctors also tend to be swayed by society’s preference to blame addiction on a person’s weak or hedonistic disposition, or to point the finger solely at genetics. “There’s a fundamental failure to see addiction as rooted in human suffering,” Maté said. For those on the receiving end of this oversight, the results can be catastrophic.

If MDMA reopens the social reward learning critical period, then that could explain why the drug combined with therapy is so much more effective than therapy alone. People are literally given the ability to rewire the neural memory circuits they’ve built around the personal narrative of their trauma. The memories are not erased, but they can be