Mdma-Assisted Psychotherapy Using Low Doses in a Small Sample of Women with Chronic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (Methylenedioxymethamphetamine) (Clinical Report‪)‬

3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, "Ecstasy") is a ring-substituted phenethylamine with a chemical structure related both to mescaline and methamphetamine. MDMA possesses a distinctive and unique psychological profile characterized by a specificity to act over the human emotional sphere (Shulgin & Nichols 1978) without notably affecting other psychological functions, such as visual perception or cognitive process (Harris et al. 2002; Tancer & Johanson 2001; Cami et al. 2000; Vollenweider et al. 1998). Because of this unusual quality, a new pharmacological category, entactogens, has been established to denote MDMA and some other chemically-related compounds (Hermle et al. 1993; Nichols 1986). MDMA was first synthesized by the pharmaceutical company Merck in 1912 as a precursor of a haemostatic drug called methylhydrastinin, but it was not tested at that time either in humans or animals (Freudenmann, Oxler & Bernschneider-Reif 2006). In the 1950s, the U.S. army assayed a number of phenethylamines, including MDMA, in toxicological animal studies (Hardman, Haavik, & Seevers 1973) but there are no references regarding its use in military human experiments. This research remained secret until publication in 1973. At the beginning of the 1970s, the former Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (now the Drug Enforcement Administration--DEA) found MDMA for the first time being used on the street (Gaston & Rasmussen 1972) but the first scientific references regarding its pharmacological profile did not appear until the end of that decade (Anderson et al. 1978; Shulgin & Nichols 1978), some years after its rediscovery by the chemist Alexander Shulgin (Shulgin & Shulgin 1991).