Despite its party drug reputation, neuroscientists and psychologists are hard at work studying MDMA's potential to help treat serious psychiatric diseases like post-traumatic stress disorder. The drug may help users put extremely negative experiences like those of violence or war into perspective, enabling them to move on with their lives in a positive way.
One arm of this research involves studying MDMA in veterans with PTSD. Study participants are given small doses of the drug alongside traditional talk therapy.
Together, the two treatments could help produce faster and more measurable results, according to people involved in the research.
"Psychotherapy is painful, it's slow, it's fits and starts, you start to get to something important and then the patient disappears for a month," Julie Holland, a New York-based psychiatrist and the medical monitor for one MDMA-PTSD study, told Business Insider at a recent psychedelic research conference in London.
"MDMA can act as a catalyst to make the therapy go faster [and] deeper," Holland said.