If you follow news about drug legislation and research (and come on, who doesn’t these days?), then you probably saw this coming.
Once the DEA approved MDMA for trials among participants in the US suffering from debilitating PTSD, the research was bound to expand to other related areas of research, including anxiety in Autistic adults.
Autistic adults are known to have anxiety issues, “especially those that function well enough to be pressured by social norms.”
In a recent review in press in the journal, Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry, a team of researchers led by Alicia Danforth, laid out their proposed methods and study rationale for what will be the first assessment of the therapeutic effects of MDMA for social anxiety in autistic adults. This research is being conducted jointly by the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
“Conventional anti-anxiety medications, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), MAOIs, and benzodiazepines, lack substantial clinical effectiveness in autistic adults,” write the authors. These medications may not work well in this group because of the physiological differences associated with autism. Thus, the researchers are trying to find a new clinical approach to help affected individuals.
The effect of research on the effects of MDMA will likely snowball with more and more research becoming available to physicians, psychiatrists and medical professionals. This will more than likely be the final frontier in the legalization of psychedelic substances, leading to more widely expanded knowledge on the subject and less hesitance to destroy the lives of those who wish to use them.
Source and excerpts taken from Psy Post