Almost forty years after it was banned, it’s taking a big step toward becoming a licensed treatment for post traumatic stress disorder. Read the full article here.

Excerpt:

In 2014, MAPS founded a for-profit public benefit company to conduct MDMA clinical trials. Earlier this year, the company changed its name to Lykos and received $100 million in funding from outside investors led by Helena Special Investments. MAPS remains the largest single shareholder. MAPS founder Rick Doblin, who’s been the public face of medicalizing MDMA therapy, maintains the data is reliable.

“We did the very best we could do” to deal with the unusual challenges of studying psychedelic drugs, he said.

Cristina Pearse, a 51-year-old Boulder, Colorado, resident and child sexual abuse survivor who participated in the second phase 3 trial of MDMA in 2022 described her own experience as “miraculous.” She suffered from persistent depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts for decades before being diagnosed with PTSD. Within one hour of the first MDMA dose, she started to feel better. “It undid 47 years of trauma in that first session,” she said.