MDMA (Ecstasy) as Therapy
/As a first year neuroscience graduate student, I am required to take a course in Neuroanatomy. Designed for medical students, this course mixes basic neuroscience ideas with clinically relevant facts. Amusingly the need to maintain some sort of clinical relevancy is often expressed by detailed explanations about how various recreational drugs modulated the brain. In light of today's explanation of how cocaine and MDMA (Ecstacy) affect domapinergic and serotonergic neurons, respectively, I was amused to run into an article about the use of Ecstasy to resolve psychiatric issues. The article makes for interesting reading, explaining the history of MDMA creation and use as a therapeutic tool.
UPDATE 1/13/2010: MDMA, aka Ecstasy, is in FDA-approved trials for use as a treatment for PTSD
