An Australian team hopes to become the first researchers to measure the outcome of using MDMA to help couples in conflict.
The first time I met Frank we had what felt like 50 first dates in one night. Under the influence of MDMA, we groomed each other’s eyebrows for hours.
That was only 18 months ago, so I can’t claim that MDMA contributed to some remarkable relationship longevity, but in terms of intimacy and connection, it set a tone. That night broke my pattern of being a terribly English intimacy-phobe, raised in a family that only ate together once a week – and even then, we all brought a book to the table.
More notoriously, MDMA is known for its rave-scene connotations, which began in Dallas, thanks to priest-turned-early-adopter-turned-dealer Michael Clegg, but spread worldwide. Sure, tough geezers in Manchester stopped bashing each other in nightclubs and started washing each other’s hair in the basins, but there were also increasing numbers of deaths and trips to emergency wards, usually due to dehydration or, conversely, water intoxication, from users over-hydrating.
Wininger, a licensed psychotherapist for 34 years, is at the heart of MDMA couples therapy in the US, thanks in part to the bold publication of a book in 2020,, about his romance with both the drug and his wife. “I liken it to taking a helicopter ride over our lives for a few hours, looking out at where we’ve been as a couple, where we are now, and envisioning where we might want to go,” he says. “And after you do that with somebody, I don’t have to tell you, you’re never quite the same again.”
Post-roll, the couple might see Wininger for some talk therapy, to discuss what came up when they took the drug. MDMA lowers the defences, so meaningful conversations that are long overdue are craved rather than resisted. “Aside from this, pregnant women, and people suffering from heart disease, immune system disorders like chronic fatigue syndrome, epileptics and others with seizure disorders, should not do MDMA,” Wininger says.
“I can sit there and just cry looking at spreadsheets on my computer,” he says. “Some people have been dealt such a rough hand from the very start. Issues of family conflict are often shrouded in secrecy and shame, and often associated with relationships where the freedom to do something about it is limited, because there can be coercion, fear, dependence.”
This would be the first such MDMA-assisted trial for couples therapy in the world, so the Clinical Psychedelic Lab is collaborating with researchers globally who have conducted trials that are similar but different – such as when MDMA-assisted therapy has been used for an individual’s mental health condition, but both the patient and their partner receive the treatment. Liknaitzky thinks the potential for MDMA to transform couples therapy is exciting.
“It’s just starting to burst into the zeitgeist, where it’s becoming more clear that MDMA-assisted couples therapy is on people’s minds all over the world,” he says.Setting up and running a trial is not a trivial matter. Dr Stephen Bright is a researcher and senior lecturer at Edith Cowan University who began running an MDMA trial for PTSD before the substance was rescheduled.
Bright says that some small clinics are hastily starting trials in order to become authorised prescribers, thus allowing them to start charging for a service. Having seen first-hand how complicated trials are with MDMA and severely affected participants, this kind of urgency causes him and his co-therapist on the trial, Associate Professor Petra Skeffington, some concern.
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