'Ecstasy' Use Studied to Ease Fear in Terminally Ill

Washington Post ^ | 27 December 2004 | Rick Weiss

[shrinkermd]

For some, the diagnosis comes out of the blue. For others, it arrives after a long battle. Either way, the news that death is just a few months away poses a daunting challenge for both doctor and patient.

Drugs can ease pain and reduce anxiety, but what about the more profound issues that come with impending death? The wish to resolve lingering conflicts with family members. The longing to know, before it's too late, what it means to love, or what it meant to live. There is no medicine to address such dis-ease.

Or is there?

This month, in a little-noted administrative decision, the Food and Drug Administration gave the green light to a Harvard proposal to test the benefits of the illegal street drug known as "ecstasy" in patients diagnosed with severe anxiety related to advanced cancer.

The drug, also known as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, has been referred to by psychiatrists as an "empathogen," a drug especially good at putting people in touch with their emotions. Some believe it could help patients come to terms with the biggest emotional challenge of all: the end of life.

[BrooklynGOP]

Ecstasy is a slang or street name for Methylenedioxymethamphetamines (MDMA) It is a synthetic, psychoactive mind-altering drug with hallucinogenic and amphetamine (stimulant) like effects. It alters perception of time and distance. MDMA was first developed in 1914 as an appetite suppressant or diet drug. It was a legal substance up until 1985. Source.

[gungatendo]

MDMA was first synthesized in 1912. It was patented in Germany by the Merck Company in 1914. At that time it was not the subject of human research.

Merck stumbled across MDMA when they tried to synthesize Hydrastinin, a vasoconstrictive and styptic medicine.

MDMA was an unplanned by-product of this synthesis. As usual, the process of its synthesis was patented.

Source: First link from Google on "MDMA manufacturing 1914"

[gungatendo]

From the same source.

In the early 1980s, the drug began to be used non-medically, particularly in Texas, under the name Ecstasy.

Both the non-medical and therapeutic use of MDMA were made illegal in 1985 despite the Drug Enforcement Administration Administrative Law Judge Francis Young's recommendation that physicians be permitted to continue to administer it to their patients.

[Conservative til I die]

WHAT...WHAT? WHAT? After reading some of these responses I feel like I'm living in BIZARRO world. So, being content and happy is not good. If by nature you're crabby, complaining and ornery, then that's the way you should go out, making everyone around you miserable as well. WOW WOW WOW.

That's what being a conservative is about, according to some Freepers. That and being a wannabe tough-guy and hard-ass ("I don't need no druuugs! I'll die with mah boots on, just like the Duke!")