California study begins screening for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD
maps.org
maps.org
The experience itself was at a hotel room I had booked. For just under six hours, I lay on the bed with an eye mask and headphones playing instrumental music picked by my guide. MDMA is commonly known as a party drug but under different settings and with different intentions, it had the power to turn to yourself examine yourself and your life in a state of love free of the fear and anxiety that we often feel in life. At least for me, this produced clarifying insights about myself and my life which have persisted long after the session.
Very excited to see progress being made for the use of MDMA to treat PTSD, and hopefully a broader class of people beyond that.
I should note that everyone’s journeys are different, and even for a single person no journey will be the same as the last. But my experience at least demonstrated the power of MDMA to serve as a healing substance when used with a particular intention and in a particular setting. The preparation work prior to the experience as well as the integration work following the experience are also incredibly important for it to have a long-lasting effect.
At the very end it was even spiritual, which is funny since I am say agnostic and didn't have any form of religious upbringing. This experience didn't change that, in fact it reinforced my opinion on religions and religious matters.
I know its a different type of drug and effect, but I think generally drugs give more inner insight when taken alone (or controlled uninterrupted env which crowd of people is definitely not).
I think most people (mentally stable people) should try psychedelics at least once in their lives. The people who need to do it the most are the people in positions of power. (Political leaders, CEOs, etc.)
In this case there wasn't even any music, and it still helped them.
That said, music is usually quite important in psychedelic therapy, and I've heard it said (by Mendel Kaelen, a neuroscientist who studied LSD's and music's effect on the brain) that "psychedelic therapy can be conceptualized as form of music therapy, but a drug-assisted or drug-enhanced form of music therapy."
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJgWKl_vss0
[2] - at around 9 minutes in to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQJZ7nFi4sA
These rape allegations are highly disconcerting and disheartening.
[1] https://www.thecut.com/2021/11/cover-story-podcast-goes-into...
[2] https://www.thecut.com/2022/03/cover-story-podcast-open-hear...
But the effect is the same, more neurotransmitters in the synaptic cleft.
People abuse Prozac as well if that given you a clue on their similarities.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8093133/
https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.150.12....
I'd like to see a paper from a reputable journal saying that MDMA is just a quicker working version of Prozac.
The fact that people are even slightly amazed at an amphetamine will make people happier is amazing to me. Don’t you’ll realize you’re substituting Street dealers for dealers in suits?
It doesn't merely "make people happier", but seems to actually help people face and let go of their trauma, forgive themselves and others, feel love and trust where they couldn't before, communicate with their loved ones more effectively, and has stopped some from killing themselves.
There is a lot of evidence that it effectively treats severe, treatment-resistant PTSD -- something no other type of treatment does even remotely as well, which is why it's likely to be fully approved by the FDA soon.
To compare its effects to other amphetamines, except at the most superficial level is ridiculous, as none of them have these effects.
As for dealers, I'd be happy if dealers (the street or suit kind) sold effective medication that improves people's lives. Of course the legal providers are better because then we can be assured of their medicines' safety and purity, and we won't have people thrown in jail and being killed in turf wars over something that helps people.
It's like saying that a helicopter and a blender are the same device because they both have spinning blades. These two substances are completely different in just about every way that they affect people, aside from producing a mood boost (which is an effect also caused by things like morphine, cocaine, a few different psychedelics, alcohol, caffeine, nitrous oxide, and many many more substances which don't act via serotonin).
One of the main theories on the action of MDMA involves the sudden serotonin release inhibiting the amygdala and thus reducing fear response. Prozac certainly does not do this. MDMA's effects are not even all shared with other serotonin releasers such as fenfluoramine or MDAI. And Prozac's effects differ somewhat from other SSRIs too.
The neurotransmitters and receptors in the brain are not a set of dials where you can ratchet one and always expect a given psychological effect independent of the other receptors, or even independent of the way it's ratcheted, or even the timing of it. Also the effect of these drugs is highly dependent on context too. Believe it or not, MDMA can sometimes produce dysphoria and or unpleasant/unhappy mental state. It is uncommon, but I have seen it happen.
Sorry for the rant, it's just this type of oversimplification really strikes a nerve with me.
> One of the main theories on the action of MDMA involves the sudden serotonin release inhibiting the amygdala and thus reducing fear response. Prozac certainly does not do this.
{cough}
Fluoxetine Facilitates Fear Extinction Through Amygdala Endocannabinoids
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4832021/
Chronic fluoxetine prevents fear memory generalization and enhances subsequent extinction by remodeling hippocampal dendritic spines and slowing down systems consolidation
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0371-3
Serotonin-2C receptors in the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala mediate the anxiogenic effect of acute imipramine and fluoxetine administration
https://academic.oup.com/ijnp/article/15/3/389/720875?login=...
You read some articles. That is not enough. You are being duped by more pharmaceutical company propaganda.
Have you ever ask yourself why they don’t investigate the reason people are not producing enough serotonin? Or white people lack serotonin?
Also, from your first link: "In contrast to fluoxetine, citalopram treatment did not increase BLA eCBs or facilitate extinction." And your second link: "Importantly, other SSRIs such as citalopram have shown the opposite effect, disrupting acquisition and retention of fear extinction"
Yeah...
Plus "fear extinction" is not the same as immediate fear reduction/inhibition as seen with MDMA.
I think that we as humans like to believe that we know more than what we do about these sorts of things.
Edit: Your third link talks about anxiogenic effects of fluoxetine, i.e. increases anxiety; literally the opposite of what you are arguing.
Here's what Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS had to say about this:
"MAPS has started the MAPS Public Benefit Corporation, which is for-profit corporation. It's 100% owned by the non-profit, but still we have a for-profit arm, and the goal of that is to sell MDMA at a profit and then whatever the profits are to fuel more research and more public education."[1]
[1] - From about 54 minutes in to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZxRxJrSSPg
I feel this way because of how the presenters initially introduced themselves as very pro-psychedelic, then over the course of the series made what seemed to be increasingly negative and misleading statements to lead listeners to the conclusion that all psychedelics research is garbage (because everyone involved is either an abuser or motivated by greed) and that these drugs are just too dangerous to be legalised or used in therapy (because they are too disinhibiting or because they break people). They started with ‘psychedelics are great and I love them and they really helped me in my life’ and ended with almost an entire episode of ‘I tell anyone who is interested not to do it’.
The serious and legitimate problems that they detailed are very worthy of investigation and remediation, but they also all seemed, to me, to be failures of: (1) individual practitioners who engaged in unethical/illegal behaviour; (2) study runners who didn’t know, or didn’t care, or even believed that these unethical behaviours were actually fine; (3) the drug war, which stopped reputable groups with stronger ethical standards from performing studies and created space for an underground movement led by sociopaths; and (4) the medical research apparatus itself which is too uncritical and accepting of garbage study designs and data.
Some other “problems” they raised just struck me as odd, like the claim that results couldn’t be legitimate because they were combined from multiple trial sites, or that MDMA-assisted therapy is uniquely bad because it is ‘like doing open heart surgery and then walking away’.
Regarding multiple trial sites: I’m not a medical researcher, but I’ve seen this many times when looking up trials on clinicaltrials.gov. So, either (1) it’s not actually a problem, or (2) they didn’t clearly explain why this study’s multi-site design was uniquely bad, or (3) it’s a problem not unique to the MDMA-assisted therapy trial and should’ve been framed as an industry-wide problem instead but wasn’t.
Regarding the ‘open heart surgery’ analogy: Limiting the number of follow-up sessions was clearly a terrible study design and never should have been allowed, and the practitioners who refused to help should almost certainly be—at a minimum—barred from practice, but basically all forms of therapy have similar risks[0], so it seemed misleading at best for them to frame it as some consequence unique to MDMA-assisted therapy. There was even an article here on HN in 2020 about risks associated with meditation and mindfulness[1].
Everyone in the field knows that there'll inevitably be some adverse effects among some (as far as we know, small minority) of participants in these studies and users of psychedelics as a whole. We also know that both the media and many media consumers love sensationalism and mud-throwing, whatever the facts may be.
So far the overwhelming majority of psychedelic studies have been enormously positive, but we also know that can't last forever and realistically speaking there are bound to be some negative effects. This was crystal clear long before the Psychedelic Renaissance even started.
We've been lucky that since the beginning of the Psychedelic Renaissance the media attention has been almost completely positive and curious. But that too will likely change. These Cover Story podcasts are a recent example of the start of this change.
The question is whether such negative media attention will derail the Psychelic Renaissance and whether we'll go back to the dark ages of complete prohibition and mainstream terror at the prospect of using psychedelics.
At this point that doesn't seem likely, and stories like this will probably just cause the scientists and organizations involved to get more serious about safety and the general public to stop (erroneously) regarding psychedelics and the people involved in the scene as panaceas that can do no wrong.
At the same time, I don't think we're at the peak of the hype curve, and as more people try psychedelics there'll be a lot more influencers and true believers who'll hype them to the sky. We might even get another Timothy Leary or Ken Kesey.
The mental health epidemic for returning veterans for example[1]:
"More than 45,000 veterans and active-duty service members have killed themselves in the past six years. That is more than 20 deaths a day — in other words, __more suicides each year than the total American military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq__." "“One of the biggest battles is the military culture,” Ms. Ruocco said. “Seeking mental health treatment goes against everything they are taught in boot camp,” where service members are told “to push through pain, to think of everybody else before self, to solve problems with lethal force if necessary.”"
The public itself needs to readjust its role with the government, where availability doesn't mean endorsement.
Just because you don’t actively go out and seek for a drug does not mean you are not addicted (conditioned)to it.
But can I tell you my own brother said he "could not live without Prozac." What does that sound like to you?
Prozac artificially increases serotonin as as a result your serotonin receptor density changes. So trying to stop the drug, not only do you end up with all these horrible side effect, but your depression will be much worse until your receptor density normalizes again.
There is a biological marker for the need of insulin. There is no such thing when it comes to prozac.
Keep trying people.
Anyways, I agree with you w.r.t. many psychiatric drugs. Don't try to spread that into psychedelics though - completely different, it has enough of its own problems and it's not necessary to make up some non-existent on top of that.
Not for psychiatric drugs, which is my only point. I am not against pharmaceuticals.
I think psychedelics are safer in that regard. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever physically done "too much acid". Even some people who ingested tens of thousands of micrograms (thinking they were snorting coke) came out of it perfectly fine with appropriate care (since the amount was so high compared to the usual dosages, they did need medical care).
Serotonin syndrome is when you have too much serotonin, not too little.
It is well known that humans can't make rational choices. If refrigerators with CFCs were still legal to purchase alongside non-CFC refrigerators, I'd be willing to bet the ozone layer would probably not exist right now. If leaded gasoline wasn't basically banned, I bet plenty of people will still drive around using leaded gasoline.
That is because "acting like adult" is used as term of approval. It means "a theoretically ideal" behavior. It does not mean "average adult have that psychology" nor "average adult have that value".
Yes, it's "ideal" in the sense that not everyone accomplishes that behavior (some people will fail a class or have bladder issues, obviously). But that doesn't mean "half the population failing Algebra I" or "half the population regularly pees their own pants" is an acceptable outcome in society.
Just because you can define "acting like an adult" as ideal rather than true in all real cases doesn't mean it shouldn't be an expectation.
Lysol can kill you and all your children.
Mouthwash can.
And for something with more similarities: advil.
All sold in gas stations.
So, do the studies just so that we can have fine print on the side of the bottle just like everything else, and sell it alongside everything else.
A car can kill you and all your children. Are you a proponent of allowing anyone to drive a car without restrictions (driver's licenses)? Slap a warning label on the steering wheel of a car "do not drive while drunk" and call it a day?
But you miss the point. Banning psychedelics prevents their use in psychotherapy.
Rolling back that ban do we can explore the possibilities is certainly sound.
Don't strawman what I said. I didn't say psychedelics should be banned. I said that they shouldn't be sold in gas stations (aka easily available to the public).
I fail to see how that prevents prescriptions from being a viable option, or a "mdma license" similar to a driver's license that is issued only after a person proves that they can safely use it.
What choice do you have if you become the problem for everybody else?
But alcohol (or tobacco) should?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_asses...
Yeah, almost like it should be... a prescription medication sold at pharmacies?
You have two options- the drug can be sold legally or we can have an excess number of deaths from overdoses, impurities and black market violence.
For some inexplicable reason, the majority of people continue to chose the option that guarantees the most human suffering.
The problem is that we are asked to decriminalize drugs (like fentanyl) at the same time that we are asked to dedicated massive public resources for the rehabilitation of those people who then used those decriminalized drugs. I would be happy if it were one way or the other, but right now it sucks.
Maybe there should be exceptions made for exceptionally deadly and addictive dugs, like fentanyl.
Convincing us that we should let people do what they want with drugs and somehow...that it is also our responsibility to pick up the pieces for these people as a consequence, it sounds like hypocrisy. Deflecting that society was responsible for the drug abuse in the first place (by letting people be poor and closing the mental hospitals) isn't going to convince many people that we should allow drug abuse and pay for the consequences as well.
The question is: what's the alternative to allowing drug abuse?
We know the War no Drugs is a dismal failure that hurts most the people who need help the most, and their families, and (as knock-on effects) the rest of society.
The pessimist in me thinks it'll just continue, despite being so detrimental to our society as a whole, but there are signs (like the success of cannabis legalization, and the ongoing Psychedelic Renaissance) that we may be moving towards a more constructive future where people who need help aren't treated like criminals and attacked.
When I was younger, I used to think the war on drugs was a dismal failure, but now seeing what happens when decriminalization is gone with instead, with junkies on the street camping in parks leaving their needles everywhere and the pervasive burnt peanut butter smell from smoking fentanyl on the buses. It might have just been the best of a bunch of bad solutions.
But I get that not all drugs are fentanyl or heroin, I'm totally ok with marijuana legalization. Also, since it is decriminalized in our city and not other places in our region, we probably attract much more of the problem just because our cops don't harass users or dealers.
Either way, we're gonna keep spending untold billions on this problem. I'd like to stop throwing money at policies that destroy lives, violate civil liberties and have been proven by decades of evidence to be infective.
Oh, we can spend an unlimited amount of helping people and it only lasts until they get out and get their next fix. How do you help people that don't really want help? And all of the "help" they want just goes to enabling the destructive behavior, the money we throw at the problem right now just allow them to do more drugs.
> instead of marginalizing/imprisoning people might be a viable solution?
So? The other approach is just enabling their behavior with compassion: let's make sure they have housing and open shelters so they can don't die while continuing to do their drugs? We are already spending untold billions on that, meanwhile ignoring petty property crimes (because junkies need legos for what?), and we only go OMG when they bash some poor girl's head in with a baseball bat because they are having a crisis.
Why have any sympathy for those people at all? So we are already spending around $60k/year/person on these people, how much higher do you want our one city to go? $200k/year? $1 million/year? How do you help people who don't really want help but will gladly take your money? Supply of those needing help (even if they just want drugs) is also basically unlimited since it is more of a national problem, while big cities are expected to provide compassion on their own.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-mdma-ther...
That is… really fucked up. Predators in the healthcare industry need to face serious punishment. Unfortunately, they largely don’t and get away with things.
"Updated announcement March 25, 2022
This a public announcement of additional information obtained regarding the conduct of former sub-investigators for a MAPS-sponsored clinical trial, initially publicly reported in 2019. We make this information public as part of our commitment to creating a culture of safety in psychedelic therapy and in alignment with our core value of transparency.
The initial ethics complaint was reported to MAPS in 2018 by the participant. The complaint specifically identified the unethical conduct as occurring after the active treatment sessions had concluded in 2015. Yensen and former sub-investigator Donna Dryer verbally confirmed that Yensen engaged in a sexual relationship with the participant. Sexual contact between therapy providers and participants is unethical conduct of sexual abuse in violation of Section 6 of MAPS Code of Ethics for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and generally accepted standards of care. In 2018, as a result of the ethical misconduct, Yensen and Dryer were barred from all MAPS-related activities and from becoming providers of MAPS-affiliated MDMA-assisted therapy if the treatment is approved.
On Saturday, November 6, 2021, MAPS staff were interviewed by a reporter who had viewed videos of clinical trial therapy sessions for the participant described in the original announcement below. Session video is made available to participants in MDMA-assisted therapy clinical trials for private review upon request. The reporter characterized former sub-investigator Richard Yensen’s behavior in at least one therapy session as “disturbing.” This characterization triggered a compliance review which was initiated Monday, November 8, 2021.
The reopened review of conduct during the trial period includes a review of previous documentation, all available videos of sessions from the sub-investigators, and information reported in media accounts of the participant’s experience. Though the review is ongoing, MAPS has provisionally determined that Yensen and Dryer substantially deviated from the MDMA-assisted Therapy Treatment Manual on several occasions during the treatment period.
MAPS has notified the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Health Canada, Ethics Committees, and relevant authorities that the review has been re-opened. We will continue to keep regulatory agencies, ethics committees, and relevant authorities apprised of any developments on this case. Changes to MAPS policies, practices, or materials made as the direct result of the review will be reported publicly at maps.org/safety."[1]
Also see MAPS's article on the Cover Story podcast regarding this issue here: [2] It contains a pretty informative FAQ in which MAPS addresses what it sees as misunderstandings in the media coverage of these events.
[1] - https://maps.org/2019/05/24/statement-public-announcement-of...
[2] - https://maps.org/2022/03/01/participant-experiences-cover-st...
Hopefully nobody thinks that therapists and counsellors without a properly regulatory framework in place aren't doing shady practices like this even without the drugs.
I am a huge fan of these drugs but this part of the world’s shame and puritan culture really shows this unexpected effect: it is not sufficient for something to be pleasant. It also has to be “medically necessary”.
The outcome is we get a bunch of things showing that these things are medically necessary. “There is some evidence that X helps Y”. Dude, with the current standard of science I can do that for arbitrary X and Y.
And you know what, the truth is that people heal and recover in all sorts of ways. But that’s not enough for us. We need to place everyone under the control of these gatekeepers. And then we find ourselves horrified at the outcome of the machine we have built where the power hungry abuse their power.
It sounds like there was “intimate contact” during the session (maybe the spooning?) but the sex was not during the session. Still massively not OK.
> Yensen has admitted to having sex with Buisson after the experimental sessions ended but while she was still enrolled in the clinical trial. In a 2018 lawsuit that has since been settled out of court, she alleged it was sexual assault, while Yensen claimed in his response that Buisson manipulated him and initiated the encounter.
That's the enduring pattern of a lot of "coming of age" initiation rituals across many different cultures. I'm not shocked to see this is the approach an unaccredited drum-beatin' hippie looking couple in beautiful British Columbia tried to carry out.
?
Still feel the same. Have something more insightful to add?
I am not saying this to be mean, but people who have encourage these approaches do not have a mood disorder. They are sad people with sad lives.
Honestly, fuck those people.
damn i was really looking forward to MDMA therapy to deal with PTSD stuff
there needs to be harsh consequences and strong regulation. make sure people are going to trained and licensed practioners who will agree to recorded footage.
I think that's about to radically change in Canada without a lot of radical change in who gets to be a therapist or counsellor and that's pretty troubling, but so are a lot of really weird oversights in that country
If you were seriously considering signing up for the study, I encourage you to contact the investigators who are running the study and/or MAPS and voice your concerns.
Not only would it help them understand what concerns prospective study participants have, but they may be able to answer your concerns to your satisfaction.
What? A therapist molested a drugged person and they blame the drug? Wtf?
therapist... the rapist... what's the fucking difference it's BC haha
Particularly LSD but also MDMA.
The wreckless abandon with which psychedelics were handed out Willy nilly was some of the evidence for making them schedule 1.
Leary was in the 60’s and the Drug Control Act wasn’t until the 70’s. Not a direct cause and effect, but certainly a contribution.
The cases of abuse that ultimately led to the stigmatization where blown up because that narrative served the view that the general public had of these substances anyway.
The same rhetoric people use today: "encryption should be forbidden because paedophilia|money laundering|<insert whatever upsets your target demographic most>"
> Not a huge factor really because schedule 1 DEA permits are available. I know a few academics with them.
What good is an permit if you don't have anyone to fund your research? And how do you get research funded for something that can't be brought to market because ... Schedule 1?
It's kind of how crypto has a reputation for buying drugs online and money laundering. When something gets tainted like that it's hard to shake it.
It's a chicken and egg thing. What I'm saying is the scheduling and bad reputation came after the reckless use of the 60's - not before.
I felt more likely to be beaten up as a teenager wearing heavy metal or grunge look from other packs of roaming teens (small town UK).
Wishing you more peace in the future!
It was safe as fuck before the pandemic. I grew up in Los Angeles and lived in East LA awhile; lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant two years; lived in the Tenderloin for a year (not the way it is now). I've also lived in Prague, Barcelona, Saigon, Bangkok, Sydney (King's Cross, before the fall of it). The total chaos and anarchy of Portland right now is hard to explain. Almost everyone I know has been attacked on the street, or a victim of random violence in the past two years. Every other city in America that had a meth or fentanyl problem gave their worst cases a one-way bus ticket to Portland, in part because "let the liberals deal with it". I was a die-hard liberal progressive two years ago, before I had savage children on drugs waging running melees with rocks and trying to rape each other's girlfriends in front of my house all night. Now I'm just waiting for the night I have to shoot someone coming into my house.
I think the only other place I sort of felt this way was Avignon. I lived on Rue des Teinturieres. It's a bit of a siege mentality when the drug dealers outside your window are blasting music so loud it sounds like they're standing over your bed at night.
At the start of the pandemic, Portland police announced they would no longer respond to any emergency calls unless a person's life was in danger. And the district attorney ran and won on the platform that he wouldn't prosecute anyone for any crime short of murder. The result is a free-fire zone. I showed up at my local bar a couple months ago and it was a crime scene with 30-40 bullet casings scattered under the table where I usually have a drink. My friend who had walked home from there a few nights prior had been jumped and had his leg broken because he was gay- by a man wearing full Joker makeup, who is still sitting and laughing to himself on the corner two blocks from my house. A boy and his girlfriend camped their van in front of my place and the boy beat their dog with a long metal pole, screaming and high on drugs. The neighbors tried calling animal services, the police wouldn't come, and this went on for days and nights, with the dog yelping in pain until I went in the street with a gun and told him it was time to leave. He got in their van screaming at me, and wrecked it into six parked cars around the corner. And finally he got arrested.
Shit, okay, I should stop.
I don’t understand this. It would make me more progressive if I saw that. What are the economic, political, social forces that are causing that? Is it that we are a fair country that treats people with dignity? Or is it that we are Country with a huge separation of wealth that doesn’t mind letting people suffer in homelessness.
It sounds like it’s not that scene, but your wealth, that made you less progressive, and wanted to protect it that caused you to become less progressive.
Where do you think the people causing all the crime come from? Why do people commit crime? I’m pretty sure people don’t commit crime when their lives are going great. And I’m sure it’s the same thing with drug addiction.
And the people that run Portland? They’re not progressive, not in the least.
Threatening a man who is beating a dog in your front yard with a gun does not make you conservative, it makes you caring. Don’t buy into the paradigm that if you own a gun you are suddenly conservative. That’s just propaganda both sides want to live inside of you.
But I think your point is "no true progressive" - if the policy didn't work, then it's not progressive because progressive policies always work.
"Passive-aggressive people regularly exhibit resistance to requests or demands from family and other individuals often by procrastinating, expressing sullenness, or acting stubborn."
"What do we want!?"
"Ending homelessness!"
"When do we want it?"
"It's impossible!"
This is how a society collapses, when people think they know who "refuses" to take care of themselves and who simply cannot.
* Perhaps no bail, although I think in isolation that's unlikely to be an issue
These areas are always unique because transient and the homeless can live with some degree of year round comfort, so they will be naturally appealing to people who have uncertain housing prospects.
Progressives believe in restorative justice not prison or punishment. They believe that justice is actually righting the wrong that caused people to behave this way in the first place. "The infinite perfectability of man". That's a core progressive belief. Thus they "catch and release" for non-violent (and sometimes violent) crimes. Reduce property crimes to misdemeanors, and generally tell law abiding citizens - "just put up with quality of life issues".
Suffice to say the experiment has failed entirely.
Lawlessness begets more lawlessness. Giving people a place to shoot drugs (without treatment options) just helps addict get their fix. Not prosecuting property crimes just encourages ever more bold property crimes.
And the funny part is, it's not poverty driving much of this. It's organized crime - easy pickings, low hanging fruit. It's not the single mom trying to feed her newborn milk that is stealing catalytic converters.
I keep saying this, but history repeats itself. Major urban cities saw mass out migrations in the 60-70s for this exact reason. Crime, lawlessness, rioting, general degradation of QOL. The "Death Wish" movie series about a vigilante taking on a lawless city wasn't popular because people enjoyed the genre. I could easily see it happening again, especially with WFH. Then the "law and order" types will get elected and we'll start the whole thing over again.
And organized crime and poverty climb on the backs of each other. To blame one or the other is simplistic.
But you keep working on your anarchistic utopia while the rest of get “exploited” and pay taxes that actually support the people who you claim to care about.
I know, change is hard.
You've described the justice systems of modern progressive countries and what would you know, they work fine. The US needs a firm hand because it's culturally savage. Folks think about themselves and corporate "culture" is enshrined as something good and expected. Everyone sees the exploitation of other human beings and denigration everywhere, is it any surprise that they cannot behave in a manner that has a little compassion for themselves and everyone else? The entire environment is fundamentally dehumanising. No amount of localised niceness is going to undo decades of absolutely brutal culture.
Well said.
The people I know in progressive countries are shocked at the rampant violence that is tolerated and no prosecuted and punished in the US. It wouldn’t be tolerated in their countries.
Hell, the lefties I know in Europe look at the West Coast of the US and ask “what the fuck are you doing?”
I think this is a dramatic misrepresentation. The west Coast cities you're referencing are making these decisions because practically speaking they do not have the resources to deal with what's happening in their cities.
These things aren't happening in other "liberal" cities because they don't have those policies. I think you're confusing the egg for the chicken.
Why is the same thing not happening en masse in Austin, in NYC, in Boston, in Atlanta, in DC, in Tampa? These are liberal cities.
The answer is the underlying problem is bigger than liberalism.
Justice reform has been desperately needed for decades, but that's not what's happening here. What's happening here is underfunded cities being overwhelmed and largely giving up.
[EDIT] TLDR: I never committed crimes or hurt people when I was poor as fuck.
When I was 20 I would've maybe thought this. I was a left anarchist, and my leanings are still in that direction. It's not wealth that made me less progressive. I wrote a novel when I was 24 that brought the world down on me; it was a satire that involved a rock band murdering Bush and Cheney at a gala at Bohemian grove. It got thousands of hits from .mil sites and I got police going through my trash cans, my apartment raided. I left the country for 15 years. And railed against the military/industrial complex.
It's progressives who made me less progressive. During my exile I worked, I created things. It was hard. But I never lost my dignity. I never acted like a savage. I did lots of drugs and drinking but I never blamed anyone else; I worked out what it was that I needed to do. I've worked every day since I was 15. I wasn't handed anything. My parents were born in complete poverty.
So when I see a 20 year old beating his dog and literally taking a shit on the sidewalk, and then screaming at me that "how dare you tell a homeless person he can't shit here unless you want me to use your bathroom", when the City of Portland and me put a porta-potty on the corner thirty paces from where he's shitting for him, what I see is an able-bodied guy with a facebook and instagram account who's LARPing as an anarchist and needs to go through some form of hardship which he's obviously not experiencing yet.
I don't blame anyone for anything I could reasonably - or unreasonably - see someone doing. Slapping someone for making fun of your wife's hair is bad but it's not incomprehensible. Beating a dog is outside the sphere of what I can understand, though. So is shitting on someone's porch.
I've started to think the main thing is that people in their early 20s are being told this is an acceptable form of rebellion. It's not the peaceful Drop out, tune out of old times. It's an aggressive attempt to assert rights to dominate everyone around them - to terrorize peaceable people - without any kind of understanding of what terror people like me went through to be here. The one thing you won't find among these Portland youth is any kind of understanding of the immigrant experience. Just (mostly white) entitlement, wrapped in a thin veneer of "woke" speech. With no thought behind it.
Social forces that drive it? Poor education, stupid parents, I don't know. They're a threat to the working order of society. I would say that even more if I were homeless; I say it as a homeowner.
[Edit] Two side thoughts: 1. Just announcing you're a homeowner in Portland is cause for being attacked these days. As if no one deserves to reap any reward for anything they've done. 2. Someone on Nextdoor here last week complained that she was sleeping on her kitchen floor because the same guy had broken into her apartment three times in a week and once started a fire in the bathroom; other people asked why she didn't call the police, and she had, but they didn't respond. Someone asked why she didn't have a baseball bat at least. She recoiled and said she didn't want to hurt anyone. Is that a way to live your life?
So you’ve taken up the I’ve pulled myself up with my own bootstraps defense. I don’t demean that at all, but you did not grow up the same way as a 20 year old in your yard did.
To be a progressive, and I’m not talking about these progressives that you think you have in the Portland government, is to understand that we all don’t share the same life experiences.
You were lucky growing up in the time You did and probably you were lucky growing up in a time in Portland actually embrace community.
Tell me all these horror stories does not do anything to address the fundamental problems that are causing the horror stories in the first place.
Can you talk about this peaceful rebellion that took place in the past. What? What rebellion? Those people turned into the boomers that bought up all the property in Portland as investment vehicles. These people aren’t revolting in any positive or not coordinated way. Their revolt is more primal and therefore A true rebellion. It is an unconscious rebellion and that scares people into conservatives.
I've staked my entire life on being an individual who won't support a team, a religion, or a social movement (beyond individual points I agree with). I happen to believe that if everyone acted this way, we'd have a lot fewer problems as a society. I refuse to take the side of a movement that claims some holistic righteousnes, just like I refuse to accept religion and race. So on a case-by-case basis, I decide what seems fair. I should note that before that dog-beating kid drove his van into six cars, I went out there with a gun and a six pack of beer which I distributed to his 17 year old homeless friends, who I sat around with while they told me he was a crazy shithead. I think that was what really drove him mental.
Individuals. That's how the world functions. Everything else is theory.
So my rebellion didn't work? It did. I was gassed in the street in 2004 protesting the Iraq war. Everyone hates neocons now and hates that war, don't they? Did I do nothing? An argument is ridiculous if it asks every person to pawn everything they ever did to the next struggle in the future. Portland is a shit show in the real estate market, but where isn't? It's by leaps and bounds the most progressive city in America.
The boomers' homeless and ultimately functional children grew up richer than I did. They need to come halfway and see that acting savage and refusing completely to partake in society is not an ultimately winning strategy. They're not going to win some revolutionary war where they suddenly abolish all private property - and if that's their goal, they've really got to become more coherent and stop doing so much heroin, because I can't even understand what they're saying.
[edit] my contention is that the 20-yo shitting in my yard's problem is that he is spoiled and rich, by every standard I've seen everywhere I've traveled in the world. And that's why I can't relate to the conditions that led to him, or sympathize with his plight.
Is there a great re-location of tech staff happening in the US right now? I heard that a lot of people are leaving California including a few friends of mine. Even Joe Rogan moved to Austin and he can handle himself!
Whatever reasons Joe Rogan had for moving had nothing to do with him fearing for his personal safety. He was almost certainly scared of taxes, not muggers (add joke about the IRS being the worst muggers, here)
Everyone in the US who formerly worked in an office is threatening to quit if they can't work remotely full time now. No one is going back to offices. Oregon is a beautiful place to move to. 99% of it is not the city of Portland.
I know quite a few people in PDX, some of who have lived there their whole lives. Not one of them has felt unsafe in the past few years. As a matter of fact my ex laughed and told me to stay away from the national news when I texted her and told her to be safe during the height of the PDX "anarchy."
btw - the TL isn't any more unsafe than it's ever been and I've lived in The City since 1972.
Consider this difference when comparing personal experience or anecdata about pressed pills (or impure "molly") to what they're using here.
0: e.g. https://www.drugsdata.org/search.php?substance1=2012&substan...
I always thought a nontrivial % of HN users were on medications like adderall. The ambiguities-- the great potential good, likewise the great potential evil, and weighing them coldly-- of using a medication that can be therapeutically used or abused are pretty familiar to everyone I've known on any scheduled medication. Of course, the 'therapy session' nature of therapeutic MDMA and ketamine complicates that; you have to trust the therapist pretty much completely, and sadly any situation of total surrender is very easy to abuse, no matter how much it might have helped.
Frankly until it does mental healthcare in the US won’t move forward in a substantial way as they keep trying to treat people with trauma with CBT and medication. Still the PTSD dx works for those with CPTSD, so it’s not all lost. But it gets really tricky since so many diagnoses are almost subsumed with the concept of CPTSD.
Extremely hopeful for MDMA therapy though. It has huge potential.
The irony is you may not believe you're really traumatized if you've been spent 10 years in standard CBT being gaslit about your "cognitive distortions" and wondering why it's not working...
CBT by itself is inappropriately prescribed as a comprehensive treatment plan for ADHD-related insomnia when there's little evidence for its efficacy compared to CBT for other insomnias.
And don't get me started on CBT and autism.
It's also related to why it's pretty hard to find therapists that take insurance in some places.
CBT still costs a LOT of money and time, so there is an incentive towards finding more effective treatments, but managing symptoms is in some ways more preferable because the medical system needs people to be “sick” or else a treatment might be seen by puritanical society as somehow indulgent or hedonistic. What if a “cure” involves taking significant time away from work to work through trauma? They might be better and more productive in the end than a stopgap treatment, but society can’t necessarily tolerate the idea.
“Renowned traumatologist, John Briere, is said to have quipped that if Complex PTSD were ever given its due – that is, if the role of dysfunctional parenting in adult psychological disorders was ever fully recognized, the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders used by all mental health professionals) would shrink to the size of a thin pamphlet.”. (http://www.pete-walker.com/fAQsComplexPTSD.html)
I take this as good news, also. CPTSD survivors need trust and safety over all other things, and properly-administered MDMA can be a shorter path to that.
For example with schizophrenia:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32890864/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7234402/
ADHD:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28477799/
So in some ways, this is your wish. Statistically, everything about many mental illnesses get worse in poor environments for children. There are many adults who might otherwise present with schizophrenia that don’t because they had a better environment.
Early childhood emotional attachment types are also relatively predictive of symptomology and psychosis in schizophrenics
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193730/#!po=1....
It doesn’t invalidate the crux of your comment and I’m not attempting to say there are no neurological or genetic causes, but severity and prevalence would be categorically reduced in a world with better parental care.
On one hand you have a single acute dose (in your words "jolting") which can profoundly 'rewire' synaptic connections
On the other hand you have a compound administered chronically to induce changes that may not last after removing the medication. The goal is the same rewiring but considering dropout rates and success rates of treatment its absolutely lacklustre
Generally speaking, the compounds that are illegal are more profoundly impactful because if their high affinity and specificity than compounds available for prescription