From Club To Clinic: How MDMA Could Help Some Cope With Trauma

Story here. Most military PTSD victims are men, but there are many ways a person can get PTSD. If this story's substance pans out, it'd be a huge game-changer. Excerpt:

'MDMA, often known as Ecstasy or Molly, has for decades been used as a party drug — consumed in clubs, fuel for all-night raves. But lately, the substance is also being used in very different settings, for a very different purpose: to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved phase two clinical studies of the treatment, and they're now underway in four locations. Results so far have been promising, according to reporter Kelley McMillan, who has been investigating this new use of MDMA and has written about it in the current issue of Marie Claire.

"The findings from these most recent studies are supporting the earlier phase two findings, which found that 83 percent of participants were cured of their PTSD — compared to 25 percent who were cured from talk therapy alone," she tells NPR's Rachel Martin.

These conclusions remain preliminary, however, and phase two trials often fail by the time they reach phase three. And McMillan offers a word of caution of her own.

"People should not be going out and taking MDMA recreationally and thinking that they're going to have these healing experiences," she says.'