In this piece for The New York Review of Books, Mike Jay reports on the shifting science and cultural attitudes around MDMA, and how today’s research is overwhelmingly positive. The once-demonized designer club drug of the ’80s and ’90s has shown so much psychotherapy potential in the past few decades, as well as social benefits at the individual and group levels—and beyond.
The most eye-catching animal experiment of recent years has been the neuroscientist Gül Dölen’s work, also at Johns Hopkins, on the behavior of octopuses under MDMA’s influence. Prior to the experiment the creatures were solitary, but as the drug took hold Dölen observed them unfurling their arms and embracing their fellows. Her conclusion that “at least one otherwise tightly wound octopus” appeared to be “really just having a good time” achieved the kind of breakthrough media coverage that Ricaurte’s deadly monkey trials had gotten sixteen years earlier.
We might also ask what science will tell us about MDMA in twenty-five years, and how the effusive positivity of the current moment will have aged. Doblin’s keynote speech at the MAPS conference predicted not simply medically licensed MDMA but a wholesale transformation of society by the drug: from conflict resolution to a world of “spiritualized humanity” and “net-zero trauma by 2070.” Whatever the likelihood of its fulfillment—and however “net-zero trauma” might be measured—this expansive vision suggests that MDMA’s future applications are unlikely to be entirely medical.
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