MDMA's Potential for Substance Use Disorders
Consistent with this literature on the use of psilocybin-assisted therapy in the treatment of alcohol use, MDMA combined with psychotherapy is also showing promise in this area.
A recent open-label study in which 14 patients with alcohol use disorder who had completed a detoxification program received an 8-week course of recovery-based therapy plus two MDMA sessions showed an 85 percent reduction in alcohol use at 9 months post detox, as well as an overall improvement in psychosocial functioning across the cohort (Sessa et al., 2021).
References
Sessa, B., Higbed, L., O'Brien, S., Durant, C., Sakal, C., Titheradge, D., Williams, T. M., Rose-Morris, A., Brew-Girard, E., Burrows, S., Wiseman, C., Wilson, S., Rickard, J., & Nutt, D. J. (2021). First study of safety and tolerability of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine-assisted psychotherapy in patients with alcohol use disorder. Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England), 35(4), 375–383.