For eight years, Marine and Army veteran Jonathan Lubecky suffered flashbacks and nightmares, got rip-roaring drunk to quell his troubled mind, took 42 pills a day to address various medical conditions, and attempted suicide multiple times.
An emergency visit to the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2014 changed his life, not because he was able to get treatment — no inpatient psychiatric beds were available that day – but because an intern slipped him a note.
It said, “Google MDMA/PTSD.”
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The intern knew that in Charleston, a researcher for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, was conducting a safety trial on the use of MDMA — 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as ecstasy or molly — for treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder.
Nine years later, having enrolled in the study and received three MDMA-assisted therapy sessions, Lubecky has no thoughts of suicide. He has founded his own company, traveled to Ukraine three times for humanitarian work, and lived through several personal traumas without recurrence of his PTSD.
MDMA and the psychotherapy he underwent while using the drug have led him to where he is today.
“I’m now PTSD-free longer than I had it,” said Lubecky during the VA’s inaugural New Horizons in Health podcast. “It’s like doing…
