MDMA, MAPS, and Cover Story's Power Trip-- Another perspective
The podcast Cover Story just released a series called Power Trip, an expose of the dark side of the psychedelic treatment world. The series highlights the stories of a few women, including the co-host, who were sexually assaulted in psychedelic treatment spaces….mostly in the underground, but also one woman who was abused by her therapist both during and after her participation in the MAPS PTSD study.
Later in the series, Cover Story shifted to a double barrel assault on MAPS as an organization and its Phase 3 PTSD study. Cover Story questioned the integrity and competence of the people working in the study and tried to paint the study as some kind of amoral juggernaut which, in its desperate desire to bring MDMA to full medicalization, is willing and able to squash any vulnerable participants or opposition in its way.
Dr. H couldn’t disagree more, and felt the imperative to share a different view. He was a study physician and therapist in the Phase 3 MDMA trial, and his experience with participants, with colleagues both at his study site and other sites, and with numerous MAPS staff at all levels of the organization was unrecognizable in Cover Story’s sensationalized account.
In this episode, Dr. H sit down with Hope, a former participant in MAPS' PTSD study. First Hope shares her moving story, then she and Dr. H discuss the critiques from Power Trip. Hope's story is neither a home run cure nor a story of wanton abuse, but rather one of two steps forward, one step back....which is how the healing journey most commonly unfolds.
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