from New York Review of Books May 23 2024 — Ecstasy’s Odyssey
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.
Doblin has flipped. This sounds like the naive and childish nonsense from the 60's that "if we could only give LSD to Nixon and..."
MDMA is not going to cure the human race of an instinct-driven motivation for tribalism.
Tribalism
And what about MAPS' big project of using MDMA to treat PTSD in soldiers returning from the most horrendous war zones ever seen in this corner of the galaxy? Isn't the U.S. war machine just tickled pink that they can save billions from their VA hospital budgets, and maybe even get second enlistments by soldiers that have learned how to love... each other? the enemy? The American Project for Continuous Warfare for Economic Stability is hardly an Rx for a world of “spiritualized humanity”.
The <1% May Have a Plan
It’s my position — and the position of a growing minority of scholars in the psychedelics field — that MAPS and MAPS PBC (now Lykos) have been leading a cultic and theological project behind a medical, scientific veneer. For a number of reasons, I’m not convinced that the MAPS protocol for psychedelic therapy is safe or particularly effective. MAPS’s claims about “inner healers” paving the way to “net-zero trauma” are not grounded in evidence, and their utopian ideology has already been used to downplay real harms and to promote unsafe models for psychedelic use. — Neşe Devenot