Psychedelic Research

On July 16th 1969, Apollo 11 set off for the Moon. On July 16th 1930, thirty-nine years earlier, humanity first encountered an MDMA-like drug as Gordon Alles began his self-experiments with MDA. Even though it appears in several percent of illicit ‘ecstasy’ tablets, MDA has received little attention in recent years. That just changed. This month, we finished collecting data in the first human study of MDA in over 30 years.
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Here are two human psychedelic studies that are currently recruiting participants healthy psychedelic-experienced volunteers. (Full disclosure: I am involved in conducting both of these studies.) In a separate entry, I list the studies that are seeking people with specific illnesses who can be psychedelic-naive. Most of the details on these other studies were obtained from ClinicalTrials.gov and maps.org
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Here is an interesting qualitative report of MDA effects that was published in the late 1960s.
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I remember sitting in Heinrich Waelsch’s study overlooking the Hudson in August 1951, just before returning to England to take up my newly-created post. “What is experimental psychiatry?” asked Heinrich Waelsch, giving me that whimsical penetrating look of his. The newly named professor did not rightly know. “I suppose,” I said, hesitatingly, “it is the application of experimental research method to clinical psychiatry.” — Joel Elkes

July 16th was the anniversary of Gordon Alles’ first self-experiment with MDA in 1930 —to my knowledge the first experience with an MDMA-like drug. Much later, at a 1959 conference at UCSF, he described his experience. If you’ve ever wondered what a hallucinogen/MDMA-like experience would be like to someone without any expectations aside from an interest in finding treatments for allergies and congestion, here is his remarkably observant account:
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