First Manitoba patient to be treated with MDMA

When produced legally, ecstasy has shown it can help veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder — and it will soon be used in Manitoba for the first time.

The Enhanced Therapy Institute in Winnipeg has recently received approval, under Health Canada’s special access program, to use the drug, known legally as MDMA, to help treat a patient.

Psychologist Darek Dawda and psychiatrist Arthur Winogrodzki of the institute are set to use the drug on a military “veteran with a diagnosis of PTSD” sometime in the next month.

The pair has worked for years with provincial regulators to set up a “safe, ethical and professional delivery of psychedelic-assisted treatments.”

“It really is a paradigm shift in mental health treatment with very promising results,” Dawda said Wednesday.

“It’s not just about another pill. It is using medication to enhance the therapeutic process. We use MDMA to direct the therapeutic process, which makes the psychotherapy, from the research we have, twice as effective as the best therapy out there.”

Winogrodzki added: “We are hoping this will become more and more popular as the evidence shows it is effective.”

Health-care practitioners must receive approval from Health Canada to use MDMA, as well as psilocybin or magic mushrooms, in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.

Health Canada has said in a statement it reviews special access program requests, to allow manufacturers to sell the drug to a health-care practitioner, “on a case-by-case basis.”

Before those drugs can be approved, Health Canada requires proof other treatments have failed.

A spokesman for Housing, Addictions and Homelessness Minister Bernadette Smith, who comments for the government on mental health issues, said “people facing mental health challenges should have access to appropriate care, effective treatments, and timely supports in their communities.”

“As the field of mental health continues to evolve, it remains important for health professionals to stay informed and adapt to emerging practices. Ongoing efforts to update skills and consider new approaches help ensure that individuals and families can access the services they need.”

MDMA, unlike other therapy, reduces fear for patients, Dawda said.

“People with PTSD, their fear sensor is overactive,” he said. “They are stuck on high alert. They are trapped in their trauma. That creates an avoidance response. They do everything they can to avoid the feelings of terror, of betrayal. The MDMA reduces, temporarily, that fear response. In therapy, it allows the patients to revisit their traumatic memory without being re-traumatized.”

“It’s like being able to walk through fire without being burned.”

Dawda said studies in the United States and other parts of the world have seen as many as two-thirds of patients with severe PTSD no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for the disorder after three dosing sessions.

John Gilchrist of TheraPsil, a non-profit organization pushing to legalize and expand access to psychedelic-assisted therapies, said Manitoba is helping pave the way for the future of mental health care.

“Canadians deserve regulated access to MDMA-assisted therapy and this milestone shows it can be delivered today,” he said in a statement.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca