One key player is Nick Walker, an autistic scholar, writer, speaker, publisher (and 6th degree black belt in Aikido) whom Danforth met through a mutual acquaintance."Nick began educating me about the common pitfalls of autism research, the importance of how language is used to discuss autism and individuals who are autistic, and he is outstanding at myth busting," says Danforth. MAPS went on to employ Walker as a paid consultant to help with risk mitigation, providing feedback, editing journal articles and "avoiding discussing autism or the research in ways that could inadvertently be harmful," as Danforth puts it."It seemed natural to ask: what other populations, beyond people with PTSD, could we help with MDMA?"
Grob's name will ring bells for anyone familiar with modern medical psychedelic research (the legit kind, sanctioned by authorities, published in scientific journals). LSD for the pain of cluster headaches; ketamine for treatment-resistant depression; psilocybin for OCD. The list of conditions and treatments is long and dramatic.MDMA entered the world of underground psychiatry in the 1980s, when hundreds of thousands of people took the drug in some form. It took a while for the therapeutic use of the drug to trickle up from the counter-culture—but it eventually did: Dr Grob led on the very first FDA-approved study with MDMA in 1993.Danforth first worked in the field of psychedelic medicine when she assisted Grob administering psilocybin to terminally ill cancer patients to help them cope with the anxiety surrounding certain death. She was inspired to look for more stories from autistic people themselves that MDMA could be helpful.The obvious place to look? The internet, said by some to be for the autistic community what sign language is for the deaf community. Previously isolated individuals—autistic or otherwise—can find like-minded people like never before. The wide availability of drugs, combined with anonymous forums and the long arm of the internet, led to a profusion in stories online about life-changing experiences with MDMA."I don't want to give the impression that we had a rave, but yes, there was some EDM involved"
Surveying autistic people for her PhD dissertation, she found that "72 percent of MDMA/ecstasy-experienced people reported 'more comfort in social settings,'" and 12 percent said that the beneficial impacts lasted for two or more years.Now, being able to give the drug herself to autistic subjects in a controlled, monitored, safe environment, she and Grob have seen some dramatic experiences. A few people who had never been on a date before have since gone on one—even two—romantic outings. Others, who had never understood dancing, suddenly felt the desire to get up and dance right there in the lab. "I don't want to give the impression that we had a rave, but yes, there was some EDM involved," says Danforth.The study doesn't involve regular MDMA doses or "prescribed" MDMA to take home. Rather, participants take the drug twice in a therapeutic setting, complete with all the normal paraphernalia of a psychologist's treatment room, from card games to art supplies and headphones "for introspection." But, like all things in medicine, everybody is different, and nothing is a cure-all. "It's important to avoid being swept up in the success stories," says Danforth. "It is well known that some individuals don't respond to MDMA in the same way most people do. Some people have the classic MDMA love puddle response—but others will feel like they have just had a strong cup of coffee. Let me be clear: MDMA is not for every individual.""MDMA changed my life … [But] it's not a miracle drug for me. Although the experience itself is great, it's the insight it has given me into my feelings and the feelings of people around me that created the lasting changes. The barriers it breaks down have proven quite permanent for me. [MDMA] certainly has shown me things nothing or nobody could have shown me otherwise."
It proved not to be for Jackson Truax, a 28-year-old with Asperger's syndrome who was the very first person enrolled in the MAPS study. Turns out, Jackson did not have your typical MDMA experience. "Did MDMA improve my ability to deal with social anxiety?" he says. "The one word answer would be no—I mostly just felt very tired."In fact, his first trip was outright bad. He had been tasked with performing a "social inference test": spending half an hour watching a series of 10-20 second videos of actors playing out a variety of social situations. It was his task to "identify their intentions.""Essentially they took the thing my brain is inherently the worst at, and asked me to do a lot of it while on MDMA," he says. "It just felt like my brain was getting hit with a hammer, it was a very intense and high pressure situation. I wound up having a total autistic meltdown. I had to ask Alicia and Dr. Grob to leave the room, and it was my support partner [a friend enrolled in the therapy process to be a sober chaperone] needed to come into the room. She and I spent some time alone together with her calming me down."In sum, he didn't enjoy the drug in the slightest—and if anything it made him more anxious (having to go off his medical marijuana for a while probably didn't help). Yet he does feel the study overall was beneficial. "Even though it was a bad trip and a painful experience that brought up a lot of stuff, it felt natural to move forward. It made it easier to just be ok with it and move on," he says. "This was definitely a net gain. This was a world-class facility where I had access to people and experiences I wouldn't otherwise have had. This gave me a greater vernacular to talk about autism spectrum and social anxiety—I gained new prisms to understand things."Which is ultimately what the study is about: the mind, not the drug."The critical distinction is that these are not drug studies," says Danforth. "Other than safety considerations, the pharmacological drug effects are irrelevant: this is about the therapeutic effects of an altered state of consciousness."Lit Up is a series about heightening—and dulling—our sense of perception. Follow along here.Correction: Some factual errors appeared in the original version of this article. We regret the errors and the following have been amended: The trial did not take place in a hospital setting but in a specifically prepared quiet room and Alicia Danforth is a psychologist, not a registered psychologist; Nick Walker was paid as a consultant by MAPS, not LA BioMed; Jackson Truax was not required to go 'cold turkey' off medical cannabis but to taper off use for the trial, and had an untypical response to MDMA but was not clinically a non-responder."They took the thing my brain is inherently the worst at, and asked me to do a lot of it while on MDMA"