Physicians at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center confirmed they will receive one of two $4.9 million grants from the Department of Defense to fund a study of MDMA, the active ingredient in the street drug known as ecstasy, according to emails shared with Military Times.
The psychedelic drug will be given to active-duty Army personnel with mild to moderate post-traumatic stress disorder to study the psychological flexibility patients experience as a potential mechanism of MDMA’s therapeutic effect.
The second grant will fund a separate MDMA-assisted therapy study done in partnership between Emory University and STRONG STAR, a medical consortium and training network based in the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
While the U.S. government first conducted illegal experiments with psychedelics on soldiers half a century ago, this new study marks the first-ever trial of MDMA for the treatment of PTSD in active-duty soldiers.
Maj. Aaron Wolfgang, a U.S. Army psychiatrist who specializes in treating PTSD, will be the lead author and physician of the double-blind placebo trial.
Wolfgang is the first author in a systematic review and overview of MDMA and MDMA-assisted therapy featured in the January issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. The article, written by a cohort of leading psychedelic researchers, describes common misconceptions about MDMA due to its close association with classical psychedelics like LSD, psilocybin and mescaline.
“Unlike other psychedelics,” the paper says, “MDMA uniquely induces prosocial subjective effects of heightened trust and self-compassion while maintaining ego functioning as well as cognitive and perceptual lucidity.”
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This apparent gain of function suggests what advocates for the legalization of MDMA have been saying for decades: the drug is uniquely positioned to be a breakthrough therapeutic for treating many psychological disorders.
The new study would enroll active-duty service members, who would each receive three MDMA dosing sessions between three and five weeks apart over the course of 10 months. Participants would receive three preparatory sessions before the first dosing session and three integration sessions after each dosing session.
“Unlike other MDMA-Assisted Therapy/Psychedelic Assisted Therapy long-term studies, this will be one of the first that I’m aware of to incorporate long-term follow-up that remains double-blinded, which will provide us with higher confidence data,” Wolfgang said.
The pharmaceutical company Lykos Therapeutics, formerly MAPS PBC, made a major push in December 2023 for MDMA to receive FDA approval. When approval was denied in August 2024, the result came as a shock to advocates for psychedelic-assisted therapy, many of whom were veterans and their family members.
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“I think that PTSD should be treated while you’re in service, not force you to decide to stay in or get out in order to receive the care you need,” said Jonathan Lubecky, an Iraq War veteran who served with the Marine Corps’ Bravo Battery, 5th Battalion, 113th Field Artillery Regiment.
Last June, Lubecky provided testimony at an FDA public hearing, where he credited MDMA-assisted therapy, which he underwent in 2014, with allowing him to “truly live” for the last decade and weather many of life’s traumatic experiences long after returning from his deployment.
Wolfgang believes the military will have more success in elevating the legitimacy of MDMA-assisted therapy.
The history of MDMA and the military runs deep. An animal toxicology study of MDMA was done by the US Army Chemical Corps in 1953 and 1954 as part of the secretive Edgewood Arsenal experiments.
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About 20 years later, American biochemist Alexander Shulgin taught retired Army Lt. Col. Leo Zeff, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, how to use MDMA to treat his therapy patients. Zeff was so taken by the drug that he came out of retirement to proselytize MDMA’s therapeutic benefits and train more than 100 therapists.
Shulgin, a Navy veteran who served on the Clemson-class destroyer Pope during World War II, went on to synthesize several unique psychedelics, including 2-CB, often described as a combination of MDMA and LSD.
Wolfgang hopes a new generation of soldiers could benefit from the drug’s consideration as a breakthrough therapy.
“I also envision this project — and the lasting program I hope to see it turn into — as a beacon of hope for countless service members and their families who are suffering and whose lives are being upended due to PTSD,” Wolfgang said. “[They] already sacrifice so much in service to our country. I’d like for them to know that we hear them and to know that we are working tirelessly to ensure we offer them the absolute cutting edge.”
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