Comment by davidhollander | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidhollander | Hacker News Reader

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From reading the letter you can tell he was suffering extremely from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder throughout much of his life.

I did not feel sad as much as disgusted that, through our politicians, we have:

A) made illegal the most effective treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder : MDMA

B) continue to support the primary generator of new PTSD cases: war

If you want to do something other than sit around feeling sad for a while, help address one of the above problems and prevent the situation from happening again.

[further reading]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/artic...

>Ecstasy is the key to treating PTSD At last the incurably traumatised may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And controversially, the key to taming their demons is the ‘killer’ drug Ecstasy

http://www.maps.org/research/mdma/

>For-profit pharmaceutical companies are not interested in developing MDMA into a medicine, because the patent for MDMA has expired. Companies cannot profit off of MDMA because it is only administered a limited number of times, unlike most medications for mental illnesses that are taken on a daily basis. Consequently MAPS is the only organization funding clinical trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in the world

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5334479/ns/health-mental_health/

>1 in 8 returning soldiers suffers from PTSD But less than half with problems seek help, report finds

This is a very serious thing, and I don't intend to start any kind of back-and-forth here and further distract from the real issues here.

That said, standing on a political soap box about drug laws and war when Mr. Zeller's primary problem was obviously having been molested is ridiculous. Yes, it's possible that ecstasy in a clinical setting may have helped him, but he was let down in a lot more ways than an inability to get that particular treatment (as he says in the note, he wasn't even seeking treatment).

It's disrespectful to pin this political issue to a man's final note to the world. Even if this was an issue Mr. Zeller felt strongly about, he obviously didn't mean to be some kind of martyr for it.

edited to add: I don't disagree with your point, I just think your timing is awful.

I respect your disagreement. I see how grouping abuse with other forms of post-traumatic stress could be viewed insensitive to the personal suffering of Mr. Zeller. However, from a psychological perspective, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in all forms is associated with the recurring visions, nightmares, avoidance of treatment, and extreme cumulative pain he refers to. I justify and stand by the timing of my comment using the principle of harm reduction. Whenever painful incidents occur that challenge us very deeply psychologically, the world would be a better place if we all stopped and thought about how we contribute to that pattern of suffering... rather than brushing it under the cognitive rug to "think about later". Because usually we never will.

I did not feel sad as much as disgusted that, through our politicians, we have: A) made illegal the most effective treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder : MDMA B) continue to support the primary generator of new PTSD cases: war

A) You're going to have to do better than The Times, MSNBC, and a pro-psychedelic-legalization think tank to say MDMA is the most effective treatment. I'm not closed-minded to the idea that psychedelic drugs have positive psychiatric applications or that they should be legalized, but there's a lot of literature about treatments overall, and you've offered no comparative studies measuring the difference between MDMA and, for instance, cognitive behavioral therapy.

B) The stereotypical PTSD case is a returning war veteran. If you hadn't noticed, though, wars also tend to kill people and destroy things, and the added weight of PTSD among veterans doesn't change the essential moral calculus that much. Participating in the Vietnam War wouldn't have become a good idea if it wasn't for PTSD, and participating in the Second World War doesn't become a bad idea just because of PTSD.

But there's also no quantification of whether warfare is indeed the primary generator of PTSD cases; it's hard to find reliable statistics about it, but I would bet that most PTSD sufferers in the US are victims of sexual abuse rather than war veterans, since it's probably far, far more common for an American to be raped or sexually assaulted than for an American to join the military, go overseas, and actually participate in combat. Of course, rape isn't something we talk about much.

Excellent extensive ABC news documentary on MDMA, and the false propoanda war against it. Hosted by Peter Jennings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjvNCijeYlI

They even interview former rape victims and the affect it had on them.

You'll see that the government study listing its negative effects was false, disproved by several independent studies and later withdrawn bu the author, apologizing for his mistakes, like giving meth to his mice, instead of MDMA, oops.

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