Marie Phelan said she had never heard of MDMA before spotting a flyer seeking veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. After enrolling in a clinical trial, the Army Reserve veteran, who was deployed to Iraq in 2003, described a profound shift in how she carried the weight of her trauma.
"My experience of MDMA was that it just cracked my heart wide open," Phelan said. "I was carrying this big heavy rucksack and I just put it down on the beach and I started unpacking it one little teeny tiny thing at a time and setting each little thing out on the waves."
Phelan is part of a small group of Americans who have gone through psychedelic-assisted therapy in clinical trials. Now, according to CNBC, access to those treatments is closer than ever to broader expansion.
In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at accelerating research into psychedelic drugs for mental illness. The administration also issued priority review vouchers to three companies developing psychedelic or MDMA-like therapies: Compass Pathways, Usona Institute, and Transcend Therapeutics. The vouchers are designed to speed up parts of the FDA review process.
The White House said psychedelic compounds "show potential in clinical studies to address serious mental illnesses for patients whose conditions persist after after completing standard therapy."
The move marked a notable shift from Trump's first term, when his administration took a harder stance on cannabis and other controlled substances. Investors responded quickly. Shares of Compass Pathways and other companies in the psychedelic drug space rallied following the announcement. Wall Street analysts argued the order could legitimize an industry long viewed as fringe.
The science, however, remains deeply contested. Researchers have historically focused psychedelic research on specific conditions. Psilocybin, the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms, has been studied in connection with depression. MDMA-assisted therapy has been researched primarily for PTSD. LSD has been examined in the context of anxiety. Ibogaine, a psychoactive compound derived from a West African shrub, is considered by some advocates to hold promise for treating addiction and traumatic brain injuries.
MDMA is technically classified as an empathogen rather than a classic psychedelic. Still, researchers and regulators often group MDMA-assisted therapy within the broader psychedelic medicine field because the treatments involve supervised therapeutic sessions targeting conditions like PTSD, depression, and addiction.
The questions about safety and effectiveness have not been resolved, and how much room the sector has to grow remains an open debate even as investor interest builds.
