by Debra Rich Gettleman

What if there was a drug that could rid the world of hatred and antisemitism? Would you lobby to make it legal? I certainly would.

Well, a guy known as Brendan, a leader of the Midwest faction of Identity Evropa, the infamous white supremacist group behind the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, insists that a single dose of MDMA changed his racist ideology into pure love for all of mankind.

Apparently, Brendan wasn’t doing so great due to his ties with the white nationalist movement. He lost his job, was dropped by friends, and found himself cut-off by his family. At rock bottom, he enrolled in a University of Chicago research study about how MDMA enhances the pleasantness of physical touch. Still carrying his racist ideology with him at the onset of the study, he discovered something pretty astonishing during his carefully monitored MDMA high.

Life Changing Ecstasy

He’s quoted in a BBC article saying, “I felt in that moment that all of my priorities in my life were just so messed up, the way I was interacting with people, particularly people who are close to me. But there was also an almost euphoric feeling, a feeling of love, and I concluded that was the sort of feeling that I should strive to permeate across the world,”

MDMA (aka molly or ecstasy) has been proven effective in the treatment of PTSD. In fact, Israel has been using it since 2019 for that very purpose. But the US FDA continues to drag its feet on approving MDMA and psilocybin (psychedelic mushrooms) for the treatment of a host of mental health disorders.

Rachel Nuwer, author of just-released book “I Feel Love: MDMA and the Search for Connection in a Fractured World,” shared with The Forward’s Senior Contributing Editor, Rob Eshman, that after speaking with Brendan for her book, “It does raise the possibility that this could be a ripe field of investigation.” She raised the question of whether we could utilize MDMS or other psychedelics as tools to de-radicalize people with extremist views.

Psychedelic Jews

Alexander Shulgin, a California pharmacologist dubbed by Jewish Currents as
the “zeyde of psychedelics,” was the first to experiment with MDMA.

According to Nuwer, Shulgin and his colleagues were stunned by the results. “All they knew,” Nuwer writes, “Was that it seemed to catalyze mental breakthroughs than normally would take months, years, or even a lifetime of traditional therapy to achieve.”

But since 1985, MDMA has been drug non-grata here in the USA.

Luckily, a Chicago Jew and activist for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Research (MAPs), Rick Doblin, was raised with the edict that “oppressive rules are made to be broken.” His family delivered books to Soviet Jews in the 70s.

He tells Eshman, “What I learned from my parents is that there are big, big systems going on in the world, but you can make tiny individual differences,” He adds, “You can’t open up Judaism in Russia, but you can bring two prayer books.”

That idealism has helped Doblin in his campaign for more and better psychedelic research. MAPS, created in 1986, continues to research the healing potential of MDMA and other psychedelics. Over the course of the past 35 years, MAPS has raised over $130 million for psychedelic research and education.

But Nuwer makes it clear in her book that while MDMA can help shift perspectives, intention is a critical element to success. She clarifies with Eshman, “If you just put MDMA in Donald Trump’s Diet Coke, he’s not gonna suddenly change. He’s just going to love himself more and love his followers more.”