What is MDMA?

The therapeutic window after a psychedelic trip scales with trip duration: ketamine (30-60 min trip) reopens a critical period for 48 hours, MDMA and psilocybin (3-6 hr trip) for about 2 weeks, LSD (8-10 hr trip) for about 3 weeks, and ibogaine (2-3 day trip) for at least a month.

“How long the critical period stays open after the acute effects of the psychedelics have worn off is proportional to how long the trip is.”

Set and setting matter neurobiologically: MDMA only reopens the social reward learning critical period in mice when given in a social context, not in isolation, explaining why recreational use in a rave does not produce the same therapeutic outcome as a clinical session.

“If we give MDMA for example in a social context, we can reopen the social reward learning critical period in mice. But if we give it in an isolation context, we don't open that critical period.”

Australia's authorized prescriber count for MDMA and/or psilocybin grew from 1 to 2 in early 2024 to 120 by mid-late 2026.

“We just found out that now there's 120 authorized prescribing psychiatrists in Australia for either MDMA or psilocybin or both medicines. So, that is a huge jump. You know, we started with one or two psychiatrists back at the start of 2024. We're now at the middle latter part of 2026.”

fMRI studies attributing function to specific brain regions are misleading because the octopus MDMA finding shows complex social behavior can arise without a cortex, nucleus accumbens, amygdala, or brain stem, meaning the true mechanism is molecular, not regional.

“That tells us that all of these studies out there that are doing like fMRI brain imaging and saying, "Oh, look, I gave a psychedelic or I gave whatever. I had people play Tetris or whatever experiment they're doing. And look, this part of the brain lit up. That kind of inference about the mechanistic relationship between those brain regions and those functions is a little bit misleading. And that the true mechanism is really at the level of molecules.”

As of mid-late 2026, Australia has over 20 clinics and roughly 400 patients treated with psilocybin- and MDMA-assisted therapy, with no serious adverse events reported to the TGA.

“There's now over 20 clinics around Australia, mostly led by clinicians that we have trained through our certificate in psychedelic assisted therapies and over 400 patients or so roughly have been treated.”

MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD showed a ~54% remission rate at end of treatment, rising to ~68% at 6-month follow-up.

“After the last administered medicine the remission rate was something like 54 and then 6 months later it climbed to 68.”

Real-world Australian data show 60 to 80% remission rates for MDMA/psilocybin treatments, compared to 10 to 15% for existing PTSD and depression treatments.

“These remission rates around 60 to 80% that's compared against 10 to 15% for existing treatments for PTSD and psilocybin with MDMA and psilocybin treatment for depression and trauma in Australia at the moment. So 10 to 15% versus 60 to 80% remission rates.”