MDMA may have protected Nova attack survivors from trauma, study suggests

With Dawn approaching on the morning of October 7, 2023, many concert pioneers at the Nova Music Festival near the Gaza border were taken to illegal recreational drugs such as MDMA or LSD.

Hundreds of them were high when gunmen attacked the gunmen, shortly after sunrise.

Neuroscientists who work with survivors of the festival say that there are early signs that MDMA – also known as euphoria or Molly – may provide some psychological protection against shock.

The preliminary results, which are currently reviewed with the review of peers with the aim of publishing in the coming months, indicate that the drug is related to more positive mental cases – during the event and in the months that followed.

The study, conducted by scientists at the University of Haifa in Israel, can contribute to an increasing scientific interest in how MDMA is used to treat psychological trauma.

This is the first time that scientists have been able to study a collective shock event as large numbers of people were under the influence of medicines that have been changed.

Hamas gunmen killed 360 people and kidnapped dozens at the festival site where 3,500 people were celebrating.

“We had people hiding under the bodies of their friends for hours while they were in LSD or MDMA,” said Professor Roy Salomon, one of those who led the research.

“There is a talk that many of these substances create the plasticity in the brain, and therefore the brain is more open to change. But what happens if this plasticity is endured in such a terrible position – will it be worse or better?”

The research follows psychological responses to more than 650 survivors of the festival. Two -thirds of these were under the influence of recreational drugs including MDMA, LSD, marijuana or Psilocybin – the compound in hallucinations – before the attacks took place.

“MDMA, especially MDMA, which was not mixed with anything else, was the most protected,” the study found, according to Professor Salomon.

He said that those who suffer from MDMA during the attack seemed much better mentally better in the first five months, when a lot of treatment occurred.

“They were better asleep, and they had less mental distress – they were doing better than people who did not take any substance,” he said.

The team believes hormones supporting the community OxytocinWhich helps to enhance interconnection – helped reduce fear and increase the feelings of intimate friendship between the one who escaped from the attack.

More importantly, they say, it seems that he has left the survivors more open to receiving love and support from their families and friends as soon as they were at home.

It is clear that the research is limited only to those who survived the attacks, which makes it difficult to determine it with any certainty whether the specific drugs have helped or hindered the chances of victims in escaping.

But researchers found that many survivors, such as Michel Ohna, believed a firm belief that he played a role – and they say that belief, in itself, may help them recover from this event.

She told me: “I feel that I saved my life, because I was very high, as if I were not in the real world.” “Because ordinary humans cannot see all these things – this is not normal.”

Without the medicine, she believed that she was to freeze or collapsed on the ground, and she was killed or arrested by the militants.

Doctors in various countries already I tried with psychotherapy with the help of MDMA PTSD (PTSD) In preparing the experiment – though this I only agreed to Australia As a treatment.

The countries rejected by the United States include, as the Food and Drug Administration mentioned concerns about the design of studies, and that treatment may not provide long -term benefits, and the potential risks of heart problems, injury and abuse.

MDMA was classified as a Class A in the UK, and has been linked to liver, kidney and heart problems.

In Israel, where MDMA is also illegal, psychologists can only use customer treatment on the basis of experimental research.

The preliminary results of the Nova study are closely followed by some of these Israeli doctors who try MDMA as a treatment for the disturbance of PTSD after October 7.

Dr. Anna Harwood-Gross, clinical psychologist and director of research at the Israel Center at Metiv Psychotrauma, described the initial results as a “truly important” for therapists like her.

She is currently trying to use MDMA to treat post -traumatic disorder within the Israeli army, and she reduced the ethics of a weak psychological state in clients when there is an ongoing war.

“At the beginning of the war, we asked if we were able to do this,” she said. “Can we give people MDMA when there is a risk of alarm warning? This will shock them.

Dr. Harwood-Gross says the early indicators of the cheerful MDMA use, even among the old military warriors with chronic trauma disorder.

The old assumptions of the “rules” of treatment – especially the length of the sessions, were also raised, which must be modified when working with customers under the influence of MDMA, she says.

“For example, our ideas have changed about 50 minutes of treatment sessions, with one patient and one therapist,” Dr. Harwood Gross told me. “The presence of two therapists, and the long sessions – up to eight hours – is a new way to treat. They look at people entirely and give them time.”

She says this new longest coordination shows promising results, even without taking MDMA patients, with a success rate of 40 % in the imaginary drug group.

The Israeli community itself changed its approach to shocks and treatment after the October 7 attacks, according to Danny Brunce, the founding director of the Metiv Psychotrauma Center at Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, and the character of a senior in this industry.

“It seems as if this was the first shock that we are going through,” he said. “I have seen wars here, I have seen a lot of terrorist attacks and people said:” We do not see the shock here. ”

“Suddenly, it seems that there is a general opinion that everyone is shocking now, and everyone needs treatment. It is a wrong approach.”

He said that what he broke is a sense of safety, which many Jews believe that Israel will provide them. These attacks revealed a mass shock, he says, linked to the Holocaust and generations of persecution.

“Our history is full of massacres,” ATZMON MesHULAM told me. “As a psychiatrist now in Israel, we face an opportunity to work with a lot of shocks that have not been treated previously, like all our novels for 2000 years.”

Collective trauma, combat shocks, changing drugs of the mind, sexual assault, hostages, survivors, collecting on the body, wounded and density-facing Israeli shock specialists as a complex cocktail of agents who are now immersed to treatment.

The size of the mental health challenge in Gaza is reflected, where huge numbers of people were killed, injured or left homeless after a 15 -month destroyer – and where there are harmful resources to help the infected residents deeply shocked.

The war in Gaza, which caused Hamas attacks on Israeli societies in October 2023, was suspended in January in a six -week truce, during which the Israeli hostages held by Hamas were exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.

But there are a few sides that peace and security needed to start recovery have arrived.

The truce expired at the end of last week, with 59 Israeli hostages still in Hamas’s families. Many Ghazan awaits, while filling their bags, until the war resumes.

Meanwhile, Michel Ohnna, the survivor of Nova, says that she feels that over time, some expect to move from the attacks, but are still affected.

She told me: “I wake up with this, and go to sleep with this, and people do not understand.”

“We live this every day. I feel that the country has supported us in the first months, but now after one year, they feel:” Well, you need to return to work and return to life. “But we cannot.”

Additional reports written