First patient to be dosed with psychadelic drugs hails the therapy

The first patient to under psychadelic therapies says MDMA helped her release traumatic ‘blockages’ in her brain that she had not been able to process before.

Claire Danko is the first person in Australia to receive MDMA therapy after it was approved last year. Picture: Aaron Francis

Claire Danko never intended to make medical history. The 38-year-old Melbourne woman, who for years had suffered debilitating symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, just wanted mental relief.

Countless sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy, psychiatry and failed medication regimes had made little impact in easing her constant mental distress and the suite of associated symptoms including sleep disturbance, disordered eating and drug addiction.

“I’ve undergone so many different treatments over the years, and none of them really went deep enough,” Ms Danko says. “It wasn’t working. It has been a frustrating and disheartening experience, without the best results.”

She has now become the first person in Australia to be administered psychedelic-assisted therapy after Australia became the first ­nation to approve psilocybin and MDMA for PTSD and treatment-resistant depression.

Ms Danko was dosed with MDMA at Malvern Private Hospital in Melbourne and has so far undergone the first of three psychotherapy sessions under the influence of the psychedelic drug.

The MDMA was administered in a capsule. Ms Danko said about 40 minutes after taking it, she felt the effects of the drug. It was a feeling of wellbeing, “feeling more comfortable and relaxed” – a feeling very similar to that experienced by anyone who has taken the drug ecstasy.

During the therapy session, which occurs over several hours with a psychiatrist and second therapist, the drug is designed to facilitate deeper processing of trauma and destructive mental patterns.

“It helps you to go deeper into different things in your mind without having those barriers,” Ms Danko says. “It was like something was released almost, and afterwards there was a feeling of feeling safer. It helped me get to places that I hadn’t been able to reach.”

Psychedelic therapies are highly contentious in psychiatry in Australia, with some prominent doctors and researchers opposing the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s surprising approval last year. Concerns abound that the therapy has been championed and lobbied for by activists with commercial interests, rather than by doctors. Some doubt the evidence and hold concerns as to unanticipated adverse effects.

But proponents of the therapy believe it is a game-changer in psychiatry for those who don’t ­respond to traditional treatments.

“I’m very hopeful about psychedelics, because they refocus psychiatry on the humanistic aspects and the psychological aspects, rather than reductive medical models of mental illness,” says psychiatrist Eli Kotler, one of only a handful of doctors approved to ­administer psychedelics and Ms Danko’s treating psychiatrist.

Psychiatrist Eli Kotler is one of only a handful of doctors approved to ­administer psychedelics.

“What these therapies do is allow experiences to come up and be refelt and re-experienced, and re-understood from a different perspective and therefore integrated.

“Psychedelic literally means ‘mind manifesting’. And that’s what it does – it helps your mind manifest itself. When they take MDMA people generally feel safe, they feel secure, they feel connected, they feel more able to access difficult memories and emotions that their mind has packed away or split off, because they’re too overwhelming.”

It is too early for Ms Danko to know how well the therapy has worked for her, with two sessions to go. But she feels positive about the shifts in her mentality so far, and hopes the therapy – which currently is exceedingly expensive albeit a one-off course of treatment – will be available to more patients in time.

“It is helped me get closer to places that I hadn’t been able to reach before, that I had blocked or avoided or just hadn’t had the time or ability to explore,” she says.

“The approval of this therapy from my point of view is a very positive step. I think every patient has the right to choose what kind of therapy they undertake. I don’t think I’m going to be 100 per cent cured after this because that takes time but I think it’s definitely pushed me a lot further along.”