Investigating Self-Transcendent Experiences During MDMA-Assisted Therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder

Abstract

Central to understanding the therapeutic potential of MDMA is a distinctive class of experiences psychedelics have been found to reliably produce: experiences and emotions that involve self-transcendence. Research is most robust for the role of classical psychedelics in self-transcendent experiences/emotions, with mixed findings on the extent to which MDMA induces self-transcendent experiences and emotions. Greater intensity of self-transcendent experiences/emotions have been linked to greater therapeutic benefit from classic psychedelic-assisted treatments, but self-transcendent experiences/emotions have only been examined in one trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, to our knowledge (Schmid et al., 2021) and no trials have examined the association between self-transcendent experiences/emotions and treatment outcomes. To address these gaps, the current study aims to (1) characterize the emotions, altered states, and self-transcendent experiences participants with social anxiety disorder experience during MDMA-assisted therapy medicine sessions; (2) compare the intensity of these experiences between the two medicine sessions; (3) and examine whether the intensity of these experiences correspond to treatment outcomes.

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