Damn, the success rate of ecstasy in PTSD isn't even close to everything else that's legal …

It's not that the numbers surrounding it are even close in comparison, because MDMA assisted treatments for things like PTSD are absolutely destroying other avenues of making people better.  

Though it has a dark reputation with people who have never taken it before, ecstasy (or "Molly" for anyone born after the mid-'90s) is currently being researched to treat people who suffer from past trauma. A small group of doctors somehow convinced the FDA to study the effects of the banned drug in people with mental health disorders. So far, its seeing an 83 percent success rate compared to the 25 percent rate of other treatments. 

"Me trying to get better by myself was like I was lost in a cave with no light," says veteran Army medic James Casey to 7 News. "The MDMA was like light for me to see all throughout this cave. And the therapists were like guides."

This has supporters thinking that — if phase three of the non-profit study is as successful as the first two — the US may see the drug legalized and approved by the FDA for medical purposes as early as 2021. 

Which, if anyone recalls correctly, is the exact avenue marijuana had to go through in order to shift public perception enough to get it legalized recreationally. So while it's way, way too soon to bet that we'll all be running around copping pills from a corner store within the decade, it goes to show that the government's mighty claws aren't as strong as they once were and reasonable efforts are being made to study the benefits of things still too taboo for people to want to understand.

Though don't assume treatments for PTSD only consist of patients entering a laser-lit room, looping their favorite trance tracks while sucking on a pacifier and huffing Vicks VapoRub, because the sessions are said to be grueling and force people to look at their disorders with a different perception than before — often having to train themselves to pick the difference between reality and what's going on inside of their heads. 

"So people are able to look at traumatic memories, the fear is reduced and then they're able to separate out that it was happening then and not now," says Rick Doblin of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. "We're saying that MDMA itself is not the medicine. It's MDMA-assisted psychotherapy."

If it helps, it helps. With a success rate as high as MDMA is seeing, there's really no other option but to allow people to get the help they need, even if it does still have a reputation to shake. What irony, to see a drug federally banned in the 1980s come full circle, now assisting the American soldiers with debilitating ailments as a direct result from the government shipping kids overseas to fight its unnecessary wars.

It's not the end-all to the mess we've created, but it's something …