Ecstasy, Y2K and Camille Paglia

Readers respond to recent People stories.

Feb 14, 2001 | Read "The disunited states of ecstasy" by Janelle Brown.

Your article on the ecstasy conference was interesting and perceptive, but unfortunately contained a remarkably inaccurate comment about "MAPS, the famed Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which does unauthorized nonprofit research into drugs without the DEA's blessing." As the founder and president of MAPS, I know that statement is fundamentally opposite to what MAPS is really all about. The author makes it clear that she missed the talk I gave in which I discussed MAPS's $4 million, five-year plan to develop the therapeutic potential of MDMA through FDA- and DEA-approved research.

The front page of the MAPS Web site says,

"The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is a membership-based non-profit research and educational organization. We assist scientists to design, fund, obtain approval for and report on studies into the healing and spiritual potentials of MDMA, psychedelic drugs and marijuana.

MAPS' goal is to use the data generated from scientific research to develop these drugs into prescription medicines."

MAPS seeks to obtain permission for authorized research from FDA, DEA and institutional review boards, and has succeeded on a number of occasions.

I recently earned a Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, with my dissertation on the regulation of the medical use of psychedelics and marijuana. I've invested much of my life in learning how to work for change and research within the current regulatory system. That's because I believe that there's more overall social change potential in legal research.

-- Rick Doblin, founder and president, MAPS

Read "Bunker fever" by Katharine Mieszkowski.

I really enjoyed your article. As a psychiatrist who sees this kind of paranoia every day in the form of what we call delusional (paranoid) disorder, I have found that the best way to conceptualize the problem is to think of paranoia as an enhancement or distortion of our normal, human ability -- which so far cannot be mimicked by machine "intelligence" -- to discern patterns in our environment. When a person is paranoid, he or she sees a pattern that, by general agreement, is not really there. Perhaps scientific and mathematical geniuses have an ability to see patterns that everyone else misses, but can then be persuaded do exist. But the Y2K and "alien" paranoias are clearly about patterns that are delusional. It is interesting to me how, in my clinical cases of paranoia of this kind, the sufferer functions mentally in all other respects, in most cases, entirely normally, in contrast to, say, schizophrenia, where there may be paranoia but there is also a general breakdown in the mind's integration and functioning.

-- Jamie Woolery

I thank Salon for this article on what's left of Y2K believers, since I've been curious about it. The paranoia angle, though, seems to just skim the surface. These people have developed a new belief system, based on a mesh of technology and millenarianism. There certainly was a large and well-publicized millenarianist Christian segment to the Y2K doomsayers, people who were obviously hoping for the rapture, and those included in this article are keeping that same faith. They may not call themselves Christians, but the yearning for a disaster, especially one that will leave them even more affirmed in their superstitious beliefs, is palpable. Unfortunately for them, any Y2K-based "disaster" would merely, at worst, plant us back to the era of 1950 or so. Things seemed to work pretty well then.

-- George Grella

Great article -- only one paragraph makes me think you might have missed your own point.

"The hardcore Y2K doomers -- the ones who fled to caves -- were like biblical prophets predicting a calamitous future. But the Y2K faithful, the people still paranoid about Y2K, are seers from a different paradigm. Like the philosopher of Plato's Cave, who realizes that we're all living among shadows that the rest of us can't recognize, they see the truth. It's an insight that sets them apart from the corruption, decline and ignorance of the society around them. They are a knowing elite, an enlightened few." The point here may be that it's the same paradigm -- it only appears different to those with the delusion. There is no difference between the New Age drivel and the "political" (for lack of a better term) drivel -- it's all drivel. I keep myself on a couple of e-mail lists where I get all the New Age promotional stuff and see the same kind of thing. It's based, as you say, on their thinking they know something everyone else doesn't know. These people have a form of mental illness where anything that doesn't fit into their view of the universe -- no matter how warped it has become, whether through some magical spiritual programming or a Y2K seminar -- is a conspiracy of either ethereal or corporate entities to hide "the truth." And for only $99.95 they will let you in on the secret so that Mommy can kiss it and make it better. It's easy to find marks -- there are an awful lot of us boomers who continue to play a cruel joke on our parents by never growing up. It's just the same old con job -- only the packaging changes.

-- Andy Parx

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