Psychedelic therapy Netherlands

The United States and MDMA

In the US, the non-profit organization MAPS has been working for years to fund research on psychedelics such as psilocybin and MDMA and to make their therapeutic properties known in the medical world. The studies on psilocybin and MDMA are therefore very positive for the later legalization of these drugs. At the moment there are 121 scientific studies investigating the therapeutic effects and therefore it seems that legalization is not very far away.

An overview of the MDMA studies can be found here

Maps website with information about this non-profit organization

Medicinal MDMA by 2024 is now the forecast

Given the attention for the therapeutic effect of MDMA and the many ongoing studies, we expect MDMA-assisted therapy to become fully legal in the United States. At the moment, therapists are being trained by MAPS to be ready for these developments. The attention for MDMA as a supporting substance can now also be seen in various documentaries and politicians and other policy makers are also gaining more confidence to legalize it.

Netflix as a catalyst

How To Change Your Mind is based on the book by Michael Pollan. The book describes a number of different psychedelic substances well and is detailed in them. Each episode is about a different psychedelic and episode 3 is about MDMA. In this episode you also see a lot of the organization MAPS. Thanks to these documentaries, legalization is partly enforced because people want to do a session in a safe way. This helps policymakers in considering whether to remove MDMA from the illicit circuit.

Watch How To Change Your Mind on Netflix here

When will MDMA therapy become legal in the Netherlands?

The Netherlands once led the way in allowing various types of drugs. However, the Netherlands has started to lag behind the facts due to the rigid policy of recent years. Now we mainly look at what the US and our neighboring countries are doing and copy that. Since the US will probably categorize MDMA as a medicine, the expectation is that the Netherlands will follow suit. Due to our bureaucracy, there may be a delay of 1-2 years compared to the US. So we expect 2025 or 2026 to be the year MDMA is legalized. We believe it will be classified as a drug and then only available on prescription. In that case it may be that MDMA sessions can be reimbursed by health insurers and that would be a nice improvement.

Already doing an MDMA session?

Legislation in the Netherlands leaves room for MDMA sessions. Do you want to know how we can still do MDMA sessions? Send us a message via this link.

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