What I didn't expect was how ordinary the 31-year-old who answered the door would appear to be: blue plaid button-up shirt, neatly cropped hair, and a friendly smile.Īfter politely hanging up my coat, he explained that, back when he was a white nationalist leader, cultivating an air of ordinariness had been exactly the point. I was unsure of what kind of person I would be meeting, and had even half-jokingly texted a couple of friends to let them know where to come looking for me in case I disappeared. As I rode the elevator up to his apartment in a luxury high-rise overlooking Lake Michigan, I felt a flutter of nervousness. When De Wit told me the story about Brendan, I wanted to hear more about what happened directly from the horse's mouth, so in December 2021 I paid Brendan a visit (he asked that his last name not be revealed, as he's trying to distance himself from his past). In certain cases, the drug may even be able to help people see through the fog of discrimination and fear that divides so many of us.
#Past thoughts synonym drivers#
While MDMA cannot fix societal-level drivers of prejudice and disconnection, on an individual basis it can make a difference. But some researchers have begun to wonder if it could be an effective tool for pushing people who are already somehow primed to reconsider their ideology toward a new way of seeing things. If this comes to pass, MDMA – and other psychedelics-assisted therapy – could transform the field of mental health through widespread clinical use in the US and beyond, for addressing trauma and possibly other conditions as well, including substance use disorders, depression and eating disorders.īut could MDMA transform people's beliefs too? MDMA does not seem to be able to magically rid people of prejudice, bigotry, or hate on its own. I learnt how this once-vilified drug is now remerging as a therapeutic agent – a role it previously played in the 1970s and 1980s, prior to its criminalisation. Over the past few years, I've been investigating the scientific research and medical potential of MDMA for a book called " I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World". To think that a drug could change somebody's beliefs and thoughts without any expectations – it's mind-boggling." "It's what everyone says about this damn drug, that it makes people feel love. When de Wit recounted this story to me nearly two years after the fact, she still could hardly believe it. "Love is the most important thing," he told the baffled research assistant. As he clarified to Bremmer, love is what he had just realised he had to do. "If it's a matter of him picking up an automatic rifle or something, we have to intervene."Ī murderous spree turned out to be the opposite of what Brendan had in mind. "Go ask him what he means by 'I now know what I need to do,'" she instructed Bremmer. She'd just given a drug to a disgraced white supremacist, she realised, and had apparently inspired him to do who knows what out in the world. Two months earlier, activists at Chicago Antifascist Action had exposed Brendan's identity, and he had lost his job.ĭe Wit was now very worried. They googled Brendan's name, and up popped a disturbing revelation: until just a couple of months before, Brendan had been the leader of the US Midwest faction of Identity Evropa, a notorious white nationalist group rebranded in 2019 as the American Identity Movement. "We really have to look into this," de Wit said. Seeing this cryptic message, both Bremmer and de Wit were worried. Strangely, at the very bottom of the form, Brendan had written in bold letters: "This experience has helped me sort out a debilitating personal issue.
The latest participant in the double-blind trial, a man named Brendan, had filled out a standard questionnaire at the end. The day was proceeding like any other Tuesday when Mike Bremmer, de Wit's research assistant, appeared at her office door with a concerned look on his face. In February 2020, Harriet de Wit, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural science at the University of Chicago, was running an experiment on whether the drug MDMA increased the pleasantness of social touch in healthy volunteers.
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