A down-on-his-luck white supremacist claimed a single dose of a party drug showed him the error of his ways as researchers wonder at the “mind-boggling” result.
In 2017, a man identified as Brendan had been a leader in Identity Evropa, later the American Identity Movement, one of the groups that participated in clashing protests that led to the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia. A few years later, after an undercover activist exposed his identity, costing him his job, Brendan said a clinical trial with MDMA changed his life.
Speaking with the BBC, University of Chicago professor of psychiatry and behavior science, Dr. Harriet de Wit, recounted seeing Brendan’s exit questionnaire after he had received one 110 milligram dose of methylenedioxy methamphetamine, also known as ecstasy and molly, in Feb. 2020.
“This experience has helped me sort out a debilitating personal issue. Google my name. I now know what I need to do,” he had written in the form that was shown to de Wit by her research assistant Mike Bremmer.
Learning that Brendan had been at the Charlottesville protest, the doctor instructed her assistant to “ask him what he means by ‘I now know what I need to do,'” added, “If it’s a matter of him picking up an automatic rifle or something, we have to intervene.”
However, the participant told Bremmer, “Love is the most important thing. Nothing matters without love.”
“Isn’t that amazing?” de Witt said to the BBC. “It’s what everyone says about this damn drug, that it makes people feel love. To think that a drug could change somebody’s beliefs and thoughts without any expectations — it’s mind-boggling.”
Later meeting with the BBC’s Rachel Nuwer, the reformed white supremacist explained he had “hired a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant to advise him, enrolled in therapy, began meditating, and started working his way through a list of educational books.”
The undercover activist who had exposed Brendan, identified as “S,” said, “It’s been a couple years we’ve been working together, trying to disconnect him from things that were harmful and reconnect him with positive reinforcement and get him ideologically educated.”
“I think he is trying to better himself and work on himself, and I do think that experience with MDMA had an impact on him. It’s been a touchstone for growth, and over time, I think, the reflection on that experience has had a greater impact on him than necessarily the experience itself.”
The drug is said to trigger neurons to release oxytocin which is believed to encourage a “tend and defend” response that both fuels nurturing behavior and rage when something loved is threatened in addition to suppressing fear.
The case study on Brendan went on to wonder, if “extremist views [are] fueled by fear, anger and cognitive biases, might these be targets of pharmacological intervention?”
Before Big Pharma and the government get any ideas on mandating similar doses for those they deign outside the preferred mindset, Brendan did report, “There are moments when I have racist or antisemitic thoughts, definitely. But now I can recognize that those kinds of thought patterns are harming me more than anyone else.”
“It helped me see things in a different way that no amount of therapy or antiracist literature ever would have done,” he concluded. “I really think it was a breakthrough experience.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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