Drugs were shield against trauma? MDMA may have protected Nova music festival survivors from psychological scars

Of the 650 survivors who participated in the study, two-thirds were under the influence of recreational drugs such as MDMA, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, or marjiana, when the Hamas attack took place, and fascinatingly, scientists found that those under influence coped better than others.

When Hamas gunmen attacked the Nova music festival site along the Gaza border shortly after sunrise on October 7, 2023, hundreds of concertgoers at the site had taken illegal recreational drugs such as MDMA and LSD, and were high.

And as it turns out, these drugs may have provided some psychological protection from trauma: neuroscientists working with survivors of the Nova music festival have found evidence of drugs such as MDMA being associated with positive mental states, something that could pave the way for more insights into how MDMA can be used to treat psychological trauma.

The study, which was carried out by neuroscientists at Israel's Haifa University and is currently under peer-review, is reportedly the first time scientists have been able to study a mass trauma event in which a large chunk of people were under the influence of mind-altering drugs.

Of the 650 survivors who participated in the study, two-thirds were under the influence of recreational drugs such as MDMA, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, or marjiana, when the attack took place, and fascinatingly, scientists found that those under influence coped better than others.

"MDMA, and especially MDMA that was not mixed with anything else, was the most protective," said Prof Roy Salomon, one of the scientists leading the study.

Commenting on how MDMA users from the festival coped during the first five months when a lot of psychological processing takes place, Prof Salomon said, "They were sleeping better, had less mental distress - they were doing better than people who didn't take any substance."

But why was this so? While the team doesn't have definitive answer yet, they believe that pro-social hormones such as oxytocin triggered by MDMA helped reduce fear among drug-using concertgoers and boosted feelings of camaraderie with other attendees who were fleeing or hiding from the attackers.

Further, the study found that those who had taken MDMA were also more open to accepting love and support from family and friends once they returned home.

In fact, even some of the survivors claimed that the drugs may have helped them recover from the trauma of the events of October 7, 2023.

Poison is the cure?

MDMA is currently illegal in Israel, and is only used in experimental treatments.

One such experiment currently underway in Israel is probing the potential of MDMA as treatment for those who suffered PTSD following the October 7 attacks, and the preliminary findings of the Nova study have only boosted hopes for MDMA-based treatments for military veterans.

Describing the Nova study's findings as "really important", Dr Anna Hardwood-Gross, director of research at Israel's Metiv Psychotrauma Centre, told BBC, "At the beginning of the war, we questioned whether we were able to do this. Can we give people MDMA when there's a risk of an air raid siren? That's going to re-traumatise them potentially. This study has shown us that even if there's a traumatic event during therapy, the MDMA might also help process that trauma."

While the Nova study is indeed novel and provides insights into how drugs affect people's ability to cope with traumatic events, it isn't the first one to suggest that MDMA may have therapeutic properties.

Studies conducted in various countries have experimented with MDMA-assisted therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in trial settings. However, with MDMA being illegal in most places, only Australia thus far has approved it as a treatment.