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Thanks so much. My guest today, Rick Doblin, has spent the last 37 years trying to get FDA approval

for a breakthrough treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD. Against all odds, it looks like

he's actually going to succeed. If we would have waited for pharmaceutical companies to develop

MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, we would still be waiting today.

Welcome to People I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

Few people dream as big as Rick Doblin, and among those who do,

almost no one has to brilliance in the perseverance and the luck to turn those dreams into reality.

I'm so looking forward, as I talk to Rick today, to try to figure out what it is about him,

that allowed him to defy the odds.

So I'd love to start with you educating me a little bit about post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD.

How does PTSD affect the brain? What are the current estimates of the prevalence of PTSD

and society? And what kind of success rates have we seen with traditional therapies that address PTSD?

Well, the Veterans Administration recently estimated that there's 13 million PTSD patients in

America. And those are just the people that qualify for a diagnosis of PTSD. There's a lot of people

that are suffering from trauma that impacts their behaviors that doesn't rise to the level of a

diagnosis of PTSD. What we know from some neuroscience studies is that if you have PTSD,

there's a hyperactive amygdala where fear is processed. And there's a reduction of activity in

...