When You Need Money for Prescription Psychedelics, Burning Man Is Your Destination
Rick Doblin, founder of MAPS, has raised tens of millions of dollars to legalize medical MDMA—aka ecstasy. His most important workweek of the year is on the playa.
One evening last August, Rick Doblin pedaled a borrowed bicycle across the baked earth playa of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, site of the annual Burning Man festival. Doblin, who’s 65 and has graying, slightly wild, curly hair, was dressed sensibly for the occasion in khaki cargo shorts and green eyeshadow. Ignoring swerving cyclists, stoned pedestrians, and tinny electronic dance music, he rode past a giant wheeled schooner with revelers splayed across its decks. Doblin was on a mission: to track down Sergey Brin and talk about drugs.
This wasn’t quite as quixotic as it might sound. Doblin, the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), is the world’s leading advocate for the medical use of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). He first got attention for his activism in the 1980s when he unsuccessfully petitioned the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to stop it from criminalizing MDMA, and since then he’s helped move the cause closer to the mainstream. Last year a widely cited study that MAPS funded showed doses of MDMA alleviated post-traumatic stress symptoms in a small group of first responders and veterans. Doblin’s pioneering work was also recognized in Michael Pollan’s recent best-seller, How to Change Your Mind.