In this articleCMPSFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTMarie Phelan said she had never heard of MDMA before spotting a flyer seeking veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.Now, she says the psychoactive drug more commonly known as ecstasy or molly has changed the trajectory of her life. “My experience of MDMA was that it just cracked my heart wide open,” said Phelan who enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve in 1999 and was deployed to Iraq in 2003.”I was carrying this big heavy rucksack and I just put it down on the beach and I started unpacking it one little teeny tiny thing at a time and setting each little thing out on the waves,” Phelan said of the release from the treatment.Phelan isn’t alone turning to alternative treatments for trauma. She is among a small group of Americans who have undergone psychedelic-assisted therapy through clinical trials studying new approaches to mental health treatment. Now, access to those therapies is closer than ever to being expanded more broadly, bringing new options for patients and opportunities for companies — but also new scrutiny about safety and effectiveness.In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at accelerating research into psychedelic drugs for mental illness. The move came as his administration issued priority review vouchers to three companies developing psychedelic or MDMA-like therapies — Compass Pathways, Usona Institute and Transcend Therapeutics — aimed at speeding up parts of the FDA review process.The order marks a notable shift in tone from Trump’s first term, when his administration took a harder stance on cannabis and other controlled substances. This time, the White House said psychedelic compounds “show potential in clinical studies to address serious mental illnesses for patients whose conditions persist after after completing standard therapy.”U.S. President Donald Trump signs an executive order on researching the effects of psychedelic drugs in medical treatment for veterans, on Saturday, April 18, 2026 in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C. The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty ImagesInvestors quickly piled into the sector. Shares of psychedelic drug developers such as Compass Pathways and other rivals tied to the space rallied following the announcement, with Wall Street analysts arguing the order could legitimize an industry long viewed as fringe. The science, however, remains deeply debated, raising questions about how much room the segment has to grow.Inside the labHistorically, research into psychedelics has focused more narrowly on certain conditions. Psilocybin — the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms — was tied to treating depression, MDMA-assisted therapy to PTSD and LSD to anxiety.While drugs like psilocybin and ibogaine — a psychoactive compound derived from a West African shrub that some advocates believe may help treat addiction and traumatic brain injuries — are considered classic psychedelics, MDMA is technically classified as an empathogen. Still, researchers and regulators often group MDMA-assisted therapy within the broader psychedelic medicine field because the treatments involve supervised therapeutic sessions designed to address conditions like PTSD, depression and addiction. “One of the things that’s important to recognize is these are all very different drugs,” said Brandon Weiss, a researcher at the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “Ibogaine and other psychedelic compounds have different safety profiles and …
