On October 7, 2023, many attendees at the Nova Music Festival, held near the Gaza border, were enjoying the event, with some reportedly under the influence of illegal recreational drugs like MDMA or LSD, when Hamas gunmen launched a brutal and unexpected attack.
The assault marked the beginning of a deadly conflict between Israel and Hamas, adding another chapter to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Neuroscientists who worked with the survivors from the festival claim that that MDMA may have provided them some psychological protection against trauma of the attack, according to a BBC report.
The initial tests by scientists at Israel’s Haifa University suggest that the drug is associated with more positive mental states during the event and in the months afterwards. The study could also contribute to a growing scientific interest in how MDMA might be used to treat psychological trauma with some psychologists in Israel are studying whether MDMA can be used to treat PTSD within the Israeli military.
The deadly assault has provided a unique opportunity to scientists who have been able to study a mass trauma event where many of the participants were under the influence of mind-altering drugs.
‘MDMA as protective drug’
“We had people hiding under the bodies of their friends for hours while on LSD or MDMA. There’s talk that a lot of these substances create plasticity in the brain, so the brain is more open to change. But what happens if you endure this plasticity in such a terrible situation – is it going to be worse, or better?” said Professor Roy Salomon, one of those leading the research, told BBC.
According to reports, around 3,500 people were partying at the Nova festival when Hamas gunmen attacked and the research tracked the psychological responses of more than 650 survivors from the festival.
As per the study, two-thirds of these were under the influence of recreational drugs including MDMA, LSD, marijuana or psilocybin or hallucinogenic mushrooms before the attacks took place. Scientists have found that MDMA was the most protective drug against the attack’s trauma as those who took it appeared to cope much better mentally in the first five months after the attack.
“They were sleeping better, had less mental distress – they were doing better than people who didn’t take any substance,” Salomon said.
Many survivors also agreed that the drugs had a role to play in their survival. “I feel like it saved my life, because I was so high, like I’m not in the real world. Because regular humans can’t see all these things – it’s not normal,” said one of them, adding that without the drug she would have frozen and collapsed upon seeing the gunmen.
(Also read: Israeli negotiators head to Qatar for a fresh round of Gaza truce talks)
