Ahead of her long awaited fourth studio album, Virgins, indie-pop sensation Lorde has made an unusual claim about her success on stage. Lorde claims that the club drug MDMA was the key to erasing her stage fright. Specifically, Lorde said that targeted MDMA therapy helped ease a lifelong fear of performing in front of crowds.
According to Stereogum the 28 year old superstar recently appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to talk about the recording of the album, her upcoming touring schedule and notably, her experience with MDMA therapy. Specifically she said “What I’ve heard, some of these [fears] live very deep in the body, and you hold on to it.You hold on to a response like stage fright for reasons that no amount of talk therapy or brain use could get at. But when you bypass that and get to the body, something shifts. And that totally happened for me. I tried everything for my stage fright. I did this therapy, and then literally, I woke up the next day and I was like, ‘Oh, it’s over. I know it’s over.”
As unconventional as this may sound, MDMA therapy has actually been used for over a decade to treat conditions such as depression, PTSD and anxiety (like the type commonly associated with stage fright.) The therapy remains controversial because of the stigma around the drug’s reputation as a party enhancer which has resulted in overdose deaths but the literature would seem to point to a clear therapeutic effect within certain use cases. In spite of this, the FDA chose earlier this year not to reschedule the drug to make it more accessible for use as a medicine. While drugs have always been a thorny issue, especially in America, it seems counterintuitive to ban a drug which is increasing survival rates among veterans and helping pop stars sell out stadiums. If MDMA could be a help to someone as monumental as Lorde what could it do for the millions of Americans struggling with anxiety?
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