Where does MDMA-assisted therapy go from here?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has delivered a "critical blow" against efforts to bring psychedelics into the mainstream, said Vox .

The agency rejected an application from drugmaker Lykos Therapeutics to use the drug MDMA as a treatment — combined with talk therapy — for post-traumatic stress. The rejection "does not fully quash" the psychedelic movement, but "it will delay it." The dismissal came after studies used to support the MDMA effort "missed serious side effects," The Wall Street Journal said, and had problems with bias.

The biggest problem? Some subjects told researchers "their thoughts of suicide worsened" amidst the testing, raising concerns the Journal said were not fully captured in the trial reports. "The data is reliable," said Lykos chief executive Amy Emerson. Veterans groups have pushed for approval of psychedelics to treat trauma issues, and their cause has bipartisan support in Congress.

For now, at least, that is not enough. "It's clear that the path to creating access to safe, psychedelic-assisted therapy is not going to run through Washington, D.C.

," Healing Action Fund's Taylor West said to The New York Times . What did the commentators say? The FDA's decision "will likely only delay psychedelic medicine's official debut" as an approved treatment, Jonathan Lambert said in The Atlantic . But it could prompt a change in one of the most "poorly understood and hotly contested" issues in psychedelic therapy: the therapy itself.

Advocates believ.