Taking party drug ecstasy may help boozers break their addiction to alcohol.

Scientists are set to carry out the first ever trial to see whether the controlled substance can help treat heavy drinkers.

A group of patients from England will be given two doses of MDMA – another name for ecstasy – over the course of two months.

The trial has just received approval from regulators in the United Kingdom.

It is the first in the world to use ecstasy to treat alcohol addiction.

Scientists believe the drug can help patients deal with underlying stress and trauma that often lies behind addiction.

It is part of a growing push to use psychoactive drugs like LSD and psilocybin – the active ingredient in magic mushrooms – as potential medical treatments.

But the study is likely to face a backlash from anti-drugs campaigners.

Lead researcher Ben Sessa, a clinical psychiatrist and senior research fellow at Imperial College London, said: “Current alcohol treatment is so poor at the moment, but it is all we have got, so we are looking for new tools to help patients. We know that MDMA works really well in helping people who have suffered trauma and it helps to build empathy.”

“Many of my patients who are alcoholics have suffered some sort of trauma in their past and this plays a role in their addiction.”

Speaking at the Breaking Convention conference on psychedelic drugs Sessa said the trial will involve 20 alcoholics.

They will be given eight weekly sessions of psychotherapy. In two of these, the patients will also be given a dose of MDMA.

Sessa is leading the trial along with Professor David Nutt, a former government chief drugs adviser.

The pair are also waiting for approval on a second trial that will see sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder given MDMA.

Tests in the US have suggested the drug can be effective when used in combination with psychotherapy.

Sessa said patients will be closely monitored after taking the drug.

He said: “There will probably not be much progress made in the session where the patients take MDMA, but it is in the subsequent sessions that will make a difference.”

Despite the tight regulatory controls on ecstasy – which is involved in 50 deaths each year – the biggest problem they had was manufacturing the drug.

Ecstasy pills may be available for just a few dollars on the street, but it’s costing over $80,000 to get 12 grams of pharmaceutical grade MDMA.

A spokesman for the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said: “This clinical trial has received both a positive benefit/risk assessment by the MHRA and also received a positive opinion from an ethics committee allowing it to go ahead in the UK.”