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  <id>158504</id>
  <name><![CDATA[Rick Strassman]]></name>
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  <about><![CDATA[Rick Strassman was born in Los Angeles, California in 1952. He attended public schools in southern California's San Fernando Valley, and graduated from Ulysses S. Grant High School in Van Nuys in 1969. As an undergraduate, he majored in zoology at Pomona College in Claremont California for two years before transferring to Stanford University, where he graduated with departmental honors in biological sciences in 1973. During summers in college he worked for RedKen Laboratories, developing cosmetics and a line of hair dyes, and also performed laboratory research at Stanford, on the development of the chicken embryo's nervous system. He attended the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in the Bronx, New York, where he obtained his medical degree with honors in 1977.<br/><br/>Dr. Strassman took his internship and general psychiatry residency at the University of California, Davis, Medical Center in Sacramento, and received the Sandoz Award for outstanding graduating resident in 1981. After graduating, he worked for a year in Fairbanks, Alaska in community mental health and private psychiatric practice. From 1982-1983, he obtained fellowship training in clinical psychopharmacology research at the University of California, San Diego's Veteran's Administration Medical Center. He then served on the clinical faculty in the department of psychiatry at UC Davis Medical Center, before taking a full-time academic position in the department of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in Albuquerque in 1984.<br/><br/>At UNM, Dr. Strassman performed clinical research investigating the function of the pineal hormone melatonin in which his research group documented the first known role of melatonin in humans. He also began the first new US government approved and funded clinical research with psychedelic drugs in over twenty years. Before leaving the University in 1995, he attained the rank of tenured Associate Professor of Psychiatry, and received the UNM General Clinical Research Center's Research Scientist Award.<br/><br/>In 1984, he received lay ordination in a Western Buddhist order, and co-founded, and for several years administered, a lay Buddhist meditation group associated with the same order. Dr. Strassman underwent a four-year personal psychoanalysis in New Mexico between 1986 and 1990.<br/><br/>He has published nearly thirty peer-reviewed scientific papers, and has served as a reviewer for several psychiatric research journals. He has been a consultant to the US Food and Drug Administration, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Veteran's Administration Hospitals, Social Security Administration, and other state and local agencies.<br/><br/>From 1996 to 2000, while living in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, Dr. Strassman worked in community mental health centers for Washington State in Bellingham and Port Townsend. For the next four years, he had a solo private practice in Taos, New Mexico. After two years working on the edge of the Navajo Reservation in Gallup NM, he returned to northern New Mexico in 2006, and works at a mental health center in Espanola. <br/><br/>He currently is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.<br/>]]></about>
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  <hometown>Los Angeles</hometown>
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        <book>
  <id type="integer">51654</id>
  <isbn>0892819278</isbn>
  <isbn13>9780892819270</isbn13>
  <text_reviews_count type="integer">58</text_reviews_count>
  <title>
    <![CDATA[DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences]]>
  </title>
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  <link>http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51654.DMT_The_Spirit_Molecule_A_Doctor_s_Revolutionary_Research_into_the_Biology_of_Near_Death_and_Mystical_Experiences</link>
  <average_rating>4.11</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>259</ratings_count>
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    <![CDATA[A clinical psychiatrist explores the effects of DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. A behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge of psychedelic research. Provides a unique scientific explanation for the phenomenon of alien abduction experiences. From 1990 to 1995 Dr. Rick Strassman conducted U.S. Government-approved and funded clinical research at the University of New Mexico in which he injected sixty volunteers with DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. His detailed account of those sessions is an extraordinarily riveting inquiry into the nature of the human mind and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. DMT, a plant-derived chemical found in the psychedelic Amazon brew, ayahuasca, is also manufactured by the human brain. In Strassman's volunteers, it consistently produced near-death and mystical experiences. Many reported convincing encounters with intelligent nonhuman presences, aliens, angels, and spirits. Nearly all felt that the sessions were among the most profound experiences of their lives. Strassman's research connects DMT with the pineal gland, considered by Hindus to be the site of the seventh chakra and by Rene Descartes to be the seat of the soul. DMT: The Spirit Molecule makes the bold case that DMT, naturally released by the pineal gland, facilitates the soul's movement in and out of the body and is an integral part of the birth and death experiences, as well as the highest states of meditation and even sexual transcendence. Strassman also believes that &quot;alien abduction experiences&quot; are brought on by accidental releases of DMT. If used wisely, DMT could trigger a period of remarkable progress in the scientific exploration of the most mystical regions of the human mind and soul.]]>
  </description>
<authors>
    <author>
    <id>158504</id>
        <name><![CDATA[Rick Strassman]]></name>
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    <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/158504.Rick_Strassman]]></link>
    <average_rating>4.10</average_rating>
    <ratings_count>280</ratings_count>
    <text_reviews_count>60</text_reviews_count>
  </author>
  </authors>  <published>2001</published>
</book>

        <book>
  <id type="integer">2183203</id>
  <isbn>159477224X</isbn>
  <isbn13>9781594772245</isbn13>
  <text_reviews_count type="integer">2</text_reviews_count>
  <title>
    <![CDATA[Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies]]>
  </title>
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  <small_image_url>http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg</small_image_url>
  <link>http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2183203.Inner_Paths_to_Outer_Space_Journeys_to_Alien_Worlds_through_Psychedelics_and_Other_Spiritual_Technologies</link>
  <average_rating>3.90</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>21</ratings_count>
  <description>
    <![CDATA[An investigation into experiences of other realms of existence and contact with otherworldly beings <br/><br/>• Examines how contact with alien life-forms can be obtained through the “inner space” dimensions of our minds <br/><br/>• Presents evidence that other worlds experienced through consciousness-altering technologies are often as real as those perceived with our five senses<br/><br/> • Correlates science fiction’s imaginal realms with psychedelic research <br/><br/>For thousands of years, voyagers of inner space--spiritual seekers, shamans, and psychoactive drug users--have returned from their inner imaginal travels reporting encounters with alien intelligences. <em>Inner Paths to Outer Space</em> presents an innovative examination of how we can reach these other dimensions of existence and contact otherworldly beings. Based on their more than 60 combined years of research into the function of the brain, the authors reveal how psychoactive substances such as DMT allow the brain to bypass our five basic senses to unlock a multidimensional realm of existence where otherworldly communication occurs. They contend that our centuries-old search for alien life-forms has been misdirected and that the alien worlds reflected in visionary science fiction actually mirror the inner space world of our minds. The authors show that these “alien” worlds encountered through altered states of human awareness, either through the use of psychedelics or other methods, possess a sense of reality as great as, or greater than, those of the ordinary awareness perceived by our five senses.]]>
  </description>
<authors>
    <author>
    <id>158504</id>
        <name><![CDATA[Rick Strassman]]></name>
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    <average_rating>4.10</average_rating>
    <ratings_count>280</ratings_count>
    <text_reviews_count>60</text_reviews_count>
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    <author>
    <id>331059</id>
        <name><![CDATA[Slawek Wojtowicz]]></name>
    <image_url><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-200x266.jpg]]></image_url>
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    <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/331059.Slawek_Wojtowicz]]></link>
    <average_rating>3.95</average_rating>
    <ratings_count>37</ratings_count>
    <text_reviews_count>2</text_reviews_count>
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    <author>
    <id>349212</id>
        <name><![CDATA[Luis Eduardo Luna]]></name>
    <image_url><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-200x266.jpg]]></image_url>
    <small_image_url><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]]></small_image_url>
    <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/349212.Luis_Eduardo_Luna]]></link>
    <average_rating>4.04</average_rating>
    <ratings_count>25</ratings_count>
    <text_reviews_count>3</text_reviews_count>
  </author>
  </authors>  <published>2008</published>
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