DMT: The Spirit Molecule

by Rick Strassman

These fields cause multiple systems to vibrate and pulse at certain frequencies.

Yes sir: https://elifesciences.org/articles/59784

A resonance process may occur in the pineal similar to that of the shattering glass, although not quite as destructive. The pineal begins to “vibrate” at frequencies that weaken its multiple barriers to DMT formation: the pineal cellular shield, enzyme levels, and quantities of anti-DMT.

We know that DMT is present in newborn laboratory animals.

According to Stanislav Grof, M.D., an LSD psychotherapist with unparalleled experience, much of what takes place during psychedelic therapy sessions is a reenactment of the birth process. He has found that those born by Cesarean section are less able to “let go” in psychedelic therapy than those born vaginally. The presence of psychedelic levels of DMT at normal birth, and inadequate levels during Cesarean births due to too little stress-hormone-induced DMT output, may explain this finding.8

Perhaps in order to fully “let go” into any powerful emotional experience as adults we need a baseline of a safe and secure resolution to our first naturally occurring “high-dose DMT session,” which accompanies the birth process.

If the pineal gland were producing DMT, however, that would certainly warrant its strategic location. A DMT release directly onto the visual, auditory, and emotional centers the pineal nearly touches would profoundly affect our inner experience. We would see, hear, feel, and think things in a way unimaginable to consider for melatonin.

I’m not sure Rick. If IM dmt works just fine then the argument of melatonin’s could be anywhere also applies for dmt.. m.. ok unless MAOs destroy it...

If DMT first entered the blood, MAO enzymes would destroy it long before it returned to the brain to exert its profound mental effects.

So why IV and IM just works then?

centers. A pumping heart would not be necessary.

You think the dmt trip could be just our memories from the birthday? Those sounds... the fact you don’t know you are breathing or not... lack of body control... being alone but feeling the presence of someone very loving (mother?)

I already knew that the Tibetan Buddhist Book of the Dead teaches that it takes forty-nine days for the soul of the recently dead to “reincarnate.” That is, seven weeks from the time of death of one person elapses until the life-force’s “rebirth” into its next body. I remember very clearly, several years later, feeling the chill along my spine when, reading my textbook of human fetal development, I discovered this same forty-nine-day interval marking two landmark events in human embryo formation. It takes forty-nine days from conception for the first signs of the human pineal to appear. Forty-nine days is also when the fetus differentiates into male or female gender. Thus the soul’s rebirth, the pineal, and the sexual organs all require forty-nine days before they manifest.

In fact, for some years researchers jokingly referred to schizophrenia as a lung disease because of the high concentrations of DMT-forming enzymes within the lung!

As radical as these theories were, I believed they could be tested using the traditional scientific method: designing experiments, analyzing data, and redefining the theories based upon results of this step-by-step research.

In 1987 my University of New Mexico mentor, Glenn Peake, died suddenly on a snowy Christmas day while returning from his morning run. Saddened and grieving, I saw my research trajectory waver. There had been a split between the research I believed was “respectable” and what I personally felt most inclined to study. There was my melatonin research, and then there was my interest in psychedelics. Glenn’s premature death hastened the closing of that gap. During his memorial service, I remembered some of his most direct advice: “Do what you really want in research. Who cares what other people think?” I decided to stop my melatonin research and attempt a DMT project.

The Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of New Mexico reviews any project intending to study humans.

89-001. The first sentence, which I’d spent hours writing and rewriting the month before, trying to find the perfect opening line, read: “This project will begin a reexamination of the human psychobiology of the tryptamine hallucinogen of abuse, N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), which is also an endogenous hallucinogen.”

Based upon a 1976 study describing hormone effects of DMT in humans, we calculated that twelve volunteers were enough to show statistically significant differences between doses of DMT and an inactive saltwater placebo.

Clifford Qualls, Ph.D., the University of New Mexico General Clinical Research Center’s biostatistician, generated a random sequence of the required doses on his computer, sealed it in an envelope, and delivered it to the pharmacy for their use.

In addition, before entering into a complicated double-blind study, we thought it best to begin a volunteer’s involvement in the research by first giving them two “non-blind” doses of DMT. An introductory low dose of 0.05 mg/kg would let people settle in to the research setting without having an effect so strong that it might disorient them. A subsequent high dose, 0.4 mg/kg, would let volunteers experience the greatest level of intoxication they would ever reach on any subsequent double-blind day. We called this the “calibration dose.” If someone received their first high dose in the middle of the full study but didn’t know it was the most they’d ever get, they might drop out for fear of getting even more of an effect on another dose. With a non-blind high dose, volunteers had the option of dropping out of the study right away, before we had begun collecting a lot of data on them. So subjects actually would receive six doses of DMT—two non-blind and four double-blind.

Placebo comes from the Latin, meaning I shall please, or to paraphrase, I shall meet your expectations.

However, in this first dose-response DMT project, we wanted to use a placebo to see if volunteers and we could distinguish between the lowest dose of drug and none at all. In that capacity, the placebo day served a valuable function.3

The first line of response to a panic reaction would be talking people down using reassurance and support. If this didn’t work, we would use a minor tranquilizer, such as injectable Valium; we would use a injection of a major tranquilizer, like Thorazine, if anyone got completely out of control. For allergic reactions, such as wheezing or a severe rash, an intravenous antihistamine was available. If blood pressure went up too high, nitroglycerin tablets under the tongue, much like the way people with angina heart pain use them, would be effective.

The process began in December 1988. I kept a log during the next two years of every phone call, letter, meeting, fax, and discussion related to 89-001, the DMT protocol.

From my notes, I summarized and extracted the most relevant information obtained from these interactions and wrote them up in 1990, immediately after getting permission to begin the study. I referred to this article as the “what if I’m run over by a bus?” paper.

Dr. C.’s estimate of the cost was over $50,000.

We arranged for the women’s first two doses, and all subsequent ones, to occur during the first ten days after their menstrual bleeding stopped.

Before wrapping up this session, I said to him, “Don’t eat or drink too much tonight. Get a good night’s sleep. Remember to skip breakfast. If you must have coffee, make sure you drink it at least two hours before you come in.”

“If you think you’ve died, there’s two ways I tell people they can deal with it. One is ‘Man, I’m dying, and I’m going to kick and scream and try and stop it.’ The other is ‘Okay, I’m dying, now let’s see what this is like. Very interesting.’ Easier said than done, of course.”

DMT appeared unique in that tolerance was quite difficult to demonstrate, even in animals given full doses every two hours around the clock for twenty-one days in a row. The only published human study couldn’t elicit tolerance when researchers gave full intramuscular doses twice a day for five days.

The first of these was the pindolol project. Pindolol is a drug used in medical practice to lower high blood pressure. It does this by blocking certain adrenaline receptors. Another property of pindolol is that it obstructs one particular type of serotonin receptor in the brain, the serotonin “1A” site. Since DMT attaches firmly to 1A receptors in animal brains, this site might be involved in DMT’s effects. If, for example, blocking the 1A site with pindolol made for a “less emotional” experience relative to DMT alone, we would propose that the 1A site regulated the emotional responses brought on by DMT. As it turned out, pindolol markedly enhanced the psychological and blood pressure effects of DMT. Eleven volunteers participated in the pindolol study, several of whom were veterans of the dose-response and tolerance ones. This protocol yielded less dramatic examples of inner work than did the tolerance study, although there were remarkably powerful single experiences.

We divided the cycle into early, middle, and late in one woman, Willow, who usually had quite deep and insightful DMT experiences. In this sole volunteer, no obvious differences in psychological effects emerged. Since we didn’t have funding to pursue this fascinating line of DMT research, we brought in no more volunteers for it.

In fact, some volunteers dropped out because they didn’t like the intensity of 0.05 mg/kg. We also excused other subjects after this small dose because their blood pressure response made us worry about how their hearts would hold up after eight times that amount the next day.

On average, heart rate, or pulse, bolted from about 70 beats per minute up to 100. The range, however, was wide. Some subjects’ pulse climbed up to 150, while others’ got no higher than 95. Blood pressure also jumped from values of about 110/70 to an average of 145/100. Heart rate and blood pressure fell as rapidly as they rose, already beginning to taper off between the 2- and 5-minute recordings.

Every pituitary gland hormone we measured increased rapidly. For example, blood levels of the endogenous morphine-like chemical beta-endorphin begin a steep ascent at 2 minutes following DMT administration and reached their peak at 5 minutes. DMT also stimulated sharp spikes in the release of vasopressin, prolactin, growth hormone, and corticotropin.

Of all the biological factors we measured, the only one that did not increase was the pineal gland hormone melatonin. This was startling, and again brought home to me the incredibly mysterious nature of this potential spirit gland.

The lowest dose of DMT, 0.05 mg/kg, was pleasant, and almost all volunteers said they felt like smiling or laughing after receiving it. One volunteer who previously had used heroin thought this dose felt something like that drug: “There was a warm cotton batting sensation.”

During each DMT session, I took detailed notes of every aspect of that day’s events: what volunteers said and did; how they looked, sounded, and felt to me; the state of the research ward, weather, and world politics; the behavior and emotional tone of others in the room with us, including the research nurse, family or friends of the volunteer, and visitors; and my own thoughts and feelings. After I got back to my office, I dictated these notes, and my secretary transcribed the dictation into a word-processor file. When printed, these records occupy more than one thousand pages of single-spaced text.

What about training a learning algo?

Upon completing a particular DMT experiment, I sent the volunteer a copy of these notes to review. I asked him or her to edit for clarity, accuracy, and completeness, as well as to add anything that may have come to mind since finishing the study. Some volunteers supplemented my records with journal entries, letters, art, and poetry related to their encounters with the spirit molecule.

The shock waves elicited by a big DMT experience extended far beyond a single session, continuing to reverberate in all aspects of someone’s life for days, months, or years.

Most of our volunteers more or less consciously hoped for a spiritual breakthrough with the aid of DMT—a final resolution to questions regarding why they were born, or a union with the Divine in which all conflict ended and an unshakeable certainty prevailed. However, DMT, as a true spirit molecule, gave our volunteers the trip they needed, rather than the one they wanted.

Some research subjects resolved difficult personal problems during their sessions. Afterward, they realized they had worked something through in a positive way and felt better. The basic processes of psychotherapy seemed to be at work: thinking, recollecting, feeling, connecting emotions with ideas. For most of us, facing painful feelings is difficult, and DMT can make those feelings easier to confront. Stan’s DMT sessions, for example, helped him contact feelings too raw to touch in everyday consciousness.

In addition, many years of undergoing, practicing, and teaching psychoanalytic psychotherapy prepared me for dealing with the painful emotions I thought would emerge during some DMT sessions.

Stan was forty-two years old when we met and he began participating in the DMT studies. His wife of fourteen years was a respiratory therapist who worked with many medical patients at the Research Center. She thought he’d be interested in the project, and he gave me a call. He was one of the most experienced psychedelic drug users of anyone in our studies, having taken LSD “over four hundred times.” “They don’t call it ‘acid’ for nothing,” he laughed during our first meeting. He took LSD or mushrooms every few months, using them with several close friends with whom he shared a strong belief in their beneficial effects.

It’s not as useful as LSD or psilocybin. It’s too much too fast. You can’t really work with it. You’re totally out of control. It wasn’t a spiritual experience. There was very little emotional flavor to it at all.

I thought I had died, and that I might not ever come back. I don’t know what happened. All of a sudden, BAM!, there I was. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

I never would have imagined it would be like this. There was no transition. There was no universe with stars and a pinpoint of light like last time. You know what happened? I was on a merry-go-round! There were all these dolls in 1890s outfits, life-sized, men and women. The women were in corsets. They had big breasts and big butts and teeny skinny waists. They were all whirling around me on tiptoes. The men had top hats, riding on two-seater bicycles. One merry-go-round after another after another. The women had red circles painted on their cheeks, and there was calliope music in the background. And there were some clowns, flitting in and out, not really the main characters, but busier, somehow more aware of me than the mannequins.

Something took my hand and yanked me. It seemed to say, “Let’s go!” Then I started flying through an intense circus-like environment. I’ve never been that out-of-body before. First there was an itchy feeling where the drug went in. We went through a maze at an incredibly fast pace. I say “we” because it seemed like I was accompanied. It was cool. There was a crazy circus sideshow—just extravagant. It’s hard to describe. They looked like Jokers. They were almost performing for me. They were funny looking, bells on their hats, big noses. However, I had the feeling they could turn on me, a little less than completely friendly. I want to do it again. I want to see if I can slow it down.

“Coming down last month from the big dose, I really felt in my body for the first time in my life. I usually live in my head. I remember that feeling. It was therapeutic. I liked the feeling of being in my body.”

“It would be great to do DMT maybe once a year to put a perspective on things and see where I’m at and heal me. The freedom in my abdomen is still there. The clenching is back again a little bit, but on a more consistent basis I can remember that I was able to really clear it out.”

This question about “being high”—I don’t know. I had my capacities. I was able to observe quite clearly. I didn’t feel stoned or intoxicated; it was just happening.

More than once, the DMT sessions gave me the gift of truly subjectively knowing the phenomenon described in “Introductions to the Dead” in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Even greater is the gift of knowing that I have had practice dying and returning.

While it’s never a good idea to call anyone’s experiences on DMT “classic,” I think it’s not too far afield to use that term in describing Willow’s near-death experiences.