DMT: The Spirit Molecule

by Rick Strassman

“These subjects reported 1 to 2 days later that they were convinced that someone wanted to kill or poison them during the experiment. DMT was the poison, and the person conducting the experiment was the murderer. One subject became very violent during the experiment and had to be restrained forcibly.”

I wasn’t sure how he’d hold up the next day, either. In my mind, MDMA is a mild drug. People who prefer it to the typical psychedelics tend not to do well when stressed, either by life or by taking more potent mind-bending drugs. MDMA is what I like to call a “love and light” drug, one that accentuates the positive and minimizes the negative. If only life were so simple.

There were two crocodiles. On my chest. Crushing me, raping me anally. I didn’t know if I would survive. At first I thought I was dreaming, having a nightmare. Then I realized it was really happening. I was glad he didn’t have the rectal probe in place, this being a screening day.

the “emergency kit”—Valium for panic and nitroglycerin pills for severe high blood pressure—

“The long-term effects are very interesting. It leaves me in a different state. It’s not altered, per se, but more open to synchronicity, magic, and unexpected opportunities.” In the longer-term follow-up Aaron said, “DMT shook some things loose, as it was so shattering. I now find I have more control over my reality by letting go; it’s a paradox. I’ve found that the DMT experience intensified verbal, visual, and musical abilities. Overall, DMT showed me another level or process I needed to see. Nothing I thought or felt made any difference in terms of controlling the sessions. I learned the beneficial aspects of losing control.”

The need to shift the focus of the psychedelic research in Albuquerque was clear. Risks were real, and long-term benefits vague. I began looking for a way to improve the benefit-to-risk ratio. This required a more concerted effort to develop a therapy study, one that would involve working with patients instead of normal volunteers. It also called for using a longer-acting drug that would allow time to perform psychological work during the acute intoxication. In the next two chapters, I will describe how the cessation of my work began with research involving the longer-acting drug psilocybin and with plans to treat patients.

Jim Fadiman at Stanford

a midwestern United States Zen monastery run by a rather reclusive, but startlingly solid, Asian teacher. I attended two weekend meditation retreats there in 1974 and felt as if I had arrived home. The monks were serene but down to earth, and we enjoyed being with each other. Most interesting was that most of them had gained their first view of the spiritual path while on psychedelic drugs.

A five-week retreat at the monastery during a break from medical school helped me develop a portable and efficient Buddhist practice. The meditation was straightforward: sit comfortably, back straight, and just sit. “Just sit” as in “just walk,” “just wash the dishes,” “just breathe.” In other words, focus all your attention on the task at hand. When sitting, therefore, you just sat. No thinking, daydreaming, fidgeting, emotional reactions, talking, or whatever else complicated the sitting process. The regular in-and-out movement of the breath functioned as an excellent anchor, a point upon which the wandering mind could ground and focus its attention whenever distracting thoughts or feelings interrupted uncluttered awareness.

Abhidharma, the Buddhist system of psychology. Abhidharma roughly translates into “catalog of mental states.” There are hundreds of Abhidharma texts, but the Nyingma lama was interested in sharing with us only the most basic principles.

Supervising psychedelic sessions usually is called “sitting.” Many believe this comes from the idea of “babysitting” people who are in a highly dependent, at times confused and vulnerable state. Even more importantly, though, is “sitting” in the meditational sense. The research nurse, either Cindy or Laura, and I did our best to practice “just sitting” while being with our volunteers: watching the breath, being alert, eyes gazing straight ahead, ready to respond, keeping a positive and aware attitude, letting the research subject’s experience unfold without unnecessary interference.2

the “mental-status” approach to interviewing psychiatric patients: You talk with someone and gently investigate the quality of their basic mental functions, such as mood, thinking, and perceptions.

The familiar Abhidharma terms “form,” “feeling,” “perception,” “consciousness,” and “habitual tendencies” became the framework or structure within which the rating scale’s questions emerged, and how we classified replies to those questions. However, instead of calling them skandhas, “clinical clusters” seemed more appropriate and palatable for a Western scientific audience.

We gave and analyzed this new questionnaire, the Hallucinogen Rating Scale, or HRS, at the end of every DMT session for the entire ...

Clifford Qualls, Ph.D., the Research Center biostatistician, and I grouped together HRS questions using the “clinical cluster” or skandha method and compared this method of analysis to a large number of alternative purely statistical models. The Abhidharma’s technique was as good as, if not superior to, ones developed solely upon mathematical considerations. Since the computer-derived classification of results was no better than the clinical cluster one, and since using the skandhas made more sense intuitively, the Buddhist classification system won out. Other groups have since used the HRS and confirmed its usefulness in measuring other altered states of consciousness, drug-induced and otherwise.

Returning to the TV analogy, these cases suggest that, rather than merely adjusting the brightness, contrast, and color of the previous program, we have changed the channel. No longer is the show we are watching everyday reality, Channel Normal. DMT provides regular, repeated, and reliable access to “other” channels. The other planes of existence are always there. In fact, they are right here, transmitting all the time! But we cannot perceive them because we are not designed to do so; our hard-wiring keeps us tuned in to Channel Normal. It takes only a second or two—the few heartbeats the spirit molecule requires to make its way to the brain—to change the channel, to open our mind to these other planes of existence.2

The leading candidates for being the building blocks of dark matter are WIMPS, or “weakly interacting massive particles.” They are called massive only in a relative sense, meaning they are larger than a proton or a hydrogen atom. Recent thinking about WIMPS suggests their strange nature, one that immediately causes us to hearken back to many of our volunteers’ reports: “If WIMPS were indeed created in the Big Bang, we will be surrounded by them because of their gravitational interaction with the visible matter in the universe. Indeed, as you read this article there could be a billion WIMPS streaming through your body every second, travelling at a million kilometers per hour. However, as WIMPS only interact weakly with matter, most will pass straight through you with no hindrance.”6

Over a cup of tea one summer day at his house in Switzerland, Albert Hofmann, who discovered LSD, shared with me his fondness for low doses of this drug. He and others have described a quickening of thought, brightening of perception, and elevation in mood that contribute to subtle but profound effects on mental function. Side effects are nearly nonexistent.

I’ve mentioned previously Harman’s and Fadiman’s 1960s studies of psychedelics’ positive effects on problem solving. Research subjects, all professionals in their fields, found that many of these psychedelically enhanced solutions were quite effective. There currently are many well-characterized ways of measuring creativity, including artistic, scientific, psychological, spiritual, and emotional. It would be relatively straightforward to renew research into psychedelics’ effects on this crucial human quality.