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N, N-dimehtyltryptamine, or DMT, is the so-called “spirit” molecule as identified by the leading researcher on the subject Dr Rick Strassman. This molecule seems to provide our consciousness access to an altered state filled with bizarre visions, thoughts and feelings. It seems, in short, to open up access to realms way beyond our imagination.
As powerful as DMT is (with the result that it is illegal and very heavily controlled even for research purposes) what is as surprising as the visions it provokes is that it is found naturally occurring throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. It is a part of the normal makeup of a regular human, as well as being found in flowers, barks, roots, mushrooms and so on. It is, literally, almost everywhere you look.
That said, DMT is most abundant in Latin America, among the plants that are used – and have been used for thousands of years - by the shamans in the area. Arguably the most famous method of ingestion of DMT is through ayahuasca, a traditional (and vile) beverage believed to help predict the future and allow contact with dead ancestors.
R. Manske, a Canadian scientist, discovered how to make DMT in the first half of the twentieth century. At the time he was unaware of its existence as a naturally occurring substance found in the human body. However, there was very little interest in it or any other psychedelic drugs. This changed in the early 1950s when LSD and serotonin were discovered. A new breed of scientist was very interested in psychedelics and using them to investigate human consciousness. Chemists began searching for the active ingredients of barks, leaves and seeds. Science developed and it was discovered that DMT was a constituent of plants that produced psychedelic effects, though it was then unknown if DMT itself was psychoactive.
The next development was an unexpected, but crucial step. Hungarian researcher Stephen Szara wanted to experiment with LSD. Living as he did behind the iron curtain he was blocked from receiving any of the drug from the West. Unperturbed he synthesized some DMT in his lab in 1955. Immediately he began to experiment only to find that his chemical was ineffective. He surmised that there must be a mechanism in the gut that breaks down DMT as quickly as it is swallowed…and he was correct. Part of the story that is so amazing is how shamans in South America were able to understand this and formulate a response thousands of years ago to allow DMT to be taken orally in one form or another (the ayahuasca brew being the most popular). Szara began experimenting on himself with an injected psychedelic and after on members of a study group.
Szara had this to say about his experience “….The hallucinations consisted of moving, brilliantly colored oriental motifs, and later I saw wonderful scenes altering very rapidly….My emotional state was elevated sometimes up to euphoria. My consciousness was completely filled by hallucinations, and my attention was firmly bound to them…”
One of his test subjects, a male physician, reported that “The whole world is brilliant….The whole room is filled with spirits….I feel exactly as if I were flying….I have the feeling that this is above everything, above the earth.”
A female physician noted “How simple everything is….In front of me are two quiet, sunlit Gods….I think they are welcoming me into this new world….I am finally at home….Dangerous game; it would be so easy not to return. I am faintly aware that I am a doctor, but this is not important; family ties, studies, plans, and memories are very remote from me. Only this world is important; I am free and utterly alone.”
Szara eventually made his way from Hungary to the United States, via Berlin, where he began working at the National Institute of Health before moving onto the National Institute on Drug Abuse before his retirement.
The subculture that had developed to experiment with psychedelic drugs starting using DMT. But not all the trips were pleasant. William Burroughs, author of The Naked Lunch was an early user and one of his friends was reduced to becoming like a “writhing, wriggling reptile.” LSD remained the hallucinogenic of choice; the trip from DMT was commonly regarded as being intense (one way or the other) and short lived.
The primacy of LSD was challenged when researchers discovered DMT in the brains of mice and rats. The scientists then established how the bodies of these animals made the psychedelic. The next question was obvious: Did DMT exist in the human body? In 1965 a German research team published in Nature magazine that it had isolated DMT from human blood. In 1972 Julius Axelrod reported finding it in human brain tissue. Other researchers found it in other fluids, such as urine. Next the pathways by which the human body made the psychedelic were identified.
Thus, and of huge significance, DMT was recognized as the first endogenous human psychedelic. That is, it was the first psychedelic compound found to be produced in the human body.
A startling question now follows, and one to which I will return in the future, but I offer it here for your own meditations.
Why had Nature / the Universe / God / evolution seen fit to create a body capable of producing a powerful psychedelic compound?
There is no clear answer to this but I am inclined to agree with Dr Rick Strassman, the foremost authority on DMT research, that the psychedelic is a “spirit molecule” intended to allow us to establish visionary contact with a realm beyond the normal and beyond the confines of time and space.
Psychiatry on the other hand explains the existence of this hallucinogen as being, perhaps, the cause of mental illness. Scientists hoped to find a way to block the effects thereby preventing mental illness.
All this research started to come to an end though in 1970 when DMT, along with other psychedelics, were placed in a highly restricted legal category. By the end of the 1970s all research was stopped until Dr Rick Strassman began a new investigation.
In effect DMT affects receptor sites for serotonin throughout the body, but of most interest are those receptors in the brain which are involved in mood, perception and thought. Of even more interest is that the brain seems to desire the psychedelic. Usually the brain works hard to keep out other drugs and chemicals by erecting a blood-brain barrier. In this way the brain can be highly selective as to what it uses for energy: glucose only. So here is the curious thing: the brain is very, very careful in selecting what it absorbs, only taking in what is vital to allow it to function in an optimal manner. So why, as Japanese scientists discovered in the second half of the twentieth century, does the brain allow a psychedelic into its realm? As far as we know, no other psychedelic is permitted to cross the blood-brain barrier. Furthermore, DMT is used almost immediately by the brain. It is as if the psychedelic is necessary for normal brain functioning.
And when the brain receives more than enough the subject begins to experience various hallucinations.
One of the ways to overload the brain with DMT is to take it in via IV. But the drug is endogenous; it is created within the body naturally. And from time to time the body is capable, all by itself, of creating an excess amount of the psychedelic leading to various visions and emotions. Indeed, it seems that the body can in fact be trained (through meditation and asceticism) to produce an above average amount, thereby allowing a subject to induce the hallucinatory trip.
Users of DMT maintain that its use allows them to accept the coexistence of opposites (such as life and death), grants them the knowledge that consciousness continues after physical death, and leaves them with the certitude that all things are connected (with the glue being love). The psychedelic also allows users to “visit” other realms that appear more real than our current reality and which may be populated by elves or aliens. These other realms however may not always be peaceful and could be, to use Christian concepts, described as hell. A trip then is not without its dangers.
The medium between DMT and consciousness seems to be the pineal gland, which I will discuss in more detail in a future article.
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