The Spirit Molecule

\,,/ Psychonauts!

As you know, DMT has become the drug of choice for psycho-navigation. The ingredients for extraction or for ayahuasca are cheap and easily obtainable. There is no acid hangover and no worries about drug testing. Voyages are vivid and often beneficial.

A great article and video about the ayahuasca ritual by Nat Geo Explorer can be found here. It is a MUST SEE.

As has been suggested elsewhere, Graham Hancock’s Supernatural is an excellent source of information about DMT, and describes the author’s experience with different forms of it. Hancock has lots of info on his website and many YouTube videos on consciousness and alterations thereof. Here is a good start.

If you want to know even more about DMT, read Dr. Rick Strassman’s DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences.

Strassman, too, has many YouTube lectures and interviews. An hour-long introduction to DMT and the pineal gland can be found here, as well as links to other material. Dr Strassman’s website is here.

Strassman writes, “DMT is closely related to serotonin, the neurotransmitter that psychedelics affect so widely. The pharmacology of DMT is similar to that of other well-known psychedelics. It affects receptor sites for serotonin in much the same way that LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline do.”

Here’s the remarkable part, “In a way, DMT is “brain food,” treated in a manner similar to how the brain handles glucose, its precious fuel source. It is part of a “high turnover” system: quick in, quick used. The brain actively transports DMT across its defense system and just as rapidly breaks it down. It is as if DMT is necessary for maintaining normal brain function. It is only when levels get too high for “normal” function that we start undergoing unusual experiences.”

Cool stuff! You’ll learn a lot about how DMT functions in the brain if you check out Strassman’s work. I can’t over-stress the importance of this information.

All living things produce DMT. Strassman quotes from Alexander Shulgin’s book, Tihkal: A Chemical Love Story, “DMT is . . . in this flower here, in that tree over there, and in yonder animal. [It] is, most simply, almost everywhere you choose to look.”

Indeed, it is getting to the point where one should report where DMT is not found, rather than where it is.”

As for the history of DMT in western thought and awareness, Strassman states, “Beginning in the mid-1800s, explorers of the Amazon ... described the effects of exotic mind-altering snuffs and brews prepared from plants by indigenous tribes. ... Especially striking were the effects of, and the manner of administering, the psychoactive snuffs. ... One dramatic technique is for one’s snuffing partner to blow the powdery mixtures ... through a tube or pipe into the other’s nose. The energy of the blast may be sufficient to drop the recipient to the ground.”

Strassman goes on to say that interest in psychedelics expanded after WWII. “No one yet knew about DMT’s existence in mind altering plants, its psychedelic properties, or its presence in the human body. ... Chemists began probing the barks, leaves, and seeds of plants first described as psychedelic a hundred years earlier, seeking their active ingredients. ... In the early 1950s, the discoveries of LSD and serotonin rocked ... Freudian psychiatry and laid the groundwork for the new world of neuroscience.”

The new breed of psychedelic researchers called themselves “psychopharmacologists”. I’ve known a few over the years, but most of them were more psychonaut than scientist.

A Hungarian chemist and psychiatrist, Stephen Szára, developed an interest in LSD, and other psychoactive substances after WWII, but, unfortunately, he lived on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. Sandoz wouldn’t sell acid to him.

He learned of reports about psychedelic Amazonian concoctions containing DMT and synthesized it for the first time in 1955. Unlike modern psychiatrists, Szára experimented first on himself, then on his colleagues. Ingesting large amounts of DMT produced no effects (No harmine additive, no effect from ingested DMT).

Eventually, Strassman reports, “Szára gave himself an intramuscular, or IM, injection of DMT in 1956.”

This was the result as reported by Szára: “In three or four minutes I started to experience visual sensations that were very similar to what I had read in descriptions by Hofmann [about LSD] and Huxley [about mescaline]. . . . ”

Szára doubled the dose and tripped again, reporting, “[Physical] symptoms appeared, such as a tingling sensation, trembling, slight nausea, [widening of the pupils], elevation of the blood pressure and increase of the pulse rate. At the same time, eidetic phenomena [after-images or “trails” of visually perceived objects], optical illusions, pseudo-hallucinations, and later real hallucinations appeared. The hallucinations consisted of moving, brilliantly colored oriental motifs...

The other physicians had their turn, too. “One male physician reported: The whole world is brilliant. . . . The whole room is filled with spirits. It makes me dizzy. . . . Now it is too much! . . . I feel exactly as if I were flying. . . . I have the feeling that this is above everything, above the earth. It is comforting to know I am back on earth again. . . . Everything has a spiritual tinge but is so real. . . . I feel that I have landed. . . .”

Strassman adds that during the trial, “A female physician stated: How simple everything is. . . . In front of me are two quiet, sunlit Gods. . . . I think they are welcoming me into this new world. There is a deep silence as in the desert. . . . 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.”

“The Western world had discovered DMT, and DMT had entered into its consciousness.”

Excerpts from:

Strassman M.D., Rick (2000-12-01). DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences (p. 40-53). Inner Traditions Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

Peace out!

BnT