Psychedelic Compound Breakdown Series: What is DMT? “The Spirit Molecule”
DMT (N, N-Dimethyltryptamine) is a hallucinogenic tryptamine drug naturally occurring in many plants, animals, and the human pineal gland. DMT is often referred to as “The Spirit Molecule” due to DMT’s spiritual and metaphysical properties when used in sacred shamanic practices.
To induce DMT’s hallucinogenic effects, users can either smoke DMT (Changa) or ingest this psychedelic in the form of a tea, Ayahuasca.
DMT is best known for its intense visual hallucinations, which occur upon ingestion and in both recreational and shamanic circles is highly regarded as “The Spirit Molecule” due to many users who have had ‘breakthrough’ experiences seeing and meeting entities who have helped them heal and receive guidance to assist with healing.
What is DMT: A Concise History
The use of DMT is a concept that has been introduced previously. Scientists discovered an Amazonian shamans medicine bag with Ayahuasca and other shamanic herbs. Carbon-dated showed that the herbs and DMT-rich plant matter dated back to over 1000 years ago.
However, the use of DMT within Western culture is relatively new, with the first synthesized version of DMT only created in 1931 by Canadian Chemist Richard Manske.
DMT wasn’t assessed for pharmacological effects during the first synthesis of DMT.
In 1946, Oswaldo Goncalves de Lima discovered that DMT occurred naturally in plants. The discovery then led to the hallucinogenic properties of DMT being discovered in 1956 when Stephen Szara, a Hungarian chemist, and psychiatrist, successfully extracted the DMT molecule and consumed the extracted DMT, thus realizing the hallucinogenic and spiritual properties of ‘the spirit molecule.
Thanks to these events, we can link the discovery of DMT within modern science and the historical use of DMT-containing plants as a cultural and religious ritual of the people of the South American Tribes.
DMT is scientifically known as N, N-dimethyltryptamine and is a hallucinogenic tryptamine compound that influences the serotonin chemical levels within the human brain. DMT is a natural compound found within many different plant species and animals and is believed to exist in humans' pineal gland.
After discovering numerous hallucinogenic substances in the 1950s, scientists began to observe and study the effects and behavior of these substances within the human body. These studies prompted multiple hypotheses, which led to the belief that the syndrome known as schizophrenia might be caused by improper metabolism that produces hallucinogens within the brain and is responsible for forming a schizo- or psycho-toxin.
To better study these hypotheses, researchers began to search for compounds that contained similar organic structures to dopamine (mescaline has a similar structure) and serotonin ( DMT has a similar structure).
During this research period, chemists discovered several interesting new compounds to assist their hypothesis. However, the only known hallucinogen chemists managed to isolate was tryptophan ( DMT and 5-methoxy-DMT).
The data collected from these initial studies of the endogenous synthesis in mammalian species, including humans, paved the way for over 60 future studies. The prospective studies attempted to correlate the presence and concentration of these naturally occurring psychedelic compounds within the human body's blood and urine systems with the aim of a particular psychiatric diagnosis.
These studies vary, resulting in no clear-cut or repeatable correlation between DMT levels in peripheral body fluids with any psychiatric diagnosis.
Even without a clear-cut result, the discovery of endogenous hallucinogens and the potential in various hypotheses surrounding the role and functions of DMT and other endogenous hallucinogens in regular and ‘extraordinary’ brain function and mental illness help create further investigations into the mechanisms of these compounds biosynthesis, metabolism, and mode of action as well as the further study of the existing and profound effects within the human consciousness.
How does DMT Work?
DMT is found in the western world as a white crystalline powder extracted from South America, Mexico, and Asia plants. DMT can be removed from common plants: Chacruna or Psychotria Viridis ( a perennial, shrubby flowering plant found with the Rubiaceae coffee family) and Caapi or Caapi Banisteriopsis Caapi (a vine which is used for the production of Ayahuasca found in South America).
The chemical root structure of DMT is similar to Sumatriptan (an anti-migraine drug). When consumed, it acts as a non-selective agonist and affects the serotonin 5-ht2a receptor within the brain.
As mentioned before, there is some evidence that DMT is produced endogenously, or in layman’s terms, DMT is believed to be produced naturally within the human pineal gland.
When the DMT is extracted from the roots of these DMT-rich plants, users can consume the DMT via the following methods;
● Vaporized or smoked in either a bong or pipe
● Injected or snorted (Rare Occasions only)
● Consumed as a ‘tea’ brew such as Ayahuasca
Effects of Consuming DMT
To better understand the effects of DMT, it is imperative to note the difference in duration and dosage consumed when either smoking DMT or drinking Ayahuasca tea.
Another critical factor to consider is that every person will react differently due to differences within individual body types.
When consumed orally, DMT is known as Ayahuasca. The dosage is between 35 mg to 75 mg of DMT.
The effects begin after 30 to 45 minutes and only peak after 2 to 3 hours, while total trip duration is said to conclude at the 3 to the 6-hour mark.
When smoked, the average dose of DMT is between 30 mg to 150 mg.
The psychedelic effects are felt instantly, with some users describing the onset as a rollercoaster climbing to the highest point on the track and then a sudden plunge into the almost instant trip.
The effects of the trip peak for roughly 3 to 15 minutes and begin to wear off after 30 to 45 minutes.
The main effect of DMT is intense visual and auditory hallucinations, an altered sense of space, body, time, and auditory hallucinations.
People who have consumed DMT describe the experience as profound, life-changing, and total shifts in perception of identity and reality. In contrast, some users describe trips to external realms, which contain entities that communicate via colors and words which are seen visually. These entities are called ‘DMT elves’ or ‘machine elves,’ a term coined by Terrence McKenna.
Users consider DMT to have the lowest side effect profile compared to other psychedelic drugs, like LSD, Magic Mushrooms, and Ketamine.
Possible side effects of DMT include:
● Agitation
● Dilated pupils
● Chest pain and tightness
● Dizziness
● Increased blood pressure
● Increased Heart rate
● Rapid rhythmic movements of the eyes
When DMT is taken orally, it is common to experience nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which during traditional shamanic ceremonies is expected, as the body is seen as cleansing itself to allow for the healing the user is seeking to take place.
Dr. Rick Strassman
Rick Strassman was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1952. While growing up, Rick attended public schools in the San Fernando Valley and graduated from Ulysses S. Grant High School in Van Nuys in 1969.
Before transferring to Stanford University, Rick Strassman majored in Zoology as an undergraduate at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Rick Strassman graduated with departmental honors in biological sciences in 1973. In addition to being a full-time student, Rick spent his summers developing cosmetics and hair dyes for Redken Laboratories and performed laboratory research on the development of the chicken embryo’s nervous system at the University of Stanford.
To further his studies, in 1977, Dr. Strassman attended the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in the Bronx, New York, where he completed his medical degree with honors.
Dr. Rick Strassman completed his internship and general psychiatry residency at the University of California, Davis, Medical Center in Sacramento. During Dr. Strassman’s residency, he received the Sandoz Award for Oustanding Graduating resident in 1981.
Dr. Strassman then worked for a year in Fairbanks, Alaska, specializing in community mental health and private psychiatric practice.
From 1982 to 1983, Dr. Strassman completed his clinical psychopharmacology research fellowship at the University of California, within San Diego’s Veteran’s Administration Medical Center.
Upon completing his fellowship training, Dr. Strassman served in the clinical faculty in the department of psychiatry at UC Davis Medical Center. In 1984, he took a full-time academic position in psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine (UNM) in Albuquerque.
During Dr. Strassman’s time at the UNM, he undertook and performed clinical research investigating the function of the pineal hormone melatonin. His study documented the first known role of melatonin in humans.
Dr. Strassman began the first US Government-approved clinical research since the ‘War on Drugs’ act implemented in 1971 by US President Nixon and his administration.
Dr. Strassman’s study focused on DMT and psilocybin and was supported by the Scottish Rite Foundation for Schizophrenia Research and the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Dr. Strassman’s DMT Study
Dr. Rick Strassman's study on DMT occurred between 1990 and 1995. In an interview with Business Insider, Dr. Strassman said;
“I was interested in looking at DMT as a naturally occurring psychedelic for quite a few reasons,” he told Business Insider. “One of them was being interested in the biology of naturally occurring spiritual states. In other words, in whatever manner, some of the symptoms of a near death-state, a mystical experience of enlightenment, or religious, unusual dreams. One could make an argument that naturally occurring DMT was also involved in those non-drug states.”
To conduct the DMT study, Dr. Strassman recruited volunteers who had experience with hallucinogenic trips. Dr. Strassman then asked the volunteers to take a regular dose of DMT within a clinical environment and recite their journeys after the trip ended 30 to 40 minutes later.
When asked about how he conducted his study, Dr. Strassman then went on to say;
“There were no bells, no whistles, no Buddhist statues- it was just ‘here’s the drug, and tell me what happened after you come down. It was kind of like sending people off to explore a new world and telling them to come back and tell us what they encountered.”
When coming down from a DMT high/trip, it isn’t uncommon for users to recite stories of profound experiences, other worlds and entities, and abstract images. During Dr. Strassman’s study, one volunteer reported that she was convinced there was consciousness after death.
Dr. Strassman then wrote his book, “DMT: The Spirit Molecule,” an account of his DMT and psilocybin studies.
The book has now sold over a quarter-million copies and has been translated into over a dozen languages.
In addition to his book, Dr. Strassman co-produced the most-streamed independent documentary on Netflix, “DMT: The Spirit Molecule,” and then authored two additional books, “Joseph Levy Escapes Death,” “ DMT and the Soul of Prophecy,” and co-authored “Inner Paths to Outer Space.”
What is Ayahuasca?
Ayahuasca is a sacred brew used for thousands of years by Latin American shamans. This psychedelic brew is made from the stem of the Banisteriopsis Caapi vine, known by the people of the Quechua tribe as “the vine of the ancestors,” and the leaves of either the Psychotria Viridis ( Chacruna) or the Diplopterys Caberana (Chagropanga) plants.
The indigenous people of the Amazon and Latin America explain that the discovery of this sacred brew was shared via tales and folklore, where the most common st. The information needed to create this brew was given to the shamans directly from the ‘plant spirits’ of the Amazon.
The main psychedelic compound extracted from these plants is known as DMT. For the indigenous people of Latin America, and is a sacred tea used for rituals and ceremonies connected to healing, rituals regarding intimacy, and ancestral guidance.
Ayahuasca is classified as a “Psychointegrator” because its physiological effects integrate conscious emotion and unconscious and pre-conscious processes.
Ayahuasca has been used for warfare, artistic inspiration, divination, the central theme of cultural narratives, healing, and as a shamanic instrument to access information from unseen realms to guide social issues within the native tribes and natural environment.
When used for healing, Ayahuasca provides the shaman information to help identify the origin of the patient’s illness and shows the shaman the area of infection, where the shaman is known to suck on the infected area to access and draw out the disease.
Ayahuasca is a powerful tool for shamans to take when they need to undertake shamanic journeys to restore soul loss and assist shamans in shamanic fights with illnesses and threats from shamans from rival tribes.
Rituals and Ayahuasca Tea Ceremonies
The traditional way of consuming Ayahuasca is by attending what is known as a Tea Ceremony. These ceremonies are performed by shamans experienced in the sacred rituals practiced for thousands of years.
The role of the shaman in these ceremonies is to help users with guidance and protect them from any evil spirits that may interfere with the healing users are receiving.
When users book or attend these ceremonies, there is a period (usually a week before the event) where the users have to follow a strict diet of no red meat, alcohol, drugs, and sex.
The requirements for this diet can vary depending on the tribe performing the ceremony, as some tribes require that the diets include no sugar, salt, wheat, etc. Some shamans give users medicine to help cleanse and purge the body a few days before the ceremony.
The diet and purge are due to Westerners’ highly toxic lifestyles, as our lives are often filled with alcohol, heavy energies such as stress, and drugs. The purge assists in cleansing and preparing the body to help users receive the best healing possible.
On the day of the ceremony, the shaman will give you the Ayahuasca brew and then call for silent meditation. These ceremonies often take place away from the city and in nature.
The effects of the tea take roughly 30 minutes to 1 hour to develop, and it is not uncommon to experience vomiting, nausea, and diarrhea after taking the tea.
When undertaking any Ayahuasca ceremony, it is always a good idea to perform these sacred ceremonies with people you fully trust and experience in performing the ceremony.
Ongoing Research — Small Pharma
Dr. Rick Strassman’s study on DMT can be described as the key to more research into the potential healing effects of DMT when treating severe mental illnesses.
A company named Small Pharma, and its team of researchers led by CEO Peter Rands, have decided to study the healing effects of DMT further and are currently at stage 2 of their clinical trials.
Small Pharma was founded in 2015 to accelerate access to new transformative treatments by advancing the development of known compounds with early signs to suggest positive clinical benefits.
When asked about the study that his company is undertaking, Small Pharma’s CEO, Peter Rands, said,
“Psychedelic medicine is an emerging field and that the current Phase I/Phase IIa trial is the first regulated clinical trial into the effects of DMT-assisted therapy in psychedelic-naive healthy subjects and patients with MDD.”
While DMT is thought to offer more of an immersive experience than both psilocybin and LSD, the downside or upside is that the immersive experience provided by DMT is over a much shorter time.
Small Pharma sees this shorter immersive experience as highly relevant to the real-world implementation of DMT-assisted therapies when they reach market approval. The central selling point would be that a DMT-assisted therapy session could last under 2 hours, while a psilocybin-assisted therapy session could last 8 hours.
DMT Study Phase I and IIa
Phase I
Small Pharma completed their Phase I UK-regulated clinical trial of their proprietary intravenous DMT formula, SPL026, combined with psychotherapy in September 2021.
Phase I consisted of 32 healthy volunteers with no prior experience with psychedelics in a dose-escalating, placebo-controlled study.
Small Pharma reported that all volunteers were happy to take the DMT before the study began. No volunteer said they regretted the experience after the examination and reported any severe after-effects.
In addition to indicating that the dose of DMT was safe compared to other medicines, Small Pharma was able to select an amount of their SPL026 that elicited a psychedelic experience in all of the 32 volunteers while remaining tolerable and causing no serious side effects. Small Pharma will use this dose in their Phase II-a study, which investigates the effects of DMT in a patient population.
Phase II-a
Phase II-a assesses the efficacy of one versus two doses of SPL026 versus placebo in combination with psychotherapy.
This study phase is a randomized, placebo-controlled, proof-of-concept study with 42 patients diagnosed with MMD.
Small Pharma initiated their Phase II-a study in October 2021, expecting the topline results in the first half of 2022. The efficacy of the SPL026 will be tested against the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating scale to help measure any potential reduction in the 42 patients’ depression.
How Does Small Pharma Conduct These Sessions?
Small Pharma prefers to take a holistic approach regarding its study and sessions.
Preparation
The initial step is to help patients feel comfortable about the dosing experience, explore their life history and intentions and ultimately help them build a positive relationship with the help of a therapist.
Dosing Session
The therapy team then supervises the patient as the DMT dose is administered in a quiet room. Patients are encouraged to lie down, use eyeshades, and listen to music to help enhance the experience.
Integration
After the patient has come down from their trip, the therapists work with the patient to help interpret and identify insights gained from the psychedelic experience to achieve meaningful long-term change.
Self-Healing
Upon leaving the DMT-assisted therapy session, patients are encouraged to use different approaches to reflect and continue their healing journey outside the clinic setting.
Conclusion
DMT is a psychedelic drug with powerful hallucinogenic properties that has been used for over a thousand years by the indigenous people of Latin America and is becoming increasingly popular in western cultures as a treatment for MDD and for users who are searching for spiritual enlightenment.
Current clinical studies show that when DMT is used in association with psychotherapy, patients receive long-term benefits compared to constant anti-depressants without any sign of severe side effects and negative long-term dependencies and health effects.
Disclaimer
This post will share information and resources on these potential groundbreaking and healing molecules. It is a criminal offense in the United States and many other countries, punishable by imprisonment and fines, to manufacture, possess, or supply LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, and 5-MeO-DMT, except in connection with government-sanctioned research.