I wrote Dr. Freedman, telling him of my grant submission to the Scottish Rite Foundation. He replied that he was on their scientific review committee, and “maybe” they would fund a year’s support. Within a month, in September 1989, a notification of award arrived announcing a one-year grant for the project.
I again wrote Dr. Freedman, updating him on the search for human-grade DMT. He scribbled a note on my letter and sent a copy of it to the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, one of his former students. His telegraphic missive ended: “Strassman needs someone at NIDA responsive. Any suggestions??”
In September I called Mr. W. at NIDA. He had just returned from a meeting with Dr. C. They were discussing how to get Schedule I drugs to researchers.
“We want to help,” he said. “Call Ms. B. at the DEA and see if she can tell you how to get approval for Dr. Nichols to make a small batch for you. If the amount is too large, he’ll need to be a legally designated manufacturer and will never be able to afford the required security.”
I called Ms. B.
“Can Dave Nichols make some human-grade DMT for my project?”
She began, “Well, if Dr. Nichols is going to be a manufacturer, he needs to meet rather stringent security requirements. Is there a DEA office near his university? They could drop over and tell him what he needs to do. Then Dr. Nichols could decide if he’s able to meet their recommendations.”
I heard the edge start creeping into my voice. I was alarmed at how close I felt to losing it.
“I’ve looked everywhere for human-grade DMT: Sigma and another chemical supply house, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Mental Health, former investigators, Dr. C. in North Carolina. Dave Nichols is willing to make some for me, incredibly cheap. He needs your okay. I’ve got an outside grant, and the Research Center at the university is behind this project. I’m losing my mind. I’m pulling out my hair. My gums are bleeding. I’m getting on my wife’s nerves.”
There was a pause. I heard what sounded like her pushing her chair away from the desk.
“Oh,” she said, sounding genuinely concerned. “Let me see here. . . Yes, there’s a ‘coincidental activities’ clause in the regulations. Dr. Nichols can make a small batch if you’re collaborating. This won’t require any additional security for his laboratory.”
I heard her pull a large book out from somewhere: “It’s acceptable for him to make it . . .” and she started reading some text, “‘. . . if and to the extent set forth . . .’”
She spoke too quickly for me to write down the information.
Ms. B. finished: “Have Dr. Nichols write me. Here’s my address. He’ll need to amend his current permits, saying how much DMT he’ll make. I’ll check with our pharmacist to be certain it’s a reasonable amount.”
“Okay,” I said. “That sounds great. I really appreciate your help.”
I called Dr. W. He confided that “off the record,” my project was pointing out a flaw in the drug laws: How do researchers study drugs of abuse?
He then described exactly how to respond to the twenty requirements the FDA had written about in the four-page letter that had arrived from them several months earlier. These steps would provide the FDA the information they needed to determine if the DMT was “safe for human use.”
The UNM Department of Psychiatry agreed to pay Dave Nichols three hundred dollars for the DMT. However, they would not write the check until the DEA issued the Schedule I permit.
The DEA would approve neither Dave’s request to make DMT nor my Schedule I permit to possess it until the FDA approved the protocol. The FDA couldn’t give me permission until I possessed the drug and tested it for safety. The DEA also required verification from the FDA that Dave could go ahead and make the drug.
Four months later, in January 1990, Dave finally received DEA approval to make the DMT. He ordered the precursors immediately and began working on it.
In the meantime, I had gotten laboratory-quality DMT from Sigma and put it into the special locked freezer in the narcotics vault in the hospital pharmacy. One hundred milligrams, a tenth of a gram, in a little vial. The Research Center began developing a method to measure DMT in human blood.
In addition, I received a high score from NIDA for a grant application to actually run the DMT study, and it was likely to be funded. Two grants approved, but no drug! It was bizarre. Everyone wanted the study done, but no one knew how to get me the drug necessary to perform it.
By February the DEA had obtained enough information from the FDA to know that the protocol was sound enough for the FDA to approve “in principle.” The DEA agreed to give me the Schedule I permit. However, my contact there, Ms. L., called with some bad news.
“Diversion Control blocked the permit.”
“Who’s Diversion Control?” I asked.
“I’ll try and get your request exempted. I’ll call you next week.”
The next day, Ms. B. from the DEA, the woman who had broken the logjam, called to say that Dave was indeed a manufacturer and would need additional security requirements. I didn’t know what to say.
I told her, “I don’t know what to say.”
“Here’s the name and phone number of the DEA agent in Indianapolis, near Purdue University. He’s responsible for that area. He’ll tell Dr. Nichols what he needs to do.”
She called back that day. “I’m sorry. Dr. Nichols is making another drug, and we mixed up that one with your DMT request. My error. You may go ahead as you were planning.”
Dave called later that week, saying the lawyers at Purdue were advising him not to make the DMT because of liability issues. I called Mr. W. at NIDA and asked him if there were ever any malpractice claims resulting from studies using their Schedule I drugs.
He offered some encouraging news: “We’ve never been sued for providing marijuana, a Schedule I drug, for human research. Just make sure you’ve got an airtight informed consent document.”
He called back that day and put the NIDA attorney on the phone.
The attorney said, “You’d be sued first, then your university, then maybe the FDA, and last and most remotely Dr. Nichols. All he’s doing is making it according to FDA regulations. He’s not deciding who gives what dose to whom—that’s your responsibility.”
I told Dave this, and he replied, “I hope you know what you’re doing. This is a real leap of faith for me and our lawyers.”
May and June involved finding laboratories to run the FDA-required tests on the DMT once it arrived. One test required the DMT to be sent out, and the first two laboratories I contacted refused to work with a Schedule I drug. Finally a third company agreed to do the testing.
By July 1990, Dave had made the drug and was running all the tests on it that the FDA needed to determine its identity and purity. It was nearly 100 percent pure.
In early July he sent five grams of DMT to my clinic by overnight courier. I kept it in my office that day and drove to the hospital pharmacy to deliver it before going home.
I called Dr. W. to tell him that the DMT had arrived and that it might take a few months to get all the tests performed and collect the results.
He said, “Get everything together, and send it to Ms. R. the chemist and Ms. P. Call them a week later. They’ll say they never saw your letter. Then call me in two weeks if you don’t hear anything after that. Some poor guy got his approval and waited a month before we found someone to type the letter to him.”
The pharmacy prepared a solution of DMT dissolved in saltwater. This was the form in which I would give DMT to the volunteers. The pharmacist divided it into one hundred separate glass vials. The samples for the FDA’s tests would come from them. I had a few last-minute questions and called Ms. R. in September. We hadn’t talked for a few months. “I need to refresh my memory about your case,” she said. After a few additional phone calls, she provided the necessary information.
By late October all the tests were complete, and the DMT passed eve
ry one. I put together my package and sent it to the FDA by overnight mail. I started calling within a week. No one replied to the dozen messages I left with the secretary. I phoned Dr. W.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You usually call when things aren’t going well.”
“May I begin the DMT study?”
“I’ll just toodle on over there and find out what I can.”
I called back in early November. The secretary told me their division had changed offices, but that they came by every half-hour to check for messages.
On November 5, 1990, Ms. M., my project officer, called at the end of the day. “Your hold has been removed.”
“Is a verbal okay all I need?”
“Yes.”
“The university won’t accept that. Would you fax a letter?” I asked.
“I’ll fax one tomorrow.”
November in the mountains of New Mexico is cold and dry, windy and harsh. I made many of these phone calls from my house in the Manzano Mountains southeast of Albuquerque. I sometimes joked to friends that my applications had to be approved because my view was nicer than anyone’s in D.C.
My former wife’s weaving studio was in a separate building about fifteen yards from the main house. Hanging up the phone after that last conversation with Ms. M., I braced myself against the cold wind and slowly walked along the crunchy gravel path to the outbuilding to share the news.
“They said I could start.” I lay down on the cold cement floor, staring up at the ceiling.
“That’s great, dear,” she replied, leaning down to ground level to kiss my cheek.
I called every day for the next ten days, asking for the fax. It arrived on November 15. At the bottom of the handwritten fax, Ms. M. wrote, “Have a Happy Thanksgiving!”
That day, the university laboratory called to tell me the DMT in the glass vials had decomposed by 30 percent; it was too weak to use. I called the laboratory technician.
“How did you calculate the concentration?”
He answered, “By using the weight of free base DMT.”
“It’s not free base. It’s a salt.”2
“Oh, I didn’t know that. Hmm, let’s see. That’s right. It’s the correct concentration after all. Sorry about that.”
Four days later, I gave Philip the first dose of DMT.
Part III
Set, Setting, and DMT
7
Being a Volunteer
I obtained approval for the DMT research in late 1990 and soon, with Philip and Nils as my human guinea pigs, determined the best doses and manner of administering the drug. It now was time to begin recruiting volunteers. While I found many volunteers among my longtime friends, I needed to enlarge the pool of research subjects beyond personal acquaintances.
I was reluctant to advertise. Such an announcement might have resulted in a flood of calls, and I did not have the time to speak to everyone with a casual interest. A public call for research subjects also might find its way to the local media and would draw unwanted attention.
Upon considering recruiting UNM students, I remembered the trouble that Leary and his associates encountered at Harvard when they included undergraduates into their program. If I were to canvas the university for volunteers, they would need to be graduate students, rather than the younger and less mature undergraduates. I also wanted to include no more than one representative from any department. Leary’s research at Harvard had created cliques of drug-taking graduate students. These students developed an “us” versus “them” mentality that contributed to intense conflicts within departments between those participating in psychedelic research and those who were not. Such envious and competitive ill will at Harvard was a significant factor in the ultimate expulsion of Leary’s group.
Several volunteers in this new group were social or professional acquaintances. Two were academic colleagues in the psychiatry department, one was a friend of my former wife, and seven belonged to a social group to which I was introduced several years after the research began. The nearly three dozen remaining people found out about the study by word of mouth; they were friends of volunteers, received psychedelic newsletters describing the Albuquerque research, or just happened to be in a conversation during which the studies were discussed.
For the sake of convenience, I will invent a hypothetical volunteer named Alex, a thirty-two-year-old married male who worked as a software programmer outside of Santa Fe. Since most of our research subjects were men, I hope no one is put off by making our generic volunteer male.
Alex’s first step was to make a phone call to my office, which was fielded by the psychiatry department secretary and subsequently answered by a member of the research team. After a brief conversation regarding age, previous psychedelic experience, and medical and psychiatric health, Alex and I made an appointment to meet in my department office.
Before this meeting took place, I sent him a packet of files, including a copy of the informed consent document for his particular study, several popular articles about DMT, and a paper I wrote some years before about the pineal gland, DMT, and consciousness. Later, when the project was well underway, I included papers describing the results of our own work.
This meeting took at least an hour. I needed to learn enough about Alex to decide whether to include him in the study. In a comparable manner, Alex needed to know I was someone he could trust to supervise his deeply psychedelic DMT experiences.
An important issue was how stable his life was at the time. If it seemed in chaos, I would be reluctant to include him. If he was in a transitional stage, he might decide to leave the area halfway through the study. If his ability to sustain relationships appeared tenuous, he might not be able to bear up in the face of the powerfully destabilizing effects of DMT. He might have problems trusting us in the hospital under the influence, or he might not be able to find enough support between sessions if his experiences were especially upsetting.
If Alex were using drugs or alcohol, he’d need to limit or stop taking them. This was especially the case if they were ones like cocaine or psychedelics, which might affect his responses to DMT.
Information about previous psychedelic drug use and experiences was crucial. The number of his experiences was not as important as their having been fully psychedelic. Because his high-dose DMT sessions probably would propel him further into psychedelic space than he had ever gone before, I wanted to be reasonably certain Alex was at least familiar with the terrain.
“What’s the furthest out you’ve ever been on a psychedelic?” I asked Alex. “Have you thought you died? What about losing all connection to your body and the outside world?”
Just as critical was finding out if Alex was steady and responsible under the influence. In a way, I was more interested in hearing about bad trips than I was the beautiful ones, because I knew our setting would tend toward producing some unpleasant moments.
The nature of psychedelic research ideally is highly collaborative. In addition to my comfort level with Alex, he had the right, and the responsibility to himself, to know how he’d feel about my giving him DMT. Alex asked about my motivations for the research, what I hoped to find, and how we supervised sessions. He wondered if I had a religious practice, and about my own experience with psychedelics. The way I handled his concerns and questions provided him with important emotional information.
A week later, we met on 5-East, the research wing of the University of New Mexico Hospital, for his medical screening. We drew blood for basic medical tests and obtained an electrocardiogram, or ECG, to assess his heart’s health.
We all gathered around to watch Alex’s veins bulge under his skin after the nurse placed the tourniquet above his elbow. Good veins were an important element of a volunteer’s successful participation because we drew so much blood. If Alex’s veins collapsed or clotted easily, it would cause a lot of stress on study days.
I went over a painstakingly detailed medical history and performed a physical examination
. The results of the medical tests were important, but equally so was the continuation of our building a close, basic relationship before giving and receiving any DMT. Asking Alex sometimes embarrassing health questions, touching, and otherwise relating at a fundamental and physical level helped establish a foundation of trust and familiarity upon which I hoped we could rely when he was in the throes of powerful, disorienting, and potentially regressive DMT sessions.
Alex’s laboratory values and ECG were normal, so we scheduled the psychiatric examination. This formal psychiatric interview followed a ninety-page form and could take several hours. Laura, our research nurse, performed all these interviews; it was their first opportunity to get to know each other. Laura then sent Alex off with one more pile of questionnaires and rating scales.
After he returned them to us, we scheduled Alex’s first non-blind, screening DMT sessions: a low dose of 0.05 mg/kg, followed by a high dose of 0.4 mg/kg the following day. For Alex and the other men, the first sessions could occur whenever our schedules permitted. In women’s cases, we needed to standardize when in the menstrual cycle we studied them. 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.
On the morning of his admission, Alex left his car across the street in the monolithic parking structure facing the south side of the hospital. He told the guard he was coming in for “a research study” and got his appropriate sticker. Walking across the footbridge over busy Lomas Boulevard, he found the hospital’s Admitting Office, where clerical staff checked him in as DMT-22. They directed Alex upstairs to the fifth-floor Research Center. He walked past the outpatient clinic and entered the ward through a set of double doors.
DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences Page 13