DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences

by Rick Strassman M. D.

  Another reason to categorize these experiences is to support the hypothesis that outside-administered DMT elicits altered states of consciousness similar to those that people report during spontaneous psychedelic experiences: near-death and mystical states and the phenomenon we call alien abduction. If drug-induced and naturally occurring conditions appear to have sufficient overlap, it supports a role for endogenous DMT in the production of these spontaneous psychedelic experiences. This would then open a wide range of possibilities for us to study, understand, and apply these findings beneficially.

  Three major groupings capture nearly all the various experiences within these reports. While most people’s actual drug sessions partook of at least two of these types, one particular category usually predominated.1

  These three categories are personal, invisible, and transpersonal experiences.

  Personal DMT experiences were limited to the volunteer’s own mental and physical processes. DMT helped open avenues to his or her personal psychology and relationship to the body. Chapter 11, “Feeling and Thinking,” presents several examples of this type of response. Once volunteers began approaching the furthest boundaries of this category, near-death and spiritual themes began to emerge. The personal then became transpersonal.

  The hallmark of the invisible category is an encounter with seemingly solid and freestanding realities coexisting with this one. When these planes of existence were inhabited, contact by our research subjects with these “beings” made for the most disturbing and unexpected type of DMT session. I cover these bizarre stories in chapters 13 and 14.

  The most sought-after and highly prized sessions were the transpersonal ones. These involved near-death and spiritual-mystical experiences. I describe these in chapter 15, “Death and Dying,” and chapter 16, “Mystical States,” respectively.

  The last chapter of case reports, “Pain and Fear,” discusses the negative, frightening, and potentially damaging effects of DMT on our volunteers. Here we encounter the negative aspects of all three types of experiences: personal, invisible, and transpersonal.

  This introduction is a good place to begin addressing how we responded to what people said and did during their DMT sessions. In chapter 7 I described how, after administering the DMT, the research nurse and I sat quietly on either side of the person’s bed. We allowed the volunteer to have his or her own experience, with no more than the barest minimum of “coaching.” However, we could not maintain absolutely neutral and passive stances when someone began talking about confusing or anxiety-ridden experiences. If a volunteer needed our help and support, we provided it.

  There is a fine line between supporting a person and telling him or her what sort of experience he or she has just undergone. After a big dose of DMT, volunteers were extraordinarily suggestible, open, and vulnerable. These factors demanded exquisite sensitivity to the interpersonal field existing in the room at the time. Reflection, support, education, advice, and interpretation are quite different from criticism, argument, persuasion, and brainwashing.

  11

  Feeling and Thinking

  For the most part, personal experiences with DMT stay within the confines of one’s own body and mind—the realms of feeling and thinking. As such, the phenomena we encounter are not very different from the sorts of things any psychotherapist hears in the office: body-based feelings and mind-based thoughts.

  Most of our volunteers more or less consciously hoped for a spiritual breakthrough with the aid of DMT—a final resolution to questions regarding why they were born, or a union with the Divine in which all conflict ended and an unshakeable certainty prevailed. However, DMT, as a true spirit molecule, gave our volunteers the trip they needed, rather than the one they wanted.

  Some research subjects resolved difficult personal problems during their sessions. Afterward, they realized they had worked something through in a positive way and felt better. The basic processes of psychotherapy seemed to be at work: thinking, recollecting, feeling, connecting emotions with ideas. For most of us, facing painful feelings is difficult, and DMT can make those feelings easier to confront. Stan’s DMT sessions, for example, helped him contact feelings too raw to touch in everyday consciousness.

  Dreams are a basic tool for any personal growth and understanding, and DMT may generate highly symbolic dreamlike images. Marsha’s highdose sessions are a beautiful example of how the spirit molecule can show us what we need to know using this particular facet of its power.

  For many of us, traumatic experiences set the stage for painfully blind reenactments of situations in which we face those same feelings over and over again. A high dose of DMT shares many features with physical and psychological trauma. We’ll see how it is possible to turn these aspects to good use in Cassandra’s story.

  I expected to see many volunteers working through emotional and psychological conflicts during these studies. Sessions of this nature might help prepare the way for psychedelic-drug-assisted psychotherapy in patients. We would note how DMT affected volunteers in potentially beneficial ways, then build those effects into any subsequent psychological treatment protocols.

  The first generation of psychedelic scientists made such therapy projects the mainstay of many centers’ research activities. We would essentially be doing little more than retracing their steps in anticipation of renewing their work in a contemporary context.

  I was ready for these types of sessions. I believed it was possible for the volunteers to reach some valuable insights into personal conflicts, difficulties, and psychosomatic symptoms by using psychedelics. In addition, many years of undergoing, practicing, and teaching psychoanalytic psychotherapy prepared me for dealing with the painful emotions I thought would emerge during some DMT sessions.

  Stan was forty-two years old when we met and he began participating in the DMT studies. His wife of fourteen years was a respiratory therapist who worked with many medical patients at the Research Center. She thought he’d be interested in the project, and he gave me a call.

  He was one of the most experienced psychedelic drug users of anyone in our studies, having taken LSD “over four hundred times.” “They don’t call it ‘acid’ for nothing,” he laughed during our first meeting. He took LSD or mushrooms every few months, using them with several close friends with whom he shared a strong belief in their beneficial effects.

  Stan was married, had a young daughter, and held a highly responsible position in the local government. He was of medium height and build, good-looking and attentive to his appearance. He was rather disinclined to talk about his inner experience, and he stated his interest in the DMT studies in a typically concise manner: “To further legitimate studies and for personal exploration.”

  Stan’s low screening dose of DMT, 0.05 mg/kg, was uneventful. Like many others, he felt an urge to smile early on in the session.

  The next day was Stan’s high-dose session. Carrying my varied assortment of needles, syringes, and disinfectant swabs, I entered his room and found Stan sitting in cross-legged position on a meditation cushion with the back of the bed raised as close to a right angle as possible. He was one of the few people who felt better sitting up than lying down.

  Stan didn’t say a lot about that morning’s high-dose experience. Mostly, he was impressed with the power of the onset of effects. In fact, he thought he might even have liked a dose slightly higher than 0.4 mg/kg.

  He wasn’t sure if DMT had any beneficial effects, either.

  It’s not as useful as LSD or psilocybin. It’s too much too fast. You can’t really work with it. You’re totally out of control. It wasn’t a spiritual experience. There was very little emotional flavor to it at all.

  Regarding what he actually saw, all Stan ventured was that there were “lots of kaleidoscopic blues and purples.”

  Stan went through the dose-response study successfully, but without it making a particularly deep impression on him. However, he enjoyed participating in the research and wanted to be notified when
the tolerance study began.

  About a year later, Stan signed on for the DMT tolerance project. A lot had happened. His wife had experienced a recurrence of her serious psychiatric illness and was filing for divorce. A very difficult child custody battle was developing, and their eight-year-old daughter was living with him.

  I wondered if the DMT sessions might provide him with some emotional clarity for these trying times. While the goals of the research remained unchanged, Stan was a fellow human being undergoing a major loss, and if we could help him within the project’s context, all the better.

  As it turned out, his first “double-blind” day was active drug—four consecutive high-dose DMT injections. The first two doses helped him clarify the stress under which he’d been laboring.

  Mmm. There were the usual colors. I guess I’ll do the next several doses, in spite of the anxiety.

  Gently teasing him, appealing to his “psychedelic machismo,” but also encouraging him to go a little deeper, I said, “I didn’t think you’d have it any other way.”

  He lay quietly with his eyeshades on.

  I like the eyeshades.

  “They’ve turned out to be quite helpful. . . . Did you have any thoughts or feelings?”

  I had some anxiety, more or less. I don’t remember that from before.

  I offered this suggestion: “There’s a lot more going on in your life now. I wonder if the anxiety is related to the uncertainty and loss of control in your life right now. This is a drug that causes loss of control. That might be uncomfortable.”

  At 5 minutes after the third injection:

  There is a very slight nausea.

  I’ve noticed that nausea in an altered state of consciousness often is a way for the body to distract us from anxiety and sadness. During meditation or hypnosis, or on psychedelic drugs or even marijuana, it’s somehow easier to feel sick than sad.

  I’m not going to throw up. Don’t worry. Maybe it’s the combination of anxiety and my sinuses. Part of my anxiety relates to my daughter’s school next year. She’s in fifth grade. I need to decide this morning. She’s having a hard time with the divorce, especially having difficulties with her mom. It’s hard on me but it’s harder on my daughter.

  “I’m sure it’s hard on your wife, too. It’s a terrible situation.”

  Yes. I wish it were a higher dose in a way. I could blast through it.

  “Blow it out of the water?”

  Yes, blow it out of the water.1

  “How do you feel about two more doses?”

  He smiled.

  I have two very opposite emotions: fear and anticipation of pleasure.

  Perhaps lying down, Stan might feel safer to give up some control, to “throw up,” if he really needed to expel his inner emotional toxins. I asked, “Do you want your head down?”

  I’m not sure it will make any different but okay, I’ll try it. If I have to vomit do you have something I can throw up into?

  “Yes, we have a wastebasket. It’s not pretty but it has a wide mouth and we can catch it all.”

  After the third dose was in he took one of Laura’s hands with his right hand and one of mine in his left.

  I’m not sure about the fourth dose. I don’t know if I can do another one.

  “It’s only been 3 minutes. Let’s see how you feel in a little while.”

  At 5 minutes he said in a humorous tone,

  I will do a fourth for you, Rick.

  “The third dose seems to be the hardest.”

  You’re just saying that.

  “Not really. People look bad after the third dose and they look good after the fourth.”

  I guess I have a lot of unresolved feelings.

  “That makes sense.”

  That’s easy for you to say.

  “I know. I’m sorry if I sound glib. Why do you think these things are unresolved?”

  The emotions are intense. They’re there, but I think I’m shielding myself from them to get through the divorce. It’s not entirely pleasant. That’s an understatement, I guess. The emotional intensity builds each time, but I feel most at peace now. That unresolved feeling is gone. Maybe something’s been done. Maybe 15 minutes from now I won’t be saying this.

  At 10 minutes after his fourth and last injection, Stan blew through his pursed lips, then said,

  It’s a much nicer ride this time. It’s like three waves you catch bodysurfing. They knock you down getting ready for the fourth, which is great. I want to do it again!

  We all laughed, relieved he was feeling better. In this man who kept so much to himself, his earlier admission of anxiety must have indicated intensely powerful feelings.

  He spent the next several minutes lying quietly, relaxing and basking in his newly found inner peace.

  Stan seemed refreshed and in good spirits after the fourth dose. He ate lunch and left quickly after finishing.

  Stan and I talked by phone a couple days later.

  He said, “I’m feeling fine. I felt some mild euphoria yesterday and today, probably related to the experience. I wasn’t sure about continuing with all four doses. Something finally clicked and got resolved. Maybe it was surrendering. It really put me through some changes. The first one was mixed emotions. The second and third ones were overwhelming. Just a lot of unresolved anxiety. The fourth one really did it.”

  I asked, “Was there any content to your sessions?”

  “Very little. It’s like a roto-rooter for your nervous system. It clears some things free. It was purely energetic. There are cumulative effects. Something happened, something changed between the third and fourth doses. After the third, I just gave up.”

  Stan kept his feelings at bay. Like many of our volunteers, he enjoyed psychedelics because of their emotional intensity. He could feel something on high doses of LSD—perhaps not pleasant or enjoyable feelings, but at least more than nothing. Any time we find ourselves stuck in life, it usually is because we can’t connect with the feelings that come with that situation. While in Stan’s case there certainly seemed to be a “roto-rooter” gradually wearing down his psychological resistance, there was a conscious processing that helped, too. He was anxious and uncertain. Although he “knew” what it was about at one level, the inner emotional contact just wasn’t there. His “free-floating” anxiety was anything but nameless. His life was in turmoil and simply making that interpretation helped him to start a process. The emotional power of DMT then drew it to some resolution.

  Stan’s joking about taking his last dose of DMT for me, rather than for himself, pointed out an interesting conflict: We needed data, but we were also concerned with the volunteers’ own needs. If Stan were having a clearly traumatic experience and seemed to be decompensating, we would have called off the study. But he seemed willing, on his own part, to continue, and we never seriously thought about stopping early. Nevertheless, his comment did have a ring of truth about it.

  The visual images volunteers encountered on DMT sometimes reminded them of dreams. And, as Freud said, dreams are “the royal road to the unconscious.” Looking at, thinking about, and discussing dreams may help us understand hidden emotions known only by the distressing symptoms they cause during ordinary wakefulness.

  Let’s imagine that someone develops paralysis in his right hand, and multiple medical examinations reveal no physical problem. He’s sent to a psychiatrist, who asks him to remember his dreams. That night our theoretical patient dreams of beating up his boss at work. The psychiatrist suggests that his paralyzed hand represents deep anger at the boss, rage that he didn’t know he had. Maybe these are emotions he’s afraid to feel because he doesn’t know what might happen if he did so. A light goes on in the patient’s mind, and he regains function of his hand!

  While such an example smacks of a Saturday morning cartoon program, it captures the essential process by which dreamwork can be personally helpful. Symptoms are not often as obvious as paralysis; they commonly include anxiety, depression, or relationship pr
oblems.

  The approach we took to supervising DMT sessions was as clinically neutral as possible, but ignoring psychological issues emerging from volunteers’ experiences would have been negligent. Sometimes I had to decide quickly whether or not to take up the personal psychological thread a research subject had begun, whether to push that volunteer forward just enough to see some resolution to his or her confusion or uncertainty. I also had to take into account the risk that such comments or interpretations might cause some destabilizing effects in his or her life. In Marsha’s case, for example, she was struggling with her marriage.

  Upon entry into the DMT study, Marsha was forty-five years old, had been divorced twice, and had been with her current husband for six years. She was of African-American descent, while her husband was white. Marsha possessed a delightful sense of humor and frankness. Her mood was significantly better this past year than it had been for some time. She felt a great sense of relief after dropping out of a graduate school program she found dehumanizing and unsupportive of her racial and ethnic background. Continued problems at home, however, revolved around her husband “being more depressed than I was,” and she had been thinking of leaving him.

  Marsha had taken psychedelic drugs perhaps thirty times in her life, and she found them “very mind-opening.” She volunteered for our research “to help out my friends,” “to experience this drug out of curiosity and wonder,” “to be challenged,” and “because my husband can’t—therefore he can vicariously share this with me.” Her husband had slightly elevated blood pressure, which disqualified him.

  Marsha managed her low screening dose of DMT well. The next day’s high dose took her completely out of her body. She was startled to find herself in a beautiful domed structure, a virtual Taj Mahal.

  I thought I had died, and that I might not ever come back. I don’t know what happened. All of a sudden, BAM!, there I was. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

  Marsha described in great detail what she saw, and how she was transformed, during her experience. It was an extraordinarily pleasurable morning. We listened to her report and didn’t need to add much. She enjoyed it. There was little conflict and we shared in her happiness.