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

by Rick Strassman M. D.

  The research setting was ripe for the development of negative responses to the drug, and this may have contributed to the high frequency we saw. The clinical environment was quite unpleasant, even though it reassured some research subjects about our ability to respond to medical emergencies.

  In addition to the actual physical environment of the Research Center, the research attitude also created a tension that does not normally exist in typical psychedelic settings. The blood drawing, questionnaire administration, and various other experimental manipulations impacted our relationship with the volunteers. We wanted something from them other than just their own psychedelic experience, and that expectation was impossible to ignore.

  I expected nearly everyone to feel some anxiety as the DMT effects began. I knew many people would find themselves struggling to keep their bearings, especially with the higher doses. My respect for the deeply disruptive properties of DMT made it easier for volunteers to feel understood in their natural apprehension before getting big doses of the spirit molecule.

  We did our best in attending to such details as smells, gestures, speech, emotional state, and the behavior of everyone in the room. This attention to detail went a long way in protecting our subjects from unnecessarily anxiety-provoking or otherwise disruptive influences. We realized that supportive, caring, and understanding attitudes and responses were the best insurance against serious adverse effects, and the best initial treatment should they emerge.1

  The issue of adverse effects becomes extraordinarily important when we assess the risk-to-benefit ratio in working with psychedelics. Do benefits outweigh risks? Are the negative consequences of psychedelics’ use worth accepting in light of their positive effects? This chapter addresses the dark side of DMT, while the next looks at how helpful the volunteers’ experiences were in the long run.

  The older research literature hinted at what types of negative reactions we might see with DMT.

  One of Stephen Szára’s subjects for a 1950s DMT EEG study was a female physician. As effects of the intramuscular DMT peaked, she exclaimed,

  It is frightening because I cannot terminate it [by opening my eyes]. . . . How unpleasant! Oh, how bad. It would be better to fall down in a faint. Will it endure still for one hour? Give me something so that I shall die quickly, it would be better to die. How were you capable to do such?2

  Szára later summarized the five “paranoid or delusional” reactions in his thirty original volunteers:

  “These subjects reported 1 to 2 days later that they were convinced that someone wanted to kill or poison them during the experiment. DMT was the poison, and the person conducting the experiment was the murderer. One subject became very violent during the experiment and had to be restrained forcibly.”3

  Szára’s descriptions are unusually forthcoming for a psychiatric researcher. It usually is rather difficult to get a clear sense of what exactly happens during psychedelic drug sessions in the research environment. This is especially common when adverse reactions occur in studies when the research team has a vested interest in demonstrating the drug’s beneficial effects.4

  Our New Mexico volunteers’ negative reactions to DMT were not qualitatively different from those of volunteers in the other types of sessions about which we’ve read. They included characteristics of all the previous categories: personal psychological issues, unseen worlds and contact with nonmaterial beings, and near-death and spiritual experiences. What made the effects adverse was not the experience itself, but the volunteers’ reaction to it. The subjects’ responses to the anxiety-provoking elements subsequently determined whether they’d continue the fearful descent or pull out of it into a more positive resolution.

  Ida was one of the few volunteers who dropped out of our research after the non-blind low dose.

  Thirty-nine years old when she volunteered for the DMT studies, Ida met my former wife at a woman’s spirituality workshop in Albuquerque. She had three children and had been unhappily married for nearly most of her adult life. She had a dry sense of humor that seemed to hide a great deal of anger and resentment. It was difficult to relax around her because it wasn’t easy to tell if she was laughing with you or at you.

  She was interested in the DMT research because of her fascination with shamanism. She had taken LSD and psilocybin mushrooms about twenty times in her life, but not once since beginning to raise her family nearly two decades previously.

  Walking into Room 531 the afternoon of Ida’s non-blind low dose, I was surprised to see her sitting on her bed reading a New Yorker magazine. This was the first and only time a volunteer ever prepared themselves for their first DMT session in this way. She looked nervous.

  She continued riffling through pages as I gave her my orientation. There was an uneasy tension in the room, and I found myself stuttering my way through my usual speech, which alerted me sooner than did my conscious mind to Ida’s intense anxiety.

  At 4 minutes after the injection her eyes opened briefly. She looked at me, then quickly looked away. A minute later, she began,

  I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the feeling. My head got real hot. I was out of my body. It was hard to breathe.

  “It’s pretty quick, isn’t it?”

  For you maybe.

  “I mean the onset. Did it seem to last a long time?”

  I was waiting for it to get over with immediately after I started feeling it. I felt the effects while the flush was going in. I couldn’t have moved if you’d asked me to. I looked down at my feet and didn’t recognize them as my own. It was scary, and I didn’t feel safe.

  There was no way I could give Ida eight times this dose tomorrow.

  “Some people just don’t like the drug, you know.”

  I hated it.

  “Let’s call it a day, and chalk it up to experience. No need to press our luck.”

  Okay.

  The kitchen brought her an awful lunch. Mystery-meat tacos. A fitting end to a difficult session.

  I called Ida that night. She felt fine, but confirmed her desire never to take DMT again.

  For some volunteers, their high-dose experiences were powerfully unsettling, and several research subjects dropped out after these sessions. Ken was one of these.

  Twenty-three years old, Ken had been in Albuquerque only a few months before embarking on our research project. Sporting long, permed hair and a flashy motorcycle, he was one of our more flamboyant volunteers. He moved to New Mexico to obtain training at one of the alternative health colleges, having dropped out of another university because of “feeling like a sheep.”

  He had taken MDMA quite often and admitted to having problems limiting his use. He enjoyed the “fun, celebration, love, bonding, depth, and spirituality” it provided. Curiously, he neglected to answer the druguse questionnaire on the typical psychedelic drugs. I didn’t notice that until after he had dropped out of the studies. If I had, it may have alerted me to some misgivings about his experiences on these more powerful drugs.

  There was something just a little unsettling about Ken. He seemed ever so slightly “too cool” and “New Age,” and Laura and I both wondered about his shadow side. Where were his edges, his anger, and his boundaries? What really made him tick? He seemed to be flitting through life rather than really taking it in. In retrospect, naturally, this seems to have been the basis for his subsequent difficulties, but there was little way we could have truly predicted his negative response to DMT.

  Ken’s low 0.05 mg/kg DMT dose went without difficulty.

  It’s a little calming and energizing, like MDMA. There were a few colors. It was pleasant. I wonder how the big dose will be tomorrow.

  I wasn’t sure how he’d hold up the next day, either. In my mind, MDMA is a mild drug. People who prefer it to the typical psychedelics tend not to do well when stressed, either by life or by taking more potent mind-bending drugs. MDMA is what I like to call a “love and light” drug, one that accentuates the positive and minimizes the negative. If only
life were so simple.

  Ken wore baggy, tie-dyed thin cotton pants the next day and a wild psychedelic T-shirt. The nurses at the front desk commented on how cute he was.

  His breath seemed to catch in his throat as the flush cleared whatever remained of the high dose of DMT from his IV line. Based upon Philip’s and other volunteers’ reactions to high doses of DMT, this small choking sound almost always was a sign of a powerful effect. Ken’s head rocked back and forth, and his feet, involuntarily it seemed, flopped up and down on the bed, as if to discharge the excessive tension he felt.

  He settled down at about the 5-minute point, but grimaced and shook his head. Within a couple more minutes he took off his eyeshades and stared straight ahead. His pupils remained large, so Laura and I sat quietly, waiting for him to come down further. At 14 minutes, looking shaken but keeping some composure, he started,

  There were two crocodiles. On my chest. Crushing me, raping me anally. I didn’t know if I would survive. At first I thought I was dreaming, having a nightmare. Then I realized it was really happening.

  I was glad he didn’t have the rectal probe in place, this being a screening day.

  Tears formed in his eyes, but stayed there.

  “It sounds awful.”

  It was awful. It’s the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. I wanted to ask to hold your hands, but I was pinned so firmly I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t speak. Jesus!

  His experience was over, so there was little advice we could give about letting go, or trying to get past his reptilian assailants. He had been stuck, and the most we could do was try and help him accept, and maybe even learn something from, his session.

  “What do you make of it?”

  I haven’t the slightest idea. It was as if I were being punished.

  He looked directly at me and asked:

  Will future doses be this big? I don’t think I could do this much again.

  Ken lay on the bed quietly, absorbing what had just happened to him. He didn’t want to talk much, but answered the rating scale without too much difficulty. He was calmer and more composed after eating breakfast.

  I reentered Room 531 after completing my notes in his chart. He looked refreshed and was waiting for me before leaving the hospital.

  “How are you feeling now?”

  I don’t think this is the drug for me. I prefer the mellowness of MDMA. This is too hard and intense.

  “That’s fine. There are other big experiences in store for you in this study. It’s a good idea to stop now.”

  I continued to wonder about the content of his horrific encounter: “Do you have any idea why crocodiles came up for you?”

  Not really. I like reptiles; I used to own a pet iguana.

  He laughed,

  Maybe it’s some sort of Egyptian past-life experience.

  We stayed in touch with Ken, although he soon left Albuquerque and moved to California. His reaction had been so traumatic that I was concerned he might have some permanent psychological damage. We wondered if perhaps he had been sexually molested as a child. He did not recall any such episodes, so this remains speculation.

  In a way, Ken’s session scared him straight. His reptile rape had become a bad memory, one that he rarely thought about, but whose effects continued to ripple outward. He stopped taking any psychoactives, including MDMA, and cut back significantly on his marijuana use. He found work at an herb store and was living with his girlfriend. It could have been a lot worse for him.

  It’s easy, with hindsight, to relate Ken’s negative entity-contact experience on a high dose of DMT to his habit of fending off any dark, shadowy aspects of himself. His psychological defenses were just too weak to function under the spirit molecule’s powerful influence.

  While earth-shattering high-dose DMT sessions could turn and stay dark and menacing, some volunteers did a remarkable job of turning them around. For example, Andrea was terrified when the spirit molecule pulled her toward a near-death experience. However, she used her initial fear as a catalyst for some important personal work.

  Andrea was thirty-three years old and lived north of Santa Fe with her husband and two children. They were software developers and were quite familiar with mind-altering drugs. She had taken psychedelics over one hundred times and had used a lot of cocaine and methamphetamine several years previously.

  As a child Andrea began experiencing what we call “sleep paralysis” and “hypnagogic hallucinations.” Upon drifting asleep, she would be unable to move and would see brief, frightening visual scenes. Her mother, a strict Catholic, told her it was Satan coming to torture her and that she should pray to Jesus for protection. These frightening experiences continued even now, although rarely.

  This inability to comfortably drop into the sleep state worried her when she thought of taking DMT at the Research Center. Perhaps she wouldn’t be able to completely relax into the rush of effects. She thought she might have a near-death experience on DMT and wondered about her ability to give up awareness of her body.

  Despite her concerns, Andrea enjoyed her low dose. She summed up her feelings with her first words:

  That was fun!

  The next day she began by saying, “I woke up this morning with a momentary fear. Then I thought that since things had been so easy yesterday, things would be fine this morning.”

  For some reason I placed the “emergency kit”—Valium for panic and nitroglycerin pills for severe high blood pressure—on the blood pressure machine. I couldn’t remember when I had ever done that before a highdose session.

  Andrea coughed before I had half-finished the DMT injection.

  She sighed deeply a time or two while the flush was going in.

  She then bellowed,

  NO! NO! NO!

  For the next minute, she cried,

  No! No! No!

  Andrea’s legs kicked and flailed. Her husband rested his hand on her leg, gently patting and massaging her. I placed my hand on her other foot.

  At 2 minutes she was sighing, no longer screaming, and seemed to be settling down a little.

  I said, “You’re doing fine. Just breathe.”

  She replied softly,

  Okay.

  I noticed tears forming under her eyeshades at about 4 minutes.

  “You can cry.”

  She began sobbing, continued for about five minutes, and then started relaxing a little.

  Did I scream?

  “A couple of times.”

  I thought so. It was hard to let go.

  “There’s a lot of feelings in there.”

  She laughed quietly,

  I volunteered for this, right?

  “Yes, I have your informed consent at home.”

  I never really left my body. I fought it all the way. I thought I was going to die. I didn’t want to die. I was afraid. I realized that I had a body for a reason and that I have work to do in this body.

  Andrea now turned her fear into a challenge, rather than a defeat.

  When I was coming down, I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to do this again, but now I think I do. I don’t think it will be as scary next time. It was death. I saw myself in that void, the void. It was just black, just too much. I’ve never had anything like that happen before. On LSD and mushrooms you can build up to things and you are still in your body and you can move in and out of it. With this you have no choice. I was just totally unprepared and startled and scared.

  When I returned to the front desk to work on Andrea’s chart, several of the ward nurses asked if everything was all right. They were alarmed by the screams coming out of Room 531.

  “She got off to a rough start, but she’s fine now.”

  Andrea looked pretty good at the 30-minute point, and she filled out her rating scale. Within an hour she was eating breakfast. How amazing the speed with which DMT hurls us through the abyss and then returns us!

  When we spoke by phone a day later, she said, “Things I want to do with my life before I die are
more clearly defined now. I’m not ready to go yet. We had originally moved to New Mexico so I could go to college, particularly in bodywork. I got discouraged and never followed through. My life is finite, though, and if I am to go to school, this is the time to do it.”

  Andrea returned for the tolerance project the next month.

  Before getting started, I steered her toward her fear.

  “Are you afraid of being unconscious? If so, it’s all right to black out. You can just pass out. Go for it. You can lose your mind, you will get it back, it’ll be all right. Four doses of DMT will wear you down today. Hopefully, you’ll just give up without too much pain and fear.”

  “I’m just worried about where I will go. Will I be all right?”

  She let out a brief muffled cry as the first 0.3 mg/kg dose went in. However, anticipating this, her husband, Laura, and I quickly responded by placing our hands on her arms and legs. She calmed quickly, and throughout the morning she worked on developing the theme that had emerged on her first high dose: a fear of death related to the fear of how to live her life fully.

  As was the case with so many of our tolerance study volunteers, Andrea broke through into an ecstatic resolution of her anxiety and confusion during her fourth session.

  Eighteen minutes into this session, she said,

  That was a real gift, this last one. I was in such angst and pain for the first doses, especially the third one, and I thought, “Oh God, am I going to do this again in this last dose?” and I thought, “Yes, I’ll do it again.” I just never gave up. And then it was easy.

  There was literally a flood of beings saying, “Okay, remember when you were young and idealistic and wanted to learn how to do bodywork?” There’s no reason I can’t do that now.

  When we spoke by phone later that week, she said, “I am really grateful for the experience. I really wanted to blow things out.5 It’s changed my perspective. It’s helped me refocus on my interest in healing work. There is so much I want to do.