6. We do not know if the opening in the skull, the fontanel, which is located directly above the infant’s pineal, allows enough light in to affect the gland.
7. Aaron B. Lerner, James D. Case, Yoshiyata Takahashi, Teh H. Lee, and Wataru Mori, “Isolation of Melatonin, the Pineal Gland Factor That Lightens Melanocytes,” Journal of the American Chemical Society 30 (1958): 2587.
8. F. Karsch, E. Bittman, D. Foster, R. Goodman, S. Legan, and J. Robinson, “Neuroendocrine Basis of Seasonal Reproduction,” Recent Progress in Hormone Research 40 (1984): 185–232.
9. The pineal gland becomes full of calcium as we age. The calcified gland is an excellent marker for the mid-line of the brain in skull X-rays and CAT scans. However, little of this calcium collects in the melatonin-producing cells. While melatonin levels do drop as we age, this is independent of the level of pineal calcification.
10. Rick J. Strassman, Clifford R. Qualls, E. Jonathan Lisansky, and Glenn T. Peake, “Elevated Rectal Temperature Produced by All-Night Bright Light Is Reversed by Melatonin Infusion in Men,” Journal of Applied Physiology 71 (1991): 2178–82.
Early morning also is when we are most likely to be in dream sleep, and some studies suggested that large doses of melatonin enhanced dreaming. We were unable to examine this in our experiments because subjects needed to stay awake with eyes open for light to suppress melatonin. If melatonin did stimulate dream sleep, we would have expected less vivid dreams in volunteers whose melatonin production was inhibited. Interestingly, drugs that suppress nighttime melatonin formation increase, rather than decrease, dreams.
Chapter 4
1. While DMT may be involved in both spiritual and psychotic experiences, it is important to distinguish between them. There is some overlap between spiritual experiences and psychosis; for example, the thrilling sense of imminence, heightened visual and auditory perceptions, and a change in the passage of time.
Usually, however, mystical experiences result from a mature and conscious effort toward obtaining them. The practitioner seeks them out, there is an intellectual and moral context supporting and encouraging them, and their expression is socially sanctioned and acceptable.
On the other hand, symptoms of schizophrenia most often are unexpected, unwelcome, and occur in those with prior behavioral and emotional problems. There is little social support for the experiences, and both the individual and his/her associates wish they would go away.
Just as is the case in our volunteers, set and setting have as much to do with the DMT experience as does the drug itself. How one adapts to the presence of naturally formed DMT in one’s life depends upon an even larger context of set and setting: who the person is, his or her experiences and expectations, how he or she interacts with and interprets the effects of DMT, and the social setting in which they occur.
2. Rick J. Strassman, Otto Appenzeller, Alfred J. Lewy, Clifford R. Qualls, and Glenn T. Peake, “Increase in Plasma Melatonin, beta-Endorphin, and Cortisol After a 28.5-Mile Mountain Race: Relationship to Performance and Lack of Effect of Naltrexone,” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 69 (1989): 540–45.
The runner’s “high” is not just a feeling of euphoria related to endorphin release. There also are sensory changes: shimmering and brightening of the visual field; a sense of body lightness, of almost floating off the ground; a feeling that time dramatically slows. All these effects also are reported by volunteers on a low dose of DMT. Maybe runners and our low-dose DMT volunteers are describing effects of the same biological event: excessive but not fully psychedelic brain levels of DMT. In runners’ cases, the massive surge of adrenaline and noradrenaline could stimulate pineal DMT production and cause a naturally occurring low-dose DMT experience. Unfortunately, we were unable to measure DMT at the point, and we could not test this hypothesis.
3. Robin M. Murray, Michael C. H. Oon, Richard Rodnight, James L. T. Birley, and Alan Smith, “Increased Excretion of Dimethyltryptamine and Certain Features of Psychosis. A Possible Association,” Archives of General Psychiatry 36 (1979): 644–49.
4. L. Bigelow, “Effects of Aqueous Pineal Extract on Chronic Schizophrenia,” Biological Psychiatry 8 (1974): 5–15.
5. Richard Jed Wyatt, J. Christian Gillin, Jonathan Kaplan, Richard Stillman, Lewis R. Mandel, H. S. Ahn, W. J. A. Vandenheuvel, and R. W. Walker, “N,N-Dimethyltryptamine—A Possible Relationship to Schizophrenia?” Advances in Biochemical Psychopharmacology 11 (1974): 299–313.
6. Jace Callaway, “A proposed mechanism for the visions of dream sleep,” Medical Hypotheses 26 (1988): 119–24.
7. Magnetic fields also may affect consciousness, as in the shifts of awareness one notices in particular geological sites or formations, so-called “power spots.” Recent studies describe magnetic fields affecting pineal function, in particular suppressing melatonin formation. These effects may redirect pineal energy and raw materials to make DMT instead.
I propose a relationship between DMT and alien abductions in another chapter. However, this is a good time to note that these experiences sometimes take place near high-intensity power lines, which produce powerful magnetic fields. In addition, alien encounters often occur at particular land locations, also suggesting magnetic field effects.
8. Jane Butterfield English, Different Doorway: Adventures of a Caesarean Born (Mt. Shasta, CA: Earth Heart, 1985).
Grof has developed a non-drug “psychedelic” therapy using prolonged hyperventilation. Thirty to 60 minutes of controlled overbreathing results in a highly altered state of consciousness that many compare to a high-dose psychedelic drug experience. Several profound metabolic effects result from this technique: blood chemistry becomes more alkaline, or basic; calcium levels drop; the blood-brain barrier becomes less effective; stress hormone levels rise dramatically. All of these may combine to activate rarely used DMT-synthetic pathways in the pineal. See Stanislav Grof, The Holotropic Mind (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993).
Chapter 5
1. Daniel X. Freedman, “On the Use and Abuse of LSD,” Archives of General Psychiatry 18 (1968): 330–47.
2. We did not collect these urine drug tests as a tool to screen out volunteers. Rather, we were interested in seeing if anyone testing positive had psychedelic experiences different from those of volunteers who were not using recreational drugs. There were only a handful of positive urines in our first study, and these volunteers’ data did not differ from those of volunteers with negative urines. In subsequent studies, therefore, we dropped these expensive tests.
3. We asked volunteers to guess which dose they got on each double-blind day. It was easy to tell which was the high dose. But it was intriguing to find out how difficult it was to tell the difference between the intermediates doses, 0.1 and 0.2 mg/kg. Even more surprisingly, many research subjects confused the low dose and saltwater placebo. Our rating scale turned out to be more accurate than the volunteers in ranking, from high to low, the dose received on any given day. That is, the questionnaire reliably showed that 0.2 mg/kg caused a larger psychological response than did 0.1, and 0.05 more than saltwater, even when volunteers’ hunches about the dose were wrong.
Chapter 6
1. Rick J. Strassman, “Human Hallucinogenic Drug Research in the United States: A Present- Day Case History and Review of the Process,” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 23 (1991): 29–38.
2. The salt form was necessary so the DMT would dissolve in water. It’s similar to cocaine—free base doesn’t dissolve in water, but various cocaine salts do.
Chapter 8
1. Gillin et al. (1976); and B. Kovacic and Edward F. Domino, “Tolerance and Limited Cross- Tolerance to the Effects of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and Lysergic Acid Diethylamide- 25 (LSD) on Food-Rewarded Bar Pressing in the Rat,” Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics 197 (1976): 495–502.
2. Rick J. Strassman, Clifford R. Qualls, and Laura M. Berg, “Differential Tolerance to Biological and Subjective Effects of Four Closely Spaced Doses of N,N-Dimet
hyltryptamine in Humans,” Biological Psychiatry 39 (1996): 784–95.
Chapter 9
1. The results of the dose-response study in which we characterized the effects of different amounts of DMT appeared in published form in 1994 in Dr. Freedman’s journal, the Archives of General Psychiatry. One paper described the biological data, the other psychological responses and the new rating scale. Freedman took special care to shepherd the articles through, demanding rewrite after rewrite. Sadly, he had been dead a year by the time the papers finally came out. He never had the opportunity to relish seeing a public written record of the fulfillment of his long-held dream: the resumption of human psychedelic research. See Rick J. Strassman and Clifford R. Qualls, “Dose-Response Study of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine in Humans. I: Neuroendocrine, Autonomic, and Cardiovascular Effects,” Archives of General Psychiatry 51 (1994): 85–97; and Rick J. Strassman, Clifford R. Qualls, Eberhard H. Uhlenhuth, and Robert Kellner, “Dose-Response Study of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine in Humans. II: Subjective Effects and Preliminary Results of a New Rating Scale,” Archives of General Psychiatry 51 (1994): 98–108.
Chapter 10
1. We must distinguish this classification from those data we obtained using the Hallucinogen Rating Scale. While I later describe the development and use of the HRS, it is worth mentioning now what the rating scale did measure, and how this differs from the groupings of experiences that are about to follow.
The mind was the object of the HRS, not the individual volunteer. The HRS provided numerical scores for various aspects of the acute DMT intoxication based upon a theoretical understanding of how the mind works. In this system, a handful of functions, including perception, emotion, body awareness, thinking, and habitual tendencies, blend together seamlessly, resulting in what we routinely experience as our present mental state.
The classes of effects I propose in this chapter, on the other hand, refer to the person’s experience, not just their mind’s. The acute effects themselves, of course, constitute that experience, but they do not give it any meaning. It is only within the context of the individual’s unique body, spirit, and mind that the sessions take on any real significance.
Chapter 11
1. This idea is a common one in people who use psychedelics for personal growth. It has to do with the purifying and relieving value of catharsis. A powerful, earth-shattering emotional experience might prove more useful than lengthy verbal analysis of the same conflict. In clinical practice, however, both methods of dealing with blocked emotional growth are necessary. Catharsis without any insight may not have much long-term benefit. But insight without emotional contact usually leads to little real progress.
Chapter 12
1. Chaco Canyon is a spectacular ruins site about three hours northwest of Albuquerque. The Anasazi Indians, probable precursors of the contemporary Pueblo tribes, inhabited it for centuries. From where the Anasazi came from, and to where they went upon abandoning this stone city in the mid-thirteenth century, remain two of the world’s greatest archeological mysteries. Their astronomical skills were extraordinarily sophisticated, and they supported themselves using irrigation and agricultural techniques that stagger the mind, considering the minimal rainfall with which they had to contend. Chaco Canyon weaves a compelling spell upon any who visit it, and many people make the pilgrimage with an almost mystical fervor.
2. Runes are an ancient Nordic divination tool, similar to the I Ching and the Tarot. Runes date from at least 1000 B.C. and use stones with symbols carved on them, rather than sticks or cards. Modern runes use twenty-five different symbols.
3. “Regular” in Spanish means “regular,” “normal,” “everyday.” The proper pronunciation accents the last syllable.
4. In classical Greek and neo-Platonic philosophy, the Logos is the cosmic reason giving order, purpose, and intelligence to the world.
5. Carlos Castaneda performed anthropology fieldwork in the Mexican desert, spending years with an Indian shaman, Don Juan Matus. Many of the scenes Castaneda describes begin as simple encounters with Don Juan and his friends, in settings similar to that which Sean described. See, for example, Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1998).
Chapter 13
1. Z. Boszormenyi and Stephen I. Szára, “Dimethyltryptamine Experiments with Psychotics,” Journal of Mental Science 104 (1958): 445–53.
2. Turner and Merlis (1959).
3. Gumby is a character from an American children’s television show from the late 1950s and early 1960s. Gumby was composed of a claylike substance molded over metal wire. This made it possible to bend him into all sorts of shapes, something kids loved doing with their own twelve-inch-tall Gumby. Gumby’s trusty sidekick was Pokey the horse. The animators bent and moved Gumby’s and Pokey’s clay bodies, then filmed them using time-lapse photography, thus giving the impression of movement.
Chapter 14
1. John E. Mack, Abduction (New York: Ballantine, 1994) and Passport to the Cosmos (New York: Crown, 1999).
Chapter 15
1. Raymond A. Moody, Life After Life (New York: Bantam Books, 1988); and Kenneth Ring, Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience (New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1980).
2. W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Book of the Dead (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974).
3. Rinpoche Sogyal, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992). This is a modern rendition of The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
4. Dannion Brinkley, Saved by the Light (New York: Harper, 1995); and Betty J. Eade, Embraced by the Light (New York: Bantam, 1994).
5. Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972); and Michael Harner, The Way of the Shaman (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990).
Chapter 16
1. Robert Master and Jean Houston, The Varieties of the Psychedelic Experience (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2000); William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Macmillan, 1997); and Robert Forte, ed., Entheogens and the Future of Religion (San Francisco: Council on Spiritual Practices, 1997).
Chapter 17
1. It may be a lack of just these considerations that underlies recent reports of adverse reactions in human ketamine research—see Anna Nidecker, “Alleged Abuses Accelerate Reform,” Clinical Psychiatry News 26 (1998): 1. That is, did the scientists know what they were doing? Had they taken ketamine themselves? How carefully did they control the setting in which their subjects received ketamine? What were their attitudes and responses toward the ketamine-induced state? Of course, it is just these variables that one must think about in reading reports of adverse effects from the first wave of human psychedelic drug research in the 1950s and 1960s.
2. F. Kajtor and Stephen Szára, “Electroencephalographic Changes Induced by Dimethyltryptamine in Normal Adults,” Confinia Neurologica 19 (1959): 52–61.
3. Sai-Halasz et al. (1958).
4. More recently, Doblin brought to light a highly stressful negative reaction to psilocybin in the famous Good Friday study. The original 1966 article (Walter N. Pahnke and William A. Richards, “Implications of LSD and Experimental Mysticism,” Journal of Religion and Health 5 (1966): 175–208) described mystical experiences brought on by psilocybin in Harvard Divinity School students. However, we heard nothing about the inebriated fellow whom research team members chased through campus, pinned against a door, and tranquilized with an injection of antipsychotic medication! See Rick Doblin, “The Good Friday Experiment: A Twenty-Five Year Follow-Up and Methodological Critique,” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 23 (1991): 1–28.
5. See endnote #1, chapter 11.
Chapter 19
1. The dose of psilocybin that Swiss and German research groups generally use, 0.2 mg/kg, is less than one-half the dose we found would bring on an unmistakable psychedelic response; that is, 0.45 mg/kg. While these groups have publis
hed their data as indicating “psychedelic effects of psilocybin,” I don’t think what they are studying is a typical syndrome. See E. Gouzoulis-Mayfrank, B. Thelen, E. Habermeyer, H. J. Kunert, K.-A. Kovar, H. Lindenblatt, L. Hermle, M. Spitzer, and H. Sass, “Psychopathological, Neuroendocrine and Autonomic Effects of 3,4-Methylenedioxyethylamphetamine (MDE), Psilocybin and d-Methamphetamine in Healthy Volunteers,” Psychopharmacology 142 (1999): 41–50; and F. X. Vollenweider, K. L. Leenders, C. Scharfetter, P. Maguire, O. Stadelmann, and J. Angst, “Positron Emission Tomography and Fluorodeoxyglucose Studies of Metabolic Hyperfrontality and Psychopathology in the Psilocybin Model of Psychosis,” Neuropsychopharmacology 16 (1997): 357–72.
We continued escalating the dose up until 1.1 mg/kg, at which point the two volunteers receiving that quantity felt it was “too much.” One became briefly disoriented, and the other experienced a sense of nearly overwhelming “mental pressure.” We were going to use 0.9 mg/kg as our high-end dose of psilocybin, more than four times the European “psychedelic dose,” before additional circumstances led to my leaving the university.
Chapter 20
1. Rick J. Strassman and Marc Galanter, “The Abhidharma: A Cross-Cultural Application of Meditation,” International Journal Social Psychiatry 26 (1980): 283–90.
2. This method is quite similar to what Freud called “evenly suspended attention” performed by a trained psychoanalyst. The analyst provides support through mostly silent but present sitting behind and off to the side of the patient’s couch. This type of unobtrusive listening and watching mirrors much of what takes place internally during Zen meditation.
3. For example, there are now Spanish, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, German, and Dutch translations of the HRS. Various research groups around the world have used it to measure the effects of ketamine, ayahuasca, amphetamines, psilocybin, and MDMA. A German research group has even measured certain features of naturally occurring psychosis with the HRS.
DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences Page 38