It took Strassman two long years to secure permission to carry out DMT studies with humans (experienced psychedelic users were utilized, as this was deemed more ethical). Indeed, this magnitude of effort probably explains the current lack of human-based hallucinogen research. A look at Strassman’s struggle reveals the horrendous bureaucratic forces (a kind of lingering cultural symptom of the 1960s) that face the potential psychedelic researcher. Strassman had to get permission from all sorts of official bodies, such as the formidable Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), not to mention the numerous ethical bodies that serve to monitor human-based experimentation.
Two years of uphill struggle and Strassman finally acquired all the necessary permission to perform a DMT study. The remarkable results were subsequently published in reputable but specialized scientific journals, a bit like planting the seeds of a new paradigm underground. Perhaps the most interesting finding concerned the subjects’ reports on what the (intravenously injected) DMT experience was like. As with psilocybin, the effects of DMT warrant our attention if we are interested in the latent potential of human consciousness to transcend “normal” reality. In Strassman’s own words:
Several aspects of DMT’s effects are interesting. The rapidity of onset is quite remarkable; nearly instantaneous when given intravenously. Also the short duration is remarkable; people are quite over the inebriation within 20 to 25 minutes. Many people describe an “intelligence” within the DMT state, which is either just “felt” or “sensed” and sometimes actually “seen” with the mind’s eye. People often lose insight into their participation in a drug study for several minutes, forgetting how they got into the mental state they find themselves so suddenly thrust into.{23}
As with its close structural relative psilocybin (molecules of these two compounds are only a few atoms different from one another), subjects reported that the DMT experience felt more real than normal reality. Indeed, it is presumably this novel reality encountered through DMT, especially with regard to the perceived contact with an “intelligent Other,” that has led to the use of DMT-containing plants by Amazonian shamans. As already noted, shamans consistently claim that their DMT-containing concoctions put them in direct contact with a transcendental dimension infused with intentionality. What makes this even more intriguing is that Western DMT users report similar experiences. Consider this lucid report from author Daniel Pinchbeck, author of
I had the sense of floating through a fractal tapestry, a curving and unfolding plane of synthetic, plastic, fantastic whiteness and gleaming colors in endless vibrant hues. This extradimensional realm I had pitched into was made, I felt certain, of data, of quantum equations, visible shamanic harmonics, and the self-weaving fabric of extradimensional superconsciousness…. There was, in that place, rushing toward me, an overwhelming force of knowledge and sentience. I knew it was impossible that my mind, on any level, had created what I was seeing. This was no mental projection. This was not a structure within the brain that the drug had somehow tapped into. It was a non-human reality existing at a deeper level than the physical world.{24}
Clearly the chemistry of the brain is indubitably bound with consciousness. Both are mutable. Moreover, certain realms of consciousness can be generated in which, as Pinchbeck forcibly attests, a seemingly autonomous intelligence is apprehended. If ever there was a “hard” approach to spirituality, this is it.
Although the study of mystical experiences and neurochemistry might seem like compelling science, the fact of the matter is that most scientists exercise great caution when it comes to explaining, in scientific terms, something as precious and as guarded as the mystical experience. Those who tend to police communion with the divine, like religious leaders for instance, are quick to react when scientists attempt to reduce an epiphany to neurochemical events occurring in the brain. Indeed, recall the reaction to Walter Pahnke’s findings in the 1960s at Harvard. Many religious authorities felt their toes being stepped on, and Pahnke was refused further funding. Yet science, with its inevitable expanding interest in the nature of human consciousness, is surely mature enough to take on the issue, and it thus remains to be seen what science can teach us about the potentialities and extraordinary capacities of the human brain/mind.
Again, I hasten to add that science is not the only valid approach to studying altered states of consciousness. As I have repeatedly implied, direct self-experimentation according to one’s own terms and at one’s own risk is also an option. At the end of the day, data is needed. From data we can derive theories. Because all entheogenic experiences carry data, we should not be in a rush to dismiss any self-report, whether garnered from a native shaman, an official study subject, or an independent researcher.
Does the Brain Recognize DMT?
There was another finding by Strassman that proved provocative. Strassman found that the human brain does not develop tolerance to DMT. Whereas the brain normally develops tolerance to psychoactive chemicals (repeated use means you need to use more to get the same experience), Strassman found that tolerance does not develop to the repeated administration of DMT. This suggests that, in the “normal” brain, DMT has some kind of
Strassman also recognized a new clinical use for DMT. He was able to administer DMT every half hour to his subjects, and after each session he was able to discuss their experiences. He found that the subjects’ “psychological resistances” gradually wore down through these sessions, suggesting that DMT has therapeutic potential. Indeed, as DMT is only active for thirty minutes, it has an advantage over therapeutic drugs whose effects last much longer and that require more in the way of supervision from the therapist.
So What Does It All Mean?
Although the therapeutic application of entheogens seems apparent, it’s less clear how these substances work and how we might address the various implications of their uncanny effects. At the very least, psychedelics alter consciousness in a dramatic fashion, and at the most extreme, as we have repeatedly seen, such substances can elicit a transcendental experience in which one apparently communes with an intelligence of some kind. Unsurprisingly, there is a popular belief among many of today’s psychedelic researchers that the very origin of humankind’s religious impulse is bound with our ancestors’ discovery of entheogenic fungi, a notion that, as you may recall, was first introduced by R. Gordon Wasson. Professor David Nichols, president of the Heffter Research Institute, puts it this way:
One can imagine an early hominid accidentally ingesting a psychedelic mushroom while foraging for edible foodstuffs. Knowledge of these drugs was handed down through the generations and led to the creation of rituals around their use. We have the hymns written to
