The Spirit Molecule

In DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences by Rick Strassman provides insight into the U.S. Government-approved and funded clinical research he carried out at the University of New Mexico between 1990 and 1995. As part of this research, Strassman injected sixty volunteers with DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. His detailed account of those sessions is an extraordinarily riveting inquiry into the nature of the human mind and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. DMT, a plant-derived chemical found in the psychedelic Amazon brew, ayahuasca, is also manufactured by the human brain. In Strassman’s volunteers, DMT consistently produced near-death and mystical experiences. Many reported convincing encounters with intelligent nonhuman presences, aliens, angels, and spirits. Nearly all felt that the sessions were among the most profound experiences of their lives.

This is a severely underrated book on psychedelics. One of its most compelling features is Strassman’s plain telling of events. He describes his thought process while administering studies, his experiences of the participants’ DMT journeys, and provides the participants’ reports of their experiences in the first psychedelic studies done in over twenty years on humans in the United States. His work opened the doors for further work done on other psychedelic substances that are presently occurring. He also recounts his research on the pineal gland and its role in DMT production, his experiences doing research, how he came to conclude that DMT is the spirit molecule, and how his studies of Buddhism shaped his thinking.

What DMT is;

    DMT exists in all of our bodies and throughout plant and animal species but appears to be most abundant in plants of Latin America.

    Hungarian chemist and psychiatrist Stephen Szara learned to synthesize DMT in the 1950s and found that it had to be injected for it to work. Other researchers confirmed Szara’s research, but there’s very little detail given on the effects of DMT by anyone other than Szara. DMT research was just getting going when it, along with the other psychedelics, were banned in the 1970s.

    DMT is the simplest of the tryptamine psychedelics. It is also one of the smaller ones. It only weighs 188 'molecular units', meaning it is barely larger than glucose.

    DMT is closely related to serotonin, and it is one of the few essential molecules that are allowed to pass through the blood-brain barrier.

    Once the body produces or takes DMT, enzymes called monoamine oxidases (MAO) begin breaking it down. The highest concentrations of MAOs are in the blood, liver, stomach, brain, and intestines which explains why the DMT effects are so short-lived.

    What is DMT doing in our bodies? Strassman’s answer is 'because it is the spirit molecule'.

    A spirit molecule must reliably elicit psychological states we consider 'spiritual' and must lead us to spiritual realms. It is a tool.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/4ADhZLTL3P8



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