overview of DMT research; new DMT virus?!?

[rxbandit]

*just look at the highlighted part if you dont have time to read this, thankyou.

Dr. Rick Strassman on DMT, and the Clinical Model Needed to Explore Psychedelics.

[It is a great honor for me to host as a guest columnist on Non-Prophet, Dr. Rick Strassman. In 1990, he began the first new human research with psychedelic, or hallucinogenic, drugs in the United States in over 20 years. These studies investigated the effects of N,N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, an extremely short-acting and powerful psychedelic. During the project's five years, he administered approximately 400 doses of DMT to 60 human volunteers. This research took place at the University of New Mexico's School of Medicine in Albuquerque, where he was tenured Associate Professor of Psychiatry. Please check out his book, DMT:The Spirit Molecule and his website. As always, this forum is built around discussion, and you are encouraged to participate.]


N,N-dimethyltryptamine, abbreviated DMT or N,N-DMT, is a molecule with powerful psychedelic properties. From a chemical structure point of view, it is the simplest of known psychedelics, and is extremely common in the plant and animal kingdoms. DMT formation takes place in human brain, lung, and red blood cells. The gene that synthesizes DMT in humans has been isolated, cloned, and inserted into a virus. Cells in a test tube infected with this virus produce DMT.
We gave a small number of psychedelic drug-experienced, healthy human volunteers DMT in the early- to mid- 1990’s in order to better characterize the effect of this intriguing compound. These were government-approved studies performed with both federal, state, and private funds at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
DMT fairly reliably induced in our volunteers a profoundly altered state of consciousness in which took place a seeming separation of mind from body. Volunteers also reported experiences that share features with mystical and near-death states. Many described the sense of contact with beings variously described as sentient, with whom they communicated. A few described scenes from what they believed was the future; in other words, prophetic visions.
We stopped this research in 1995 for several reasons. They are too complicated to describe here, but I lay them out in detail in my book.

Material/Spiritual Nature of DMT
DMT exerts particular effects on the brain and hormone-producing endocrine glands. Serotonin receptors are a key locus for DMT’s biological/pharmacological effects. These modifications of brain function are associated with the radical changes in subjective experience brought on by this compound.
I have gradually come to favor a primarily spiritual explanation of DMT’s effects. This model is wedded to the material, but not limited to it. That is, DMT changes brain function in such a manner that we can apprehend previously unperceived phenomena. For lack of a better term, we usually call these phenomena spiritual—they include all the “sense” modalities in which we “hear” and “see” in those states. We also perceive new mental forms taking shape as memories, associations, feelings, and insights.
I consider DMT’s role much like that of silicon in a computer chip. It is the physical agent that exists in order to effect the transfer of a particular type of information, in this case across the subjective-objective divide. The fact that DMT is taken up by the brain across the usually impenetrable blood-brain-barrier adds support to a theory suggesting its fundamental role in consciousness.
How to gauge the legitimacy of the information experienced under the influence of DMT? This relates to the legitimacy of any subjective experience, and ultimately leads us to issues regarding truly prophetic versus falsely prophetic experiences.
The evolutionary significance of DMT’s ubiquity deserves some thought. Much of eschatological literature describes a seemingly non-material state that occurs after death, or for all of us, at “the end of time.” Might DMT be involved in some type of transition that occurs either in each or all of us?

What Model to Use?
Our clinical research model was intrusive, based as it is on the participant providing the researcher data. A purely psychopharmacological/brain function model also limits the discussion of psychedelics’ effects and mechanisms of action to materially quantifiable objects, even those measured with highly sophisticated tools. Psychotherapeutic models broaden the scope of allowable discourse by adding to it objects such as the mind and the unconscious. Spiritual world views include even more abundant constructs, and can contain more of the experienced phenomena. However, they often limit the discussion to “allowable” categories in much the same way as a primarily materialist model can. A shamanic model of psychedelic states and their use, while attractive, lacks an established tradition in post-industrialized cultures.
We need to develop a new model, based on the best of each of these systems—taking into account how best to understand and apply psychedelics’ effects on our bodies, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Then, perhaps, we can realize more of their potential for growth.