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Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: Dutch Pride on September 01, 2013, 09:39 pm

Title: DMT: Dr Rick Strassman Prelude...part3
Post by: Dutch Pride on September 01, 2013, 09:39 pm
He replied, "I did what?"

Forty-five minutes after the injection, drinking tea and no longer feeling any effects of the drug, he said he had no recollection of sitting up, looking at us, or touching Robin.

He and Robin drove 90 miles to his home later that day, and we spoke the following evening. He felt a little run down, but had slept very well. He had "more interesting than usual" dreams, although not particularly bizarre ones, which nevertheless, he could not remember. He worked 10 hours the next day, although "not at full steam." However, "Nobody but I would have noticed I was tired."

Amazingly, these are all the notes I have from that session and the next day's report. This is in great contrast to Philip's usually quite eloquent descriptions of his drug sessions. Maybe his getting through the session safely was the important information I really needed from him. After Philip's session, comfortable with his state and confident Robin could look after him, I walked out of the north end of University Hospital. I went through a hard-to-find door in this building, which has been added on to piecemeal for the last 30 years. An icy breeze whipped around my face, jolting me from my reverie. I squinted into the sun and sighed, exhausted from the morning's activities.

There were several explanations for why Nils and Philip had such poor recollection of their experiences. One possibility relates to what is known as "state specific memory." State specific memory refers to what happens when things perceived, felt, and thought in an "altered state of consciousness" are not accessible during the "normal" state. This occurs with drugs such as alcohol and marijuana, and prescription drugs like the sedatives, Valium or Xanax. It also occurs with non-drug altered states, such as hypnosis as in the so-called post-hypnotic suggestion, or in dreams.

Another possibility is that Nils and Philip may have suffered from a brief delirium, an "acute organic brain syndrome" or "acute confusional state." This term comes from the Latin, de, "from, or out of," and lira, "a furrow;" literally, "going out of the furrow," or "out of it." Delirium can be caused by overwhelming psychological stress, or physical factors such as fever, lack of oxygen, drugs, or low blood sugar.

I was unsure how much "psychological stress" contributed to Nils' and Philip's brief episodes of confusion, or "deliria," early on in their sessions. How much was a "reaction" to the drug's effects, rather than a direct effect of the drug itself? That is, climbing a ladder to view a scene of unimaginable shock value might throw one into a delirious or confused state, but it is not the ladder, rather the view the ladder provided, that's responsible. Was what Nils and Philip saw so bizarre, so incomprehensible, so utterly aberrant, that the lights just went out to spare them the shock of seeing clearly what was there? Sadly (or perhaps not) they nor we may never know. In either case, too much drug or too much experience, whatever 0.6 mg/kg IV DMT did to these two seasoned psychedelic veterans, it was "too much."

Philip went on to develop a month or two of "flashback"-like symptoms from his 0.6 mg/kg experience. These will be discussed in the chapter on adverse effects, which will cover the topic in general, and describe what we have seen in our own work. We stayed in close contact during this time, both by phone and in person. He referred to his 0.6 mg/kg session as "a cosmic blow torch... a tempest of color, bewildering, like I was thrown overboard into a storm and spinning out of control, being tossed like a cork."

Driving the 40 minutes to our home in the mountains outside of Albuquerque that night, I had time to think. I was glad that both these intrepid volunteers had come out the other side of their 0.6 mg/kg sessions intact. But, I also thought, "What was the point of giving doses of DMT that didn't lay down any accessible memories?"

Professor Nichols and I again discussed DMT dose. What should be a lower "high" dose? A 0.5 mg/kg dose would only be one-sixth less, while a 0.4 mg/kg dose would be a full one- third less. It was hard to decide. I had several conflicting motivations. One of these was a desire that volunteers "got enough," so as to make their participation worthwhile, in what I was concerned might be an overly demanding study. On the other hand, I did not want to have volunteers' "minds blown" from too much DMT. "First of all, do no harm" is the overriding dictum for medicine in general, and for research with humans even more so. Having a group of psychically damaged volunteers was not an option.

Sobered by Philip's and Nils' 0.6 mg/kg sessions, I decided to make 0.4 mg/kg our top dose of DMT for future studies.

Later in the month, I had the opportunity to speak by phone with Dr. Stephen Szara, the Hungarian psychiatrist and chemist who was the first person to inject himself with intramuscular DMT, having found that it was inactive orally. This took place in Budapest in the mid- 1950s. Soon thereafter, Dr. Szara immigrated to the US, where he embarked upon a successful 30-year research and administrative career at the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

I asked Dr. Szara, "Did you ever give too much DMT to your volunteers?"

He thought for a moment, and answered in his thick East European accent, "Yes. They could not remember anything. They could not bring back memories of the experience. We did not believe it worthwhile administering those kinds of doses."

After administering 0.4 mg/kg IV DMT to 56 volunteers over 100 times, I have seen that there is an extra-ordinarily wide range of sensitivity to this dose of DMT. A few have said, "I could have done more." However, there also have been those who said they would have dropped out if the dose were any higher. And some, even at this lower dose, could not remember what happened at the peak effects. I am glad we decided to perhaps "under-dose" some, rather than "over- dose" any more people, as we did Philip and Nils.

Lastly, while driving over the winding mountain roads home, I was struck by several themes that appeared in Nils' and Philip's accounts. These were to be repeated many times over by our volunteers, and serve to inspire much speculation about what happens on high doses of DMT. While in this article, I'm not enthusiastic about numbering items, there are many but discrete topics that were raised by their sessions that day.

1) The "inhabited" nature of the DMT realms. Who or what do our volunteers encounter? Where do "they" reside and what is their nature? How do we address what they "say," or "tell" us? Are they figments of the "imagination" or do they represent denizens of independent, free- standing "alternative" realities?

2) The near-death, or death theme. How is it that people believe they have died, or are near death, on a high dose of DMT? Is this indeed a foretelling of the state encountered at the time or death? Or is it a so-called "near-death experience," whose relevance to actual death is hotly debated?

I have proposed that the pineal gland might produce DMT and other tryptamines at the time of death. If this were the case, might a "dry-run," using "outside administered" DMT, the same compound released at the time of death, provide practice for those either dying, or interested in the dying process?

3) The religious/spiritual nature of the experience. Near- death states share much with mystical/religious experiences. These, then share much with high-dose psychedelic sessions. My years of practice and study with a Buddhist contemplative organization inspired and helped shape my thinking about our DMT work. Now that these sorts of experiences were being had by our volunteers, how would the "rubber meet the road"?

Many senior students had shared with me the importance of their own psychedelic experiences in prompting their pursuit of the monastic, meditative life. Could those same leaders of an organized religion, albeit one based upon mystical consciousness, absorb and hold experiences that traditionally were brought on by what are disparingly referred to as "intoxicants," or the "wine of delusion."

On the other hand, could these drugs be used to help religious practitioners? Or, could they hurt the progress of those practitioners? If these drugs are to be used "religiously," how is the best way to do so?

4) The element of fear that accompanied both of our courageous volunteers' initial entrance to the DMT state. The sudden, unexpected, unpreparable, and totally compelling nature of the shift from normal reality to that of DMT is the "acid test" of one's ability to let go. People's inability to manage this transition seems to be the major ingredient in the development of adverse reaction, to both DMT, and later on, we would find, to psilocybin.

5) My motivations for giving DMT. Was this another example of "research is me-search"? In retrospect, I ought to have given a lower dose than 0.6 mg/kg. We could have gone to 0.4 mg/kg, and then if that weren't "enough," 0.5 or 0.6, depending on how close to "enough" we had gotten. However, as alluded to, there were many conflicting feelings driving my decisions to give 0.6, and as time went on, many more issues involving my relationships to our volunteers emerged. In general, I wondered if I were up to the challenge. Was Pandora's box opened? Should it have been kept shut? Were there greedy and manipulative motives conflicting with altruistic and helpful ones? What effect did giving so much DMT to so many people have on me: personally, psychologically, professionally, spiritually? How did it impact my family?

6) The model. While scientific data collection was the sine qua non of this research, how did this model affect our volunteers? What are other competing models? Is "psychedelic research" an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms? Along these lines, who should give psychedelics, and how should they be trained and monitored? Should people have their own experiences if they administer the drugs?

7) Are these drugs good or bad? That is, what is the real benefit to risk ratio? Were more people helped more than they were hurt? Who was helped, and who was hurt? How are these terms even defined? Could we predict who had what type of response?

How important is set and setting? If these drugs have inherent utility, is just sitting around quietly enough? How much preparation, guidance, and supervision should be provided? If "stacking the deck" in favor of a particular type of reaction is to be encouraged, how then does the role of the drug itself take shape? Do you even need a drug?

This was not easy work. Neither was it ever straight-forward or conflict-free. Three years have elapsed since we left New Mexico, and this research ended. Even with that much time, answers to questions raised by this project are not yet as in-focus as I wish they were. However, the questions are becoming clearer. It is only by asking the right questions that the debate surrounding psychedelics can be enlarged adequately enough for us to find the best answers. In introducing MAPS readers to my book-in-progress, DMT: The Spirit Molecule, I hope a sense of the multitude of feelings: excitement and anxiety, discovery and responsibility, awe and confusion, surrounding our DMT research is at least partially conveyed. ยท