Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is perhaps the strongest hallucinogen in the world today. It is found in many plants, such as girbola and mimosa as it is also part of the ayahuasca drink of South American shamans, designed to introduce fellow tribesmen into a special mental state.
In its structure, this molecule is close to serotonin, often called the “happiness hormone”. It binds to the same receptor. In 1999, Michael Thompson and his colleagues from the USA identified the gene encoding the synthesis of an enzyme that converts the tryptamine amino acid to dimethyltryptamine.
DMT, like alcohol, is endogenous; is produced in the body of humans and other mammals, and therefore, a priori, it must have some important physiological functions. It has been found that the pineal gland (a gland in the brain that releases melatonin to regulate sleep and wakefulness) is responsible for producing this chemical, and DMT appears to be responsible for REM dream production.
DMT causes the brightest visual and auditory hallucinations. There is a distortion of the sense of time, space and sense of reality. A trip while taking DMT is an unusual spectacle in terms of the power of sensations. In this case, regardless of the method of administration, the effect reaches its maximum approximately five minutes after administration and lasts no more than half an hour.
For DMT, no negative effect on the genetic apparatus was found, no general toxic effects on the body were determined, there was no increase in tolerance, withdrawal syndrome, and other phenomena characteristic of substances belonging to the narcotic class. Of course, this may be due to the fact that science simply did not have time to reveal such phenomena, since research on DMT, however, like LSD, was banned back in the middle of the 20th century.
Terence McKenna, an ethnobotanist, philosopher, and proponent of the “responsible use” of herbal psychedelics, describes the sensations that arise from taking this substance:
“Under the influence of DMT, the world becomes a labyrinth, a palace, some kind of more than possible Martian treasure, filled with motives that flood the astonished mind, inexpressible delight. The color and feeling of a mystery that reveals reality literally permeates the entire experience. There is a feeling of other times, as well as one’s own childhood, a miracle, a miracle, and again a miracle.” McKenna’s work refers to encounters with mini-beings that he associates with elves: “There are many mini-entities here – babies, self-forming mechanical elves of hyperspace.”
It is interesting that even Carl Jung in his work “Psychology and Alchemy” mentions magical archetypes-symbols present in very ancient unconscious memories of mankind, some alchemical entities, whose appearance is present at the final stage of alchemical creation. The most striking thing is that the meeting with mini-entities is a specific feature of the DMT trip, literally some kind of its calling card.
In 2020, Alan Davies and colleagues conducted a study [184], which included 2561 respondents who took DMT. Among the respondents, such characteristics of these objects as “creature”, “spirit”, “alien”, “assistant”, “guide from a parallel reality” were most often encountered. 96% of individuals experienced visual hallucinations, 54% auditory and 35% tactile hallucinations. Olfactory and gustatory hallucinations occurred in less than 10% of cases. 84% of people described their experience of communicating with these entities as psychic, including characterizing it with the word “telepathic”.
At the same time, the most common emotions that respondents experienced in the process of contact were kindness, love, and joy. And only less than 5% of individuals characterized this experience as negative. In the process of communication, according to the “psychonauts”, 69% of them received some kind of message, and 29% received a prediction of the future. 80% are convinced that this experience has changed their worldview.
Interestingly, more than 50% of respondents who were previously atheists or agnostics changed their minds after contact with other entities. More than half are convinced that this experience was one of the five most important or even the only significant event in their lives. It should be noted that people who experienced clinical death and had never taken narcotic drugs had similar visions, sensations and experiences.
This is consistent with the data of an experiment in which an increase in the level of DMT was recorded in rats after cardiac arrest. In the same study, the researchers set out to test the hypothesis that the pineal gland is not the only organ capable of producing DMT. An increase in its level was found both with intact and with previously removed pineal gland.
In recent years, a number of works have appeared on the study of DMT as a means of ensuring the processes of regeneration of nervous tissue, and for a long time there was a paradigm in neurology, according to which nerve cells are not able to recover at all.
A Spanish team of scientists has identified a stimulating effect of DMT on the reproduction and migration of progenitor cells of hippocampal neurons. It turned out that three weeks after the injection, new nerve cells appeared in laboratory mice. The growth of glial cells – astrocytes and oligonendrocytes – was also noted. At the same time, in the course of special tests to assess memory function, the animals showed better results than before the administration of the drug. Moreover, if the serotonin receptors were blocked, the use of DMT did not cause hallucinations.
At present, the use of DMT as a means for the treatment and prevention of lesions of the central nervous system in humans is seen as very promising. Atilla Szabo from the University of Oslo and his colleagues, in particular, found an increase in the survival of neurons in the cerebral cortex, dendritic cells and macrophages under conditions of ten-hour hypoxia.
Already today, the huge potential of this substance in the treatment of ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes, senile dementia, neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, is becoming obvious.
DMT research should and will be actively continued, and it is possible that very soon medicine will receive new effective, safe pharmaceutical preparations based on it. However, this psychedelic, thanks to its still unknown mechanisms and effects, manifested in a change in the sensation and perception of reality, can reveal many secrets that are still hidden from human consciousness, in particular, the existence of parallel universes and obtaining keys to access them.
