Dmt (Dimethyltryptamine)

[jeremyb]

Dimethyltryptamine is considered a drug and is illegal in many places (including the United States). What it does takes you out of reality completely and puts you in a different state of mind (subconscious dimension). It kinda acts like other hallucinates but with DMT you can't do anything like walk around and enjoy visuals because your mind has left reality. With LSD, you are in both places at once, so the effect is not as strong.

 

This thread is not a "lets talk about getting high", its more of a "is there real value to the effects of DMT"

 

Like some of you I'm sure, at a younger age, I experimented with various "fun", including LSD and other hallucinating drugs. I once overdosed on LSD, lost control of my body and mind, and paid some serious consequences for it. DMT seems to be something different entirely, though I can't speak from experience, because I just heard about the stuff in the last few weeks (thanks to netflix).

 

I watched this documentary called "DMT: The Spirit Molecule", thinking it was about something slightly different, but once I got the point of the video, I just kept on watching.

 

According to this program, people who consume a certain dose of this chemical are sent to another realm within their mind. The stories told are quite fascinating, but I am not sure if they are 100% believable. The reason why I believed any of it at all is due to my very own overdose of a similar drug (LSD). The way some of the patients described a "plane of passing letters, numbers and symbols of known and unknown" is something indeed real, because I myself have seen this very plane. This plane contained every character you could ever imagine, and many things I have never seen, there was no pattern to it, it was just a flow with random order, but always in parallel lines. The plane seemed to be angled and not strait forth.

 

What the real purpose of this thread is, is dimensions, can we really enter another realm within our minds, a real realm that is, not just something that is different for each individual, but the same realm.

 

I remember one patient coming back to reality, asking the doctor how long he was under, the doctor said "15 minutes"....the patient said, "it felt like thousands of years", and he was not the only one with that experience, it seemed that all of them agree that time was reduced while they were under. Perhaps such things can unlock secrets that we would never know without the help of such chemicals? perhaps. Is it possible to actually "learn" things while in another state of mind, such as higher mathematics?

 

I ask such questions to better understand.....everything. If it is possible to visit a real realm within the mind, I think that this is a field that more research needs to be done.

Edited March 10, 2012 by jeremyb

[CraigD]

Dimethyltryptamine is considered a drug and is illegal in many places (including the United States). What it does takes you out of reality completely and puts you in a different state of mind (subconscious dimension). It kinda acts like other hallucinates but with DMT you can't do anything like walk around and enjoy visuals because your mind has left reality. With LSD, you are in both places at once, so the effect is not as strong.

You can function fairly normally under the influence of moderate doses of DMT or LSD. You can’t under the influence of large doses.

 

DMT is a tryptamine, the same family as the important endogenous neurotransmitter serotonin and the common dietary tryptophan molecule, and an important part of larger, more complicated psychotropic molecules such as LSD.

 

My personal subjective experience is that DMT is similar to LSD, the main differences owing to differences in the way it’s easily ingested. LSD is a large, sturdy molecule that can be taken orally, resulting slow, prolonged uptake into the blood and brain and a long (4+ hour) “high”. DMT is almost completely broken down by MAO, a ubiquitous molecule in nearly all complex organism, including, so unless ingested orally along with an effective MAO inhibitor, has no psychotropic effect, and is therefore most commonly inhaled (smoked), resulting in fast, brief uptake, and a short (about 10 min) high.

 

In my experience, DMT doesn’t produce more “profound” or “spiritual” thoughts, feelings, and hallucinations than LSD. The belief that it does is mostly, I think, due to its association (in oral form) with native religious traditions, vs. LSD’s association with scientific, technological, and western counter-cultural ones. LSD seems more “intellectual” to me, DMT more emotional. I found DMT’s visual hallucinations more colorful and “opaque”, LSD’s usually like faint writing on ordinary surfaces. However, I’m unsure to what extent these differences are due to the Pharmodynamics of the two molecules, rather than difference in their ingestion methods.

 

Another strongly psychotropic molecules related to the tryptamines is ibogain. Like LSD, in can be effectively orally ingested, and produces a long high, but is reported by people I know who have taken it as having a different long term effect, neither intellectually enlightening, as with LSD, nor spiritually revelatory, as with DMT, but as producing a deep sense of emotional maturity and social responsibility. As with LSD and DMT, I suspect that this difference is due in greatest part to its reputation, which comes from anthropologists accounts of 19th century Africans using it in ritual rites of passage into adulthood.

 

I’d like to see these and other psychoactive drugs studied using high-resolution imaging using PET with the drug molecules radionuclide tagged, or a similarly high-resolution imaging technology. It I fear, however, that the 40 year old legal legacy practically banning scientific experiments on humans with these drugs will, for at least the next few years, prevent this.

 

What the real purpose of this thread is, is dimensions, can we really enter another realm within our minds, a real realm that is, not just something that is different for each individual, but the same realm.

Like other metaphysical questions like this (for example, questions about the objective reality of out-of-body experiences), this isn’t a very difficult one to resolve experimentally. If a particular drug-induced experience transports its subjects to a sharable experiential realm, it should be possible for two people to share an objectively verifiable datum, such as a short number or word.

 

To the best of my knowledge, this has never been demonstrated in a properly controlled experiment. I’ve personally tried such experiments, always with negative results. This lack of confirming experimental results indicated that drug-induced experiences don’t transport their subjects to a sharable experiential realms.

[modest]

This thread is not a "lets talk about getting high", its more of a "is there real value to the effects of DMT"

I've heard, although I forget where I heard this, that DMT is produced or used by the body quite normally during REM sleep. If that is the case (and I'm curious if it is, perhaps Craig knows) then the answer would clearly be that there is real value in the sense that without REM sleep people die.

 

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I remember, I heard it from Joe Rogan. Not the most reputable source.

[SmoothHerring]

I've heard, although I forget where I heard this, that DMT is produced or used by the body quite normally during REM sleep. If that is the case (and I'm curious if it is, perhaps Craig knows) then the answer would clearly be that there is real value in the sense that without REM sleep people die.

 

edit-->

 

I remember, I heard it from Joe Rogan. Not the most reputable source.

 

That idea originates from Dr. Rick Strassman's study on injected DMT on human subjects. In his book "The Spirit Molecule" he makes the unformal hypothesis that endogenous DMT is responsible for the peak experiences of birth, death and dreaming, and maybe all of the conscious experience. Later he regrets how widely it's been took as a fact. Joe Rogan hosts a documentary/film of the same name: Spirit Molecule

 

DMT is almost universally part of animal and plant kingdom. Here's a quote from a book that I pasted on another thread about the subject of endogenous DMT levels.

 

The best figure I can get for endogenous DMT is actually from CSF(cerebrospinal fluid) collected via the lumbar and in humans the maximum reported is 100 micrograms per liter of CSF. [smythies, J.R., Morin R.D., Brown G.B.(June 1979). "Identification of dimethyltryptamine and O-methylbufotenin in human cerebrospinal fluid by combined gas chromatography/mass spectrometry". Biological Psychiatry 14 (3):549-56]. The body contains roughly 150 milliliters CSF at any one time. An injected dose of DMT capable of producing a psychedelic experience so intense the subject is incapable of perceiving the room is about 10 milligrams. There are roughly 5 liters of blood in the human body. This reduces the injected dose to about 2 milligrams per liter of blood. Assuming 100% blood-brain barrier penetration (it is actually much lower) this would result in 300 micrograms reaching the brain. This means that the lumbar measurement cited above indicates that an individual is about 5% on their way to a psychedelic experience so intesne they can not perceive the room they are in, as an endogenous state of the human body's own metabolism. The number could be as low as 1%, however, I am certain the blood brain barrier penetration is poor and 5% is in the ballpark. This is a very crude approximation based on a vital lack of pharmacokinetic data for endogenous DMT in humans.

[belovelife]

interesting, i hear that native americans used these substances for conciousness transfer

 

basically learn alot of lessons quick, kinda like the social resposibility thing

 

i would like to see MRI images

of brain activity in a scientific setting that involves

 

lots of nice intentions

 

since, anyone who knows or who has done any of these substances

 

negative energy is quite lame

 

but to define what parts of the brain are stimulated would be good

 

levels of brain activity would be nice to make a pic and look at

 

kinda like the caffene measurements

 

i will reitterate this point

 

while certain pshycoactive substances "open" a certain perspective

 

meditating can do this also

 

and it really depends on who you do it with

 

---this is really off the chart here-----

 

i think adults change the experience for youger adults

 

for good or bad

 

while younger adults doing it may share an experience

 

sometimes the older we get, the more judgemental we are

 

then again, sometimes we learn to control that

 

it all depends

 

+ =

 

+ =

 

++:artgallery: =:shade:

 

:smart: + = +

[SmoothHerring]

Native americans have used a plant based concoction called ayahuasca in rituals and healing for thousands of years. There are also Christian churches which use ayahuasca as a sacrament, the most notable being probably Santo Daime. Ayahuasca contains DMT in combination with a MAOI, which inhibits the monoamine enzyme and allows for the DMT to be orally active. Without it, the DMT would be broken down before it reaches the brain. Given the rich flora of tens to hundreds thousands of plants in rainforests, it is interesting how such a combination has been found out.

 

The experience indeed can be like a lifetime worth of life-lessons in a few hours. Common aftereffect can be a feeling of deep peace and mental clarity, which tend to dissipate slowly during the following week.

 

Charles Grob has studied ayahuasca and found it to be non-toxic, and regular drinkers generally healthier compared to non-drinkers. I think increased serotonin receptor density was found in the frontal cortex, but don't take my word for it. It would make sense, since frontal lobe is a relatively independent and rational region of the brain, which can control the behavior of the whole brain. Subjectively that is exactly what I find ayahuasca increases: independence and responsibility for ones choices.

 

Part of the increased serotonin receptor density may be simply explained by the effect of MAOI's, since monoamine oxidase inhibitors inhibit the monoamine oxidase enzyme, which normally breaks down neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline. For that reason MAOI's are also a class of antidepressants(i.e Nardil, Moclobemide).

 

Here is a link to the studies on ayahuasca for further reading.

Edited July 5, 2012 by SmoothHerring

[belovelife]

thank you smooth