<\/p>\n
Here’s an intriguing question: Why do our bodies, and those of other mammals, produce N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT<\/span>), a potent psychedelic also found throughout the plant kingdom? The answer, perhaps disappointingly, is that we don’t know yet. According to the authors of a new review in the Journal of Psychopharmacology,1<\/a>DMT<\/span>The raison d’\u00eatre of ‘s, indeed whether or not it is relevant to mammalian physiology, is the subject of a 60-year-old debate that remains unresolved to this day.<\/p>\n Instead of repeating the whole story, which the authors claim began in 1961 with a statement in the journal Science that DMT<\/span> could be the basis of a mental illness,2<\/a> let’s go to 2001. When Rick Strassman’s historical book DMT<\/span>: The molecule of the spirit<\/a> was published that year, DMT<\/span> it was still a niche topic in a niche field. In 2001, only six articles in the entire peer-reviewed scientific literature mentioned the compound, five of which, including one co-authored by Strassman,3<\/a> they were concerned with research methods and pharmacology. (The sixth was an early and now widely cited study outside Europe of the subjective effects of the psychedelic brew ayahuasca, which contains DMT<\/span>.4<\/a>)<\/p>\n Strassman brought this up DMT<\/span> generated in the pineal gland plays a key role in mystical and near-death experiences.<\/p>\n On the US side, Strassman’s studies in the 1990s of the peculiar and powerful effects of pure DMT<\/span> administered intravenously to healthy human volunteers at the University of New Mexico represented the first government-approved research on psychedelic drugs in more than two decades. But even beyond that, his book, informed by these ground-breaking studies, ignited debate about the role of endogenous. DMT<\/span> in humans proposing some rather provocative theories about the pineal gland, considered by some to be a “third eye” or seat of the soul.5<\/a><\/p>\n In particular, Strassman raised this DMT<\/span> generated in the pineal gland: a tiny gland about the size of a grain of rice deep in the brain that produces melatonin, a structural analogue of DMT<\/span> \u2013 plays a key role in mystical near-death experiences and the like. Many of the dozens of DMT<\/span> The trips cataloged in Strassman’s studies include features also common to previously reported near-death experiences.<\/p>\n After the publication of DMT<\/span>: The Spirit Molecule (and, later, the release of a documentary<\/a> co-produced by Strassman and starring Joe Rogan), this line of thinking became “a hot topic of countercultural pseudoscience,” write the authors of the new review, both from Spain. ICEERS<\/span> Foundation (International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research and Services). But then they proceed to throw cold water on Strassman’s theory by citing research led by another major figure in psychedelic science, David Nichols, who published a paper in 2018.6<\/a> \u201cexposing the many difficulties that the pineal gland [would] must be faced to produce fully psychoactive amounts of DMT<\/span> in the few seconds or minutes before death.”<\/p>\nSecond thoughts on a third eye<\/h2>\n