086 | DMT: The Mystery of Psychedelics & What The Research Shows w/ Dr. Rick Strassman

Born and raised in Southern California, Stanford University BS in biology, MD from Albert Einstein College of medicine, psychiatry residency training at UC Davis, psychopharmacology research fellowship at UC San Diego. Discovered the first role of melatonin in humans in the 1980s, and began the first new human research with psychedelics in the US in 1990 studying DMT and psilocybin. Author of the best-selling book describing the studies: DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Author of the recent The Psychedelic Handbook. Adjunct associate Prof. of psychiatry, University of New Mexico school of medicine.

Website
rjstrassman@gmail.com

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Lana Pribic: Dr. Rick Strassman, welcome to the podcast. It's so amazing to have you here today with us sharing
Rick Strassman: Thanks, Lana. My pleasure.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, really looking forward to introducing the audience to a new psychedelic that we have not spent much time on. And you are probably the best person on the planet to talk to about this. So yeah, we really appreciate you being here today.
Rick Strassman: Yeah, it's a bit surprising, isn't it, that more people aren't talking about DMT?
Lana Pribic: Yeah, I myself haven't had a high dose experience with it. So reading your book was, yeah, I think it might have deterred me from it, to be honest. It sounds, yeah, good, okay
Rick Strassman: Terrace McKenna who was a big spokesman for the DMT experience, used to say, that one's hand always shakes lighting the pipe. He, no matter how experienced you are, first time, you a hundredth time, you're never quite sure what's in store for you.
Lana Pribic: [00:01:00] Yeah, it certainly sounds like it. I just got back from a 5meo DMT experience and that was wild, but DMT still sounds a little scary to me. So yeah, let's get into it. Not that you need much introduction, but can you please introduce yourself and your work to our listeners?
Rick Strassman: Sure, yeah my name is Rick Strassman, I'm a psychiatrist by training born and raised in L. A., went to school at Pomona College and Stanford University where I studied biology went to medical school in New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Returned to California for my training in general psychiatry.
Spent a year in Alaska. The pineal gland and winter depression and melatonin were just becoming of interest at that point, which was, my stepping stone into doing, clinical research, because of my interest in the biology of [00:02:00] spirituality. Took some extra training at UC San Diego in psychopharmacology research.
And then moved out, to to New Mexico in the mid 1980s. Ran the melatonin study, the DMT studies, some psilocybin research. Then wrapped things up in 95. Then practiced. Uh, Psychiatry for the next 13 years in both the community, mental health environment, and in private practice.
Stopped seeing patients in 2008, and I've been writing full time since then. I'm currently on the adjunct, faculty at the University of New Mexico's medical school in the psychiatry department. And I live out in the bush, in, western New Mexico.
Lana Pribic: You are a true researcher and it's pretty rare that I get to speak to someone so deep in the psychedelic research world for so long. So yeah, again, just really grateful that you're spending some time with us [00:03:00] today. I want to spend some time talking about your book in the trials DMT, the spirit molecule, which it was over 20 years ago at this point.
So late eighties, early nineties, not much psychedelic research was going on. The doors were still locked and you wanted to study DMT. Which, there was not many people doing, not many people even knew about, so what was it about this molecule that really, yeah, drew you in?
Rick Strassman: A couple of things. One of them was, me search is research, or, research is me search. I had my own psychedelic experiences as a youngster. Late teens, early twenties, and I was really impressed. I thought, whoa, this is interesting.
And I started off as a, chemistry major in college because of my interest in, fireworks and bombs, actually. I went to college, hoping to start my own line of, fireworks or else, go into explosives. But, people discouraged me and whatnot, so I became a [00:04:00] doctor instead.
I was impressed with, the psychedelic experience. And formulated it as uh, you know, change in brain chemistry. There must be some chemical changes in the brain responsible, for these highly altered states. And being in, California in the late 1960s, early 1970s, besides, psychedelics, coming in.
to the west coast, the east coast too, but especially the west coast. Buddhism and eastern meditation practices were also coming into vogue. Especially Hinduism and Buddhism. And the descriptions of the effects of certain kinds of meditation, they, seem to overlap with certain aspects of the psychedelic.
Drug experience I, formulated or started speculating about a, common biological denominator, that was activated, both from taking psychedelics and from [00:05:00] certain, meditation techniques at least to the extent, that the syndromes overlap, visions and voices and extreme emotions insights and meaningfulness, those kinds of things.
You I went to medical school with, that kind of an idea, that's what I wanted to, to study, but obviously, medical school is gross anatomy and biochemistry and infectious diseases and things, so when, the reality, hit me I dropped out, actually because of, some depression, before the first year was up.
I ended up at a Zen monastery, actually, was thinking I'd be You become a monk. But then, my depression improved and I went back to school. And I kept, my interest to myself. First things first. You have to be I'm a physician if you're gonna be, doing research with, psychedelics.
And especially during that time, this was the early 70s, the mid 70s, and the Controlled Substances Act had just been passed a, a few years before. Psychedelics [00:06:00] had begun as a wonder drug, or a class of wonder drugs, like the SSRIs back in the 80s, and, deja vu all over again with, psychedelics, being, touted as wonder drugs again, but, they became horror drugs in the late, 60s, early 70s all the overdoses and suicides and hospitalizations and all kinds of problems so then, once they became outlawed or, because You know, their availability, for research, became incredibly restricted.
People just forgot about them. They just became, zero drugs. Nobody knew about psychedelics. There were, there were still underground things going on. But academically research, there just wasn't anything happening at all.
So I, was interested in , the biology of, spiritual experience as I mentioned earlier. But also any kind of altered state which occurred, without drugs, your meditation effects, dreams, near death [00:07:00] experiences even psychosis, which is a highly altered state.
And, I you began, looking at, the pineal gland which has a venerable history in esoteric, physiology, the Hindu chakras and, the Kabbalistic Sephirot and, those things. The location of the pineal gland in the, middle of, the top of the head, corresponds to the, to the location of The subjective experience of the highest altered states resulting from prayer or, from meditation.
And there was not much known about the human physiology of melatonin back then. There were even, some, suggestions that it was quite mind altering, caused REM sleep stimulated the dream state made, depressed patients, more depressed, was even psychedelic, so I, began, looking for what I guess you would call a spirit molecule a naturally occurring, compound, , [00:08:00] which, potentially, when elevated, would induce spiritual or altered states of consciousness.
We looked at melatonin and I was hoping if, melatonin were psychedelic, it would be game over. This is, very simple. The pineal glands in everybody, melatonin is, produced at night during dreams and things, but we, discovered that, melatonin was only sedating.
So it was back to the drawing board. And in the meantime I learned about DMT, dimethyl, tryptamine which is, chemically related to melatonin, is the tryptamine like melatonin is. And like serotonin is if you produce naturally in the body, the human body and it's quite psychedelic.
It had been studied previously in Europe and in the U. S. And, could be given safely to people. So I, faced the, the obstacles which were associated with, no human research occurring in,[00:09:00] the U. S. Since the Controlled Substances Act, almost 20 years.
I started, working on, getting, permission, funding, the drug, all that, in, September 1988, and it, it was really, Kafka esque, it was, just an enormous number of hurdles, all bureaucratic and, two years later, or actually, two years plus, two months later, we gave our first, dose of DMT in November 1990, Yeah, and I was interested in, comparing the effects of, DMT with, the , descriptions of, non drug altered states like, like dreams, meditation, , near death experiences.
And, to the extent that they overlapped, I could then argue, for, for a potential role of endogenous, DMT in, producing those, non drug states. So in, some ways they did, some ways they didn't. And we ran a couple of more [00:10:00] studies other than just, giving, various, doses of, DMT to our volunteers.
We started, some psilocybin work as well. Yeah, so I, closed up, shop after. Five years. I, wasn't able to accumulate a team around me back then in Albuquerque. Our work was, so cutting edge and so far out and so weird that nobody really knew what we were doing.
And they figured what could I contribute? Or, that's what, they were saying. Or, they didn't want to move or they thought Albuquerque was, too was, too small fry or, whatever. So, um. It was, mostly mission accomplished. We gave a lot of DMT.
We established a protocol with the DEA and FDA to give humans, a Schedule 1, psychedelics. And I, was not able to, branch out into, psychotherapy research, spirituality research creativity research. Those kind of more interesting things other than the pure psychopharmacology.
[00:11:00] But other groups have, picked up the ball since then.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, you outline in your book how many hurdles you had to go through and twists and turns even after you got the the permissions to do the study, right? There is a lot of. Surprises during these trials for you.
Rick Strassman: Yeah. I just, you know, was pulling my hair out. Yeah. Yeah, some people, think, oh, it was the hostility of the government or, their, being that they were antagonistic. Or, they didn't want to see, the research done. But that wasn't the case at all.
They were very keen on the research being done. I received, two grants even before I I got my hands on the drug. So there was a lot of interest in this, in the studies taking place. It, it was more, just bureaucratic. Like, how do like how do you possess a Schedule 1, drug for human use [00:12:00] if it's not approved for human use?
And, how can you get approval, for human use if you don't have the drug? So that was the catch 22 which I had, to maneuver through over the space of a couple years. Yeah, I got, funding. for two grants from the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, which are extraordinarily competitive.
And I got both grants on the first submission. They didn't even require any modification.
Lana Pribic: Wow.
Rick Strassman: So I think, that bespeaks, two things, one is the whole, myth of the government not, wanting to support research is a myth. If you, you know, can design a rigorous study and defend why you want to do what you want to do, there's money there.
And the other is, the government was, very interested in studying these drugs after a 20 [00:13:00] year hiatus.
Lana Pribic: So there was bureaucratic hurdles and it also seems like there was hurdles phenomenology of DMT and what was coming up. It seems like that really surprised you you were doing the research.
Rick Strassman: What do you mean, the experiences themselves?
Lana Pribic: Of the volunteers.
Rick Strassman: Yeah so we only studied experienced psychedelic users. And, this was, back in the early 90s. And, people didn't really know that much about, DMT. Terrence was, talking about it but still it was a, fairly obscure drug.
And we studied 54 people, I think. And only, maybe two or three had, previously used DMT recreationally. But everybody else had, taken mushrooms or LSD, POD, mescaline, those kinds of things. And we chose experienced volunteers for a couple of reasons.
One would, was was that they would be familiar with the experience [00:14:00] and, would be able to compare and, contrast, the DMT effect with, for example, the effects of LSD. And, they would be, familiar with how strange a full psychedelic experience is and they would be less likely to panic and would be able to manage any, tight corners that they, found themselves in.
Yeah, my expectation of the experiences, at least, from the spirituality point of view were predicated on, my having been studying and practicing Zen Buddhism for, 15 to, 20 years before that, and the paradigmatic spiritual experience in And Zen Buddhism is what's called Kensho or Satori, an enlightenment experience.
And it's free of content. There's no, there isn't any self. There's no time, there's no space, there's no words, there's no feeling, there's no body. It's what's called [00:15:00] emptiness. Although it's a, very pregnant with potential, emptiness. still is empty of any recognizable, form or content.
And, most of my volunteers were also, meditators and were expecting that kind of experience as well. But, lo and behold, only one of the volunteers had that kind of experience, and, he was, somebody with a longstanding interest in that kind of experience, was a member of uh, you know, religious organization which, cultivated that kind of experience, valued it.
He was a religious studies major in college. So only one individual, had, what I've later, defined as the mystical unitive state where there isn't any self, there's no content, the Kensho kind of experience. Everybody else had experiences, full.
of, content with which they're related and interacted with, so [00:16:00] that, led me to define a, different kind of, psychedelic or, highly altered state, which I've, label the interactive relational where your personality is maintained.
There's, plenty of content in that state with which you interact. The state itself, if you give IV DMT or you smoke a big dose of DMT, it works very quickly within a few heartbeats. You experience a huge rush of inner acceleration, inner tension magnification of everything.
The room starts, pixelating and, quickly dissolves. And you should close your eyes in order to, focus on what's happening. Going on in there. Yeah, and you're transported out of your body. You lose awareness of your body and you enter into a world of light, which is, full of, of, rapidly moving, morphing things colorful.
And, depending on, the ability of the volunteer, to maneuver in [00:17:00] that state, you can extract, certain, kinds of information from that experience. The peak effect though occurs within a couple, three minutes or so. And, then you start coming down at around, five minutes. It, was a bit, difficult for the volunteers to stabilize, themselves in that state.
And, be able, to, work with it in a more leisurely manner. It's like you were just, thrust into that world. There's a, there's a limited amount of time, to make the most of it. And, then you start coming down. So you're pretty normal.
Within a half hour, you're stunned, slack jawed as it were after a high dose, but the temporal sequence is, that after, 30, minutes or so you're pretty much down. You're able to drink tea and converse and start, filling out rating scales.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. Yeah. So it sounds like you said only one of your volunteers had that kind of complete, unitive, oneness, non dual experience.
Rick Strassman: Right.
Lana Pribic: yeah, that's really interesting. [00:18:00] I wouldn't expect that from DMT. I would love to actually get your perspective on this. I've heard the difference between NN DMT and 5 MeO DMT described as, obviously DMT is the spirit molecule, it is like the spirit worlds, the spirit realms familiar content, as you were talking about, whereas 5 MeO kind of bypasses all of that and goes straight to the oneness, the unity, the non dual experience.
But I've also heard that it is potentially possible to reach that experience with a high enough dose of NMDMT. So yeah, just curious to hear about your perspective of the differences and similarities between the two.
Rick Strassman: Yeah, you don't hear stories of unitive, white light, ego, burnout, nuclear explosion kind of stuff with, with DMT. It's much more common with, 5 methoxy DMT. The chemistry is different, the pharmacology is different. Oh, there was just a paper a few weeks ago, came out, looking [00:19:00] more carefully at the animal physiology of, The, five MEO and you hear a lot of stories about, people just, checking out on, five MEO they don't remember what happened.
They
Lana Pribic: Yeah, the whiteout.
Rick Strassman: Yeah. They're just completely whited out. Yeah. Yeah. So this, paper actually described that, five MEO, it, causes epileptiform electrical inactivity in the animal brain. So it, it could be the amnesia and the flopping around and the complete whiteout.
It is a, minor seizure. There's a lot of interest in, 5 MEO as a therapeutic drug. But it's a lot to handle even without the knowledge that it may induce, seizures. But, now I think, People are going to be thinking, twice about, touting the therapeutic, the, therapeutic efficacy of, 5 MEO.
The authors of, that paper tried, to salvage, some, therapeutic, [00:20:00] potential benefit. By referring, to the, the beneficial effect of electroconvulsive therapy in, depression, which is true if you have a really depressed person who's not responding to anything, you give them ECT and, they often respond, when I was a resident and, junior faculty I gave a lot of ECT and it's a miraculous cure.
So they were saying in this, paper, Oh, there's ECT. and you, that's really useful, but you don't begin treating depression with ECT, it's your last resort. So the, the notion, that, oh, we should continue, looking at, five MEO because it's ECT I don't think is very strong argument in his favor.
Yeah. But, getting back to the comparison yeah, DMT, generally. Is, you're more visual, your sense of self is maintained, you may be even stronger, than usual. The hallmark of, both of those compounds, I think, is the, [00:21:00] is, the feeling that what you're undergoing or witnessing or apprehending is more real than real.
Which is a unique element of the DMT experience or the, the 5 MeO one, but obviously I'm, more familiar with DMT. And, so that is an interesting aspect of the drug effect.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. Yeah, thank you for that. So I want to spend some time talking about endogenous DMT in the human body. So when you wrote the book in comparison to now, what have we learned about that? Have we, has science explored DMT production in the pineal gland? What do we know about that?
Rick Strassman: Well, The brain makes DMT. There's no ifs, ands, or buts. The pineal gland may or may not. I think that, I think, the jury is still out.
You, surprisingly, we know more, but, but [00:22:00] the amount of data and the amount of effort expended in understanding naturally occurring DMT is, shockingly thin. So DMT was, discovered in a psychedelic Amazonian plants in the 1940s. And, it was first, studied in humans in the 1950s in Budapest Stephen Czar there was a Hungarian psychiatrist who was interested in studying LSD, but he couldn't, because it was, behind the Iron Curtain. And, so he went back, to the library, saw, oh, there's this, DMT in, in plants, let me try that.
Yeah, so he I synthesized a batch and, discovered it was not orally active, it had to be administered, perenterally intramuscularly, back then. And it was, quite psychoactive if it were injected. But it remained an obscure, compound for the next, 10 years or so[00:23:00] until it was discovered in the tissues of animals mammals, and blood, urine, and spinal fluid.
And then a year or two after that, in, the mid 1960s, it was also discovered in human body fluids. So everybody was, keen on understanding the, function of endogenous DMT. The focus, back then was, more on its, potential role in schizophrenia.
Perhaps, schizophrenia because he produced, too much DMT. And, that was, the reason, that they had hallucinations, for example. So there was a lot of effort expended in that avenue. There wasn't any interest in understanding his potential role in, non psychotic altered states like dreams or meditation, more schizophrenia.
This was the beginning of the modern age of, psychopharmacology. And, Thorazine was just discovered and being used. The earliest antidepressants were discovered and being used, so the focus on [00:24:00] brain chemistry and, psychopharmacology was, purely oriented, towards towards understanding mental illness and and, helping treat mental illness.
So there were, quite a few studies done, for example, comparing, levels of DMT in schizophrenics, compared to normal volunteers. Comparing responsiveness, to injections of DMT in schizophrenics versus normal volunteers. And those studies were, just getting off the ground.
When, the passage of the Controlled Substances Act took place and all, clinical research shut down. And, since then, since, 1970 or so there has not been a lot of, research into endogenous DMT. The going, theory, back then was that it was, produced in the lungs.
And, this was based on, rapid [00:25:00] lung studies, where you homogenized or, blended, a, rapid lung in a blender and added the ingredients to make, DMT and, voila, there is DMT. There's a lot of interest in, the lung as, as a potential source of DMT.
And you'll back that also, there were some Japanese data indicating that DMT is actively transported into the brain using an energy dependent process. mechanism which, you know, which which is only, the case with compounds that the brain requires for normal metabolism blood sugar, for example.
It's transported into the brain using an energy dependent process, that was also the case with DMT. So the, the theory was that it's produced in the lung and that's transported into the brain in everyday life. And, perhaps it was, more active in, psychosis, let's say.
But then, there were some studies in the late, 1990s or early 2000s [00:26:00] indicating, that the lung, that the intact lung did not make, you know, DMT. And, this was, because you need, both enzymes, which, synthesize uh, you know, DMT in the same cell.
There's, two enzymes required, for the synthesis. But, but they ended up occurring in in, two different cells in the lung. And, when you looked at you know, whole lung as opposed, to lung homogenate there wasn't any DMT, made in the lung.
There were also some brain studies, by the same group, Michael Thompson at, the Mayo in Minnesota, indicating that, DMT, wasn't made in the brain either of mammals. But his, method, wasn't quite as sensitive or as specific as it, could be.
Looking, for the enzymes which were necessary, to make, DMT in the brain. and, there wasn't any in the pineal gland either using his methodologies, but a [00:27:00] few years after that there's a group in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the university there a pharmacologist named his name is Jim.
Who stumbled upon the Spirit Molecule book, 13 years after it came out. And, she became, quite, and, her, field of study was melatonin and the pineal gland. And she had never heard of DMT. And she, she gave me a call and, we talked.
And, she said, I'm going to look for DMT in the pineal gland. . So she did, and John Dean and she, published a paper in, 2013, demonstrating I, DMT in the Fluid or, that was around the pineal gland in the Living Rodent so that you seemed to confirm that the pineal gland makes DMT, but they continued, looking, more closely and they, published on the paper.
There were two interesting findings from [00:28:00] that 2019 paper. One is if you look more carefully at the pineal gland, it, it, does not seem to make, DMT. So they concluded, that their earlier, findings were the result of the probe snagging on your brain tissue on the way into and out of the, the the pineal gland, so that is part two is, that the brain, makes DMT that was their, you know, major finding.
That the brain makes DMT. And the, pineal gland, DMT, which they reported earlier, was actually, brain DMT. They discovered in the brain, that the two necessary enzymes were co localized in the same neurons. So that was, key in demonstrating that the brain could make its own DMT.
You don't need the lung. You don't need active transport using an energy dependent mechanism. That the brain makes DMT because, [00:29:00] certain neurons contain, both of the necessary enzymes. So even more interesting was that, concentrations of brain, DMT are comparable to concentrations of established neurotransmitters, like serotonin and like dopamine.
So that, raises the possibility of a, you know, DMT neurotransmitter system in, the mammalian brain, which is a, very weird thing to think about. And the other is that uh, you know, levels of brain, you know, DMT increase in, the dying brain if you experimentally, give a heart attack.
To an animal concentrations of DMT increase dramatically, especially in the visual cortex five times, normal values, maybe even, 10 times normal values, so that, suggests, that there is a link at least between elevated levels of, DMT and visual, cortex in, the dying the dying animal,[00:30:00] which, points to a possible, role of, naturally occurring DMT, mediating, the visual effects of, the NDE, for example.
But, these are incredibly important, questions, what is DMT doing in the brain? It's this incredibly weird, psychedelic.
There's one, person in La Jolla. John Dean, who, did the, 2013 and, 2019 papers in, GMO's lab. He's at UC San Diego, looking, to visualize. Synthesis of DMT in, the living human brain using high tech imaging, techniques.
And there was one, grad student who recently, graduated from, GMO's lab, looking at endogenous, synthesis. So there's two people in the world looking at endogenous, DMT right now. And one just graduated. And, he's [00:31:00] on a leave. He's taking a break.
He's, working in his pottery studio. So strictly speaking, there's one person in the world, looking at endogenous DMT. Which is, which seems to me to be a major oversight in the, scientific, stream of things.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, at least there's one.
Rick Strassman: At least there's one,
Lana Pribic: probably makes you pretty happy that there's at least one person
Rick Strassman: Well, you know, Look at all the people giving psilocybin for depression. And there's one guy in the world looking at endogenous DMT, which, what the heck is it, doing in the human brain? Is it, mediating our, perceptual, world? Is it, mediating our, sense of reality?
Is it elevated when you dream? Is it elevated in psychosis? Is it elevated when you meditate? When you meditate? What's the role of endogenous DMT in mammals? Yeah, it's a strange thing. One could speculate as to, [00:32:00] why it's being ignored as Radically as it is, it is also, mostly, being ignored.
Even within the, therapeutic arena. There's one study from Yale came out a year, or, two ago, giving one high dose of of, DMT to depressives they improved. There's some research, commercial research. In England, small pharma has got a new version of, DMT and, they're looking at it, for depression as well.
One of the more interesting themes are projects which have, come up the last a couple of years with respect, to research into DMT. Is the continuous infusion you protocol. We established, that that you don't develop, tolerance to closely spaced repeated doses of DMT.
If you take LSD every day for a few days, you mostly stop responding and, that's the case with you [00:33:00] psilocybin and your mescalin as well. That's, that's called tolerance. You stop responding normally or in this. To the same, magnitude after, repeated dosing of, the drug at the same dose.
And, that hadn't been established with DMT. And even, giving it every half hour, there's no tolerance to the psychological effects anyway. That's spurred a colleague of mine, Andrew Gallimore, to contact me a few years later. And, we wrote a paper on.
a continuous infusion model on the DMT, like if you just, infused it over the space of a half hour or an hour or whatnot, would you be able to stay in that state? So there are two groups doing that, now, there's one in England and one in Switzerland. And the one in England, I think extended it for a half hour.
Continuous infusion for a half hour as opposed, to, the way, that I was giving it, which was, just injected over the space of [00:34:00] a minute and, then, just let her rip. The Swiss group has been extending the experience out, to 90 minutes.
You, so that, mostly at this point is is to help understand, the phenomenology of the state in a more leisurely manner. But I think it also has got, some therapeutic, potential as well, because you can turn up the infusion rate, or you could, turn down the infusion rate, which would increase or decrease the intensity of the experience almost in real time.
So if you're doing your psychotherapy with somebody and they want to go deeper, you can increase the infusion rate. If they want to come down and talk about things with you, you can lower the infusion rate or even stop it. And you can interact with your therapist or if you want to maintain [00:35:00] things at a medium rate, you can do that as well.
That hasn't been employed yet in those protocols, but I think it's only a matter of time.
Lana Pribic: , it would be interesting to see who would choose DMT or who would be a good candidate for DMT for depression. Over something like psilocybin, or ayahuasca, or, even LSD, which really, for me, leads me to the question of, other than psychonauts who are really interested in exploring inner space and other dimensions and fearless about that who is DMT 4?
Rick Strassman: DMT for? If you're interested in the psychedelic experience for your curiosity, for example yeah, who's it for? I suppose it, that question is, what's the role of your psychedelics within society? [00:36:00] Yeah, therapeutically, psychedelics, seem to have, potential in, the right, setting.
You just don't take mushrooms if you're depressed and hope to feel better, like that airline pilot, for example. Yeah, that's not the way to do it. You want to do it in a, supervised, setting, you're screened carefully. You're prepared, you're supervised, you're followed up you're treated if you have problems.
But in the controlled, research environment psychedelics have got a role to play in, therapeutic endeavors. Creativity, there was some old research and a lot of anecdotal Reports that, psychedelics increase, creativity.
Understanding the mind. How does the mind work? What's the relationship between the mind and the brain? Recreation. Most people trip for fun. I would say. I was at an event a number of years ago, with Alex Gray, the artist, the visionary artist, and, we were talking about, what do you call these drugs?
Or the psychedelics, are they enteogens? Are they psycho [00:37:00] mimetics? What are they exactly. And he was like, voting for entheogen, like they're holy, they're you, sacred, they're special. And we were, walking, past the dance hall.
And you look there are hundreds of kids, you know that were tripping on drugs, dancing and screaming and taking off their clothes, . And I turned to Alex and I said, in Ians, so I would say, most, people, trip for fun and there isn't any harm in having fun, but you have to be careful,
Lana Pribic: I don't know how much fun the doses you were giving your volunteers would be at a rave.
Rick Strassman: Yeah, of course. Like any psychedelic experience is the end result of, three factors, the set and the setting and the dose. So you can, micro dose and you could clean house more quickly. Or you could code, you know, more creatively. You could take, medium doses and you walk around.
You can take, high doses and just, lay down. there's a lot of interest in these, compounds, for their,[00:38:00] so called spiritual effects. But I think in a way that's troubling because you just don't become a spiritual, person after you trip with, that intent.
, it's, set in setting Charles Charles, Manson, took a lot of LSD, gave a lot of LSD, and, developed a, cadre of, serial killers so LSD, or any psychedelic, you've got to set, who you are, what you want to get out of the experience the setting, who you're doing it with, you And, the dose small, medium, and large, so the spiritual effects, like if you're a spiritually oriented person, and you want to get some answers to your spiritual questions, then your psychedelics can be helpful. It just depends, specifically, for DMT, it is an extreme experience.
It can establish a know benchmark,[00:39:00] for psychedelic in intensity. But it isn't, for everyone five Methoxy DMT for example is just, so mind blowing, that there are a lot of flashbacks. Which occur afterwards. So you don't want to, begin your psychedelic your work with with an overdose, with a psychic overdose even even though it may not be a, pharmacological overdose, it's still a, psychological overdose.
That isn't, the case, with DMT to anywhere, near the extent, yeah, so I guess, different drugs, for different, settings and, sets. The advantage of DMTs is quite, short.
And, that's another reason that we. The reason I chose it to study for my research is even if it was a bad experience, it would be short. But once you take LSD or psilocybin you're occupied, for the next, 6 or 8 or 12 hours. So there is an advantage of the, shorter [00:40:00] duration if you just, want to.
You know, Short experience. It used to be called, the businessman's trip, back in the, 60s. Theoretically, you could smoke, DMT on your lunch break and, then go back to work. It depends. You don't, prescribe, the same antibiotic for all infections.
You don't prescribe the same antidepressant, for all cases of depression. So you tailor the, drug for the effect that you're looking for.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, I love the, I guess the micro doses of DMT, that's all I've ever experienced. With, the pens that you can get online now, anywhere.
Rick Strassman: DMT vape pens. Isn't that something? Yeah.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, what do you think of those? Yeah.
Rick Strassman: yeah.
Lana Pribic: can't really have a breakthrough experience with them. You'd have
Rick Strassman: you can if it's a. potent enough preparation and you take enough in, you can have a breakthrough experience. But you can, puff, [00:41:00] like a bit, here and there. Terence used to, joke about, his, definition of drug abuse.
It was, taking too little was, drug abuse in his mind. And in, in a way, in the, case of DMV our small doses are in between, sorts of doses in my studies. We're not experienced in a, particularly, pleasant, manner.
You felt, the excitation, without any breakthrough. So you're kind of be twixt in between. And, people didn't, really like the smaller doses uniformly.
What so what happened to you with your, micro dosing like a small, puffer, whatever kind of puff on the vape pen?
Lana Pribic: What happens to me?
Rick Strassman: Yeah, you know what how would you describe it?
Lana Pribic: Yeah, so I'm usually doing it at parties where I'm on a cocktail of substances, but what it does is it just adds this beautiful, sharpness to the [00:42:00] air and kind of just heightens my sense of feeling connected. And then often it actually makes me feel a little tired and reminds me of that state of waking dreams within an ayahuasca ceremony.
I think that my addition of DMT to my regular roster of my rave cocktail has helped me to go maybe it's not helped me, but has caused me to go much deeper on the dance floor than I normally would. So yeah.
Rick Strassman: Yeah, that was interesting. Well, you know, Spongle, the group Spongle?
I suppose if you were to, categorize their, genre, it would be EDM, like electronic dance music. Simon Posford, the lead guy, and some other older fellow, I can't remember his name. Yeah, so I was at an event in Texas a number of years ago, which, with With, with uh, gel and I smelled more DMT [00:43:00] coming from the
Lana Pribic: Yeah.
Rick Strassman: I smelled marijuana.
Lana Pribic: And it's a
Rick Strassman: And I,
Lana Pribic: Yeah.
Rick Strassman: yeah. So I and I asked, Simon about that, and I said, man, there's a lot of DMT coming up from the dance floor. Is that common? And he said, at my concerts there's more DMT smell than, than cannabis. And, some kid came up to me and he said I just took a small dose of DMT.
It was great. I'm going to take a, big dose in the next, ten minutes. Just like this huge rave scene. And like this, kid went to the corner with his friends It's tucked away in the corner, but still yeah, and he had a huge DMT experience and he came up to me and said it was amazing and with all that, but it seemed a little reckless.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, it can really merge you with the music though, like the experience that I had was I became the music basically with the DMT and it was really beautiful. But yeah, as you were saying, it can get reckless. Yeah.
Rick Strassman: doses, yeah, small doses, you can still maneuver but if you take a full dose and you can't [00:44:00] move and you're completely out of your body and it's just, chaos. Like after, that event, I was at some friends that, you know, that were hosting me and, they said, Oh, you want to be around when this guy smokes DMT for the first time?
And I said, sure. Yeah. So I went over to their house and you know, set in setting there were, you're calling for pizza on the phone and they were, giving this guy, DMT and he slides off the couch and he goes outside and starts screaming in the middle of the backyard in Dallas.
In, in the middle of the day. And I thought, set in setting, you really need to be, careful with your high doses of anything, but especially DMT.
Lana Pribic: Yeah, included in that setting would be, the guides, the people that you are around. I can't imagine something like a high dose of DMT casually,
Rick Strassman: Yeah the first time I smoked, DMT Terrence gave it to me. We were sitting on a bed.
He just [00:45:00] sat and described what to do and how to react. And some of your friends were on a couch up against the wall, you're praying and you're meditating and all that.
So it was a great, DMT experience. But like in a crowded living room with people, calling for pizza on the phone and all kinds of, chaos breaking out. Yeah, it isn't the worst, possible, but it's, certainly, could have been prepared a bit better.
Lana Pribic: Yeah. Wow, it's very special that you were baptized into DMT by Terrence McKenna, that's amazing,
Rick Strassman: Yeah, it was very cool. Yeah.
it, convinced me that I was going to study DMT. Like, I was still, teetering out with, the melatonin research. It didn't quite, pan out. So I was wondering, what to do. I learned about DMT. I was speculating about, the pineal and mystical states and near death states in DMT.
Yeah, and I gave a talk at a meeting once that, Terrence was there and he said you're talking about DMT. You want to try it? So I'm going to try it. And then the next, the [00:46:00] next day I withdrew my melatonin grant application and started working on the DMT one within a few months.
Lana Pribic: Me search, like you said at the beginning.
Rick Strassman: Research is research, oftentimes, yeah, especially when it comes to drugs.
Lana Pribic: I want to start winding this down. The phenomenology of DMT is quite intense and unique, right? It's pretty common to experience leaving the body, the consciousness leaving the body, encounters with entities and beings Traveling to different dimensions, alien abductions, right?
People are reporting these types of experiences. What do you know about how people integrate and make sense of and bring back these out of this world experiences?
Rick Strassman: yeah yeah, that's obviously a good question. I I think integration, begins, way before you trip. One of my, one of my mentors [00:47:00] was a Jungian psychologist named Leo. this was in the 80s and I was interested in being supervised, by him, for, psychedelic sessions.
And I think we were going to do Ibogaine the first time. Yeah, it was Ibogaine. I went out there, to Berkeley, and, we started talking and he said, the trip has already begun. Which was interesting, and it was true, because once you start, thinking about, tripping, it's in your mind, and you're wondering, what's it going to be like?
Is it going to be good? Is it going to be bad? What do I work on? How do I get ready? What do I want out of it? What, don't I want out of it? So the integration part, I think, also begins when you start to think about, tripping how do you want to apply whatever it is that you experience?
The most, common example, it might be for spiritual purposes. Let's say you want to, develop your [00:48:00] meditation practice or your prayer practice. Your yoga practice, , you would want to be working on those things, before you trip.
You would wanna start, looking at, where am I happy with my practice? Where am I not, what, do I want in in terms of it evolving and, growing. What are the, questions which I've, got regarding my practice. So you would already be getting ready, for integrating.
You would be looking at those questions when you're in the altered state. And, hopefully you'd be writing things down or, dictating or the person in the room, with you would be, taking notes and would, be remembering things, for you. Discuss your things with them.
And then you work on those things once, once you're down, I've really only had one major, DMT experience. And it was 1985 or 1986. , but in a way I've [00:49:00] been integrating, that experience ever since. So like for the next, 30, 36 years or so.
37 years. One of, the generic pieces of advice I give people about integrating is, to occupy yourself with things that evoke in you the same feelings that were the most valuable when you were tripping. For example for whatever reason I discovered I love the Hebrew Bible.
And I love the Hebrew language and I, love, the message contained in the Hebrew Bible. It reminds me of, the feelings of certainty and expansiveness and, you know, meaningfulness and mysteriousness, which have been the most, valuable aspects of, my psychedelic experiences.
One of the, hallmarks of any psychedelic experience including including DMT, is that, sense of meaningfulness., the convincingly true, [00:50:00] feeling which, comes up in association with certain ideas. Certain feelings which occur in the psychedelic state.
So if you can, find things that evoke that same, sense of meaningfulness I think you're on the right, track with respect, to integrating the most important elements of, the psychedelic experience.
If it's, jarring and it doesn't make any sense, you need to get help.
And, that could be, from any source. Your, local friendly cleric or your therapist or your best friend or your spouse or your teacher or your mentor. Yeah, that's another thing that I think is, needs to be addressed more carefully is the issue of adverse effects to psychedelics.
They're being, candy coated, now by, calling them, challenging experiences or extended, extended difficulties. But I think that's, that's, sugar coating. If you're, psychotic for five [00:51:00] years after taking a big dose of LSD in the wrong setting when you were in the wrong state of mind, that's not a challenging experience.
That's a chronic, long term, severe adverse effect. You don't call a skin rash to penicillin. a challenging experience. Just like you don't, call a heart attack in response to cancer, chemotherapy a challenging experience. Within the biomedical psychological realm there are no challenging experiences.
There's adverse there's adverse there's adverse effects. There's in short Or, there's acute, which is in the state itself. You might be anxious, you might be prepared, you might be depressed or even suicidal. And, those pass within, minutes or hours.
There's your short term midterm and long term, there's mild moderate and severe adverse effects, if you're experiencing an adverse effect [00:52:00] and you don't really, tell yourself, and if you're a clinician, you don't, tell, you know the person that it's an adverse effect.
You label it like you're anxious or you're depressed, or you're disorganized, or you're dissociated and you can tell yourself that too. As opposed to I'm having, I'm, having a challenging experience that's completely meaningless. And it, may, prevent you from, from getting, the care you need.
So if you're anxious and it's, continuing for more than, like a day or, two afterward, you should, pay attention to it. For example the first time I smoked, 5 methoxy DMT, it completely rattled my cage. It was just really god awful.
But, luckily, I was in psychoanalysis at the time, going, four or five days a week, lying on the couch, free associating. So I could, talk about it with my analyst. My friends weren't that helpful because, [00:53:00] their experiences were beatific, and, what's your problem, Rick?
Why didn't you have a good experience? Like I was lucky, to be in therapy at the time. Yeah, you just can't ignore adverse effects, and you can't, sugarcoat them. It is true that, bad experiences, can be utilized.
But, not automatically. You need to work through those bad experiences. Find out what gave rise to them understand them, work them through, and then, do the work involved with not, having a recurrence if you are going to take your psychedelics later.
There's this, notion of, getting back on the horse after you've been thrown, but I don't think, that's a good idea. I think you need to, take care of what's You know, came up in a negative way first.
Lana Pribic: Thank you for, for saying that about the adverse effects for our listeners who might be experiencing that. So to close this off, you wrote a new book. [00:54:00] More than 20 years after your best seller, so the psychedelic handbook, a practical guide to psilocybin, LSD, ketamine, MDMA, and DMT. Tell us a little bit about this and what led you to write this book now.
Rick Strassman: Yeah. So after the first book came out, The Spirit Molecule I, co authored a book called Inner Paths to Outer Space. It was the, the brainchild of, the second author, who was an oncologist and also a, sci fi buff.
The next book I wrote was, DMT and the Soul of Prophecy, which was my attempt to contextualize the interactive relational DMT effect within a religious within a, religious setting, the Buddhism emptiness model, the all is one mystical, unitive state you didn't apply to the DMT effect.
And so I went back to the, drawing board with respect to, the religious traditions out there, which, [00:55:00] prioritize the interactive relational state as opposed to the mystical unit of one. And, lo and behold, it was in, the Hebrew Bible's notion of, the prophetic state.
If you read Ezekiel, the first, chapter of Ezekiel, it is a big DMT experience. There's spinning wheels and globes, and, the, there's ice, and there's, the roaring, sound, and there's beings with wings and eyes on their wings, and it's just completely, DMT.
So I scoured the Hebrew Bible, for all of the descriptions of any altered state in any person, and, compared and, contrasted, those reports with, the reports of, my DMT volunteers. Yeah, so that was a 16 year, project. I, retaught myself in Biblical Hebrew.
I read the Hebrew Bible five times in Hebrew and in English. Dozens of commentaries Maimonides, Spinoza, it was a major effort. Yeah, so that came out in, 2014.[00:56:00] Once, that book, came out, I got sick. Super sick. Almost died twice. With really, horrible infections, which, people here didn't really know what to do with.
And I swore if I lived, I was going to write about it. And I did live and I wrote about it. It's an autobiographical novel, in quotes, air quotes called Joseph Levy Escapes Death. And it's pretty morbid, but, pretty funny. It, came out in 2019.
Yeah, you know, so, um, I was, taking a break and then, Michael Pollan's, book came out. And everybody just, became interested in, in, psychedelics all of a sudden. But, Michael Pollan's book isn't really that great. And, Michael Pollan isn't a, clinician, he's not a researcher, he is not a psychologist.
He's a, science reporter, science I know journalist, as much as anything I wrote that book to, fill in the gaps that Michael's book produced, which was [00:57:00] a book about your psychedelics by somebody you know that's been in the field has, done, decades of psychotherapy.
Went to medical school, became a psychiatrist, practiced and studied Zen, went through psychoanalysis. Did psychopharmacology research, like I figured I knew what I was talking about and it would be a good, counterweight, to the, to the entheogenic, crowd out there, which is, you take this drug, you have a mystical experience and the messianic era is upon us.
You don't have to really read between the lines all that much to get the sense of, that's the agenda. I wanted to, sober up the agenda and, talk about adverse effects as much as, potentially beneficial ones. And, provide a more, balanced approach.
Lana Pribic: Amazing. I haven't read that one yet, but I will know that
Rick Strassman: It's a,
Lana Pribic: finally finished the spirit molecule.
Rick Strassman: Yeah, the Psychedelic Handbook is a, it's what you would call a small textbook. [00:58:00] But still, after I've edited my writing enough times I write in an engaging style. Lots of people, describe reading the book in just a couple of days, and, they get quite a bit out of it.,
Lana Pribic: Amazing. And we're going to be giving away a copy of the psychedelic handbook, which is so much fun. That will be hosted on Instagram. So if you're listening and you want to enter the giveaway, go to Instagram and we'll run it for a week after this episode airs.
So thank you, Dr. Rick Strassman for, yeah giving us a book to give away.
Rick Strassman: For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Spread the word.
Lana Pribic: Absolutely. Yeah. Any last words of wisdom you want to leave our listeners with?
Rick Strassman: Yeah, be careful, pay attention to set, setting and dose and good luck and get, help if you need it.
Lana Pribic: Perfect. Thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you to the listeners for listening. We'll catch you in the next episode.

Lana Pribic

086 | DMT: The Mystery of Psychedelics & What The Research Shows w/ Dr. Rick Strassman

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Dr. Rick Strassman is gracing us with his wisdom today! He has appeared on the #1 global show, The Joe Rogan podcast, so it’s quite a treat for us to hear from him on this corner of the podcasting world.

Stick around until the end because we have a lot of fun talking about recreational psychedelic experiences, and he tells us the story of how Terence McKenna served him his first DMT dose. We also announce a giveaway for his latest book The Psychedelic Handbook.

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087 | My Full Psychedelic Healing Journey & Origin Story: War, Abandonment, Heartbreak & Alienation

085 | My Relationship with Cannabis: How It Helped Me with Healing, Integration, Creativity & Self-Love

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