About DMT

So I’m hanging out at work with the usual suspects, and we get into this conversation about the effects of social networks on individuals in different societies. Primarily, one of us was trying to present evidence that having a strong social network is a buffer to suicide. We all agreed that it certainly appeared that way. It seems obvious that people who have families are less likely to be suicidal than those who don’t have families (if you just look at the extremes). And, in particular, those who have families and are removed from them for an extended period, have a much higher rate of suicide and depression.

This made me think about the fact that families and family members in particular, are often the primary sources of social approval. When there isn’t anyone else to tell us we’ve done a good job, or someone else to tell us they care about us, we can always still rely on family (for the most part). They serve as a safety net.

I then took the topic off track by pointing out that we typically gain social satisfaction from other people in the form of approval, and that this generates a release of neurotransmitters (dopamine and serotonin if I remember correctly). This release – the approval release – is similar in appearance (albeit much reduced) to the pleasure received by someone on heroin. Since isolation limits the approval release, because there’s no incoming approval, I couldn’t help but wonder if drugs could be used to replace the approval requirement. Why? Because after an extended period of time without approval, the risk of depression becomes much higher due to lack of this chemical release. If you could manually control that release, then you could operate in isolation much more effectively. Note that I am NOT promoting the use of heroin here.

Verbally pondering this to the others prompted someone else to mention a drug called DMT (dimethyltryptamine) which was one I hadn’t heard of. Apparently it’s been said to generate “faith” in people. It’s known as the “Spirit Drug” or the “God Drug.” Naturally we all wanted to know what effect this would have on an atheist – after all, that would be the litmus test wouldn’t it? I mean, there are a lot of things you could have “faith” in, and faith is just defined as the belief in something for which you have no evidence (empirical or otherwise). This appeared to be a semantic issue to me, a disagreement in the definition of a term. But, it is said, those atheists who take DMT still experience some kind of perception of a higher state or existence, even though they have nothing to associate it with.

Some research into DMT revealed some VERY strange websites. Here are a few:

• Finding God
• DMT the Spirit Molecule
• Dimethyltryptamine (Wikipedia)
• Machine Elf (Wikipedia)
• Terence McKenna (Wikipedia)
• What is DMT?
• Six Accounts of DMT

There are a lot more, of course. You can spend all day on the web reading about the various spiritual experiences people have had using one drug or another. So, why am I posting this? Because it’s interesting to me. When you don’t understand how something works, sometimes you poke it with a stick and see what it does. That’s how the brain is right now. We can’t trace the flow of information across individual neurons, but drugs give you a glimpse at internal operations. User feedback, that’s the key. What these people perceive and why is important. What they understand as being spiritual may, in fact, by a clue as to how information is being processed.

Anyway, I thought it was fun. Not that I’m going out and looking for some DMT to take. Frankly, I don’t have time for an extended high, or a change of personality. Not while I’ve got a job to do and a family to take care of. Hey, if anyone out there’s ever taken this shit, please leave a reply here and let us know what you experienced. (Yes, you can be anonymous).