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by Rick Strassman, M.D.
Review by Cate Montana
The subtitle to this book "A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences" fails to capture the dynamic story of Rick Strassman's research, and the richly diverse experiences of the 60 volunteers who participated in the DMT study he conducted at the University of New Mexico between 1990 and 1995.
Considering that DMT is one of the most powerful psychedelics known to science, very little - let alone a subtitle - could capture the essence of its impact on human beings and encapsulate the extraordinary journeys of Strassman's volunteers who were injected with varying doses of clinically pure DMT during the New Mexico study. Even though DMT, known in clinical circles as N,N-dimethyltryptamine, is a naturally occurring substance manufactured by the pineal gland of our brains, and even though it is also produced by many plants in this world, very little is known about its properties. Even less is known about DMT's psychological and physiological effects. Absolutely nothing, up until Strassman's research, has been understood about its presence and purpose in our bodies and our lives.
As a scientist, Strassman himself would probably be the first to agree that even after his exhausting (but not exhaustive) five year study, that DMT's presence and purpose in our bodies and our lives is still not understood. Too little research has been done, and the results of Strassman's own research points to so many rich, multi-dimensional potentials that it staggers the imagination. A substance that catapults individual's through such a wide array of inner experiences, from accessing mystical states of oneness and bliss transcending human consciousness, to contact with beings in other dimensions; from personal healing through gestalt "ah ha's" to experiencing traumatically disturbing psychic and etheric rape does not lend itself easily to categorization. Or control. Or application.
A practicing clinical psychiatrist and a researcher investigating the function of the pineal hormone melatonin, Strassman was fascinated with the possibility of isolating the chemical which might be the triggering element in mystical, near-death, and out-of-body experiences. To him, DMT seemed the most likely candidate. The book chronicles his journey preparing for and conducting the hundreds of DMT sessions with his volunteers; getting the grants and legal permission to undertake the study - the first sanctioned research in psychedelics in the U.S. in over 20 years - makes for eye-opening reading just in itself.
But as intriguing as Strassman's journey is, it is the stories of the volunteers that are the most riveting, for they illuminate all aspects of our humanity… from the most sublime transports of joy, harmony and unification with the divine, to the most deadly despairing regions in our own psyches. And then there are the hypotheses that Strassman builds upon the potent and powerful realness of people's experiences on DMT.
Unlike many clinical researchers, when it comes to DMT's psychedelics effects, Strassman doesn't play safe and take the "it's all chemically induced and in your head" approach. Instead he sticks his neck waaaay out there and takes the unpopular stance that people's "hallucinatory" experiences just might be real. Like something out of Carlos Casteneda, Strassman hypothesizes that DMT experiences occur in a non-ordinary reality; that DMT opens the human brain up so we can perceive realities that are all around us all the time - just unseen. And he makes some absolutely intriguing leaps into the world of quantum physics, dark matter, WIMPS (weakly interacting massive particles), and parallel universes as he hypothesizes just where DMT enables us to go.
As meticulously written as his research was conducted, DMT: The Spirit Molecule
