More on DMT: Excerpts from my letters to Dana
(c) Minna Pöntinen 2006
DMT
For the first (and probably the last) time I tried out the Ayahuasca brew; its active ingredient is DMT or dimethyltryptophane is a tryptophan-related compound that is endogenic, ie. it is generated in every human's pineal gland in tiny amounts. Ironically, it's also a U.S. Schedule 1 Drug - meaning that you'll get into SERIOUS trouble if you have even a fraction of a gram of it on you. Yes, you derived right: every person on the planet should be imprisoned.
Ayahuasca has been used for thousands of years by South American medicine men in the Amazon region in curative and visionary rituals. DMT can be acquired from certain vines and plants that grow there. I'm a highly sceptic person and a firm believer in the power of modern science, but STILL I found out that for me one 12-hour shamanic trip on DMT was worth years and years of therapy and modern medicine, or even better. (As an interesting side note - the experience also made me quit from being a member of the Lutheran church (okay, I haven't been a believer in a decade) and convert into a sort of atheist Buddhism.
In the body the endogenous DMT's function is not yet quite clear and even its presence in the human body is sometimes debated; however, it is often or even commonly believed to hold a significant role in mystical experiences such as near-death experiences and religious ecstacy. The brain's DMT level also rises during nighttime, ie. when dreaming. (See MD Rick Strassman's book "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" for more info on the action on endogenous DMT.)
The Trip: Evolution
The 12 hours under ayahuasca were sheer bliss, inversely proportional to the horrible taste of the liquid. I felt my body and my mind clearer than ever before. I gradually slipped back in evolution: I grew younger, I could feel my mind and body change to be more primitive; first I was a child; then I was a toddler, a baby... then I started going back in evolution: I was a lizard/dog-like creature in a vast desert, hunting for wild game and drinking from a lonely oasis... then I was a tiny blob of some amoebic goo floating in a primordial sea. The pure essence of "being" was the most beautiful, couraging and convincing feeling I've ever felt.
Beauty Beyond the Cocoon
Basically I just saw everything as... undescribably beautiful. Utterly meaningful, utterly full of knowledge - and yet utterly meaningless. I travelled across vast spaces and times (the word "hallucinate" comes from the Latin alucinare, or "to wander in one's mind"), and still felt that mysterious "something" - my consciousness as a separate entity - explaining things to me in various kinds of ways.
This state or entity of "just being" rejoiced over "just being", it didn't care to know a reason to exist or any other fundamental universal secret, it just was and was and was with all its might, and sucked in information through its (my) eyes and its (my) ears and loved every tiny little piece of information and treated everything with equal respect and value.
Taking Pleasure in the Senses
My senses of smell and taste disappeared almost completely, but my visual, auditory and tactile senses were at least equally enhanced. I browsed through my collection of gemstones, and stared at each of them for an eternity: they all seemed to be crystalline embodiments of the one fact that the "consciousness-entity" was telling me: "everything is all right, there's nothing to fear, just enjoy Being, look at this beautiful gem, feel the beauty dissolve into your being, feel it becoming a part of you forever now that you have a memory of looking at it."
I also stared at myself in the mirror for about two hours (my fiancé was overseeing my actions and recording times etc.). I was really fixated on my eyes and my nose. My eyes were full of wonder and compassion when they stared at me, but even more wonderful was (surprisingly) my nose: I just touched it, and kept prodding at it with my finger, and stroking its arch, and staring at it in the mirror, and all the while being totally filled with an unnamed joy: I was thinking "WOW! Has this nose really been here all my life? Strange... I can't ever remember looking at it like this... what a wondrous, WONDROUS organ this is!"
Music was extremely pleasurable to listen to. Every note seemed to strike straight at some emotion center in my brain: every piece of melody sounded like it was my brain cells singing and while doing it, producing a huge spectrum of emotions. We also had sex: it felt really, really weird, but in a good way - I think I giggled during it, because it just felt really funny, and SO good that I just had to giggle and laugh because of the pleasure.
Aftermath: Lifting of depression
I now believe that that "consciousness-entity" I encountered is the supreme and only god/goddess/deity/divine there is. Being able to see so clearly even for once that you possess the Divine in you is the most convincing thought and emotion I've ever felt.
I've had no need for any medication after my experience, nor any thoughts on killing or harming myself. I see utter beauty and I rejoice. Sure, I do have my dark moments and I do brood and get depressed, but somehow the sadness is only a thin veil between me and the beauty of Everything, not a huge cloth of velvet encasing me in a cocoon and separating me from the rest of the world.
Medical usage
However great my illuminating experience was, I don't think people should just go and gulp down a pint o' huasca just like that. As with any mind-altering substance, there are risks that the "casual" user just looking to have a good time or a "nice high to laugh about" is not aware of. (For example, if you're already feeling sad about something and take ayahuasca in a non-peaceful setting with strange people around you, my guess is that instead of a divine trip you'd end up in a hellish nightmare. Quite possibly not damaging for life, but certainly really, really nasty.)
I do believe, however, that in the right hands, used in the right situations, psychedelics like DMT and LSD are the greatest tools for curing mental illnesses the mankind has ever had. The study on psychedelics in treating various mental illnesses bloomed in the 1950s and 1960s, with magnificent results in curing diseases like depression , traumatic conditions and obsessive-compulsive disorders.
Then, as the chemicals escaped from the laboratories and universities and the general public started to abuse the drugs, the US government decided to ban them all. Nowadays it's really, REALLY hard - nearly impossible - to get any academic research done on these chemicals because of those laws. I find this to be one of the greatest tragedies of our century. And it makes me SO ANGRY that because of the decades of propaganda and crap people are so stuck on their idea of "all drugs being totally harmful"... and they don't even want to listen! I'm a very intelligent, academic & articulate young woman, and particularly brilliant in making civilized arguments, but even when I try to educate people on this particular matter, they just get a weird expression, grunt "ARE YOU SOME SORT OF A GODDAMN JUNKIE?!" and refuse to listen anymore.
More on psychedelics vs. depression
The LSD/mescaline research that went on in the 1950s and 1960s really had terrific results in curing various kinds of mental illnesses, as I mentioned in my previous letter. A few months ago I noticed in the Finnish medical journal an entry which really lifted my spirits: they Finns are doing some major research on ketamine (a dissociative psychedelic, currently used in veterinary medicine as a narcoleptic) in curing treatment-resistant depression, and the studies also showed that ketamine showed an amazing potential at this. Yippee! Finally a turn for the better, I hoped. (I've also used a mild ketamine-like substance called dextrometorphan - yup, the chemical agent in cough syrups such as Robitussin - recreationally a few times, and all those times my depression was lifted for over a month.)
Then, about a month ago, I read a follow-up on that ketamine study: some folks were apprehensive about starting to use ketamine in the treatment of depression. Even when in the best cases ONLY ONE dose of ketamine to a patient is enough to cure a lifelong depression, to quote them, they "find it maybe a bit too risky to use in human subjects, because ketamine is known to provoke short-term euphoria."
EXCUSE ME. Let's check the facts.
- Depression is one of the most debilitating illnesses in Finland, costing the society a few billion euros every year.
- You have a hard-core, really efficient, side-effect free and cheap drug on curing depression once and for all.
- As the drug is already used in veterinary medicine (and was previously used as a human narcoleptic, too), the drug wouldn't require the decade-long test/exam time to enter the market, as other new drugs do.
- And after all of this - you don't want to allow its use for curing depression because you're afraid of a short-term bout of euphoria in the patients?! WTF, and you can quote me on that one. :E
- You have a hard-core, really efficient, side-effect free and cheap drug on curing depression once and for all.
- As the drug is already used in veterinary medicine (and was previously used as a human narcoleptic, too), the drug wouldn't require the decade-long test/exam time to enter the market, as other new drugs do.
- And after all of this - you don't want to allow its use for curing depression because you're afraid of a short-term bout of euphoria in the patients?! WTF, and you can quote me on that one. :E
I'm speechless. These kinds of things make me want to bang my head against the wall and pretend that I'm not aware of all the mad and injust crap that goes on in the world. Hope the decision-makers get it right this time.
And continuing...
I don't know if I've already bored you to death with this subject, but I've just got to tell you this one creepy thing about DMT.
Some people (even respectable scientists!) believe that endogenous-occurring DMT is the long-sought "thing" that provides us with our consciousness. In a human embryo, the pineal gland (which synthesizes and releases DMT in the human brain), is recognizable exactly on the day when the fetus is 49 days old. On that day the DMT level in the fetal blood soars for a moment; also, on that day, the baby's gender can be identified (or so I've heard, I should probably verify this from somewhere... heh).
Now comes the creepy part: I assume you've at least heard of the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol), an ancient Buddhist manuscript dealing with death and rebirth? Well, according to this book (and some sects of Buddhism), when a human dies his/her soul enters bardo, a state of non-being, to reflect upon his/her actions when alive. And then the person is reborn into the world after a period of - yup, you guessed it - 49 days.
Kind of scared the sh*t out of me when I first came across these facts. OK, so it very well just might be a common coincidence, and that's all. But if we ignore our skepticism and belief in the natural sciences for a moment and think about various kinds of far-fetched explanations: what if the pineal gland truly is a "spiritual antenna" of some sort, that somehow receives the "soul" 49 days after conception?
And what is the soul-consciousness-thing? Could it really be some sort of... an essence or a resonance of something, that is mediated via endogenous DMT and recycled between people? These kinds of problems really twist my brain when I try to sort them out. As an old Zen Buddhist proverb goes: "A fingertip can't touch itself - a fire can't burn itself - a mind cannot understand itself." (By the way, Dalai Lama is an avid fan (couldn't think of a better word) of modern neuroscience / the study of human consciousness, and he regularly attends many major neuroscience conferences all over the world. One of the things that drew me towards Buddhism was how well it goes with modern science!)
... OK, hehe, I have to admit I feel like a complete madwoman speculating things like this aloud :D But just M A Y B E there's actually more to the universe than, as a figure of speech, meets the eye.