Contemporary Research with Dr Rick Strassman

My unofficial Vital Study Zine #6 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space

John Giorno ‘We Gave a Party for the Gods’ in the gardens at Chateau de Versailles

Who would inject test subjects with large doses of intravenous DMT four times in a row thereby opening a new paradigm in psychedelic research?

And who, on an otherwise genteel psychedelic training course, would casually riff on orgasms, prophets and brainwashed assassins? Before announcing that it’s probably the placebo effect anyway?

Who turns up at self-declared ‘21st Century Mystery School’ The Tyringham Initiative as sole representative of the USA, and whacks a bible on the overhead projector before calmly explaining that entities are angels? Despite being an ordained Zen buddhist lay priest. And, besides all this drugs stuff, once found a new way to grow embryonic avian dorsal root ganglion neurons, suspended in a semi-solid agar matrix? As one does.

Who, in this psychedelic renaissance of ours, is totally styling it in double denim while sharing police medical reports on the fallout from satanic ayahuasca rituals on Facebook? 

Dr Rick ‘The Strass’ Strassman does all these things and much more.

Like a strong ecstasy pill he sneaks up, and you don’t realise how out there you were till 24 hours later. Displaying affection and disdain for the contemporary space in equal measure, like the sensitive and driven do, this dark horse of psychedelia rattled through a sharp snapshot of the science, peppered with his own astute asides. 

And yes, he spoke about the sex, death and God stuff. And the pineal gland, and the entities. 

“I knew I had to be really well trained to do work like this”

Dr Strassman played with a straight bat in his startling breakthrough book The Spirit Molecule, covering his pioneering DMT tests that catalysed the psychedelic renaissance and become one of the most compelling areas of experimental science. In his opening to this ‘Contemporary Research’ lecture he urged Vital students to also take a scientific approach when rising through the ranks. 

Dr Rick Strassman will put the cat amongst the pigeons at your ceremony

“Stanford in the 70s was pretty cutting-edge. It was a very interesting time, intellectually,” he reminisces, “I was 20 years old in July 1972, and I was watching the sun come down on acid, and decided I wanted to study psychedelics. I wrote a manifesto, got a bit hyper manic, and 19 out of 21 medical schools rejected me straight out. Of the others, one refused talk about it in the interview. The other heard me out, and rejected me anyway. So I knew I had to be really well trained to do this.”

Look normal, and they will suspect nothing. Dr Strassman’s rigour paid off and his research on DMT at the University of New Mexico between 1990 and 1995, which he successfully applied for state funding. Like a tripedal DMT vision shaped as a giant rotating bejewelled milking stool, he stands astride neuroscience, theology – in fact he’s about to reveal his ‘theoneurology’ research – and the imaginative, creative chaos of the trickster archetype. He is currently Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico and on the advisory board of Eduardo de la Luna’s Wasiwaka centre in Brazil. 

“Stanford in the 70s was pretty cutting-edge”

His latest, The Psychedelic Handbook released in 2022 offers up his own thoughts on grassroots healing. DMT: The Spirit Molecule is a core psychonaut text and here’s that Joe Rogan movie. Aficionados recommend DMT and the Soul of Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible and Inner Paths To Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies of which Dr David Luke says "This book raises many fundamental questions about the nature of reality that have barely been asked in the scientific community, let alone answered, and I strongly urge all researchers of consciousness to read it.”

"This book raises many fundamental questions about the nature of reality that have barely been asked in the scientific community, let alone answered, and I strongly urge all researchers of consciousness to read it.”

In the company of fellow travellers he is liberal with his opinions that were always well-informed, and tempered where required. Often these ran contrary to narrative – as the wisdom of the serious players often does.  Listen to him talk about God and DMT along with a bunch more on the New Psychonaut ‘lecture channel’.

Next issue: Dr Bennet Zenner, the mycelial businessman

Boldly going where no heads have gone before

Approach

Intravenous infusion (IV) application allows for extended DMT sessions dubbed ‘DMTx’ lasting hours at a time

By Colin Prahl from the exhibition Limit Sequence at The Chambers Project gallery till 16 September 2022. homepage image ‘Geodesia’ also by Prahl is available as a print from the artists’ webstore.

DMTx is an extended DMT trip applied by intravenous drip… in the ‘DMTx machine’ at Imperial College London.

“It’s crazy that ppl aren’t studying endogenous DMT more than they are,” says the man who brought ‘the spirit molecule’ to Western attention, pointing out that Dr Jon Dean of DMT Quest cannot get further funding for his revelatory 2019 discovery that DMT is produced in large quantities by the human body.

“Nature is gushing with DMT” according to Dennis McKenna. At least plant medicine got decriminalised in Dr Dean’s Michigan neighbourhood.

“How is DMT made?” Strassman prompts, “What’s its synthesis? What turns it on or off? Why should the brain when faced with this simple, ubiquitous molecule start constructing these alien realities? And what purpose does it have?”

Dr Strassman’s got plenty of ideas to get the ball rolling. He first put forward the notion of a DMaTrix in a 2016 paper published alongside Andrew Gallimore, a Japan-based British neuroscientist who could lay claim to being the most ambitious psychonaut in the global space.

“The DMT experience could be ‘titrated’ both in terms of duration and intensity, adjusting these levels to accommodate the specific needs of individuals”

The two pointed out in rigorous scientific detail that DMT was ideally placed to be administered by IV drip, hospital bed-style. 

‘There are potential clinical applications of a continuous IV infusion of DMT,’ they wrote, ‘Compared to the substantially longer effects of other psychedelic substances, DMT offers more discrete and therefore more easily manageable experiences. In conjunction with continuous target‐controlled infusions, the DMT experience could be “titrated” both in terms of duration and intensity, adjusting these levels to accommodate the specific needs of different individuals and indications.’

Colorado based Mindfulness Medicine picked up on this and began its DMTx awareness-raising project already preparing 21st Century to explore DMT hyperspace for extended periods. Gallimore’s enthusiastic lectures suggested they would y’know, get used to it after a while, find their feet and achieve a clearer, productive learning experience. The intensity can be dialled up or down, and explorers in dire straits can be pulled out of DMTx at the flick of a switch.

“I asked Rick how long he’d like to spend there,” says DMTx’s Daniel McQueen, a psychotherapist and psychedelic retreat organiser, and ‘Oh, a couple of days’ was the reply.”

On the practicalities of commuting to hyperspace Dr Strassman commented “Well, astronauts wear diapers” during his Vital lecture.

No prizes for guessing where the DMaTrix is up and running right now. Imperial College London, backed by the UK’s Small Pharma company are on the verge of publishing the results of their experiment SPL028 Prolonged DMT Series: An injectable formulation of deuterated DMT designed to deliver a more prolonged psychedelic experience.

At July’s Breaking Convention conference I chatted to a gentleman who’d been in the DMaTrix (already shortened to ‘The DMTX Machine’ in UK space argot), the day before; a young neuroscientist. He seemed pretty chilled, to be fair.

“I won’t ask you what it was like,” I said, flexing my fearless reporting skills. “Hm,” came the reply, in acknowledgment. He showed me photos, and there he was wired up to the machine in a technicolour Frankenstein’s laboratory transported into the secular era, with MSB doors plus health ‘n’ safety notices. And a dude playing the lute in the corner.

While it was one of those strikingly unfamiliar scenes that tickled my ontology, there was undeniably something exciting, creative, proactive and downright courageous about it too. This was bolstered by the presence of Robin Carhart-Harris himself, who’s taken personal charge of SPL028 (which is patented). Still, by the time you actually read this there could be a hole torn in the fabric of reality where Imperial’s South Kensington campus used to be.

“The important thing is not what the entities are, but what can we learn to better ourselves and society?”

Imperial’s model is considered ‘scientific’ in comparison to the DMTX org’s emphasis on spiritual preparation. The college’s secret weapon Dr Chris Timmerman though is out there detailing a combined model of approach and researching DMT’s similarity to a ‘waking dream’ state featuring the requisite rapid drop in alpha waves and rise in delta plus gamma waves, plus: “reduced modularity, increased integration and functional plasticity. These findings were complemented by psychological studies showing that the DMT state is one of immersive visual imagery, intense somatic experiences and partial disconnection from the environment, which we found shared significant overlap with near- death experiences. DMT administration also resulted in positive mental health outcomes in healthy volunteers providing evidence for the first time that DMT may provide a useful alternative to currently investigated psychedelic treatments.”

The space’s first documented encounter with stand-alone DMT came in 1961 when William Burroughs wrote to Timothy Leary urging him to have some apomorphine to hand if he gave it a go. Because Burroughs had thought he was fine with DMT until one of his companions turned into – what else? – a bejewelled jaguar. (Burroughs was already a veteran of the Amazon, having written about yagé over a decade previously. Neuroscientist Andrew Lees credits Burroughs, a failed doctor who became a writer, with inspiring him to sample yagé that in turn “broke down certain rigid structures that were blocking innovations” in Lees’ leading Parkinson’s disease research).

Leary write later that DMT was “the nuclear bomb of the psychedelic family. A sub-cellular cloud-ride into a world of ordered, moving beauty which defies external metaphor. There’s memory of structure, because space is converted into flowing process.” His crew’s reports were varied, and indeed DMT still gets a mixed reception today despite a John Hopkins compilation report maintaining 80% of users surveyed reported positive entity encounters. 

“The kids round here don’t need psychedelic guides. They’ve got YouTube and DMT vapes”

Lady Amanda Fielding described it as “a little harsh” with English understatement at the Psych Summit. But her Berkley Psytech concluded in its ayahuasca research that long-term use is beneficial. 

Might as well try microdosing it then.

“The kids round here don’t need psychedelic guides. They’ve got YouTube and DMT vapes,” said a friend of mine based in a large regional UK city when I told him about Vital. And indeed medical reports published in July 2022 shows how a diagnosed schizophrenic claimed to have healed himself with DMT and other psychedelics.

“During his final trip, he even encountered an “entity” in the form of a geometric shape called an icosahedron “with a consciousness”. Every thought that the teenager shared with the icosahedron was mirrored back to him as if it would have answers to all possible questions.

Taking his treatment a step further, the patient then began smoking low doses of DMT on a daily basis for an extended period of time. Doing so brought him into contact with yet more entities and produced an antidepressant effect. Eventually, he came to realise that “he wanted [to] belong to the society and the world, to live and enjoy life. He described that 'life had begun to feel like a life”.’

Well, The University of California says microdosing DMT works for rats.

Out there in the self-healing underground though, the “question everything” rule Dr Strassman swears by is alive. “Vaping DMT is spiritual masturbation” writes one discontent (a Chicken Licken or plant medicine snob? You decide). Carl Jung warned, “Beware of unearned wisdom” and with my apprentice ‘guide’ hat on I would remind everyone to actually live the lessons learned from the Icosahedrons or whatever they might really be above. 

“The important thing is not what they are, but what can we learn to better ourselves and society?” says Dr Strassman. And we cannot do that if we spend the whole time wired into a machine at Imperial College.

This may hurt a little…

Therapy

Constant reflection and tireless self-work are essential to handle the rigours of psychedelic therapy

Paul Smith, ‘Awaken’ via here.

“Doubt is core to the psychedelic movement,” says Dr Strassman, “We question authority, we question belief.”

The top-flight ego dissolver leaves no current controversy unexamined in his Vital lecture on contemporary research, evoking the hard truths of psychedelic experience.

The fearless researcher starts by probing the supposed mental health revolution. “I don’t think these miraculous cures are going stick,” he warns, “The figures are good, but there’s an open question abut regularity. With ketamine it looks like you’re having to come in every week. Psilocybin looks like every month or so. People ‘come down’ and revert to the old patterns.”

He’s most keen to impart the value of self-examination and ‘shadow work’; on behalf of the therapists themselves. “Consider your own prejudices. Take what you believe to be ‘right’ and and be very careful not to project it,” he warns.

“There’s been a suicide in testing. One subject was so disappointed he didn’t have one of these ‘life-changing mystical experiences’.”

Dr Strassman is an ordained key buddhist priest and a student of Hebrew mysticism who’s developing a way to communicate with entities using conversational models inspired by the prophets of the Old Testament. But he’s not sold on the ‘mystical experience’ allegedly key to healing.

“I think if we left it secular we’d be better off,” he says, “the scientific plane can coexist. There’s been a suicide in testing because one subject was so disappointed he didn’t have one of these ‘life-changing mystical experiences’. Part of the setting should be not to have it as a goal.”

This actually echoes Stan Grof, who in LSD Psychotherapy refers to Einstein’s ‘cosmic consciousness’ that can be considered universal, practical and even scientific. Therapists should allow ‘a symbolic framework that is emerging spontaneously from the subject’s collective unconscious, and is the most appropriate form for their spiritual experience.’

“If this is a simulation, there’s still cause and effect. You do things, think things, they have repercussions”

Dr Strassman’s standpoint extends to arguments from the religious use movement. “There’s a movement to you relabel these compounds divine, or specifically ‘generating God from within’. That assumes a lot: first of all, that there is a spiritual level of existence, specifically God, and that’s within us, you know, which is questionable. That a drug can generate divinity, or a real religious experience, I don't think is an established fact."

Humans are capable of transcendence without a particular faith, says Strassman: “My colleague Daniel Freidman used to talk about the ‘portentous’ moments – the feeling that what you're seeing is the most significant thing you've ever undergone. That can be truly meaningful even without religious belief.”

Even once the more fantastical effects of the treatment have worn off, “it will still strengthen aspects like ‘vocational efficacy’, one’s sense of self.”

Strassman prefers ‘unitive experience’ to the ‘spiritual’ term, and reminds “there are plenty of ways to achieve a mystical experience without drugs, in particular traditions for example.” [EG tantra, or alchemy].

“Doubt is core to the psychedelic movement. We question authority, we question belief”

Plus he advises sensitivity with any spiritual props in the treatment room. A multi-faith approach might work for the irreligious but some communities can be actively triggered by some psychedelic tropes: “a lot of the official music is Wagner, which the Nazis played to jews arriving at the concentration camps. Imagine you’re a jew presenting with generational trauma and hearing that as you’re coming up. Or lots of christians believe Buddhism is idolatry and paganism. If a christian opens their eyes and the first thing they see is a buddha… it may be cool, it may not be.”

Challenging experiences is a term he’s equally wary of: “Challenging ‘reactions’ is possibly less onerous.”

With Strassman it all comes down to results. Asked where he stands on Anil Seth’s simulation theory, he replies “If this is a simulation, there’s still cause and effect. You do things, think things, they have repercussions.  I don’t think we need to spend a lot of time figuring that one out.”

Tremendously more important, he says is that “We make ourselves better people and the world a better place. If psychedelics can contribute to that, more power to them.”

The Strass is so promethean that he debunks his own landmark hypotheses. Like the one about DMT originating from the pineal gland AKA ‘third eye’ in mystic circles.

“I don’t think it’s as important as it was when I put it out,” he harrumphs, “I write a wild-eyed but scientific article about the pineal gland in 1991. The group in Ann Arbor picked up on that 12 years later, and produced the study in the living rodent pineal gland. Now a 2019 report thinks the 2013 data was the result of the probe going through the brain into the pineal snagged brain tissue, not pineal tissue… What’s much more interesting is the brain makes DMT – in very high quantities.”

How will the stark nature of psychedelic science play out within our comically dysfunctional human condition?

Turning to tragedy, ‘Kill the physician and the fee bestow upon thy foul disease’ says the Earl of Kent to King Lear in act one of Shakespeare’s masterwork. Lear has disowned his loving but frankly-spoken daughter, after her honest efforts to protect him from hubris; the complacent monarch is suffering from a ‘disease of the ego’ according to Shakespeare buffs. 

Holy vape pens, Metatron!

Space

Arguing where DMT entities come from is moot says Dr Strassman. Besides, they’re angels

Magnus Gjoen, ‘I Saw the Sky Come Down to Meet You’ available here.

It’s how and what we learn from DM entities that counts. Not their origin, says Dr Strassman.

“The most important thing is how we use our words. Can we ask the right questions? Can we ask the right answers? And remember them?” says the Spirit Molecule author.

Dr Strassman might be wary of bringing established religions into psychedelic therapy. But he’s certainly not against using them to aid discovery. “The established model is ‘neurotheology’ which states the brain is at the centre of human experience. Things can get it off that: drugs, fasting sleep deprivation, that trigger brain reflex changes. But these are described after the fact as ‘spiritual’ and given terms like ‘openness’, ‘ecstasy’, ‘out of body experience.’ 

Modern science, which is informed by the biological, competitive model put forward by Sigmund Freud and Richard Dawkins, explains this as “We’re evolutionarily configured to be perceptive, compassionate, empathic and sociable to help us survive.”

This explanation might be tight, but fails to include the grander narrative that DMT is especially at pains to impress upon us is ‘real’, or ‘noetic’ to the scientific language. “During the 1990s tests, I learned that I wouldn’t get the same debriefs out of subjects unless I took their DMT experiences to be real,” says Strassman on his YouTube. And can we just explain away art, love, friendship, purpose and so many other wonderful things, as stuff we do to get laid?

“I expected Zen shunyata without form, feeling, consciousness, perception or volition… empty. It turned out DMT was everything but”

Theoneurology, outlined in Strassman’s book DMT and the Soul of Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible flips the script, proposing the ‘divine’ whatever it might be, informs neurology. This could be said to suit the psychology of Carl Jung.

At this point it’s worth noting that the two Vital lecturers who’ve cautioned the most against ‘transcendence porn’ and the quest for a ‘mystical experience’, Bill Richards and Strassman, are both deeply religious individuals. 

“Buddhism saved my life after I dropped out of medical school,” Strassman says, “I became a serious practitioner for two decades. I’m in its debt. It was the closest thing I had come across that strengthened the psychedelic experience, and also strengthened my belief there was some intimate relationship between psychedelic states and buddhist practice.”

When he began his famous early 1990s DMT tests he expected the experiences to mirror buddhist teaching: “Both myself and the subjects expected something similar to Tensho, the Zen state of shinyata, “without form, feeling, consciousness, perception or volition… empty."

However, “It turned out that DMT was everything but that.”

He continues: “The beings, the visions, the information… The personality was maintained, even strengthened. There was space and time, it was distorted but it still existed. This was not consistent with my data.” Strassman was subjected to an ego death of sorts: “I had to go back to the drawing board.” (Dr Strassman’s N, N-Dimethyltryptamine DMT is not to be confused with 5-MEO DMT of Sandoran desert toad fame, which is said to produce a ‘white out’ experience.)

Other influences were at play in this ontological snafu. “I was being discouraged by the American buddhist organisation, for being too truth-orientated. I ended up studying judaism and being impressed by prophecy.” Ever the scientist, he uses ‘impressed’ to mean ‘could be useful’.

“Armed with an expanded definition of prophecy from Maimonides, I began to compare the visions from the Old Testament and DMT”

At the 2015 Tyringham Initiative gathering, Strassman stunned even the world-class psychedelic thinkers in attendance by delivering a bravura presentation on how Old Testament dialogue can be employed when chatting to DMT ‘entities’. (Read about it in the superlative DMT Dialogues book covering the whole conference, edited by Dr David Luke). Correspondence in hyperspace is notoriously difficult, and can include important elements like divulging the intentions of the entity in question, or decoding the information they relay.

To clarify, “Prophecy doesn’t always mean foretelling like the canonical prophets do. It includes any spiritual experience: from the nameless soldier who has a dream predicting victory for Israel to Moses on mount Sinai.” The key text to study apparently is The Guide of the Perplexed, written by the Ottoman Emperor Saladin’s physician and astronomer Maimonides’ in 1190. 

“Maimonides borrowed Aristotle’s concept of ‘active intellect’ conflating information from the past, present and possible future,” says Strassman in this interview with a Hebrew mystic channel.

According to Maimonides’ own introduction, “The Guide of the Perplexed has a second object: it seeks to explain certain obscure figures which occur in the Prophets. Even well-informed persons are bewildered if they understand these passages in their literal signification. But they are entirely relieved of their perplexity when we explain, or merely suggest that the terms are figurative.”

In recent podcast interviews Dr Strassman’s been keen to insist he’s presenting the notion as “an interested theologian” rather than a profile scientist. It doesn’t stop him bringing in medical anecdotes, like left-brain stroke victims seeing in ‘pixelated’ vision. Anyway, back to the Bible. 

“Armed with an expanded definition of prophecy from Maimonides, I began to compare the visions from the Old Testament and DMT. And, descriptively phenomenologically, the visions, the voices, the emotions, the effects on the body… were quite similar.”

You may’ve figured that we’re getting into the ‘advanced class’ of psychedelic use here. So I’ll end with this passage from the book of Ezekiel, a favourite with contemporary churches, abridged by Strassman in his 2015 Tyringham Initiative presentation.

“Ezekiel’s messages came from God and were intended to be given to the wider community. In chapter one, the heavens open, there’s a stormy wind, brilliant light, beings emerge from the fire. There are spheres, wheels. Ezekiel sees faces of beings: a man, a lion, an ox, an eagle. The beings run rapidly to-and-fro despite the immobility of their legs. Their backs and wings are full of eyes. Some beings fly through space. Thee is an expanse of blue, or a rainbow, above their heads. Ezekiel loses all strength, falls on his face. An angel stands him up, speaks to him, pulls him by the hair, and carries him through space.”

Peak sexual experience

Integration

DMT is possibly responsible for the female full body orgasm

Eternal Phoenix by Carolyn Mary Kleefeld

There’s a new emphasis on returning to the womb.

An intrepid Vital student asked Dr Strassman a very pertinent question, going forward: “I’m a sex therapist. Should I ever mix psychedelics with that?”

Dr Strassman does have something of the ‘unlikely sex symbol’ about him. A volcano festers within, and I can imagine bookish, imaginative girls becoming rather intrigued by the quietly uncompromising genius. 

This image is compounded by The Strass’ involvement in the science of women’s cervical ‘full body’ orgasms.

“I posted an interview about this on my Facebook page,” he coyly replies to my fellow psychedelic student, “and it got a ton of likes compared to everything else,” (He probably means the Old Testament stuff). 

The splendid Double Blind magazine were first on it. The psychedelic lifestyle leader matched the sterling work of Olivia Bryant’s Self:Cervix project to spread awareness of earth-moving sex, with sex therapists who link that cervix to the vagus nerve. If the ‘full body’ orgasm activates the vagus nerve, the part of our nervous system responsible for the ‘rest and digest’ state, swinging from the chandeliers would bring significant health benefits.

“You do hear reports of experiences with a sexual character during DMT states”

The article quotes one of Bryant’s students: “Time both expanded and stood still. I understood everything and nothing. I was both God and unborn. The micro and the macro. The purest form of ecstasy and surrender I could ever hope to experience.”

Writer Nicolle Hodges pointed out that in The Spirit Molecule Dr Strassman writes of DMT, “There is a powerful dynamic or tension between the two roles it may play—one spiritual and the other sexual.” Asked if the brain releases DMT during orgasm The Strass wouldn’t take the bait: “That’s not known,” he replies in the interview. ‘Is sexually-activated DMT production perhaps one of the major motivating factors in reproductive behaviour?’ comes the follow-up question. “It’s educated speculation,” he says. “We don’t know for sure one way or the other.”

Undaunted, Hodges hit up Imperial’s Dr Chris Timmerman. “You do hear about reports of people having sensual experiences, which have a sexual character to them during DMT states,” he conceded, “Maybe [orgasms] have not been reported as much because sex has a taboo connotation to it, and the same can happen when sex is associated with DMT and psychedelics in general.” 

Britain’s cannabis journal Leafie ran with the ball. Neuroscience graduate Bethan Finnegan pointed out that women with major spinal injury can still have cervical orgasms and the clitoral orgasm deactivates the pre-frontal cortex leading to miniature ‘ego death’, with French lingo for orgasm being le petit mort, ‘little death’.

Back in the Vital Q&A, Dr Strassman falls back to scientist mode. “You’d have to be methodical and incremental with your research! Study the DMT like properties of orgasm with psychedelic questionnaires, to make a cogent comparison. I think you’d find a relationship, strong correlation. Then you can look into how it occurs.”

He has some trade secrets for anyone carrying out cutting-edge research in mainstream science…

“Don’t worry about risk. Find some good mentors, keep your head on your shoulders, and do your research step by step in a Trojan Horse manner. That’s how I did mine.”

Dr Timmerman in Double Blind adds some London-based understatement: “You would need to collect blood samples when people are having these experiences to detect DMT levels in their bodies when this is occurring. This might be tricky to do in a lab environment for obvious reasons. But not impossible.”