DMT or N,N-Dimethyltryptamine is the strangest drug on Earth.
It is the “first endogenous human psychedelic” which means that our body synthesizes it in small doses, as well as at least 60 other live organisms on Earth. DMT is the root chemical structure of psilocybin, psilocin and some others. Moreover, it is used as the root for some important medical drugs. In our brain it plays a role in thought-processing, dreaming, meditating etc.
DMT was first synthesized in 1931 by a Canadian chemist Richard Helmuth Frederick Maske and in 1971 it was stated as a Schedule I drug, which means that common use of it is illegal.
The book, written by Rick Strassman, MD “DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experience.” is the basic material for the movie, together with researches and studies.
Rick Strassman addresses Terence McKenna – the most famous advocate for the use of psychedelics, who took DMT about 40 times. MacKenna traveled with lectures and his view on DMT was arguable. He used to say that if the things he sees in his trips didn’t exist, he wouldn’t dream that.
The researchers – biologists, physicians, neurologists, psychologists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, who have the word in the movie say, that basically, DMT is sort of a connection between all living things.
“It may be the common molecular language among all living beings on this planet and, maybe, others as well…”
The reason it’s so confounding is because its impact is on the language-forming capacity itself. So the reason it’s so confounding is because the thing that is trying to look at the DMT is infected by it—by the process of inspection. So DMT does not provide an experience that you analyze. Nothing so tidy goes on. The syntactical machinery of description undergoes some sort of hyper-dimensional inflation instantly, and then, you know, you cannot tell yourself what it is that you understand. In other words, what DMT does can’t be downloaded into as low-dimensional a language as English.
Terrence McKenna
“I was…neither intellectually nor emotionally prepared for the frequency with which contact with beings occurred in our studies, nor the often utterly bizarre nature of these experiences. Neither, it seemed, were many of the volunteers, even those who had smoked DMT previously.”
Rick Strassman
The movie brings attention to the cultural and historical qualities of modern societies, bring up questions of the roles of psychedelics in ancient societies and modern tribe traditions and why those drugs are pushed out from scientific research and from our life when being drunk is tolerated.
If you want to go further with educating yourself about DMT, here is a TED Talk, that was banned from TED website.
