31/08/2022
Here’s an intriguing question: Why do our bodies, and those of other mammals, produce N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a potent psychedelic also found throughout the plant kingdom?
The answer, perhaps disappointingly, is that we still don’t know.
According to the authors of a new review in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, DMT’s raison d’etre– indeed whether or not it’s relevant to mammalian physiology at all – is the subject of a 60-year debate that remains unsettled to this day.
Instead of rehashing the entire history, which the review authors assert began in 1961 with a claim in the journal Science that endogenous DMT could underlie mental illness, let’s jump to 2001.
When Rick Strassman’s landmark book DMT: The Spirit Molecule was published that year, DMT was still a niche subject in a niche field.
In 2001, only six papers across the entire body of peer-reviewed scientific literature so much as mentioned the compound – five of which, including one coauthored by Strassman, were concerned with research methods and pharmacology.
Why do our bodies produce DMT, a potent psychedelic compound?
