I think we can all agree that every molecule in our bodies has a vital purpose. Why do think our bodies produce this powerful entheogen, DMT? If you don't have a comment, what are some theories that you have heard?

i think its there to connect us with..something Other

I have a theory. Perhaps we are developing a sixth sense. Literally. Whatever organ is producing it (the pineal gland for example) could be an evolving sixth sense organ. Various animals have evolved to have eyes. Before having eyes, however, they may have had something more primitive. Receptors that detect only changes in light for instance. Eventually, it became necessary to see a full spectrum of colors (for us humans, anyway) and see three dimensions, etc. This was simply for our survival. Now, the eyes are used for things like communication and art as well. We interpret symbols and patterns with our eyes. With our evolved consciousness, the eyes serve us not only for our survival.

Now, this sixth sense organ could be the same way. It could be primitive. Necessary for keeping psychological balance by producing psychoactive chemicals like DMT. In the future, though, it could serve an entirely different purpose providing a sixth way to perceive reality. Organisms with primitive photoreceptors don't perceive the world with the depth and clarity that animals with eyeballs do. Their visual perception is dictated by changes in the light reaching them and their subjective experience includes only that which they perceive. I believe we may have primitive spiritual (for lack of a better word) receptors. Our descendents will be more perceptive of the things that are "out of this world" and it may or may not be necessary for their survival.

Interesting idea. I agree that DMT might be a ligand used in some kind of spiritual sensation center in the brain. Maybe though this organ is actually becomming weaker in contemporary humans?

Evolution has no set trajectory from simple->complex. It all depends on the selection pressures. Plenty of critters have given up developing eyes. Lampreys have given up making complex brains. If a linneage does not require an organ/cell type/senory modality or whatever it will ultimately be degraded and abandoned.

I guess the big question is do we need it? If so, for what? I can't see complex brains devolving in humans. We've come to far, but there are a lot of just plain, stupid people out there. Social conditioning makes that a sure thing. We're smart enough now that it may be our decision which way to go. If DMT plays a part in our evolution, we can use it as a catalyst. I'd rather the human race evolved. Or died off completely. Whichever comes first.

It's like asking what the purpose is of dreaming. It might be just resetting the brain.
It's clear that we need the serotonergic system for our survival and well-being, so what could the purpose be then, of a powerfull endogenous serotonin antagonist?
Maybe it has to do with balancing the system. While serotonin is seen as the 'balance-molecule' by many scientists, it's functionig might need some counterbalance itself, as well.

Interesting. I think it was some McKenna that I was listening to, where he proposed the same in reverse. That we HAD a sixth sense which we are LOOSING, and that endogenous DMT could be a relic of something past like the appendix.

Nobody wants to hear that though. I like yours better.

Tribal, where can I find this McKenna lecture/book?

The idea of it being vestigial is interesting. He believed the world would undergo extreme change in 2012. If this shift in, well, everything occurred it might make something like endogenous DMT useless. This would make up for our psychological/spiritual "loss." Much like evolution of the human palate has made the appendix useless. The appendix must have been vital at one point, but isn't any more.

An interesting article which proposes DMT acts as an endogenous neurotransmitter.
http://www.erowid.org/re...=7404&DocPartID=6553

Hey blue velvet, check out http://deoxy.org/mckenna.htm

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and there you will find many, many videos. Enjoy!

I think it simply serves as an endogenous neurotransmitter most likely involved in sensory perception. That theory is based on other theories in the literature but also it makes sense if you just sit and think about what facts are out there (and about what happens when you smoke it ). I highly recommend checking out the link that bufoman posted the article is a nice update on what is known, although the author does make a lot of speculation but simply because more data is needed and I don't think he claims anything unresonable.

The evidence is accumulating for this role of endogenous dmt.

1. It interacts with a group of neuro-receptors the trace amine receptors. I think seretonin receptors while it does effect them play less of a role in its visual effects, perhaps it is more involved in the emotional effects the seretonin aspect (this may be the case with other psychedelic substances as well but alas more research needs to be done).

2. It gets degraded quickly suggesting its not a constant hormonal signal.

I think we will learn a lot more about the role of these compounds as this receptor system gets studied in a bit more detail.

But then another bunch of interesting questions come up. If dmt's primary role is to serve in some aspect of either visual or some other sensory perception why at higher doses does it so drastically alter our normal waking everyday sensory perception? Does it trip our brains signals into perceiving reality differently at such doses? If so that gives science an amazing tool to understand how our brain uses these chemical signals to aid in building its picture of reality from sensory input. Is there a certain level of dmt required in the human body to perceive aspects of reality at all? In other words what would happen to an individual who had no endogenous dmt? Would they not be able to perceive certain aspects of reality or not be able to form pictures in the mind? DMT could very well be involved in helping out brain build visual images of reality!

Also I think the role for dmt and its possible link to schizophrenia and other hallucinatory (although this may show they are not hallucinations at all!) mental illness still may hold some water. Let me try to explain. Ok schizophrenia has many aspects. For example dopamine is heavily involved and damage to this system precipitates the illness. Now any cognitive or mental phenomenon usually requires many different systems cross communicating etc so its not just dopamine involved here. The dopamine aspect could certainly explain in part the paranoia and the auditory hallucinations people experience because we have another way of inducing psychosis by playing with dopamine (amphetamine psychosis which closely resembles certain types of "natural" psychosis). Even some of the visual hallucinations. But most certainly thats not all! Clearly the psychotic can hallucinate entities and also experience serious distortions in visual perception. For example take a look at this picture:

http://www.genomenewsnet...hizophrenia/Cats_squ.jpg

I always love the above pictures because they look very much like the types of hallucinations one could experience under the influence of a very visual psychedelic substance (like dmt!). Those pictures even look like some drawings people have made of dmt elves! Anyway back to the brain chemistry. So dopamine can explain certain aspects of the schizophrenia but I think there is more to it. Clearly the analytical methods at the time when the dmt and schizophrenia hypothesis was popular were not sensitive enough to reveal significant differences between psychotics and normal people (but I don't think there even needs to be a significant difference in the blood or urine to still tie dmt into mental illness but I will avoid going into too much detail as its complicated). BUT! I think dmt could explain the visual hallucinations of a psychotic such as the cat pictures above by not making too much dmt but with mislevels of certain brain monoamine oxidases. There is accumulating evidence that genes involved in MAOI enzymes are altered in people who develop schizophrenia (although there is still contradicting evidence about this and clearly more research is needed). So if someone has a weak monoamine oxidase system (perhaps this also fluctuates based on a number of factors and could explain why sometimes people hallucinate vividly at certain points in their illness but not on others) certain levels of monoamines could go up like dmt. Also if someone has overactive monoamines there will be less of certain monoamines which might explain even more about whats involved and how. But even this is too simple as schizophrenia is so complex of a disease and many factors contribute and I am not comphrehensively going to review everything about it here! This could also help explain why MAOI inhibitors are useful in treating certain types of mental illness. I think a lot of the literature has focused on blood MAOI levels or blood levels of dmt etc and not found significant differences but I think there could be something going on in the brain related to all this and that we need methods to examine more of whats going on beyond the blood brain barrier (which of course is much more difficult to measure directly hence why this research hasn't gone that far).

So ok many people might not like hearing that dmt is involved in mental illness (even if its only indirect). But I think we have an important lesson to learn if dmt is involved in sensory perception (which is tied into mental illness clearly). Ok let me think because now this gets hard to explain as SWIM thought this up on lsd. Ok so we know the brain only brings in so much information and creates a picture of reality that is largely subjective. It acts as a gate to reality. Now imagine that a psychotic who is avidly hallucinating and hearing voices is just perceiving things we are not! Perhaps his gates are just wide open to other levels of reality and perhaps to other beings dwelling in these levels of reality (even ancesteral human consciousness that has never gone away). The problem then with these diseases is that the person is tormented by this constant bombardment of other levels of reality! So maybe we should be listening to the psychotic and stop throwing him in the dungeon? Now the psychedelic user can get to open the gates whenever they want and luckily they close back up again. Now this is going out on a limb and I might not be explaining myself clearly but its an idea.


I don't think there is any point in speculating about the spiritual implications of this substance until more is known about what its doing. Spirituality is something human beings came up with to attempt to explain things we don't understand and is thus too subjective and mixed up with weird ideas to give any meaningful answers. At least thats my opinion on such explanations for its role. In other words why invoke magic unless its the only option left? But then again thats more of a language issue as we have no words to describe other levels of reality or things beyond our normal waking senses so we lump those things together and call it spirituality. I think we need new words to describe this stuff!

Sorry for the long post but I hope it made some sense



I thought it acts as an agonist?

It does, but it's a little more complicating.
It acts as a serotonin agonist for some specific receptors only. But these are receptors that when activated will lead to a decrease of serotonergic activity, so in a sense serotonin can act as an antagonist of itself and DMT activates those specific receptors.

Basically the brain creates two sequential 'layers' of perception; the first layer is that of straightforward sensory perception and the second is a sort of 'echo' of this signal that's filled with all kinds of personal associations on the signal; like 1-you see a tree and 2- you see a tree and you think: tree, wood, forrest, green, etc.
All kinds of links with what you see of wich some are relevant and some are totally irrelevant. The serotonergic system acts as a filter on this 'echo', filtering out the irrelevant things.
When this system is repressed as with DMT, all these 'irrelevant' things are no longer filtered and the 'echo' signals may even become the more dominant signals.

It may be that DMT is meant as a counterbalance for the filter, to give this filtering system some rest now and then for neural maintenance. It also may be that the filtering system needs some adjustment now and then and it may also be that all that's filtered out is not irrelevant for our existance, just for our daily hour-to-hour survival so that sometimes, like in our dreams, we do need to become aware of all these very idiosyncratic versions of reality. I think it's a combination of these things.
Nature tends to be efficient in these sort of things. mechanisms often serve more than just one purpose, because why would you want to design a whole new transmitter system for every task if you could use an already existing system for just the same thing?

DMT is an agonist of some serotonin and other (like the TAAR) receptors.

And even though there are some indications that it can be a neurotransmitter, the fact that it may act as a hormone has not yet been excluded. Both possibilities are still open and NOT mutually exclusive.

I had formulated a theory for DMT as an endocrine hormone, that went like that:

DMT is produced in the body by some organs and just as many endocrine hormones do, it travels to the brain to report the status of these organs. We have no clue when dmt is excreted, but let's assume it is excreted at night just for the argument's sake. At this certain time of the circadian rhythm the body usually sleeps and organs behave differently. Heart starts beating at a different pace, digestion and metabolism take a different route compared to when one is awake, lung and breathing function also change etcetera etcetera.

So, the mind puts the body to sleep and then it instructs the organs on how to behave, sort of like giving the command: "Now switch to the sleeping mode!" The organs do so, but they also need to report their status back to the brain, so the brain knows that they really work in sleeping mode and not something else.

So, the body organs excrete the dmt which as an endocrine hormone gets to the blood and eventually reaches the brain and give the message: "aye, we're certainly working in sleeping mode now". Should the dmt levels fall, the brain understands that the organs are going astray and puts more effort on making them work the way they should.

In other words therefore, dmt's role as a hormone could be to establish a feedback-based molecular balance, like a dialogue between the brain and certain organs to meet the right function at the right time. In this PURELY HYPOTHETICAL example the right function was the "sleeping mode" and the right time was night". One can think other body functions that need to be harmonised at around certain times, and dmt's role as an endocrine hormone could fit it.

But we do not really know, all these are speculations for the time being.

It's very likely that it HAS multiple purposses. it's just more efficient that way, from an evolutionary perspective. Just like sex is a means of reproduction, but through evolution became a tool for social bounding in many species and just like the fats that keep the feathers of birds waterproof also enable some birdsspecies to float on water and just like smell initially meant for animals to find food also began to serve for some species like the K9's, as a tool for communication.

True it makes sense that it would have multiple functions and also true that its role as a hormone cannot yet be excluded and that it could be a bit of both.

There are some reasons the hormone aspect I am not so convinced by yet. DMT gets broken down fast MAOI's chew it up. Most hormones tend to stick around and there levels fluctuate more gradually. But hmm well other neurotransmitters also regulate sleep and wake modes. For example seretonin and acetylcholine are both heavily involved in sleep regulation. I think meletonin acts also as a sleep like hormone (and less of a neurotransmitter). I could be a bit off on my facts here so correct me if I say something wrong.

Ok but one question. If dmt were to act as a hormone to communicate between the brain and organs then there must be receptors for dmt on the organs in question? Now there are seretonin receptors on various organs like the stomach (I don't know much about where else they reside). So far I think dmt has been shown to bind more strongly to trace amines receptors then seretonin. But I could be wrong about that I'd have to check out the papers again. This suggests its endogenous role is to act on these receptors and as far as I know there distribution isn't that wide. Are they found outside the CNS and spinal cord? If so then yes that might suggest a more hormone like role. If not then I think it points more towards a neurotransmitter role. But again the definition of a neurotransmitter and hormone can get vague in certain cases.

No, I think the definition of neurotransmitter and hormone are pretty clear to me; The neurotransmitter is excreted in the synaptic space from the presynaptic cell and perceived from the postcynaptic cell. The hormone (let's only get the endocrine hormone thing) is secreted in the blood and through the blood circulation it can reach on it's targets anywhere they are on the body.

Now, as far as the existence of any dmt receptors on the organs, I do not feel that they would be necessary in the first place. If they do exist, they would basically act as checking mechanism of dmt excretion and possibly regulation of the latter. I do not propose that dmt is the brain's signal to put the organ's to an x, y, or z mode of function. Albeit, not impossible hypothesis, I would rather keep things as simple as possible and assume that any other hormone or neural signal could serve the brain ---> organ communication. I just propose that dmt serves the organ ---> brain communication. In that respect, the organs could as well get away without having dmt receptors since they are not that necessary to them should the proposed hypothesis is correct.

On the other hand, the enzymes responsible for dmt synthesis are found around the body. I do not like this reductionist argument (the exact same argument was used to support the dmt-and-pineal hypothesis), but hey, that an extra indication pointing towards the peripheral dmt production.

And just to make things even more complicated one could also say that the MAO system could be equally regulated (shut down) so that dmt can report to the brain. But I will stop hypothesisign further on that; evoking an ad hoc hypothesis like that to fill caveats of another hypothesis is a joke in itself has no end.

True I guess I was thinking of meletonin when I got confused with definitions. As far as I know its not a neurotransmitter but chemically it looks like a lot of neurotransmitters. I always thought it was a hormone. Is that correct?



Wait but how would a cell detect if dmt is present then? I am a bit confused here maybe I am not understanding what your saying.

Melatonin does not look like neurotransmitter, it just looks like a class of neurotransmitters!


The organs do not necessarily need to detect dmt. Brain does so that it detects what the organs "say". Organs just need to secrete it. the system is organ ---> brain via dmt, brain----> organ via fuckknowswhat.

Compare with a similar system, the communication of pituitary and gonads. Pituitary secretes FSH and LH, they are being perceived by the gonads through FSH and LH receptors. The gonads respond back to the pituitary by excreting estrogen and progesterone. The pituitary has estrogen and progesterone receptors to perceive the message. In this simplified system, the gonads do not need estrogen and progesterone receptors and the brain does not need FSH and LH receptors.

But the gonads actually have some estrogen and progesterone receptors just like pituitary has FSH and LH receptors. Their presence may sound redundant, but the role is basically to be able to "hear" the message they send. Just like when I shout something to my mates, I just need my mouth. It is also good to have ears so I can check myself that I am shouting what I am supposed to be shouting.

So, I could be shouting and being totally deaf. My message would go through however. In a similar manner, the organs need to shout but not necessarily hear for themselves what they say. That is why they could theoretically go away without having any dmt receptors.

Thats what I meant.



I see what you mean now I was looking at it the other way around.

DMT like 5-HT and many other compounds could act in the CNS as well as in the peripheral organs. This is very likely, thus in may act as a transmitter in some regions while a hormone in others. The fact that it is so rapidly metabolized among other things supports that it acts as a NT in the CNS. Remember DMT is found in many organs all the time not at specific times. This supports it role in normal everyday physiology. While the blood levels are very low this does not mean at the synapse where DMT is released the levels are low in fact they are likely very high. Its strong effects on sensory perception also support a role as a NT in higher circuit sensory regions of the CNS. The TAARs are a good place to look however this is not set in stone and other sites may act as the endogenous HA receptors. Much more research needs to be performed. But there is much evidence that supports DMT's role as a neurotransmitter see (Baker 1981 DMT an endogneous Hallucinogen.) It is shown that DMT meets much of the criteria for a neurotransmitter this in conjunction with the TAAR data is very supportive of its role as a true NT.

Activity at the 5-HT1a autoreceptors acts to decrease 5-HT release. However activity at 5-HT2a acts to increase the release of glutamate in the frontal cortex (an excitatory effect). So at some 5-HT receptors hallucinogens are inhibitory while at others they are excitatory. I agree with Wallach and think that the 5-HT system is not responsible for the visual effects some additional sites seem necessary to explain these effects as severeal 5-HT2a agonists lack visual effects yet are still considered hallucinogens. 5-HT2a receptors likely mediate the emotional discriminative effects.

There does seem to be some loosening of a gate while on hallucinogens. Information that would normally be filtered out for various reasons seems to "make it through" into consciousness. One of the theories regarding this is that the thalamus acts as a gate and HA alter its functioning thus inhibiting the gating function and causing sensory flooding of the frontal lobes and cortex. This information is not necessarily external it may be internal as well, we do not yet understand how the information conveyed by neural circuits compete with one another for consciousness and studying this system may shed some light on this interesting theory.