These are all open questions and important ones and your suggestions are as valid as any others - I'm currently writing a paper that deals with this very issue, because solving the problem could have applications to other areas of study (e.g. psi)...




It's always going to be hard to generalise and say "this is what happens when you smoke DMT" - but we must if we are to say anything more than the fact that it is hallucinogenic (some would stop there and stop trying to analyse the experience - they may have a point too). Although I focus on DMT, this is not only because of its effects, but also because of its pharmacological peculiarities that I discuss in the paper. However, ultimately, it is your brain that generates the experience - DMT is only the catalyst and, I would suggest, the most efficient one. So, is it surprising that other molecules may sometimes generate similar experiences? Probably not. Anther problem, that you have alluded to, is that very few people inject pharmaceutical grade DMT in a carefully measured dose, so experiences are always going to be variable in intensity and quality - this generates a noisy picture of the effects... the only person that HAS used DMT in such a context with large numbers of people is, of course, Strassman and this is what makes these reports so useful... unfortunately, it isn't possible to take a statistically representative sample of DMT experiences from online trip reports, but this is the best we have at the moment (apart from Strassman's)...



Sadly, everyone is different and not everyone seems to be affected in the same way - 20% or so seem to experience no effect whatsoever - this is perhaps unsurprising if this neural function is many thousands of years in disuse and neurophysiologies have shifted.... perhaps we are lucky we still see even a glimpse of this other reality...



This is a possibility, which is why I proposed it, but I am not convinced yet myself either way - ultimately we will probably find that the distinction between the sub/unconscious and other external realities is kind of a false dichotomy as only the ego gives the illusion of the self and the other....



You are making perfect sense.... this is a difficult subject, so it is often hard to verbalise exactly what you mean, but you seem to be doing very well.......

If you really want to add something to the scientific discussion, I think it is. Although it is true that there are examples of papers that where so in front of there time than no A journal would think of publishing these things (only time will tel if this is such a case).


that's just arrogance, or at least it sounds like that.


i totally agree



And this I think this is totality true, it's always needed to bring new ideas to light and maybe therefore we have to leave the roads that are already there. In that sense its admirable that your having a go at that.


If its 99% positive than in my opinion your asking the wrong people.


In hind side I should have stated this a little less bold,(I hope I didn't hurt your feelings. ) although I do think its important to know the scope of the journal it was published. It tells the reader what kind of standards of screening there where prior to publication.

I wasn't being arrogant - I was just making the point that we could spend all day debating on whether something is scientific or not and get absolutely nowhere - I was merely suggesting we discuss the content of the paper rather than try to define whether or not it can be called scientific.



I disagree, because I don't see constructive criticism as negative - the 1% I'm talking about is those that can only say negative things about my work (like "You're not a scientist!" or "This is absolute nonsense and you are only spreading misinformation" and stuff like that)



The "scope" of the journal has no bearing whatsoever on the "standards of screening" (come on, choose your words more carefully - you're making it sound like my paper slipped through the net) prior to publication and to say so is an insult to the 2 referees that reviewed the paper (both well-respected academics) and, in fact, to myself... just because a journal provides a forum for controversial and speculative areas of science (do we agree this is a good thing or not?) that would never be entertained in more mainstream journals does not mean that it is any easier to publish in that journal(I know this, I've published in some VERY mainstream journals)... if this was the case, the JSE would be chock full of papers in each issue - the current issue has 3 research articles and 1 essay (mine)... every one has been doubly peer-reviewed and subject to a least one set of revisions, just as with any mainstream journal... if you bother to actually look at the articles in an issue of JSE, you will see that almost all the authors are from regular well-established academic institutions (like myself)... I get the feeling you think I just tossed this paper off on a Sunday morning and emailed it to JSE and they dropped into their next issue the following week after giving it a cursory glance... Can I ask what your experience with scientific publishing has been?

I must say that I have the utmost respect for the JSE - the reason is because they go to great lengths to counter the "pseudo-science" or "fringe science" brigade that like to dismiss it as worthless(like a few, not many, on here). They do this by ensuring that every single article they publish deserves to be there, by being rigorous in their peer-review process and not allowing any article to be published that is unsupported or poorly constructed... I put more work and effort into getting this paper into JSE than with any other journal I've published with (e.g. Angewandte Chemie, Natural Product Reports, Chemistry & Biology - you can probably find some online)... the list of revisions was almost as long as the paper itself and not a word was left unscrutinised... if you look at the average time between submission and acceptance, you'll see it is pretty long for a journal that publishes only a few articles each quarterly - this is not the sign of a quack journal with no editorial quality and if you look at the editorial board you'll see this is simply not the case, as much as you would like it to be.....

Some of the editorial board...

Richard Conn Henry - Johns Hopkins University

David C. Pieri - Caltech

Michael Levin - City University New York

Robert Jahn - Princeton

Peter Fenwick(!!!) - Maudsley Hospital

Chandra Wickramasinghe - University of Buckingham

So-called "fringe science" journals are extremely important for allowing scientists in controversial fields to share their work - yes there are poor ones, but those that have established themselves as rigorous and peer-reviewed forums for such science, as the JSE has, ought to be respected and not ridiculed or passed off as substandard or unworthy of being taken seriously...

First up well done on your paper good effort.

I am not sure if I agree on some of your conclusions but nevertheless you bothered to take the time to write yours into a paper which is more than can be said for me.

I always felt some of the DMT experience was something that was always there like static at the back of your mind and that DMT amplified it and helped you tune in. Disregarded data or background functions of your mind brought forth. I get organic living energy shape things (highly scientific don't you think) from spice and they feel really familiar I am sure they are normally there in the background but I just don't see them because of all the sensory input I am constantly receiving.

I don't believe these are some alien life forces or anything silly like that just a normal part of my consciousness.

There is a really interesting TED lecture about blind people hallucinating due to a lack of sensory input. It touches on how we perceive this world. Part of our vision picks up on shapes and edges and part focus on colour. Another part of the brain decodes this information and attempts to assign meaning to those objects we perceive. Once a meaning has been assigned you have part of your memory that deals with all the associations we have with that object or person.

I think DMT disrupts parts of this process overstimulating in some areas and disconnecting others.

Leaving your mind to conjure up a world out chaos and to find meaning where there in none.

I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss something as "silly" just because it seems far from what we normally consider possible... I don't see it as a silly idea at all, but then I'm not convinced it's true... we must approach with an open mind and not decide what is silly and what isn't beforehand....



This is a comfortably glib conclusion to draw (you sound a bit like James Kent here - you're not James Kent are you? ), but I am not happy with it - this is largely why I wrote the paper... as I explain in detail in the paper, there is no reason to assume, or even think it possible, that the brain would suddenly start conjuring up "worlds out of chaos" when DMT floods the brain, at least not the bizarre worlds seen with DMT. As far as we know, the brain just doesn't work like that - if it was going to try and create order out of chaos, then it would most probably create the world you see around you normally - this is what it does during dreaming and that is what the brain has evolved to do... it's hardly an adaptive trait to create bizarre imaginary worlds when faced with chaotic data and there is no reason to think the brain should act like that... this is what makes the fact that these worlds do appear all the more perplexing...

this paper is basically a really verbose review of psychedelic phenomenology?

No it's not (Have you read it yet?) - the phenomenology is only one section, but forms part of the overall argument/discussion, which examines the neurological mechanisms of DMT, world-building by the thalamocortical system, evolution, etc...

I have.
What I haven't seen is an experimental, but plenty of citations.
So it's a review. So was Nichol's comprehensive, and also verbose, 2004 paper "Hallucinogens".

This is because it's a theoretical paper (it's actually an essay/review) and these don't have experimental sections, but rather synthesise other data in order to draw new conclusions and develop new models/hypotheses/speculations that might then form the basis of further experimental work - this is pretty standard for a review article... what are you driving at?

Nothing, other than it's a review.
That's its purpose, to propose new questions, and hopefully, new ways of approaching those questions.

Yes kind of but it goes further than a review and develops new hypotheses/models etc - Nichols' review was more of a pure review and wasn't verbose, but extremely detailed and the paper to read if you want to understand all the work that's been done re hallucinogens...

Again, I don't think we need to debate the type of article it is - it is what it is... I've written reviews before and I've written more theoretical discussions/proposals/ and critical analyses and they're not exactly the same, but it's not important what you call it...

I'm not really qualified to critique this paper one way or the other, but I think it's excellent! Not that my opinion, or for that matter the opinion of most anyone here, is worth a magic bean.

I just want to say thanks for all your effort and hard work laughingcat. I'm very pleased to see this kind of information making it to the "above ground" and helping to move legitimate research into our most beloved molecule forward.

I think in having to defend your position against so many (in most cases rather tenuous) critiques of and opinions about this most unconventional area of research, you have shown unquestionably that you did exactly what set out to do and you did it very well. Your paper and your position are rock solid in my mind and you've shown your personal character to be above reproach in supporting your position.

Kudos to you good sir! and thanks again for all your effort on behalf of the medicine.

Thought exercises and technical writing are all fun and good.
Do you have any with experiments you've conducted? Just curious.

Without getting into debating about what the article is or isn't, i just wanted to say I enjoyed the read and appreciate your hard work. I'm proud of you for being published, and the paper definitely brings up some aspects i was yet to think about. Thank yoU!

Thanks dreamer042 !! I expected some criticism and 'most' of it has been constructive and that's why the paper's on here...

... and thanks iAwakenU !!! I appreciate the support....

Yes, but not yet in this field (although I'm working on some computational models at the moment)... would you like references?

I'd like to read some experimentals, not monte carlo simulations