Recent great in-depth, no BS talk given by David Nichols at Breaking Convention, may be of interest to some. One of a number of interesting DMT presentations from the conference to come.

David Nichols - DMT And The Pineal Gland: Facts vs Fantasy.

Wonderful, thank you.
I didn't understand all of that but comes down to his conclusions:

Thanks for the link!
BTW: He makes a little mistake in the beginning, when saying 1pg is 1/1000ug. Obviously that should actually be 1/1'000'000ug.

Yesssssssssssssssshh!

There's a few things I can think of that are still left unexplained:

1. Studies on pineal gland metabolism show that the most likely chemical to come out of the pineal gland after Melatonin is actually 5-meo-dmt and not nn,dmt. Which is active at much lower dosage. And could be psychoactive in trace amounts that david nichols talks about, perhaps.

2. This still doesn't explain why urine samples or what have you of schizophrenic patients show higher concentrations of DMT metabolites.

That was actually my first thought as well, why come no one is looking at 5-MeO? It's the one with the NDE God Light activity, it's the one with the low mg dosage, it's the one that really "fits the bill" so to speak.

IIRC bufotenine was present in much larger amounts than DMT in those early psychotomimetic studies. It's got all the same visual activity and a much more solid backing for endogenous activity being a simple methylation step away from serotonin which is quite a bit moar abundant in our metabolism than tryptamine.

I'm short on time but I'll return to this later with some references and see if we can't come up with a few interesting hypotheses to add to the collaborative research goals.

There is definitely the potential for 5-MeO-DMT to be produced in the pineal gland (i.e. the necessary enzymatic machinery and biochemistry appears to be present) but as far as I know, evidence for its production there in humans remains as speculative as pineal-N,N-DMT production currently. However it is definitely an interesting point about 5-MeO's much greater potency than N,N-DMT...a little goes a long way in comparison. I made the same point in another post elsewhere discussing this talk. I am personally sceptical of a strong DMT-NDE link, as the reported phenomenological content varies markedly between experiences (for example one is highly likely to encounter deceased relatives in an NDE, and only rarely during DMT trips...while the latter experience much more often yields entities that seem to be lacking from NDE's). However there is a lot more overlap in reported phenomenological content between 5-MeO and NDE's. While only comprising a sample size of one, in the audience when I was giving my talk there was a woman with experience of psychedelics, 5-MeO-DMT and an NDE. She said that her 5-MeO experience in particular was much closer to her NDE than her experiences with the other psychedelics, and the 5-MeO essentially transported her to the NDE space she had encountered previously. This was a very therapeutic experience for her, reaffirming her NDE insights.

Regarding the schizophrenic patients having higher DMT levels in their urine/blood, as far as I was aware this was found in one study, but the findings were not replicated in further research.

Although I do believe you end up in the same place with 5-MeO-DMT, I also do believe that the NDE experiences are not caused by endogenous 5-Meo-DMT secretion (and surely not DMT, as a DMT experience is IMHO just completely different, due to the visual impairment)

For actually exactly the reason I already gave above: NDEs are much clearer

Why I do believe this?
With the NDE I had as a child, I can say, that the typical tryptamine feeling that one has on come-up, etc. was completely missing.
Also the typical tryptamine hiss was completely missing. Right from the beginning it was very peaceful and silent. Not as pushy aggressive and loud as 5-MeO-DMT is on the come-up.
Also the come-down was quick and I was immediately completely clear again, not like the come-down from any substance I know.

Edit:
I could only think 5-MeO-DMT could be the culprit, if it only gets secreted in special regions of the brain and therefore the experience is different.
I have no idea if this is even a possibility in how the brain operates.

You may well be right Aum_Shanti, maybe 5-MeO-DMT acts to tune one in, to open one up or bridge them to that state, and we're confusing the key with the open door. There is more overlap on the whole between NDE's and 5-MeO-DMT than other psychedelics it seems, but from reports I obtained from my talk, the incredible hyper-clarity of an NDE was mentioned consistently, and was one of the main distinguishing features presented between people's NDE's and their psychedelic experiences. And you're right, 5-MeO-DMT is many things, but gentle isn't one of them!

I promised some references.

Fairly early paper demonstrating the ability of pineal tissues to synthesize 5-MeO-DMT ***in vitro*** and a fairly well supported hypothesis that this likely occurs in vivo:
Guchhait, R. B. "Biogenesis of 5‐methoxy‐N, N‐dimethyltryptamine in human pineal gland." Journal of neurochemistry 26.1 (1976): 187-190.

That early study that found elevated bufo in schizophrenics, that couldn't be replicated:
Faurbye, Arild, and K. Pind. "Occurrence of bufotenin in the urine of schizophrenic patients and normal persons." Nature 220.5166 (1968 ): 489-489.

A really interesting 2010 study that found elevated levels of bufo in autistic and schizophrenic subjects compared to controls:
Emanuele, Enzo, et al. "Elevated urine levels of bufotenine in patients with autistic spectrum disorders and schizophrenia." Neuroendocrinol Lett 31.1 (2010): 117-121.

Just some good general information on pharmacokinetics and metabolism of 5-MeO-DMT, this one is likely the most pertinent to the inquiry at hand:
Shen, Hong-Wu, et al. "Psychedelic 5-methoxy-N, N-dimethyltryptamine: metabolism, pharmacokinetics, drug interactions, and pharmacological actions." Current drug metabolism 11.8 (2010): 659-666.

Yes I remember this lady. I was discussing this very thing with her just before the conference, and she was very excited for your talk because of this. I gave her details of the Nexus, hopefully she'll join us.

This looks like an interesting article regarding this talk:

http://q4lt.com/dave-nic...e-pineal-gland-partially

Though I haven't read the article (yet), I apologise in advance if it doesn't live up to its title. Incidently, I got the link to this article from Rick Strassman. Shame he wasn't at BC to get involved in the panel discussions with Dave, Ede and Dennis.

Peace

Macre

From Dave's fb page, in the comments below a link to this article.





If Dave posts any additional relevant comments, I'll add them to the thread.

Interesting...

just some loose change...

an year or so ago i have read a hard to find scentific paper (in russian, hard to date, perhaps from the 90s) from a researcher working in a very hardcore experimental medicine institute, studying death and the brain from a military perspective (whatever that may mean).

what blew my mind was that the researcher was taking for a fact that the brain executes a whole set of well defined complex (cleaning up?) procedures in the event of death, and those are very sofisticated biochemically speaking. it's kinda hard to study these mechanisms, one can't just go around and kill people, just to see what happens when they die. though judging from soviet era official patent documents published and available through your friend el goog (obviously in russian), some people in certain reesarch labs enjoyed considerable freedom in that regard.

i was under the impressian that death is just a system failure event without any possibility of any recovery (of the old bag of fat and bones). when you are dead you stay dead, that's the most fundamental property of the state of "being dead" after all. so the notion that the event of death triggers a whole bunch of special complex subroutines in the brain and the problem of how and why those might have even evolved struck me as rather bizarre. evolution optimizes for survival, not from extinction after all, no?

Really interesting topic, and thanks for all the links!!!

Not directly related, but maybe still interesting in this relation:
In the meantime I'm definitely convinced that my brain stores part of the 5-MeO-DMT when I do trip on it.
Always when I trip on 5-MeO-DMT then within 2-3 days I suddenly wake up during the night and do trip on 5-MeO-DMT.
The effects are very distinctive and IMHO clearly from 5-MeO-DMT. I have the typical Tryptamine hissing sound plus the typical 5-MeO-DMT vibrating body feeling and head space.
It always just happens once after a trip, then it seems to be depleted.
It never happens during the day.

I only get this effect from 5-MeO-DMT, no other substance.
Also when I insufflated the 5-MeO-DMT, then this nightly after trip is much more intense.
I could think because an insufflated trip lasts much longer, the brain has more time to store the 5-MeO-DMT.
IMHO it gets probably put into these neurotransmitter storage vesicles.
I find it also interesting that this tripping always happens in the beginning of the night. I could well think that the body actually wants to only secrete Melatonin, but instead also releases the 5-MeO-DMT (not being able to distinguish it).

Surely this is a purely subjective conclusion, but I wouldn't know how I could explain it otherwise. Anybody else ever experienced anything like that, or has a theory for explanation?

From this perspective I could even think that 5-MeO-DMT in the normal brain chemistry is actually not really used but more of an unwanted byproduct created by the enzymes which just do their job.

Hey Aum_Shanti, I've experienced similar effects, but with a few differences to what you are describing. These vivid reactivations post experience do seem pretty unique to 5-MeO-DMT and are widely reported. For myself, these reactivations can occur for several weeks after the initial experience (I've also noticed a large number of 5-MeO themed dreams, these seem more long term than the reactivations and I'm still experiencing these). I've also had several experiences after a single experience, and interesting to note that my most vivid reactivation was actually my last one, after experiencing a few less intense ones previous to this. Also distinct for me is that these reactivations tend to occur later on in the night, although one time I experienced a reactivation as I was falling asleep on the night following my first Bufo/5-MeO encounter earlier that day. That's interesting to hear what you're saying about the insufflated trip after effects in comparison. It does seem like some storage could be taking place, but maybe one's own system is somehow triggered into biosynthesising its own supply for a time following exposure to it.

Interesting. I actually never heard of this effect before.
E.g. I read the whole Big&Dandy thread over at BL, but cannot remember reading anything about such an effect.

I'm really wondering why 5-MeO-DMT has this unique effect.

First off, thanks for the link, banco, boy am I gonna have fun with it! Wheeee!

This is a really interesting discussion.

Even if it was not the focus of the research spotlighted in the OP, I'm really excited to see 5meo DMT being given some well-deserved scientific attention. While I have never supported the NDE/n,n DMT hypothesis for the same reasons as pointed out by others, my experience with 5meo so closely aligns with NDE descriptions in the literature that I cannot ignore it.

I'm fascinated that there are people with both experiences under their belt who can compare.

That is interesting to me. Man, I wish someone had been there- I STILL wonder if I did not really die on the floor that night, the more descriptions of the real thing I read! That is the thing, none of the typical body load or "buzzzz" of trypts for me during the 5meo trip- the first one with an NDE experience, others did have this feeling. Yes, silent, but there was no resisting it,
if that's what you mean by pushy.


Something like that, for sure. I don't know if it just triggers some kind of cognitive change, but the intensity of the 'reactivations' and the fact that they fade with time leads me to beleive its more along the lines of a metabolite (ala. noribogaine from ibogaine) that stays around for awhile. Or is it just chakras? For me, I could trigger these episodes with any combination of yoga techniques, it lasted close to a month, and did not matter if it was night or day.

This is all a fascinating subject.