The history of DMT: from Andean snuff tubes to modern clinical trials

THE SHORT VERSION · SWIPE

▶ Watch it as a 20-second video

‹›

Much of what people believe about DMT’s past traces back to a few sources: one chemist, one Hungarian psychiatrist, one American study in the 1990s and the popular book that followed it. This timeline sets out what the primary sources say, in order, and flags where the popular story and the record part ways.

The history of DMT at a glance

How old is human use of DMT?

The oldest direct evidence comes from Chavín de Huántar, a monumental ritual centre in the Peruvian highlands. In 2025, a team analysed 23 artifacts, mostly bone tubes, from sealed deposits in an underground gallery. Six held traces of nicotine, bufotenine (a close chemical relative of DMT) or both; DMT itself was found in one of them. Microscopic plant remains matched vilca and wild tobacco. The layers tied to the gallery’s use date to roughly 800–350 BCE (Rick et al., 2025). The authors call these the first direct evidence of psychoactive plants in archaeological bone tubes used as inhalers in that region. Evidence: established.

Further south, a ritual bundle radiocarbon-dated to about 1000 CE was excavated from a rock shelter in the Lípez Altiplano of southwestern Bolivia. Residue analysis found bufotenine, DMT, harmine and cocaine. The authors note that DMT and harmine are the two main ingredients now associated with ayahuasca (Miller et al., 2019). That is not proof that anyone drank ayahuasca 1,000 years ago: the bundle’s contents point to snuffing paraphernalia, and how old ayahuasca drinking is remains debated among historians. Evidence: established for the residues; unresolved for what they say about drinking.

Two cautions. Bufotenine appears alongside DMT in both finds, so “ancient DMT use” is only part of the chemical story. And these are traces from objects, not records of what people experienced or believed. For the full archaeology, see ancient DMT snuffs: what archaeology shows. Evidence: established.

Who first made DMT, and when was it found in nature?

Western science first met DMT in a Canadian chemistry journal. Richard Manske’s paper “A synthesis of the methyltryptamines and some derivatives” appeared in the Canadian Journal of Research in November 1931 (Manske, 1931). A later review notes that DMT was not assessed for effects in people at the time (Barker, 2018). Manske made a molecule; he did not discover a psychedelic. Evidence: established.

In 1946 the microbiologist Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima reported DMT’s natural occurrence in a plant, according to a 2018 review (Barker, 2018). In 1959 Irwin Pachter and colleagues published a chemistry paper on the indole alkaloids of the same plant and others (Pachter et al., 1959). We checked that paper’s record, not its full text, so we do not describe its findings further. Evidence: established that DMT occurs naturally in plants; the details of the 1946 identification are unresolved from the sources we read.

Who first tested DMT in people?

DMT’s effects in people were first described by Stephen Szára, a Hungarian chemist and psychiatrist. An obituary in Neuropsychopharmacology records that he turned to DMT after Sandoz declined to send LSD behind the Iron Curtain, then recruited 30 volunteers, mostly young physician colleagues (Wirz-Justice, 2021). His report appeared in Experientia in November 1956, under a title linking DMT’s “psychotic effect” to serotonin metabolism (Szára, 1956). Weeks after the Hungarian uprising, he left the country, later joining the US National Institute of Mental Health (Wirz-Justice, 2021). Evidence: established.

Sources disagree on how Szára obtained his DMT: his 2021 obituary in Neuropsychopharmacology says he synthesized it (Wirz-Justice, 2021), while a 2018 review says he extracted it from a plant (Barker, 2018). The Budapest work also included experiments on psychiatric patients, published in 1958 (Böszörményi and Szára, 1958). That was ordinary practice in 1950s “model psychosis” research and would not pass ethics review today. Our Stephen Szára article covers both. Evidence: established for the 1958 paper; how he obtained his DMT is unresolved.

The transmethylation era: looking for a madness molecule

The 1950s discovery of several hallucinogens led researchers to ask whether schizophrenia might come from an error of metabolism that made such compounds in the brain, an idea traced to Humphry Osmond and John Smythies in 1952. When the search began, the only known hallucinogens found in the body were tryptamines such as DMT (Barker, 2018). In 1961 Julius Axelrod found an enzyme in rat brain able to methylate tryptamine, and in 1972 Juan Saavedra and Axelrod showed DMT forming in living rat brain (as described by Barker, 2018). Evidence: established as history.

The core hypothesis did not hold. More than 60 studies tried to link DMT in blood or urine to a psychiatric diagnosis, and none found a clear, repeatable link (Barker, 2018). Szára himself later wrote that DMT had not proved to be a “schizotoxin” (Szára, 2007). The question of what DMT does in the body did not go away; it moved to new methods, including a 2019 rat study that measured DMT in living cortex with or without a pineal gland (Dean et al., 2019). Evidence: established that the schizophrenia link failed; unresolved what DMT does in humans.

When did DMT become illegal?

In the United States, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 placed DMT in Schedule I, alongside the other major hallucinogens (Barker, 2018). The US Code still lists dimethyltryptamine among the hallucinogenic substances of Schedule I(c) (21 U.S.C. 812). Internationally, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, adopted in Vienna on 21 February 1971, lists DMT in its Schedule I (UN, 1971). We checked the current position: the International Narcotics Control Board’s Green List, 36th edition (2025), still lists DMT in Schedule I (INCB Green List). Evidence: established.

Scheduling slowed human research for two decades. A 2018 review argues that hallucinogen research in the US was impeded for at least 50 years by these laws (Barker, 2018), and Szára wrote that DMT had a difficult first 50 years in medicine primarily for legal reasons (Szára, 2007). Those are the views of two researchers in the field. Canada lists DMT in Schedule III of its own law; see is DMT legal in Canada. Evidence: established for the laws; the effect on research is the authors’ judgment.

1990–1995: Rick Strassman restarts human research

In 1990 the psychiatrist Rick Strassman began giving DMT to volunteers at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, after a long approval process he described in a 1991 paper (Strassman, 1991). In his own account, he gave about 400 doses to about 60 volunteers over five years (Strassman, book page). Evidence: these totals are his own figures, not counts from a paper.

His first 1994 paper, a double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 11 experienced users, found effects peaking within 2 minutes and negligible by 30 (Strassman and Qualls, 1994). A 1996 study of 13 people found no tolerance to the subjective effects of closely spaced doses, while hormone and heart-rate responses declined (Strassman et al., 1996). Evidence: established for these small published studies.

The work ended in 1995. In a 1995 newsletter he named his family’s move to Victoria, British Columbia as the main factor (MAPS, 1995); his later book adds institutional strain and pressure from his Buddhist community. No source we read says the government shut the studies down. See Rick Strassman’s DMT study for the full account. Evidence: these are his own reports.

2000–2010: the book, the film and the mainstream

Strassman’s book DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2000) mixed the research with what he himself calls highly speculative ideas, among them that the pineal gland might release DMT at birth and death (Strassman, book page). A documentary of the same name followed in 2010. Later research did not support the pineal story: in rats, brain DMT did not depend on the pineal gland (Dean et al., 2019). Our article on DMT: The Spirit Molecule weighs what each made of the evidence. Evidence: established for the dates; the pineal idea is unsupported in humans.

2006: a Supreme Court case about a church tea

In Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, decided 21 February 2006, the US Supreme Court considered a church whose members receive communion by drinking hoasca, a tea that contains DMT. The government argued that barring the tea served compelling interests, including compliance with the 1971 Convention. The Court, with all participating justices joining, held that the government had not shown a compelling interest at the preliminary-injunction stage, under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (Gonzales v. O Centro, 546 U.S. 418). It was a narrow ruling about one church’s religious use. It did not make ayahuasca legal in the United States. Evidence: established.

2016 to today: infusions and clinical trials

Modern research has moved in two directions. One is longer DMT states: in 2016, Andrew Gallimore and Strassman proposed using target-controlled infusion, a technology from anaesthesia, to hold the DMT state steady long enough to study it (Gallimore and Strassman, 2016). The other is clinical trials. A 2026 scoping review counted 26 registered trials of DMT and ayahuasca, mostly phase I studies in healthy volunteers focused on safety (Stojanović et al., 2026). Evidence: established.

The first placebo-controlled trial of DMT alone in major depression was published in 2026: 34 participants, a single infusion with psychological support, and a significantly larger drop in depression scores than placebo at two weeks (Erritzoe et al., 2026). It was small, and its three-month follow-up was open-label, with no placebo group. In Basel, a trial named DMT4D, recruiting since 2025 with an estimated 112 participants, tests whether any effect survives when the experience is masked by anaesthesia; completion is estimated for 2029 (ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT06927076). For the evidence in detail, see DMT therapy research. Evidence: preliminary.

Popular claims versus the record

What historians and scientists still debate

• How old ayahuasca drinking is, as distinct from snuff use (unresolved).
• How Gonçalves de Lima identified DMT in 1946, and how Szára obtained his DMT in Budapest (unresolved from the sources we read).
• What DMT does in the human body, after the schizophrenia hypothesis failed (unresolved).
• Whether the 2026 depression result holds in larger, longer placebo-controlled trials (unresolved).

Shroomverse sells mushroom products. This article is general information about the history of DMT. It is not medical, legal or purchasing advice, and it does not recommend any product.