DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine) is a natural psychedelic compound from the tryptamine family, a close chemical cousin of serotonin. It occurs in many plants and animals and acts mainly on the brain’s serotonin 5-HT2A receptor, the same receptor targeted by psilocybin and LSD (Barker, 2018).
Its effects are short. In Rick Strassman’s 1994 study, where DMT was given into a vein, peak blood levels and effects came within 2 minutes and were negligible by 30 minutes (Strassman and Qualls, 1994).
The chemical was first made in a lab by Richard Manske in 1931, in the Canadian Journal of Research (Manske, 1931), and its psychedelic effects in people were reported by Stephen Szára in 1956 (Szára, 1956). Traditional use of DMT-containing snuffs and brews is far older.
One big question is still open. DMT has been measured in living rat brain and detected in human body fluids, but never measured in a living human brain, so what it does in the body, if anything, is unknown. In Canada, DMT is item 7 of Schedule III of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. This is not legal advice.
Sources
- Barker, 2018, Frontiers in Neuroscience: DMT, an endogenous hallucinogen
- Strassman and Qualls, 1994, Archives of General Psychiatry: dose-response study
- Manske, 1931, Canadian Journal of Research: synthesis of the methyltryptamines
- Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, Schedule III (Justice Laws)
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