The idea that DMT is linked to near-death experiences (NDEs) has two parts: that DMT experiences resemble NDEs, and that the dying brain releases DMT. The first has been tested. At Imperial College London, all 13 volunteers given DMT scored at or above the usual threshold of the Greyson Near-Death Experience Scale (Timmermann et al., 2018).
But a questionnaire records broad features, not content. A 2025 comparison found deceased relatives in 6% of DMT interviews against 27% of near-death narratives, and several classic NDE features, such as being sent back, were absent from DMT (Michael et al., 2025). In a language analysis of about 15,000 drug reports and 625 NDE narratives, ketamine reports were the most NDE-like, not DMT (Martial et al., 2019).
The second part, that the brain floods with DMT at death, traces to Rick Strassman’s speculation in DMT: The Spirit Molecule and remains untested in people; DMT has never been measured in a living human brain. Related claims of verifiable out-of-body perception have also been tested: in a 25-hospital study, no cardiac-arrest survivor identified a hidden visual image (Parnia et al., 2023). Similar is not the same as identical, and the cause of NDEs is unknown.
Sources
- Timmermann et al., 2018, Frontiers in Psychology: DMT models the near-death experience
- Michael, Luke and Robinson, 2025, Frontiers in Psychology: DMT and the near-death experience compared
- Martial et al., 2019, Consciousness and Cognition: neurochemical models of NDEs
- Parnia et al., 2023, Resuscitation: AWARE-II
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