DMT The Spirit Molecule - Rick Strassman-pages

Page 61 of 369

Page 61 of 369
DMT The Spirit Molecule - Rick Strassman-pages

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Szara quickly recruited thirty volunteers, mostly young Hungarian physi- cian colleagues. They all received full psychedelic doses.° 46 + THE BUILDING BLOCKS One male physician reported: The whole world is brilliant... The whole room is filled with spirits. It makes me dizzy.... Now it is too muchl... I feel exactly as if I were flying. ... Thave the feeling that this is above everything, above the earth. It is comforting to know Iam back on earth again. . . . Everything has a spiritual tinge but is so real... . I feel that I have landed... . A female physician stated: How simple everything is. .. . Infront ofme are two quiet, sunlit Gods. . . . I think they are welcoming me into this new world. There is a deep silence as in the desert. .. . lam finally at home. . . . Dangerous game; it would be so easy not to return. I amfaintly aware that Iam a doctor, but this is not important; family ties, studies, plans, and memories are very remotefrom me. Only this world is important; I amfree and utterly alone. The Western world had discovered DMT, and DMT had entered into its consciousness. Despite the occasional bad trip among his volunteers, Szara liked the short-acting DMT. It was relatively easy to use, fully psychedelic, and experiments could be done in just a few hours. After escaping Hungary with his DMT supply in the late 1950s, he met a Berlin colleague who enrolled him in an LSD study. Finally Szara could try this fabled psyche- delic. While he found the effects interesting, its twelve-hour duration was too long for his liking. Upon emigrating to the United States, Szara's primary research inter- est continued to be DMT. It served him well in his new job at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where he worked for over three decades. He served as the Director of Preclinical Research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse for many years before retiring in 1991. Other groups confirmed and expanded Szara's discovery that DMT must be injected to work. However, it is surprising how little detailed information