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bodies?" WHAT DMT Is + 49 The crucial question then naturally arose: "What is DMT doing in our Psychiatry's answer was: "Perhaps it causes mental illness." This reply was reasonable, considering psychiatry's mandate to un- derstand and treat serious psychopathology. However, it fell short of all the other possible scientifically meritorious answers. By limiting them- selves to investigating DMT's role in psychosis, scientists lost a unique opportunity to probe deeper into the mysteries of consciousness. Scientists believed that LSD and other "psychotomimetics" induced a short-term "model psychosis" in normal volunteers. They thought that by finding an "endogenous psychotomimetic," the cause of, and potential cures for, serious mental illnesses might be at hand. DMT, as the first known endogenous psychotomimetic, suggested the search might be over. For example, one could give DMT to normal volunteers to induce psycho- sis, and eventually develop new medications to block its effects in them. Subsequently, psychiatric patients would receive this "anti-DMT." If ex- cessive naturally produced DMT was causing the patient's psychosis, this anti-DMT would have antipsychotic effects. These DMT investigations just were getting up to speed when, in 1970, Congress passed the law placing it and other psychedelics into a highly restricted legal category. It became nearly impossible to conduct any new human DMT research. Soon after, in 1976, a paper published by scien- tists at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, or NIMH, tolled the death knell for human DMT studies. The authors were topflight research- ers, several of whom had given DMT to humans. They correctly concluded that the evidence relating DMT to schizophrenia was complex and uncer- tain. However, rather than suggesting more refined and careful research into the areas of disagreement, the authors concluded: Like any good scientific theory, the DMT model of schizophrenia will ultimately live or die by the data that it heuristically generates. We hope that, within the foreseeable future, forthcoming data will give this theory either a new lease on life or a decent burial.’