HealthyGamerGG - What the Research Says about DMT

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

Today Doctor K talks about the new research about DMT and talks a bit about ayahuasca as well! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So DMT is the active ingredient in ayahuasca that is used by certain Native American tribes as like part of their religious ceremonies and as like, part of like spiritual journeys and things like that. Astral travel, like otherworldly beings, like states of consciousness. So what we see is not actually real. And as a psychiatrist, like, this is something that's very clear to me, is that the mind does not produce an accurate representation of reality. So if I have a patient who's suicidal and thinks that their family would be better off without them, that is like factually, like pretty clearly incorrect. But in the mind, our mind is capable of producing these things that we call it cognitive biases,

which shape reality to look a particular way, which it isn't. So now what I'd like to do is talk a little bit about psychedelic experiences and meditation and specifically some of the weirder stuff that happens with particular psychedelics and in meditation. And I'm going to teach you all a preliminary technique. for some weird stuff in meditation. So what I'm going to teach you all today is actually the first step to, and let me think about what the right frame is. I'm going to teach you all the first step to having an out-of-body experience through meditation.

Okay. So let's talk a little bit about this for a moment. So meditation is generally speaking of practice that has been scientifically studied and, you know, has a lot of health benefits. There's overwhelming data that it is good for depression and anxiety and arthritis and all this kind of stuff. Meditation was originally designed for the purpose of gaining enlightenment or understanding the true nature of reality. But the interesting thing is that if you look at meditation along the way of developing a strong meditative practice, sometimes people have consistently reported having strange, almost supernatural experiences.

So one of those experiences is something like an out-of-body experience or what people will call astral travel or astral projection. We're going to sort of leave science to the side here because I don't really know what kind of scientific evidence there is of these things. We're going to talk a little bit about it. We'll talk about it the extent of what science sort of tells us. but we're really going to go beyond science because I think that the so meditation has been around for at least 5,000 years scientific studies on meditation have been around for about 30 or 40 years for the most part so we're like really lagging behind scientifically compared to the history of what's existed in meditation now a lot of people may be put off by this kind of content which totally makes sense because a lot of what we share is sort of based in science based in evidence based in medicine totally fine so not your cup of tea. But I think part of what we try to do here on stream and, you know, for the internet is like just talk about this stuff. So the truth is that these traditions have

existed for a long, long time and that people have consistently had these kinds of experiences. And so I think ignoring that is sort of a sterilization of meditation, which I personally don't think is ideal. So what we've started to do with a lot of meditation is we've gotten rid of things that we don't understand. Without sort of really evaluating them, it's just like, we can't study that. So let's just pretend it doesn't exist. And the biggest, the top of the list is just talking about enlightenment.

So you have all these apps for meditation. You have all these YouTube videos for meditation, but like no one talks about enlightening anymore, which blows my mind because that's been the point, right? So like everyone talks about Buddhism, but like no one talks about enlightenment. Like there are books on Buddhism. There are books on detachment.

There are books on things that we, he understand. So what we've sort of done is we've taken this meditative body of knowledge, which is huge. And what we've done is like only accept the part which already makes sense to us. Which is sort of okay, right? Because like we want to remember that we can't just accept everything part and parcel, right? Because like there could be a lot of wrong stuff in there.

So we want to be critical. We want to be skeptical. We should absolutely be scientific. And at the same time, I don't think we should ignore or discount. the rest of it, because some of this stuff can be studied or explored in a systematic way. And that's actually what I'm going to share with you all today is a particular paper on DMT, which sort of made me feel like it's okay to kind of talk about this stuff. So let's take a quick look at the paper, okay?

And what we're going to talk about today is a little bit about like, you know, what the hell is going on with this stuff, like this astral travel, like otherworldly beings, like states of consciousness. Because what tends to happen, actually before we go to the paper, what tends to happen is you'll get people who are kind of into meditation. And then they'll really step outside of what they know and we'll start talking about all kinds of crap. So like quantum mysticism is a good example of this. It's something that I've been guilty of in the past, am still somewhat guilty of and we'll probably be guilty of in the future.

One of the things that I've learned is that some of it's kind of BS, which is okay, we'll get to that in a second two. But I think part of the problem here is that you have a lot of people who believe in this stuff. whereas the predominant experience I've had with like supernatural sort of stuff, for lack of better term, is it's not nearly as like romantic as people think it is. So when it comes to things like karma and seeing people's karma and understanding your past lives and stuff like that, as a society we've romanticized it. But like the truth is that it's like way more simple than that. So, you know, my experience of past lives and working with people in their past lives is that it's, it's no different from your memories. It's just like, the way I describe it is it's like it's memories of,

it's when you have a memory, but it's just not like this body. So like, I, you know, you have memories and memories are completely normal. They're not drastic. They're not transformative. They're like, what did I do yesterday? Oh yeah, like I was wearing a yellow shirt. And then you have a memory of like you in a yellow shirt. The only difference is that if you remember a past life, it's sort of like it's a different you, right? But it's not anything special. It's kind of weird. So I think that there's like a lot of like romanticization of it. And that also creates like a lot of problems because I think a lot of the people who like advocate for this kind of stuff really do kind of like think themselves into it. So I don't think it's actually born of genuine spiritual practice.

It's it's like they want to believe that this thing is going to happen. And so like something mild happens and they like really think they understand it and like, oh my God, my consciousness has been elevated. What does that even mean? most of the stuff honestly most of the stuff that I've most of the people that I've talked to like I think are just kind of full of crap so what I'd like to do today is share something a share scientific paper I was looking at on DMT so DMT is the active ingredient in ayahuasca so iawaska is i think a kind of cactus that is used by certain Native American tribes as like part of their religious ceremonies and is like part of like spiritual journeys and things like that so I do not advocate for

the use of any psychedelics without medical supervision or the appropriate supervision, I suppose, if it's part of a religious tradition that you're a part of, and there are people in your religious tradition that know what they're doing, that's probably okay, too. But generally speaking, as a medical doctor, I do not advocate for the usage of any of this stuff. So let's take a quick look at the paper and see what they sort of see. Okay? So an encounter with the other, a thematic and content analysis of DMT experiences from a naturalistic field study. So let's first talk a little bit about what a naturalistic field study is. So in medicine, we tend to have, well, I mean, there's a lot more than two, but there are two kinds of trials.

So we'll do something called a randomized controlled trial, which is when we take a group of people, we'll like divide them into a control group in a treatment group or an intervention group. And then so that's what we have a control and we have our intervention group and a control group. And then we also randomize them so we like don't pick a particular population for a particular group. So they're randomly assigned to each one. And then we'll offer the intervention. We'll kind of see what happens. So there are a lot of studies by drug companies, for example, that will do like randomized controlled trials. They'll submit those to the FDA or like whatever the European Union authority is.

And so you'll have a medication like, you know, let's say like aeropiprizo. or clausapine. So these are both antipsychotic medications that have been shown in clinical trials to be very, very effective at treating various conditions. So things like adjunctive treatments for depression, bipolar disorder, things like that. So actually, let's use quatyapine, which is a good example, for bipolar disorder. So they did this randomized control trial where you take a thousand people who sign up to be in a clinical study, usually. And then they'll kind of randomize them to groups, and they'll give one group quatypine, they'll give the other group, not quatapine.

They'll measure particular things, and they'll sort of say, hey, see, quatipine works. It'll go through FDA approval. People start prescribing quatipine. And then what happens is, like, the effects that you see in the real world for this medication are not nearly as good

as what you saw in the randomized controlled trial. So there's a really good trial called step BD, which is a naturalistic study, of bipolar disorder. And what does naturalistic mean? It means that the trial is uncontrolled. And that offers some advantages and some disadvantages. On the one hand, we can't control for every variable, which is bad, but on the other hand, it much more closely mirrors real life, because it's a naturalistic study. So what they did in step BD is they gave people medication, they just saw what happened. So they did, like, you know, did someone quit? Did they continue taking it? Did they

get better, did they not get better? They just sort of just like watch what happens in the real world. And what they discovered in step BD is that adherence, so people taking medication like quitaipine was very, very low. So when I'm like part of a trial and I'm getting free medication or I'm even getting paid to try the medication, like I may take it, especially if they're going to be like measuring my blood levels and stuff like that. I'm going to like take it no matter what, right? Whereas in the real world, what quatypine does is makes people sleep. and it causes people to gain weight. We're talking anywhere from five to like 50 pounds.

Right? So in the real world, when you have someone with bipolar disorder and you prescribe them quatypine, like they can't play music much anymore, they feel kind of foggy, they have difficulty working, they put on 30 pounds. And so what do they do? They stop taking the medication. And so like even though the medication has this kind of benefit, which is significant, in the real world, if you give it to a human, the likelihood that they'll get that theoretical

benefit is way lower because of things like side effects. So I personally like naturalistic studies. I think that they mirror like the real world better, because they're not randomized and they're not controlled. The quality of information in some ways is worse, right, because there are all kinds of individual variables in naturalistic studies that we can't control for. So in a sense, a non-naturalistic study is like good because you're looking at the pure effect of the medication. You're ignoring things like side effects and like, not really. I mean, there's also allowances for side effects and stuff in those studies.

But generally speaking, it's like it's a pure, pure, scientifically valid laboratory kind of experiment. But in the real world, things are different. So in this study, what they did is they took DMT. Actually, they didn't take DMT. They took 36 people who used DMT. and they started asking them questions, like, what was your experience? What was it like?

What happened to you? Things like that. So they did content and thematic analysis, right? So let's take a quick look at that. Ooh, so bright. Okay? So NN dimethyltryptylene or tryptamine is an endogenous serotonergic, psychedelic, capable of producing radical shifts in conscious experience. So if memory serves it, it activates serotonin receptor 580s.

H-T-2A, so there's like certain things associated with that. Increasing trends in its use, as well as new trials administering DMT to patients, indicating the growing importance of a thorough elucidation of the qualitative content over and above structure, which the drug occasions. This is particularly in light of the hyper-real, otherworldly, and often ontologically challenging, yet potentially transformative nature of the experience. Not least encounters with apparently non-self-social agents.

Laboratory studies have been limited by clinical setting and lacking qualitative analyses of the experiential content, while online surveys limitations lie in retrospective design, uncontrolled use, and both of which not guaranteeing breakthrough experiences. Yeah, so screened healthy, anonymized, and experienced DMT users were observed during their non-clinical use of the drug at home. and then in-depth semi-structured interviews on 36 people. So what they essentially did was, so 36 post-DMT experience interviews with mostly Caucasian, 80% males, eight females, so this is 28 to 8 in terms of gender ratio, of average 37 years were predominantly inductively coded.

Okay? the first overarching category comprised the encounter with other beings, 94% of reports. So this is with 34 of the 36 people talked about encountering otherworldly beings. And so this is kind of interesting, right? So then like encompassing superordinate themes, including the entity's role, appearance, demeanor, communication, interaction, while the second overarching category comprised of experiences of emerging into other worlds, 100% of reports. Many further mid-level themes and sub-themes also illuminate the rich content of the DMT experience.

Okay? So basically what this study did is it took experienced DMT users. I'm not sure exactly what that means. I'm sure they define it. And they asked them, like, what happens when you use DMT? And 34 out of 36 were like, we encounter otherworldly beings. And 100% were like we visit other worlds.

So what the hell does that actually mean? Like what's going on here? So let's like run through a couple of options. So the first is like let's take kind of a neurobiological approach. So like there's an argument. So here's the question that I'm basically trying to explore. Is this real? Do otherworldly beings exist?

Can you travel to different planes of existence and like all this other weird stuff. Is any of that crap real? So the first thing to kind of note is that we don't really have any evidence of this stuff existing, right? We have no pictures. We have no signals. We have no way that these beings communicate with us in a verifiable, consistently reproducible, answer, at least that I'm aware of. If you all know about, you know, transmissions from alternate universes, please let me know. We'll get to what's real in a second. So then the question is like, okay, if we don't have any concrete evidence that this stuff actually exists, like what's going on? So there's the neurobiological hypothesis, which essentially says that this is like your brain

malfunctioning, for lack of a better term. So we have these parts of our brain that interpret stimuli. And if you directly stimulate them with drugs, it'll create these kinds of artificial experiences, which sort of aren't real, right? And so there's a very. And so, There's no real there. It's just our brain is kind of messed up, and it's all essentially like an illusion within our brain or within our mind. Now, I personally lean a little bit away from that explanation, so I completely agree that we have no evidence that these things exist and that they communicate with us in an objective, reliable manner. But I think this is where we start to get into amateur philosophy, which I'm sure if y'all are philosophers out there, you'll be able to explain this better than I can. But, you know, one of the things that we understand about the brain is that, like, it interprets stimuli and creates a reality, right?

So the simplest thing to think a little bit about is that, you know, when I look at this table and I touch this table, it feels solid to me. It looks solid to me because I can't penetrate it with my eyes. But the truth is that most of the table is, like, empty air, right? It's like electrons spinning in orbits. And even the force that I feel is the result of electrons. It's not actually, like physical resistance. It's not like my atom is bumping against a physical barrier. it's, I think it's like, you know, what we consider physicality is mostly empty space.

So our brain is sort of designed to interpret things. So we also see this like neurologically that the brain can interpret things that don't exist. So phantom limb is a really good example of this. So phantom limb, sometimes people will lose a limb. And then there are no nerves left there, right? Because you're not, it's gone. And yet we know that people will experience sensations in their phantom limb, unfortunately most commonly pain.

and so even though your hand is gone, you feel like there's a hand there. Now, this has sparked sort of this idea in the, you know, in the spiritual realm of like, oh, you have an astral body and the astral body is still intact. That's why you can still feel things. I don't really know if I really buy into that because we sort of have neurological explanations for that, that, you know, your somatosensory cortex, the map in your brain has neurons that are devoted to this part of my limb. and even if I lose this part of my limb,

sometimes signals will get sent, which get interpreted by our central signal interpretation apparatus, is the existence of a limb. So we kind of know that. So which one is it? You know, we certainly know sort of the scientific side of it, you know, in phantom limb. They're also really cool exercises that you can do

that can trick your brain into making the phantom limb pain go away. And that's the kind of thing that if there's truly an astral body, I don't know how that sort of makes sense. So there's a fantastic book called Phantoms in the Brain where a neurologist creates this cool apparatus. So if I'm missing my right hand, okay, like if I lost my right hand in an accident, I have phantom limb pain.

There's a cool thing that the neurologist did is that he built a box where I stick my left hand in the box. And over here, there's a mirror that shows the reflection of my left hand. But since it's in a mirror, it looks like my right hand. So I see something that looks like my right hand,

but it's really just a reflection of my left hand. And if I'm experiencing phantom limb pain and I put my left hand in this box and I can't see my left hand, by the way, because it's covered. It's just stuck through a hole. And then I move my hand and I see my right hand moving over here.

Suddenly the phantom limb pain goes away. Right? So there's some kind of like feedback that I get from like looking at my right hand being intact and healthy and moving normally, that makes the phantom limb pain go away. Okay?

Well-studied stuff. So you guys can look this stuff up. I think the guy's name is Ramachandran, if memory serves, rusty. So in terms of like astral bodies and stuff, right? So that's where like is, like, I got to wonder. Like, how does that work from your astral body? How does seeing, you know, the reflection of your left hand that looks like your right hand? Like, what does that do to the astral body?

If the astral body is in pain, like, how does, like, how does that work, right? Because I don't know. It doesn't make sense to me. So, you know, we know that the brain is capable of interpreting stimuli and sort of like makes a representation of the world. Now, that's like basically what the brain does. So we don't actually see reality, right?

So someone earlier was asking, what is reality? Well, like, we don't really know. So what we see is not actually real. And as a psychiatrist, like, this is something that's very clear to me, is that the mind does not produce an accurate representation of reality. Right? So if I have a patient who's suicidal and thinks that they're not. family would be better off without them, that is like factually, like pretty clearly incorrect.

Right? So the family will even tell them, no, we like, we'll be terrible, like, we'll be lost without you. We love you. Don't go anywhere. But in the mind, our mind is capable of producing these things that we call cognitive biases, which shape reality to look a particular way, which it isn't. And even when we when we look at things like the wavelength of light, right? So like light only looks the way it does because of the way that our photoreceptors react in the construct that our brain kind of puts together. Right? So we can't, like, you know, I don't know that, and this is where I'm not really an expert here,

but, you know, when I look at the world and I see red, it's unclear to me whether that red is real, right? It's a wavelength of light. That's really all we know. And my mind interprets it as red, right? That's what I think it is. So in general, like, our mind is between us and reality. I think that we're pretty sure about.

maybe I'm wrong there. And so it's kind of weird. So like we even have weird things like, you know, telescopes and night vision goggles. So like when I, you know, if I have a telescope and I like look into like something over here, it makes it seem like the moon is like right in front of my face, right? Like I'm looking at the moon like right here. But the moon isn't actually there. Right.

So like it's kind of weird because the moon is like up there. So that's really where it is. And now it's I'm interpreting it is over here. And I essentially like use a telescope. to make the moon appear closer, right? But, you know, then we kind of get the question like, okay, so like, what's real there? Like, is what I see real? Or is, you know, the moon is really far away and I'm using an instrument to make this thing appear closer?

And then the other thing that's kind of important, the reason that we sort of conclude that the moon is really there and that this is like a, you know, a fair interpretation is because anyone who looks in the telescope will see the moon, right? Like, anyone who looks in the telescope will, like, see the moon. So when we have a conservation of human experience, that's what we sort of call objective reality. So if we say that, like, you know, to the west is the Pacific coast and to the east is the Atlantic coast, that's true if you're in North America. So we have, like, a bunch of human beings that get together on some shared experience and we decide that this is reality. So then the question kind of becomes, okay, so like if that's the, if that's sort of how we determine, like, what's, you know, what's real and what isn't,

and there are arguments against that, I'm sure. Then what's going on with this DMT stuff, right? So then this is where there's a part of me that kind of wonders is essentially like a telescope, right? Is this like a tool that we can use that does it represent reality, like sort of, or is there something real that we're picking up on, which our brain is then interpreting in a particular way, right? So we call these things beings because we don't have, this word is so hard to use, but I'm going to try to use it anyway. So we don't know, we don't understand the dimension at which they exist because that's just, we're going off in the left field.

So that's the best word I can use. Oh my God. They're like alternate dimensions. Like, oh, my God. No, but like literally like what our brain does is interpret stimuli based on our understanding, right? So like our brain is a pattern generating machine. That I feel pretty confident in. So we have this encounter with this thing.

And then we call it a being because we don't know what else to call it. It's the closest thing in our approximation. But then the question still remains, like, is that thing real? Is there something really out there? Or is it just like our imagine, is it like a phantom limb or is it the telescope looking at the moon? Right? That's the main question. Now, generally speaking, I'm of the mind that there is like stuff out there.

I don't know how else to describe it. And that's primarily because of my experiences in meditation. Okay? So that's where like, you know, in the absence of a substance, when you meditate for a prolonged period of time and you have like a weird experience, it sort of shapes the nature of your reality. Like it changes you. And that's what people, we sort of know this, some of this stuff. We know the effects of this scientifically. So we know that, for example, people.

who meditate on a regular basis will, like, be more empathic, be more compassionate. So we can see some of the outcomes that we can measure of meditation. But when you really, like, talk to people, like, what oftentimes what leads to these, like, profound changes in compassion are, like, these spiritual experiences. And this is where, like, even William James talks about this stuff in the varieties of religious experience, where he kind of talks about, you know, religious delusions and spiritual experiences and all this kind of stuff. Like, what's psychosis?

What's a spiritual experience? It's like, you know, we know that human beings have these weird things that happen to them. So the next thing to kind of think a little bit about is that, what was I going to say? Oh, yeah, the next thing to consider is that any substance tends to activate the brain, right? It doesn't actually, like, create new neurosurcuitry. So, for example, you know, when I use cocaine, the reason it's so addictive is because it's activating circuitry, that's already there. So even in the case of DMT, we know that, for example,

DMT activates 5HT2A, so a particular serotonergic receptor. So then it sort of implies... What? Why is everyone freaking out? Oh, so when I say, when we use cocaine? No, I meant like... I didn't mean we.

I've never used cocaine. I mean, like, when humans, we know what it does, right? I'm using we and this in the collective. We know what it does is in science. is what it does. I stick with T. Chat. So when we use a substance, it just activates the neurocircuitary that's already there. So even in the case of DMT, like we know that it activates 5HT2A.

Now, this is where things get kind of interesting. So we know that, for example, opioids activate the mu receptors, right? We know that cannabinoids activate cannabinoid receptors or anandamide. so THC or marijuana activates those receptors. So we know that all these things like will activate receptors in our brain. So then the question kind of becomes, if it's just turning on something in the brain, do you need the substance at all?

So this is where, you know, I don't know that we have a clear answer because it may be possible that DMT activates the brain in a way that it is impossible to endogenously activate the brain. I don't know. But generally speaking, I think that most things that drugs can do, we can get some kind of approximate experience ourselves because we all have 5 HD2A receptors in our brain that get activated all the time. It's just about cultivating

a particular kind of practice that activates those receptors through that practice. And that, too, is a scientific statement that hasn't been borne out. We don't know if that's true. So the skeptical side, which I live with, will say, like, well, we don't really know that you can activate that constellation of receptors in that way endogenously. because it's not, you know, five H2A receptors all over your brain. So DMT may, you know, get uptaken by particular cells, may be distributed in a particular way that may not be possible to endogenously create. What I do know, though, is that, you know,

a lot of the experiences that people will describe with psychedelics are very similar to what I have experience with meditation. The biggest difference is that in meditation, it's not as sexy, for lack of a better term. So, you know, in terms of like encounters with otherworldly beings, it's like, it feels like really normal. It's hard to describe. So a lot of the things that I've come to understand. So I'm going to say something weird that's kind of hard to describe.

But so like, you know, through meditation, I've come to understand. This is going to sound weird. I've come to understand the rhythms of the universe. And like, what the hell does that even mean? It's hard to describe. It's sort of like, you know, like gravity. So gravity is like a thing that we all see and we're aware of and we account for, but it's not anything magnificent, right? Like, sure, it's like, when you think about it, it's

amazing that all these orbits and stuff like that. But on a day-to-day basis, like gravity is like, you know, it's gravity. So in that way, like understanding the rhythms of the universe is just sort of like, it's like gravity. It's like understanding that there is a kind of gravity in terms of a general universal force that acts in the world that like that you understand now when you meditate. So it's just like knowledge of gravity is the best way I can put it. And it is as simple as gravity, at least in my experience. So is it pretty cool? Sure.

Is it useful? Absolutely. Is it like neat to think about? Yeah. But it's not like this weird, you know, like, oh my God. Like I understand like the rhythms of the universe, man. I don't even know what that means. It's even hard to describe because it's just sort of like you kind of intuitively understand how gravity works.

So you know that if you pick up a rock and you drop it, it's going to fall. Like that's as simple as that. So in terms of otherworldly beings, like that too I would sort of say is this sort of thing where like, you know, you just kind of encounter them and they're just sort of there and they're chilling. I think it's like kind of like plant life. It's sort of like it's kind of doing a thing. And sometimes they're pretty cool. Like don't get me wrong. But it's not as, you know, it's not like.

the way that it's portrayed in movies and that yoga hippies talk about, or people who have done drugs, for that matter. So the experience seems to be much more drastic and bizarre when people use drugs.