Drugs And UFO Abductions Update
Yesterday at the American Bookseller’s Expo here in Los Angeles, I had the good fortune to meet up with Dr. Rick Strassman, author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule. For background on Strassman, see my earlier post. He was signing books at the Park Street Press booth, publishers of his new (co-written) volume, Inner Paths To Outer Space (review to come after I’ve read it.)
Strassman continues to write and lecture about his experience working with subjects who were injected with the psychoactive drug Di-Methyl Tryptamine (DMT) during a five year scientific study in the 1990s. He told me that he is going to Brazil soon to lead a study group looking into the effects of the ayahuasca brew, which shamans have been using for thousands of years to access realms beyond our normal senses.
I asked how he came to believe (as a classically-trained scientist) that psychedelic experiences were not just mind-created hallucinations. He had a reflective reply: “According to my training and some of the negative things people said about the study, I concluded that the whole experiment was a wash, but this tended to demean the reality of the experience for the subjects involved.” [Paraphrasing here--I'm going from memory.]
Strassman also remarked that the consistency of reports from those under the influence of psychoactive compounds, not only in his study, but across history, points convincingly to the idea that our perception of reality is not confined to the five senses. This can be extrapolated to the concepts that we use to describe our surroundings–we may be partially trapped in construct of the world derived from our normal sensory input. We are also laboring under a culture that pushes one point of view of how we should look at things. “We don’t realize that we’re an aberration in history,” Strassman added.
Perhaps the subjects in the DMT study, a portion of whom described experiences strikingly similar to what we would consider an alien abduction, were influenced by their culture and stories they had read. Strassman assured me that not only had some not known the details of reported UFO abductions, but that he knew of accounts from cultures who have had little or no contact with civilization that also described UFOs and alien-like entities while under the influence of psychoactive plants, and that his had occurred before contact with those from outside of their culture.
One surprising study Strassman described is being undertaken Northern California. He was not forthcoming with any details, but interest in his ideas and work is now apparently coming from the ranks of MUFON members, who are sponsoring a project based on these controversial theories. This is certainly a hopeful sign that new generations of UFO researchers are willing to push some boundaries.
Perhaps I can get Strassman to agree to an interview for Radio Misterioso soon. Stay tuned.
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Jun 02 2008 
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Lucky you! I have wanted to meet Dr. Strassman for years.
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:48 am
I’m glad you’re exploring this. I think it’s an important facet of what’s going on… well beyond any easy dismissal that the abduction enigma can be explained away by dodgy internal chemistry, intoxication, or mind altering drugs.
It’s a grander universe than we can have perceived with the imposed scientific reductionism and abusive Occam flogging. Too, as Terence McKenna said, it’s another reminder to monkeys merely making mouth noises that the answers to these questions are not found so much as they are faced.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 10:33 am
Since folk like Strassman and McKenna insist that this is an, as yet, unperceived dimension of reality, I’m curious to know if groups of DMT users who dimension hop together happen to meet each other in this other dimension?
I’m reading McKenna’s Archaic Revival and he dances around this question but never actually answers it.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:01 pm
This isn’t ufo related but I remember reading a Stanislav Grof book years ago that dealt with someone seemingly accessing another plane/dimension/whatever. Grof was conducting LSD research in Czechoslovakia. The guy who was tripping encountered a being of light who gave him a name and address and the village he was from. So when they check out the address it turns out it was a mother who had recently lost her son. Anyway, I read the book a long time ago, so I don’t have the details nailed down, but that was the gist of it.
June 3rd, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Lesley,
It was the second time I’ve seen him, but the first that I was able to actually speak with him. It’s inspiring to talk to someone who is actually out there doing valuable work instead of just writing about other people’s research.
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Mr. Al,
The DMT/ pyschedelic thing is certainly important, but as you say, it’s probably only one “door” to the place where all of this paranormal stuff originates.
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Joseph,
Although some confirmation of communication between people in altered states would be a great to confirm things in a classically logical or scientific way, the nature of “visits” to wherever we go during these episodes may be individualized for a reason (or reasons.) It may be that the only way to access the “alter-realm” is as an individual experience.
That being said, I have heard of people who shared the same “trip.” Two of them were told to me personally. One was from Kevin Booth, who told me about going on an alien ship of all things, along with his buddy, comedian Bill Hicks.
June 10th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
I’ll just throw my take on this DMT stuff while we’re at it. First of all real spirit travel is based on electromagnetic energy (chi, prana, etc.) while drugs are based on electrochemical energy. Sure DMT type drugs will open up the pineal gland — but so will salvia (which I’ve done) yet it apparently works through the THC-type neuron network. When I did salvia I was doing full-lotus yoga and the salvia ALWAYS triggered multiple internal climaxes — real orgasms — up the back — which then opened up the pineal gland. That’s how the electrochemical energy works and it will create light but if too strong you will black out. The standard medical take on psychotropics is that they shut down the thalamus so that the cerebellum directly downloads visions to the cerebral cortex. So again trance spirit travel — alchemy or yoga or qigong — relies on building up the electrochemical energy to create stronger electromagnetic fields. Usually the traditional DMT users will also practice gender dynamics and fasting (so the males go into the jungle on their own for a long time) — so that’s a type of yoga as well. In the Bushmen culture NO drugs were used for spirit travel unless the females needed help. The electromagnetic energy is male while the electrochemical energy is female. My take is that the “aliens” are just the subconscious reptilian brain as archetypal visions.
June 11th, 2008 at 8:24 am
I am number 34, “Sara” in the DMT study. If you’ve read the book, you’ll know I had probably the most profound encounter of all the research subjects. Strassman really dismissed our experiences as the time as being only products of our imagination. That was quite a contradiction at the time. The most profound experience of my life (beside the birth of my children) and it’s a product of my imagination? Not all of us who were in the study would agree that Strassman is the great guru, he now portrays himself to be. His research nurse was much more helpful to most of us in processing and understanding our experiences.
June 11th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Athena S,
A great surprise and honor to have you read and comment on my post.
While I (and other readers of The Spirit Molecule) were of course not present during the study, we could only be aware of Strassman’s view of events. Actually, he did allude to this moral dilemma when I spoke with him, which I included in the post.
I believe that he was honest about his change of opinion, considering the strictly scientific discipline from which he was operating at the time. Of course I cannot know what happened between you and Strassman at the time, or in subsequent years.
You and the other people in the study are lucky that the research nurse was more compassionate. Perhaps she (or he) was instrumental in helping Strassman see the value of your subjective experiences.
It might be a good idea for someone to collect the impressions the DMT study members from their point of view for publication, unless you all had to sign some sort of non-disclosure contract.