The book I chose for this report was “DMT: The spirit molecule” by Rick Strassman M.D. I was drawn to this book a few years back, due to my personal interest in hallucinogens, and their effect of the human psyche. When I saw this book on the list I knew it was what I wanted to learn more about. Dr. Rick Strassman has involved himself in multiple fields of medicine, including treatment of psychiatric patients, teaching medicine, and clinical research. For years he was interested in the certain drugs, such as MDMA, LSD, Psilocybin, and DMT, and their effects on an individual’s state of mind. Before trying to dive in head first into a DMT study, he completed a study using melatonin to see if in large amounts could cause hallucinations. He chose…show more content… Strassman ended the DMT research, due to many overlaying reasons. Once the clinical studies were finished, he began calling volunteers to see if their DMT experiences had any long terms effects on their life. Unfortunately, most felt the effects from the trips lasted only a few weeks, or months following their last injection. Disappointed by this news, he turned to a different field of scientific study to help give more clarity as to why his volunteers felt, saw, and experienced what they did. He talks about dark matter making up 95 universes mass, and a building block of dark matter known as WIMPS. WIMPS stands for “weakly interacting massive particles” meaning they are larger than a proton, but have little to no known effect on most physical matter. He theorized that once someone is injected with DMT, they become more susceptible to the WIMPS, and this causes their psyche to enter a sort of parallel universe. Even though his research did not produce the results he was hoping for, Dr. Strassman still believes there could be beneficial uses of DMT, and other hallucinogens. If we were allowed to administrate these types of drugs in a relaxing setting, where doctors are trained in both the fields of Medicine and Spiritualty, then it could be a major breakthrough in the field of Psychotherapy. I think Dr. Strassman did the best he could with his research given his circumstances, at some point he tried to get the University to allow him to use a University owned house.…show more content… There are many factors that play into this, including social media. With the number of people partaking in social media rises so does the number of people at risk for these diseases, in turn our need for a better long-term treatment is needed. If doctors were able to study the use small doses of certain hallucinogens in a therapeutic setting one day we may see a significant drop in the number of mental health patients. For example, those that suffer from severe anxiety disorders are given Xanax. Xanax is a type of drug that mellows the moods of the user, but if abused or taken with alcohol it can cause major problems. It is also often used as a recreational drug, it can cause the user to loss memory, track of time, weight loss, it effects ones’ balance, and can be extremely dangerous to take then operate a motorized vehicle. For a drug that is commonly used as treatment it is not very
