Near
death experiences (NDE) first came to public light in the 1970's with
the publication of Raymond Moody's book Life After Life. Patching
together elements from different accounts, Moody described an
archetypal typical near-death experience, while noting that most
accounts include only some elements in the described archetype. The
archetype NDE included elements such as a sensation of floating out
of the body, feelings of peace and joy, a life-review that occurs
very quickly or in some altered type of time, a passage through a
tunnel, an encounter with a being of light, and seeing deceased
relatives. Since Moody's original book, near-death experiences have
been the subject of extensive scientific study, with very many
accounts published and collected by other authors.
A
recent scientific paper attempts to hint at a natural explanation for
near-death experiences, by trying to suggest that they may be caused by
the hallucinogenic drug DMT. The paper was entitled “DMT Models
the Near-Death Experience.” The hypothesis hinted at (that DMT may
be an explanation for near-death experiences) is hardly credible.
99% of the people who have experienced near-death experiences never
used the drug DMT. While some have suggested that there may be the
faintest traces of this drug in the human body, the facts I cite at the end of this post will clarify that the human body does not have even a thousandth of the amount of DMT necessary to create some type of
unusual mental experience.
The
paper authors (Timmermann and others) made use of what is called the
Greyson scale. Created by near-death experience researcher Bruce
Greyson, the Greyson scale asks 16 questions about reported aspects
of a near-death experience. A person can give an answer that can be 0
to mean “no,” 1 to mean something moderately extraordinary, or 2
to mean something highly extraordinary. For example, question 12 is
“Did you feel separated from your body?” The three possible
answers are 0 to mean “No,” 1 to mean “I lost awareness of my
body,” and 2 to mean “I clearly left my body and existed outside
of it.” The maximum
score on the Greyson scale is 48.
Timmermann
and his colleagues injected 13 subjects with the drug DMT. The
number of subjects was smaller than the number of subjects (15)
recommended for reliable data with a low chance of false alarms.
Timmermann and his colleagues then asked the Greyson scale questions
of these subjects. They then compared their answers to 13 random
people who claimed to have near-death experiences.
There's
something rather suspect in the latter part of this methodology.
There has already been much data collected in regard to the Greyson
scale scores of those who experience near-death experiences, so why
not use some of that data (which involves large numbers of people),
rather than randomly selecting only 13 people who experienced
near-death experiences?
Figure
4 of the study compares the Greyson scale answers of the people who
experienced near-death experiences with the answers of those who
received the DMT injections. We see quite a discrepancy in several
areas. The main differences are below:
- The people who had NDE's had a much higher tendency to report separation from the body than the DMT-injected people.
- The people who had NDE's had a much higher tendency to report altered time perception than the DMT-injected people.
- The people who had near death experiences had a much higher tendency to report encountering spirits of the deceased or other spirits than the DMT-injected people.
- The people who had near death experiences had a higher tendency to report speeded-up thoughts than the DMT-injected people.
- The people who had near death experiences had a much higher tendency to report "understanding everything" than the DMT-injected people.
- The people who had near death experiences had a much higher tendency to report encountering a border or point of no return than the DMT-injected people.
- The people who had near death experiences had a much higher tendency to report having precognitive visions than the DMT-injected people.
- The people who had near death experiences had a much higher tendency to report experiencing ESP than the DMT-injected people.
- The people who had near death experiences had a much higher tendency to report experiencing a life-review than the DMT-injected people.
In
light of these differences, it is clear that the authors of this
study should not have used “DMT Models the Near-Death Experience” as the
title of their paper, and should not have claimed “DMT Induces
Near-Death Type Experiences” in their paper.
In
order for us to judge how closely these DMT-induced experiences
resembled near-death experiences, we would need to have first-hand
accounts of the experiences from the people who had the experiences.
It would have been very easy for a scientific study to have produced
such accounts. Timmermann and his colleagues could have simply had
each of his subjects write (or recite into a tape recorder) a
500-word or 1000-word account describing their experiences. Then
those accounts could have been included verbatim as appendixes in the
scientific paper. If that had been done, then we would be able to
judge how closely the experiences resembled near-death experiences,
not only by looking for points of similarity between DMT experiences
and near-death experiences, but also by looking at things that
happened during the DMT experiences that did not happen in the near-death
experiences. But since Timmermann and his colleagues have not
included any such accounts in their paper, we have no way of
accurately judging how closely the DMT experiences resemble
near-death experiences. It could be that the DMT experiences were
filled with all kinds of things that never happen in near-death
experiences.
In
fact, when we read previously published accounts of DMT experiences, such as those given here, we
have reason to believe that DMT produces all kinds of weird stuff
that doesn't show up in near-death experiences. The page includes all
kind of random hallucinatory stuff such as someone seeing his house
unbuilding itself, someone reporting that there were slinky toys everywhere, someone reporting his computer looking sad, someone reporting his friends melting, and
someone being swallowed by a being like an octopus.
It seems likely that not a single one of the 13
subjects had an overall experience closely resembling a near-death
experience, on the grounds that the Timmermann paper does not publish
a single account written by the subjects who were injected with DMT.
If any one of the subjects had reported such an experience, it seems
that the authors would have included such a compelling account in
their paper, which might have persuaded many people what the authors
were trying to provide evidence for.
The
Timmermann paper says that it got subjects “by word of mouth,”
so we may guess that the subjects were students of the professors. Such persons might have been people more likely to give positive answers when given the Greyson scale
questions after their DMT experience, particularly if they knew that one
of their professors was hoping to get enough positive answers to
publish a paper saying DMT experiences are like near-death
experiences. A better approach might have been to have advertised
for subjects online.
A
question of great relevance here is: is there any reason to believe
that the human brain might be able to produce or release enough DMT
to produce an extraordinary experience that was something like a
hallucinogenic experience or near-death experience? DMT was found in
the brains of rats, but only 20 nanograms per kilogram (as mentioned here). To get a
mystical or hallucinatory or extraordinary experience in a human, you
need about 20 milligrams of DMT, an amount a million times larger
than 20 nanograms.
The
question of DMT in the brain was clarified by David E. Nichols in a
paper he authored in the Journal of Psychopharmocology. Speaking of
DMT (also known as N,N-dimethyltryptamine) in the paper Nichols says,
“It is clear that very minute concentrations of
N,N-dimethyltryptamine have been detected in the brain, but they are
not sufficient to produce psychoactive effects.” Addressing
speculations that DMT is produced by the tiny pea-sized pineal gland
in the brain, Nichols points out that the main purpose of the pineal
gland is to produce melatonin, but the pineal gland only produces 30
micrograms of melatonin per day. But the pineal gland would need to
produce about 20 milligrams of DMT (about 660 times more than 30
micrograms) to produce a mystical or hallucinatory experience. “The
rational scientist will recognize that it is simply impossible for
the pineal gland to accomplish such a heroic biochemical feat,”
says Nichols. In the article in which he states that, it is noted
that “DMT is rapidly broken down by monoamine oxidase (MAO) and
there is no evidence that the drug can naturally accumulate within
the brain.” Strassman attempted to detect DMT in the brains of 10
human corpses, but was not able to find any.
Given
these facts, it is quite absurd to suggest that near-death
experiences are being produced by DMT in the brain. Judging from the
amount of DMT in rat brains, we have about 100,000 times too little
DMT in our bodies for DMT-produced experiences to appear. Web pages
speculating that near-death experiences may be produced by DMT will
typically tell us that DMT has been detected in rat brains, failing
to tell us how much DMT was detected (merely trace levels 100,000
times too small to produce any remarkable mental experiences).
Postscript: You can google for "DMT experiences" to get many accounts of what it's like to take DMT. When people take DMT, it is extremely common for them to quickly experience a kind of runaway, kaleidoscopic imagery with all kinds of fantastic bizarre details. For example, you might see something like this in front of you:
People taking DMT report encounters with an extremely wide variety of strange beings, that may include elves, reptiles, spiders, robots, jellyfish, extraterrestrials, spiritual figures, or an octopus. So you might see something like this:
We may contrast such exotic dream-like imagery with the 20+ "veridical" near-death experiences described here, in which people having near-death experiences reported no kind of weird psychedelic imagery, but just ordinary down-to-earth details of medical efforts to revive them (while they were unconscious) or parts of a hospital they hadn't seen yet, details that were subsequently confirmed. There's a world of difference between such accounts and DMT trips.
Another reason for rejecting a DMT explanation and all other brain chemistry explanations for near-death experiences is that near-death experiences have been repeatedly been reported during cardiac arrests, after the brain has temporarily shut down (as it does within 20 seconds after the heart stops). Your brain cannot be tripping out on DMT when the brain's electrical activity has shut down.
Post-Postscript: See this video for a very detailed technical discussion by David E. Nichols PhD on why the idea of DMT existing in the pineal gland is a fantasy. Although micro-traces of DMT have been found in cerebrospinal fluid, there is zero evidence that DMT exists in the human brain. At 25:08 in the Nichols video, he displays a slide saying, "There is no evidence to suggest that DMT can be accumulated within the brain or within neurons at significant concentrations; such inferences are either not supported by direct experimental evidence or are based on flawed experiments."
Postscript: You can google for "DMT experiences" to get many accounts of what it's like to take DMT. When people take DMT, it is extremely common for them to quickly experience a kind of runaway, kaleidoscopic imagery with all kinds of fantastic bizarre details. For example, you might see something like this in front of you:
People taking DMT report encounters with an extremely wide variety of strange beings, that may include elves, reptiles, spiders, robots, jellyfish, extraterrestrials, spiritual figures, or an octopus. So you might see something like this:
We may contrast such exotic dream-like imagery with the 20+ "veridical" near-death experiences described here, in which people having near-death experiences reported no kind of weird psychedelic imagery, but just ordinary down-to-earth details of medical efforts to revive them (while they were unconscious) or parts of a hospital they hadn't seen yet, details that were subsequently confirmed. There's a world of difference between such accounts and DMT trips.
Another reason for rejecting a DMT explanation and all other brain chemistry explanations for near-death experiences is that near-death experiences have been repeatedly been reported during cardiac arrests, after the brain has temporarily shut down (as it does within 20 seconds after the heart stops). Your brain cannot be tripping out on DMT when the brain's electrical activity has shut down.
Post-Postscript: See this video for a very detailed technical discussion by David E. Nichols PhD on why the idea of DMT existing in the pineal gland is a fantasy. Although micro-traces of DMT have been found in cerebrospinal fluid, there is zero evidence that DMT exists in the human brain. At 25:08 in the Nichols video, he displays a slide saying, "There is no evidence to suggest that DMT can be accumulated within the brain or within neurons at significant concentrations; such inferences are either not supported by direct experimental evidence or are based on flawed experiments."
Post-Post-Postscript: A study discussed in 2022 logged the experiences of many DMT users. An article on the study states this:
"Michael also suggested the findings poked holes in a common myth which posits dying feels like a psychedelic trip because the human brain releases DMT upon death. If anything, he felt the trips his team chronicled had less in common with near-death experiences than they did with typical recounting of alien encounters and abductions."
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