Hi guys, today I want to discuss a pretty popular conjecture about near-death experiences, which
claims that they are caused by a psychedelic drug, DMT produced by the pineal glands in human brains.
In the past few years, people from Hollywood, Silicon Valley and beyond have been traveling
to South America to take part in the so-called Ayahuasca retreats. The active ingredient of the
Ayahuasca plant is DMT. Ayahuasca is traditionally used by indigenous people in shamanistic rituals.
Drinkers of Ayahuasca experience short-term hallucinogenic episodes, which many describe
as life-changing. In 2018, a paper purported that DMT simulates the near-death experience, wherein
people report the sensation of transcending their bodies and entering another realm.
Media had a frenzy with this hypothesis, creating articles with stirring titles such as BBC’s “A DMT
trip 'feels like dying' - and scientists now agree”, to “are near-death experiences just
psychedelic trips?” But how credible is this proposal? Is it just hype or is DMT really
the reason behind near-death experiences? I did some digging and found interesting information
that points me in a different direction. There are multiple scientific studies which compared
descriptions of all kinds of psychedelic drug experiences with near-death experiences.
One study established that another drug, not DMT, shares the most similarities with
near-death experiences, or NDEs for short. What’s more, the authors of the DMT paper
emphasized the broad commonalities between DMT and near-death experiences, but didn’t
provide any convincing arguments on the profound differences between the two. These differences,
in my opinion, are the fundamental factors which make near-death experiences unique and distinct
from any psychedelic drug induced hallucinations. Now, let me show you my findings and reasoning on
why neither DMT nor this other drug provides the full answer to near-death experiences.
The extraordinary phenomenon is shared by countless individuals across cultures and history.
Most near-death experiencers have depicted a sweeping and embracing feeling of peace
at the moment of death; leaving one’s body and floating above, traveling towards a bright light
at the end of a tunnel, seeing one’s life flashing before their eyes, and meeting deceased relatives,
loved ones or supernatural beings. Such experiences are described as intensely
vivid and realistic, more so than memories of true events. These characteristics define
near-death experiences. If DMT is really the cause of such episodes, then using
this drug should induce most all of these special characteristics, right? But does it in fact do so?
Plus, what about other psychedelics? Is DMT that different from comparable drugs?
Psychedelic drugs are potent modulators of conscious states.
They can rapidly induce an extremely immersive state of consciousness characterized by vivid
and elaborate visual imagery. DMT is less well-known than psilocybin or LSD, though it
has become the focus of a number of speculative theories. Some claim that the pineal glands
in human brains can produce enough DMT to form psychoactive effects like near-death experiences.
The pineal gland is referred to as the third eye, which is a tiny pinecone-shaped organ located deep
in the center of the brain. Since its discovery, the pineal gland has been shrouded in mystery.
Philosopher and scientist Rene Descartes thought the pineal gland was the seat of the soul.
Some postulate that the ancient Egyptian eye of Horus and pinecones held by Sumerians’ gods are
representations of the pineal gland. Many people today believe in its mystic power.
Therefore, it truly makes an exciting story when you try and combine the
perplexing near-death experience, a certain psychedelic and the mysterious pineal gland.
Yet here we are looking for the truth not a cool fiction. So let’s see what
scientists have found in experiments and where the facts might actually lead us.
The main product of the pineal gland is not DMT but melatonin, a hormone that helps to
synchronize circadian rhythms in different parts of your body in response to light and dark cycles.
DMT has been found in small amounts in human brain tissue and larger amounts in cerebrospinal fluid.
Animal studies have found INMT, an enzyme required for the production of DMT,
in various parts of the brain and other organs such as lungs and hearts. Researchers detected
the extracellular concentrations of DMT in the cerebral cortex of normal behaving rats,
were similar to neurotransmitters including serotonin which stabilizes mood.
This is a helpful piece of information. Rats and humans are not the same but it raises the
possibility that the synthesizing DMT phenomenon in rats may occur similarly in human brains.
So, even though there is no data on the amount of DMT in human brains,
we can potentially get an idea from serotonin since it might be at similar levels with DMT.
The average adult human possesses only 5–10 mg of serotonin, and over 90% is in the intestine.
The remaining amount is less than 0.5 to 1 mg and is located in blood platelets and the brain. Thus,
the natural DMT level in the human brain is likely in the same minute amount.
Within the human brain, highest INMT activity has been found in uncus, medulla, amygdala, frontal
cortex and in the fronto-parietal and temporal lobes. INMT is also found in the pineal gland.
The 2019 animal study proves that even after removing the pineal gland, the rat brain was
still able to produce DMT in various regions; and there was no difference in brain concentrations of
DMT at baseline between rats with or without the pineal gland. This means the pineal gland might
be just one of many places to create DMT and it is probably not even a major producer. Therefore,
the idea of activating this gland to increase DMT might not be very effective at all.
The rat experiments also revealed something very interesting, that the levels of DMT elevated
significantly after cardiac arrest. This prompts the question whether DMT floods the human brain at
death causing near-death experiences. Is this DMT spike high enough to trigger psychedelic effects?
Researchers tested the DMT levels before and after the cardiac arrests in rats. On average,
there were 2.4 times increases in pineal-intact rats, and 1.8 times in pineal-removed rats.
To induce episodes as intense and vivid as near-death experiences in humans, 0.2 and
0.4 mg/kg DMT is needed, thus for a person who weighs 70 kg or 154 lbs, about 20-25 milligrams
of DMT needs to be produced in brain rapidly in a few minutes. That’s around 40 times higher than
the possible 0.5-1 mg natural DMT level in an average adult human brain. Assuming that human
brains also experience a 2-3 folds of DMT surge after cardiac arrest at near death, it would still
be far from the sufficient amount required to trigger a psychedelic event. In addition,
DMT is quickly metabolized and broken down in the body, so it wouldn’t be able to naturally
accumulate in the brain. Hence, the endogenous DMT is unlikely to explain near-death experiences.
On a different note, some researchers claimed that reports of near-death experiences have
a striking resemblance to DMT-induced states. How accurate is that? Several papers dissected
descriptions of near-death experiences and episodes from different psychedelics,
and they argued otherwise. Let’s check them out.
In 2019, a study compared the stories of 625 individuals who reported NDEs with the
stories of more than 15,000 individuals who had taken one of 165 different psychoactive drugs.
When those descriptions were linguistically analyzed, researchers found that hallucinogens
and psychedelics had the greatest similarities to near-death-experiences, and the drug that scored
the highest similarity was the hallucinogen ketamine, with the street name K or special K.
Ketamine is used as an anesthetic and antidepressant. Researchers learned the
word most strongly represented in descriptions of both near-death and ketamine experiences was
“reality,” highlighting the sense of presence that accompanies near-death experiences.
According to this study, other drugs such as LSD and DMT also share similarities with NDEs,
though they scored lower than ketamine.
In 2020, another study compared NDE content, on 20 characteristics, with four other modified states
of consciousness: a group having recreational drugs, a group of long-term meditators,
a group of experts in cognitive trance, and a group of participants claimed that they
had experienced a similar near-death type but in non-life-threatening situations.
Data from these four groups were compared to the near-death experience content with 161
near-death experiencers. The drug group consists of 51 users of LSD, DMT, ketamine and others.
Here is what the researchers found: among the 20 characteristics, seven were specific,
in other words, unique, to near-death experiences. They are: seeing or feeling surrounded by a bright
light, out-of-body experiences, leaving the earthly world, a border/point of no return,
the feeling of dying and/or being dead, the decision to come back from the experience
and seeing or entering a gateway. The 13 shared items among near-death experiences, drug-using,
meditation and cognitive trance include peacefulness, extrasensory perception,
ineffability, harmony, understanding, altered time perception, encounter and more.
From this study we can see, there are parallels between psychedelic drugs and
near-death experiences, and these parallels mostly cluster on common perceptions,
visual and sensory distortions, which might be caused by altered states of consciousness.
However, the seven characteristics specific to near-death experiences that are not shared
by drug-using, are some of the core features which make NDEs stand alone.
The differences between these two consciousness states are so profound that it’s obvious that
near-death experiences are distinctly different from drug-induced conditions.
Bright light, leaving the earthly world, feeling dead or dying, a border of no return, seeing
or entering a gateway; these are legitimately fundamental to NDEs. It should be noted though:
that a high enough dose of ketamine can cause out-of-body experiences; which adds
to the point that ketamine, not DMT shares the most similarities with near-death experiences.
Even so, ketamine still can’t generate the other 6 key characteristics of NDEs listed in the study.
An earlier 2012 paper finds that near-death experiences share some
similar characteristics with drug episodes, but also remarkably different on major items.
The author also pointed out that “The most compelling reason against the DMT hypothesis
of NDEs is the same reason the ketamine theory is flawed: The phenomenology of drug-facilitated
experiences is far more different from than it is similar to the phenomenology of NDEs.”
The researchers of the DMT proposal argued that these particular differences between DMT and
NDEs are likely a function of contextual factors, such as a person’s expectations of death. I don’t
find this as a strong argument. Most near-death experiencers recounted/ reported/depicted highly
similar parallel events. Are we sure that all these people from different cultures
and historical eras expected very much the same thing at the moment of death? Moreover we know
that human minds especially in altered states like subconscious or unconscious is not that obedient
or controllable. So, can a person expect, plan or dictate what he or she is going to experience
while on psychedelics like DMT or during sleeping? How often do you dream of something
that you expected or hoped to happen? Most of the time, it’s not because we want certain things to
occur that our mind will create such comforting experiences for us. If a person’s expectations or
other contextual factors can not control or manage the content of our dreams or DMT hallucinogenic
trips, then how can such factors suddenly work during DMT-caused near-death experiences?
These studies raise serious questions on the hypothesis that near death experiences are
created by DMT or other drugs. If we overly focus on certain shared features between DMT
or ketamine with near-death experiences and ignore the obvious differences, then we risk
exaggerating their similarities and in turn overlook the distinctions that set them apart.
Given the fact that none of these drugs can produce the majority of the specific
characteristics of near-death experiences, such as leaving the earthy world, feeling dead,
or passing a gateway; it’s conceivable that none of these drugs plays a causal role in the
production of experiences when death is imminent. DMT and near-death experiences may very well share
some underlying neurological and psychological features, but so do many other phenomena
associated with altered states of consciousness, such as using ketamine or deep meditation.
The striking differences between DMT and near-death experiences are intriguing and worthy
of further investigation. Perhaps the complex NDEs involve multiple neurotransmitters and
regions of the brain; and the naturally produced substances might contribute to a limited extent.
One thing is for sure, that based upon available studies and evidence we are still far away from
drawing any conclusions on near-death experiences. There is a missing piece to this puzzle. Something
remains hidden and unknown about the near-death experience, which when found might be the key to
unravel and explain its core characteristics. What do you think? If you have any insights, please
leave me a comment. If you like my video, please subscribe to my channel and share with others. You
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support. This is Curious Being, I am Tina. Thanks for watching and see you next time.