Psychedelics have been part of the human story
for quite a while.
And only now we are starting to delve
a bit deeper into what this experience is about.
We're about to find out if DMT,
the key ingredient in ayahuasca
could treat depression.
Indigenous people have used psychedelics
if not for hundreds of years, for thousands of years.
By having these mystical type experiences
or these spiritual type experiences,
they can also be healing experiences.
So a very interesting door is opened
on the use of DMT to treating mental health conditions.
One of the most powerful psychedelics
that's viewed as as a gateway to the spiritual
is now entering the world of clinical science.
This is the first clinical trial
which hopefully will demonstrate that DMT,
with therapy, is antidepressant in patients
with major depressive disorder.
DMT assisted psychotherapy could actually be
one of the best treatments ever.
I really, really genuinely believe that
and I don't say that lightly.
This is Just Might Work,
a show about surprising solutions to our biggest problems.
I'm about to call Chloe Sakal,
a psychiatrist in the UK
to talk about her experiences on DMT.
Hello?
Hey Chloe, how are you?
I'm good, how are you?
So you took DMT in an MRI machine.
Yeah. [chuckles] What was that like?
I suppose it's a little bit like,
if the whole world was deaf
and you had to explain hearing to somebody.
Once I passed over into this other dimension,
I was surrounded by what felt like,
about six or seven other beings
that I perceived as being not human,
but very powerful and all knowing.
And I was one with everything.
That sounds really cliche and cheesy
but that's what it felt like.
These encounters with entities,
Chloe calls them beings,
but they're also known as Machine Elves,
is a common experience by those who have tripped on DMT.
And this ability for DMT to completely alter
someone's mental state
is exactly why researchers like Dr. Chris Timmermann
are so interested in its potential
to treat mental health disorders.
When you put a brain at rest in the scanner,
the net moves that emerge are very fixed.
Under DMT, we see that there's a hyper-connectivity
from these areas to the rest of the brain.
The brain becomes diverse
and it becomes diverse and unique
in a novel way,
in a creative way.
He's been studying the psychedelic for years.
In fact, the experience Chloe described
was a first of its kind experiment led by Chris.
Participants were injected with DMT
while in an MRI machine
to get an objective look at the drug's effects
on brain waves and consciousness.
In these very immersive states
in which people have such a strong experience
that they're no longer feeling that they're in this reality
but they're somewhere else
that feels more real than real,
or that can feel like a different sort of dimension,
we found that the wave patterns that emerged in that
were very similar to the ones
that occur when people are experiencing dreaming.
When you are dreaming, you're disconnected
from your external environment,
but this immersive experience feels convincingly real
and it's also visionary
and emotionally engaging in a similar way as DMT.
This research spawned a movement
to explore if DMT's transformative effects
could have an application as medicine.
So my journey to DMT is probably a bit boring,
but for me, really exciting.
So you know, I've worked in psychiatry,
I've worked in neurology.
I've never worked in the psychedelic space before.
I was really skeptical.
I was actually thinking there is no way
that these are going to ever be treatments.
And now, she's running the world's first clinical trial
using DMT to treat major depressive disorder.
So a lot of the mental health disorders like depression,
like post traumatic stress disorder, even OCD,
they have this real negative cycling thought process
which leads to ingrained neuronal processes.
And it's almost impossible to get out of those
and I think that's why SSRIs don't really,
even attempt to do that.
What psychedelics do, is that they break that pathway.
They break those neuronal connections
and then they increase neuronal connectivity
and synaptic connectivity.
Studies have already shown that other psychedelics
like psilocybin and ketamine
are promising treatments for depression and PTSD.
But DMT could be the ideal compound
to treat depression for three main reasons.
A trip only lasts up to 20 minutes,
making it easier to prescribe
and administer to patients.
And unlike most SSRIs
DMT doesn't generate tolerance,
which means you can personalize doses.
And it's naturally produced in plants, mammals,
even tiny amounts in our brains.
So there's this broad hypothesis that DMT
is safe to take.
But the key to this trial,
and how the psychedelic can potentially lift people
out of severe depression,
is that it's taken in conjunction with therapy.
So one way of thinking about the therapeutic effect of DMT
is that they can help the mind be like
a freshly plowed field.
We try and create the most therapeutic environment
for people to go through a psychedelic experience -
safe enough to really let go and be open
to whatever arises,
helping it to be a place where new growth takes place.
The crucial difference is whereas SSRIs
deal with the symptoms of depression,
we're hoping that psychedelics will help
get to the root causes,
so you're dealing with your issues
in a lot more substantial way.
In a way, it's also a bit of a paradigm shift
in thinking about mental health.
This trial is just starting
but if the findings are consistent with early indications,
DMT assisted therapy could be just an appointment away
within the next five years.
And it might be better than drugs currently prescribed.
Showing that your drug is effective in patients
is actually so exciting,
and I know that's a bit nerdy,
but it is so exciting
because you're really then on the way
to developing your drug.
Psychedelic assisted psychotherapy
could fundamentally change
how you treat mental health disorders.
It's in a way, starting to engage in this conversation
of how we think about medicine
that is experiential,
and how we can heal in different ways now.
Human beings, we're trying to understand
the human experience more broadly,
and this is a part of it.
For more episodes of Just Might Work, click subscribe,
and check out our videos on ketamine to treat depression or
find out if microdosing actually works.