The notion that something from within our bodies could be considered an illegal substance seems rather odd to me. However, this is very much the case with the powerful drug Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), active ingredient in the mysterious shamanic ayahuasca tea used by native cultures around the world for vision quests, which also happens to be found in the human body.

The catch is that we don’t know exactly where the DMT is created, though pioneering psychedelics researcher Dr. Rick Strassman has suggested that, in theory, the stuff could be produced within the human pineal gland, which Renee Descartes famously proposed “was the point of mediation between the material body and the immaterial soul.” In the realms of both fact and fiction, the pineal gland has occasionally played an important role with regard to man’s supposed innate abilities to “unlock” psychic powers from within, allowing us to perceive distant worlds which, to the naked senses in our typical day-to-day state of mind, remain hidden. H.P. Lovecraft’s maniacal character Crawford Tillinghast from the short story From Beyond described it as such:

You have heard of the pineal gland? I laugh at the shallow endocrinologist, fellow-dupe and fellow-parvenu of the Freudian. That gland is the great sense organ of organs – I have found out. It is like sight in the end, and transmits visual pictures to the brain. If you are normal, that is the way you ought to get most of it… I mean get most of the evidence from beyond.

What poor old Crawford was rambling about, in Lovecraft’s story that is, was that the pineal gland would allow a “normal” person to perceive “evidence from beyond” through the use of a resonating device he had built. This contraption allowed the pineal gland to function in such a way that alien realms became visible when one stood near it. Funny enough, if researchers like Dr. Rick Strassman are correct about DMT production in the brain, Lovecraft may have been closer to home than he could ever have imagined with his notions that the pineal gland might act as a medium for strange phenomenon. (Keep in mind that Lovecraft is often suspected by researchers of the bizarre for having been capable of “tapping into” ancient rites and other realms with some strange mental prowess he possessed, which translated into his fiction).

In fact, recent studies by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found that DMT regulates a mysterious protein that is abundant throughout the body called the sigma-1 receptor. Experiments with laboratory mice that had had this receptor genetically removed yielded the strange effect of nothing, whereas “normal” mice that had been injected with DMT yielded expected increases in hyperactivity until the effects of the drug had worn off. Indeed, it seems that a receptor for the hallucinogenic effects of DMT may have been discovered.

But perhaps of even more interest is the fact that, in addition to small amounts found throughout the body of sane healthy humans, elevated levels of DMT have also been found in the urine of schizophrenics. This brings to mind a few interesting questions; for instance, could finding ways to inhibit or otherwise appease sigma-1 receptors in schizophrenic patients result in a new treatment for the disease? On the other hand, many of the shamanic cultures around the world who use DMT-rich snuffs and teas in their rituals describe entities they meet while taking the stuff. Similarly, test subjects in various DMT studies (including those of Rick Strassman) report meeting similar “beings”, and common to both groups are haunting consistencies between descriptions of these entities. In fact, some believe these beings could even be “interdimensional ambassadors” which come to meet psychonauts in the sub-space realm that lingers between reality and wherever people experiencing a DMT trip tend to end up visiting.

If indeed there is a link between DMT and diseases like schizophrenia, could this in any way mean that a person afflicted with such a condition may have some limited ability to perceive elements of worlds beyond the five senses? We are left with the curious, even frightening questions as to how exactly drugs like DMT work, why it exists in the human body, and how, under the right conditions, substances like this might bear strange abilities that allow us some limited perception of those things which exist in places from beyond.