Danny Jones Podcast
#299 - #1 DMT Scientist: BANNED Research, Biblical Prophecy & the CIA | Dr. Rick Strassman
Mon, 28 Apr 2025
Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Rick Strassman is best known for pioneering DMT research in humans and proposing that DMT could be a biological gateway to mystical or alternate realities. Currently, Dr. Strassman serves as a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. His new book, "My Altered States: A Doctor's Extraordinary Account of Trauma, Psychedelics, and Spiritual Growth," is available now. SPONSORS http://morning.ver.so/danny - Use code DANNY for 15% off your first order. https://hims.com/danny - Start your FREE online visit today. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS https://x.com/rick_strassman https://www.rickstrassman.com FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Adverse effects of DMT 06:54 - Is DMT the source of human consciousness? 10:25 - Extended state DMT experiments 20:19 - DMT reveals a universal religion 29:08 - Psychedelic religion of mystical consciousness 35:10 - What Danny saw during DMT experiment 37:54 - Terrifying experience on 5-MeO DMT 41:39 - Melatonin & the pineal gland 52:43 - When DMT stops working 57:38 - DMT & NDE's 01:02:45 - Telepathic experiences on psychedelics 01:12:53 - Prophets of the bible 01:18:34 - The first anti-christ 01:31:42 - Drugs in antiquity 01:37:24 - CIA-funded LSD clinics w/ Charles Manson 01:40:13 - Rick's friendship with Joe Rogan 01:45:42 - Did ergot & psychedelics create religion? 01:53:12 - Government research on psychedelic soldiers 02:03:01 - Amphetamines & adderall 02:14:00 - Next species of humans will have telepathy 02:19:39 - John Mack's alien research vs. psychedelics 02:26:53 - Remembering previous lives 02:29:20 - Translating the book of Genesis 02:34:06 - DARPA research on buddhism Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the adverse effects of DMT?
So hi Danny, nice to meet you. Hi Rick, pleasure to meet you too as well.
Before we started rolling, we were talking about the effects of DMT. I told you I was super afraid to try it again by myself. And people I've spoken with that know more about this than I do, which isn't saying much, said that there's not really any, there's not any documented cases of people having any like real adverse effects of using DMT or overusing DMT.
Yeah, that's not been my experience. Every once or twice a year, I get a note from a family member or a friend of somebody who has smoked way too much DMT. And they develop a certain kind of mental state. It's kind of messianic that they feel they have the answer. And if people don't agree with their answer, they get mad. Yeah. So they're convinced it's kind of messianic in nature.
Have you ever heard of anybody smoking DMT and sort of like not coming back fully getting like stuck in like this weird, uh, slippery version of reality, like for forever. Cause I've had, I have friends that in high school that took a lot of LSD or smoked a lot of weed. And after a certain point, they were just never the same.
Yeah, that's hard to say. I mean, personalities get modified, I think, or can be modified under the influence of a psychedelic. But it's more, I think, that they made those changes more real in their lives. And that might be what people are referring to as they've changed. They maybe took more action on some of the ideas they had than otherwise would have been the case.
I think that's how psychedelics work actually, is they just increase the strength and power of things which already exist in the mind. If you want to be a happier person, you might become happier after taking a psychedelic because it's convinced you that it's good to be happy.
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Chapter 2: Is DMT the source of human consciousness?
You were the first person in the United States to do human research on psychedelics. You are probably like one of the most legendary people in the psychedelic world. And one of the things that really blew my mind was that you were explaining on, I think it was Hamilton's podcast. I could be wrong. I think it was Hamilton's podcast. You were explaining how you had the idea
to get this funded when you were hanging out with Terrence McKenna And you guys decided that it would be the best way to get it funded through the war on drugs.
Right, right. That's crazy. Yeah, it was 1988. And I was kind of at a crossroads of where my career was going. The melatonin and pineal work hadn't quite panned out the way I wanted it to. But I was still interested in the pineal gland and in psychedelics mostly. Yeah. And I met Terrence a year or two before. He's the first person to give me DMT, actually.
Oh, really?
Chapter 3: What happened during extended state DMT experiments?
Yeah, 1986 or something.
Oh, wow.
And then a couple years later, I was driving down from Canada, stopped at their place, and we spent the day up in his loft library. Wow. Yeah. And, um, you know, we just, the, uh, the war on, uh, you know, the war on drugs was in full steam ahead. Uh, there was a lot of money being poured into it.
What a clever idea.
And we, we, we came up with the idea of the ultimate study, give DMT to people and see what it does. You can't really, you can't really argue with that. And, uh, I describe it as an abusable drug. It's a prototypical classic psychedelic. And people were still using psychedelics. And we didn't know how they worked or really what they did in the face of like 20 years of intervening animal research.
So there are pretty straightforward kinds of arguments that could have been used against studying the drug or for studying the drug. And I framed it as let's find out more and no value judgment placed on the work, no therapy or religious motivations.
What do you think DMT in a healthy dose does to the human brain? not necessarily i'm i know it's speculative when you're talking about what it's doing to the brain when you're taking it when it's active right but like oh kind of like when it when it subsides like what do you think the after effect is
Well, I think it works on the imagination. So if you can divide the mind into an intellectual part and an imaginative part, it's based on some of the ideas of Aristotle, that the imaginative part of the mind holds on to perceptions, emotions, feelings of certainty. And the intellectual part is ideas, abstract notions.
So I think that DMT ultimately stimulates the imagination as compared to stimulating the intellect. It makes things, you know, it appears, but what the appearance actually means is more dependent on the intellect.
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Chapter 4: Can DMT reveal a universal religion?
in the brain. Yeah, he was probably talking about neurogenesis and neuroplasticity.
Yes, I think that's what it was.
Yeah, so stem cells converting to neurons is neurogenesis. You're making new neurons.
Right.
And neuroplasticity is increasing the number and complexity of connections among neurons.
Yeah, because every person I've ever talked to that does DMT, they're all super smart.
I don't know what that is. There are a lot of ways to try and figure out what DMT is and what it's doing. And also, I think, interesting to consider is why. Why is there DMT in our brains?
Well, it's not just in the brain, right? It's all throughout the body. Isn't that true?
Mostly, it's been found most recently and most objectively in the brain.
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Chapter 5: What is the psychedelic religion of mystical consciousness?
Okay, so it's mostly in the brain. In the pineal gland or all throughout the brain?
In the cortexes, the visual cortex, parietal cortex, there's a number of cortices on the brain. And each is responsible for certain psychological functions almost.
So do you think that – is the idea that DMT existing in the brain is sort of what's responsible for giving us our perception of the world for – which animates the world around us, gives us this depth and color and –
Um, there's this, there's this other idea called the, um, which I think it was Andrew Gallimore who explained this to me, the, uh, the filter idea of the brain being a filter where it filters out all this other stuff that could exist in reality to what, so we can perceive only what we need to survive.
Yeah, I think it's really hard to say now what the role of naturally occurring DMT in the brain is, but you can consider it like a way it maintains consensus reality. Too much makes things get really psychedelic, and not enough might make things seem flat and boring.
Yeah, I want I always wondered, like, is the is the DMT in there? Is that breaking down some sort of filter in the brain, which is enabling us to see more or like temporarily making us see something like like overloading the brain with information? And that's maybe explains that. this stuff that we're seeing or these things that we're experiencing or communicating with.
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Chapter 6: What did Danny experience during a DMT experiment?
And, you know, once it fades, fades away, maybe those filters are coming back into, into place.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, there's a part of the brain called the reticular activating system, which people have considered for a long time to be that filtering mechanism.
Reticular activating system?
Yeah, it's in the extremely primitive parts of the brain. And many people have thought about psychedelics or the function of that part of the brain as acting as a filter. Interesting. And psychedelics affect that part of the brain pretty robustly.
Now, is this where the third ventricle is?
That's probably, let's see.
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Chapter 7: How does the pineal gland relate to DMT?
The water of life is in the third ventricle. That's what I've heard.
Well, it's the cerebral spinal fluid.
Right, right.
Very interesting. The pineal gland is right in the middle there.
Okay, yeah, it's right dead in the center.
Yeah, the reticular activating system is up on the brain stem. Yeah, so there are receptors in that part of the brain that psychedelics bind to and change the activity of the neurons there. So that could be the filter.
Yeah. What do you make of these these new experiments that are going on with the what Andrew Gallimore is doing? They're trying to put people on extended state intravenous DMT to see to try to map this DMT world.
Yeah, yeah.
Sounds wild.
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Chapter 8: What role does DMT play in near-death experiences?
Man. No, it's reported in retrospect. You know, like you give DMT for a half hour at a prearranged infusion rate.
Right. Yeah.
And the person comes down and you ask them to describe what it was like.
And then you throw them right back in.
Well, you could go in and out like that. I don't think anybody is doing that kind of work. I think that kind of work would be helpful for psychotherapy.
Really?
Well, I think it would be useful. You can be in a state for a while, DMT state or whatever. very highly altered state for let's say a half hour, you come down and you talk with your therapist and you decide what to do next. Go deeper, go back lighter, take some more time off. So I think that holds promise for therapeutic purposes too. But I think characterizing that landscape is also important.
Like the beings. How do you interact with the beings once you've gotten used to their presence?
Right. And what even are the beings? Because you said that all this stuff is amplification of what's already in your mind. So how do you explain people seeing aliens that are talking to them? People like Andrew Huberman, Dr. Rhonda Patrick, and even Joe Rogan have talked about a compound called epicatechin that's found in dark chocolate and green tea.
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