Nope said:
I could be in the wrong here but your example seems a far stretch to me.
I think a better example would be say, if someone tried dmt, then a high dose of psilocybin, and noted that the similarities of the effects/experience were so close there was probably a connection, that would not be a ridiculous hypothesis.
So far as I am aware, the Pineal Gland has been shown to secrete dmt naturally. I know this was a subject of debate and speculation for a long time but I also remember that recently a connection was objectively shown. I understand your hesitancy in this area but I hardly think looking for a connection between altered waking states and the dream state is a waste of time or a closed discussion as of yet.
edit: after double checking I found that there are several studies showing the existence of DMT in the Pineal Gland of rodents.
The DMT/Psilo analogy is flawed because in the case of both of them, you're dealing with exogenous drugs, with similar mechanisms of action and chemical structures. This contrasts with the heroin/sex analogy because in that case, only one of those is an exogenous molecule, while the other is a natural physiological process that, as far as we know, does not require said exogenous molecule.
The DMT/Sleep question I think maps much better to my analogy than yours. DMT is an exogenous compound, sleep is a natural physiological process.
It may be true that DMT is produced in the pineal gland (so far, I think we've only found it in rats, not humans, but correct me if I'm wrong), but just because it's there doesn't mean that it's doing anything in particular. Biochemistry is a messy proces, right now, I see no reason to believe that it's not just biological white noise caused by the natural, stochastic interactions between molecules and enzymes which, ordinarily, would serve a different purpose. I may be totally wrong, but I'm very hesitent to hypothesize a role for endogenous DMT w/out evidence.
Here's something else that just sprang to mind:
If DMT caused dreams, or was related to them, we would expect dreaming to be attenuated by the administration of an antipsychotic, right? The exact opposite happens - a lot of atypical antipsychotics actually cause more vivid dreams and put people who take them to sleep (that's why they're before-bedtime drugs). By inhibiting your bodies ability to respond to it's own endogenous DMT, you're actually triggering the responses you're claiming DMT induces. That doesn't make sense to me.
I think that there is an argument to be made for a relationship between the psychedelic state and dreamed experience, but this whole DMT thing is not it, not by a long shot. Look at some of the papers coming out of the Imperial College where they show that psychedelics produce an entropic state similar to that of REM sleep. That is interesting, robust research grounded in strong, scientific facts.
Problems develop when people start putting too much weight in one or two individual, phenomenological experiences, largely because we know so little about how experiences of consciousness map to brain function that any attempts to bridge that chasm require unreasonably large leaps of faith.
Nope said:
I appreciate the advice but I'm basing the direction of my opinion on the literature that shows DMT is also probably produced in the lungs and liver, as well as possibly elsewhere,
What literature would that be, exactly?
Blessings
~ND