Science paper Meditating on psychedelics. A randomized placebo-controlled study of DMT and harmine in a mindfulness retreat

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02698811241282637
Big surprise

Results:
Compared to meditation with a placebo, meditators who received DMT and harmine self-attributed greater levels of mystical-type experiences, non-dual awareness, and emotional breakthrough during the acute substance effects and, when corrected for baseline differences, greater psychological insight 1 day later.

One really interesting thing is that they used a "standardized sublingual formulation containing DMT hemisuccinate and harmine glucuronate." Never heard of that.

 

[Here&Now]

Very interesting, that's awesome DMT and harmine's meditation-enhancing capabilities are being properly studied. I've noticed it's helpful in those ways as well.

Personally though, I much prefer 5-MeO-DMT for that purpose. I hope it receives similar testing someday.

 

[dreamer042]

The sublingual formulation was made by blending the active drugs with calcium phosphate, sucralose, and flavors for taste masking (menthol, peppermint). The blend was then compacted into fast-disintegrating orodispersible tablets using TIP (template inverted particles).

Sublingual pharma tek incoming.

 

[Varallo]

Thank you for sharing.

An interesting take on the subject, but to me It screamed expectation bias, and might be more evidence of the Michael Pollan effect than anything else. Luckily this touched on in the limitations paragraph.

Also I’m interested to know more about the sublingual preparation, especially since it took a lot of dmt to make it work, I mean 120 mg is not a really light dose. Then an 120 mg of harmine sublingual is, for me, much more than needed and is almost an oral dose.

 

[Mechanism]

I agree, it was an interesting read and I'm glad the participants felt better about themselves but the aim seemed a little vague and the metrics were mostly subjective.

The introduction does cite two papers that establish a relationship between brain connectivity, psychedelics and meditation however:

Smigielski L, Scheidegger M, Kometer M, et al. (2019b) Psilocybin-assisted mindfulness training modulates self-consciousness and brain default mode network connectivity with lasting effects. NeuroImage 196: 207–215.

Singer B, Meling D, Hirsch-Hoffmann M, et al. (2024) Psilocybin enhances insightfulness in meditation: A perspective on the global topology of brain imaging during meditation. Scient Rep 14: 7211.