Category: Introduction

My unofficial Vital Study Zine #6 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space

Who would inject test subjects with large doses of intravenous DMT four times in a row thereby opening a new paradigm in psychedelic research?

And who, on an otherwise genteel psychedelic training course, would casually riff on orgasms, prophets and brainwashed assassins? Before announcing that it’s probably the placebo effect anyway?

Who turns up at self-declared ‘21st Century Mystery School’ The Tyringham Initiative as sole representative of the USA, and whacks a bible on the overhead projector before calmly explaining that entities are angels? Despite being an ordained Zen buddhist lay priest. And, besides all this drugs stuff, once found a new way to grow embryonic avian dorsal root ganglion neurons, suspended in a semi-solid agar matrix? As one does.

Who, in this psychedelic renaissance of ours, is totally styling it in double denim while sharing police medical reports on the fallout from satanic ayahuasca rituals on Facebook? 

Dr Rick ‘The Strass’ Strassman does all these things and much more.

Like a strong ecstasy pill he sneaks up, and you don’t realise how out there you were till 24 hours later. Displaying affection and disdain for the contemporary space in equal measure, like the sensitive and driven do, this dark horse of psychedelia rattled through a sharp snapshot of the science, peppered with his own astute asides. 

And yes, he spoke about the sex, death and God stuff. And the pineal gland, and the entities. 

“I knew I had to be really well trained to do work like this”

Dr Strassman played with a straight bat in his startling breakthrough book The Spirit Molecule, covering his pioneering DMT tests that catalysed the psychedelic renaissance and become one of the most compelling areas of experimental science. In his opening to this ‘Contemporary Research’ lecture he urged Vital students to also take a scientific approach when rising through the ranks. 

“Stanford in the 70s was pretty cutting-edge. It was a very interesting time, intellectually,” he reminisces, “I was 20 years old in July 1972, and I was watching the sun come down on acid, and decided I wanted to study psychedelics. I wrote a manifesto, got a bit hyper manic, and 19 out of 21 medical schools rejected me straight out. Of the others, one refused talk about it in the interview. The other heard me out, and rejected me anyway. So I knew I had to be really well trained to do this.”

Look normal, and they will suspect nothing. Dr Strassman’s rigour paid off and his research on DMT at the University of New Mexico between 1990 and 1995, which he successfully applied for state funding. Like a tripedal DMT vision shaped as a giant rotating bejewelled milking stool, he stands astride neuroscience, theology – in fact he’s about to reveal his ‘theoneurology’ research – and the imaginative, creative chaos of the trickster archetype. He is currently Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico and on the advisory board of Eduardo de la Luna’s Wasiwaka centre in Brazil. 

“Stanford in the 70s was pretty cutting-edge”

His latest, The Psychedelic Handbook released in 2022 offers up his own thoughts on grassroots healing. DMT: The Spirit Molecule is a core psychonaut text and here’s that Joe Rogan movie. Aficionados recommend DMT and the Soul of Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible and Inner Paths To Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies of which Dr David Luke says “This book raises many fundamental questions about the nature of reality that have barely been asked in the scientific community, let alone answered, and I strongly urge all researchers of consciousness to read it.”

“This book raises many fundamental questions about the nature of reality that have barely been asked in the scientific community, let alone answered, and I strongly urge all researchers of consciousness to read it.”

In the company of fellow travellers he is liberal with his opinions that were always well-informed, and tempered where required. Often these ran contrary to narrative – as the wisdom of the serious players often does.  Listen to him talk about God and DMT along with a bunch more on the New Psychonaut ‘lecture channel’.

Next issue: Dr Bennet Zenner, the mycelial businessman