I want to start by saying that i am in no way affiliated to cottonwood research.I Am a supporter.Dr.Rick strassman(author of "the sprit Molecule" and Cottonwood research is in the process of doing scientific reseach into the healing powers of ayahuasca as a cure for addiction and alcohoism.Another progect is called : Endogenous hallucinogen asay,which is a continuation of his clinical research that was done in the 90's on the effects of Dmt and its properties as an indiginous molecule in the human brain.The 3rd project is the attempt to turn his book "The Spirit Mlecule" into a documentary in order to educate the public on dmt.I've been corresponding with Dr.Strassman and he desperately needs funding in order to continue his research and to educate the public on an issue,that most of us support in our own way.You can make a donation of any dollar amount you like and you have the option of your donation going to the specific project you desire.With any donation of 100$ or more you will recieve a signed copy of Dr. Strassmans book "the spirit molecule" and along with that you get a certificate that proves your donation as a tax deduction.I plan on suppoting in whatever way i can because i believe in what they are doing.To make a donation,click on the following link and when you get to the page click on "projects" and then you chose wher you want your donation to go. Thanx -D http://www.cottonwoodres...ood_Research_Founda.html

got the email from him about four months ago regarding this.
he wants/needs funding to finance more sensitive assay methods to validate his theories.

So many sensitive assays have been developed to detect trace amounts of chemicals in human fluid it shouldn't be too difficult. Analyzing human cerebrospinal fluid and blood with a sensitive method like MS should be sufficient if the extraction has good recovery. Immuno based assays could also work perhaps.

you're correct, many published articles exist for quantitatively measuring tryptamines in human cells, serum, and urine. here are a couple of fairly recent ones http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16095048 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11763413

though the issue is actually trying to detect these compounds being synthesized in vivo, something that has eluded researchers thus far.

yea true detecting them being made in vivo is certainly not as easy as detecting them simply being there. such a study would involve much more then running some blood or cerebrospinal fluid through some fancy analytical equipment. cool papers tho ill check em out later on.

its weird though they aren't saying anything about what analytical approaches they will be using in this assay unless i couldn't find it. i wouldn't really want to donate money to them (although their purpose is noble and i respect it) unless i knew more about their plan otherwise i may not buy into its feasability. ulta-sensitive assay doesn't mean much. although sometimes people like to keep these things hidden. plus i myself am looking for those willing to fund my research its a b%Tch.

I've read his book and I'm not sure if I want to support this person. He speculates and is a "want believer" but at the same time trys to project the image of a "great elitist scientist". He doesn't seem to be congruent in his approach.

I like guys like Terennca McKenna better..sure hes biased, but at the time totally in touch with his mission and vision...or he...was.

very odd you say that. people with left brain attributes (such as myself, though being a lefty and musical, I'm naturally right-brain) think TM was a bit off his rocker at times. the man embodies speculation.
not to say the late great McKenna wasn't brilliant, but he was purely philosophical, backed by history.

I don't fully agree with Dr. Strassman's theories either (though I once did), but his approach I can appreciate. the instruments don't lie. they are precise, and tell it how it is...not how you think it is.

burnt, I am in favor of a radio-tagged bioassay. this is tried and true. given how technology is making MS techniques more sensitive, I believe the latter technology (radiotagging...70's tech) combined with mass spec, would give a
fairly accurate assessment of the synthesis of the low-key tryptophan metabolites which intrigue us all

so..? I think you're missing the point. It's about beeing congruent or not. Rick Strassman always tried to appear as "the autority" as "Science" but at the same time tried to find some kinda far out explanation..tried to influence the trips of his volunteers ("there will be aliens, just let got of the colors...etc" etc.

Terence McKenna always said that he was speculating. He never claimed to to have the ultimate answer like science. He was very congruent in his mission as an explorer. But Strasman was not as a scientist. That's the difference.



My mind is the most exact, advanced..and most important instrument. At least for me.

I used to feel the same way, when I first heard about DMT ('95). I was 19, and fell in love with McKenna's romanticism of DMT at the time, incidentally, it was around the same time Strassman did his studies.
No one can tell you what you will experience, obviously, only a breakdown of the commonly reported somatic/psychic effects. no one can explain what you experience, or why you experience it, but they're looking to pinpoint what areas of the body are responsible for it.





good for you. subjectivity applies to every individual, including those which we cast away as "crazy". science knows one truth... objectivity...as can be observed by everyone, and repeated.

agreed.

anyway i hope they do get the funding and permission to do more research. more research is better and results should tell the story.

indeed.

if i dedicated my life's work to the project, I would donate significantly.
I'm on a different mission...my sis has HIV, so I have to join the fight. my career will be geared towards protein folding and conducting assays.
DMT has been a great interest of mine for 13 years, but it is not vital.

I was trying to put science into another perspective, as it's not the ultimate answer for truth..at least not in my eyes. Science works pretty well in itself. The brain for instance is a biological computer with neurotransmiters, neurons etc....we can describe our brain with scientific tools derrived from our "consensus reality" ...but that still doesn't mean, that the information we gain is "the truth". Science is more or less a logical approach to explaining the reality we all can percieve....

The problem is, that science always trys to say "Well, I'm god, everything I do is real and not what you SEE FEEL AND HEAR the world is made of." How arrogant that is, to dismiss once perception just because ones reality can't be meassured with a logical method backed up by consent reality. No wonder this is not possible!!

What is the brain? What do we see if we look at a skull cracked open? We're seeing a model for our reality, something we can understand, something that doesn't blow our minds.

We're seeing a mind explaining itself. Nothing more.

While science makes sense in a way, it's not god nor the ultimate answer...nothing justifys Rick Strassmans arrogance.

I think its unfair to equate rick strassman with mechanistic science

whether you like his exact attitude or interpretations or not, you have to hand it to the guy for being the first after so long in this area, re-starting the psychedelic research wave

Im also not a huge fan of the way he concludes things, his hypothesis and so on. I would do it differently. But im still very thankful for someone starting this, for someone being a bit more open minded and still down to the ground enough to convince FDA and DEA to allow this kind of work.. He stood 2 years of bureaucratic battle to bring some sort of information that interests us, contributing to the psychedelic scene.. I think all of us psychonauts should be thankful, at least a little bit..


btw, I dont know exactly how the movie and so will be, but did you look at the website? Look at the 'Participants' button, and check out how many nice characters are going to be a part of this.. Its amazing, nearly everyone in the psychedelic research scene.. It has to be interesting!

that being said, if there was a way to give money directly to someone I would, but credit-card/paypall is not an option for me... but lets see, maybe I make a way

i beleive science does a better job at explaining the world around us then any other method. besides actually being in the world that works too but only scientific objectivity can explain why we percieve and see etc.

the funny thing is people accept that science and our creativity cannot answer some of these ultamite questions. but only science has been good enough to find other planets that could be similar to ours and make any truthful investigation into is their life somewhere else. only science has figured out the approximate age of our earth. only science figured out that its our brain doing the thinking. of course current science and our intelligence is no where near understanding everything but to say that it can't or that thats religions job is a fallacy.

science is the search for the truth. thats why i love it. religion does nothing but confuse people and make them accept dumb things.

yes i very much want to see their video i think itll be really cool. and yes i have very much respect for strassman dealing with the FDA and DEA. i myself have an enemy agaisnt my research and his name is the DEA and his buddy is the FDA. its a big fat pain in @ss.

and benzyme sorry to hear about your unfortunate situation best of luck to you in your work and with your family.

thank you kindly, sir.
she's living an interesting life, doing an internship in Geneva, giving speeches and hearing speeches at WHO conferences. when she comes to visit, hopefully she'll be down for some spice and mushies
would be her first time partaking in either

Yes, I have nothing against psychedelic research, the opposite is the case. It could lead to a better acceptance. I'm also not against science. I'm just saying that science only maps the space we call "reality" ...successfully. But I'm against the reductionist approach of basing every experience on scientific grounds "It was your brain malfunctioning" .."just some weird neurotransmitter flow" ...I strongly believe, that the mind is more than that.

it is more then that. and science can help answer more about this question. your right reductionism does have limits but science is not always about reductionism. either way cool discussion that i think ive had in many other posts but i cant seem to stop talking about it. haha

anyway ill stop posting because this thread is more about strassmans research not my own crazy rantings.

The fault with objectivity is it must be subjectively interpreted, in fact it can be argued competently that objectivism is consensual subjective experience of causal phenomena. Oh, and yes the human brain is the most important instrument of analysis in science, Imagine trying to run a GC/MS without one.

An example of ojectivism being a recurring causal phenomena subjectively experienced congruently is a sunset. Objectively we all experience the phenomena and subjectively agree on it's characteristics, for the most part. While everyone is experiencing the same causal phenomena and can reach a consensual form for the event, each experiences a different event. The same photons which produce my subjective impression of the same sunset are not the same which produce an impression in the next observer. Therefore despite the consensual agreement of the characteristics of the sunset each observer has experienced a different reality there by negating 'objectivity' and creating consensual subjectivity or consensual reality in quantum terms.With ALL information we gather being subjectively processed by our minds what does this ultimately say about reality? That which we consider real and concrete is as much a creation of our senses as it is an objective phenomena. If we were to percieve "reality" we would experience a world of possibility, Loci of interference patterns and much,much empty space. It our subjective interpretation on a genetic scaffold which gives rise to the "reality" we percieve. Not the permanence of object phenomena.
WR

I don't see how this is a major fault. The consensual part keep science truthful.

Science must not only present the interpretation of an observation, it must strive to present the observation itself. This is quite easy for the biologist working at the microscope, our basic currency is the digital image. Other fields use more specialized instruments and these folks mostly deal in numbers. For a hypothesis to attain any level of truth, the data must lead to the same hypothesis in the minds of many observers (each with their own subjective reality).

Peer-review by the scientific community is just as important as the individual researching brain. Without peer-review science does not work.

On topic:

Strassman and folks should let us see the actual proposal before we decide whether to donate.

Does anyone know when the "DMT: THE SPIRIT MOLECULE" movie is to be released? Has it been announced?