The Psychedelic Drug DMT Can Simulate a Near-Death Experience, Study Suggests (vice.com) 120
dmoberhaus writes: In the first study of its kind, [published this week in the journal Frontiers in Psychology,] researchers dosed 13 people with the potent psychedelic dimethyltryptamine (DMT) to investigate its similarity to near-death experiences. As the researchers found, DMT does in fact induce experiences that are qualitatively similar to NDEs, [but the intensity of these NDEs largely depend on context]. Motherboard spoke with an independent researcher who pioneered DMT research in the 90s to discuss the possible implications of this research. While tricky to define due to their subjective nature, "NDEs tend to share many common elements, such as feelings of inner peace, the experience of traveling through a tunnel, out of body experiences, and encounters with sentient beings," reports Motherboard. A psychiatrist not involved with the study "suggested that the overlap between DMT and NDEs could possibly be explained on a biological level since DMT is naturally produced in small quantities by the human body and has been shown to minimize neuronal damage due to hypoxia (insufficient oxygen) in test tubes," reports Motherboard. "Thus, [the psychiatrist said] 'one could construct a coherent scenario where endogenous DMT rises in response to cardiac arrest/hypoxia in order to protect the brain as long as possible.'"
Title is wrong (Score:1)
The article suggests DMT is created by the body when you’re near death.
It claims the sensations experienced during a Near Death Experience are not similar to, but literally caused by DMT.
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No, it's "This drug produces the feeling of driving a car". Just because it's also produced by your body when actually driving a car doesn't mean that's the only situation it works in.
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Re:WOW! (Score:5, Funny)
That needs to be verified. Let's do an empiric study.
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I'm in.
I suggest we start with a simulated out of body, psychedelic, stoned experience.
Let's avoid the drunken simulation. Alcohol will fucking kill you.
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Even more interestingly, out of body experiences can be easily induced with a VR headset. Just show the wearer a human that is being poked with a stick, as an assistant simultaneously pokes the wearer with a stick (in the same manner) in reality. The wearer then feels that the avatar is 'their body' and that their point of view lies outside of their body.
Re:'out of body experiences' are delusions (Score:4, Insightful)
'out of body experiences' are delusions
The word you're looking for is 'hallucination', not delusion: the difference between hallucination and psychosis is you can tell the difference between whats imaginary and whats real
Re:'out of body experiences' are delusions (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't even need to be high for your brain to experience sensory perceptions that aren't real. Phantom limb, for example, is one such well established and researched phenomenon.
Re:'out of body experiences' are delusions (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually leaving your body and going on some kind of spirit journey is fake
If it's happening in your brain, it's not fake, by definition. That the meaning may be difficult to derive is a separate issue but the reality cannot be questioned. This is a novice materialist error which contradicts the central materialist claim.
That so many psychedelics turn off inhibatory centers specifically should give pause to those who claim that experiences are "fake" or "delusions". Anybody who can see an optical illusion should understand that the world isn't precisely what we sense. It takes years of building processing filters for humans to build a stable subset of reality that they can filter.
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Glad we have the forefront scientist on consciousness telling us what is real and what is not.
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I've had experiences where I've felt as though I'm floating outside of my body or otherwise no longer anchored to it, even though I really know that I was still physically sitting on the coach.
Yes, many people have reported that riding the Greyhound was similar to death.
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Coincidence is a motherfucker.
Case in point: I was meditating one day, slipped into sleep, and dreamed I was in the car with my at-the-time-girlfriend, her two exchange students and our friend, Melea. Melea and I were in the front passenger seat together, girlfriend was driving, and the exchange ladies were in the back seat. A car swerved toward us from the left, we dodged to the right, hit a concrete abutment, ricochet sideways to the left, spinning back to front, went over some railroad tracks, and the
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What studies?
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The experience is real. However, when it is used to point or refer to an external (to you) event, then that pointer is faulty. It points to nothing and you claiming it does doesn't make it so.
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It is impossible for a person under the influence of societal, cultural, and self-created inaccurate belief systems to sense what's real. They block the input that disagrees with their expectation of reality, so they wind up only seeing what they expect to see. Some people mistake this myopic filtered viewpoint for reality.
We, as a species, exist in a world in which exist a myriad of
data points.1 Upon these matrices of points we
superimpose a structure2 and the world makes sense to us.
The pattern of the st
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Spotted the armchair critic who is magically an "expert" on other people's experience with something they have never even experienced.
/sarcasm Oh look, it is a blind man arguing there is no such thing as color!
> Some studies have shown that out of body experiences is real.
FTFY.
But keep trying to ignore the evidence [near-death.com] (Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1968, vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 3-27.) of both OBEs and NDEs. [amazon.com]
The shared OBE is proof that you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
The delusional ignore the science. (Score:2)
I guess I should not be surprised that the delusional affirm their delusion by down voting science into oblivion to affirm their delusion.
Incorrect description NDE (Score:5, Interesting)
While the first studies reported those elements, by now it is pretty much clear that 1) NDE depends on cultural backgrounds and 2) there are also negative one which go under reported because most religious folk don't like to report they saw vision of hell on where they think they are going after death. Just sayin'.
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* You are really dead, in which case your brain can't record new memories
* You aren't really dead and your brain is just reacting to trauma in a predictable way. The light is surgeon's headlamp, etc...
Long story short, NDErs are full of shit, anyone with a brain knows it, many are just fame + glory hounds, including my former prof, Dr Ken Ring (psychology depts make bullshitters of us all).
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What about the point at which your heart has stopped beating but there is still brain activity - as is required for any attempt at bringing a person back to life?
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You really think people are making up these experiences? Just because you haven't experienced one doesn't mean people are just "saying stuff" for attention.
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You really think people are making up these experiences? Just because you haven't experienced one doesn't mean people are just "saying stuff" for attention.
Can't speak for previous poster; but studies show that NDE vary by culture. The "step into the light" is a very Western view- and other people experience different things based on what their culture perceives as the afterlife.
A religious view could be "God is making them comfortable by presenting them with what they expect" a non-religious view is that the experience is actually happening as you are resuscitating and disoriented in an almost dream like state and your brain is trying to make sense of what i
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There’s Eben Alexander, an academic neurosurgeon, who would have said NDEs are just the product of a sick brain, until he had a long NDE. The problem with saying it was his brain creating a hallucination, is that due to the severe bacterial meningitis he’d gotten sick with, as far as he knows as a neurosurgeon, his brain was in no shape to do anything other than highly delirious confused dreamstates, if even that. But he recalled a very detailed, well ordered, long, set of clear experience in hi
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So in other words someone who believed NDEs were just a hallucination had a hallucination and so assumed it was real. Lots of intelligent people have had hallucinations, experienced delusions, or developed dementia or other mental problems.
Being a neurosurgeon doesn't prevent you from being a victim of delusion.
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No, it’s that with cardiac arrests, the brain may still work, and create hallucinations. Whereas Amexander’s illness was attacking his brain directly. The TV can’t produce a picture if the TV is busted. But he says he did experience pictures, visions, detailed and well organised experiences. But the TV was busted, so it should not have been possible. It’s like seeing pictures on a TV that’s not plugged in.
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I too would assume the light is lamps.
I guess out of body experiences could be fear and memories of ones own situation too. As in you lying there thinking about what are happening to you and as such paint that picture and later remember that you thought that way. Doesn't mean somehow was observing yourself from out of your body but rather just imagine what was happening to your body. Quite a difference.
As for actual responses due to chemical changes / drugging of the body / natural occuring DMT or similar c
It's a dream stupid (Score:1)
I have never understood why these are called NDE. I mean the people who report them are alive, they didn't die. They are just dreams that happen when you are in a sleep state. There is nothing special about them.
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Near DEATH Experience, not Near LIFE Experience.
You can get near to a whole lot of things without actually getting it. If someone says he NEARLY won the lottery, would you stand there looking confused because he's still poor?
Re: It's a dream stupid (Score:1)
Yes because you either win or you don't. It's exactly same with death. You either die or you don't.
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You can be dead or any degree of approaching death. Everyone is approaching death the moment they are born and lifespans differ greatly based on a number of factors.
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"He's dead. He can't talk."
"Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do."
"What's that?"
"Go through his clothes and look for loose change."
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Like pregnancy or the Easter Bunny.
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You’ve never understood why the experience of being close to death is called a Near Death Experience?
Re: It's a dream stupid (Score:1)
Yes because its not near death people are alive and they just had a dream.
Re: It's a dream stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading your 5 posts about the topic: you are not even a nitpicker, but a plain idiot.
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Yes it means exactly that you had a dream about dying, it just so happened that you we are also in a critical state at the time, but it was still a dream.
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Yes exactly all of this was a dream. I had a dream where I was superman and could fly around my neighbourhood, doesn't mean I am superman tough.
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If I had already commented in this topic, I would assume you were talking about me. *sigh* (why did i choose to respond to your post?)
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Yes because its not near death people are alive and they just had a dream.
How close would you consider yourself to have to walk next to a cliff, or a head of lettuce, or a parked car to consider yourself to be near those things? You sound like someone who has never been near anything, ever. If you're in the next room, you aren't near the chair in front of your computer. Later, you're sitting IN that chair. Is there really no time, in your world, where in between being in the other room and sitting in the chair, that you were ... near the chair, but not actually in it? Seriously:
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How ignorant do you have to be to understand the parent is not arguing about anything other than the unnecessary usage of the term NDE? We already have a valid term to describe this; it's called a dream.
Is it physically painful to be so angry while also totally missing the point?
... is that you have a dream while you're asleep. You have an NDE while you're nearly dead. There are profound physiological differences. The brain is under significant stress. All sorts of things are happening, chemically, that are not happening when you're going through our normal sleep cycle. All of which you know, which means
The difference between a typical dream and what the medical community calls a near death experience
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No it's the same. When you sleep you are unconscious and dream. When you are near death you are also unconscious and dream. It's the same thing. The only difference is that maybe your heart stopped for a few minutes but before and after that you where in a unconscious state.
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No it's the same. When you sleep you are unconscious and dream. When you are near death you are also unconscious and dream. It's the same thing. The only difference is that maybe your heart stopped for a few minutes but before and after that you where in a unconscious state.
Really? You're THAT ignorant about the wild things your body does when the brain or heart tissues are deprived of oxygen? A body that is moments away from death (especially from a large trauma, blood loss, cardio/pulmonary failure) is NOT doing business - chemically, neurologically, metabolically, hormonally - the same way as a sleeping body is. How are you not aware of this?
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Because those people have NDE which are dreams, so obviously they can dream or hallucinate even though they are about to have their heart stopped.
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That's just stupid. Dreams (even dreams of dying and dreams of experiencing NDE) are totally different phenomenon from NDE's. It's NOT the same state as dream - continuing to claim so doesn't make it so, and thus your reply is not really something I'm interested in :)
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The most common outcome for atheists who experience a NDE is to... become religious.
I'd like some data to prove this claim.
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And I never understood why it's called KDE! I mean the people that uses them aren't K's, okay?
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Never understood, or didn't want to acknowledge that maybe the multitude of people who have shared the experience of NDE's might have caught a glimpse of something that your worldview doesn't care to accept?
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Millions of people dream every night. You dream in your sleep right? Are all those dreams a glimpse of something out of this world? Even the stupid ones?
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Imperial College London (Score:4, Informative)
I had been hoping we'd see the failure in my lifetime, and marijuana reform provided some optimism, until the opioid crisis squelched it with more of 'The War on Drugs has failed!' 'So what should we do about opiates?' 'More police! More laws! More regulation! Longer sentences! Crack down on supply! Fuck how many people have to suffer in agony or kill themselves when they can't get pain relief!' like if we just try prohibition a little harder it will magically start working, because this time it's Really Bad. Oh well, at least we have other countries that can do this great research.
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Psychedelics offer an escape from the prison/slavery that is the hallmark of modern living. That can not be allowed. Each person must serve a "business" and that business must serve a government. In order to get maximum efficiency, you have to have maximum participation. Those who do psychedelics tend to drop out and not participate.
To be used by the military / CIA / NSA... (Score:1)
Boy, just wait until the Tinfoil Hat Brigade gets ahold of this story! ;-)
suggested further reading (Score:2)
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence Hardcover
by Michael Pollan
May 15, 2018
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That's next up on my reading list, looks great (written by the author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma"). If anyone hasn't read it yet, "The Doors of Perception" by Huxley is a fantastic short read. At the very least the last chapter with his opinions on drugs in society is excellent.
It is frequently (Score:2)
difficult to learn about DMT induced NDE due to the NDA the CIA, NSA, and other NGOs make you sign.
Our next step... (Score:1)
I have been suffering from (HERPES) disease (Score:1)
Clockwork elves (Score:2, Insightful)
I've used DMT many times. Amazing experience. Beings like the Clockwork Elves are very real and sentient, it's not a hallucination.
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Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
This made me laugh.
--A FreeBSD user (not joking)
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I can make better click bait than this !