Hey readers,
How’s it going? Happy Friday! One question I have for you all: What are some of the biggest questions you have around humanitarian aid? Whether it’s about funding hurdles or how to pick an effective charity, the Future Perfect team would love to hear from you: futureperfect@vox.com.
Hope you have a great weekend!
—Kelsey Piper, senior writer |
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How extending the strange world of DMT trips could offer more affordable psychedelic therapy |
Pedro Pardo, Mariana Mendez/AFP via Getty Images |
In the realm of bizarre psychedelic drugs, DMT reigns supreme.
DMT — which stands for N,N-Dimethyltryptamine — is a naturally occurring substance across myriad plants (including those used to brew ayahuasca) as well as in the human body. Despite being one of the most potent psychedelics, it has been largely neglected by the ongoing psychedelic renaissance in Western science.
But a pair of recent papers on DMT suggest it could offer a more effective, customizable, and affordable option for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy than the usual suspects like psilocybin or MDMA.
The first study observes what DMT does to the brain through various neuroimaging scanners, and finds elevated levels of activity and integration across the brain. The second examines “extended DMT,” where an IV drip can lengthen the DMT state indefinitely with no apparent side effects.
Ordinary DMT trips usually clock in at 20 minutes or less. For this study, the researchers extended immersion in the DMT experience to 30 minutes. Continuing to increase trip lengths could help us learn more about all the different ways our brains construct and reconstruct what we perceive as reality.
On the medical side, tailoring the length and intensity of a psychedelic-assisted therapy session means unprecedented control in matching the details of a patient’s trip to their particular needs. On the science of consciousness side, it means enhanced ability to explore the trippier experiences that DMT states reliably feature.
I chatted with Christopher Timmermann — a neuroscientist and psychologist who leads the DMT Research Group at Imperial College London’s Centre for Psychedelic Research — about how DMT differs from other psychedelics, and what he hopes to learn from extending the already-strange DMT state. —Oshan Jarow, Future Perfect fellow
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How does DMT compare to other “classical” psychedelics like psilocybin mushrooms or LSD?
DMT is a naturally occurring psychedelic substance. It's widespread in the natural world in many different plants. We also have it in the human body in very small amounts, though we don’t know its function. It’s unique among psychedelics because usual psychedelics induce a distortion of the external world. DMT is special because it deconstructs the external world almost completely, and in its place, you reconstruct a novel world of experience. Many users describe the experience as being transported into an alternate dimension of reality where they interact with beings or entities.
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"Some people might like a strong, intense entrance into that psychedelic state; other people might favor something that is smoother and easier." |
There’s a lot of focus on drugs like psilocybin mushrooms and MDMA as new therapeutic tools. Where does DMT fit? Is it something that might have similar therapeutic benefits, or is it more of a recreational drug?
In terms of institutionalization, the path is medicalization. DMT is very attractive because psilocybin lasts six to eight hours, and having expertly trained professionals supporting these sessions makes it very expensive. The interesting thing about DMT is that it induces this remarkable alteration of consciousness in a very brief amount of time. When you take DMT, you’re in and out of that [altered state] in about 15 minutes.
We recently did this extended DMT paper, where we were testing whether or not we can flexibly extend the experience over time. And the main finding was that it works! So you can extend a DMT state, not only in the duration of effects, but in carving a shape of that experience. Some people might like a strong, intense entrance into that psychedelic state; other people might favor something that is smoother and easier. Some might favor two peaks of experience for therapeutic purposes; others might want a single peak that’s extended in a plateau.
So when we speak about precision psychiatry and how to treat individuals according to their specific profiles and needs, a plastic and dynamic psychedelic experience could make things cheaper and more effective.
On a recreational level, I can imagine why extending the DMT state would be fascinating. But I’m curious from an institutional perspective, how do you sell this research? What are the aims of studying extended DMT?
I can think of three reasons. One is all these clinical and therapeutic opportunities, where we need to develop technologies within psychedelics that can be cheaper to use on the one hand, and more flexible in their application as we’re entering this world of personalized psychiatry.
Another reason is that while we do this, we also record brain activity. It’s important for us to understand the basic mechanisms of what’s happening in the brain when people are having these experiences that can be therapeutic, meaningful, and life-changing in positive ways.
The last one is about understanding the nature of the human mind and brain. A big part of these experiences is that they reveal the contents of the mind. We don’t know if what is being revealed is just meaningful for that individual, or what is revealed is something that is meaningful about how our minds and brains operate in general. But the fact that we can have more control over what generates these experiences by having a psychedelic experience that is plastic and dynamic and customizable opens up a lot of possibilities around understanding the mind and brain.
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Half the world is at risk of dengue. Why is there no universal way to prevent it? |
Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto via Getty Images |
Dengue fever can cause high fever, nausea, rash, body aches, and stiff movements, and can leave patients suffering from depression and fatigue in its wake. Dengue has been around since at least the 17th century, but cases of the infection skyrocketed in the past two decades — from only a little over 505,000 cases in 2000 to 5.2 million cases in 2019. But even as the threat of dengue grows, new developments over the past decade — including a recently approved vaccine and an initiative to infect mosquitos with a virus-resistant bacteria — could mean that dengue eradication is on the horizon, writes Future Perfect fellow Rachel DuRose.
“My partner told me the sickest he's ever felt was when he had dengue fever,” DuRose said. “I knew from him that when he was a child there was no viable treatment and no vaccine against the virus. I was curious if after a decade that would have changed, and when I discovered it largely had not, I was even more interested in finding out why.”
More on this topic from Vox:
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Creative Touch Imaging Ltd./NurPhoto via Getty Images
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In the past decade, alternative meat options, like Impossible and Beyond, rose as a potential solution, a product that can substitute for animal meat without the ethical and planetary penalties. However, there’s a simple way to provide plenty of protein that doesn’t require animals or plant-based startups: beans. If we’re serious about changing how we think about our agricultural resources, beans can be a champion for delicious, sustainable, and affordable protein, argues Future Perfect fellow Julieta Cardenas.
“There’s an increasing interest in making beans the hero of dishes across the US, but first they have to get past a bit of a public relations hurdle,” Cardenas said. “The US doesn't eat nearly as many beans as we should, but we have to overcome our intimidation over cooking beans, or buying canned beans. At scale, growing and eating more beans can help us drive sustainable agriculture forward.” More on this topic from Vox:
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Bildagentur-online/Universal Images Group via Getty Images |
Will someone please explain to the FBI the difference between a peaceful animal rights activist and a nuclear bomb? A recently obtained FBI memo — reported this week by journalist Lee Fang — reveals the agency investigated the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere under its Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate(!) based on, Fang reports, easily falsifiable claims that the activists were spreading a poultry disease by failing to wear proper biosecurity gear at an action at a factory farm. If the FBI is worried about livestock disease spread, they should be far more concerned with the meat industry itself than with the activists challenging it (and they should check out an investigation we covered this week that detailed biosecurity violations at a Tyson chicken supplier). —Marina Bolotnikova, staff editor
It’s hard to sort good AI commentary from bad AI commentary these days. It’s a problem that will only worsen as AI itself gets used more and more to generate commentary, so I wanted to single out Samuel Hammond’s call for a Manhattan Project for artificial intelligence. As Hammond notes, calling for a Manhattan Project for X is something of a cliché in Washington, but the actual, literally existing 1942-1945 Manhattan Project is not a bad model for AI. Both concern a dangerous, novel technology with wide-ranging military applications for which there is reason to want the US government to develop safely before other actors (either Nazi Germany or private industry, respectively). —Dylan Matthews, senior correspondent
Even billionaires in Silicon Valley know that slouching toward immortality alone is a raw deal. The quest for life span extension has evolved a complementary focus on extending health span, too. But even if you remain exceedingly healthy into old age, that won’t shield you from a new affliction among the elderly of Western society: tiredness of life syndrome. As Sam Carr explores in The Conversation, older adults in Western countries such as the US increasingly feel like burdensome cargo fastened to a society that no longer values them, welcoming death as an exit from their understaffed, carceral nursing homes. I hope we figure out better ways to integrate the wisdom, or at least existence, of elders into our lives before I get too old. —Oshan Jarow, Future Perfect fellow
The United States’ first food product developed with CRISPR is now on sale: mustard greens that aren’t bitter. The biotech company Pairwise is first rolling out the greens, which are made to taste more like lettuce, under the brand name Conscious Greens in select restaurants with plans for grocery stores later this year. Other crops have been modified to improve yield or pest resistance, but Pairwise wants to increase fruit and vegetable consumption by making certain crops healthier or more appealing to consumers. I hope it has the desired effect, as only one in 10 adults eat enough vegetables. I, however, will continue to eat vegetables I don’t like out of the hope it builds character. —Kenny Torrella, staff writer
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is now an iPhone app. (Sorry, Android users.) Of course, to find it on the app store, you’ll need to filter through countless other apps also claiming to use ChatGPT, at least some of which may be scams. For now, it doesn’t appear to offer a whole lot more than the web app, with no integration with other iPhone functions, like iMessage, though it does respond to voice commands. Which I suppose means the user base for this is people who are lazy enough that they want an AI to write their texts for them, but not so lazy that they mind a lot of cutting and pasting. In other words: it me. —Bryan Walsh, editorial director
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