Rick Strassman

Rick Strassman (born February 8, 1952 in Los Angeles, California) is a medical doctor specialized in psychiatry with a fellowship in clinical psychopharmacology research. He has held a fellowship in clinical psychopharmacology research at the University of California San Diego and was Professor of Psychiatry for eleven years at the University of New Mexico. After twenty years of intermission, Strassman was the first person in the United States to undertake human research with psychedelic, hallucinogenic, or entheogenic substances with his research on N,N-dimethyltryptamine. He is also the author of the well known book "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" which summarizes his academic research into DMT and includes his own reflections and conclusions based on this research.

As an undergraduate at Stanford University, working in the developmental biology laboratory of Norman K. Wessells PhD, Strassman developed a new model for growing embryonic avian dorsal root ganglion neurons, suspended in a semi-solid agar matrix, thus allowing 3-dimensional assessment of growing patterns. Using this model, he discovered a non-random pattern of growth of the leading edge of these cells.

Strassman’s interest in the human biology of altered states of consciousness led him to study the pineal gland hormone melatonin in the 1980s, at which time there were suggestive data regarding highly psychoactive effects of the hormone. This research took place at the University of New Mexico's School of Medicine in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he was then tenured Associate Professor of Psychiatry. He first developed a model of all-night suppression of melatonin by all-night bright light. He then established a successful exogenous melatonin infusion protocol that replicated endogenous melatonin levels in the bright-light conditions. All-night bright-light suppression of melatonin suppressed the normal trough of body temperature seen between 3-4 a.m., the time of maximum melatonin levels. Exogenous infusion of melatonin, replicating endogenous levels, in the bright light condition (in which endogenous melatonin was suppressed) reestablished the normal trough of core body temperature. Melatonin’s psychoactive effects were only sedating, however, leading him to focus on DMT in his future work.

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