Silk Road forums

Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: Dutch Pride on September 02, 2013, 08:29 am

Title: 1956: Stephen Szara, and the birth of the modern DMT era...
Post by: Dutch Pride on September 02, 2013, 08:29 am
While DMT was ‘discovered’ by Richard Manske (by synthesis) in a lab in 1936, and later found in the plants used by South American Shamans in the mid-1940’s, its psychoactive properties were not recognized until 1956 by the Hungarian chemist ad psychiatrist Stephen Szára. Szára had read in the early 1950’s of the effects of LSD and mescaline and was keen to carry out the same kind of ‘psychedelic’ research that was going on the West, but because he was behind the ‘Iron Curtain’, Sandoz refused his order for LSD. (The CIA carefully monitored and approved or denied all LSD sales by Sandoz). After realizing that DMT had been analyzed as being present in many of the plant sources that were used by the Amazonian shamans, Szára synthesized his own supply of DMT in 1955 to see if the compound was ‘psychoactive’. After initial experimentation with ingesting the drug failed to show any signs of activity (Szára reportedly ate up to a gram of DMT with no effect) he began to wonder if something in his stomach was in fact neutralizing the drug. So one day in 1956, in the adventurous spirit of the era, Szára gave himself an intramuscular injection of DMT – and the ‘modern’ DMT era was born.
 
Szára would subsequently administer DMT to volunteers at the Central State Institute for Nervous and Mental Diseases, Budapest-Lipótmezö, Hungary, and publish his findings behind the same ‘Iron Curtain’ that was denying his access to LSD. After the Hungarian Revolution Szára fled Hungary (with his stash of DMT), and emigrated to the USA. He ended up as the Chief of the Biomedical Branch of  National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where he continued his research on DMT (with Julius Axelrod and others) until research in psychedelics was made virtually impossible after the Drug Scheduling Act of 1971. Among other achievements, Szára and his colleagues characterized the biochemistry of the first three psychedelic cogeners of tryptamine: dimethyl-, diethyl-, and dipropyl-tryptamine (DMT, DET, and DPT), describing their pharmacokinetics and effects. In recent years, Szára has argued that psychedelic drugs should be studied in a 'heuristic' manner and that learning the mechanisms by which they affect the brain may "serve as keys to unlock the mysteries of the brain/mind relationship".