alt Hacker NewsThere is evidence for a surge in DMT production in some rats upon death:
> In our previous studies, we have observed a marked elevation of some, but not all, critical neurotransmitters in rat brain during asphyxic cardiac arrest21, which we posit may contribute to the elevated conscious information processing observed in dying rats21,49. These data also suggest that global ischemia (by cardiac arrest, as in the current study), similar to global hypoxia (by asphyxia, as in21), leads to a tightly regulated release of a select set of neurotransmitters21. To test whether DMT concentrations are regulated by physiological alterations, we monitored DMT levels in rat brain dialysates following experimentally-induced cardiac arrest, and identified a significant rise in DMT levels in animals with (Fig. 4A) and without the pineal (Fig. 4B).
> The cardiac arrest-induced increase of endogenous DMT release may be related to near-death experiences (NDEs), as a recent study reports NDE-like mental states in human subjects given exogenous DMT50. Not all rats in our current study exhibited a surge of DMT following cardiac arrest (Fig. 4), an interesting observation in light of the fact that NDEs are reported by less than 20% of patients who survive cardiac arrests.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6088236/
Presumably only 20% of the rats were religious.
Right, the 250 microgram figure was the maximum amount that you might dump into your system in one go, normal DMT blood concentration is far lower. The bare minimum for a psychedelic experience is 20k micrograms, but many people won't notice anything overt until 35k+, and a full "breakthrough" experience requires 50k or more, generally speaking, independent of weight.
For such a tiny amount of DMT to have a significant impact, it would have to be 40 to 100 times more "effective" than usual, or be supported by the soup of other chemicals released in those situations in a sort of entourage effect, with MAO metabolism reduced, and all sorts of neurons firing that otherwise would be silent.
NDEs often overlap real events, where full-on DMT trips shut out the world, so the entourage effect theory makes the most sense to me. Your brain gets overwhelmed, and the dump of DMT all at once, with serotonin, dopamine, and adrenaline maxed out as well, contributes to a predictable psychedelic effect on subjective experience.