About Rick Strassman

A native of Los Angeles, Rick Strassman obtained his undergraduate degree in biological sciences from Stanford University and his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in the Bronx, New York. He trained in general psychiatry at the University of California Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, and took a clinical psychopharmacology research fellowship at the University of California San Diego. At the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, his clinical research team discovered the first known function of melatonin in humans.

Between 1990 and 1995, he performed the first new US clinical research with psychedelic drugs in a generation, studying DMT and psilocybin. From 1995 to 2008, Dr. Strassman practiced general psychiatry in community mental health and the private sectors.

Author or coauthor of nearly fifty peer-reviewed papers, Dr. Strassman has served as guest editor and reviewer for numerous scientific journals, and consulted to academic, government, nonprofit, and for-profit entities. His 2001 book DMT: The Spirit Molecule has been translated into fourteen languages and is the basis of a successful independent documentary of the same name. Dr. Strassman co authored Inner Paths to Outer Space (2008), and is the author of DMT and the Soul of Prophecy (2014), the novel Joseph Levy Escapes Death (2019), and The Psychedelic Handbook (2022). He is currently Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and lives in Gallup, New Mexico.