Definition Day: DMT & Bicycle Day
Two more terms worth slowing down on.
DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine): a classic psychedelic found naturally in plants and animals, and the principal psychoactive ingredient in ayahuasca. A single dose reversed depression-like symptoms in stressed mice by regrowing brain cells, according to research we've covered — animal data, not a human result yet.
Bicycle Day: April 19, 1943, the date Albert Hofmann deliberately dosed himself with 0.25mg of the LSD he'd synthesized five years earlier, then rode his bicycle home through Basel as the effects took hold — now marked informally every year as a psychedelic holiday. Hofmann himself later described becoming convinced his neighbor was a malevolent witch and that the drug had poisoned him — a real account of how disorienting an unplanned first dose can be, even for the person who invented the compound.
Full entries, plus 156 other terms, are in our Encyclopedia.