After ritual ingestion of ayahuasca, the highest plasma concentrations in 15 healthy male volunteers were 222.3 ng/mL for harmine, 134.5 ng/mL for tetrahydroharmine, and 9.4 ng/mL for harmaline, with N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) also quantitated. Harmala alkaloids were measured by high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection, achieving limits of quantitation below 2 ng/mL; DMT was measured by gas chromatography with nitrogen-phosphorus detection. Recovery was quantitative for all analytes. These are the first reported measurements of DMT and harmala alkaloids in human plasma following ritual ayahuasca ingestion. The methods may apply to other biological matrices.
Alpha-methyltryptamine (AMT), an indole analogue of amphetamine originally investigated as an antidepressant and monoamine oxidase inhibitor, caused the first known death in the United States when a young college student in Miami-Dade County died after ingesting the drug. The student told his roommate he was taking hallucinating drugs and had discovered the secret of the universe; about 12 hours later he was found unresponsive in bed with an empty 1-gram vial of AMT. Postmortem blood showed 2.0 mg/L of AMT, the liver contained 24.7 mg/kg, and the brain contained 7.8 mg/kg. AMT was emergency-scheduled as a Schedule 1 controlled substance shortly after this death.