DMT, fluoride and the internet version
By the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the pineal gland already had an unusually convenient history for the internet to inherit. It had been linked to the soul, described as the remnant of an ancient eye, associated with spiritual perception, and found to contain brain sand and calcite microcrystals. Add a few modern biochemical details and a new package almost assembles itself.
DMT became one of its most famous pieces.
N,N-dimethyltryptamine, usually shortened to DMT, is a powerful psychedelic compound that can occur naturally in the body. From the late twentieth century onward, psychiatrist Rick Strassman studied its effects in humans and later proposed that the pineal gland might be involved in producing it. He also speculated that endogenous DMT could be related to dreams, near-death experiences, mystical states, or particular moments such as birth and death.
That was the part the internet particularly liked.
The hypothesis quickly hardened into confident claims: the pineal gland releases DMT during dreams, deep meditation, death or near-death experiences; opening the third eye releases DMT and carries consciousness into higher states.
The evidence has not gone that far.
Endogenous DMT has been detected in very small amounts in the body and nervous tissue, but there is still no proof that the human pineal gland produces enough to generate a psychedelic state. A 2018 review by pharmacologist David Nichols also argued that the concentrations reported are far too low to explain the intense experiences associated with externally administered DMT. DMT is real, and the body can produce it; the direct bridge from the pineal gland to dreams, near-death experiences or “superconscious” states remains largely hypothetical.
Fluoride entered through a different route.
In 2001, Jennifer Luke published a study of pineal glands from 11 deceased older adults. Fluoride was found to accumulate in the gland, with a positive correlation between fluoride and calcium levels. That finding was real, and it later became one of the main foundations of the online movement around “decalcifying the pineal gland”.
Luke’s study did not show that fluoride shuts down the third eye, destroys intuition, or that removing fluoride restores psychic abilities. The sample was very small, consisting of only 11 older cadavers, while pineal calcification itself is common and influenced by age and other biological factors.
Online, the gaps were filled quickly.
Calcification became a gland being “clogged”. Fluoride became the culprit keeping the third eye asleep. Decalcification was promoted as a route to awakening the pineal gland through diet, supplements, meditation, sunlight, detox practices, fluoride avoidance and an expanding list of rituals. Some versions also carried forward the chain from Part VI: clean the gland, improve the crystals, increase sensitivity to “frequencies”, sharpen intuition, or enter higher states of consciousness.
At this point, evidence and inference had become tightly entangled.
The pineal gland can calcify. Fluoride can accumulate in pineal tissue. The gland secretes melatonin and helps regulate circadian rhythms. DMT occurs naturally in the body. Calcite microcrystals have also been identified in the pineal gland.
Those facts still do not demonstrate that the pineal gland is a locked spiritual eye, a DMT generator at the moment of death, or a biological antenna that can be activated to receive forms of awareness beyond the ordinary senses.
The modern pineal package was assembled piece by piece across many different periods.
Herophilus assigned the gland a role in regulating pneuma. Descartes placed the soul there. Nineteenth-century anatomy found a genuine light-sensitive eye in evolutionary relatives of the pineal system. Blavatsky connected that biological remnant with the “third eye”. Steiner gave brain sand a place within a wider cosmology. Modern science identified calcite, fluoride and DMT. The internet gathered nearly all of it into one box and placed a familiar label on the lid: pineal gland = third eye.
Across more than two thousand years, the pineal gland has never carried a single fixed meaning. Each period left behind a piece, while later generations kept some parts, discarded others and added new ones. The version we inherit today contains real anatomy, biology and chemistry alongside philosophy, occult thought, unconfirmed hypotheses and very recent layers from internet wellness culture.
Perhaps that is the most memorable thing about the pineal gland: an organ only a few millimetres long has managed to carry more than two millennia of human ideas about mind, soul, evolution and the limits of perception.
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