Stephen Szára

Hungarian-born chemist and psychiatrist best known for his pioneering discovery of DMT’s psychoactivity.
In 1956, while working in Budapest, Szára injected synthesized DMT into human volunteers—including himself—after discovering it was inactive when swallowed. The resulting experiences were immediate, intense, and often described as mystical or terrifying, establishing DMT as a new class of short-acting hallucinogens.

Szára’s work predates the mainstream psychedelic wave of the 1960s and provided a biochemical foundation for later research by Rick Strassman and others exploring endogenous tryptamines in the human brain.

He later emigrated to the United States, where he contributed to neurochemical studies at the National Institutes of Health, exploring serotonin metabolism and hallucinogen structure–activity relationships.

Szára’s 1956 paper marks a turning point: the moment when Western science recognized DMT as a powerful and endogenous psychoactive compound, bridging pharmacology, consciousness research, and spiritual inquiry.