Dedication

To the volunteers, and all their relations

We do not possess imagination enough to sense what we are missing.

Jean Toomer1

Epigraph

Advance Praise for

DMT: The Spirit Molecule

“Strassman’s important research contributes to a growing awareness

that we inhabit a multidimensional universe that is far more complex

and interesting than the one our scientific theories have shown us. It is

of the utmost importance that we face the implications of this

discovery, for it has so much to tell us about who we are and why we

are here.”

John Mack, author of Abduction and Passport to the Cosmos

“The most extensive scientific study of the mental and perceptual

effects of a psychedelic drug since the 1960s. Strassman provides

fascinating insight into the world of psychiatric research as he seeks to

understand these most mysterious substances and their profound

effects on human consciousness.”

Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., author of Ayahuasca: Consciousness and the

Spirits of Nature

“This book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the mind,

philosophy, the nature of reality, and spirituality. The world’s foremost

expert on DMT has created a masterpiece of the genre, as he brilliantly

leads the reader through a series of startling revelations about the

nature of the universe, revealed behind the doorway once DMT turns

the key.”

Karl Jansen, M.D., Ph.D., author of K. Ketamine: Dreams and

Realities

“DMT: The Spirit Molecule points the way beyond the present impasse

of the reigning “drug abuse” paradigm. We owe a debt of gratitude to

Strassman for persevering in the face of bureaucratic obstacles to

conduct important research into the human pharmacology of DMT and

elucidate it for the general public, in both scientific and humanistic

terms.”

Jonathan Ott, author of The Age of Entheogens and Hallucinogenic

Plants of North America

Acknowledgments

Countless colleagues, committees, and agencies helped with all stages of

this research. Several deserve special mention. The late Daniel X.

Freedman, M.D., from UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry, advocated for

these projects at all levels and was instrumental in my obtaining crucial

early funding. Staff at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S.

Drug Enforcement Administration were extraordinarily flexible and

responsive to the unusual circumstances of this research. Clifford Qualls,

Ph.D., the University of New Mexico biostatistician, spent endless hours,

days, and weeks crunching numbers at the Research Center, at his home,

and at mine. David Nichols, Ph.D., from Purdue University, made the DMT,

without which the research never would have occurred.

At every turn, the University of New Mexico School of Medicine

provided academic, physical, and administrative support for my work.

Walter Winslow, M.D., chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, gave me

great latitude as one of his only clinical research scientists at the time.

Samuel Keith, M.D., continued with outstanding administrative and

academic assistance and counsel after Dr. Winslow retired. Alan Frank,

M.D., chair of the university’s Human Research Ethics Committee, handled

my requests with consistency and evenhandedness.

To the UNM General Clinical Research Center I express my appreciation

for their decade of assistance in all my studies: melatonin, DMT, and

psilocybin. Jonathan Lisansky, M.D., a UNM Psychiatry and Research

Center colleague, originally introduced me to the late Glenn Peake, M.D.,

Scientific Director of the GCRC. Together they enticed me to Albuquerque

in 1984. Philip Eaton, M.D., effortlessly took over the reins of the GCRC

after Dr. Peake’s sudden death, and barely blinked an eye when I told him I

had decided to study psychedelic drugs. David Schade, M.D., Joy McLeod,

and Alberta Bland helped with me with skillful laboratory support

throughout the years. Lori Sloane of the Computing Center kept all the

machines running at top efficiency with what seemed to be amazing ease,

and taught me to use programs that otherwise would have taken me years to

understand.

Many thanks to the inpatient and outpatient nursing staff, kitchen

personnel, and administrative staff, especially Kathy Legoza and Irene

Williams. Laura Berg, M.S.N, and Cindy Geist, R.N., provided heroic,

cheerful, and disciplined nursing support for all the studies. Katy Brazis,

R.N., also contributed her skills to the early psychiatric interviews.

A generous research grant from the Scottish Rite Foundation for

Schizophrenia Research helped establish the earliest phases of the DMT

project’s scientific merit. Later, more substantial funding for the DMT and

psilocybin research came from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a

division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.1

For the writing of this book, John Barlow and the Rexx Foundation, as

well as Andrew Stone, provided crucial financial kindling, while support

from the Barnhart Foundation later set the project blazing forth. Rick

Doblin at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies

graciously and generously administered the Stone and Barnhart support.

Ned Naumes of the Barnhart Foundation and Sylvia Thiessen and Carla

Higdon at MAPS seamlessly coordinated the movement in and out of grant

monies.

Friends, colleagues, students, teachers, and mentors over the years have

contributed ideas and support to this project: Ralph Abraham, Debra Asis,

Alan Badiner, Kay Blacker, Jill and Lewis Carlino, Ram Dass, David

Deutsch, Norman Don, Betty Eisner, Dorothy and James Fadiman, Robert

Forte, Shefa Gold, Alex Grey, Charles Grob, Stan Grof, John Halpern,

Diane Haug, Mark Galanter, Mark Geyer, Chris Gillin, George Greer,

Abram Hoffer, Carol and Rodney Houghton, Daniel Hoyer, Oscar Janiger,

David Janowsky, Karl Jansen, Sheperd Jenks, Robert Jesse, Robert Kellner,

Herbert Kleber, Tad Lepman, Nancy Lethcoe, Paul Lord, David Lorimer,

Luis Eduardo Luna, John Mack, Dennis and Terence McKenna, Herbert

Meltzer, David Metcalf, Ralph Metzner, Nancy Morrison, Ethan

Nadelmann, Ken Nathanson, Steven Nickeson, Oz, Bernd Michael

Pohlman, Karl Pribram, Jill Purce, Rupert Sheldrake, Alexander and Ann

Shulgin, Daniel Siebert, Wayne Silby, Zachary Solomon, Myron Stolaroff,

Juraj and Sonja Styk, Steven Szára, Charles Tart, Requa Tolbert, Tarthang

Tulku, Joe Tupin, Eberhard Uhlenhuth, Andrew Weil, Samuel Widmer, and

Leo Zeff. My former wife, Marion Cragg, was there for me and the research

through all its twists and turns, providing valuable advice and counsel.

Several people additionally read all or part of the manuscript and

commented liberally and helpfully on the work-in-progress: Robert

Barnhart, Rick Doblin, Rosetta Maranos, Tony Milosz, Norm Smookler,

Andrew Stone, Robert Weisz, and Bernard Xolotl.

Many thanks to Daniel Perrine for rendering the best possible images of

the book’s molecular structures. And to Alex Grey, deep appreciation for

the cover art, and for leading me to Inner Traditions, where Jon Graham

liked what he saw in my proposal. Rowan Jacobsen has been everything an

editor can be, and then some. Nancy Ringer’s peerless copyediting made

many improvements to the text.

I am grateful to my former Zen Buddhist community’s late abbot, and to

the monastic and extended lay communities for their teaching, guidance,

and a powerful model of mystical pragmatism.

My deepest thanks go to my family, for without my parents, Alvin and

Charlotte Strassman; my brother, Marc Strassman; and my sister, Hanna

Dettman, none of this would have been possible.

Finally, I salute, bow, and stand in awe of the volunteers. Their courage

to hitch themselves to the spirit molecule’s wings, their faith in the research

team watching over their bodies and minds while they ventured forth, and

their grace under the most austere and unforgiving environment imaginable

for taking psychedelic drugs will serve as an inspiration for generations of

fellow seekers.

Contents
 
Title Page
 Dedication
 Epigraph
 Acknowledgments
 Introduction
 Prologue: First Sessions
 
Part I: The Building Blocks
 
 1   Psychedelic Drugs: Science and Society
  2   What DMT Is
  3   The Pineal: Meet the Spirit Gland
  4   The Psychedelic Pineal
 
Part II: Conception and Birth
 
 5   89-001
  6   Labyrinth
 
Part III: Set, Setting, and DMT
 
 7   Being a Volunteer
  8   Getting DMT
  9   Under the Influence
 

Part IV: The Sessions
 
10   Introduction to the Case Reports
 11   Feeling and Thinking
 12   Unseen Worlds
 13   Contact Through the Veil: 1
 14   Contact Through the Veil: 2
 15   Death and Dying
 16   Mystical States
 17   Pain and Fear
 
Part V: Taking Pause
 
18   If So, So What?
 19   Winding Down
 20   Stepping on Holy Toes
 
Part VI: What Could and Might Be
 
21   DMT: The Spirit Molecule
 22   The Futures of Psychedelic Research
 Epilogue
 Endnotes
 About the Author
 About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company
 Copyright & Permissions
 

Introduction

In 1990 I began the first new research in the United States in over twenty

years on the effects of psychedelic, or hallucinogenic, drugs on humans.

These studies investigated the effects of N,N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT,

an extremely short-acting and powerful psychedelic. During the project’s

five years, I administered approximately four hundred doses of DMT to

sixty human volunteers. This research took place at the University of New

Mexico’s School of Medicine in Albuquerque, where I was tenured

Associate Professor of Psychiatry.

I was drawn to DMT because of its presence in all of our bodies. I

believed the source of this DMT was the mysterious pineal gland, a tiny

organ situated in the center of our brains. Modern medicine knows little

about this little gland’s role, but it has a rich “metaphysical” history.

Descartes, for example, believed the pineal was the “seat of the soul,” and

both Western and Eastern mystical traditions place our highest spiritual

center within its confines. I therefore wondered if excessive pineal DMT

production was involved in naturally occurring “psychedelic” states. These

might include birth, death and near-death, psychosis, and mystical

experiences. Only later, when the study was well underway, did I also begin

considering DMT’s role in the “alien abduction” experience.

The DMT project was founded on cutting-edge brain science, especially

that which dealt with the psychopharmacology of serotonin. However, my

own background, which included a decades-long relationship with a Zen

Buddhist training monastery, powerfully affected how we prepared people

for, and supervised, their drug sessions.

DMT: The Spirit Molecule reviews what we know about psychedelic

drugs in general, and DMT in particular. It then traces the DMT research

project from its earliest intimations through a maze of committees and

review boards to its actual performance.

Although all of us believed in the potentially beneficial properties of

psychedelic drugs, the studies were not intended to be therapeutic, and so

our research subjects were healthy volunteers. The project generated a

wealth of biological and psychological data, much of which I have already

published in the scientific literature. On the other hand, I have written

nearly nothing about volunteers’ stories. I hope the many excerpts I have

included here, taken from over one thousand pages of my notes, will

provide a sense of the remarkable emotional, psychological, and spiritual

effects of this chemical.

Problems inside and outside of the research environment led to the end of

these studies in 1995. Despite the difficulties we encountered, I am

optimistic about the possible benefits of the controlled use of psychedelic

drugs. Based upon what we learned in the New Mexico research, I offer a

wide-ranging vision for DMT’s role in our lives and conclude by proposing

a research agenda and optimal setting for future work with DMT and

related drugs.

The late Willis Harman possessed one of the most discerning minds to

apply itself to the field of psychedelic research. Earlier in his career, he and

his colleagues administered LSD to scientists in an attempt to bolster their

problem-solving skills. They found that LSD demonstrated a powerfully

beneficial effect on creativity. This landmark research remains the first and

only scientific project to use psychedelics to enhance the creative process.

When I met Willis thirty years later, in 1994, he was president of the

Institute of Noetic Sciences, an organization founded by the sixth man to

walk on the moon, Edgar Mitchell. Mitchell’s mystical experience,

stimulated by viewing Earth on his return home, inspired him to study

phenomena outside the range of traditional science that nevertheless might

yield to a broader application of the scientific method.

During a long walk together along the central California coastal range

one day, Willis said firmly, “At the very least, we must enlarge the

discussion about psychedelics.” It is in response to his request that I include

in this book highly speculative ideas and my own personal motivations for

performing this research.

This approach will satisfy no one in every respect. There is intense

friction between what we know intellectually, or even intuitively, and what

we experience with the aid of DMT. As one of our volunteers exclaimed

after his first high-dose session, “Wow! I never expected that!” Or as

Dogen, a thirteenth-century Japanese Buddhist teacher, said, “We must

always be disturbed by the truth.”

Enthusiasts of the psychedelic drug culture may dislike my conclusion:

that DMT has no beneficial effects in and of itself; that rather, the context in

which people take it is at least as important. Proponents of drug control may

condemn what they read as encouragement to take psychedelic drugs and a

glorification of the DMT experience. Practitioners and spokespersons of

traditional religions may reject the suggestion that spiritual states can be

accessed, and mystical information gained, through drugs. Those who have

undergone “alien abduction,” and their advocates, may interpret my

suggestion that DMT is intimately involved in these events as a challenge to

the “reality” of their experiences. Opponents and supporters of abortion

rights may find fault with my proposal that a pineal DMT release at forty-

nine days after conception marks the entrance of the spirit into the fetus.

Brain researchers may object to the suggestion that DMT affects the brain’s

ability to receive information, rather than only generating those perceptions.

They also may dismiss the proposal that DMT can allow our brains to

perceive dark matter or parallel universes, realms of existence inhabited by

conscious entities.

However, if I did not describe all the ideas behind the DMT studies, and

the entire range of our volunteers’ experiences, I would not be telling the

entire tale. And without the radical proposals I offer in an attempt to

understand volunteers’ sessions, DMT: The Spirit Molecule might have, at

best, little effect on the scope of discussion about psychedelics; at worst, the

book would reduce the field. Nor would I be honest if I did not share my

own speculations and theories, which are based on decades of study and

listening to hundreds of DMT sessions. This is why I did it. This is what

happened. This is what I think about it.

It is so important for us to understand consciousness. It is just as

important to place psychedelic drugs in general, and DMT in particular, into

a personal and cultural matrix in which we do the most good, and the least

harm. In such a wide-open area of inquiry, it is best that we reject no ideas

until we actually disprove them. It is in the interest of enlarging the

discussion about psychedelic drugs that I’ve written DMT: The Spirit

Molecule.

Prologue: First Sessions

One morning in December 1990, I gave both Philip and Nils an injection

of a large dose of intravenous DMT. These two men were the first people in

the study to receive DMT, and they were helping me determine the best

dose and manner of injecting it. They were our “human guinea pigs.”

Two weeks earlier, I had given the very first dose of DMT to Philip. As I

will describe, the intramuscular injection, into his shoulder, didn’t give

completely satisfactory results. We then switched to the intravenous route,

and Nils received the drug that way for the first time a week later. Nils’s

reaction indicated that the dose we gave him was too low. So today Philip

and Nils were going to receive substantially higher doses of intravenous

DMT.

It was hard to believe we really were giving DMT to human volunteers.

A two-year process of obtaining permission and funding, which I felt would

never end, was finally over. Attaining the goal never seemed as likely as the

continual struggle to do so.

Philip and Nils both had previous experience with DMT, and I was glad

they did. About a year before starting our study, they had attended a

ceremony in which a Peruvian folk healer gave all participants ayahuasca,

the legendary DMT-containing tea. The two men were enthusiastic about

this orally active form of DMT and were eager to smoke pure DMT the

next day, when a member of the workshop made it available. They wanted

to feel its effects in a much more immediate and intense manner than the tea

form allowed.

Philip’s and Nils’s experiences smoking DMT were typical: a startlingly

rapid onset of effects, a kaleidoscopic display of visual hallucinations, and a

separation of consciousness from the physical body. And, most curiously,

there was a feeling of “the other” somewhere within the hallucinatory world

to which this remarkable psychedelic allowed them entrance.

Their prior experience with DMT was a very important aspect of

bringing them in as the first volunteers. Philip and Nils were familiar with

the effects of DMT. Even more crucial, they were familiar with the effects

of smoking the drug, which would help them gauge the adequacy of the two

different administration methods I was considering, intramuscular (IM) or

intravenous (IV), in reproducing the full effects of the smoking route. Since

recreational users of DMT usually smoke it, I wanted to approximate as

closely as possible the effects as they occur when taken in this manner.

On the day Philip received the first dose of DMT by the intramuscular

route, I already was thinking ahead. Perhaps the IM method might be too

slow and mild compared to smoking the drug. What I had read about IM

DMT suggested it took up to a minute to start working, substantially longer

than when it was smoked. However, since all but one of the previously

published human research papers on DMT reported giving it

intramuscularly, I was obliged to begin this way. This older literature

suggested that the dose I was to give Philip, 1 milligram per kilogram (mg/

kg), about 75 mg, probably would be a moderately high dose.

Philip was forty-five years old when he began participating in our

research. Bespectacled, bearded, and of medium height and build, he was an

internationally known clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, and workshop

leader. He was soft-spoken but direct, and he elicited great affection from

his friends and clients.

At the time, Philip was beginning a divorce that would become especially

long and difficult. His life had been marked by many deep changes, losses,

and gains, and he seemed to take the good and the bad with the same

equanimity. He liked to say that the title of his self-help best-seller would

be Surviving Your Life.

At least five years had passed since I last gave an IM injection of

anything to anyone, and I was nervous about administering the first dose of

DMT this way. What if I missed? The last time I gave such an injection, I

probably had been giving the antipsychotic drug haloperidol to an agitated

patient with psychosis. These patients often had their arms and legs tied

down by psychiatric orderlies or the police beforehand, to make sure their

disorganized and frightened behavior didn’t end in violence. This also kept

the patients’ arms in a relatively stable position for my injection.

I tried remembering the confidence with which I previously gave IM

shots, since I had performed hundreds in the past. The secret was to think of

the syringe as a dart. We were taught in medical school to pretend you were

throwing this dart into the rounded deltoid muscle of the shoulder, or the

gluteus maximus muscle of the buttocks. A single, fluid motion, lightening

the pressure just as the needle pierced the muscle through the skin, usually

produced excellent results. We practiced on grapefruits.

Philip, however, was neither a grapefruit nor an acutely psychotic patient

delivered up to me for involuntary tranquilization. He was a professional

colleague, friend, and research volunteer on equal footing with me and my

staff. Philip was to be the scout. Cindy, our research nurse, and I were to

remain at “base camp,” to hear about where he went after his return.

Practicing my technique in the air, I walked down the hall and entered

Philip’s room.

Philip lay in bed; his new girlfriend, Robin, sat nearby. The cuff of a

blood pressure machine was loosely wrapped around his arm. We would

check his heart rate and blood pressure frequently throughout the session.

I explained what was going to happen: “I’ll wipe your shoulder with

some alcohol. Take as much time as you need to collect yourself. Then I’ll

inject the needle into your arm, draw back to make sure I’m not in a blood

vessel, and then push in the plunger on the syringe. It might sting, or it

might not. I don’t really know. You ought to feel something in a minute or

less. But I’m not sure what that something will be. You’re the first.”

Philip closed his eyes for a moment as he prepared to venture into

unknown territory, worlds only he would perceive, leaving us behind to

look after his life functions. He opened his eyes widely to briefly gaze at us

one more time, then closed them again, took a deep breath, and on his

exhalation said, “I’m ready.”

The injection went without a hitch.

After a little more than a minute, Philip opened his eyes and began

breathing deeply. He looked as if he were in an altered state of

consciousness. His pupils were large, he began groaning, and the lines of

his face smoothed. He closed his eyes while Robin held his hand. He laid

extremely still and remained silent, eyes closed. What was happening? Was

he all right? His blood pressure and heart rate seemed fine, but what about

his mind? Did we overdose him? Was he having any effect at all?

About 25 minutes after the injection, Philip opened his eyes and looked

up at Robin. Smiling, he said,

I could have done more.

We all breathed a sigh of relief.

Fifteen minutes later, or 40 minutes after the injection, Philip started

speaking slowly and haltingly.

I never lost touch with my body. Compared to smoking DMT, the visuals

were less intense, the colors were not as deep, and the geometric patterns

did not move as fast.

He sought my hand for comfort. My hands were damp from nervousness,

and he laughed good-naturedly at my anxiety, which was clearly greater

than his!

Upon arising to go the bathroom, Philip was shaky. He drank some grape

juice, ate a little container of yogurt, and filled out the rating scale. He felt

“spaced-out,” fuzzy in his mind, awkward, while we walked to and from

another building where I had some business. It was important to be with

him, to observe how he functioned for the next couple of hours. Philip

seemed well enough three hours after his DMT shot for Robin to drive him

home. We said good-bye in the hospital parking lot, and I told him to expect

a call that night.

When we spoke, Philip told me that Robin and he went to eat lunch after

leaving the hospital. He immediately became more alert and focused. On

the ride home, he felt euphoric, and colors seemed brighter everywhere he

looked. He sounded quite happy.

Philip sent me a written report a few days later. Most important was his

last comment:

I expected to jump to a higher level, to leave the body and ego

consciousness, the jump into cosmic space. But this did not happen.

This threshold to which Philip referred is what we now call the

“psychedelic threshold” for DMT. You cross it when there is a separation of

consciousness from the body and psychedelic effects completely replace the

mind’s normal contents. There is a sense of wonder or awe, and a feeling of

undeniable certainty in the reality of the experience. This clearly had not

occurred with 1 mg/kg intramuscular DMT.

It was great to have Philip in this explorer’s role. He was psychologically

mature and stable and was familiar with the effects of psychedelics in

general, and DMT in particular. He could make clear, understandable

comparisons between different drugs and different ways of receiving them.

His case was powerful validation of our decision to enroll only experienced

psychedelic users.

Philip’s report left no doubt that IM DMT effects lagged behind those of

smoked DMT. I considered giving a higher dose. However, even if full peak

effects developed, I doubted that this route would ever give the “rush” that

is another hallmark of smoked DMT. During this “rush,” which usually

happens in the first 15 to 30 seconds after smoking DMT, the shift from

normal consciousness to an overwhelming psychedelic reality takes place

with breathtaking speed. It is this “nuclear cannon” effect that users find so

frighteningly attractive. We definitely needed a more rapid way of getting

DMT into the system.

Most recreational DMT users smoke it in a pipe, sprinkled on marijuana

or a non-psychoactive herb. This is not the ideal method of getting DMT

into your body. The drug often catches fire, which is disconcerting when

you are trying to inhale as much of the vapor as possible. The smell of

burning DMT is intensely nauseating, like that of burning plastic. As the

drug takes effect and the room seems to begin breaking up into crystalline

shards, your body following suit, it becomes nearly impossible to know if

you are inhaling or exhaling. In that state of intoxication, imagine trying to

breathe into your lungs as much of this flaming, foul-odored blob of

chemical as possible!

The fastest and most efficient way to administer DMT is by injection.

Intramuscular injections depend on the relatively limited blood flow

through muscles to drain away the drug, and it is the slowest type of

injection. Drugs also may be given into the skin, or subcutaneously, where

the slightly richer blood flow makes for a faster, though usually painful,

method. Injection into a vein is the best method. From the intravenous, or

IV, injection site, drug-rich blood returns to the heart. The heart pumps this

blood through the lungs; from there it reenters the heart and then makes its

way out to the rest of the body, including the brain. The time for this entire

process, what physiologists call “arm-to-tongue time,” is usually about 16

seconds.1

I consulted with my colleague who had made the DMT, David Nichols,

Ph.D., at Purdue University in Indiana. He agreed that I needed to switch to

the intravenous route. Reflecting upon our mutual anxiety about this change

in plans, he added dryly, “I’m glad it’s you and not me.”

It was time to consult with Dr. W., the physician at the U.S. Food and

Drug Administration (FDA) who, after helping guide the project through

the two-year regulatory process, was now overseeing its performance.

When I asked his opinion, he laughed and said, “You are the only research

scientist in the world giving DMT. You’re the expert. You decide.”

He was right, but I was nervous about entering such uncharted territory

so quickly, after giving just one dose of DMT. There was only one

previously published report that described giving DMT intravenously, but

this was to psychiatric patients, not normal volunteers.2 That 1950s project

studied severely impaired patients with schizophrenia, most of whom were

unable to report much about their experiences. In fact, one unfortunate

woman’s pulse was not detectable for a short while after she received IV

DMT. It was in deference to this report that I was so cautious about heart

function in all prospective volunteers.3

Dr. W. recommended trying about one-fifth the IM dose when switching

to the IV route. “That will probably give you lower blood and brain levels

of DMT than you produced by giving it intramuscularly, and you should

have some room to maneuver,” he said. “You probably won’t overdose

anyone this way.” In our case, that meant converting the IM dose of 1

mg/kg to 0.2 mg/kg intravenous DMT.

Philip and Nils both had eagerly volunteered for this new and uncharted

phase of the research: finding a satisfactory dose of IV DMT in normal

volunteers. Since both had smoked DMT previously, we would be able to

compare directly the effects of IV to smoked drug. And, in Philip’s case, we

could compare IV to IM routes.

Nils was thirty-six years old when he began in our research. As a

younger man, Nils had enlisted in the Army, desiring to specialize in

explosives. However, he quickly saw that he was unfit for the armed

services, and he applied for an early discharge for psychological reasons.

Philip happened to be the psychologist who performed this evaluation on

Nils, and they had remained friends afterward.

Nils was keenly interested in mind-altering drugs and always was

looking for a neglected plant or animal product that might produce such

effects. He had written several popular pamphlets, including one

announcing his discovery of the psychedelic properties of the venom of the

Sonoran Desert toad. This venom contains high levels of 5-methoxy-DMT,

a compound closely related to DMT. When smoked, this toad product is

quite impressive.

Nils was a long and lanky fellow, charming and fun to be around. He had

taken LSD many times, having “lost track after the 150th dose.” The first

time he had smoked DMT, at Philip’s house the year before, he was

powerfully moved. He said,

It made strong telepathic impressions, causing mental bonds with the

people around me. This was confusing and overwhelming. I became very

excited as an inner voice spoke to me. This was my intuition directly

relating to me. It was the most intense experience of my life. I want to go

back. I saw a different space with bright bands of color. I couldn’t raise my

hands, I tripped so hard. It is a mental Mecca, an excellent reference point

for all other psychedelics. Those around me looked like alien space insects.

I realized they were all part of it, too.

Nils received 0.2 mg/kg intravenous DMT about a week after Philip’s first

IM dose. My feelings were similar to those I had for Philip’s injection; that

is, while the actual day was a landmark, it also seemed like a dry run, a

rehearsal for the real thing. It was very likely we would go beyond this

dose.

On the day of Nils’s 0.2 mg/kg session, I found him lying on the hospital

bed in his research center room, underneath his familiar Army sleeping bag.

He took this bag with him whenever he traveled, both literally and

figuratively: when he would journey on the road, or when he would take a

psychedelic drug trip.

Cindy and I sat on either side of Nils. I gave him a brief preview of what

to expect. He nodded for me to begin.

Halfway through the injection, Nils said,

Yes, I taste it.

Nils turned out to be one of the few volunteers who could taste

intravenous DMT as the drug-rich blood rushed through his mouth and

tongue on the way to his brain. It was a metallic, slightly bitter taste.

I thought, “This seems fast enough.”

My notes are sketchy as to the effects of this dose of IV DMT on Nils.

This may have been due to his taciturn nature, or because neither of us were

especially impressed with the intensity of the experience. He did remark,

however, that 0.2 mg/kg was “maybe one-third to one-fourth” a full dose,

relative to his experience smoking DMT. Perhaps feeling a little

overconfident from how easy these first two sessions—Philip’s IM, and

Nils’s IV—had been, I decided to proceed immediately to triple Nils’s IV

dose: from 0.2 to 0.6 mg/kg.

My confidence was premature. In retrospect, a more cautious move to

doubling it, to 0.4 mg/kg, would have been more reasonable. Thankfully, I

didn’t jump to 0.8 mg/kg, which would have happened had I followed

Nils’s suggestion that 0.2 mg/kg was a fourth of a full dose.

This morning, both Philip and Nils were going to get 0.6 mg/kg IV DMT.

It was sunny, cold, and windy in Albuquerque that day, and I was glad to

be working inside. I entered Nils’s room in the Research Center. He was

lying under his sleeping bag, awaiting the first 0.6 mg/kg dose. Cindy

already had placed a small needle into a forearm vein, the portal through

which I would inject the DMT solution directly into his blood. She sat on

his right side, and I on his left, where the tubing from the IV line dangled

off his arm. Philip also was here; he was scheduled to receive the same dose

later in the morning if all went well with Nils. He sat at the foot of the bed,

curious about what Nils was to experience, and ready to provide moral

support for all of us. Little did we suspect we’d need him for physical

backup, too.

I infused the solution of DMT somewhat more quickly than I did for

Nils’s previous 0.2 mg/kg dose, over 30 seconds rather than a minute. I

thought a faster injection might allow for less dilution of the DMT in the

bloodstream. This then would generate higher peak levels of DMT in the

blood and, therefore, the brain. After the infusion of drug was complete,

Nils said excitedly,

I can taste it. . . . Here it is!

Immediately after blurting this out, he began tossing and turning under

his sleeping bag. He then sat up with a start, exclaiming,

I’m going to vomit!

He gazed at us, stunned and uncertain. Cindy and I looked at each other

at the same time, realizing we had nothing into which he could throw up.

We hadn’t foreseen that our test subjects might need to vomit. He mumbled,

But I didn’t have any breakfast . . . so there’s nothing to throw up.

Nils became agitated and pulled the pillow and sleeping bag over his

face. He curled into the fetal position, away from us and the blood pressure

machine, kinking the tubing that connected the cuff to the unit. We could

not get a reading at either 2 or 5 minutes, when we knew his blood pressure

and heart rate would be at their highest, and potentially most dangerous,

levels. He tried climbing out of the bed with a mostly purposeless flailing of

his arms and legs—but this was a substantial mass of limbs in someone

6'4". His hands were cold and clammy as Cindy, Philip, and I joined forces

and maneuvered him back into the now-too-small-seeming bed. At 6

minutes, he retched into a basin we found in the closet. Because he had to

sit up to do so, we were able to reposition him in the bed, and we obtained a

blood pressure and heart rate recording. At this point, 10 minutes after the

injection, his readings were surprisingly normal.

He reached out to Cindy, touching her arm and sweater. It looked as if he

were about to stroke her hair, but quickly seemed to forgot what he was

going to do. Nils then stared at me, saying,

I need to look at you now, not Philip or Cindy.

I did my best to look calm, answering his gaze with my own, praying

quietly that he would be all right. At 19 minutes, he sat up on his elbows

and laughed. He looked very “stoned”: large pupils, lopsided grin,

mumbling incoherently.

He finally said,

I think the best high dose is between 0.2 and 0.6.

We all laughed, and the tension in the room dropped a few notches. Nils

still had his wits about him, at least at that moment.

He continued,

There was the movement of the self. I am disappointed that it’s ending. It

was a cafeteria of colors. A familiar feeling. Yes, I’ve returned. “They”

were there and we recognized each other.

I asked, “Who?”

No one or thing identifiable as such.

He still seemed quite under the influence. I did not want to press him.

He shook his head and added,

Coming down from the high was very colorful, but it was boring

compared to the peak. At the peak, I knew I was back where I had been

when I smoked it last year. It was a lonely feeling leaving there.

I thought I had gotten really sick. I felt you hovering over me, like I was

dying, and you all were trying to resuscitate me. I hoped everything was all

right. I was just trying to catch what was happening inside.

He paused, then concluded,

I’m tired. I’d like to nap, but I’m not really sleepy.

Nils had little to say beyond this, other than that he was ravenously

hungry, wisely having skipped breakfast. He ate heartily while filling out

our rating scale. So even Nils thought 0.6 mg/kg was “too much”!

I spent a few minutes in the nurses’ lounge, reflecting upon what we had

just seen. From a cardiac point of view, Nils’s blood pressure and heart rate

had risen only moderately, although we missed the readings at their

presumed peak. Thus, there seemed likely to be no physical harm from

administering 0.6 mg/kg IV DMT. However, I was not sure if the thinness

of Nils’s report was because he could not remember what had happened, or

because of his style of keeping to himself most of what had taken place.

We clearly had broken through the “psychedelic threshold.” The

suddenness and intensity of onset, the irrefutable nature of the experience,

the inhabited sense Nils described, all added up to a “full” DMT trip. But

was it too far beyond the psychedelic barrier? Nils was a self-acknowledged

“hard head,” requiring higher doses than many to attain comparable levels

of altered perceptions from the same drug. How would Philip fare?

Philip and I walked down the Research Center’s brightly lit hall. We passed

Nils at the nurses’ station, looking for more food. He felt great. It was

reassuring to see how well he looked so quickly after his harrowing jump

off the psychic cliff.

I asked Philip, “Are you sure you want the same dose?”

“Yes.” There was absolutely no hesitation.

I was not so sure.

If Philip declined undergoing an experience similar to Nils’s, my anxiety

would have become more tolerable. Perhaps he would settle for 0.5 or 0.4

mg/kg. This would be easy enough to do—I could simply stop short of

emptying the entire syringe full of DMT solution. While I believed 0.6

mg/kg most likely was physically safe, the potentially shattering mental

effects loomed in front of all of us even more dramatically than they had

before Nils’s session. However, Philip was not to be outdone by his friend

and fellow “psychonaut.” He was ready for his 0.6 mg/kg dose.

This tendency in our volunteers, to persevere even under the possibility

of an annihilating psychedelic experience, was marked. It was most

apparent during our tolerance study, which took place the next year, in

1991, in which volunteers received four large doses of DMT, each separated

by only 30 minutes. Not one volunteer, no matter how worn out, refused

that fourth and final high dose of DMT.

Philip’s desire to take the same dose as Nils confronted me with a

scientific, personal, and ethical dilemma. My training had taught me that

one should not shy away from prescribing a little too much of a medication

if the circumstances called for doing so. For example, very high doses

might be necessary for a full therapeutic response in otherwise treatment-

resistant patients. In addition, it was important to learn about toxic effects,

to be able to recognize them quickly in various circumstances. This latter

point is even more important when studying a new experimental drug.

It was within my authority and responsibility as the principal investigator

of the project to tell Philip I did not want him to repeat a Nils-like 0.6

mg/kg DMT experience. However, Nils seemed fine now. Most importantly,

he was the first and only person to get this dose. I had planned on two 0.6

mg/kg sessions that morning so that I could determine if this dose caused

similar responses in two different people.

I liked Philip, and he did want his 0.6 mg/kg dose. But how much of a

role did our friendship play? I didn’t want to do as he requested just so that

I wouldn’t jeopardize our relationship, but I wanted his participation in this

early stage of the study to be worth his while. He was, in some ways,

“doing us a favor.” Philip lived far from Albuquerque, and asking him to

return once more to get 0.6 mg/kg, if 0.4 or 0.5 were not a full-enough dose,

would have inconvenienced him. There were many competing priorities. I

hoped I made the right decision by agreeing to give Philip 0.6 mg/kg.

Entering his room, Philip and I said hello to Cindy and Robin, Philip’s

girlfriend, who were already there, waiting for us. He made himself

comfortable on the bed. Another 0.6 mg/kg IV DMT session was about to

begin.

Philip’s bare and sterile room featured brightly waxed linoleum floors,

salmon pink walls, and tubes for oxygen, suctioning of secretions, and

water exiting from behind the bed. He had taped a poster of Avalokitesvara,

the one-thousand-armed Buddhist saint of compassion, on the outside of the

closed wooden bathroom door that faced his bed. A television attached by a

maze of cables hung from the ceiling, looking down at his mechanized,

narrow bed, which was covered with thin hospital sheets. The air

conditioning hummed loudly. He lay down on the bed and made himself as

comfortable as possible.

Cindy smoothly and skillfully placed an intravenous line into one

forearm vein. The blood pressure cuff was also wrapped around this arm.

Philip’s other arm had inserted into it a larger IV line from which we could

draw blood, so we could measure concentrations of DMT in his blood after

administering it. This line was attached to a clear plastic bag that dripped

sterile saltwater into the vein so that there would be no clotting in the

blood-drawing tube. Cindy and I sat on either side of Philip, not sure what

to expect in light of Nils’s earlier reaction. Robin sat off to the side, near the

foot of the bed.

Philip, fresh from Nils’s unnerving session only an hour ago, needed little

preparation. He knew what to expect from us while he was lying in his bed

under the influence. He had seen that we would help him immediately if he

seemed in need of assistance. We wished him luck. He closed his eyes, lay

back, took some deep breaths, and said, “I’m ready.”

I watched the second hand of the clock on the wall, waiting for it to hit

the “6” so that I could time the 30-second injection to finish when the

second hand hit the “12,” which would be “time zero.” It was nearly 10

A.M.

Just as I finished inserting the needle of the syringe into Philip’s line, but

before depressing the plunger and emptying the DMT solution into Philip’s

vein, there was a loud, insistent knocking on the door. I looked up, paused,

removed the needle from the line, capped it, and placed it on the nightstand

next to Philip’s bed.

The director of the Research Center laboratory was waiting outside the

door. I stepped into the hall, out of earshot from the room. He said that the

previous blood samples for DMT analyses were collected incorrectly, and

that we needed to change how we did this. I told him we would modify our

technique accordingly.

I let myself back into Philip’s room and took the chair by the side of his

bed once more. He seemed unaware of the interruption, having begun the

inward turning and letting go that we found allows for the smoothest

possible entry into the DMT realms. For him, the trip had already begun.

I apologized for the interruption and, trying to lighten the mood, said,

“Where were we now?” Philip replied with only a grunt; he opened his

eyes, nodded for me to proceed, and closed them again. I uncapped the

syringe and reinserted the needle into his IV tubing. Cindy nodded that she

was ready, too.

I said, “Okay, here’s the DMT.”

I slowly and carefully began infusing 0.6 mg/kg DMT into Philip’s vein.

Halfway through the injection, Philip’s breath caught in his throat,

sounding like a cough that never quite got out. We quickly learned that

whenever this catching in the throat followed a high-dose injection, we

were in for a wild ride.

Quietly, I let Philip know, “It’s all in.”

Twenty-five seconds after the infusion was complete, he began groaning,

I love, I love . . .

His blood pressure rose moderately, but his heart rate jumped to 140

beats per minute, up from his resting level of 65. This increase in pulse is

equivalent to that which might occur after racing up three or four flights of

stairs. But in this case, Philip hadn’t moved an inch.

At 1 minute, Philip sat up, looking at Cindy and me with saucer-sized

eyes. His pupils were hugely dilated. His movements were automatic, jerky,

puppetlike. There seemed to be “no one home” behind Philip’s actions.

He leaned toward Robin and stroked her hair:

I love, I love . . .

Twice that morning, then: a volunteer in a dazed DMT state, attracted to

a woman’s hair. Nils to Cindy’s, Philip to Robin’s. Perhaps it was the most

powerful image of living, organic, familiar reality available when one

looked around a dreary hospital room in such a highly psychedelic state.

To our relief, he laid back down without prompting or assistance. His

skin was cold and clammy, as had been Nils’s. His body was in a classic

“fight-or-flight” reaction: high blood pressure and heart rate, blood moving

from the skin deeper into the vital internal organs, but all while he was

performing almost no actual physical activity. It was difficult to draw

Philip’s blood—the high levels of stress hormones caused the tiny muscles

lining the veins to clamp down, reducing unnecessary blood flow to the

skin.

At 10 minutes, Philip began to sigh,

How beautiful, how beautiful!

Tears began streaming down his cheeks.

Now that was what you would call a transcendent experience. I died and

went to heaven.

By 30 minutes after the injection, his pulse and blood pressure were

normal.

It was flying within a vastness. There was no relative space or size.

I asked, “What did you feel when your breath caught in your throat?”

I felt a cold, contracting feeling in my throat. It frightened me. I thought

maybe I would stop breathing. The thought, “Let go, surrender, let go,” was

there for a split second, then the rush of the drug swept even that away.

“Do you recall sitting up and stroking Robin’s hair?”

I did what?

Forty-five minutes after the injection, drinking tea and no longer feeling

any effects of the drug, Philip could not remember sitting up, looking at us,

or touching Robin. Soon thereafter, he seemed comfortable and we were

confident Robin could look after him.

Philip and I spoke the following evening. He felt a little run down, but

had slept very well. His dreams were “more interesting than usual,”

although not particularly bizarre. Nevertheless, he could not remember any

of them. He worked a full ten hours the next day, although “not at full

steam.” However, he said, “Nobody but I would have noticed I was tired.”

Amazingly, these are all the notes I have from that session and the next

day’s report. This contrasts strikingly with Philip’s usually quite eloquent

descriptions of his drug sessions. Perhaps his getting through the morning

safely was the most important information we needed to learn.

Driving home that evening into the mountains outside of Albuquerque, I

used the time to think about the day’s events. I was glad that both Nils and

Philip had emerged intact from their 0.6 mg/kg IV DMT encounters.

However, I had not learned much about what their experiences were really

like. Their reports were remarkably brief and lacked detail.

Why were Nils’s and Philip’s reports so sparse?

One possibility was “state-specific memory.” This refers to the

phenomenon in which events experienced in an altered state of

consciousness can be recalled clearly only upon reentering that state, and

not in the normal one. This happens under the influence of substances such

as alcohol, marijuana, or prescription drugs like the sedatives Valium,

Xanax, or barbiturates. It also results from non-drug-induced altered states,

such as hypnosis or dreams. In Philip’s and Nils’s cases, this explanation

would be likely if they later recalled more of their 0.6 mg/kg sessions while

working with lower, more manageable doses of DMT. However, this did not

occur to any extent in either man during their subsequent participation in

the project.

Another possibility is that Nils and Philip suffered a brief delirium, an

“acute organic brain syndrome,” or “acute confusional state.” Delirium

derives from the Latin de, meaning “from” or “out of,” and lira, “a furrow”;

literally, “going out of the furrow,” or “out of it.” Delirium can result from

physical factors such as fever, head injury, lack of oxygen, or low blood

sugar. In addition, a profoundly traumatic psychological experience may

produce a delirious state, such as what happens in survivors of severe

trauma or disasters.

I was uncertain to what degree “psychological trauma” contributed to

Nils’s and Philip’s confusion in, and inability to remember much of, their

DMT sessions. How much was a psychological reaction to the drug’s

effects, rather than a direct effect of the drug itself? That is, climbing a

ladder to view a scene of unimaginable shock value might throw one into a

delirious or confused state, but it is not the ladder but rather the view the

ladder provides that is responsible. Was what Nils and Philip saw so bizarre,

so incomprehensible, so utterly aberrant that their minds simply turned off

to spare them from seeing clearly what was there? Maybe it was better to

forget.

In either case, whether too much drug or too much experience, whatever

0.6 mg/kg IV DMT did to these two seasoned psychedelic veterans, it came

down to just this: “too much.” As Philip said later,

It was a cosmic blowtorch, a tempest of color, bewildering, like I was

thrown overboard into a storm and was spinning out of control, being

tossed like a cork.

I called Dave Nichols again to discuss the DMT dose. What should be a

lower “high” dose? A reduction to 0.5 mg/kg would be lowering the dose

by only one-sixth, while 0.4 mg/kg was fully one-third less. We went back

and forth. While I wanted to make certain the high dose elicited a full

effect, I did not want to psychologically traumatize our volunteers. I was

feeling a little tentative after the day’s events with Philip and Nils. “First, do

no harm” is the overriding dictum for medicine in general, and even more

so for human research. Creating a group of psychically damaged volunteers

was not an option. Keeping the effects of Philip’s and Nils’s 0.6 mg/kg

sessions in the forefront of our discussion, we decided to make 0.4 mg/kg

the top DMT dose for the study.

A few days later, I called the early DMT pioneer Dr. Stephen Szára to

discuss these dosage issues. Dr. Szára had discovered the psychedelic

effects of DMT by injecting it into himself in his laboratory in Budapest,

Hungary, in the mid-1950s. (During the first phases of human psychedelic

research, it was common for the researchers themselves to “go first.”) He

now was completing a long and distinguished career at the U.S. National

Institute on Drug Abuse in Washington, D.C.

I asked him, “Did you ever give too much DMT to your volunteers?”

Dr. Szára thought for a moment, then answered in his refined Eastern

European accent, “Yes. They could not remember anything. They could not

bring back memories of the experience. The only thing that remained with

them was the feeling that something frightening had happened. We did not

believe it worthwhile administering those kinds of doses.”

It is fascinating how many of the themes that would emerge over the next

five years appeared that December morning when I administered 0.6 mg/ kg

IV DMT doses to Philip and Nils. We hear about near-death and spiritual

experiences, and contact with “them” in the DMT realms. I felt conflicting

priorities around friendship and research goals. The drawbacks of the

hospital setting and medical model quickly were apparent. The need to give

full psychedelic doses was already tempered by an awareness of their

potential for negative reactions. There was a far-flung network of

colleagues and regulators who variously assisted the project. All were there

in some form or another in Philip’s and Nil’s 0.6 mg/kg IV DMT sessions.

Let’s now turn to the background for this research, the vast amount we

know about psychedelic drugs, and the way our science and society have

used that information. Then we can begin to understand the unique role

DMT plays in our bodies, and the astonishing functions it may serve in our

lives.

Part I - The Building Blocks

Psychedelic Drugs: Science and

Society

The history of human use of plants, mushrooms, and animals for their

psychedelic effects is far older than written history, and probably predates

the appearance of the modern human species. Ronald Siegel and Terence

McKenna, for example, suggest that our apelike ancestors imitated other

animals by eating things that caused unusual behavior. In this way, they

discovered the earliest mind-altering substances.

There is growing physical evidence that many ancient cultures used

psychedelics for their effects on consciousness. Archaeologists have

uncovered ancient African images of mushrooms sprouting from a human

body, and recent discoveries of prehistoric northern European rock art

strongly suggest the influence of psychedelically altered consciousness.

Some authors have proposed that language developed out of

psychedelically enhanced appreciation of, and associations with, early

hominid mouth sounds. Others suggest that psychedelic states formed the

basis of humans’ earliest awareness of religious experience.

The visions, ecstatic states, and flights of imagination made possible by

psychedelic drugs gave these substances an important role in many ancient

cultures. Hundreds of years of anthropological research have demonstrated

that these societies used psychedelics to maintain social solidarity, aid the

healing arts, and inspire artistic and spiritual creativity.

New World aboriginal people used, and continue to use, a wide range of

mind-altering plants and mushrooms. Most of what we know about

psychedelics comes from investigating chemicals first found in Western

Hemisphere materials: DMT, psilocybin, mescaline, and several LSD-like

compounds.

The depth and breadth of psychedelic plant use by New World residents

surprised and alarmed European settlers. Their reaction may have been due

to the relative lack of psychedelic plants and mushrooms in Europe. Just as

important was the association of mind-altering substances with witchcraft.

The Church effectively suppressed information about the use of those

materials in both the Old and New Worlds and persecuted bearers and

practitioners of that knowledge. It is only in the last fifty years that we have

realized that Mexican Indian use of magic mushrooms did not entirely die

out in the sixteenth century.

In Europe, there was little interest in, or access to, psychedelic plants or

drugs until the end of the late 1800s. Some authors described their own

“psychedelic” reactions to opium or hashish, but the amount required for

psychedelic effects was difficult to consume, excessive, or dangerous. This

situation began to change with the discovery of mescaline in peyote, a New

World cactus.

German chemists isolated mescaline from peyote in the 1890s. The more

literary among those exploring its effects hailed its ability to open the gates

of an “artificial paradise.” However, medical and psychiatric interest in

mescaline was surprisingly restrained, and researchers published only a

limited number of papers by the end of the 1930s. The unpleasant nausea

and vomiting that often occur with mescaline may have had something to

do with the lack of interest in it.

Another reason for the minimal enthusiasm about mescaline may have

been that there was no scientific or medical context in which to understand

its effects. Freudian psychoanalysis was that era’s predominant force in

psychiatry. While Freud himself was strongly attracted to mind-altering

drugs such as cocaine and tobacco, his students were less so. In addition,

Freud distrusted religion and believed spiritual or religious experience was

a defense against childish fears and wishes. This attitude probably did little

to encourage investigation of mescaline, with its trappings of Native

American spirituality. Then LSD made its revolutionary appearance.

In 1938 the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann was working with ergot, a rye

fungus, in the natural products division of Sandoz Laboratories, even then a

major pharmaceutical company. He hoped to find a drug that might help

stop uterine bleeding after childbirth. One of these ergot-based compounds

was LSD-25, or lysergic acid diethylamide. It had little effect on the uterus

of laboratory animals, and Hofmann shelved it. Five years later, “a curious

presentiment” called Hofmann back to examine LSD, and he accidentally

discovered its powerful psychedelic properties.

The remarkable thing about LSD was that it brought on psychedelic

effects at doses of millionths of a gram, which meant that it had more than

one thousand times the strength of mescaline. In fact, Hofmann nearly

overdosed himself with what he thought was too small a quantity to

possibly be mind-altering: a quarter milligram. Hoffman and his Swiss

colleagues were quick to publish their findings in the early 1940s. Because

of the highly altered state of mind LSD produced, and the traditional

psychiatric context in which researchers explored it, scientists decided to

emphasize its “psychosis-mimicking” properties.1

The years after World War II were exciting ones for psychiatry. In addition

to LSD, scientists also discovered the “antipsychotic” properties of

chlorpromazine, or Thorazine. Thorazine made it possible for severely

mentally ill patients to improve enough that they could leave asylums in

unprecedented numbers. This and other antipsychotic medications finally

allowed doctors to make progress in treating some of our most disabling

illnesses.

The contemporary field of “biological psychiatry” was born in those

years. This discipline, which studies the relationship between the human

mind and its brain chemistry, was the child of these two strange bedfellows:

LSD and Thorazine. And serotonin was the matchmaker.

In 1948 researchers discovered that serotonin carried in the bloodstream

was responsible for contracting the muscles lining veins and arteries. This

was vitally important in understanding how to control the bleeding process.

The name for serotonin came from the Latin sero, “blood,” and tonin,

“tightening.”

A few years later, in the mid-1950s, investigators discovered serotonin in

the brain of laboratory animals. Subsequent experiments demonstrated its

precise localization and its effects on electrical and chemical functions of

individual nerve cells. Drugs or surgery that modified serotonin-containing

areas of an animal’s brain profoundly altered sexual and aggressive

behavior as well as sleep, wakefulness, and a diverse array of basic

biological functions. The presence and function of serotonin in the brain

and in animal behavior clinched its role as the first known

neurotransmitter.2

At the same time, scientists showed that LSD and serotonin molecules

looked very much like each other. They then demonstrated that LSD and

serotonin competed for many of the same brain sites. In some experimental

situations, LSD blocked the effects of serotonin; in others, the psychedelic

drug mimicked serotonin’s effects.

These findings established LSD as the most powerful tool available for

learning about brain-mind relationships. If LSD’s extraordinary sensory and

emotional properties resulted from changing the function of brain serotonin

in specific and understandable ways, it might be possible to “chemically

dissect” particular mental functions into their basic physiological

components. Other mind-altering drugs with comparably well-characterized

effects on different neurotransmitters could lead to a decoding of the

varieties of conscious experience into their underlying chemical

mechanisms.

Dozens of investigators around the world administered a dizzying array

of psychedelic drugs to thousands of healthy volunteers and psychiatric

patients. For more than two decades, generous government and private

funding supported this effort. Researchers published hundreds of papers and

dozens of books. Many international conferences, meetings, and symposia

discussed the latest findings in human psychedelic drug research.3

Sandoz Laboratories distributed LSD to researchers so they might induce

a brief psychotic state in normal volunteers. Scientists hoped such

experiments might shed light on naturally occurring psychotic disorders like

schizophrenia.

Sandoz also recommended giving LSD to psychiatric interns to help

them establish a sense of empathy for their psychotic patients. These young

doctors were amazed by this temporary encounter with insanity. The raw

encounter with their own previously unconscious memories and feelings led

these psychiatrists to believe that these mind-loosening properties might

enhance psychotherapy.

Numerous research publications suggested that the normal mechanisms

of talk therapy were much more effective with the addition of a psychedelic

drug. Dozens of scientific articles described remarkable success in helping

previously untreatable patients suffering from obsessions and compulsions,

post-traumatic stress, eating disorders, anxiety, depression, alcoholism, and

heroin dependence.

The rapid breakthroughs described by researchers using “psychedelic

psychotherapy” spurred other investigators to study these drugs’ beneficial

effects in despairing and pain-ridden terminally ill patients. While there was

little effect on the underlying medical conditions, psychedelic

psychotherapy in these patients had striking psychological effects.

Depression lifted, requirements for pain medication fell dramatically, and

patients’ acceptance of their disease and its prognosis improved markedly.

In addition, patients and their families seemed able to address deep-seated

and emotionally charged issues in ways never before possible. The rapid

accleration of psychological growth resulting from this new treatment

appeared quite promising in these cases where time was of the essence.

Some therapists believed that a transformative, mystical, or spiritual

experience was responsible for many of these “miraculous” responses to

psychedelic psychotherapy.4

In addition, it soon became apparent that the experiences described by

volunteers under deep psychedelic influences were strikingly similar to

those of practitioners of traditional Eastern meditation. The overlap

between consciousness alteration induced by psychedelic drugs and that

induced by meditation attracted the attention of writers outside of

academics, including the English novelist and religious philosopher Aldous

Huxley. Huxley underwent his own remarkably positive mescaline and LSD

experiences under the watchful eye of the Canadian psychiatrist Humphrey

Osmond, who visited him in Los Angeles in the 1950s. Huxley soon wrote

about his drug sessions and the musings they inspired in him. His writings

on the nature and value of the psychedelic experience were compelling and

eloquent, inspiring many individuals’ attempts to attain, and researchers to

elicit, spiritual enlightenment through psychedelic drugs. Despite that fact

that his ideas stimulated a massive movement toward popular

experimentation with the psychedelics, Huxley was a staunch advocate of

the theory that only an elite group of intellectuals and artists should have

access to them. He did not believe that the common man or woman was

capable of using psychedelics in the safest and most productive ways

possible.5

However, terminal illness studies and discussions of similarities between

psychedelic drug effects and mystical experiences brought religion and

science together in an uneasy mix. The research was moving further away

from Sandoz’s original agenda.

Complicating things further was LSD’s escape from the laboratory in the

1960s. Reports of emergency room visits, suicides, murders, birth defects,

and broken chromosomes filled the media. The highly publicized

abandonment of scientific research principles by Timothy Leary, Ph.D., and

his research team at Harvard University ultimately resulted in their

dismissals. These events reinforced the growing suspicion that even the

scientists had lost control of these powerful psychoactive drugs.6

The media exaggerated and emphasized psychedelic drugs’ negative

physical and psychological effects. Some of these reports resulted from

poor research; others were simply fabricated. Subsequent publications

cleared psychedelics from serious toxicity, including chromosome damage.

However, these follow-up studies generated much less fanfare than did the

original damaging reports.

Papers in the psychiatric literature describing “bad trips,” or adverse

psychological reactions to psychedelics, also multiplied, but are similarly

limited. In order to address these concerns in my own study, I read every

paper describing such negative effects and published the results. It was clear

that rates of psychiatric complications were extraordinarily low in

controlled research settings, for both normal volunteers and psychiatric

patients. However, when psychiatrically ill or unstable individuals took

impure or unknown psychedelics, combined with alcohol and other drugs,

in an uncontrolled setting with inadequate supervision, problems occurred.7

In response to the public’s anxiety about uncontrolled LSD use, and over

the objections of nearly every investigator in the field, the United States

Congress passed a law in 1970 making LSD and other psychedelics illegal.

The government told scientists to return their drugs, paperwork

requirements for obtaining and maintaining new supplies of psychedelics

for research became a time-consuming and confusing burden, and there was

little hope for new projects. Money for studies dried up and researchers

abandoned their experiments. With the new drug laws in place, interest in

human psychedelic research died off almost as rapidly as it had begun. It

was as if the psychedelic drugs became “un-discovered.”

Considering the intense pace of human research with psychedelics just

thirty years ago, it is amazing how little today’s medical and psychiatric

training programs teach about them. Psychedelics were the growth area in

psychiatry for over twenty years. Now young physicians and psychiatrists

know nearly nothing about them.

By the time I was a medical student in the mid-1970s, less than ten years

after the drug laws changed, psychedelics were the topic of just two lectures

in my four years of study. Even this may have been more information than

students received at most other medical schools, because there was a

research group performing animal studies at the Albert Einstein College of

Medicine in New York City, where I trained. In the mid-1990s, I taught a

psychedelic drug research seminar to senior psychiatric residents at the

University of New Mexico—probably the only one of its kind in the

country in decades.

The lack of academic attention to psychedelics may have been partly due

to the absence of any ongoing human research. However, it is common for

physicians-in-training to learn about previously popular theories and

techniques, even if they no longer are in favor. The psychedelic drugs,

however, seemed to have dropped out of all psychiatric dialogue.

Most new theories, techniques, and drugs in the clinical psychiatric field

follow a predictable course of evolution as they are introduced, tested, and

refined for further application. Therefore, it was not at all surprising that

conflicting results began to emerge as more data accumulated during the

first wave of human psychedelic research. Enthusiasm predictably slowed

for claims that psychedelics could produce a “model psychosis” or “cures”

in intractable psychotherapy cases. The natural process within psychiatric

research is for scientists to refine research questions, methods, and

applications. This never happened with the psychedelic drugs. Instead, their

study went through a highly unnatural evolution. They began as “wonder

drugs,” turned into “horror drugs,” then became nothing.

I believe that medical students and psychiatric trainees learn so little

about psychedelic drugs not because research did end, but because of how it

ended. This process deeply demoralized academic psychiatry, which then

turned its back on psychedelic drugs.

Psychedelic research was a bruising and humiliating chapter in the lives

of many of its most prominent scientists. These were the best and the

brightest psychiatrists of their generation. Many of today’s most respected

North American and European psychiatric researchers, in both academics

and industry, now chairmen of major university departments and presidents

of national psychiatric organizations, began their professional lives

investigating psychedelic drugs. The most powerful members of their

profession discovered that science, data, and reason were incapable of

defending their research against the enactment of repressive laws fueled by

opinion, emotion, and the media.

Once these laws passed, government regulators and funding agencies

quickly withdrew permits, drugs, and money. The same psychedelic drugs

that researchers thought were unique keys to mental illness, and that had

launched dozens of careers, became feared and hated.

Another problem was that psychedelics were becoming an embarrassing

source of contention even within psychiatry itself. Biology-based

psychiatrists had little patience with colleagues who “found religion” and

touted the spiritual effects of these drugs. These latter researchers viewed

their brain-only associates as narrow-minded and repressed. Psychiatry has

never been especially comfortable with spiritual issues, and in fact, an

entirely new division appeared in the field to contend with results from

psychedelic research: the “transpersonal” area of theory and practice. Thus,

at least some psychedelic researchers may have been quietly relieved that

they no longer had to face many of the complex, contradictory, and

confusing effects these drugs produced in their patients, themselves, and

their colleagues.

Why would anyone want to lecture on this embarrassing chapter in

academic psychiatry to an auditorium packed with two hundred sharp-

witted medical students? This early group of psychedelic researchers was

for the most part professional scientists, not zealots. They knew enough not

to publicly criticize the behavior of their colleagues and benefactors. Better

to live and learn.8

Now that we have reviewed some important background of the

psychedelics, let’s look at what they do.

Psychedelics exert their effects by a complex blending of three factors:

set, setting, and drug.

Set is our own makeup, both long term and immediate. It is our past, our

present, and our potential future; our preferences, ideas, habits, and

feelings. Set also includes our body and brain.

The psychedelic experience also hinges on setting: who or what is or isn’t

in our immediate surroundings; the environment we’re in, whether natural

or urban, indoor or outdoor; the quality of the air and ambient sound around

us; and so on. Setting also partakes of the set of who is with us while we

take the drug, whether they be a friend or a stranger, relaxed or tense, a

supportive guide or a probing scientist.

Then, there is the drug.

First, what do we call it? Even among researchers there is little

agreement over this crucial point. Some don’t even use the word drug,

preferring instead molecule, compound, agent, substance, medicine, or

sacrament.

Even if we agree to call it a drug, look at how many different names it

has: hallucinogen (producing hallucinations), entheogen (generating the

divine), mysticomimetic (mimicking mystical states), oneirogen (producing

dreams), phanerothyme (producing visible feelings), phantasticant

(stimulating fantasy), psychodysleptic (mind-disturbing), psychotomimetic

and psychotogen (mimicking or producing psychosis, respectively), and

psychotoxin and schizotoxin (a poison causing psychosis or schizophrenia,

respectively).

This focus on name is not trivial. If everyone agreed about what a

psychedelic is or does, there certainly would not be so many words for the

same drug. The multitude of labels reflects the deep-seated and ongoing

debate about psychedelic drugs and their effects.

Scientists rarely acknowledge the importance of the name they give to

psychedelics, even though they know how powerfully expectations modify

drug effects. All undergraduate psychology students learn this in their

introductory psychology courses when they review landmark studies

published in the 1960s. These experiments injected volunteers with

adrenaline, the “fight-or-flight” hormone, under different sets of

expectations. Adrenaline caused a calm and relaxed state in volunteers told

they were receiving a sedative. If told that the experimental drug was

stimulating, volunteers felt the more typical anxiety and energy.9

Thus, what we call a drug we take, or give, influences our expectations of

what that drug will do. It also modifies the effects themselves, and how we

interpret and deal with them. No other drug’s name feeds back so

powerfully upon the responses they elicit as do the psychedelics, because

they greatly magnify our suggestibility.

In addition to what we call psychedelics, the terms we apply to the

people involved in their use also impact set and setting, and therefore drug

response. As one who takes the drug, are we research subjects or

volunteers? Clients or celebrants? As the one giving them, are we guides,

sitters, or research investigators? Shamans or scientists?

Try this mental exercise: Consider how you might look forward to your

day as a “research subject” under the influence of a “psychotomimetic

agent.” Then reconsider: How would you feel about your role as a

“celebrant” in a “ceremony” involving an “entheogenic sacrament”? How

would these different contexts affect your interpretation of the

hallucinations and intense mood swings brought on by the drug? Would you

be “going crazy” or having an “enlightenment experience”?

If you were administering psychedelics, what types of behavior would

you anticipate in your research subject, and what sorts would you ignore?

Much would depend upon whether you were giving a “schizotoxin” or a

“phantasticant.” You might encourage an “out-of-body experience” in a

“shamanic” context, but abort the same effects by giving an antipsychotic

antidote in a “psychotomimetic” one.10

Hallucinogen is the most common medical term for psychedelic drugs,

and it emphasizes the perceptual, mostly visual effects of these drugs.

However, while perceptual effects of psychedelics are usual, they are not

the only effects, nor are they necessarily the most valued. The visions

actually may be distractions from the more sought-after properties of the

experience, such as intense euphoria, profound intellectual or spiritual

insights, and the dissolving of the body’s physical boundaries.

I prefer the term psychedelic, or mind-manifesting, over hallucinogen.

Psychedelics show you what’s in and on your mind, those subconscious

thoughts and feelings that are are hidden, covered up, forgotten, out of

sight, maybe even completely unexpected, but nevertheless imminently

present. Depending upon set and setting, the same drug, at the same dose,

can cause vastly different responses in the same person. One day, very little

happens; another day, you soar, full of ecstatic and insightful discoveries;

the next, you struggle through a terrifying nightmare. The generic nature of

psychedelic, a term wide open to interpretation, suits these effects.

Psychedelic has taken on its own cultural and linguistic life. It now can

refer to a particular style of art, clothing, or even an especially intense set of

circumstances. When it comes to rational discourse about drugs,

psychedelic also stirs up powerful 1960s-based emotions and conflicts over

unrelated political and sociological issues. Many of us now think

“counterculture,” “rebellious,” “liberal,” or “left-wing” when we see the

term “psychedelic.” I will take my chances, however, and use it throughout

this book. I think it is the best term we have. I hope not to offend anyone

who finds the word objectionable.

No matter what we call them, most of us agree that the psychedelic drugs

are physical, chemical things. It is at this most basic level that we can begin

to understand what they are and what they do.

The diagrams accompanying the following descriptions show the

chemical structure of various psychedelic compounds. The balls represent

atoms, the most common of which is carbon, which is not labeled. “N”

signifies nitrogen; “P,” phosphorous; and “O,” oxygen. Numerous hydrogen

atoms are attached to other atoms in the molecules; however, there are so

many that they would unnecessarily clutter up the diagram, so I have not

included them here.

There are two main chemical families of psychedelic drugs: the

phenethylamines and the tryptamines.11

The phenethylamines build upon the “parent compound”

phenethylamine.

The best-known phenethylamine is mescaline, which is derived from the

peyote cactus of the American Southwest.

Another famous phenethylamine is MDMA, or “Ecstasy.”

The other main chemical family of psychedelic drugs is the tryptamines.

These all possess a nucleus, or basic building block, of tryptamine.

Tryptamine is a derivative of tryptophan, an amino acid present in our diet.

Serotonin is a tryptamine—5-hydroxy-tryptamine, to be exact—but it is

not psychedelic. It contains one more oxygen atom than does tryptamine.

DMT is also a tryptamine and is the simplest psychedelic. Simply add

two methyl groups to the tryptamine molecule and the result is “di-methyl-

tryptamine”: DMT.12

The “grandfather” of all modern psychedelics, LSD, contains a

tryptamine core, as does ibogaine, the African psychedelic with highly

publicized anti-addictive properties.

One of the best-known tryptamine psychedelics is psilocybin, the active

ingredient of “magic mushrooms.”

When these mushrooms are ingested, the body removes a phosphorous

atom from the psilocybin, converting it to psilocin.

Psilocin differs from DMT by only one oxygen. I like to think of

psilocybin/psilocin as “orally active DMT.”

Another important tryptamine is 5-methoxy-DMT, or 5-MeO-DMT. It

differs from DMT by the addition of only one methyl group and one

oxygen.

Many of the plants, fungi, and animals containing DMT also possess 5-

MeO-DMT. As with DMT, those who use 5-MeO-DMT usually smoke it.13

In addition to their chemical structure, psychedelics also possess activity.

This is where chemistry becomes pharmacology, the study of drug action.

One way to describe psychedelics’ activity is by how quickly they work

and how long they last.

DMT and 5-MeO-DMT effects are remarkably rapid in onset and brief in

duration. We gave DMT through a vein, or intravenously, in which case

volunteers felt it within several heartbeats. They were “highest” at 1 to 2

minutes and were “back to normal” within 20 to 30 minutes.

LSD, mescaline, and ibogaine are longer-acting. Effects begin 30 to 60

minutes after swallowing them. The effects of LSD and mescaline may last

12 hours, ibogaine up to 24 hours. Psilocybin effects are slightly shorter;

they begin within 30 minutes and last 4 to 6 hours.

Another more basic aspect of pharmacology is “mechanism of action,” or

how drugs affect brain activity. This is a crucial issue, because it is by

altering brain function that psychedelics change consciousness.

The earliest psychopharmacological experiments in humans and animals

suggested that LSD, mescaline, DMT, and other psychedelic drugs exerted

their primary effects on the brain’s serotonin system. Animal research, in

contrast to human studies, has continued over the last thirty years and has

established conclusively this neurotransmitter’s crucial role.

Serotonin has reigned as the royal neurotransmitter for decades, and

there’s little sign of change. The new, safer, and more effective

antipsychotic medications all have unique effects on serotonin. The new

generation of antidepressants, of which Prozac is the most famous, also

specifically modify the function of this neurotransmitter.

We now believe that psychedelics mimic the effects of serotonin in some

cases and block them in others. Researchers are now concerned with

determining which of the twenty or so different types of serotonin receptors

psychedelics attach to. These multiple docking sites for serotonin exist in

high concentrations on nerve cells in brain areas regulating a host of

important psychological and physical processes: cardiovascular, hormone,

and temperature regulation, as well as sleep, feeding, mood, perception, and

motor control.

Now that we’ve looked at what psychedelics “are” and “do” in the worlds

of objective and measurable data, let’s turn our attention how they feel to

us, for it is only in the mind that we notice their effects.

It is important to remember that while we understand a great deal about

the pharmacology of psychedelics, we know nearly nothing about how

changes in brain chemistry directly relate to subjective, or inner, experience.

This is as true for psychedelics as it is for Prozac. That is, we are far from

comprehending how activating particular serotonin receptors translates into

a new thought or emotion. We don’t “feel” a serotonin receptor blockade;

rather, we feel ecstasy. We don’t “see” frontal lobe activation; instead, we

observe angels or demons.

It is impossible to predict accurately what will happen after taking a

psychedelic drug on any particular day. Nevertheless, we will generalize

about their subjective effects because we must gain a sense of a “typical”

response. We can do this by averaging all of our own and others’

experiences, all of the “trips” that have gone before us. (By “trip” I mean

the full effects of a typical psychedelic drug like LSD, mescaline,

psilocybin, or DMT. A trip is difficult to define, but we certainly know

when we are having one!)

The following descriptions do not apply to “mild” psychedelics such as

MDMA or usual-strength marijuana, nor do they describe responses to low

doses of psychedelics, for which effects are similar to those of other non-

psychedelic drugs, like amphetamine.

Psychedelics affect all of our mental functions: perception, emotion,

thinking, body awareness, and our sense of self.

Perceptual or sensory effects often, but not always, are primary. Objects

in our field of vision appear brighter or duller, larger or smaller, and seem to

be shifting shape and melting. Eyes closed or open, we see things that have

little to do with the outside world: swirling, colorful, geometric cloud

patterns, or well-formed images of both animate and inanimate objects, in

various conditions of motion or activity.

Sounds are softer or louder, harsher or gentler. We hear new rhythms in

the wind. Singing or mechanical sounds appear in a previously silent

environment.

The skin is more or less sensitive to touch. Our ability to taste and smell

becomes more or less acute.

Our emotions overflow or dry up. Anxiety or fear, pleasure or relaxation,

all feelings wax and wane, overpoweringly intense or frustratingly absent.

At the extremes lie terror or ecstasy. Two opposite feelings may exist

together at the same time. Emotional conflicts become more painful, or a

new emotional acceptance takes place. We have a new appreciation of how

others feel, or no longer care about them at all.

Our thinking processes speed up or slow down. Thoughts themselves

become confused or clearer. We notice the absence of thoughts, or it is

impossible to contain the flood of new ideas. Fresh insights about problems

come, or we become hopelessly stuck in a mental rut. The significance of

things takes on more importance than the things themselves. Time

collapses: in the blink of an eye, two hours pass. Or time expands: a minute

contains a never-ending march of sensations and ideas.

Our bodies are hot or cold, heavy or light; our limbs grow or shrink; we

move upward or downward through space. We feel the body no longer

exists, or that the mind and body have separated.

We feel more or less in control of our “selves.” We experience others

influencing our minds or bodies—in ways that are beneficial or frightening.

The future is ours for the taking, or fate has determined everything and

there is no point in trying.

Psychedelics affect every aspect of our consciousness. It is this unique

consciousness that separates our species from all others below, and that

gives us access to what we consider the divine above. Maybe that’s another

reason why the psychedelics are so frightening and so inspiring: They bend

and stretch the basic pillars, the structure and defining characteristics, of our

human identity.

These are the psychedelic drugs. There exists a complex and rich context

for viewing them, a perspective that few appreciate. They are not new

substances, and we know an enormous amount about them. They ushered in

the modern era of biological psychiatry, and their highly publicized abuse

prematurely ended an extraordinarily rich human research endeavor.

It was into this seething matrix of conflict, ambivalence, and controversy

that I looked for a point of traction and a clear line of sight in order to

formulate my own research agenda. Where could I get a toehold? In which

direction should I look? I needed a key with which to open the lock keeping

psychedelic research buried.

Out of this virtual swamp emerged one small obscure molecule: DMT. Its

call was one I could not ignore, even though I had little idea of how I might

get to it. Nor could I possibly expect where it would lead me once I found

it.

What DMT Is

N, N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, is the remarkable main character of this

book. While chemically simple, this “spirit” molecule provides our

consciousness access to the most amazing and unexpected visions,

thoughts, and feelings. It throws open the door to worlds beyond our

imagination.

DMT exists in all of our bodies and occurs throughout the plant and

animal kingdoms. It is a part of the normal makeup of humans and other

mammals; marine animals; grasses and peas; toads and frogs; mushrooms

and molds; and barks, flowers, and roots.

Psychedelic alchemist Alexander Shulgin devotes an entire chapter to

DMT in TIHKAL: Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved. He aptly entitles

this chapter “DMT Is Everywhere” and declares: “DMT is . . . in this flower

here, in that tree over there, and in yonder animal. [It] is, most simply,

almost everywhere you choose to look.” Indeed, it is getting to the point

where one should report where DMT is not found, rather than where it is.1

DMT is most abundant in plants of Latin America. There, humans have

known of its amazing properties for some tens of thousands of years.

However, it is only in the last 150 years that we have gained some inkling

of the antiquity of DMT’s relationship with our species.

Beginning in the mid-1800s, explorers of the Amazon, particularly

Richard Spruce from England and Alexander von Humboldt from Germany,

described the effects of exotic mind-altering snuffs and brews prepared

from plants by indigenous tribes. In the twentieth century, the American

botanist Richard Schultes continued this dangerous yet exciting line of

fieldwork. Especially striking were the effects of, and the manner of

administering, the psychoactive snuffs.

Latin American indigenous tribes continue to use these snuffs and have

given them many names, including yopo, epena, and jurema. They take

huge doses, sometimes an ounce or more. One dramatic technique is for

one’s snuffing partner to blow the powdery mixtures with considerable

force through a tube or pipe into the other’s nose. The energy of the blast

may be sufficient to drop the recipient to the ground.

Spruce and von Humboldt reported that natives were immediately

incapacitated by these psychedelic snuffs. Neither, however, went so far as

to see for themselves what they were like. It was enough to watch the

intoxicated Indians, twitching, vomiting, and babbling incoherently. These

early explorers heard tales of fantastic visions, “out-of-body travel,”

predictions of the future, location of lost objects, and contact with dead

ancestors or other disembodied entities.

Another plant mixture, this one consumed as a beverage, seemed to

produce similar effects at a slower pace. This brew also went by several

names, including ayahuasca and yagé. This drink inspired much rock art

and paintings drawn on the walls of native shelters—what would be called

“psychedelic” art today.

Spruce and von Humboldt brought samples of these New World

psychedelic plants back home to Europe. There the plants lay undisturbed

for decades, as neither the interest nor the technology existed for further

analysis of their chemical makeup or effects.

While psychedelic plants languished in natural history museum archives,

Canadian chemist R. Manske, in unrelated research, synthesized a new drug

called N,N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. As he described in a 1931

scientific article, Manske had made several compounds derived by

chemically modifying tryptamine. He was interested in these products

because they occurred in a toxic North American plant, the strawberry

shrub. DMT was one of these.2

As far as anyone knows, Manske made DMT, noted its structure, and

then placed his supply in some isolated corner of his laboratory, where it

quietly collected dust. No one yet knew about DMT’s existence in

mindaltering plants, its psychedelic properties, or its presence in the human

body. There was little interest in psychedelics in scientific circles until

decades later, after World War II.

In the early 1950s, the discoveries of LSD and serotonin rocked the staid

foundations of Freudian psychiatry and laid the groundwork for the new

world of neuroscience. Curiosity about psychedelic drugs was intense

among the growing circle of scientists who called themselves

“psychopharmacologists.” Chemists began probing the barks, leaves, and

seeds of plants first described as psychedelic a hundred years earlier,

seeking their active ingredients. The tryptamine family was a logical place

to focus, as both serotonin and LSD are tryptamines.

Success was not long in coming. In 1946, O. Gonçalves isolated DMT

from a South American tree used for psychedelic snuffs and published his

findings in Spanish. In 1955, M. S. Fish, N. M. Johnson, and E. C. Horning

published the first English-language paper describing DMT’s presence in

another closely related snuff-producing tree. However, although they knew

that DMT was a constituent of plants that produced psychedelic effects,

scientists didn’t know if DMT itself was psychoactive.3

In the 1950s, Hungarian chemist and psychiatrist Stephen Szára read

about the profoundly mind-altering effects of LSD and mescaline. He

ordered some LSD from Sandoz Laboratories so he could begin his own

studies into the chemistry of consciousness. Since Szára was behind the

Iron Curtain, the Swiss drug company was unwilling to risk letting their

powerful LSD falling into Communist hands, and they turned down his

request. Undaunted, he looked up recent papers describing DMT’s presence

in psychedelic Amazonian snuffs. He then synthesized some DMT in his

Budapest laboratory in 1955.

Szára swallowed ever-increasing doses of DMT, but felt nothing. He tried

taking up to one full gram, hundreds of thousands of times more than an

active dose of LSD. He wondered whether something in his gastrointestinal

system was preventing oral DMT from working. Maybe it needed to be

injected. His hunch predated the later discovery that there is a mechanism in

the gut that breaks down oral DMT as quickly as it is swallowed—a

mechanism South American natives found a way to bypass thousands of

years ago.

In the spirit of “who goes first,” Szára gave himself an intramuscular, or

IM, injection of DMT in 1956. In this case, he used about half of what we

now know to be a “full” dose:

In three or four minutes I started to experience visual sensations that

were very similar to what I had read in descriptions by Hofmann [about

LSD] and Huxley [about mescaline]. . . . I got very, very excited. It was

obvious this was the secret.4

After later doubling the dose, he had this to say:

[Physical] symptoms appeared, such as a tingling sensation, trembling,

slight nausea, [widening of the pupils], elevation of the blood pressure and

increase of the pulse rate. At the same time, eidetic phenomena [after-

images or “trails” of visually perceived objects], optical illusions, pseudo-

hallucinations, and later real hallucinations appeared. The hallucinations

consisted of moving, brilliantly colored oriental motifs, and later I saw

wonderful scenes altering very rapidly. The faces of the people seemed to be

masks. My emotional state was elevated sometimes up to euphoria. My

consciousness was completely filled by hallucinations, and my attention

was firmly bound to them; therefore I could not give an account of the

events happening around me. After 45 minutes to 1 hour the symptoms

disappeared, and I was able to describe what had happened.5

Szára quickly recruited thirty volunteers, mostly young Hungarian

physician colleagues. They all received full psychedelic doses.6

One male physician reported:

The whole world is brilliant. . . . The whole room is filled with spirits. It

makes me dizzy. . . . Now it is too much! . . . I feel exactly as if I were flying.

. . . I have the feeling that this is above everything, above the earth.

It is comforting to know I am back on earth again. . . . Everything has a

spiritual tinge but is so real. . . . I feel that I have landed. . . .

A female physician stated:

How simple everything is. . . . In front of me are two quiet, sunlit Gods. . .

. I think they are welcoming me into this new world. There is a deep silence

as in the desert. . . . I am finally at home. . . . Dangerous game; it would be

so easy not to return. I am faintly aware that I am a doctor, but this is not

important; family ties, studies, plans, and memories are very remote from

me. Only this world is important; I am free and utterly alone.

The Western world had discovered DMT, and DMT had entered into its

consciousness.

Despite the occasional bad trip among his volunteers, Szára liked the short-

acting DMT. It was relatively easy to use, fully psychedelic, and

experiments could be done in just a few hours. After escaping Hungary with

his DMT supply in the late 1950s, he met a Berlin colleague who enrolled

him in an LSD study. Finally Szára could try this fabled psychedelic. While

he found the effects interesting, its twelve-hour duration was too long for

his liking.

Upon emigrating to the United States, Szára’s primary research interest

continued to be DMT. It served him well in his new job at the National

Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where he worked for over three

decades. He served as the Director of Preclinical Research at the National

Institute on Drug Abuse for many years before retiring in 1991.

Other groups confirmed and expanded Szára’s discovery that DMT must be

injected to work. However, it is surprising how little detailed information

researchers other than Szára gave regarding its psychological properties.

For example, after Szára left Hungary, his former laboratory reported

only that DMT in normal volunteers caused “a [psychotic] state . . .

dominated by colored hallucinations, loss of time and space reality,

euphoria, some delusional experiences and sometimes by anxiety and

clouding of consciousness.”7

One of the busiest American centers for human psychedelic research was

the Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. There, men

serving prison sentences for narcotic law violations received dozens of

mind-altering drugs, hoping their research participation might lead to more

favorable treatment. However, all we read about the effects of DMT in

these studies is that “the mental effects consisted of anxiety, hallucinations

(usually visual) and perceptual distortions.”8

Even less revealing were studies at the U.S. National Institute of Mental

Health. Here, a group of research subjects with experience using

psychedelics needed only to provide a number indicating “how high” they

were on a full dose of DMT. The authors do comment, however, that most

of these seasoned volunteers were “higher than they had ever been.”9

The “psychedelic subculture” discovered DMT soon after the research

community did, but the earliest reports of its effects earned it the title of a

“terror drug.” William Burroughs, author of The Naked Lunch, was one of

the earliest field users of DMT. Burroughs’s and his British colleagues’

encounters with it were unpleasant. Leary relates Burroughs’s tale of a

psychiatrist and his friend who injected DMT together in a London

apartment. The friend began panicking and, to the psychiatrist, appeared to

transform into a “writhing, wiggling reptile.” “The doctor’s dilemma: where

to make an intravenous injection [of an antidote] in a squirming,

orientalmartian snake?”10 This is as good an example of the power of a

negative set and setting as there is: two people high on injected DMT in a

seedy flat at the same time, one being responsible for the other. “Terror”

drug, indeed.

It was difficult for DMT to shake its frightening reputation, even after

Leary’s later positive descriptions of its effects. DMT did see some

popularity among those who appreciated its short duration. Some bold

individuals thought it possible to take DMT during lunch, and so it gained

the dubious nickname, “businessman’s trip.”11

Despite Szára’s and others’ steady production of research papers about

DMT, it remained mostly a pharmacological curiosity: intense, short-lived,

and found in plants. Clearly, LSD had a leg up on DMT when it came to

making a significant impression on the psychiatric research community.

This all changed, however, when researchers discovered DMT in the brains

of mice and rats, and then uncovered the pathways by which these animals’

bodies made this powerful psychedelic.

Did DMT exist in the human body? It seemed likely, because scientists

had discovered DMT-forming enzymes in samples of human lung tissue

while searching for those same enzymes in other animals.

The race was on. In 1965 a research team from Germany published a

paper in the flagship British science journal Nature announcing that they

had isolated DMT from human blood. In 1972 Nobel-prize winning

scientist Julius Axelrod of the U.S. National Institutes of Health reported

finding it in human brain tissue. Additional research showed that DMT

could also be found in human urine and the cerebrospinal fluid bathing the

brain. It was not long before scientists discovered the pathways, similar to

those in lower animals, by which the human body made DMT. DMT thus

became the first endogenous human psychedelic.12

Endogenous means that a compound is made in the body: endo, “within,”

and genous, “generated” or “formed.” Endogenous DMT, then, is DMT

made within the body. There are other endogenous compounds with which

we’ve become familiar over the years. For example, endo-genous

morphine-like compounds are endorphins.

However, the discovery of DMT in the human body stimulated much less

fanfare than did that of endorphins. As we will see later in this chapter, anti-

psychedelic-drug sentiment sweeping the country at the time actually turned

researchers against studying endogenous DMT. The discoverers of

endorphins, in contrast, won Nobel Prizes.

The crucial question then naturally arose: “What is DMT doing in our

bodies?”

Psychiatry’s answer was: “Perhaps it causes mental illness.”

This reply was reasonable, considering psychiatry’s mandate to

understand and treat serious psychopathology. However, it fell short of all

the other possible scientifically meritorious answers. By limiting

themselves to investigating DMT’s role in psychosis, scientists lost a unique

opportunity to probe deeper into the mysteries of consciousness.

Scientists believed that LSD and other “psychotomimetics” induced a

short-term “model psychosis” in normal volunteers. They thought that by

finding an “endogenous psychotomimetic,” the cause of, and potential cures

for, serious mental illnesses might be at hand. DMT, as the first known

endogenous psychotomimetic, suggested the search might be over. For

example, one could give DMT to normal volunteers to induce psychosis,

and eventually develop new medications to block its effects in them.

Subsequently, psychiatric patients would receive this “anti-DMT.” If

excessive naturally produced DMT was causing the patient’s psychosis, this

anti-DMT would have antipsychotic effects.

These DMT investigations just were getting up to speed when, in 1970,

Congress passed the law placing it and other psychedelics into a highly

restricted legal category. It became nearly impossible to conduct any new

human DMT research. Soon after, in 1976, a paper published by scientists

at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, or NIMH, tolled the death

knell for human DMT studies. The authors were topflight researchers,

several of whom had given DMT to humans. They correctly concluded that

the evidence relating DMT to schizophrenia was complex and uncertain.

However, rather than suggesting more refined and careful research into the

areas of disagreement, the authors concluded:

Like any good scientific theory, the DMT model of schizophrenia will

ultimately live or die by the data that it heuristically generates. We

hope that, within the foreseeable future, forthcoming data will give this

theory either a new lease on life or a decent burial.13

This “decent burial” came soon enough. Within a year or two, the last

paper on human DMT research appeared. Few scientists shed tears to mark

its passing.

Was DMT buried alive by those whose careers and reputations were

endangered by a controversial area of research? The DMT-psychosis field

was no different from any other biological psychiatry research endeavor

investigating complex and uncertain relationships between the mind and

brain. Encouraging its abandonment appears to have been as much

politically as scientifically motivated.

In general, there were two types of studies investigating the DMT-

psychosis theory. One compared blood levels of DMT between ill patients

and normal volunteers. The other study design compared the subjective

effects of psychedelic drugs to those of naturally occurring psychotic states.

The NIMH team that discounted the theory of a DMT-psychosis

relationship, leading to the demise of human DMT research, critiqued both

approaches. They pointed to the lack of consistent differences between

blood levels of DMT in normal volunteers and psychotic patients; they also

rejected claims that the effects of DMT and symptoms of schizophrenia

demonstrated enough similarities to justify additional research.

First, let’s discuss the blood level data. Essentially all DMT studies

measured its concentration in blood drawn from forearm veins. However, it

seems unreasonable to expect these levels to accurately reflect DMT’s

function in extraordinarily small, highly specialized, distinct brain areas.

Finding a close relationship between blood levels and brain effects would

be even less likely if the DMT originated in the brain in the first place.

This difficulty is one that all scientists recognize, even for such well-

known brain chemicals as serotonin. Dozens of studies have failed to

convincingly relate serotonin levels in blood drawn from the forearm to

psychiatric diagnoses with presumed abnormalities in brain serotonin.

Therefore, it was unlikely, using DMT blood levels, that any real

conclusions could be drawn regarding differences between normal and

psychotic individuals. If psychiatric researchers demand such data for all

brain chemicals, where is the call to bury serotonin?

In the case of comparing schizophrenia to DMT intoxication, the case

becomes even murkier. Schizophrenia is a remarkably complex syndrome.

There are several forms, such as “paranoid,” “disorganized,” and

“undifferentiated.” There are many stages, including “early,” “acute,”

“late,” and “chronic.” There are even “prodromal” symptoms that exist

before the illness becomes severe enough to diagnose. In addition,

symptoms of schizophrenia develop over months and years, and individuals

modify their behavior to deal with their unusual experiences. These

adaptations in turn create new symptoms and behaviors.

To expect a single drug given one time to a normal person to mimic

schizophrenia is not reasonable. No one today contends that this is possible.

Rather, the consensus even then was that the syndromes of psychedelic drug

intoxication and schizophrenia possessed significant overlap. Hallucinations

and other sensory distortions, altered thought processes, extreme and rapid

shifts in mood, disturbances in the sense of bodily and personal identity—

all these may occur in some cases of schizophrenia and psychedelic states.

In psychiatry, there are always both similarities and differences between

the diseases we seek to understand and the models we use to study them.

We are always in search of better models, but we use the ones we have,

keeping in mind their shortcomings. The NIMH group’s rejection of DMT

effects as producing a “valid” psychotic state was not consistent with

accepted psychiatric research theory, practice, or the data.14

If the scientific basis for discontinuing human DMT research was so

meager, why, then, was it stopped? What was the meaning behind the “life

and death,” “lease on life,” and “decent burial” rhetoric? The data begged

for further clarification. Instead, these federal scientists distanced

themselves from an extraordinarily promising field and encouraged others

to do the same.

DMT was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rational research into its

function was swept aside by the anti-psychedelic furor that accompanied

these drugs’ uncontrolled use and abuse. This move to limit access to

psychedelic drugs in order to respond to widespread public health fears

affected DMT research in the same way it did research into LSD and other

psychedelics. Political concerns overwhelmed scientific principles.15

Stuck in the quicksand of trying to prove its role in schizophrenia, and

trampled underfoot in the stampede of anti-psychedelic sentiments, no one

studying DMT dared continue asking the most obvious and pressing

question, which the first round of human research had failed to address. It

was a riddle I could not ignore:

“What is DMT doing in our bodies?”

DMT is the simplest of the tryptamine psychedelics. Compared to other

molecules, DMT is rather small. Its weight is 188 “molecular units,”

meaning that it is not significantly larger than glucose, the simplest sugar in

our bodies, which weighs 180, and only ten times heavier than a water

molecule, which weighs 18. By comparison, consider the weight of LSD at

323, or of mescaline at 211.16

DMT is closely related to serotonin, the neurotransmitter that

psychedelics affect so widely. The pharmacology of DMT is similar to that

of other well-known psychedelics. It affects receptor sites for serotonin in

much the same way that LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline do. These

serotonin receptors are widespread throughout the body and can be found in

blood vessels, muscle, glands, and skin.

However, the brain is where DMT exerts its most interesting effects.

There, sites rich in these DMT-sensitive serotonin receptors are involved in

mood, perception, and thought. Although the brain denies access to most

drugs and chemicals, it takes a particular and remarkable fancy to DMT. It

is not stretching the truth to suggest that the brain “hungers” for it.

The brain is a highly sensitive organ, especially susceptible to toxins and

metabolic imbalances. A nearly impenetrable shield, the blood-brain barrier,

prevents unwelcome agents from leaving the blood and crossing the

capillary walls into the brain tissue. This defense extends even to keeping

out the complex carbohydrates and fats that other tissues use for energy.

The brain burns instead only the purest form of fuel: simple sugar, or

glucose.

However, a few essential molecules undergo “active transport” across the

blood-brain barrier. Little specialized carrier molecules ferry them into the

brain, a process that requires a significant amount of precious energy. In

most cases, it is obvious why the brain actively transports particular

compounds into its hallowed ground; amino acids required for maintaining

brain proteins, for example, are allowed in.

Twenty-five years ago, Japanese scientists discovered that the brain

actively transports DMT across the blood-brain barrier into its tissues. I

know of no other psychedelic drug that the brain treats with such eagerness.

This is a startling fact that we should keep in mind when we recall how

readily biological psychiatrists dismissed a vital role for DMT in our lives.

If DMT were only an insignificant, irrelevant by-product of our

metabolism, why does the brain go out of its way to draw it into its

confines?17

Once the body produces or takes in DMT, certain enzymes break it down

within seconds. These enzymes, called monoamine oxidases (MAO), occur

in high concentrations in the blood, liver, stomach, brain, and intestines.

The widespread presence of MAO is why DMT effects are so short-lived.

Whenever and wherever it appears, the body makes sure it is used up

quickly.18

In a way, DMT is “brain food,” treated in a manner similar to how the

brain handles glucose, its precious fuel source. It is part of a “high

turnover” system: quick in, quick used. The brain actively transports DMT

across its defense system and just as rapidly breaks it down. It is as if DMT

is necessary for maintaining normal brain function. It is only when levels

get too high for “normal” function that we start undergoing unusual

experiences.

Now that we have reviewed the history and science behind DMT, let’s

return to the most pressing question, one that no one has adequately

answered: “What is DMT doing in our bodies?” More specifically, let’s ask,

“Why do we make DMT in our bodies?”

My answer is: “Because it is the spirit molecule.”

What, then, is a spirit molecule? What must it do, and how might it do it?

Why is DMT the prime candidate?

Visionary artist Alex Grey has sketched an inspiring rendition of the

DMT molecule. Alex’s art helped me begin thinking about these questions

much more clearly. Let’s look at it carefully and consider how it reflects the

necessary properties of such a chemical.

A spirit molecule needs to elicit, with reasonable reliability, certain

psychological states we consider “spiritual.” These are feelings of

extraordinary joy, timelessness, and a certainty that what we are

experiencing is “more real than real.” Such a substance may lead us to an

acceptance of the coexistence of opposites, such as life and death, good and

evil; a knowledge that consciousness continues after death; a deep

understanding of the basic unity of all phenomena; and a sense of wisdom

or love pervading all existence.

A spirit molecule also leads us to spiritual realms. These worlds usually

are invisible to us and our instruments and are not accessible using our

normal state of consciousness. However, just as likely as the theory that

these worlds exist “only in our minds” is that they are, in reality, “outside”

of us and freestanding. If we simply change our brain’s receiving abilities,

we can apprehend and interact with them.

Furthermore, keep in mind that a spirit molecule is not spiritual in and of

itself. It is a tool, or a vehicle. Think of it as a tugboat, a chariot, a scout on

horseback, something to which we can hitch our consciousness. It pulls us

into worlds known only to itself. We need to hold on tight, and we must be

prepared, for spiritual realms include both heaven and hell, both fantasy and

nightmare. While the spirit molecule’s role may seem angelic, there is no

guarantee it will not take us to the demonic.

Why is DMT so attractive a candidate for being the spirit molecule?

Its effects are extraordinarily and fully psychedelic. We have read some

of the earliest reports of these properties from unprepared and unsuspecting

research subjects who participated in the first clinical studies in the 1950s

and 1960s. We will read much more about how truly mindboggling are

DMT’s effects in our own very experienced and well-prepared volunteers.

Equally important is that DMT occurs in our bodies. We produce it

naturally. Our brain seeks it out, pulls it in, and readily digests it. As an

endogenous psychedelic, DMT may be involved in naturally occurring

psychedelic states that have nothing to do with taking drugs, but whose

similarities to drug-induced conditions are striking. While these states

certainly can include psychosis, we must also include in our discussion

conditions outside of mental illness. It may be upon endogenous DMT’s

wings that we experience other life-changing states of mind associated with

birth, death, and near-death, entity or alien contact experiences, and

mystical/spiritual consciousness. These we will explore in much greater

detail later.

In this chapter, we’ve learned the “what” about DMT. We now need to turn

our attention to the “how” and “where.” We have prepared the groundwork

into which we may now introduce the mysterious pineal gland. In its role as

a potential “spirit gland,” or producer of endogenous DMT, the pineal is the

topic of our next two chapters. We’ll also start investigating the

circumstances under which our bodies might make psychedelic amounts of

DMT.

The Pineal: Meet the Spirit Gland

One of my deepest motivations behind the DMT research was the search

for a biological basis of spiritual experience. Much of what I had learned

over the years made me wonder if the pineal gland produced DMT during

mystical states and other naturally occurring, psychedelic-like experiences.

These are ideas I developed before performing the New Mexico research. In

chapter 21, I enlarge these hypotheses to incorporate what we discovered

during the experiments themselves. In this chapter I will review what we

know about the pineal gland.

In the next, I will elaborate upon these data to suggest conditions in

which the pineal, in its role as a possible spirit gland, might make mind-

altering amounts of endogenous DMT.

As a Stanford University undergraduate in the early 1970s I performed

laboratory research on the development of the fetal chicken nervous system.

I was curious about how a single fertilized cell could result in a fully grown

and functioning organism. This was an exciting research field, and I wanted

to see how I liked laboratory science. Less nobly, I also believed a research

elective would help my chances of getting into medical school.

Despite the passion I had for this research, I felt guilty about killing fetal

chicks. I had nightmares of chickens chasing me through vague and

menacing landscapes. In these dreams, I escaped by lifting myself onto my

mother’s washing machine!

It also did not seem as if laboratory science would provide me the

opportunity to study the topics with which I was increasingly fascinated.

While at Stanford, I took classes on sleep and dreams, hypnosis, the

psychology of consciousness, physiological psychology, and Buddhism—

all cutting-edge material in California universities in those days.

Wanting to sort things out, I went to the student health service and talked

with one of their psychiatrists. He recommended I meet James Fadiman,

Ph.D., a psychologist who worked at Stanford’s School of Engineering.

I called Jim’s secretary, set up an appointment to meet him, and got the

confusing directions to the “engineering corner” of the university. After

finding my way out of a few wrong turns and blind alleys, I found Jim’s

office. He sat with his back to the window, the sun streaming in. I couldn’t

see him very clearly due to the glare. The halo effect around his head added

to my already moderate anxiety. I knew this would be an important

meeting.

To deal with my own nervousness, I began the conversation and asked

him what he, a psychologist, was doing in the engineering department. He

chuckled and replied, “I teach engineers how to think. They’re smart, no

doubt about that, but can they really solve problems imaginatively? How do

they approach the creative process? I help them look at situations from

different perspectives.”

Little did I know that Jim had worked with Willis Harman, who was

administering psychedelic drugs in an attempt to enhance creativity, at a

nearby research institute. The published results of this work, over thirty

years old, remains the only such data in the literature and showed great

potential for stimulating the creative process. I wonder how many of the

Stanford engineering students he supervised were in those studies!1

Jim leaned forward, and the blinding glare from the sun worsened. He

asked, “And what are you doing here?”

I told him. My ideas were poorly formed. I was fascinated by

psychedelics. I had just started practicing Transcendental Meditation. My

coursework was leading me into some very interesting fields. There seemed

to be a thread running through it all, but what was it? Where could I look

for a unifying factor?

Jim sat back and looked thoughtful, or so it seemed—his face was nearly

invisible because of the sun’s rays behind him. “You ought to look into the

pineal gland,” he said at last. “My wife Dorothy is making a film about the

experience of inner light described by mystics. The pineal gland is drawing

her in as the metaphysical source of this light, the crowning achievement of

many traditions. Maybe it really does generate that light inside our heads.”

“How do you spell ‘pineal’?” I asked, taking notes.

We chatted a little more about my plans after graduation. Our brief

meeting ended.

Building upon Jim’s advice, I began investigating what was known about

the pineal gland, a tiny organ situated in the middle of the brain. I wrote

several papers for classes that school year that began to lay out the broad

framework for the theories I later developed.2

Western and Eastern mystical traditions are replete with descriptions of a

blinding bright white light accompanying deep spiritual realization. This

“enlightenment” usually is the result of a progression of consciousness

through various levels of spiritual, psychological, and ethical development.

All mystical traditions describe the process and its stages.

In Judaism, for example, consciousness moves through the sefirot, or

Kabbalistic centers of spiritual development, the highest being Keter, or

Crown. In the Eastern Ayurvedic tradition, these centers are called chakras,

and particular experiences likewise accompany the movement of energy

through them. The highest chakra is also called the Crown, or the

Thousand-Petaled Lotus. In both traditions, the location of this Crown

sefira or chakra is the center and top of the skull, anatomically

corresponding to the human pineal gland.3

We first read about the physical pineal gland in the writings of

Herophilus, a third-century B.C. Greek physician from the time of

Alexander the Great. Its name comes from the Latin pineus, relating to the

pine, pinus. This little organ is thus piniform, or shaped like a pinecone, no

bigger than the nail of your pinkie finger.

The pineal gland is unique in its solitary status within the brain. All other

brain sites are paired, meaning that they have left and right counterparts; for

example, there are left and right frontal lobes and left and right temporal

lobes. As the only unpaired organ deep within the brain, the pineal gland

remained an anatomical curiosity for nearly two thousand years. No one in

the West had any idea what its function was.

Interest in the pineal accelerated after it attracted Rene Descartes’s

attention. This seventeenth-century French philosopher and mathematician,

who said, “I think, therefore I am,” needed a source for those thoughts.

Introspection showed him that it was possible to think only one thought at a

time. From where in the brain might these unpaired, solitary thoughts arise?

Descartes proposed that the pineal, the only singleton organ of the brain,

generated thoughts. In addition, Descartes believed the pineal’s location,

directly above one of the crucial byways for the cerebrospinal fluid, made

this function even more likely.

The ventricles, hollow cavities deep within the brain, produce

cerebrospinal fluid. This clear, salty, protein-rich fluid provides cushioning

for the brain, protecting it from sudden jolts and bumps. It also carries

nutrients to, and waste products away from, deep brain tissue.

In Descartes’s time, the ebb and flow of the cerebrospinal fluid through

the ventricles seemed perfectly suited for the corresponding movement of

thoughts. If the pineal gland “secreted” thoughts into the cerebrospinal

fluid, what better means for the “stream of consciousness” to make its way

to the rest of the brain?4

Descartes also had a deeply spiritual side. He believed that thinking, or

the human imagination, was basically a spiritual phenomenon made

possible by our divine nature, what we share with God. That is, our

thoughts are expressions of, and proof for the existence of, our soul.

Descartes believed that the pineal gland played an essential role in the

expression of the soul:

Although the soul is joined with the entire body, there is one part of the

body [the pineal] in which it exercises its function more than

elsewhere. . . . [The pineal] is so suspended between the passages

containing the animal spirits [guiding reason and carrying sensation

and movement] that it can be moved by them . . . ; and it carries this

motion on to the soul. . . . Then conversely, the bodily machine is so

constituted that whenever the gland is moved in one way or another by

the soul, or for that matter by any other cause, it pushes the animal

spirits which surround it to the pores of the brain.5

Descartes thus proposed that the pineal gland somehow was the “seat of

the soul,” the intermediary between the spiritual and physical. The body and

the spirit met there, each affecting the other, and the repercussions extended

in both directions.

How close to the truth was Descartes? What do we know now about the

biology of the pineal gland? Can we relate this biology to the nature of

spirit?

The pineal gland of evolutionarily older animals, such as lizards and

amphibians, is also called the “third” eye. Just like the two seeing eyes, the

third eye possesses a lens, cornea, and retina. It is light-sensitive and helps

regulate body temperature and skin coloration—two basic survival

functions intimately related to environmental light. Melatonin, the primary

pineal hormone, is present in primitive pineal glands.

As animals climbed the evolutionary ladder, the pineal moved inward,

deeper into the brain, more hidden and removed from outside influences.

While the bird pineal no longer sits on top of the skull, it remains sensitive

to outside light because of the paper-thin surrounding bones. The

mammalian, including human, pineal is buried even deeper in the brain’s

recesses and is not directly sensitive to light, at least in adults.6 It is

interesting to speculate that as the pineal assumes a more “spiritual” role, it

needs the greater protection from the environment afforded by such deep

placement in the skull.

The human pineal gland becomes visible in the developing fetus at seven

weeks, or forty-nine days, after conception. Of great interest to me was

finding out that this is nearly exactly the moment in which one can clearly

see the first indication of male or female gender. Before this time, the sex of

the fetus is indeterminate, or unknown. Thus, the pineal gland and the most

important differentiation of humanity, male and female gender, appear at the

same time.

The human pineal gland is not actually part of the brain. Rather, it

develops from specialized tissues in the roof of the fetal mouth. From there

it migrates to the center of the brain, where it seems to have the best seat in

the house.

We have already noted the pineal’s proximity to cerebrospinal fluid

channels, which allows its secretions easy access to the brain’s deepest

recesses. Additionally, it sits in strategic closeness to the crucial emotional

and sensory brain centers.

These sensory or perceptual hubs are called the visual and auditory

colliculi, little mounds of specialized brain tissue. They are relay stations

for the transmission of sense data to brain sites involved in their registration

and interpretation. That is, electrical and chemical impulses that begin in

the eyes and ears must pass through the colliculi before we experience them

in our minds as sights and sounds. The pineal gland hangs directly over

these colliculi, separated by only a narrow channel of cerebrospinal fluid.

Anything secreted by the pineal into that fluid would settle onto the

colliculi in a moment.

In addition, the limbic, or “emotional,” brain surrounds the tiny pineal.

The limbic “system” is a collection of brain structures intimately involved

in the experience of feelings, such as joy, rage, fear, anxiety, and pleasure.

Therefore, the pineal also has direct access to the brain’s emotional centers.

For many years physiologists considered the mammalian pineal gland the

equivalent of the “brain’s appendix.” It was a residual, vestigial organ, a

throwback to our early reptilian days, with no known role. That changed

when American dermatologist Aaron Lerner discovered melatonin in 1958.

This and related findings began what might be called the era of the

“melatonin hypothesis of pineal function.”

Lerner was interested in vitiligo, a skin disorder in which there are

depigmented, or lightened, patches of skin throughout the body. A 1917

study observed that cow pineal gland extract lightened frog skin. Lerner

thought that a pineal factor therefore was involved in vitiligo. He ground up

over twelve thousand cow pineals and finally found the skin-lightening

compound. He named it melatonin because it lightened skin by contracting

the black pigment in special cells: melas, black; and tonin, contract or

squeeze. (Despite all of Lerner’s work, there is little evidence today that

melatonin plays a role in vitiligo.)7

At the same time, scientists were manipulating light and dark cycles in

order to better understand the effect of light on reproduction, no small issue

when one considers the economic value of well-timed animal breeding for

the livestock industry. They found that constant darkness blocked

reproductive function and shrank the sexual organs; it also stimulated pineal

growth and the production of melatonin. On the other hand, constant light

shrank the pineal, reduced melatonin levels, and turned on sexual function.

Using these experimental results, scientists concluded that melatonin was

the crucial pineal factor in whose presence reproductive function flagged,

and in whose absence reproductive function flourished. Put simply,

melatonin possessed powerful anti-reproductive effects.8

Now that the pineal gland had lost some of its mystery, how did melatonin

relate to the alleged spiritual properties of the gland? I firmly believed that

there was a spirit molecule somewhere in the brain, initiating or supporting

mystical and other naturally occurring altered states of consciousness. My

first best guess was that pineal melatonin was this “spirit molecule,” the

chemical interpreter through which the body and spirit met and

communicated. If melatonin had profound psychedelic properties, my

search for the vehicle by which the pineal affected our spiritual lives was

over.

Melatonin’s full name is N-acetyl-5-methoxy-tryptamine. We can tell by

its name and structure that, like DMT and 5-methoxy-DMT, melatonin is a

tryptamine.

We have a good understanding of how the body regulates melatonin

production. It is the “hormone of darkness.” Light turns off melatonin

production, both during daylight hours and in the presence of artificial light

during nighttime hours. The longer the nighttime dark hours, the more

melatonin. The greater the daylight hours, the less melatonin. Besides

indicating whether it is day or night, the patterns of melatonin production

also inform the animal about the time of year. These longerterm melatonin

effects help prepare for the appropriate seasonal responses—pregnancy in

spring or fall, hibernation during the winter, or fat loss in summer.

Noradrenaline and adrenaline (or norepinephrine and epinephrine) are the

two neurotransmitters that turn on melatonin synthesis in the pineal. They

are released directly onto the pineal gland by nerve cells that almost touch

it. The neurotransmitters attach to specialized receptors, which then begin

the chemical process of melatonin formation.

The adrenal glands also make adrenaline and noradrenaline, releasing

them into the bloodstream in response to stress. They are crucial factors in

the body’s reaction to danger: the “fight-or-flight” response. However, only

adrenaline and noradrenaline released by nearby pineal nerve endings, not

by the adrenal glands, have any effect on pineal function.

This is not what we would expect. Since the pineal gland does not

originate from brain tissue, it exists outside the blood-brain barrier and

ought to be responsive to blood-borne chemicals and drugs. Nevertheless,

the body protects the pineal gland with a fierce tenacity. The stress-related

surges of adrenal-gland adrenaline and noradrenaline secreted into the

blood never get to the pineal. The pineal security system, made up of

“vacuuming” nerve cells, simply cleans up the blood-borne adrenaline and

noradrenaline in an incredibly efficient manner. Not surprisingly, this

barrier makes it nearly impossible to stimulate the pineal gland to produce

melatonin during the day.

Tiny blood vessels surround the pineal, so once it makes melatonin, the

hormone quickly enters the bloodstream and spreads throughout the body.

The pineal also secretes melatonin directly into the cerebrospinal fluid,

where it can affect the brain even more quickly.

The function of melatonin in humans is uncertain, despite major

advances in our understanding of its effects in other animals. There is great

interest in determining whether melatonin has the same effects on

reproductive function in humans as it does in other mammals. Melatonin

levels fall dramatically at human puberty. Some investigators think this may

allow the sexual apparatus to free itself from pineal restraint and thus begin

functioning in an adult manner. Conclusive evidence remains elusive.

Neither is it scientifically established that melatonin plays a role in jet lag,

winter depression, sleep, cancer, or aging.9

For any chemical to qualify as a spirit molecule, it must at least possess

psychedelic effects. Does melatonin’s striking chemical similarity to DMT

and 5-methoxy-DMT mean that it also is profoundly psychoactive?

Some early studies suggested that melatonin has mind-altering properties.

For example, administering high doses before bedtime seemed to induce

vivid dreams. However, it is difficult to interpret those older studies. They

were not looking for, nor did they measure, psychedelic effects of

melatonin. There was only one way for me to find out if melatonin was

psychedelic, and that was to administer it to my own human volunteers.

After completing my psychiatric residency, I spent a year in Fairbanks,

Alaska, working at the local community mental health center. My

experience in the Arctic introduced me to the new field of “winter

depression.” This syndrome revitalized interest in the human biology of the

pineal gland and melatonin. Research into their role in winter depression

held promise for helping us understand and treat a wide range of seasonal

human syndromes. This astonishing coincidence provided me a context for

beginning to probe the pineal’s mysteries. However, I knew little about

human research, so I sought ways to further my training.

I moved to San Diego to take up a year-long fellowship in clinical

psychopharmacology research at the University of California. I learned how

to write scientific proposals and grants, design experiments, and administer

research drugs in a clinical environment. I gave and scored rating scales,

collected blood and other biological samples, and analyzed and wrote up

data.

Following a San Diego colleague, Jonathan Lisansky, M.D., to

Albuquerque, I began working under the guidance of Glenn Peake, M.D., a

pediatric endocrinologist. Glenn was the Scientific Director of the

University of New Mexico’s General Clinical Research Center, an

outstanding research site funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Glenn, Jonathan, and I performed a comprehensive three-year study of

melatonin effects in normal human volunteers. Out of this emerged the first,

and so far only, documented role for melatonin in human physiology:

melatonin contributes to the early morning drop in body temperature.

There is a daily rhythm in many biological functions in humans. One of

the most robust is body temperature, in which there is a sharp dip at 3 A.M.

This also is when melatonin levels are highest.

We studied nineteen male volunteers who stayed awake all night in light

that was bright enough to prevent any melatonin formation. The drop in

body temperature was not nearly as deep as normal in these melatonin-

deprived men, and we wondered if the lack of melatonin was responsible.

Administering melatonin back to the volunteers caused body temperature to

fall in a typical manner. From these results, we proposed that melatonin

plays a major role in the early morning temperature drop found in all of

us.10

Most important to me were results from several rating scales that measured

the psychological properties of melatonin. My reading led me to hope for

some profound mind-altering effects of this pineal product. However, we

found that melatonin produced little more than sedation and relaxation.

I was disappointed by the lack of significant mind-altering effects of

melatonin. So, toward the end of this project, when I got a call late one

night from the research unit telling me that one of our volunteers

accidentally received about ten times the normal dose of melatonin, it was

difficult to mask my excitement. This might be very interesting. If low

doses of melatonin had such timid effects, this accident might breathe some

life into my pursuit of its psychological properties.

I listened carefully to the research nurse’s description of how the staff

miscalculated the delivery rate of melatonin. It seemed an honest mistake.

In addition, the volunteer’s heart rate and blood pressure were holding up

fine. It was his state of mind, however, that drew most of my concern.

“How’s he doing?” I asked.

“Well,” she yawned, “I’m having an awfully hard time keeping him

awake to fill out his rating scales. He can’t keep his eyes open.”

“He’s not hallucinating or anything?” I offered hopefully.

“No such luck for you, Dr. Strassman,” she laughed in reply.

“No, no, I’m glad he’s fine,” I said, quickly returning to a more

professional tone.

This event, more than any other, convinced me that melatonin was not

psychedelic. However, my reading continued to persuade me that the pineal

gland was the prime site in which to search for a spirit molecule. Let’s turn

to that information, and the ideas that developed while pondering it. In

doing so, we’ll begin to consider a DMT-forming function for the pineal

gland.

The Psychedelic Pineal

Even before I began the melatonin study, my review of the literature

indicated it might not be the spirit molecule. I wondered if the pineal gland

made other compounds with psychedelic properties. However, while still in

the early stages of my career, and well before I began outlining my DMT

project, I quickly discovered how controversial these ideas could be.

In 1982 I undertook a year of clinical psychopharmacology research

training at the University of California in San Diego. While I concentrated

mostly on the relationship between the thyroid gland and mood, I also

learned everything I could about the pineal gland.

One of my teachers was Dr. K., an authority on biological rhythms,

melatonin, and sleep. Halfway through my fellowship training, I decided to

share with him some of my nascent ideas about a psychedelic role for the

pineal. We were walking along one of the innumerable halls of the San

Diego Veterans’ Administration Hospital. Our conversation was rambling

and wide-ranging. There was a pause, and I took the chance.

“Do you think,” I offered, “that the pineal might produce psychedelic

compounds? It seems to have the right ingredients. Maybe it somehow

mediates spontaneous psychedelic types of states—psychosis for example.”

I was hesitant to get much deeper than this and avoided mentioning my

more controversial ideas about the pineal—that it played a role in more

exotic states, such as near-death or mystical experiences.

Dr. K. stopped in his tracks and turned on his heels. His brow furrowed

and he peered at me intently through his glasses. A palpable menace glinted

from his eyes. “Oops,” I thought.

“Let me tell you this, Rick,” he said very slowly and firmly. “The pineal

has nothing to do with psychedelic drugs.”

That was the last time that year I said the words pineal and psychedelic in

the same breath to anyone.

Nevertheless, I continued examining the literature and began developing

some of the theories that inform this book. Further study of other scientists’

work, and the results of my own later melatonin research, added to the body

of evidence upon which I drew in formulating the following proposals.

These hypotheses are not proven, but they derive from scientifically valid

data combined with spiritual and religious observations and teachings.

Many of these ideas are testable using available tools and methods. The

implications of these theories are profound and disturbing but also create a

context of hope and promise.

The most general hypothesis is that the pineal gland produces

psychedelic amounts of DMT at extraordinary times in our lives. Pineal

DMT production is the physical representation of non-material, or

energetic, processes. It provides us with the vehicle to consciously

experience the movement of our life-force in its most extreme

manifestations. Specific examples of this phenomenon are the following:

When our individual life force enters our fetal body, the moment in

which we become truly human, it passes through the pineal and triggers the

first primordial flood of DMT.

Later, at birth, the pineal releases more DMT.

In some of us, pineal DMT mediates the pivotal experiences of deep

meditation, psychosis, and near-death experiences.

As we die, the life-force leaves the body through the pineal gland,

releasing another flood of this psychedelic spirit molecule.

The pineal gland contains the necessary building blocks to make DMT. For

example, it possesses the highest levels of serotonin anywhere in the body,

and serotonin is a crucial precursor for pineal melatonin. The pineal also

has the ability to convert serotonin to tryptamine, a critical step in DMT

formation.

The unique enzymes that convert serotonin, melatonin, or tryptamine into

psychedelic compounds also are present in extraordinarily high

concentrations in the pineal. These enzymes, the methyltransferases, attach

a methyl group—that is, one carbon and three hydrogens—onto other

molecules, thus methylating them. Simply methylate tryptamine twice, and

we have di-methyl-tryptamine, or DMT. Because it possesses the high

levels of the necessary enzymes and precursors, the pineal gland is the most

reasonable place for DMT formation to occur. Surprisingly, no one has

looked for DMT in the pineal.

The pineal gland also makes other potentially mind-altering substances,

the beta-carbolines. These compounds inhibit the breakdown of DMT by

the body’s monoamine oxidases (MAO). One of the most striking examples

of how beta-carbolines work is ayahuasca. Certain plants that contain

betacarbolines are combined with other plants that contain DMT to make

this psychedelic Amazonian brew, which allows the DMT to become orally

active. If it weren’t for the beta-carbolines, MAO in the gut would rapidly

destroy this swallowed DMT, and it would have no effect on our minds.

It is uncertain whether beta-carbolines by themselves are psychedelic.

However, they do markedly enhance the effects of DMT. Thus, the pineal

gland may produce both DMT and chemicals that magnify and prolong its

effects.

Under what circumstances might the pineal gland make DMT instead of the

minimally psychoactive melatonin? For this to happen, there needs to be an

overriding of one or more of the following constraints normally preventing

pineal DMT production:

The cellular security system around the pineal gland;

The presence of an anti-DMT compound in the pineal gland;

The low activity of the methyltransferase enzymes that produce DMT;

and

The efficiency of the monoamine oxidase enzymes’ breakdown of

DMT.

The guiding principle of the first wave of human DMT research was to

compare DMT and schizophrenic states. Therefore, this was the context in

which scientists studied these four different elements of the human DMT

system. From these psychosis studies, we can extract data supporting my

hypotheses about how the pineal may make DMT.

My emphasis on the relationship between DMT and psychosis, therefore,

is not because I believe that this is the only role for endogenous DMT.

Rather, psychosis is the only naturally occurring altered state of

consciousness for which we have any real data. I believe that other

“spontaneous psychedelic” conditions, such as near-death and spiritual

experiences, also share a similar relationship with endogenous DMT. Those

studies, however, have yet to be performed.1

Most likely, the primary factor inhibiting excessive pineal DMT production

is the supremely efficient pineal security system discussed in the last

chapter. The best-known example of this defense is the difficulty we

encounter when trying to stimulate daytime melatonin production.

Adrenaline and noradrenaline, the neurotransmitters that stimulate

nighttime melatonin formation, collectively are called catecholamines.

Nerve cells nearly touching the pineal gland release these catecholamines,

which activate specific receptors on pineal tissue and thus initiate melatonin

synthesis.

The adrenal glands also produce adrenaline and noradrenaline, releasing

them into the bloodstream in response to stress. However, when blood-

borne adrenal catecholamines approach the pineal, the nerve cells around

the pineal immediately take up and dispose of them. Therefore,

circumstances in which adrenal catecholamine release occurs, such as in

times of stress or during exercise, don’t stimulate daytime melatonin

formation.

We performed a research study that demonstrated this quite clearly. Elite

athletes ran a high-altitude marathon, spending much of it above 10,000

feet. We measured melatonin before and after the race. For many of the

runners, this was “nearly” a near-death experience. Yet melatonin levels in

these athletes rose only to those observed at night during normal sleep—

hardly an explosion of brain chemistry! Nevertheless, we did see that it is

possible to override the pineal’s defense shield if the stress is great enough.2

Neuroscientists believe this barrier to pineal activation exists because it

would be problematic for an animal to experience its environment as “dark”

during daylight hours. Since the pineal normally releases melatonin only at

night, daytime melatonin release would “feel” as if it were dark at the

“wrong” time, and the animal would be disoriented.

However, this explanation is weak. Daytime melatonin secretion is hardly

“dangerous” enough to merit such a complex and efficient security system.

Melatonin effects are not immediate, but rather take hours to days to

materialize. In addition, daylight almost instantly suppresses melatonin

production to near zero, returning the system to baseline before any internal

disruptions occur.

However, consider what might happen if stress easily triggered the pineal

to produce DMT, rather than melatonin. DMT is physically immobilizing

and produces a flood of unexpected and overwhelming visual and

emotional imagery. Certainly, frequent bursts of DMT release would be

much more dangerous for an animal than would be those of melatonin.

It may be that melatonin is so hard to make during the day because any

breach in the pineal security system is intolerable. The pineal erects a

barrier to inordinate stress that protects equally everything behind it. So,

one set of circumstances in which pineal DMT may form is when stress-

induced catecholamine output is just too great for the pineal shield to

withstand.

It also is possible that the pineal security system does not function

normally in psychotic individuals. There are strong indirect data supporting

this idea. Stress worsens hallucinations and delusions in psychotic patients.

DMT levels in those patients are related to the degree of psychosis—the

more intense the symptoms, the higher the levels of DMT. We know that

DMT also rises in animals exposed to stress. More common levels of

stressinduced catecholamines may overwhelm inadequate pineal defenses in

psychosis, thus producing too much DMT. This DMT then brings on or

worsens symptoms in psychotic patients.3

Another factor normally protecting the body from pineal production of

psychedelic amounts of DMT resides within the pineal gland itself. A

particular kind of small protein, first discovered in blood, has been shown

to interfere with the activity of the DMT-forming enzymes. The pineal has

quite high levels of this protein, a sort of “anti-DMT.” If this inhibitor itself

were blocked, DMT formation is more likely. Where better to provide an

anti-DMT for preventing potentially dangerous excessive DMT formation

than where it is made—in the pineal gland?

Data from psychosis research also support this contention. Individuals

with schizophrenia received pineal gland extracts as an experimental

treatment in the 1960s. Their symptoms improved markedly. The

explanation for this finding was that the pineal extracts provided patients

with an additional dose of the anti-DMT that their own pineal glands

lacked. Thus, they were better able to combat pathologically high levels of

DMT, and their psychotic symptoms improved.4

Two other possible brakes on DMT production in the pineal relate to

enzymes: those that produce and those that break down the spirit molecule

within the body.

Researchers have found that the methyltransferase enzymes that form

DMT are more active in schizophrenia than in normal conditions. This

would raise production of DMT. Scientists looked at many human tissues

for the source of this abnormal enzyme function, but unfortunately did not

study the pineal gland.5

Finally, if the MAO system normally destroying DMT were defective,

more DMT might linger and produce “psychedelic”/psychotic symptoms.

MAO is less efficient in schizophrenics than in healthy volunteers, and it

may be that schizophrenics do not clear DMT quickly enough from their

systems. This also would result in DMT levels too high for normal mental

function. While researchers examined MAO activity in several human

tissues, they unfortunately did not assess pineal MAO activity in

schizophrenia.

Let’s now consider less pathological, but also relatively common and

naturally occurring, altered states of awareness in which pineal DMT may

play a role. Dream consciousness is one of these.

The most likely time for us to dream is also the time at which melatonin

levels are highest, that is, around 3 A.M. Since melatonin itself has such

mild psychological effects, it suggests a role for another pineal compound

whose levels parallel those of melatonin. DMT is a likely prospect for such

a substance. However, no one has looked at 24-hour DMT rhythms in

normal volunteers in an attempt to relate DMT levels to dream intensity or

frequency.

Jace Callaway, Ph.D., has suggested that pineal derived beta-carbolines

may mediate dreams. While the uncertain psychological effects of the beta-

carbolines shed some doubt on this hypothesis, pineal beta-carbolines

certainly could, by virtue of their DMT-boosting effects, indirectly stimulate

dream production.6

Meditation or prayer also may elicit deeply altered states of

consciousness. Pineal DMT production could underlie these mystical or

spiritual experiences.

All spiritual disciplines describe quite psychedelic accounts of the

transformative experiences, whose attainment motivate their practice.

Blinding white light, encounters with demonic and angelic entities, ecstatic

emotions, timelessness, heavenly sounds, feelings of having died and being

reborn, contacting a powerful and loving presence underlying all of reality

—these experiences cut across all denominations. They also are

characteristic of a fully psychedelic DMT experience.

How might meditation evoke the pineal DMT response?

Several meditative disciplines bring about an intense fine-tuning of

attention and awareness; for example, one-pointed focus on the breath. The

brain’s electrical activity, as measured by the electroencephalogram, reflects

this synchronization, or bringing together, of brain activity. Many studies

have reported that experienced meditators produce brain wave patterns that

are slower and better organized than those found in everyday awareness.

The “deeper” the meditation, the slower and stronger the waves.

Other techniques supplement these attentional practices with methods

like chanting. Chants, using words from ancient languages with supposedly

unique spiritual properties, may cause profound psychological effects.

Visualization practices, in which one builds up increasingly complex and

dynamic images in the mind’s eye, also can lead to blissful and sublime

states of mind.

In these conditions there is a dynamic yet unmoving quality to the

experience, like a standing wave in a river. It looks as if the wave is not

moving at all, while water rushes along on all sides of it. In fact, it is the

rushing water that produces the wave. And those waves create a unique

note, or sound.

Such wave phenomena, by their production of a particular note or sound

associated with their frequency, establish wide-ranging and diffuse fields of

influence. Objects within those fields vibrate sympathetically, or with the

same frequency, a phenomenon called resonance.

An example of the powerful effects of resonance is when a particular

note shatters a glass, even though the sound is not especially loud. The glass

vibrates sympathetically, or resonates, at the same frequency as that of

surrounding sound. Certain notes can create intolerable stress within the

unique structure of the glass, and it bursts.

In a similar way, meditative techniques using sound, sight, or the mind

may generate particular wave patterns whose fields induce resonance in the

brain. Millennia of human trial and error have determined that certain

“sacred” words, visual images, and mental exercises exert uniquely desired

effects. Such effects may occur because of the specific fields they generate

within the brain. These fields cause multiple systems to vibrate and pulse at

certain frequencies. We can feel our minds and bodies resonate with these

spiritual exercises. Of course, the pineal gland also is buzzing at these same

frequencies.

A resonance process may occur in the pineal similar to that of the

shattering glass, although not quite as destructive. The pineal begins to

“vibrate” at frequencies that weaken its multiple barriers to DMT

formation: the pineal cellular shield, enzyme levels, and quantities of anti-

DMT. The end result is a psychedelic surge of the pineal spirit molecule,

resulting in the subjective states of mystical consciousness.7

So far, we have looked at non-life-threatening situations: psychosis and

spiritual experiences. Now we may turn to more dramatic instances that

also are nearly always accompanied by psychedelic subjective realities:

birth, near-death, and death experiences.

It is no exaggeration to say that birth, near-death, and death are

extraordinarily “stressful” events. The life-force is doing all it can to sustain

its struggling residence. Tremendous outpourings of stress-related

hormones occur at these times, including the pineal-stimulating

catecholamines adrenaline and noradrenaline.

Let’s start with the birth process. The birth experience is highly

psychedelic for the unanesthetized mother. How much more so for the

newborn! We know that DMT is present in newborn laboratory animals.

There’s no reason to believe it’s not also present in newborn humans.

However, no one has yet looked for DMT in human newborns or their

mothers during delivery.

Normal vaginal delivery produces an enormous outpouring of

catecholamine release. The massive flooding of these stress hormones over

the mother’s and fetus’s pineal glands may be enough to override the pineal

defense system and set in motion DMT release. If the mother is

anesthetized, catecholamine production is less, and the least occurs when

the baby is delivered by Cesarean section. Therefore, these latter two

situations may result in less robust, if any, DMT release by mother’s and

baby’s pineals.

High levels of DMT at birth provide an explanation for a particular piece

of conventional wisdom from psychedelic psychotherapy. According to

Stanislav Grof, M.D., an LSD psychotherapist with unparalleled

experience, much of what takes place during psychedelic therapy sessions is

a reenactment of the birth process. He has found that those born by

Cesarean section are less able to “let go” in psychedelic therapy than those

born vaginally. The presence of psychedelic levels of DMT at normal birth,

and inadequate levels during Cesarean births due to too little stress-

hormone-induced DMT output, may explain this finding.8

Perhaps in order to fully “let go” into any powerful emotional experience

as adults we need a baseline of a safe and secure resolution to our first

naturally occurring “high-dose DMT session,” which accompanies the birth

process. Otherwise, later, as an adult, exposure to such unusual and

unexpected states throws us into a completely unfamiliar set of experiences,

disorienting and frightening us. We lack a reliable history of such

experiences ending successfully.

Massive surges of stress hormones also mark the near-death experience,

or NDE. Much of the literature on the NDE describes this as a mystical,

psychedelic, overwhelming psychological experience. It also may be a time

when the protective mechanisms of the pineal are flooded and otherwise

inactive pathways to DMT production turn on.

We know very little about the physiology of death itself. What happens to

our bodies, our brains, and our minds when we die? How long is the

process? Does it end when we stop breathing? Or is there a reason many

traditions counsel us about when to move or bury the dead? Why are they

concerned about not wanting to disturb residual consciousness? Thus, we

also must consider decomposing pineal tissue’s effects upon our

consciousness, both near and after death.

Pineal tissue in the dying or recently dead may produce DMT for a few

hours, and perhaps longer, and could affect our lingering consciousness.

While our “dead” brain wave readings are “flat,” who knows about our

inner mental state at this time?

To begin testing the hypothesis that decomposing pineal tissue produces

psychedelic compounds, many years ago I collected pineal glands from

about ten human cadavers to which I had access at a local morgue. I sent

them to another laboratory to measure DMT. Unfortunately, the brains were

not “fresh frozen,” or removed immediately at the time of death and placed

into liquid nitrogen. This instant deep freeze stops all breakdown of tissues

from that point onward. We found no DMT in these pineal glands. If there

were any, it is possible the long delay in processing the tissue, several days

in some cases, resulted in its loss before analysis.

Finally, psychedelic drugs may affect the pineal gland, and thereby use it

and DMT formation as an intermediary in their action.

There are LSD receptors on the pineal gland, and mescaline raises

serotonin levels in the pineal. Beta-carbolines accelerate melatonin

formation, in addition to their previously described property of magnifying

and prolonging DMT effects. And DMT is the most potent of several

psychedelics that stimulate pineal melatonin production.

DMT promoting the formation of its own possible building blocks is

similar to the kindling process, in which a tiny match can start a huge

bonfire. The match begins by burning paper, which then lights larger twigs.

Burning twigs ignite branches until ultimately, a raging blaze ensues.

Similarly, the various circumstances we’ve discussed that are conducive to

endogenous DMT production may begin with just a little bit of newly

formed material. These conditions could begin a process of making even

more by raising levels of necessary precursors. Finally, there is a “flash

point” for a full psychedelic burst of pineal DMT. The psychedelic “fire”

burns itself out after it has run its course and exhausted the supply of raw

materials.

This “DMT hypothesis of pineal function” allows us to tie up several loose

ends left by the melatonin hypothesis of pineal function.

One of these questions I have already discussed is why the pineal gland

possesses such a potent defense system against stress. The melatonin

hypothesis does not adequately answer this. The DMT hypothesis, however,

provides a much more satisfactory explanation. That is, the body so

ruthlessly defends the pineal gland so that we are not disabled by everyday

levels of stress releasing psychedelic levels of DMT.

Another mystery unsolved by the melatonin hypothesis relates to the

pineal gland’s unique location. The pineal gland is not even made of brain

tissue. Rather, it comes from specialized cells originating in the roof of the

fetal mouth. Why does it migrate in every one of us to the middle of the

brain?

From its unique perch, the pineal nearly touches visual and auditory

sensory relay stations. The emotional centers of the limbic system surround

it, and its position allows for instant delivery of its products directly into the

cerebrospinal fluid.

Traditionally, we believe that the placement of the pineal is such that it

can respond best to lighting conditions. However, the route from the eyes to

the pineal is curiously tortuous. Nerves from the eyes to the pineal actually

exit the head and detour through the neck before returning to the pineal

deep within the skull. It would be just as efficient for the gland to stay in the

neck or upper spinal cord and release melatonin directly into the

bloodstream as a way of notifying its host animal of lighting conditions.

It may be the pineal’s placement is necessary so that melatonin may best

affect nearby important brain centers, such as the pituitary gland, which

regulates reproductive function. But this requirement really does not

demand a deep brain location for the pineal. Melatonin carried by the blood

from somewhere else could do just as good a job, as is the case with ovary

and adrenal gland hormones.

Perhaps melatonin needs immediate access to cerebrospinal fluid, and

that’s why it hangs from the roof of a fluid-containing ventricle. However,

the pineal gland releases melatonin in a steady stream lasting for many

hours, and its effects develop over days and weeks. A hormone with

melatonin’s characteristics has no need for access to cerebrospinal fluid.

Finally, melatonin’s psychological properties are rather insignificant.

These minor mind-altering effects do not justify immediate access to the

colliculi and limbic system, the deep brain structures that regulate

perceptions and emotions.

Thus, the pineal does not need to be in the middle of the brain if this

location were to support melatonin’s role in our lives.

If the pineal gland were producing DMT, however, that would certainly

warrant its strategic location. A DMT release directly onto the visual,

auditory, and emotional centers the pineal nearly touches would profoundly

affect our inner experience. We would see, hear, feel, and think things in a

way unimaginable to consider for melatonin.

Because of its extraordinarily short life span of just a few minutes, DMT

would also benefit from the small distances, only millimeters wide, between

the pineal and important brain structures. It could diffuse directly onto these

brain sites by way of the cerebrospinal fluid, without first having to enter

the blood circulation. If DMT first entered the blood, MAO enzymes would

destroy it long before it returned to the brain to exert its profound mental

effects.

These considerations also effectively dispense with one of the major

objections to the DMT theory of psychosis: the lack of differences between

DMT blood levels in normal volunteers and in patients with psychosis. We

now see that DMT concentrations in forearm vein blood may have little to

do with its effects at discrete brain sites, sites at which DMT is broken

down nearly as quickly as it is produced.

This reasoning further develops the idea that decomposing pineal tissue

affects residual awareness after death. If this postmortem DMT emptied

directly into the spinal fluid, simple diffusion is all it would take for it to

attach to those sensory and emotional centers. A pumping heart would not

be necessary.

Now that we’ve discussed two theories of pineal gland function in humans,

the melatonin model and the DMT model, it is time to venture into

analyzing the implications of these opposing paradigms.

In the last chapter, I described how the pineal gland, by way of

melatonin, inhibits reproductive function. In this chapter, I hypothesize that

pineal DMT opens our senses to profound psychedelic experiences. It is as

if within the pineal gland there is a powerful dynamic or tension between

the two roles it may play—one spiritual and the other sexual.

It’s fascinating to note that many religious disciplines believe celibacy is

necessary to attain the highest spiritual states. The explanation for this idea

is that sexual activity diverts the energy required for full spiritual

development. One chooses either the life of the flesh or the life of the spirit.

Nevertheless, celibacy isn’t consistent with reproduction, and there is a

conflict between the continuity of the species and the antisexual attainment

of reaching the greatest flowering of the individual spirit.

This conflict may be played out biologically in the pineal gland. Valuable

resources may go to the formation of either the reproductively important

melatonin or the spiritually indispensable DMT, the hormone of darkness or

the chemical of inner light.

However, this opposition may be more apparent than real. Consider the

possibility that pineal DMT release mediates sexual ecstasy, resulting from

the strenuous exertion, hyperventilation, and intense emotions of the sex

act. Psychedelic features do emerge at orgasm. In fact, the highly

pleasurable effects of sexually activated DMT production may be one of the

major factors motivating reproductive behavior.

Practitioners of Tantra attempt to achieve the best of both these worlds.

This spiritual discipline recognizes that sexual excitation and orgasm

produce highly ecstatic states, and therefore uses sexual intercourse as a

meditative technique. By combining sex and meditation, Tantric

practitioners access states of consciousness not available with either

practice alone. Pineal DMT release, stimulated by both deep meditation and

intense sexual activity, may then result in especially pronounced

psychedelic effects.

There is a third element that ties together reproduction and higher

consciousness, the energetic matrix within which is played out these

competing pineal priorities. This is spirit, or life-force.

It is difficult to introduce the concept of “spirit” into any discussion of

science in general, or biology in particular. However, it is even more

difficult not to do so when the phenomena beg for it. In order to deal

directly and deeply with the issues raised by the material I have presented,

we must address this issue.

How do we define the spirit?

Compare life and death: the state of being alive to that of being dead.

One moment we are thinking, moving, and feeling. Cells are dividing,

replacing dying ones with fresh recruits for the liver, lung, skin, and heart.

The next moment we are no longer breathing; our heart has pumped its last

beat. What is the difference? What’s gone that was just there?

There is something that “enlivens” us when joined with our body. When

present in matter, it shows itself by way of movement and heat. In the brain,

it provides the power to receive, and transform into awareness, our

thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. When it is gone, the light is

extinguished and the engine stops. Whatever it is, the presence of this

enlivening force provides us the opportunity to interact with this time and

place.

While not “personal,” this spirit or life-force has a “history” associated

with our particular collection of animated matter. It has experienced things

with us, while being essentially unchanged by those events. Its movements

have created unique fields of influence by the notes or sounds it has

generated by our body’s mental and physical activities. When the body is

too weak to contain it, it leaves. Some goes to other matter, and some joins

the ambient background of fields. The unique fields produced by its

cleaving to our body, however, remain for a while before dissipating. The

stronger the field, or the louder the note, the more time it takes to fade.

One of the most powerful reasons for my fascination with the pineal

gland relates to its function in the life of the spirit. The importance and

potential of this was brought home to me when, as a medical student in the

mid-1970s, I learned of a startling coincidence involving the pineal gland

and Buddhist beliefs about reincarnation. I cannot overemphasize how

strong an impression this discovery made on me, and how it strengthened

my search for a spiritual role for the pineal gland and, within it, the spirit

molecule.

I already knew that the Tibetan Buddhist Book of the Dead teaches that it

takes forty-nine days for the soul of the recently dead to “reincarnate.” That

is, seven weeks from the time of death of one person elapses until the life-

force’s “rebirth” into its next body. I remember very clearly, several years

later, feeling the chill along my spine when, reading my textbook of human

fetal development, I discovered this same forty-nine-day interval marking

two landmark events in human embryo formation. It takes forty-nine days

from conception for the first signs of the human pineal to appear. Forty-nine

days is also when the fetus differentiates into male or female gender. Thus

the soul’s rebirth, the pineal, and the sexual organs all require forty-nine

days before they manifest.

I unearthed this synchronicity when I was in my early twenties. I didn’t

know exactly how to make sense of it at the time. I still do not. In fact,

conjectures relating far-flung phenomena based upon similarities in time

may be as much wishful thinking as the old herbal “doctrine of signatures,”

which suggested that an herb’s properties depended upon how it looked. If a

plant looked like a heart, it must be good for heart disease.

What I’m proposing is almost a “doctrine of elapsed time.” If Buddhist

texts and human embryology reveal that different developments require

forty-nine days, the events must be related. This association is perhaps

logically shaky, but also intuitively appealing.

How might the anatomical emergence of the pineal and the reproductive

organs forty-nine days after conception involve the spiritual or life force?

As we die, if near-death experiences are any indication, there is a

profound shift in consciousness away from identification with the body.

Pineal DMT makes available those particular non-embodied contents of

consciousness. All the factors previously described combine for one final

burst of DMT production: catecholamine release; decreased breakdown and

increased formation of DMT; reduced anti-DMT; and decomposing pineal

tissue. Therefore, it may be that the pineal is the most active organ in the

body at the time of death. Might we say that the life-force therefore exits

the body through the pineal?

The consequence of this flood of DMT upon our dying brain-based mind

is a pulling back of the veils normally hiding what Tibetan Buddhists call

the bardo, or intermediary states between this life and the next. DMT opens

our inner senses to these betwixt states with their myriad visions, thoughts,

sounds, and feelings. As the body becomes totally inert, consciousness has

completely left the body and now exists as a field among many fields of

manifest things.

The spirit molecule has outlived its usefulness as a scout for these realms.

It has led us to the other shore, and we are on our own. During the next

forty-nine days, we use our will, or intent, to process our unique life’s

signature, the accumulated experiences, memories, habits, tendencies, and

feelings of the life that has ended. This conscious contending with our

personal histories, where complete, results in a joining of those fields with

ambient ones. It is as if a bell has been rung; the sound, loud at first, joins

background noise, then gradually fades away.

What is left over settles onto the next physical life-form that seems most

appropriate for subsequent processing of unresolved issues. There is a

resonance, a sympathetic vibration, of similar fields: C-minor gravitates to

C-minor, animal traits to animals, plant qualities to plants, human issues to

humans.

In the case of human beings, these unmetabolized tendencies, this

unfinished business, can enter the fetus only when it is “ready.” This

readiness may require forty-nine days, too, and may take the form of a

pineal gland able to synthesize DMT. The pineal could act as an antenna or

lightning rod for the soul. And sexual differentiation into male or female,

occurring at exactly the same moment, provides the biological framework

through which the life-force now may assert itself.

The movement of this energy, the residual life-force of the past into the

present, through the pineal and into the fetus, might be the first and most

primordial DMT flash. This is the dawning of consciousness, of mind, of

awareness as a distinct biological and sexual entity. The blinding light of

pineal DMT, secreted within the developing brain, marks the passage

through this threshold.

Until this forty-nine-day watershed, the fetus may be only a physical,

rather than a physical-spiritual, being. Therefore, is forty-nine days when

we truly can consider a fetus to be an individual sentient, and therefore

spiritual, entity?

This chapter suggests that naturally occurring altered states of

consciousness result from high levels of pineal DMT production. However,

what might happen if someone does not have a pineal gland, due to pineal

cancer or a stroke destroying it? Would he or she have the same access to

conscious experiences from endogenous DMT as someone with an intact

pineal?

The enzymes and precursors in the pineal gland are not unique to it, but

the high concentrations of these compounds, and the gland’s remarkably

convenient location, make it an ideal source of the spirit molecule. Lung,

liver, blood, eye, and brain all possess the appropriate raw materials for

DMT production. In fact, for some years researchers jokingly referred to

schizophrenia as a lung disease because of the high concentrations of DMT-

forming enzymes within the lung! These other organs may produce DMT

when the same sets of circumstances exist as those that would stimulate the

pineal to do so.

As radical as these theories were, I believed they could be tested using the

traditional scientific method: designing experiments, analyzing data, and

redefining the theories based upon results of this step-by-step research. So,

the next step in this hypothesis-building process was to determine if DMT

given to people reproduced the features of those experiences. If outside-

administered DMT elicited effects similar to those presumably resulting

from inner-produced DMT, such as near-death and mystical states, my

hypotheses would be much stronger. Therefore, I needed to find some way

to perform a human research study with DMT.

However, I was studying melatonin, and this pineal hormone’s effects

scarcely resembled those of DMT. Further studies into melatonin’s

physiology seemed futile.

A paper I wrote in San Diego on adverse reactions to psychedelics,

published while I was performing the melatonin project, drew the attention

of Rick Doblin, a tireless fund- and consciousness-raiser for psychedelic

drug research. He invited me to a conference in 1985, where I met the

major figures of the psychedelic research and therapy field. Representatives

from a wide variety of disciplines joined together for wideranging, far-

reaching discussions about what to make of, and do with, the psychedelic

experience. These new colleagues provided support, inspiration, valuable

experience, and crucial information. They made it much easier to begin

conceptualizing how a psychedelic research project actually might look.

In 1987 my University of New Mexico mentor, Glenn Peake, died

suddenly on a snowy Christmas day while returning from his morning run.

Saddened and grieving, I saw my research trajectory waver. There had been

a split between the research I believed was “respectable” and what I

personally felt most inclined to study. There was my melatonin research,

and then there was my interest in psychedelics. Glenn’s premature death

hastened the closing of that gap. During his memorial service, I

remembered some of his most direct advice: “Do what you really want in

research. Who cares what other people think?”

I decided to stop my melatonin research and attempt a DMT project. I

talked these ideas over with the chairmen, directors, and heads of the

university divisions supporting my melatonin experiments. They all

believed a change in fields involved a real but reasonable risk. However, all

were supportive of a psychedelic research project, “if that’s what you really

want to do.”

The years of preparation were over. It was now or never. It was 1988.

Part II Conception and

Birth

89-001

There were two separate but overlapping fields upon which I would work

out my attempt to perform a human DMT study. One was the clinical

research realm; the other was regulatory. In this chapter I will focus on the

science of the study: the actual research proposal. The next chapter will

describe the labyrinth of boards and agencies through which the protocol

passed.

The Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of New

Mexico reviews any project intending to study humans. This committee

stamps all such proposals with a number. The first two digits correspond to

the year, and the next three digits reflect the order in which the protocol

arrives. I submitted the DMT proposal in late 1988. It was the committee’s

first study up for review at their January meeting. Thus, it became 89-001.

The first sentence, which I’d spent hours writing and rewriting the month

before, trying to find the perfect opening line, read:

“This project will begin a reexamination of the human psychobiology of

the tryptamine hallucinogen of abuse, N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT),

which is also an endogenous hallucinogen.”

It was nearly two years later, on November 15, 1990, before the U.S.

Food and Drug Administration wrote to me, stating:

“We have completed our review . . . and have concluded that it is

reasonably safe to proceed with your proposed study.”

I already had some experience with the difficulties involved in giving an

abusable, mind-altering drug to humans. This was from submitting a

protocol to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) several years before

deciding to attempt a DMT study. The drug in this case was MDMA,

popularly known as Ecstasy, a stimulant drug with mild psychedelic

properties.

In the early 1980s, a loose-knit network of therapists was giving this drug

to their patients as an aid to psychotherapy. It was not illegal, and these

psychiatrists and psychologists found that its effects were more reliable and

easier to use than those of LSD. To their dismay, this “wonder drug,” like

LSD decades before, soon became widely abused across college campuses.

In addition, scientific papers began reporting that MDMA caused brain

damage in laboratory animals. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration

(DEA) placed MDMA into the most restrictive legal category for drugs,

Schedule I, in 1985.

Nearly all the therapists using MDMA tried to make the DEA reverse its

opinion. I went a different route and requested permission to give MDMA

within its new legal status.

I submitted an application to the FDA in 1986. I proposed to give

MDMA to human volunteers and measure its psychological and physical

effects. When they sent me their standard “you may proceed if you don’t

hear from us in 30 days” letter, I thought to myself, “Great! I’ll be able to

start the research within a month!” However, like clockwork, the FDA

called after twenty-nine days and said I couldn’t begin yet. Soon a letter

came detailing their concerns about the neurotoxic effects of MDMA. They

didn’t know when there would be enough information to allow me to go

ahead. It might be quite a while.

My MDMA application languished in the FDA files and never amounted

to much. However, I did learn that the FDA was a large and rather

conservative organization. They had to be. This was made clear to me

during an informal conversation with Dr. L., the director of the FDA

division responsible for reviewing my MDMA proposal.

Dr. L. and I were attending a scientific meeting in 1987. We happened to

be standing near each other during a coffee break. Introducing myself, I

asked him if he would consider allowing me to study MDMA in the

terminally ill, since he had concerns about long-term brain damage in

normal volunteers. In what now seems a somewhat cavalier and callous

manner, I told him that these issues wouldn’t be as much of a problem in

those with a six-month life expectancy. In addition, I added gamely, it

would be an opening into some psychotherapy work with the terminally ill.

Dr. L. replied matter-of-factly, “Even the terminally ill have rights, and

you don’t want to waste their death. And besides, sometimes the diagnosis

of terminal is wrong.” He wrote me later to reaffirm his opposition to any

MDMA studies involving dying patients.

Years later, halfway through the DMT study, the FDA sent me a letter

asking if I’d like to cancel the request for an MDMA permit. It seemed like

a good idea, so I agreed.

As my melatonin project began revealing the unmistakably timid

psychological effects of this pineal hormone, I decided to visit a close

friend and colleague, one whose opinions I valued regarding these matters.

Sitting up in the loft of his northern California home in August 1988, we

spent a day sorting through a wide range of approaches with which to frame

a human psychedelic research project. By sunset, we arrived at two

relatively simple but solid conclusions.

First, DMT clearly was the drug to study. It was incredibly interesting,

and we all had some circulating in our bodies. Second, any psychedelic

research project must not conflict with, and in fact must be consistent with,

the current concerns about drug abuse. The U.S. government was spending

billions of dollars contending with the problems associated with out-of-

control substance use. Surely some of that money could fund a human DMT

study. Rather than fighting against the government by trying to remove

legal restrictions, it made more sense to appeal directly to the scientific

thinking that ultimately drives research. We all wanted to know what drugs

like DMT did, and how they did it.

My psychedelic colleagues weren’t especially optimistic about a DMT

project’s chances for success. The MDMA affair had demoralized many.

“You know what?” one predicted. “The only paper you’ll ever write is how

you couldn’t do it. Look at how your MDMA protocol fared.” However, I

had been working alone in my MDMA project. For the DMT study I had

the support and advice of Daniel X. Freedman, M.D.

I met Danny Freedman in 1987 at one of the many scientific meetings I

was beginning to attend. Such conferences, and the networking occurring at

them, is part of the ritual of establishing a successful research career. A

diminutive, gnomelike man, Dr. Freedman was arguably the most powerful

individual in American psychiatry at the time. He began his career in the

psychiatry department at Yale University studying LSD in laboratory

animals. He later moved on to become chairman of the psychiatry

department at the University of Chicago. By the time I met him, he had

moved again and was professor and vice-chairman of psychiatry at the

University of California in Los Angeles.

He had been president of the American Psychiatric Association as well as

of every major biological psychiatry organization. Rather than take a

government health position, he chose to wield his power as the editor of

psychiatry’s most influential academic journal, the Archives of General

Psychiatry. He routinely made and dashed careers by accepting or rejecting

any one of the thousands of papers aspiring researchers endlessly submitted

to him.

Freedman trained dozens of topflight researchers in academics and

industry. He made late-night calls to anyone he liked to discuss the latest

research ideas or political developments. He possessed unlimited energy

and seemed to require almost no sleep. He chain-smoked cigarettes and

drank endless quantities of frighteningly strong coffee. Seductive and

charming, he could also lash out unpredictably if you aroused his ire.

His 1968 paper “On the Use and Abuse of LSD” was a seminal article in

my thinking.1 I admired his no-nonsense but openminded approach to

clinical psychedelic research. While he had worked with schizophrenic

patients under the influence of LSD in the 1950s, he nearly exclusively

performed animal studies. His early animal pharmacology papers on LSD

established the groundwork for future laboratories’ approaches to assessing

the role of serotonin in psychedelic drugs’ effects. He also testified in front

of the 1966 U.S. Senate committee, chaired by Senator Robert Kennedy,

that sealed the fate of psychedelic drugs’ placement into their restricted

legal category.

Freedman had serious doubts about the possibility of performing good

human psychedelic research. He believed volunteers had too many

expectations of drug effects. He also was worried about the risk of

“unreliable personnel,” a euphemistic reference to drug-taking by members

of a research team. This latter concern unerringly predicted some of the

problems our own group would encounter in New Mexico.

In our meetings and correspondence, Freedman predicated any help he

would provide me upon the premise that my DMT research would focus

solely on pharmacology. He thought psychotherapy research would result in

irrational enthusiasm, questionable results, and scientific controversy. It was

safer and more practical first to confirm and extend the wealth of data

coming from animal laboratories. While his logic was unassailable, our

adherence to this biomedical model did set the stage for certain problems

that developed later on in our research.

With Dr. Freedman’s guidance, I wrote up a DMT study, the “dose-

response” project. It was simple, levelheaded, and achievable, containing

four specific goals:

Recruit “well-functioning, experienced hallucinogen users” for

volunteers;

Develop a method to measure DMT in blood;

Create a new rating scale by which we could assess DMT’s

psychological effects; and

Characterize psychological and physical responses to several doses of

DMT.

After briefly summarizing the history of psychedelics within academic

psychiatry, I pointed out that while animal studies continued, human

experiments lagged far behind. Psychedelics continued to be popular drugs

of abuse, and understanding what they did, and how they did it, would

address real public health concerns.

I also reviewed previously published animal and human data on DMT

and listed the qualities that made it an ideal candidate with which to resume

human psychedelic drug research. I noted that one of the best reasons for

choosing DMT was that very few people had heard of it. When the media

discovered my research, it would draw much less attention than would an

LSD project.

Next I exhumed the endogenous psychotomimetic argument, arguing that

scientists had yet to find any better candidate for a naturally occurring

schizotoxin. Researchers were developing new antipsychotic drugs that

blocked the same serotonin receptors that psychedelics activated. Thus, the

more we knew about DMT, the more we might learn about psychotic

disorders. If we could block the effects of DMT in normal individuals,

perhaps we would have a new weapon in our armamentarium against

schizophrenia.

I also proposed that DMT’s short duration of effects would make it easier

to use than longer-acting drugs, especially in the potentially negative setting

of a hospital environment.

Finally, DMT had a track record of safe use in previously published

human research, especially that of Dr. Szára.

This introduction led to the theoretical underpinnings for studying DMT:

the biomedical model. Psychopharmacologists had firmly established that

psychedelics, including DMT, activated many of the same brain receptors as

did serotonin. Laboratory animal research, continuing for decades after

human studies ended, revealed the specific types of serotonin receptors

involved. I was to build upon this animal data and determine if it also

applied to humans.

The most important biological variables were to be neuroendocrine in

nature. Neuroendocrinology is the study of how drugs influence hormones

by first stimulating certain brain sites. For example, activation of specific

serotonin receptors in the brain causes a rise in blood levels of particular

pituitary hormones, such as growth hormone, prolactin, and beta-endorphin.

The hormones that change in response to drugs reflect which brain

receptors those drugs affect.

Serotonin receptors also regulate heart rate, blood pressure, body

temperature, and pupil diameter. I would measure these, too, in an attempt

to thoroughly catalog other signs of serotonin receptor activation by DMT.

These were objective, numerical data.

I would recruit only experienced psychedelic users for the study.

Experienced volunteers would be better able to report drug effects than

those with no idea what to expect. In addition, seasoned research subjects

were less likely to panic under the influence of the extremely powerful

effects of DMT, which potentially would be more disorienting in the stark

clinical research center environment. Finally, there were unpleasant, but

real, liability issues. I had to protect myself from any lawsuits that might

result if people claimed they began using psychedelics because of their

participation in the study. If they had used psychedelics in the past, it would

be more difficult for them to claim the study had introduced them to these

drugs.

Volunteers also would be required to be functioning at a relatively high

level, working or in school, and in stable relationships. This would help

assure me that they were grounded enough in everyday reality to handle

what would be a rigorous and demanding study. I wanted them to have

support from sources other than the research team to whom they could turn

if they needed help outside of the sessions.

There would be careful medical and psychological screening of the

volunteers. Women must neither be pregnant nor likely to become pregnant,

and we would test urine for recreational drugs before every study day.2

In reviewing the techniques for measuring psychedelics’ psychological

effects, I concluded that all previous questionnaires presumed their effects

to be unpleasant and psychotic. A newer scale with less of a bias, based on

responses in people who liked psychedelics, might provide a broader

perspective on their effects. I proposed interviewing as many recreational

DMT users as I could for this purpose. These individuals would provide a

broad overview of DMT’s effects, which would form the basis of a new

rating scale. As the research progressed, I could appropriately modify the

questionnaire.

It also was necessary to develop an assay, or method of measuring, for

DMT in blood. There were several older assays from which to choose, and

we would try our hand at whichever seemed easiest and most sensitive. The

most likely method was one used by researchers at the National Institute of

Mental Health, the same group that had written the “decent burial” paper on

DMT.

Based upon a 1976 study describing hormone effects of DMT in humans,

we calculated that twelve volunteers were enough to show statistically

significant differences between doses of DMT and an inactive saltwater

placebo. Most dose-response studies of any new drug give volunteers one

“high” dose, one “low” dose, and one or two “medium” doses in order to

describe the entire spectrum of effects. I wanted to give as much DMT as

possible, so I decided that each volunteer in the study would receive a

placebo and four doses of DMT—one high, one low, and two medium.

Volunteers would receive the different DMT doses in a randomized and

double-blind manner. Randomized means that the sequence of doses is in no

particular order, as if a roll of the dice determined which day would involve

any particular dose. Clifford Qualls, Ph.D., the University of New Mexico

General Clinical Research Center’s biostatistician, generated a random

sequence of the required doses on his computer, sealed it in an envelope,

and delivered it to the pharmacy for their use. Double-blind means that

neither the volunteers nor I would know which dose any volunteer was to

receive on any particular day. Only the pharmacist possessed the list

detailing the unique ordering of doses for each person.

The purpose of randomized double-blind studies is to reduce the role of

expectation in affecting results. In chapter 1 I referred to the classic study

demonstrating the power of expectation in determining drug effects.

Similarly, if volunteers knew when they were going to get a low dose of

DMT, their responses might be biased. They might react in a way consistent

with what they expected a low dose to be like, rather than what actually

happened, be it in reality placebo or a medium dose they received that day.

In addition, before entering into a complicated double-blind study, we

thought it best to begin a volunteer’s involvement in the research by first

giving them two “non-blind” doses of DMT. An introductory low dose of

0.05 mg/kg would let people settle in to the research setting without having

an effect so strong that it might disorient them. A subsequent high dose, 0.4

mg/kg, would let volunteers experience the greatest level of intoxication

they would ever reach on any subsequent double-blind day. We called this

the “calibration dose.” If someone received their first high dose in the

middle of the full study but didn’t know it was the most they’d ever get,

they might drop out for fear of getting even more of an effect on another

dose. With a non-blind high dose, volunteers had the option of dropping out

of the study right away, before we had begun collecting a lot of data on

them. So subjects actually would receive six doses of DMT—two non-blind

and four double-blind.

Tests of new drugs always include a placebo, and our study would, too.

Placebo-controlled studies further help tease apart the effects of anticipation

from those of the drug. Placebo comes from the Latin, meaning I shall

please, or to paraphrase, I shall meet your expectations. Most of us think of

a placebo as an inert substance, what we refer to as inactive placebo. Sugar

pills are the best-known example of inactive placebos. In our DMT studies,

the inert placebo was sterile saltwater, or saline.

Practically speaking, it is extraordinarily difficult to keep doubleblind,

placebo-controlled studies “double-blind.” Effects of active drugs are

usually much more obvious than those of inactive saltwater or sugar, and

both research subjects and staff almost always can tell the difference.

However, in this first dose-response DMT project, we wanted to use a

placebo to see if volunteers and we could distinguish between the lowest

dose of drug and none at all. In that capacity, the placebo day served a

valuable function.3

There were drawbacks to this design. Volunteers usually felt substantial

anxiety before getting their first double-blind dose. Was today going to be

another shattering high dose? Or could they relax? If it was apparent that

the first few double-blind sessions did not involve the large dose, anxiety

also built up before later sessions in a way that didn’t for those who got the

high dose out of the way on an earlier day. While the randomized order in

which all volunteers received their full complement of doses probably

statistically “evened out” this factor, at a human level there was a price to

pay.

I also addressed how we would manage psychological and physical

adverse effects. The first line of response to a panic reaction would be

talking people down using reassurance and support. If this didn’t work, we

would use a minor tranquilizer, such as injectable Valium; we would use a

injection of a major tranquilizer, like Thorazine, if anyone got completely

out of control. For allergic reactions, such as wheezing or a severe rash, an

intravenous antihistamine was available. If blood pressure went up too high,

nitroglycerin tablets under the tongue, much like the way people with

angina heart pain use them, would be effective.

I attached a list of several dozen references supporting the ideas I had

laid out. These included papers from the first wave of human psychedelic

research. There were articles describing what we knew about psychedelics’

effects on animals and on serotonin receptors. Anticipating concerns about

safety, I pointed to my previously published review of adverse effects of

psychedelics. In it, I suggested that if people were mentally healthy, well

prepared, and closely supervised before, during, and after the experience,

the chances of serious and prolonged psychiatric side effects were

extremely low.

Copies of the proposal went to all the boards that had control over human

drug abuse research, including the Human Research Ethics Committee at

the University of New Mexico, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and

the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The study would occur at the

University of New Mexico Hospital’s General Clinical Research Center, so

I sent a copy of the proposal there as well. The Research Center might

cover the costs of measuring the large number of blood samples for DMT

and hormone levels, so I also submitted a budget to their laboratory.

Now for the hard part: Getting everyone responsible for overseeing and

funding this project to agree it was safe, was worth doing, and deserved

money.

Labyrinth

In the United States, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 exists to

protect the public from potentially harmful drugs. This law also is a barrier

preventing access to those drugs by the clinical research community. It is

the labyrinth through which anyone who wishes to perform human research

with psychedelic drugs must pass.

The Controlled Substances Act placed all drugs into “schedules,”

depending on their “abuse potential,” “currently accepted medical use,” and

“safety of use under medical supervision.” Schedule I drugs, the most

restricted, are “highly abusable, lack medical utility, and are unsafe under

medical supervision.” Over the objections of dozens of high-level

psychiatric researchers, including Dr. Daniel Freedman, Congress placed

LSD and all the other psychedelic drugs into Schedule I.

Schedule II includes drugs like methamphetamine and cocaine. They

possess high abuse potential but some medical utility—cocaine as a local

anesthetic for eye surgery, and methamphetamine for the treatment of

hyperactive children, for example. Codeine is in Schedule III, because this

commonly used painkiller has abuse potential “less than” Schedule I and II

drugs, as well as fewer and less severe adverse consequences when used

under medical supervision. Schedule IV drugs like Xanax and Valium

possess abuse potential “less than” Schedule III and have “limited”

problems associated with their medical use.

In the case of the psychedelics, the high abuse potential that lawmakers

noted was not the compulsive, out-of-control use commonly seen with

drugs like heroin and cocaine. Psychedelics don’t cause craving or

withdrawal. In fact, one of their hallmarks is that they produce almost no

effects after three or four daily doses, and abruptly stopping them causes no

withdrawal. Rather, it was their acute effects that were so profoundly

disruptive and at times disabling. Because of those highly destabilizing

effects, Congress decided psychedelics must be tightly regulated.

Clinical research scientists in the 1950s and 1960s recognized and

usually took into account the unique dangers of LSD and other

psychedelics. By doing so, they could successfully prevent or quickly deal

with any adverse psychological reactions to these drugs. However,

uncontrolled public use, and media-intensive breaches in research protocols

by Leary and his colleagues at Harvard, brought the expected responses.

These drugs were causing highly publicized problems, and the door had to

be shut for damage control.

In order to turn this tide of abuse, Congress emphasized psychedelics’

negative properties at the expense of their positive or neutral ones. What

one day was “safety under medical supervision” became “lack of safety

under medical supervision” the next. “Medical utility” as research and

training tools and aids to psychotherapy quickly changed into “no currently

acceptable medical use.”

It was into this black hole I peered as I prepared to shepherd the DMT

protocol through the regulatory system.

The process began in December 1988. I kept a log during the next two years

of every phone call, letter, meeting, fax, and discussion related to 89-001,

the DMT protocol. From my notes, I summarized and extracted the most

relevant information obtained from these interactions and wrote them up in

1990, immediately after getting permission to begin the study. I referred to

this article as the “what if I’m run over by a bus?” paper. It was important

that other people knew how to wind their way through this maze. It was

possible, and there was a route through it. If nothing else came of the DMT

project, I wanted to leave behind this map for success.1

The initial guardians of the regulatory realms were two University of New

Mexico School of Medicine committees: the Research Center’s Scientific

Advisory Committee and the Human Research Ethics Committee.

The General Clinical Research Center Scientific Advisory Committee

dealt with the science behind my proposal. Fellow researchers on the panel

looked at the scientific merit of the study and offered remedial suggestions.

They also decided whether to allow its performance at the Research Center,

and whether to pay for the many blood tests I requested. Because I had

spent the last two years running the human melatonin project at the

Research Center, I was a member of this committee at the time.

The Human Research Ethics Committee dealt with the safety of my

proposed study. Its duties were to make sure the project had an acceptable

safety profile, and that the informed consent document clearly spelled out

the nature of the study and its risks.

It was incredibly fortunate that the chairman of the crucial ethics

committee was a firm believer in libertarianism; that is, that the individual

takes precedence over the state. He believed that educated people could

make up their own minds. His motto, as head of one of the first and most

important review panels, was great encouragement: “We’re not here to play

God.”

The informed consent document is a crucial element of human research.

In it, the researcher describes the objectives of the protocol, and why he or

she is performing it. The consent states exactly, and in mind-numbing

detail, what to expect from participating. It lists the potential risks and

benefits associated with volunteering, details how the research team will

manage risks, and notes that volunteers will receive all necessary treatment

for adverse effects free of charge. The consent reminds the potential

research subject that participation is totally voluntary and ongoing. He or

she may withdraw at any time, for any reason, with no penalty or

withholding of necessary care. In case a volunteer feels unfairly treated, the

informed consent document provides names and phone numbers of people

he or she can contact in order to complain.

While negotiating with the university committees, I also began working

with the two United States federal agencies that formed the final, and more

formidable, regulatory barriers. They held in their hands the ultimate

decisions.

The first was the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). They

had a local Albuquerque office, but their headquarters were in Washington,

D.C. The DEA would decide if I would be allowed to possess DMT. If

granted, this permission would take the form of a Schedule I permit.

The other federal regulatory agency was the U.S. Food and Drug

Administration (FDA), which also is based in Washington, D.C. The FDA

would decide if it was safe and worthwhile to give DMT to human research

volunteers in my study. If granted, the FDA’s permission would take the

form of an Investigational New Drug (IND) permit.

When submitting the protocol to the university committees, I told them

the study would not begin until the FDA and DEA both gave their

permission to administer DMT. However, these federal agencies first

required local approval.

The informed consent document would be a major hurdle, and I was direct

with the ethics committee about the expected effects of DMT. I did not want

to lull volunteers into thinking it would be an easy day, but I also did not

want to scare them away by emphasizing potential negative effects. On

page two of the consent, this is what the volunteer read:

I understand that the primary effects of this drug are psychological.

Visual and/or auditory hallucinations or other perceptual distortions

may occur. My sense of time may be altered (short lengths of time

passing slowly or vice versa). I may experience very powerful

emotions, pleasurable or unpleasant. Opposite feelings or thoughts

may be experienced at the same time. I may be extremely sensitive and

aware of the environment; on the other hand, I may not notice anything

at all in the environment. It may feel like my body and mind have

separated. Feelings of impending or actual death or confusion may

occur. Euphoria is very common. The onset of the experience is rapid,

the experience being very intense with the higher doses within 30

seconds. It peaks within 2 to 5 minutes and is usually felt as only a

mild intoxication within 20 to 30 minutes. I will quite likely feel like

my normal self within an hour after the injection.

Regarding risks, the consent form was brief, but honest:

The main effects of DMT are psychological and have been described

above. These usually last less than 1 hour. Rarely, emotional reactions

to these effects may last longer (i.e., 24 to 48 hours). I can stay at the

Research Center as long as necessary to regain my equilibrium,

including overnight if desired. . . . DMT is physically safe. Mild to

moderate brief increases in blood pressure and heart rate occur.

It would have been premature and inappropriate to suggest in the

informed consent that participation in the DMT study offered any potential

benefits. While I knew volunteers probably would enjoy their DMT

experiences, this was different from suggesting that I was providing

treatment for a diagnosable condition. Thus, the consent went on to say:

There are no benefits to me personally as a result of participating in

this research. However, the potential benefits are a greater

understanding of the mechanism of action of hallucinogenic agents.

Within a week of submitting the DMT study, the ethics committee asked

me to include the phrase “no currently accepted medical use” in the

informed consent’s introductory paragraph. I replied by suggesting this

phrase would unnecessarily frighten off prospective volunteers. In addition,

if I ever did get permission to run the study, the phrase would no longer,

strictly speaking, be true. It then would have currently accepted medical

use; in this case, as a clinical research tool. They accepted this answer.

Confidentiality and anonymity were important issues I had to work out with

the ethics committee, the Research Center, and the university hospital

administration. Nearly all the DMT volunteers had jobs and families,

neither of which they cared to endanger by admitting to the use of illegal

drugs. Confession to having broken the law was a prerequisite for enrolling

in the study, since only experienced psychedelic drug users could

participate. I met with staff from the hospital’s medical records department

and admitting offices, the head nurse and administrator of the Research

Center, and the hospital’s attorney. Together we worked out a complicated

but effective arrangement.

Records of the medical screening performed in the outpatient clinic of the

Research Center would hold important medical information. This might be

extraordinarily helpful if the volunteer at some future date developed health

problems for which the treating physician needed baseline values, for

example, regarding heart function. Therefore, we placed the volunteer’s real

name on the chart containing results of the physical examination and

screening laboratory tests. In this chart was no mention of drug use, nor a

linking of the volunteer to my drug studies.

The signed informed consent document, which was usually attached to

the chart, required the volunteer’s real name on the signature line. To

protect confidentiality, I kept all signed informed consents under lock and

key in my home office. All that was necessary for the “real name” chart was

the comment: “Consent signed. Held by Principal Investigator.”

Each volunteer then received a code number, such as DMT-3. From that

point on, this anonymous identification was the only one they possessed,

and I was the only person who knew the key. They each received a new

hospital chart labeled only with their DMT number. The first time we used

the code number was for the psychiatric examination detailing their history

of drug use and emotional problems.

There was one final concern. This related to outside agencies looking at

charts in order to assess long-term effects of exposure to experimental

drugs. In my melatonin studies, I included a phrase in the informed consent

stating that the manufacturer of melatonin and the FDA might review

patient files in order to investigate any risks or problems associated with

receiving melatonin. When I included this comment in the DMT consent,

prospective volunteers objected. Nevertheless, there had to be some

mechanism by which legitimate investigation into possible long-term health

risks resulting from DMT could occur. However, it must be voluntary.

The compromise we developed was that if the FDA or the DMT

manufacturer wanted to interview research volunteers or look at their

medical records, they first had to go through me. I would check with the

individual volunteers to see who was interested. Research records certainly

could be subpoenaed, but without the key to the code numbers they would

be of limited use. I would refuse to divulge the key on the grounds of

patient-doctor privilege. It would be a mess, but it was worth it.

As it turns out, in five years of studies with over sixty DMT volunteers,

not one breach of confidentiality or anonymity ever occurred. Neither have

there been, five years since the studies’ completion, any requests by the

authorities to review volunteers’ charts.

The Research Center’s Scientific Advisory Committee acknowledged that

the science of the DMT protocol was relatively direct and uncomplicated.

They realized the primary obstacles were ethical, political, and

administrative, areas in which they had less authority and responsibility

than the ethics committee.

There were security and liability concerns, however. The Research

Center asked me to keep volunteers in the hospital overnight, to make sure

they were watched by the nursing staff for a full day after their

participation. I replied that this would cut down on the number of

prospective volunteers. Previous DMT studies had sent their volunteers

home in the afternoon, following morning studies, with good safety results.

They accepted this.

The Research Center scientists also wanted to establish the best time of

day to give DMT. Was there a daily rhythm in DMT sensitivity? Were

responses greater in the morning or evening? I answered that I didn’t know,

but that by giving DMT to everyone at the same time of day, in the

morning, we would standardize that factor. We could investigate possible

changes in sensitivity throughout the day in a different study.

My research colleagues also requested more justification from the animal

literature for drawing blood levels of the various hormones I wanted to

measure. These references were easy to provide. Finally, they wanted

volunteers to submit urine samples for testing for drugs of abuse.

Within a month, on February 19, 1989, the Research Center approved the

DMT protocol. They also agreed to fund my request for testing hormone

levels and for developing a method of measuring DMT in human blood.

Three days later, the Human Research Ethics Committee also approved

the study.

I then began looking for a source of DMT. At the same time, I had to make

sure it was legal for me to possess it once I found it. The simpler of these

two tasks was possession, and this depended on the DEA providing me a

Schedule I permit.

In April 1989 I met with the university hospital pharmacy about the

security requirements the DEA would request for storing a Schedule I drug.

Since the pharmacists previously had worked on a marijuana study, they

believed their safeguards were adequate.

I sent in my DEA Schedule I permit application. It stated that the permit

was necessary to possess laboratory-grade DMT so we could begin

developing a way to measure DMT in human blood. Later, the permit

would need to cover the human-grade DMT volunteers would receive. This

human-grade DMT needed to be purer than that required for laboratory

work. Giving people DMT would not begin until the FDA approved the

study and the purity of the human-grade drug.

One section of the DEA application asked for DMT’s “drug number.” I

called the DEA office in Washington, D.C., and a staff person looked up

DMT on the list of national drug codes. This number went into the

appropriate box.

I called the DEA two weeks later, but they had no record of receiving my

application. The person with whom I spoke said, “We’re moving into a new

office, and everything’s in boxes.”

Another two weeks passed—still no record of my request. In a few days,

though, I received the entire application back. They needed the correct drug

number for DMT. This number was on a sheet of paper they enclosed with

the returned application. The person with whom I had spoken earlier had

given me the wrong number. I entered the correct number and mailed back

the “revised” application that day.

The DEA also wanted a New Mexico Board of Pharmacy Schedule I

permit; I applied for and received this certificate within a few weeks. “It’s

all up to the DEA,” the staff at the New Mexico Board said.

The DEA then told me they would approve the request for laboratory-

grade DMT if the hospital pharmacy and staff passed necessary security

checks. The paperwork went from Washington to Denver, and from Denver

to Albuquerque.

The local Albuquerque DEA field officer, Agent D., came to the

university to meet me and look over the pharmacy in early June of 1989.

She asked for the names of all those pharmacy staff who might have contact

with the DMT, as well as our addresses, phone numbers, and social security

numbers. She found several breaches in security and asked us to get a

locked freezer. That freezer was to be placed in the locked narcotics vault.

She said I could not have a copy of the freezer key—only the hospital

pharmacists should. If any of the drug ended up missing, they didn’t want to

suspect me of stealing it.

She had the unsettling habit of joking, every so often, “Well, that won’t

land you in jail.” And, “Don’t worry—we won’t take you away in

handcuffs for that.”

I tried to laugh with her.

When we said good-bye that day, she summed it up: “It’s your ass on the

line. If anything goes wrong—theft, loss, bad record keeping—we look to

you for explanations.”

As anxious as her visit made me feel, Agent D.’s last words were the

most troubling: “By the way, where will you get the DMT you’ll give to

your volunteers?”

Later that month, the DEA approved in principle my request for

permission to possess laboratory-grade DMT. I promised not to give this

lower-grade drug to volunteers and would await FDA approval on human-

grade DMT before starting the study. The DEA still held control over

whether I could possess human-grade DMT, because this was to be a

different batch of drug.

In March 1989, within a week of obtaining university approvals for the

DMT study and just after mailing in my forms to the DEA, I called Sigma

Laboratories in St. Louis, Missouri. Sigma was the chemical supply house

that had provided melatonin for my human pineal project. There was a

listing for DMT in their catalog, and I asked if they would sell some to me.

I requested laboratory-grade DMT for our efforts to measure DMT in body

fluids. I also asked for clinical-grade drug for human use. Sigma told me

that there was no problem in purchasing laboratory-grade DMT—the only

requirement was a Schedule I permit from the DEA.

Obtaining human-grade DMT was going to be more complicated, as it

called for Sigma putting together specific documentation for the FDA, a

“drug master file.” Sigma recommended contacting the investigators who

administered DMT to humans in previous studies to find out who had

supplied them. Sigma then would know how much detail to provide the

FDA. If there were problems finding out who used to have those files, they

recommended utilizing the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. This law

allows citizens to request privileged information as long as it does not

threaten American national security interests.

I obtained a list of all the currently active investigational drug permits in

the country so that I could contact anyone who possessed one for DMT.

Unfortunately, there weren’t any. My request to find out about the existence

of old permits, using the Freedom of Information Act, was not successful.

There were no records or files at the FDA for previous DMT permits.

My application to give DMT to humans went in to the FDA in late April.

I asked for a reactivation of the old DMT permits that the first generation of

researchers had used, hoping the FDA itself might be able to find those old

hidden files. One of the scientists who had given humans DMT, a co-author

of the “decent burial” paper, agreed to let the FDA look at his old records

on my behalf. However, in later correspondence, he discovered he had no

information about the drug and couldn’t remember who had been his

supplier. He wished me good luck.

In early May the FDA sent their first letter, signed by Ms. P., advising

that if they didn’t get in touch within a month, the study could proceed. Of

course, I had no DMT. However, they now had the application, and my

request received a file number. Sigma now agreed to discuss with the FDA

putting together a drug master file for me.

In June, Ms. P. at the FDA said Sigma was not providing them enough

information about how their DMT was made. Sigma replied that their

European DMT supplier refused to release any such information—it was a

trade secret. Sigma also was concerned that the FDA was asking for more

information about DMT than they did for other drugs Sigma previously had

provided for human studies. Sigma gave me the name of the FDA chemist

assigned to my application: Ms. R. She and I were to carry on dozens of

conversations over the next year and a half.

I asked Ms. R. why the FDA was requiring more information about DMT

than they did about melatonin for my previous research.

She replied, “It’s case by case.”

Sigma complained that the FDA was being unreasonable. The FDA

wouldn’t move forward until they had more information. When I asked Ms.

R. if she knew who was Sigma’s supplier, saying that I wished to contact

them directly myself, she offered their name. When I asked Sigma to

confirm this, they were upset by what they felt was a breach of confidence.

Nevertheless, they agreed to send the FDA all the information they

possessed about their DMT.

I asked Ms. R., “If Sigma’s DMT doesn’t have all the necessary

manufacturing data, could I purify it so it meets your requirements?”

She doubted it. The director of the division within the FDA where she

worked before was the fellow who told me, at the brain science meeting

some years back, “the dying have rights, too.” He had blocked all requests

by previous researchers to purify laboratory-grade drugs in order to give

them to humans.

“Maybe it’s different now,” she said. “This is a new division, with new

directors.”

This was true. The rising tide of AIDS and drug abuse brought into focus

the delays in the drug approval process at the FDA. A new division formed

to provide expedited review of new drugs for these problems. Fortunately,

my DMT request went to this new division rather than Dr. L.’s, where my

MDMA proposal never made any progress.

Several months passed, and Ms. R. never did receive any information

from Sigma. Sigma felt that the FDA had broken confidentiality, and they

probably did not want to get any deeper into what they knew would be a

long and complicated process. What was in it for them? I gave up hoping to

obtain Sigma’s DMT for human use.

A densely worded letter arrived from the FDA in August 1989, spelling out

twenty separate requirements the human-grade DMT must meet. There

were no questions about general toxicity, which would require complicated

and expensive animal testing. Nor were there concerns about the study’s

scientific merit. On those counts, in any event, I was encouraged.

I called the chemist colleague who previously had offered his dire

prediction about my only publication being one on the failure to obtain

permission to run the study. I asked him directly, “Will you make me some

DMT?”

He declined. He did not believe his current laboratory would meet the

requirements to qualify as a “manufacturer.” It would be too expensive and

time-consuming to try.

I also asked David Nichols, Ph.D., a chemist and pharmacologist at

Purdue University in Indiana. He recommended Dr. K. at the National

Institute of Mental Health, who directed a program that made hard-to-find

research drugs. Dr. K. said his contract prohibited use of his compounds in

humans, although perhaps in the future he might request to synthesize

human-grade drugs. Dr. K. recommended calling Lou G., an old colleague

at a chemical supply house in Chicago.

As it turned out, Lou, who stayed on after another firm bought his

company, had provided much of the DMT for American human studies.

However, his Chicago firm did not give those researchers any

manufacturing or animal toxicity data.

Lou laughed on the phone as he said, “We just told them it was pure

—‘95 percent, more or less.’ Things were a lot looser then.”

I wrote to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), asking if they had

some human-grade DMT. When a month elapsed, I wrote again. Mr. W.

replied and said NIDA drugs usually came from a laboratory in North

Carolina. Dr. C. directed this group.

I called Dr. C., who told me they could not make human-grade drugs.

When reminded of a recently published study in which his laboratory did so

for another research project, he said he’d look into it. Even if he did agree

to make the drug, he wouldn’t put the drug master file together for the FDA.

He said, “I don’t want the liability. I don’t have insurance for human use.

It’s not in my contract.”

Dr. C. recommended getting some DMT from NIDA and purifying it to

the required 99.5 percent purity. He thought they might have 5 grams or so

“on the shelf.”

When asked about this, Mr. W. answered, “Our DMT is too old. And we

don’t have any manufacturing data.”

He continued, “We’ve got a contract with Dr. C. They make what we ask

them. There’s another laboratory that prepares their drugs for human use. I

think the bigger issue is that there’s not a lot of movement on DMT these

days. It wouldn’t be very cost-effective for us to use much money from our

contract for such an obscure drug. Let me see what I can find out.”

A few weeks later Mr. W. called back, saying Dr. C. could make DMT,

but I would have to pay for it. Dr. C. agreed to calculate an estimate, but

repeated that he would not put together the required drug file for FDA. “It’s

too much work.”

This seemed minimally promising. When I asked Ms. R. at the FDA

about putting together my own drug file on Dr. C.’s DMT, she said she’d

get back to me.

“If Dr. C. made the DMT, could I really use it?”

“I’ll check with the drug abuse staff here,” she answered.

“Why wouldn’t I be able to?”

She answered, “I don’t know. Maybe our director, Dr. H., will call you.”

Dr. C.’s estimate of the cost was over $50,000.

“Well,” I said, “thanks for looking into it.”

Another door closed.

I called Ms. R.: “I’m not having much luck. What do you suggest?”

“I’ll go to the Federal Archives Building and see if I can find the

previous DMT researchers’ files.”

In July 1989 Ms. R. found the files for these old studies. “The data in

them are terrible,” she said. “There’s nothing—no animal data, no

chemistry data. We closed it. They never responded to our requests for

progress reports. It won’t help you.”

“How did you ever approve that study?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t work here then.” She tried sounding hopeful. “I’ll

send the information you need to set up your own drug file.”

The information she sent was designed for a large drug company such as

Lilly, Merck, or Pfizer. It had nothing to do with an individual investigator.

I called Ms. R. “I need help. Why aren’t you helping me?”

“Our director’s name is Dr. H. Here’s his phone number. Insist on

speaking with him.”

I called Dr. H.’s office. Dr. H.’s secretary said, “You’ll need to speak to

Dr. W.”

Before I could protest, he transferred the call to Dr. W.

“This is Dr. W.!,” boomed the friendly but commanding voice on the other

end of the line. “I’m the only physician on the drug abuse staff in this new

division. I know what you’ve been going through. We’re here to help. Don’t

despair.”

“How can I get human-grade DMT?” I asked.

“Find someone to make it for you.”

“How about Dave Nichols at Purdue?”

He replied, “That’s possible.”

“Could you and Dave talk with each other?”

“Have Dr. Nichols write to the director, Dr. H. Here’s his address. The

name of the staff working on your request is Ms. M. Call her in two weeks.”

I felt something shift with that phone conversation.

I called Dave Nichols. He quoted me a price of $300—just the cost of

supplies.

While all these calls were taking place, I knew that funding from outside

the University was crucial for the project to gain all the legitimacy it

needed. Additional financial support also would free up my time to find

human-grade DMT and help the Research Center pay for some of the work

I requested. This, in turn, would increase the Research Center’s backing of

the protocol.

In looking over some of the old DMT and schizophrenia research, it

appeared that the Scottish Rite Foundation, a branch of the Freemasons, had

funded some of it through their Schizophrenia Research program. I asked

this program to send an application for funding. My DMT proposal already

discussed the importance of understanding DMT’s effects in its possible

role as an endogenous schizotoxin. Therefore, it took little work to modify

the grant to emphasize these issues more clearly.

I wrote Dr. Freedman, telling him of my grant submission to the Scottish

Rite Foundation. He replied that he was on their scientific review

committee, and “maybe” they would fund a year’s support. Within a month,

in September 1989, a notification of award arrived announcing a one-year

grant for the project.

I again wrote Dr. Freedman, updating him on the search for human-grade

DMT. He scribbled a note on my letter and sent a copy of it to the Director

of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, one of his former students. His

telegraphic missive ended: “Strassman needs someone at NIDA responsive.

Any suggestions??”

In September I called Mr. W. at NIDA. He had just returned from a meeting

with Dr. C. They were discussing how to get Schedule I drugs to

researchers.

“We want to help,” he said. “Call Ms. B. at the DEA and see if she can

tell you how to get approval for Dr. Nichols to make a small batch for you.

If the amount is too large, he’ll need to be a legally designated manufacturer

and will never be able to afford the required security.”

I called Ms. B.

“Can Dave Nichols make some human-grade DMT for my project?”

She began, “Well, if Dr. Nichols is going to be a manufacturer, he needs

to meet rather stringent security requirements. Is there a DEA office near

his university? They could drop over and tell him what he needs to do. Then

Dr. Nichols could decide if he’s able to meet their recommendations.”

I heard the edge start creeping into my voice. I was alarmed at how close

I felt to losing it.

“I’ve looked everywhere for human-grade DMT: Sigma and another

chemical supply house, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National

Institute of Mental Health, former investigators, Dr. C. in North Carolina.

Dave Nichols is willing to make some for me, incredibly cheap. He needs

your okay. I’ve got an outside grant, and the Research Center at the

university is behind this project. I’m losing my mind. I’m pulling out my

hair. My gums are bleeding. I’m getting on my wife’s nerves.”

There was a pause. I heard what sounded like her pushing her chair away

from the desk.

“Oh,” she said, sounding genuinely concerned. “Let me see here. . . Yes,

there’s a ‘coincidental activities’ clause in the regulations. Dr. Nichols can

make a small batch if you’re collaborating. This won’t require any

additional security for his laboratory.”

I heard her pull a large book out from somewhere: “It’s acceptable for

him to make it . . .” and she started reading some text, “‘. . . if and to the

extent set forth . . .’”

She spoke too quickly for me to write down the information.

Ms. B. finished: “Have Dr. Nichols write me. Here’s my address. He’ll

need to amend his current permits, saying how much DMT he’ll make. I’ll

check with our pharmacist to be certain it’s a reasonable amount.”

“Okay,” I said. “That sounds great. I really appreciate your help.”

I called Dr. W. He confided that “off the record,” my project was pointing

out a flaw in the drug laws: How do researchers study drugs of abuse?

He then described exactly how to respond to the twenty requirements the

FDA had written about in the four-page letter that had arrived from them

several months earlier. These steps would provide the FDA the information

they needed to determine if the DMT was “safe for human use.”

The UNM Department of Psychiatry agreed to pay Dave Nichols three

hundred dollars for the DMT. However, they would not write the check

until the DEA issued the Schedule I permit.

The DEA would approve neither Dave’s request to make DMT nor my

Schedule I permit to possess it until the FDA approved the protocol. The

FDA couldn’t give me permission until I possessed the drug and tested it

for safety. The DEA also required verification from the FDA that Dave

could go ahead and make the drug.

Four months later, in January 1990, Dave finally received DEA approval

to make the DMT. He ordered the precursors immediately and began

working on it.

In the meantime, I had gotten laboratory-quality DMT from Sigma and put

it into the special locked freezer in the narcotics vault in the hospital

pharmacy. One hundred milligrams, a tenth of a gram, in a little vial. The

Research Center began developing a method to measure DMT in human

blood.

In addition, I received a high score from NIDA for a grant application to

actually run the DMT study, and it was likely to be funded. Two grants

approved, but no drug! It was bizarre. Everyone wanted the study done, but

no one knew how to get me the drug necessary to perform it.

By February the DEA had obtained enough information from the FDA to

know that the protocol was sound enough for the FDA to approve “in

principle.” The DEA agreed to give me the Schedule I permit. However, my

contact there, Ms. L., called with some bad news.

“Diversion Control blocked the permit.”

“Who’s Diversion Control?” I asked.

“I’ll try and get your request exempted. I’ll call you next week.”

The next day, Ms. B. from the DEA, the woman who had broken the

logjam, called to say that Dave was indeed a manufacturer and would need

additional security requirements. I didn’t know what to say.

I told her, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Here’s the name and phone number of the DEA agent in Indianapolis,

near Purdue University. He’s responsible for that area. He’ll tell Dr. Nichols

what he needs to do.”

She called back that day. “I’m sorry. Dr. Nichols is making another drug,

and we mixed up that one with your DMT request. My error. You may go

ahead as you were planning.”

Dave called later that week, saying the lawyers at Purdue were advising

him not to make the DMT because of liability issues. I called Mr. W. at

NIDA and asked him if there were ever any malpractice claims resulting

from studies using their Schedule I drugs.

He offered some encouraging news: “We’ve never been sued for

providing marijuana, a Schedule I drug, for human research. Just make sure

you’ve got an airtight informed consent document.”

He called back that day and put the NIDA attorney on the phone.

The attorney said, “You’d be sued first, then your university, then maybe

the FDA, and last and most remotely Dr. Nichols. All he’s doing is making

it according to FDA regulations. He’s not deciding who gives what dose to

whom—that’s your responsibility.”

I told Dave this, and he replied, “I hope you know what you’re doing.

This is a real leap of faith for me and our lawyers.”

May and June involved finding laboratories to run the FDA-required tests

on the DMT once it arrived. One test required the DMT to be sent out, and

the first two laboratories I contacted refused to work with a Schedule I

drug. Finally a third company agreed to do the testing.

By July 1990, Dave had made the drug and was running all the tests on it

that the FDA needed to determine its identity and purity. It was nearly 100

percent pure.

In early July he sent five grams of DMT to my clinic by overnight

courier. I kept it in my office that day and drove to the hospital pharmacy to

deliver it before going home.

I called Dr. W. to tell him that the DMT had arrived and that it might take

a few months to get all the tests performed and collect the results.

He said, “Get everything together, and send it to Ms. R. the chemist and

Ms. P. Call them a week later. They’ll say they never saw your letter. Then

call me in two weeks if you don’t hear anything after that. Some poor guy

got his approval and waited a month before we found someone to type the

letter to him.”

The pharmacy prepared a solution of DMT dissolved in saltwater. This

was the form in which I would give DMT to the volunteers. The pharmacist

divided it into one hundred separate glass vials. The samples for the FDA’s

tests would come from them. I had a few last-minute questions and called

Ms. R. in September. We hadn’t talked for a few months. “I need to refresh

my memory about your case,” she said. After a few additional phone calls,

she provided the necessary information.

By late October all the tests were complete, and the DMT passed every

one. I put together my package and sent it to the FDA by overnight mail. I

started calling within a week. No one replied to the dozen messages I left

with the secretary. I phoned Dr. W.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You usually call when things aren’t

going well.”

“May I begin the DMT study?”

“I’ll just toodle on over there and find out what I can.”

I called back in early November. The secretary told me their division had

changed offices, but that they came by every half-hour to check for

messages.

On November 5, 1990, Ms. M., my project officer, called at the end of

the day. “Your hold has been removed.”

“Is a verbal okay all I need?”

“Yes.”

“The university won’t accept that. Would you fax a letter?” I asked.

“I’ll fax one tomorrow.”

November in the mountains of New Mexico is cold and dry, windy and

harsh. I made many of these phone calls from my house in the Manzano

Mountains southeast of Albuquerque. I sometimes joked to friends that my

applications had to be approved because my view was nicer than anyone’s

in D.C.

My former wife’s weaving studio was in a separate building about fifteen

yards from the main house. Hanging up the phone after that last

conversation with Ms. M., I braced myself against the cold wind and slowly

walked along the crunchy gravel path to the outbuilding to share the news.

“They said I could start.” I lay down on the cold cement floor, staring up

at the ceiling.

“That’s great, dear,” she replied, leaning down to ground level to kiss my

cheek.

I called every day for the next ten days, asking for the fax. It arrived on

November 15. At the bottom of the handwritten fax, Ms. M. wrote, “Have a

Happy Thanksgiving!”

That day, the university laboratory called to tell me the DMT in the glass

vials had decomposed by 30 percent; it was too weak to use. I called the

laboratory technician.

“How did you calculate the concentration?”

He answered, “By using the weight of free base DMT.”

“It’s not free base. It’s a salt.”2

“Oh, I didn’t know that. Hmm, let’s see. That’s right. It’s the correct

concentration after all. Sorry about that.”

Four days later, I gave Philip the first dose of DMT.

Part III Set, Setting, and

DMT

Being a Volunteer

I obtained approval for the DMT research in late 1990 and soon, with

Philip and Nils as my human guinea pigs, determined the best doses and

manner of administering the drug. It now was time to begin recruiting

volunteers. While I found many volunteers among my longtime friends, I

needed to enlarge the pool of research subjects beyond personal

acquaintances.

I was reluctant to advertise. Such an announcement might have resulted

in a flood of calls, and I did not have the time to speak to everyone with a

casual interest. A public call for research subjects also might find its way to

the local media and would draw unwanted attention.

Upon considering recruiting UNM students, I remembered the trouble

that Leary and his associates encountered at Harvard when they included

undergraduates into their program. If I were to canvas the university for

volunteers, they would need to be graduate students, rather than the younger

and less mature undergraduates. I also wanted to include no more than one

representative from any department. Leary’s research at Harvard had

created cliques of drug-taking graduate students. These students developed

an “us” versus “them” mentality that contributed to intense conflicts within

departments between those participating in psychedelic research and those

who were not. Such envious and competitive ill will at Harvard was a

significant factor in the ultimate expulsion of Leary’s group.

Several volunteers in this new group were social or professional

acquaintances. Two were academic colleagues in the psychiatry department,

one was a friend of my former wife, and seven belonged to a social group to

which I was introduced several years after the research began. The nearly

three dozen remaining people found out about the study by word of mouth;

they were friends of volunteers, received psychedelic newsletters describing

the Albuquerque research, or just happened to be in a conversation during

which the studies were discussed.

For the sake of convenience, I will invent a hypothetical volunteer named

Alex, a thirty-two-year-old married male who worked as a software

programmer outside of Santa Fe. Since most of our research subjects were

men, I hope no one is put off by making our generic volunteer male.

Alex’s first step was to make a phone call to my office, which was

fielded by the psychiatry department secretary and subsequently answered

by a member of the research team. After a brief conversation regarding age,

previous psychedelic experience, and medical and psychiatric health, Alex

and I made an appointment to meet in my department office.

Before this meeting took place, I sent him a packet of files, including a

copy of the informed consent document for his particular study, several

popular articles about DMT, and a paper I wrote some years before about

the pineal gland, DMT, and consciousness. Later, when the project was well

underway, I included papers describing the results of our own work.

This meeting took at least an hour. I needed to learn enough about Alex

to decide whether to include him in the study. In a comparable manner,

Alex needed to know I was someone he could trust to supervise his deeply

psychedelic DMT experiences.

An important issue was how stable his life was at the time. If it seemed in

chaos, I would be reluctant to include him. If he was in a transitional stage,

he might decide to leave the area halfway through the study. If his ability to

sustain relationships appeared tenuous, he might not be able to bear up in

the face of the powerfully destabilizing effects of DMT. He might have

problems trusting us in the hospital under the influence, or he might not be

able to find enough support between sessions if his experiences were

especially upsetting.

If Alex were using drugs or alcohol, he’d need to limit or stop taking

them. This was especially the case if they were ones like cocaine or

psychedelics, which might affect his responses to DMT.

Information about previous psychedelic drug use and experiences was

crucial. The number of his experiences was not as important as their having

been fully psychedelic. Because his high-dose DMT sessions probably

would propel him further into psychedelic space than he had ever gone

before, I wanted to be reasonably certain Alex was at least familiar with the

terrain.

“What’s the furthest out you’ve ever been on a psychedelic?” I asked

Alex. “Have you thought you died? What about losing all connection to

your body and the outside world?”

Just as critical was finding out if Alex was steady and responsible under

the influence. In a way, I was more interested in hearing about bad trips

than I was the beautiful ones, because I knew our setting would tend toward

producing some unpleasant moments.

The nature of psychedelic research ideally is highly collaborative. In

addition to my comfort level with Alex, he had the right, and the

responsibility to himself, to know how he’d feel about my giving him DMT.

Alex asked about my motivations for the research, what I hoped to find, and

how we supervised sessions. He wondered if I had a religious practice, and

about my own experience with psychedelics. The way I handled his

concerns and questions provided him with important emotional information.

A week later, we met on 5-East, the research wing of the University of

New Mexico Hospital, for his medical screening. We drew blood for basic

medical tests and obtained an electrocardiogram, or ECG, to assess his

heart’s health.

We all gathered around to watch Alex’s veins bulge under his skin after

the nurse placed the tourniquet above his elbow. Good veins were an

important element of a volunteer’s successful participation because we

drew so much blood. If Alex’s veins collapsed or clotted easily, it would

cause a lot of stress on study days.

I went over a painstakingly detailed medical history and performed a

physical examination. The results of the medical tests were important, but

equally so was the continuation of our building a close, basic relationship

before giving and receiving any DMT. Asking Alex sometimes

embarrassing health questions, touching, and otherwise relating at a

fundamental and physical level helped establish a foundation of trust and

familiarity upon which I hoped we could rely when he was in the throes of

powerful, disorienting, and potentially regressive DMT sessions.

Alex’s laboratory values and ECG were normal, so we scheduled the

psychiatric examination. This formal psychiatric interview followed a

ninety-page form and could take several hours. Laura, our research nurse,

performed all these interviews; it was their first opportunity to get to know

each other. Laura then sent Alex off with one more pile of questionnaires

and rating scales.

After he returned them to us, we scheduled Alex’s first non-blind,

screening DMT sessions: a low dose of 0.05 mg/kg, followed by a high

dose of 0.4 mg/kg the following day. For Alex and the other men, the first

sessions could occur whenever our schedules permitted. In women’s cases,

we needed to standardize when in the menstrual cycle we studied them. We

arranged for the women’s first two doses, and all subsequent ones, to occur

during the first ten days after their menstrual bleeding stopped.

On the morning of his admission, Alex left his car across the street in the

monolithic parking structure facing the south side of the hospital. He told

the guard he was coming in for “a research study” and got his appropriate

sticker. Walking across the footbridge over busy Lomas Boulevard, he

found the hospital’s Admitting Office, where clerical staff checked him in

as DMT-22. They directed Alex upstairs to the fifth-floor Research Center.

He walked past the outpatient clinic and entered the ward through a set of

double doors.

Alex signed in at the nursing desk, where one of the regular ward nurses

greeted him.

“Hi, DMT-22,” she said. “How are you doing?”

“Fine, although it’s weird being called DMT-22.”

“Oh, don’t worry. We’re used to it. Here, let me put your ID band on

you.”

She attached this identification to his wrist, then walked Alex down to

Room 531.

At first, we used whatever room happened to be available in the Research

Center. It was best to have a quiet one—far from the nurses’ station, away

from the bustling kitchen, but not too close to the double doors leading onto

5-East.

Some days we had little choice about which room we could use, and the

setting could be grim. For example, occasionally we had to use a lead-lined

room at the very end of the ward designed for patients who were receiving

radioactive implants for cancer. Other days we might need to use the

“traction room,” where patients stayed who suffered from multiple trauma

and fractured bones. A “cage” over the bed provided several convenient

access points from which to attach ropes, pulleys, and cables for suspending

casted broken limbs. A few volunteers professed that they didn’t mind the

cage, but I found it intimidating and disconcerting. After one or two

sessions maneuvering around it, I made certain to disassemble this structure

before we got started.

Another room on the same end of the ward was the bone marrow

transplant room. Absolutely sanitized, with a ceiling full of high-powered

fans and two sets of double doors partitioning off an anteroom, it was a

germfree environment where these highly infection-prone patients could

remain in relative safety. Thankfully, there were switches with which I

could turn off the fans.

We needed a nicer room. I requested to remodel a room on the ward over

which we would have scheduling priority. The budget in my grant from the

National Institute on Drug Abuse included funds for this renovation. We

chose Room 531.

This room was square, about fifteen feet to a side, and relatively quiet,

being the last one on the north side of the hall. At the end of the hall was the

door to a hospital stairwell, and across it, but nearer the stairway, was the

lead-lined room. Directly across from Room 531 was the entrance to the

bone marrow transplant room, but from our doorway, it was hard to see

what was in it.

We met with the hospital’s clinical engineering department and made

several modifications to the room. Carpenters built a cover over the tubes

and hoses emerging from the panel behind the bed and a little closet below

the sink to hide its pipes. Extra insulation on the top and bottom of the door

more efficiently sealed the room from hallway sounds. And, after one

particularly unnerving session in which the public address system blared

repeatedly from the speaker in the ceiling, the electrician designed a switch,

controlled at the nurses’ station, that turned off the room’s speaker.

We could do little about the bed, because it needed to be a regulation

unit, and specially built hospital beds are outrageously expensive. A

wooden headboard and footboard added a somewhat more pleasant touch.

However, nicer furniture made a big difference: a rocking chair and footrest

for me, a comfortable oversized chair for Laura or other research nurses,

and two visitors’ chairs.

My former wife, a tapestry artist, and I pored over dozens of swatches of

material for the chairs before finding one that met all our needs. The design

needed to be relatively soothing, but not so dull as to dampen or depress the

volunteers’ mood and perceptions upon opening their eyes. Another

requirement was that it be consistent with the particular type of visual

effects wrought by DMT, but not so stimulating that volunteers would be

startled or disoriented looking at the furniture in their highly altered state.

The best fit was a pleasing blue, subtly multicolored, with speckles, flecks,

and patterns embedded within it. A solid light blue carpet and soothing pale

blue paint covering the formerly bright white walls were the final pieces of

the refurbishing effort.

These changes to Room 531 nevertheless left several minor, but

insurmountable, problems. Because the room now had become almost

soundproofed from the outside hall, the ceiling fan seemed louder than ever.

Many volunteers paid this no heed, but for others it was an irritant. In

addition, the bathroom shared a wall with the shower between our room and

the next. When someone used the shower, we could hear it quite well. If

that person happened to be ill, their coughs, groans, and cries were audible

through the wall.

Another factor over which we had no control was noise from outside of

the hospital. The busy Albuquerque International Airport and a major U.S.

Air Force base were only five miles south of the hospital. While flight

patterns usually were concentrated south of town, away from the hospital,

weather occasionally forced jets to fly overhead. The noise, although

buffered by double-paned windows, could be jarring. Sounds from the

hospital grounds also could be grating, especially those arising from the

trash compactor located right below Room 531’s window.

Once Alex settled himself into Room 531, the ward nurse who walked him

down the hall checked his heart rate, blood pressure, weight, and

temperature. Someone from the research kitchen staff came by and asked

Alex what he’d like to eat after the study: a snack, late breakfast, early

lunch, vegetarian or meat, what to drink. We rarely received complaints

about the food!

Laura was the research nurse working with us that day. She arrived and

began the preparations for the low dose. She placed a blue, plastic-lined

cloth, about fourteen inches square, under Alex’s arm. This cloth protects

the bed linens from the antiseptic iodine solution. The cloth also absorbs

any blood that might drip out of the intravenous line before she can cap it.

She began scrubbing his forearm skin over the vein in which she was to

insert the intravenous line with the antiseptic. She placed the blood pressure

cuff on the other arm and took another heart rate and blood pressure

reading.

On these first non-blind DMT test days, we drew no blood. Rather, a

single small needle was all we needed for administering DMT. However, if

we were going to take blood samples, Laura would insert another more

complicated apparatus into the other arm. This setup consisted of several

extra pieces of plastic “plumbing” that permitted drawing blood into

syringes, while at the same time providing a steady drip of sterile saltwater

into the vein. After drawing blood, Laura would squirt a little bit of heparin,

a blood-thinning drug, into the line to reduce the likelihood of any clots.

Clogging of that needle made for a very difficult day, since we were so

dependent upon measuring levels of various substances in the blood.

On blood-drawing days, we had to keep the samples chilled, and for this

purpose we would keep a basin filled with ice chips next to the bed. Test

tubes waited for transferring blood collected from the syringes. It was best

to remove the tops from these vacuum tubes before the study began;

otherwise, they made a loud distracting “pop” when opened.

Finally, there was the rectal probe, or “thermistor.” We wanted to

measure temperature several times before, during, and after DMT

administration. The least trouble was to have the thermometer in place

throughout the session, rather than requiring Alex to actively interact with

yet one more piece of equipment. And the most accurate temperature

readings are from the rectum. All these factors added up to a rectal probe.

Laura inserted it a half-hour before the study, and it stayed in place until we

were done. The probe was about an eighth of an inch in diameter; it was

made out of rubber-coated wire and was quite flexible. It went in about four

to six inches and rarely caused any discomfort, except in those with

hemorrhoids. Despite being taped in place, it sometimes slipped out if a

volunteer was especially restless during the session. Only Nils refused the

rectal probe.

The thermistor attached to a small portable computer that recorded

temperature every minute. We clipped this to the handrail of the bed, and

after the session was complete, I downloaded the data directly onto the

Research Center’s computers.

By the time all of these preparations were complete, even for a double-

blind blood-drawing day, Alex had been in the room for no more than 20

minutes. We were efficient.

I usually arrived on the ward about 30 to 40 minutes before hoping to

give the DMT. Asking the admitting nurse at the front desk how Alex

seemed gave me the first sense of what the morning might be like. In Room

531, Alex and I exchanged a few pleasantries before I went to pick up the

DMT.

Walking down six flights to the basement, I turned right, making my way

down the container-strewn hall. The solid metal pharmacy door was to the

left. In bold letters, a sign commanded, “DON’T RING MORE THAN

ONCE. PUSH GENTLY AND QUICKLY AFTER THE DOOR

UNLOCKS.” I pushed the intercom buzzer. A closed-circuit camera stared

down at me.

There were days when, despite my better judgement, I did buzz more

than once—I could wait in the hallway only so long. There also were days

when I wasn’t quick enough to push open the door when the lock released,

and I had to ring again.

Inside, a waist-high countertop ran along the length of a narrow

antechamber. From it rose a four-foot-high wall of thick glass, probably

bullet-proof. Behind the glass stood several busy pharmacists, and beyond

them was the storage site for all the hospital’s medications, including the

narcotics vault.

The research pharmacist unlocked the narcotics room, went behind

another set of doors, and unlocked the little freezer containing our drugs.

He had filled the syringe with the prearranged dose of DMT the previous

night. He only capped the syringe, because attaching a needle was

cumbersome and potentially dangerous—he might accidentally inject

himself with DMT. The drug solution in the syringe was frozen, and I put it

in my breast pocket so that it could begin to thaw while I signed various

forms.

Returning to the ward, I told the nurses at the front desk that the injection

would take place in about 15 minutes. My warning was intended to help

lend a slightly quieter air to the usually very busy ward. They had heard

enough strange stories from the volunteers, and sometimes even yells and

cries from the study room, to know that something serious was about to

begin. They switched off the public address system to Room 531 and

awaited my return an hour or so later. I went to the medication room and

prepared a syringe full of sterile saltwater for the flush that followed the

DMT injection. I fastened a needle to the top of the DMT-containing

syringe. Finally, I stuffed a few alcohol swabs into my pocket for use in

wiping off the end of the IV tube into which I’d inject Alex’s DMT.

I reentered Alex’s room and placed the “Session in Progress. Do Not

Disturb” sign on the outside of the door. Sometimes even this didn’t work.

Once or twice housekeeping staff, accustomed to entering hospital rooms at

will, noisily intruded upon sessions. Unexpected phone calls also were not

welcome. Making certain the phone was unplugged from the outlet in the

wall, I walked around Alex’s bed and took my seat.

“Here’s the DMT,” I said, pulling out the little syringe from my shirt

pocket and placing it on the bed next to Alex’s leg.

We spent a few minutes catching up on any important news and

preparing for the session. While we were talking, I opened up the top

drawer of the nightstand near his bed and took out another vial of sterile

saltwater. Inserting the needle into the vial, I drew back enough saline to

nearly fill the DMT-containing syringe. This additional volume in the

syringe made it easier to control the rate of injection. The nurses wanted me

to keep the saline vials for this purpose separate from the ones they used.

They were afraid that if a drop or two of DMT leaked into one of their vials,

it might cause an unwelcome and unexpected “trip” in one of the ward’s

other residents.

Initiating my own ritual while talking and listening, I placed my yellow

notepad in a clipboard and wrote down Alex’s DMT number, the date, the

protocol number, and the dose. In the left-hand margin, I scribbled a column

of minutes at which I would measure blood pressure and heart rate: -30, -1,

2, 5, 10, 15, 30.

I asked, “Did you have any dreams last night?”

A volunteer’s dreams the night before a study might give us insights into

fears, hopes, and wishes about the upcoming session, or about previous

ones. Alex couldn’t recall any.

I pulled the saltwater-flush syringe and the alcohol swabs out of my

pocket, placing them all on the bed next to the DMT solution.

“Did you take any medications this morning or last night?”

“No.”

“What are you doing after today’s session?”

“I’ve got a few hours of work to do. Then, not too much. Relax, think

about tomorrow. Get a good night’s sleep.”

Sometimes these little visits took the form of brief counseling or therapy

sessions. Relationship problems, career or school concerns, spiritual or

religious issues raised by participation in this research—all these were

important to air before beginning such deep and profound journeying

through the DMT realms.

I started telling Alex what to expect.

“Today’s DMT dose is small. You might not notice too much from it. But

don’t be too blasé. It’s better to be too prepared than caught off-guard. We

won’t do much after the DMT’s in you. We’ll sit quietly, be alert, pay

attention to you, be available, hold good thoughts and feelings for you. If

you need human contact, just put out your hand and someone will take it. If

you lose control, we’re here to help. Otherwise, this is your experience, not

ours. You’re pretty much on your own.”

In the first series of DMT studies, I recommended that volunteers close

their eyes to start, and open them as effects began fading. Sometimes,

however, the shock of the first minute or two of the high-dose DMT

experience would cause an almost reflex opening of the eyes in an attempt

to orient. This almost always made things worse. The room, already rather

forbidding, could take on even more troubling overtones, and the research

nurse and I, our visages hopelessly transfigured, did not look much more

appealing. Now we placed black eyeshades on all the volunteers at this

point in the session. The eyeshades were the soft satin ones airline travelers

use, or those who need to sleep during daylight hours. It was difficult

finding any at the local drugstores.

Once this orientation was done, I said, “Spend as much time as you like

getting ready. It might help to focus on your breath, how your body feels on

the bed. That will start the process of letting go.

“When you’re ready, let me know. I’ll tell you when it’s about 5 to 10

seconds before the beginning of the injection. I like to start giving the drug

when the second hand of my watch is in an easy-to-read position.

“I’ll now clean off the tubing with a little alcohol swab. Like this. The

alcohol will quickly evaporate, so the smell won’t distract you. I’ll now

insert the needle into the tubing, but I won’t empty out the DMT. It’s easier

for me to have the needle in place beforehand. That way I won’t fumble

around trying to fit it in right as the injection should begin.

“I’ll tell you when I start. It might feel cold, or tingly. Maybe it will burn

slightly, or feel a little bubbly; some people describe those sensations. The

DMT goes in over 30 seconds. Once it’s all in, I’ll tell you. Then there will

be 15 seconds of saltwater flush of the tubing, to make sure all of the DMT

gets into you and there’s none left in the line. I’ll tell you when I start and

finish the flush, too. Any questions so far?”

“That’s pretty straightforward.”

The ebb and flow of tension in the room at this point was always

fascinating. Only one of our many volunteers had ever used a recreational

drug intravenously before, and no one had taken a psychedelic that way.

The novelty of this element itself was sufficient to get all our nerve endings

more alert than usual.

As I described the process to Alex and prepared this small dose, I was

thinking ahead to how Alex would negotiate tomorrow’s high dose.

However, there was no guarantee that this minor dose might not have some

major effects. Several people did drop out after this first session. Others we

had to excuse because their blood pressure surpassed our predetermined

cutoff point.

I continued: “Alex, it starts fast. Perhaps even before the injection is

done. It can be a little frightening. Do your best to remain alert and relaxed,

poised but passive. The effects will peak in a couple of minutes. Then relax

and wait a while until you decide to start talking. It’s tempting to speak

right away, but you’ll miss some of the subtle coming-down effects if you

don’t wait at least 10 or 15 minutes, even today. So, let’s get started. Are

you ready?”

Alex answered, “Sure, I’m ready.”

For the deep letting go and relaxing necessary to successfully experience

the full effects of DMT, it was best if the volunteers were lying down for

the injection. Otherwise, there might be a lot of fussing involved with

maneuvering Alex into a more comfortable position as he was losing

normal awareness of his body and the rush of psychedelic effects began.

We adjusted his bed. Some volunteers liked their head a little elevated. A

few preferred to have their knees slightly bent, for which we raised that part

of the bed or placed a pillow under the knees. We made sure the eyeshades

fit loosely but securely.

A few deep breaths, some adjusting of clothes, arms, legs, feet, and then

Alex’s words:

“Go ahead.”

“Good. Let’s start in about 5 seconds here. . . . Okay, I’ll start right now.”

Gently pressing on the plunger of the syringe, I hoped there would be no

obstruction, which would indicate a clot or that the needle had worked its

way loose out of the vein.

The syringe was empty at 30 seconds. I pulled it out of the line.

“The DMT’s in.”

Using my teeth, I pulled off the cap covering the needle attached to the

saltwater syringe. Inserting that needle, I said, “Here’s the flush now.”

Fifteen seconds later, pulling out that needle: “All right, I’m all done.”

In addition to familiarizing Alex with the technical details of getting IV

DMT on this low-dose day, it was an excellent time to instruct him in filling

out the questionnaire. We might spend an hour going over any questions he

had about what particular terms or phrases meant. After a few sessions,

Alex could complete the questionnaire in 10 minutes.

Before wrapping up this session, I said to him, “Don’t eat or drink too

much tonight. Get a good night’s sleep. Remember to skip breakfast. If you

must have coffee, make sure you drink it at least two hours before you

come in.”

This was commonsense advice. If the DMT brought on intense nausea, it

was best to have an empty stomach. However, it wasn’t worth bringing on a

coffee-withdrawal headache.

I dated the note in DMT-22’s chart and wrote: “Low dose tolerated

without incident. Patient sent home on overnight pass from the hospital.

Will return tomorrow a.m. for high dose.”

Alex returned the next morning. We followed the same preliminary routine

until it was time for the injection. I looked over at Laura, on the other side

of the bed, and noted that there was a vomit basin close enough for her to

pick up, just in case. Tossing the used alcohol swabs and their wrappers into

the nearby wastebasket, I began, “It comes on just as fast, but it’s a lot

stronger. It may startle you. Don’t bother trying to resist, because it’s

usually impossible.”

“Okay.” Alex smiled thinly but determinedly.

“What do you normally do when you find yourself overwhelmed in a

psychedelic experience?”

“I usually breath deeply and slowly. That’s something I learned from my

years of meditation. Or I may touch these,” he said, fingering his necklace

of Tibetan prayer beads.

Other volunteers might hold a fetish, a rock or piece of wood. Some

might hum, sing, or chant. A few evoked the image of a teacher, friend, or

loved one. Those with a deep and sustained meditation practice started

meditating before the DMT went in and tried to maintain that mental

balance throughout the session.

I said, “Sometimes people think they’ve died, or are dying, or that we’ve

overdosed them. So far, no one’s been injured. This is a physically safe

dose, although your blood pressure and heart rate will probably take a nice

jump. We can respond if there are problems.

“If you think you’ve died, there’s two ways I tell people they can deal

with it. One is ‘Man, I’m dying, and I’m going to kick and scream and try

and stop it.’ The other is ‘Okay, I’m dying, now let’s see what this is like.

Very interesting.’ Easier said than done, of course.”

“I know what you’re talking about.”

“You probably won’t notice the first blood pressure reading at 2 minutes.

You’ll most likely be down enough at 5 minutes to feel that one.”

I was done marking my notepad: DMT-22, date, protocol number, dose.

Blood pressure and heart rate columns.

When all was said and done, we three—Alex, Laura, and myself—looked

at each other. If a plane were flying overhead, we paused, waiting for it to

pass. As the time for the injection approached, the air in the room and on

the ward took on a certain density. There was little more to say.

Alex put on the eyeshades, and we lowered the head of the bed. I

prepared all the syringes and moved my chair closer. Laura warmed up her

hands, getting ready to hold Alex’s if he needed a loving touch.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“Yes.” Barely audible.

Laura said, “Good luck. We’ll be here waiting.”

I watched the second hand of my watch as it approached the 9. I said,

“I’ll start in about 5 to10 seconds.”

Then, as the second hand hit the 12, I told him quietly, “I’m beginning

the injection now. . . .”

Ten, 20, 30 seconds, slowly emptying the drug into Alex’s vein. My

feelings at this point were always intense and contradictory: jealousy of his

impending fantastic experience, sadness for any pain he might undergo,

doubt mixed with certainty regarding the wisdom of what I was doing.

“The DMT’s in.”

Time was speeding up and slowing down at the same time. My

movements felt quick, but also leaden. Was Alex going to be all right?

Could he manage his trip? I felt my heart beating in my chest. Could we

manage his trip?

There was no turning back.

“Here’s the flush. . . .”

Before I could finish my sentence, Alex murmured,

Here it comes. . . .

He took in an enormous breath, then sighed it out loudly, just as I

finished saying, “The flush is done.”

I knew he probably had not heard the end of my sentence. Nor would he

likely remember his loud exhalation.

Leaning back into my chair, I sighed, too, although silently, looking over

at my nurse colleague, then gazing down at Alex, his body motionless. One

minute. Ninety seconds. It was almost time for the first blood pressure

check. He would be peaking and wouldn’t feel the iron grip of the cuff.

His words echoed in my head and my heart.

Here it comes. . . .

Getting DMT

Twelve subjects participated in the original dose-response study, which

took most of 1991 to perform. They each received non-blind low and high

doses of DMT and subsequently got the same doses double-blind. Two

intermediate doses and a saline placebo completed this series of injections.

Once we had thoroughly characterized DMT’s effects in the

doseresponse study, the first follow-up project investigated whether it was

possible to develop tolerance to repeated injections of DMT.

Tolerance occurs when the same dose of a drug produces smaller effects

when taken repeatedly. LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline all produce rapid

and nearly complete tolerance after three or four daily doses. In other

words, an amount that had quite profound psychedelic effects on the first

day, given every day, would be barely noticeable on the fourth.

DMT appeared unique in that tolerance was quite difficult to

demonstrate, even in animals given full doses every two hours around the

clock for twenty-one days in a row. The only published human study

couldn’t elicit tolerance when researchers gave full intramuscular doses

twice a day for five days.1

“Field” reports among recreational DMT users were inconsistent. Some

believed they could smoke DMT all night with no diminishing effects,

while others described being able to use it only three or four times in a row

before they seemed immune to it. However, an important factor in these

field stories is fatigue—it’s difficult to inhale large volumes of DMT vapor

time and time again at one sitting. Maybe this “tolerance” was the result of

not getting enough DMT into the lungs after the second or third trip.

DMT’s lack of tolerance development also was one of the factors making

it a likely naturally occurring schizotoxin. If tolerance to endogenous DMT

did develop, psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia, for example, would last

only as long as it took for tolerance to build up. Since psychotic symptoms

are usually chronic and constant, demonstrating that DMT could not elicit

tolerance would be powerful evidence that it could play a role in these

disorders.

There were other reasons a tolerance study intrigued me. The brevity of

DMT’s action seemed to limit its usefulness as a tool for any inner

psychological or spiritual work. All one could do was hold on tight through

the rush. By the time volunteers got their bearings, they were already

coming down. Repeated entrance into the DMT state might provide better

conditions for applying its incredibly profound psychedelic properties.

Another less clearly articulated reason for performing this study right

after the dose-response one was that it was a “pure” DMT study. Protocols

following up the tolerance project would start investigating mechanisms of

action by modifying brain serotonin and other receptors using various drugs

in combination with DMT. Something in me knew that these studies, which

attempted to replicate animal laboratory experiments in humans, would be

difficult. In retrospect, I think that I wanted to delay getting on with those

types of projects as long as possible.

I proposed that DMT’s short duration was the reason previous studies

failed to demonstrate tolerance. LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline tolerance

experiments all used once-daily doses. However, their effects last 6 to 12

hours, while those of DMT were much shorter. This suggested the need to

give DMT at much shorter intervals, every 30 to 60 minutes, in order to

demonstrate reduced responses over time.

The other option was a continuous intravenous infusion, a “drip” of DMT

into volunteers’ veins. However, I liked the idea of people “coming down”

after each injection so we could hear what had happened. With a continuous

drip, communication would be problematic.

After two months of trial and error, I determined that the best regime was

four injections of 0.3 mg/kg DMT given at 30-minute intervals. This dose,

while highly psychedelic, was just below our highest, 0.4 mg/kg. One man,

Cal, was able to manage four 0.4 mg/kg injections at half-hour intervals.

However, his wife, Linda, was completely spent after three doses and

refused the fourth and final one during this preliminary work. Remembering

the harrowing nature of giving too much DMT to Philip and Nils, I backed

off without argument and settled for one notch less. Better safe than sorry.

We enrolled thirteen volunteers in the tolerance study, many of whom

had already participated in the dose-response project. New research subjects

went through the same screening and received their non-blind low and high

doses.

While the tolerance experiment was double-blind and saline-placebo-

controlled, the “blind” became apparent within a few seconds of the first

injection. It was either a big dose of DMT or saline. And, if it was DMT,

there would be three more big trips before the morning was over.

We drew blood samples similar to those for the dose-response project and

gave a shortened version of the rating scale that took only about five

minutes to fill out. The timing was split-second but worked perfectly.

Volunteers began talking at about 10 to 15 minutes, and then filled out the

rating scale. We’d have a chance to process their trip and get ready for the

next one over the ensuing 5 to 10 minutes. If it were four injections of

saltwater, we spent the morning in more casual conversation.

This study showed that there was no tolerance to the psychological

effects of repeated DMT injections. The experience was as intensely

psychedelic the fourth time as it was the first. Because of this, and as I had

hoped, subjects were much more able to process and do something with the

repeated high dose than with a single isolated experience. Many of the most

moving tales from DMT volunteers in the following chapters derive from

this study.2

After demonstrating what DMT did, the biomedical model requires

determining how those effects occur. These are mechanism-of-action

studies. As our research was pharmacologically based, these follow-up

experiments would attempt to establish which brain receptors mediated

DMT’s effects.

The first of these was the pindolol project. Pindolol is a drug used in

medical practice to lower high blood pressure. It does this by blocking

certain adrenaline receptors. Another property of pindolol is that it obstructs

one particular type of serotonin receptor in the brain, the serotonin “1A”

site. Since DMT attaches firmly to 1A receptors in animal brains, this site

might be involved in DMT’s effects. If, for example, blocking the 1A site

with pindolol made for a “less emotional” experience relative to DMT

alone, we would propose that the 1A site regulated the emotional responses

brought on by DMT. As it turned out, pindolol markedly enhanced the

psychological and blood pressure effects of DMT.

Eleven volunteers participated in the pindolol study, several of whom

were veterans of the dose-response and tolerance ones. This protocol

yielded less dramatic examples of inner work than did the tolerance study,

although there were remarkably powerful single experiences.

The next serotonin receptor blockade study used cyproheptadine, an

antihistamine drug with additional anti-serotonin properties. In this case,

cyproheptadine prevents drugs from attaching to the serotonin “2” site, the

receptor researchers believe is the most important in controlling how

psychedelics work.

This protocol was identical in design to that of the pindolol study in that

volunteers received cyproheptadine several hours before DMT. Eight

volunteers completed this study. Most were new recruits.

There appeared to be some suppression of effects, so we gave the high

dose, 0.4 mg/kg, with and without the serotonin blocker. Because

cyproheptadine clearly did not magnify DMT’s effects, we hoped that using

this large dose would give us the best chance of establishing a significant

level of DMT suppression. However, the sedating properties of the drug

were so pronounced that they complicated interpretation of the data. It was

difficult to tell how much was specific DMT blockade, and how much was

general tranquilization.

At this juncture, it was becoming difficult to bring in first-time research

subjects, or to induce experienced ones to return. Who wanted to take a

drug that would suppress the effects of DMT? I could draw people in to this

study by emphasizing that they would get two unadulterated high doses:

one on the first screening day, and the other in combination with placebo-

cyproheptadine. However, I heard myself sounding apologetic for this

project, a bit like a used-car salesman.

I initiated several other experiments that received university and FDA

approval. However, they did not receive enough funding to perform full-

scale investigations.

One of these, the naltrexone study, continued with mechanism-of-action

experiments designed to determine brain receptors regulating DMT effects.

In this case, naltrexone blocks opiate receptors, and for that purpose it is

helpful in treating heroin addiction. Animal data showed some interaction

between opiates and psychedelics, and naltrexone might help us find out

more about that relationship in humans.

We began preliminary work in three volunteers for this project. However,

one fellow felt so bad on naltrexone alone that he dropped out after his first

session. In the other two men, we saw little effect one way or the other, and

so we went no further.

Another pilot project was to assess if the phase of the menstrual cycle in

women affected the DMT response. Many women report cyclical variations

in their sensitivity to psychedelics. In addition, animal studies clearly

indicated that sex hormones influenced responses to psychedelic and other

serotonin-active drugs.

We divided the cycle into early, middle, and late in one woman, Willow,

who usually had quite deep and insightful DMT experiences. In this sole

volunteer, no obvious differences in psychological effects emerged. Since

we didn’t have funding to pursue this fascinating line of DMT research, we

brought in no more volunteers for it.

We also turned some high technology onto the DMT state. Three men

received 0.4 mg/kg DMT doses at the Research Center while we recorded

their brain waves using an EEG, or electroencephalogram. We hoped this

would show us which brain areas were more or less active during the DMT

intoxication.

These were difficult studies, as the EEG machine was extraordinarily

bulky and noisy and required constant adjustments. As well, there were

eighteen electrodes firmly attached to volunteers’ scalps, glued in place by

some of the strongest-smelling contact cement I have ever encountered.

While all three subjects had “full” responses to DMT, the setting was

terribly unpleasant. I recruited no more volunteers than these three, wanting

first to be sure the data were so impressive as to justify the discomfort. The

results were not especially striking, and we ran no more EEG experiments.

Finally, I took advantage of some state-of-the-art brain-imaging research

taking place at the University of New Mexico. This was “functional

magnetic resonance imaging,” a modified MRI head scan that measures

brain metabolism, rather than just its structure. For example, we might be

able to show that the brain areas involved in vision were using more sugar

after a visual DMT experience.

To an even greater extent than the EEG equipment, the MRI equipment

absolutely dominated the setting. This scanner, support equipment, and staff

required their own building on the other side of campus. These were the

only DMT studies ever performed outside the Research Center.

The MRI machine generates intensely high energy magnetic fields, and

there can be no metal anywhere in the room, or in the person’s body.

Otherwise, that metal gets instantly and irresistibly pulled into the machine.

To accommodate the scanner, the room is cavernous, and it is kept quite

cool because this reduces the power necessary to maintain the magnetic

fields.

The space into which we slid volunteers for their scans was a very

narrow shiny metallic tube. I knew many people suffered their first panic

attack during an MRI scan because of the cramped quarters into which one

has to fit for the procedure. I now saw why.

Worst of all was the noise. The machine contains a massive coil that

swings back and forth, much like a washing machine, only ten times as fast

and hundreds of times as loud. The “BANG-BANG-BANG-BANGBANG-

BANG-BANG” of the coil reminded me of a jackhammer. Anyone in the

scanner, or the room, had to wear earplugs. Even so, the tumult set one’s

teeth on edge.

Nevertheless, some of our research subjects were unbelievably robust.

They liked DMT, they wanted to help with the experiments, and they were

interested in knowing what the scans would show. I was alone with them in

the MRI room while four or five other researchers sat on the opposite side

of a thick “soundproof” window, in front of the instrument panels, adjusting

dials, flipping switches, and keeping in contact through the intercom

system. The scan began; I injected the DMT and stayed in the room

throughout the session, checking blood pressure and providing moral

support. During the trip, my colleagues took scans every few minutes.

For all of the effort, stress, and expectations, these data, too, were not

especially revealing. The MRI team believed that major and expensive

modifications to the scanner might have helped in increasing its ability to

reveal DMT-induced brain changes. However, I didn’t like the machine, and

I didn’t want to expose any more volunteers, or myself, to its deafening

sound, claustrophobic quarters, and powerful magnetic fields.

While it may sound as if I had lost all modesty, or common sense,

regarding what sort of studies I enrolled volunteers in, I did draw the line at

radioactivity. Positron emission tomography (PET) scans provide very nice

color photographic images of brain activity using what I thought were

negligible amounts of radioactivity. I located some colleagues who were

interested in a DMT PET scan study. PET scans would most certainly

provide a more refined analysis of where DMT was acting in the brain.

However, after learning about the amount of radiation involved, I decided

against it.

This chapter and the last have described the set and setting of our studies:

who volunteers were, and in what circumstances and studies they received

DMT. Earlier chapters reviewed what we know about the drug itself. Now

that the tripod of set, setting, and drug is complete, we can begin following

the spirit molecule to where it leads.

Under the Influence

Describing what it’s like in the DMT realms is about as easy as giving

words to scaling a mountain peak, sexual orgasm, undersea diving, and

other nonverbal but breathtakingly profound experiences. However, since

most of us will never participate in a DMT research project, I will try to

provide a general overview of what happens after receiving various doses of

intravenous DMT.1

In our volunteers, a full dose of IV DMT almost instantly elicited intense

psychedelic visions, a feeling that the mind had separated from the body,

and overpowering emotions. These effects completely replaced whatever

had occupied their minds just before drug administration. For most people,

psychedelic doses of DMT were 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 mg/kg.

Effects began within seconds of finishing the 30-second DMT infusion,

and people were fully involved in the psychedelic worlds by the time I

finished clearing the intravenous line with sterile saline 15 seconds later.

The peak of the DMT response occurred by 2 minutes, and volunteers felt

as if they were coming down at 5 minutes. Most were able to talk about 12

to 15 minutes after drug injection, even though they remained moderately

intoxicated. Nearly everyone felt relatively normal at the 30-minute point.

We measured levels of DMT in the blood frequently after injecting it and

verified that the time course of psychological effects and DMT blood levels

overlapped exactly. That is, blood levels of DMT reached their peak at 2

minutes and were nearly undetectable at 30. Since the brain actively

transports DMT across the blood-brain barrier into its confines, it’s

reasonably certain brain levels of DMT rose as quickly as blood levels.

Lower doses of DMT, 0.1 and 0.05 mg/kg, generally were not

psychedelic, but certainly produced some psychological effects. These were

primarily emotional and physical, although some particularly sensitive

people had significant psychedelic and physical responses to even these low

doses. In fact, some volunteers dropped out because they didn’t like the

intensity of 0.05 mg/kg. We also excused other subjects after this small dose

because their blood pressure response made us worry about how their hearts

would hold up after eight times that amount the next day.

While the profound psychological effects of DMT were progressing, the

physical self followed suit with its own constellation of responses. The

body initially reacted to a high dose of DMT with a typical “fight-or-flight”

stress reaction. Heart rate and blood pressure jumped radically, their time

course closely following the psychological responses. After a while we

could almost predict how intense a volunteer’s session was by the rise in

their blood pressure.

On average, heart rate, or pulse, bolted from about 70 beats per minute

up to 100. The range, however, was wide. Some subjects’ pulse climbed up

to 150, while others’ got no higher than 95. Blood pressure also jumped

from values of about 110/70 to an average of 145/100. Heart rate and blood

pressure fell as rapidly as they rose, already beginning to taper off between

the 2- and 5-minute recordings.

Every pituitary gland hormone we measured increased rapidly. For

example, blood levels of the endogenous morphine-like chemical beta-

endorphin begin a steep ascent at 2 minutes following DMT administration

and reached their peak at 5 minutes. DMT also stimulated sharp spikes in

the release of vasopressin, prolactin, growth hormone, and corticotropin.

The last is a hormone responsible for stimulating the adrenal glands, which

then release cortisol, a powerful, all-purpose stress steroid similar to

cortisone. The elevations of these hormones may have exerted some

psychological effects—I’ll discuss this in chapter 21.

Pupil diameter doubled, from 4 millimeters to nearly 8, with a high dose

of DMT, with biggest responses at 2 minutes. Body temperature took longer

to rise, beginning at 15 minutes and continuing to climb by the time we

removed the rectal temperature monitor at 60 minutes.

Of all the biological factors we measured, the only one that did not

increase was the pineal gland hormone melatonin. This was startling, and

again brought home to me the incredibly mysterious nature of this potential

spirit gland.

It may be that outside-administered DMT was not a powerful-enough

stimulus to overcome the pineal defense mechanism we’ve discussed

previously. While it’s clear that stress hormones rose in response to the

spirit molecule, they may not have gotten high enough to stimulate daytime

melatonin production.

Another possibility is that exogenous DMT actually did stimulate the

pineal to make more of its own endogenous DMT. However, our method of

measuring DMT in the blood would not have been able to distinguish

between the two sources of the spirit molecule.

Volunteers, of course, did not feel the rise in prolactin or experience in their

consciousness their elevated blood pressure. Rather, it was in their minds

that the images, feelings, and thoughts defined the essence of the spirit

molecule’s effects.

The initial moments of the first non-blind high dose of DMT

overwhelmed almost everyone. There was an intense, rapidly developing,

and at least temporarily anxiety-provoking “rush” throughout the body and

mind. This rush began even before I had finished the saline flush.

It is difficult to do justice in describing the rush. My dictionary uses such

terms as “a sudden turbulent movement, drive, or onset; a feeling of

urgency or haste; a swift or violent movement.” Almost without thinking,

several volunteers blurted out, as effects began, “Here we go!” Some

compared this feeling to a “freight train,” “ground zero,” or a “nuclear

cannon.” Several people reported that the “breath caught in my throat” or

“the wind was knocked out of me.” Those who previously had smoked

DMT were at an advantage in being able to anticipate its disorienting onset.

However, they believed the rush of IV DMT was more rapid and powerful

than that of the smoked method.

Nearly everyone remarked on the “vibrations” brought on by DMT, the

sense of powerful energy pulsing through them at a very rapid and high

frequency. Typical comments were: “I was worried that the vibration would

blow my head up,” “The colors and vibration were so intense I thought I

would pop,” “I didn’t think I would stay in my skin.”

This tidal wave of DMT effects quickly led to losing awareness of the

body, causing some volunteers to think they had died. This dissociation of

body and mind paralleled the development of peak visual effects. We

typically heard phrases like: “I no longer had a body,” “My body dissolved

—I was pure awareness.” There seemed to be a clearly identifiable sense of

movement of consciousness away from the body, such as “falling,” “lifting

up,” “flying,” a feeling of weightlessness, or rapid movement.

Some male volunteers, but no females, experienced localized sensations

in their genitals. While sometimes these were pleasurable, for others they

were emotionally neutral or bland. No one ejaculated.

The rush of early effects almost inevitably caused some fear and anxiety.

However, most volunteers quickly settled in to the experience within 15 to

30 seconds by deep breathing, physical relaxation, or whatever else they

knew would help them to deeply let go. Perhaps because of their previous

psychedelic experience, they frequently could separate their emotions from

their body’s physical reaction without panicking.

Visual images were the predominant sensory effects of a full dose of

DMT. Usually there was little difference between what volunteers “saw”

with their eyes opened or closed. However, opening the eyes often caused

the visions to overlay what was in the room. This had a disorienting effect,

and it was less confusing to keep their eyes closed. That’s one of the

reasons we decided to place black silk eyeshades on all the volunteers

before we gave any DMT.

Subjects saw all sorts of imaginable and unimaginable things. The least

complex were kaleidoscopic geometric patterns, which sometimes partook

of “Mayan,” “Islamic,” or “Aztec” qualities. For example, “beautiful,

colorful pink cobwebs; an elongation of light,” “tremendously intricate tiny

geometric colors, like being one inch from a color television.”

The colors of this imagery were brighter, more intense, and deeper than

those of normal awareness or dreams: “It was like the blue of a desert sky,

but on another planet. The colors were a hundred times deeper.”

Background and foreground distinctions might merge so that countless

images would occupy a volunteer’s visual field. It was impossible to tell

what was “in front” and what was “behind.” Many used the term

“fourdimensional” or “beyond dimensionality” to describe this effect.

There were more formed, specific visual images, too. These included “a

fantastic bird,” “a tree of life and knowledge,” and “a ballroom with crystal

chandeliers.” There were “tunnels,” “stairways,” “ducts,” and “a spinning

golden disc.” Others saw the “inner workings” of machines or bodies:

“inside a computer’s boards,” “DNA double helices,” and “the pulsating

diaphragm around my heart.”

Even more impressive was the apprehension of human and “alien”

figures that seemed to be aware of and interacting with the volunteers. Non-

human entities might be recognizable: “spiders,” “mantises,” “reptiles,” and

“something like a saguaro cactus.”

Visual effects lingered as volunteers’ bodies rapidly metabolized the

DMT. The room was uncomfortably bright when they removed the

eyeshades or opened their eyes. Objects in the room took on a wavy,

undulating motion, radiating with their own inner light. Subjects

commented on an exaggerated depth perception, sometimes being

mesmerized by the patterns in the wooden bathroom door.

A few participants told us of a peculiar breakdown in the normal fluidity

of their vision: “Your movements were not your own, they were no longer

smooth and coordinated,” and “You guys looked robotic; moving jerkier,

more mechanical, geometric.”

About half the volunteers experienced auditory effects: sounds were

different, or they heard things that we did not. These were most pronounced

during the DMT rush. Sometimes this was little more than intensification of

normal hearing. Others became functionally deaf and did not hear the

grinding motor of the blood pressure machine or any other outside sounds.

However, it was quite rare for volunteers to hear formed voices or music.

Rather, there were simply sounds, variously described as “highpitched,”

“whining and whirring,” “chattering,” “crinkling and crunching.” Many

remarked on the similarity of DMT auditory effects to those of nitrous

oxide, where there is a “wah-wah,” oscillating, wavering distortion of

sounds. Occasionally there were the sorts of things one hears in cartoons:

comical “sproing, boing” noises.

Sometimes volunteers did lose their bearings and forgot that they were in

a hospital or involved in a research study. Bespeaking their mental strength

and agility, some retained their perspective even in this condition: “My

mind was definitely in a different place, but it was commenting on the state

as it was going on.” Nevertheless, there were sessions when the confusion

of the initial rush stayed with the volunteer until drug effects began wearing

off.

Most people found the high dose of DMT exciting, euphoric, and

extraordinarily pleasurable. Sometimes this ecstasy related to the visions.

The elation also might come from new insights gained during the session:

“I feel great, like I had a revelation.” Often, it was pure bliss without any

particular object.

For others the fear and anxiety were nearly unbearable. Comments such

as “I hated it. I’ve never been so frightened,” “menacing,” “incredible

torture; I thought it would never end” refer to these feelings.

While many research subjects experienced powerful feelings on DMT,

both negative and positive, some commented on how unemotional their

high-dose sessions were: “I tried to get myself worked up over what I was

seeing, but I just wasn’t able to respond emotionally.”

Once DMT effects established themselves, the drug had surprisingly little

effect on volunteers’ ability to think and reason. “My intellect wasn’t

altered at all. I was just alert to what was unfolding during the experience”;

“As I started coming down a little, I got journalistic. I became an observer.”

Others, however, sensed their thinking was abnormal and, in fact, even

wondered if DMT might cause psychotic thought processes. “Everything

looked right, but just a little off. It seemed as if the clock was just starting to

move every time I looked at it. The colors in the room were malevolent.”

Another said, “You know how schizophrenics talk about different meanings

to things? A leaf on the ground takes on great significance? That kind of

thing.”

One common effect was a loss of normal time perception. For example,

nearly everyone was surprised at how late in the session it was by the time

they found out the time, believing only a few minutes had passed.

Nevertheless, there was a sense of timelessness in the peak DMT state: they

experienced an enormous amount in those first few minutes.

Volunteers usually found the high dose caused an almost complete loss of

control. They felt utterly helpless, incapacitated, unable to function or

interact in the “real” world: “I felt like an infant, helpless, unable to do

anything.” DMT volunteers decided, at this point, they were happy to be in

the hospital! Beyond their own loss of control, some volunteers felt another

“intelligence” or “force” directing their minds in an interactive manner.

This was especially common in cases of contact with “beings.”

Almost every research subject believed their first non-blind high dose of

DMT brought them “higher than they had ever been.” However, this first

session usually was more anxiety-ridden than any other high doses they

received subsequently. Once volunteers were prepared to lose control, it

was easier for them to do so. They understood that the drug experience was

essentially safe, that they would live through it and not suffer any

psychological or physical damage. What also helped was their growing

confidence in our ability to support their regressed condition as our work

together progressed.

While the most stunning effects came from the high doses of DMT, smaller

ones also produced a variety of responses, many of which volunteers found

pleasurable and interesting.

The tolerance study dose, 0.3 mg/kg, was fully psychedelic, and for some

was their “dose of choice,” causing the full spectrum of mind-altering

effects with slightly less anxiety.

The next lower dose, 0.2 mg/kg, was the threshold at which typical

psychedelic effects reliably emerged. Nearly everyone had relatively intense

visual imagery, but auditory effects were rare. Some particularly sensitive

volunteers preferred 0.2 over 0.3 or 0.4 mg/kg.

The 0.1 mg/kg dose was the least popular. The vibratory energizing

effects predominated, but there never was a breakthrough into a full

psychedelic experience. Volunteers felt “left hanging,” uncomfortably tense,

both physically and mentally. “My body feels like pepper tastes,” one said.

“This dose has all the negative physical effects without any of the positive

mental ones.”

The lowest dose of DMT, 0.05 mg/kg, was pleasant, and almost all

volunteers said they felt like smiling or laughing after receiving it. One

volunteer who previously had used heroin thought this dose felt something

like that drug: “There was a warm cotton batting sensation.” A few people

experienced relatively intense effects from this little bit of DMT we gave on

the first day. This warned us that the next day’s large dose might be

especially powerful.

For readers familiar with other psychedelics, the effects of DMT must

sound more or less typical. While its properties are similar in many ways to

those of LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin, there is something peerless about

the spirit molecule. I don’t know if this is because it works so quickly or

because it possesses a unique chemical structure. Maybe it’s because the

brain is familiar with, and actively seeks out, this endogenous psychedelic.

Whatever the reasons, at the further limits of the spirit molecule’s reach,

volunteers returned with tales of encounters neither they nor I knew were

possible. It is to these stories we’ll now turn our attention.

Part IV The Sessions

Introduction to the Case Reports

During each DMT session, I took detailed notes of every aspect of that

day’s events: what volunteers said and did; how they looked, sounded, and

felt to me; the state of the research ward, weather, and world politics; the

behavior and emotional tone of others in the room with us, including the

research nurse, family or friends of the volunteer, and visitors; and my own

thoughts and feelings.

After I got back to my office, I dictated these notes, and my secretary

transcribed the dictation into a word-processor file. When printed, these

records occupy more than one thousand pages of single-spaced text.

Upon completing a particular DMT experiment, I sent the volunteer a

copy of these notes to review. I asked him or her to edit for clarity,

accuracy, and completeness, as well as to add anything that may have come

to mind since finishing the study. Some volunteers supplemented my

records with journal entries, letters, art, and poetry related to their

encounters with the spirit molecule.

While most sessions involved psychedelic amounts of DMT, there also

were many low-dose and placebo days. These were more relaxed and gave

us an opportunity to discuss and work through earlier high-dose sessions. It

was quite helpful for volunteers to do this in a less altered, or even

completely normal, state of mind. The shock waves elicited by a big DMT

experience extended far beyond a single session, continuing to reverberate

in all aspects of someone’s life for days, months, or years.

DMT does a lot to our consciousness, but not everything. If we can limit the

number of types of experiences DMT produces, we can start focusing on a

manageable number of hypotheses to help understand them. Developing

coherent and reasonable groupings helps us make sense of the amazingly

wide array of stories we’re about to hear.

Another reason to categorize these experiences is to support the

hypothesis that outside-administered DMT elicits altered states of

consciousness similar to those that people report during spontaneous

psychedelic experiences: near-death and mystical states and the

phenomenon we call alien abduction. If drug-induced and naturally

occurring conditions appear to have sufficient overlap, it supports a role for

endogenous DMT in the production of these spontaneous psychedelic

experiences. This would then open a wide range of possibilities for us to

study, understand, and apply these findings beneficially.

Three major groupings capture nearly all the various experiences within

these reports. While most people’s actual drug sessions partook of at least

two of these types, one particular category usually predominated.1

These three categories are personal, invisible, and transpersonal

experiences.

Personal DMT experiences were limited to the volunteer’s own mental

and physical processes. DMT helped open avenues to his or her personal

psychology and relationship to the body. Chapter 11, “Feeling and

Thinking,” presents several examples of this type of response. Once

volunteers began approaching the furthest boundaries of this category, near-

death and spiritual themes began to emerge. The personal then became

transpersonal.

The hallmark of the invisible category is an encounter with seemingly

solid and freestanding realities coexisting with this one. When these planes

of existence were inhabited, contact by our research subjects with these

“beings” made for the most disturbing and unexpected type of DMT

session. I cover these bizarre stories in chapters 13 and 14.

The most sought-after and highly prized sessions were the transpersonal

ones. These involved near-death and spiritual-mystical experiences. I

describe these in chapter 15, “Death and Dying,” and chapter 16, “Mystical

States,” respectively.

The last chapter of case reports, “Pain and Fear,” discusses the negative,

frightening, and potentially damaging effects of DMT on our volunteers.

Here we encounter the negative aspects of all three types of experiences:

personal, invisible, and transpersonal.

This introduction is a good place to begin addressing how we responded to

what people said and did during their DMT sessions. In chapter 7 I

described how, after administering the DMT, the research nurse and I sat

quietly on either side of the person’s bed. We allowed the volunteer to have

his or her own experience, with no more than the barest minimum of

“coaching.” However, we could not maintain absolutely neutral and passive

stances when someone began talking about confusing or anxiety-ridden

experiences. If a volunteer needed our help and support, we provided it.

There is a fine line between supporting a person and telling him or her

what sort of experience he or she has just undergone. After a big dose of

DMT, volunteers were extraordinarily suggestible, open, and vulnerable.

These factors demanded exquisite sensitivity to the interpersonal field

existing in the room at the time. Reflection, support, education, advice, and

interpretation are quite different from criticism, argument, persuasion, and

brainwashing.

Feeling and Thinking

For the most part, personal experiences with DMT stay within the confines

of one’s own body and mind—the realms of feeling and thinking. As such,

the phenomena we encounter are not very different from the sorts of things

any psychotherapist hears in the office: body-based feelings and mind-

based thoughts.

Most of our volunteers more or less consciously hoped for a spiritual

breakthrough with the aid of DMT—a final resolution to questions

regarding why they were born, or a union with the Divine in which all

conflict ended and an unshakeable certainty prevailed. However, DMT, as a

true spirit molecule, gave our volunteers the trip they needed, rather than

the one they wanted.

Some research subjects resolved difficult personal problems during their

sessions. Afterward, they realized they had worked something through in a

positive way and felt better. The basic processes of psychotherapy seemed

to be at work: thinking, recollecting, feeling, connecting emotions with

ideas. For most of us, facing painful feelings is difficult, and DMT can

make those feelings easier to confront. Stan’s DMT sessions, for example,

helped him contact feelings too raw to touch in everyday consciousness.

Dreams are a basic tool for any personal growth and understanding, and

DMT may generate highly symbolic dreamlike images. Marsha’s highdose

sessions are a beautiful example of how the spirit molecule can show us

what we need to know using this particular facet of its power.

For many of us, traumatic experiences set the stage for painfully blind

reenactments of situations in which we face those same feelings over and

over again. A high dose of DMT shares many features with physical and

psychological trauma. We’ll see how it is possible to turn these aspects to

good use in Cassandra’s story.

I expected to see many volunteers working through emotional and

psychological conflicts during these studies. Sessions of this nature might

help prepare the way for psychedelic-drug-assisted psychotherapy in

patients. We would note how DMT affected volunteers in potentially

beneficial ways, then build those effects into any subsequent psychological

treatment protocols.

The first generation of psychedelic scientists made such therapy projects

the mainstay of many centers’ research activities. We would essentially be

doing little more than retracing their steps in anticipation of renewing their

work in a contemporary context.

I was ready for these types of sessions. I believed it was possible for the

volunteers to reach some valuable insights into personal conflicts,

difficulties, and psychosomatic symptoms by using psychedelics. In

addition, many years of undergoing, practicing, and teaching

psychoanalytic psychotherapy prepared me for dealing with the painful

emotions I thought would emerge during some DMT sessions.

Stan was forty-two years old when we met and he began participating in the

DMT studies. His wife of fourteen years was a respiratory therapist who

worked with many medical patients at the Research Center. She thought

he’d be interested in the project, and he gave me a call.

He was one of the most experienced psychedelic drug users of anyone in

our studies, having taken LSD “over four hundred times.” “They don’t call

it ‘acid’ for nothing,” he laughed during our first meeting. He took LSD or

mushrooms every few months, using them with several close friends with

whom he shared a strong belief in their beneficial effects.

Stan was married, had a young daughter, and held a highly responsible

position in the local government. He was of medium height and build,

good-looking and attentive to his appearance. He was rather disinclined to

talk about his inner experience, and he stated his interest in the DMT

studies in a typically concise manner: “To further legitimate studies and for

personal exploration.”

Stan’s low screening dose of DMT, 0.05 mg/kg, was uneventful. Like many

others, he felt an urge to smile early on in the session.

The next day was Stan’s high-dose session. Carrying my varied

assortment of needles, syringes, and disinfectant swabs, I entered his room

and found Stan sitting in cross-legged position on a meditation cushion with

the back of the bed raised as close to a right angle as possible. He was one

of the few people who felt better sitting up than lying down.

Stan didn’t say a lot about that morning’s high-dose experience. Mostly,

he was impressed with the power of the onset of effects. In fact, he thought

he might even have liked a dose slightly higher than 0.4 mg/kg.

He wasn’t sure if DMT had any beneficial effects, either.

It’s not as useful as LSD or psilocybin. It’s too much too fast. You can’t

really work with it. You’re totally out of control. It wasn’t a spiritual

experience. There was very little emotional flavor to it at all.

Regarding what he actually saw, all Stan ventured was that there were

“lots of kaleidoscopic blues and purples.”

Stan went through the dose-response study successfully, but without it

making a particularly deep impression on him. However, he enjoyed

participating in the research and wanted to be notified when the tolerance

study began.

About a year later, Stan signed on for the DMT tolerance project. A lot had

happened. His wife had experienced a recurrence of her serious psychiatric

illness and was filing for divorce. A very difficult child custody battle was

developing, and their eight-year-old daughter was living with him.

I wondered if the DMT sessions might provide him with some emotional

clarity for these trying times. While the goals of the research remained

unchanged, Stan was a fellow human being undergoing a major loss, and if

we could help him within the project’s context, all the better.

As it turned out, his first “double-blind” day was active drug—four

consecutive high-dose DMT injections. The first two doses helped him

clarify the stress under which he’d been laboring.

Mmm. There were the usual colors. I guess I’ll do the next several doses,

in spite of the anxiety.

Gently teasing him, appealing to his “psychedelic machismo,” but also

encouraging him to go a little deeper, I said, “I didn’t think you’d have it

any other way.”

He lay quietly with his eyeshades on.

I like the eyeshades.

“They’ve turned out to be quite helpful. . . . Did you have any thoughts or

feelings?”

I had some anxiety, more or less. I don’t remember that from before.

I offered this suggestion: “There’s a lot more going on in your life now. I

wonder if the anxiety is related to the uncertainty and loss of control in your

life right now. This is a drug that causes loss of control. That might be

uncomfortable.”

At 5 minutes after the third injection:

There is a very slight nausea.

I’ve noticed that nausea in an altered state of consciousness often is a

way for the body to distract us from anxiety and sadness. During meditation

or hypnosis, or on psychedelic drugs or even marijuana, it’s somehow easier

to feel sick than sad.

I’m not going to throw up. Don’t worry. Maybe it’s the combination of

anxiety and my sinuses. Part of my anxiety relates to my daughter’s school

next year. She’s in fifth grade. I need to decide this morning. She’s having a

hard time with the divorce, especially having difficulties with her mom. It’s

hard on me but it’s harder on my daughter.

“I’m sure it’s hard on your wife, too. It’s a terrible situation.”

Yes. I wish it were a higher dose in a way. I could blast through it.

“Blow it out of the water?”

Yes, blow it out of the water.1

“How do you feel about two more doses?”

He smiled.

I have two very opposite emotions: fear and anticipation of pleasure.

Perhaps lying down, Stan might feel safer to give up some control, to

“throw up,” if he really needed to expel his inner emotional toxins. I asked,

“Do you want your head down?”

I’m not sure it will make any different but okay, I’ll try it. If I have to

vomit do you have something I can throw up into?

“Yes, we have a wastebasket. It’s not pretty but it has a wide mouth and

we can catch it all.”

After the third dose was in he took one of Laura’s hands with his right

hand and one of mine in his left.

I’m not sure about the fourth dose. I don’t know if I can do another one.

“It’s only been 3 minutes. Let’s see how you feel in a little while.”

At 5 minutes he said in a humorous tone,

I will do a fourth for you, Rick.

“The third dose seems to be the hardest.”

You’re just saying that.

“Not really. People look bad after the third dose and they look good after

the fourth.”

I guess I have a lot of unresolved feelings.

“That makes sense.”

That’s easy for you to say.

“I know. I’m sorry if I sound glib. Why do you think these things are

unresolved?”

The emotions are intense. They’re there, but I think I’m shielding myself

from them to get through the divorce. It’s not entirely pleasant. That’s an

understatement, I guess. The emotional intensity builds each time, but I feel

most at peace now. That unresolved feeling is gone. Maybe something’s

been done. Maybe 15 minutes from now I won’t be saying this.

At 10 minutes after his fourth and last injection, Stan blew through his

pursed lips, then said,

It’s a much nicer ride this time. It’s like three waves you catch

bodysurfing. They knock you down getting ready for the fourth, which is

great. I want to do it again!

We all laughed, relieved he was feeling better. In this man who kept so

much to himself, his earlier admission of anxiety must have indicated

intensely powerful feelings.

He spent the next several minutes lying quietly, relaxing and basking in

his newly found inner peace.

Stan seemed refreshed and in good spirits after the fourth dose. He ate

lunch and left quickly after finishing.

Stan and I talked by phone a couple days later.

He said, “I’m feeling fine. I felt some mild euphoria yesterday and today,

probably related to the experience. I wasn’t sure about continuing with all

four doses. Something finally clicked and got resolved. Maybe it was

surrendering. It really put me through some changes. The first one was

mixed emotions. The second and third ones were overwhelming. Just a lot

of unresolved anxiety. The fourth one really did it.”

I asked, “Was there any content to your sessions?”

“Very little. It’s like a roto-rooter for your nervous system. It clears some

things free. It was purely energetic. There are cumulative effects.

Something happened, something changed between the third and fourth

doses. After the third, I just gave up.”

Stan kept his feelings at bay. Like many of our volunteers, he enjoyed

psychedelics because of their emotional intensity. He could feel something

on high doses of LSD—perhaps not pleasant or enjoyable feelings, but at

least more than nothing. Any time we find ourselves stuck in life, it usually

is because we can’t connect with the feelings that come with that situation.

While in Stan’s case there certainly seemed to be a “roto-rooter” gradually

wearing down his psychological resistance, there was a conscious

processing that helped, too. He was anxious and uncertain. Although he

“knew” what it was about at one level, the inner emotional contact just

wasn’t there. His “free-floating” anxiety was anything but nameless. His

life was in turmoil and simply making that interpretation helped him to start

a process. The emotional power of DMT then drew it to some resolution.

Stan’s joking about taking his last dose of DMT for me, rather than for

himself, pointed out an interesting conflict: We needed data, but we were

also concerned with the volunteers’ own needs. If Stan were having a

clearly traumatic experience and seemed to be decompensating, we would

have called off the study. But he seemed willing, on his own part, to

continue, and we never seriously thought about stopping early.

Nevertheless, his comment did have a ring of truth about it.

The visual images volunteers encountered on DMT sometimes reminded

them of dreams. And, as Freud said, dreams are “the royal road to the

unconscious.” Looking at, thinking about, and discussing dreams may help

us understand hidden emotions known only by the distressing symptoms

they cause during ordinary wakefulness.

Let’s imagine that someone develops paralysis in his right hand, and

multiple medical examinations reveal no physical problem. He’s sent to a

psychiatrist, who asks him to remember his dreams. That night our

theoretical patient dreams of beating up his boss at work. The psychiatrist

suggests that his paralyzed hand represents deep anger at the boss, rage that

he didn’t know he had. Maybe these are emotions he’s afraid to feel because

he doesn’t know what might happen if he did so. A light goes on in the

patient’s mind, and he regains function of his hand!

While such an example smacks of a Saturday morning cartoon program,

it captures the essential process by which dreamwork can be personally

helpful. Symptoms are not often as obvious as paralysis; they commonly

include anxiety, depression, or relationship problems.

The approach we took to supervising DMT sessions was as clinically

neutral as possible, but ignoring psychological issues emerging from

volunteers’ experiences would have been negligent. Sometimes I had to

decide quickly whether or not to take up the personal psychological thread a

research subject had begun, whether to push that volunteer forward just

enough to see some resolution to his or her confusion or uncertainty. I also

had to take into account the risk that such comments or interpretations

might cause some destabilizing effects in his or her life. In Marsha’s case,

for example, she was struggling with her marriage.

Upon entry into the DMT study, Marsha was forty-five years old, had been

divorced twice, and had been with her current husband for six years. She

was of African-American descent, while her husband was white. Marsha

possessed a delightful sense of humor and frankness. Her mood was

significantly better this past year than it had been for some time. She felt a

great sense of relief after dropping out of a graduate school program she

found dehumanizing and unsupportive of her racial and ethnic background.

Continued problems at home, however, revolved around her husband “being

more depressed than I was,” and she had been thinking of leaving him.

Marsha had taken psychedelic drugs perhaps thirty times in her life, and

she found them “very mind-opening.” She volunteered for our research “to

help out my friends,” “to experience this drug out of curiosity and wonder,”

“to be challenged,” and “because my husband can’t—therefore he can

vicariously share this with me.” Her husband had slightly elevated blood

pressure, which disqualified him.

Marsha managed her low screening dose of DMT well. The next day’s

high dose took her completely out of her body. She was startled to find

herself in a beautiful domed structure, a virtual Taj Mahal.

I thought I had died, and that I might not ever come back. I don’t know

what happened. All of a sudden, BAM!, there I was. It was the most

beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Marsha described in great detail what she saw, and how she was

transformed, during her experience. It was an extraordinarily pleasurable

morning. We listened to her report and didn’t need to add much. She

enjoyed it. There was little conflict and we shared in her happiness.

Marsha later participated in the cyproheptadine study. When it came time

for her fourth double-blind session we were nearly certain, taking into

account the effects of her previous sessions, that this final dose would be an

unadulterated 0.4 mg/kg.

She began by saying, “I hope to meet some of my ancestors today, to

help me deal with my current life stresses.”

She talked about her marriage; her husband had been in therapy and his

therapist was telling him to be more honest with her. As a result, he told her

he didn’t like that she was getting “fat,” that it was a sexual turnoff. She

wondered if I thought she was fat.

I sidestepped her question and suggested, “Maybe there’s more going on

that just how much you weigh.”

She nodded, and we began preparing for the injection.

A few minutes before giving Marsha the DMT, her husband entered the

room, ready to join us for the session. The atmosphere in the room was

slightly sad, but also hopeful.

She began talking about 15 minutes after the injection.

I never would have imagined it would be like this. There was no

transition. There was no universe with stars and a pinpoint of light like last

time. You know what happened? I was on a merry-go-round!

There were all these dolls in 1890s outfits, life-sized, men and women.

The women were in corsets. They had big breasts and big butts and teeny

skinny waists. They were all whirling around me on tiptoes. The men had

top hats, riding on two-seater bicycles. One merry-go-round after another

after another. The women had red circles painted on their cheeks, and there

was calliope music in the background. And there were some clowns, flitting

in and out, not really the main characters, but busier, somehow more aware

of me than the mannequins.

This sounded like a dream. It also was another encounter with clowns or

jesters, something I had been hearing about for quite some time from other

volunteers. However, they seemed less important than the merry-go- round

and her feelings about it.

We had been talking about “therapeutic” issues before the injection. I

decided to put on my therapist’s cap and see what happened. When

someone comes into a therapy session recounting a dream, I usually ask,

and did this time, “What did it feel like for you?”

That’s the wrong question, try another.

At that moment Marsha wasn’t ready to “do work” with the dream, so I

responded to the more superficial aspects of her experience, the carnival

atmosphere.

“Was it fun?”

Yes.

Could we go deeper? “Was it really fun?”

Yes, but it was no Taj Mahal. I hoped to see my ancestors, a temple, or

that I would see tall African people in old clothing.

“Instead you were at a carnival at the State Fair.”

Big time! I was the only human there. They had these painted-on smiles,

there was no change in their expression. I thought, “Hey, what’s going on?”

She added,

There was a sexual energy of wanting more, of being stimulated, of

wanting more. I’ve never felt that way on DMT. I guess the mannequins

were so beautiful that it was a turn-on.

She lifted her eyeshades and looked at her husband, blurting out,

Let’s fuck!

I laughed. “Sorry, you’ll need to wait until you get home.”

Her husband turned to me and said “Do people have sexual experiences

during DMT?”

While a reasonable question, it did not quite fit in with the personal and

emotional themes that were so active at that moment. I had to answer, but

did so briefly and with the hope of regaining direction.

“There’s sexual energy, but not usually sexual-intercourse types of

feelings.”

I knew I had to act fast if I were to be of any help in interpreting the

dreamlike features of Marsha’s session. What was the spirit molecule trying

to tell us?

“Were the mannequins white? Were they Anglo?”

Yes, they all were. There were no colored people in any of the things I’ve

ever seen from the gay ’90s.

“It’s interesting. DMT seems to have its own agenda. What do you make

of this?”

I just can’t figure it out. I’m exhausted and starved.

I ventured, “They sound like an exaggeration or a caricature of Anglo

beauty. It’s interesting within the context of what we were talking about—

your concerns about your weight.”

It’s true, maybe I should have fun with my figure.

She looked at her husband and said,

I told Rick about your thinking I was fat, that that was part of your

therapy.

He looked a little embarrassed.

When I was young I was quite thin. When my husband and I met I was 20

pounds less than I am now. I looked like a stick figure. That’s not my culture

at all. Rather, the desired form is heavy and full, big breasts and big waists

and big rear. Skinny was terrible in my culture. They used a slang word that

meant skinny but when they used it, I didn’t know what it meant. It seemed

like they were talking about ugly, ill, not well.

Marsha’s husband excused himself to use the bathroom. Upon returning,

he seemed to sense Marsha’s need to talk about these things without him in

the room, and he returned to work. She and I continued this discussion for a

while longer, and then drifted onto other topics.

I usually was not as directive with volunteers as I was with Marsha that

day. However, her DMT vision seemed so perfectly related to her current

conflicts that I could not ignore the message the spirit molecule was giving

us. Marsha’s Anglo husband was comparing her with his image of the ideal

woman, and she was lacking. Her figure was not “right.” However, the

“mannequin” Anglo women and men were lifeless, painted images, going

round and round aimlessly. Marsha remembered the pride with which her

family greeted the full figure of womanhood, and tried owning that herself.

She felt her inherent sexuality was good enough. She wanted to have sex

with her husband, to reconnect at that basic level. Surprised and

nonplussed, it was difficult for him to address her emotional needs at that

moment. It was a miniature version of their ongoing problems.

Another way in which DMT affects the mind and body in potentially useful

ways is through creating a controlled and supported traumatic experience.

Trauma derives from a Greek word meaning “wound.” My dictionary

defines trauma as “a severe emotional shock having a deep, often lasting

effect upon the personality.”

Traumatic experiences usually are out of our control. For example, we do

not choose our abusive childhoods, exposure to natural or manmade

disasters, or real threats to our life. Once we have experienced such events,

the mind’s natural tendency is to wall off the feelings of fear, helplessness,

and anxiety that threatened to overwhelm us at the time.

Nevertheless, unprocessed trauma seeps out into our lives. We may find

ourselves in situations that produce ghosts or shadows of those trauma-

based feelings over and over again. It is as if we feel forced to repeat certain

types of relationships that bring out feelings we couldn’t master or control

the first time, usually when we were powerless children. For example, an

abusive spouse recreates the feelings brought on by an abusive parent. We

may notice it’s difficult to make deep emotional attachments because being

close means being dangerously vulnerable.

If we are to move past the consequences of trauma, it is necessary to

confront them head-on. Usually this requires a voluntary reexperiencing of

the feelings caused by the trauma in a safe and supportive environment. The

problem is how to access those feelings in the first place.

In many ways, a high dose of DMT is traumatic, bringing about a loss of

control and annihilation of personal identity. “Shock” is a word we heard

many times during the DMT studies. I even began using the term when I

prepared people for their first 0.4 mg/kg session. Several volunteers

recommended we print t-shirts with the words “I Survived 0.4” to hand out

to those who successfully negotiated that morning’s events.

I am certain that many of our volunteers were at some level attracted to

the DMT project because it promised an overwhelming but structured

voluntary traumatic experience. By experiencing absolute loss of control in

a safe and supportive situation, it might be possible to more fully contact,

and thereby own and let go of, certain painful emotions. Cassandra was one

such volunteer whose incompletely expressed and felt emotions from past

trauma hindered her current life.

Cassandra was twenty-two years old, the next-to-youngest volunteer, when

she signed on for the DMT project. Her manner and appearance brought out

conflicting feelings in most people she met, and I was no exception. She

dressed and carried herself in a somewhat masculine way, and she was

bisexual. Both men and women found her pleasing face and lithe,

androgynous body type attractive. Her studiously casual attitude toward

appearance and self-care made her seem somewhat waiflike, and it was

easy to feel caring and maternal toward her—the older nurses on the

research ward wanted to feed her and give her a bath. She also possessed

sharp intelligence, laconic humor, and a direct manner. Cassandra was a

complicated young woman, and it took some effort to see with whom you

were really dealing.

Cassandra suffered in relationships. Her parents divorced before she was

a year old, and her mother raised her neglectfully. This came to a head at

the age of sixteen, when her mother left her alone with her stepfather for a

week. He raped her repeatedly during that time, and this cemented her stark

ambivalence toward men and women: distrusting and hating them on one

hand, but needing their love and protection at the same time.

After this, she developed symptoms of a post-traumatic stress disorder,

experiencing flashbacks of the rape during sexual relations in her first long-

term relationship. When she was twenty, she decided that she never wanted

to have children and had a tubal ligation.

Cassandra had been in and out of many short-term therapeutic and

romantic relationships. At first she would idealize and romanticize the

therapist or lover. Then she experienced disappointment and contempt in his

or her inability to provide the empathy she needed so badly. She was friends

with one of our male volunteers, and they became sexually involved after

they completed the tolerance study. Soon after that she left the country,

leaving no forwarding address.

I include Cassandra’s story here although it could also belong in the

entity contact or mystical experience chapters. Her sessions did include

interactions with the “clowns” and led to a deep serene peace she had never

previously known. However, the beings’ primary effect was to make her

feel loved and happy, and the mystical resolution to her conflicts came only

after a painful psychological process. Cassandra’s sessions were, like many

of the ones I will present, hybrids of more than one type.

In addition, it felt as if I were doing psychotherapy with Cassandra,

rather than spiritual counseling or interpreting “transdimensional”

phenomena. So placement into the feeling-thinking, personal category of

experiences relates to the type of response her session evoked in me as

much as in her.

She had few stated expectations of her participation in our studies: “I

want to see what DMT feels like.” Also, she requested we not ask her a lot

of questions, “so I could simply enjoy the effects.”

We were not so offhanded in considering Cassandra’s ability to manage

high doses of DMT. We knew she could be volatile, and that it was

important to be especially careful to avoid making her feel we were forcing

anything on her. We didn’t want to replay any rape themes in Room 531.

Cassandra’s screening low dose of DMT was mild and pleasant. We met the

next day for her non-blind, 0.4 mg/kg high dose.

As she began coming down, she said,

Something took my hand and yanked me. It seemed to say, “Let’s go!”

Then I started flying through an intense circus-like environment. I’ve never

been that out-of-body before. First there was an itchy feeling where the

drug went in. We went through a maze at an incredibly fast pace. I say

“we” because it seemed like I was accompanied.

It was cool. There was a crazy circus sideshow—just extravagant. It’s

hard to describe. They looked like Jokers. They were almost performing for

me. They were funny looking, bells on their hats, big noses. However, I had

the feeling they could turn on me, a little less than completely friendly.

I want to do it again. I want to see if I can slow it down.

I called Cassandra the next day.

She said, “It’s impossible to make sense of it. I’d rather do it again, to see

what it’s like. It’s refreshing to get a change of perspective, to see how

insignificant my everyday problems are. I felt peaceful this afternoon.

There was a brief moment of wanting it to be over because it was so

intense, but I remembered to breathe and settled back into it. It’s so weird,

impossible to prepare for, to know what to expect. I’d rather not introspect

too much.”

She agreed to participate in the tolerance study.

Cassandra was in a good mood when we met in Room 531 a month later.

She began, “I quit my job at the local restaurant where I’ve been

working. I’m not sure what’s next in my life now. I met a woman whom I

really like; I think about her a lot.”

I asked, “What are you thinking about the study today?”

“Coming down last month from the big dose, I really felt in my body for

the first time in my life. I usually live in my head. I remember that feeling.

It was therapeutic. I liked the feeling of being in my body.”

“Can you carry it with you?”

She answered, “It’s hard to do all at once. I’ve been out of touch with my

body for so long, in a fight with it, I figure it will be a gradual process.”

It turned out that this first double-blind tolerance day was active drug.

We could tell at the 2-minute point, when Cassandra’s heart rate and blood

pressure jumped dramatically.

She didn’t say much about her first dose that morning. She seemed to be

getting her bearings, keeping her cards close to her chest. As she finished

answering the first of the four rating scales, she said,

I thought a lot about my new friend. That was good, but this next one I

want to be all my trip.

Once she was able to talk after her second dose:

It’s funny. I let go more this time. This was no problem at all. It was all

about feeling good. There was no revelation, no meaningful overtones. The

body is a real hindrance, isn’t it? I definitely felt the presence of others.

They were kind to me, nice and caring. They seemed small, as if they could

enter my body and mind in that space. There was a total sense of losing my

body, but the little presences know how to enter it somehow.

“How do you feel about the third dose?”

You should patent it. I guess it’s too late for that. If I could only hold onto

this feeling. If everybody did this every day the world would be a much

better place. Life would be a lot better. The potential for good is so great.

Feeling good within yourself. I guess meditation is supposed to get you to

the same place.

“I’m not sure that’s possible.”

Me neither.

Ten minutes into her third dose, Cassandra started smiling. Just then,

there also was a horrible coughing out in the hall.

I can still feel it. I hold all this stuff, the shit, in the left side of my

abdomen. I got the message this time to let go of all that. I can still feel the

relaxation. It’s warm and tingly.

This seemed like an opening. If she retreated or attacked in response to

my next few comments, I’d leave well enough alone. However, she seemed

to be asking for some help.

“What do you hold on to?”

The pain.

“What pain?”

I guess all the pain.

She began crying.

I guess all the pain I ever felt.

“There’s a lot there?”

Yeah.

She began crying more heavily.

“It’s okay to feel it, and cry, and to let it go, too.”

That’s the good part, to let go of it.

At 15 minutes she sighed,

I feel like I have a new body. It’s so much more aware.

“It is yours.”

She laughed dryly, then began crying more deeply.

These aren’t sad tears, they are tears of enlightenment.

“It doesn’t matter.”

I felt her bristle as she said,

Yes it does.

Reflecting back to her even more closely, I offered, “I guess they are a

cleansing sort of tears.”

Yes. I’ll be a guru after this morning. You know how everyone’s quest is

to find the meaning or the purpose of life? Well, it’s to feel this way. Life

doesn’t cut it normally.

“What do you mean?”

Everything about life. It’s not very empowering. You aren’t taught to

focus on yourself. To realize the strength you have in yourself. Life throws

you into the victim role. I know that’s a trite expression, but I think it’s true.

Things do happen when you’re out of control with your life. These DMT

experiences are like the height of meditation, accessing inner power and

inner strength. You know that question in your rating scale about “higher

power or God”? Well, I’m uncomfortable with that idea because it implies

outside, but I do contact something deeper and more inside. This session

was more combined, in terms of the presences joining me and me being the

focus of it more. The first trip was just me, and the second trip was more the

presences; this was a combination.

“How do you feel about the fourth dose coming up?”

It’ll be the best, it’ll be even better. I am going deeper and deeper

through these layers.

Immediately after giving Cassandra her last dose, people began talking

loudly outside the door. At 6 minutes we heard a huge crash. Five minutes

later she said,

I feel very loved.

“That’s a nice feeling.”

Yes, warm.

She looked sad and tapped the fingers of her right hand against the bed.

I’m feeling a lot.

There was a horrible sound outside the door, someone drilling in screws.

I thought about how incredible it was that our volunteers could disregard all

the chaos of a hospital ward and still have such profound experiences.

Cassandra lifted the eyeshades but kept her eyes closed. Then she opened

her eyes half-mast, gazing straight ahead. She looked up at the ceiling and

began crying again.

“What are you feeling?”

Everything will be okay. I don’t need to worry about all my doubts.

Things like “Where will I go? What will I do?” It’s reassuring.

“An optimistic feeling?”

Yes, it’s very refreshing. It feels like there are thousands and thousands of

separate parts of me and this drug brings them all together. It feels very

complete.

“You said you felt loved.”

It was a feeling in my chest. It was warm. My whole chest felt inflated. It

was a really good feeling. I was loved by the entities or whatever they are.

It was very pleasant and comforting.

Cassandra and I spoke a few weeks later by phone.

She said, “There have been profound physical changes, very beneficial

ones. It feels as if I got my stomach back. Now for the first time in years

I’m able to breathe deep into my stomach. I’m more optimistic. That’s worn

off a little bit by now, but not extremely. I can remember the optimism in

meditation. It’s like having the deepest possible tissue massage. On the third

trip I was really able to let go. I guess I was hurt in there when I was raped.

That’s where I hide things and protect myself, constantly clenching them.

Years of keeping those feelings tightly kept in my abdomen. I feel a lot

freer.

“DMT is far better than any therapy ever was for me. All therapy

reminds me of is how bad things were and are. On DMT I saw and felt

myself as a good person, as loved by the DMT elves.”

I asked, “Elves?”

“There was a sense of many visitors. They were jovial, and they had a

great time giving me the experience of being loved. With each dose there

was more and more of a fulfilling safe and comfortable familiar feeling.

“It would be great to do DMT maybe once a year to put a perspective on

things and see where I’m at and heal me. The freedom in my abdomen is

still there. The clenching is back again a little bit, but on a more consistent

basis I can remember that I was able to really clear it out.”

I added, “It can be a useful reference point.”

Freud coined the term transference, which refers to how people habitually

react to others as if they were important figures from that person’s earlier

life. In therapy, countertransference feelings are those in the therapist

similarly projected toward his or her client.

Cassandra’s life was full of transference feelings for those with whom

she became involved. Because there’s never transference without

countertransference, people reacted just as strongly to her. Sharing her

comfort with me could be a trap or an opportunity. We needed to look at our

relationship without the confusing dance of transference and

countertransference.

The next month Cassandra returned for the second half of the tolerance

study: four consecutive doses of placebo.

After we wrapped up the fourth dose of salt water, I said, “Thanks for

your participation.”

“Thank you. You’ve been easy to talk with.”

I took this as an opening to do a little bit of work before saying goodbye.

She was in a sober and steady condition, so I directly addressed the

underlying theme.

“I wonder if you had some difficulty at first trusting a male physician

who was going to incapacitate you with a drug.”

She answered, “I went for it. I trusted you. I never really was worried

about it. You changed my life.”

Knowing Cassandra put people on pedestals before knocking them down,

I countered very carefully, “I helped create the context for you to change

your life.”

“I guess. DMT strips you down to your soul. I know that there is nothing

to worry about. DMT showed me how to see beyond it all. Everything will

basically be all right. I remember an idea of Samuel Coleridge: If you have

a wonderful dream and bring a rose back with you and then you wake up

and the rose is in your hand, that meant the dream was real. When I came

home and saw the bruises and the holes in my arm I really felt like that—

that it really did happen, and that I really was where I was, and felt what I

felt.”

Cassandra’s case shows us how critically important it is to respond

appropriately to whatever issues DMT raises. I said the bare minimum to

keep her process going, without trying to judge, take credit, or otherwise

betray her trust. To do so would have derailed the important work she was

doing, and most likely she’d experience it as another violation of her

integrity.

With Cassandra, there was a blending of several different themes.

However, the primary one seems to have been reencountering the

psychological trauma of her rape through the symptom of her abdominal

pain. DMT made it easier for her to make the emotional contact with what

her physical pain represented and, indeed, where it began. The spirit

molecule helped her by demonstrating that she could lose control,

particularly around a powerful man, and be safe and loved at the same time.

The issues of who loved her and told her she was good, and the nature of

that love, take us into other categories, such as contact with beings and

spirituality.

Both Marsha and Cassandra met up with clowns and presences who seemed

to reside somewhere other than Room 531. Let’s now examine these other

worlds, and their inhabitants, to which the spirit molecule may lead us.

They are neither personal nor transpersonal in nature. Rather, they are

invisible, and for the volunteers and research team, quite startling and

unexpected.

Unseen Worlds

In this chapter, we begin following the spirit molecule into more

unexpected territory. This terrain is not so easy to recognize or understand

because the experiences are less clearly related to the thoughts, feelings,

and bodies of our volunteers. Rather, they suggest freestanding,

independent levels of existence about which we are at most only dimly

aware. These reports challenge our world view, and they raise the emotional

intensity of debate: “Is it a dream? A hallucination? Or is it real?” “Where

are these places? Inside or out?” These are the some of the questions we’ll

begin pondering as we review the following reports.

Volunteers have referred to these places already. Marsha journeyed to

“the Taj Mahal,” and Cassandra was yanked into “the crazy circus

sideshow” full of clowns and other beings. In this chapter, I will focus on

this issue of “where.” Where does DMT take us by the hand and lead us to?

This is a necessary part of mapping the spirit molecule’s territory.

An interesting aspect to these reports is that they are mostly excerpts

rather than records of entire sessions. Rarely did the DMT environment

alone take center stage during someone’s trip. Certainly the spaces in which

volunteers found themselves were highly unusual. However, more

important was the meaning or the feeling, the information, associated with

where they were. Of course, once other “life-forms” began to appear in

these spaces, it was difficult not to be completely swept up in their

existence, and these reports rightly are the subject of separate chapters.

Despite their strange nature, these excerpts are introductory. They set the

stage for the next layer of existence to which the spirit molecule leads.

“Where” is the backdrop, the scenery. “Who” gets to the core of these

matters. But first, let’s get acquainted with the landscape.

At the most basic biological level was the perception of DNA and other

biological components.

Karl was our first dose-response study volunteer: DMT-1. He began

speaking within 2 minutes of getting his first non-blind low dose:

There were spirals of what looked like DNA, red and green.

Philip, about whose harrowing 0.6 mg/kg experience we’ve already read,

also recognized the familiar double-helix pattern, this time on his

doubleblind 0.4 mg/kg dose:

The visuals were dropping back into tubes, like protozoa, like the inside

of a cell, seeing the DNA twirling and spiraling. They looked gelatinlike,

like tubes, inside which were cellular activities. It was like a microscopic

view of them.

Cleo, whose enlightenment experience we will discuss in a later chapter,

also met up with visions of DNA:

There was a spiral DNA-type thing made out of incredibly bright cubes. I

“felt” the boxes at the same time that my consciousness shifted.

We will closely examine Sara’s entity contact experience in a subsequent

chapter. However, it’s interesting to note her reference to DNA:

I felt the DMT release my soul’s energy and push it through the DNA. It’s

what happened when I lost my body. There were spirals that reminded me of

things I’ve seen at Chaco Canyon. Maybe that was DNA. Maybe the

ancients knew that. The DNA is backed into the universe like space travel.

One needs to travel without one’s body. It’s ridiculous to think about space

travel in little ships.1

Some subjects experienced a less obviously biological representation of

information than DNA.

Vladan, a forty-two-year-old Eastern European filmmaker, was one of

our busiest research subjects; he volunteered for many of the pilot studies in

which we worked out doses and combinations of medications to use with

DMT. He also received more psilocybin in our preliminary dosefinding

work than anyone else.

On a relatively low dose of DMT, 0.1 mg/kg, during the pindolol study,

he encountered symbols that were rich with meaning:

There were visuals at the peak, soft and geometric. They were 3-D circles

and cones with shading. They moved a lot. It was almost like looking at an

alphabet, but it wasn’t English. It was like a fantasy alphabet, a cross

between runes and Russian or Arabic writing. It felt like there was some

information in it, like it was data. It wasn’t just random.2

Later, while participating in a pilot cyproheptadine session, Vladan

received 0.2 mg/kg DMT and again saw alphabet-like figures.

Like seeing panels with a cut-out shape, rounded edges, hieroglyphics of

some sort. They weren’t painted on but more cut out, through which I saw

the colors.

Another striking example of the visual transformation of language and

numbers comes from Heather. At twenty-seven years of age, she was one of

our most experienced volunteers. Heather had taken psychedelics close to

two hundred times, had over a dozen experiences with smoked DMT, and

was quite familiar with marijuana, stimulants, and MDMA. In addition, she

had drunk the DMT-containing tea ayahuasca ten times.

Emerging from her first non-blind high dose of DMT, she began:

There was a woman speaking Spanish all the time throughout the trip.

She had quite a unique accent. Maybe it wasn’t Spanish, but it sounded like

it. At one point she said, “Regular.”3 She threw a white blanket over the

scene and then pulled it back repeatedly. It was really weird. There were

numbers. It was like numerology and language. There were all these colors

and then there were all these numbers, Roman numerals. The numbers

became words. Where do words come from? The woman would cover them

with her blanket—the words and the numbers.

It started out typically as DMT but then I went past it, beyond where I’ve

been on DMT. There is that ringing sound as you’re getting up there, and

then I went to the language or number thing. It was totally inexplicable.

Maybe it was trying to teach me something. The first number I saw was a 2

and I looked around and there were numbers all around. They were

separate in their little boxes, and then the boxes would melt and the

numbers would all merge together to make long numbers.

Eli was a thirty-eight-year-old architect and one of our most fearless

research subjects. He previously had “regressed under LSD through

childhood to a point where I was sitting above the room, watching myself.”

During a 0.4 mg/kg dose that he received during the cyproheptadine study,

he noted,

What’s interesting is that I began experiencing sets of hallucinations, and

then I said to myself, “Ah, this is the Logos.” There’s the blue-yellow core

of meaning and semantics, basically.4

I laughed at his use of the word “basically”: “That’s easy for you to say.”

I know! It’s like threads of words or DNA or something. They’re all

around there, they’re everywhere. After the blue amoebic shapes, there were

several pulsating places. I thought, “There are lots of these.” It’s a good

feeling. Then it breaks into a ruffled reality. When I looked around, it

seemed like the meaning or symbols were there. Some kind of core of reality

where all meaning is stored. I burst into its main chamber.

Trying to keep up with Eli, I wondered, “It seems like some kind of

membrane you break through, into a feeling of meaning and certainty.”

It is! I don’t know if it’s because of my interest in computers or not, but it

seems like it’s the raw bits of reality. It’s a lot more than only ones and

zeros. It’s a higher level, very potent bits.

Eli went on to describe the “room” into which he burst. With this report,

the view DMT provides now starts enlarging.

I was in a white room, experiencing certain emotions and feelings that

gave me an intense feeling of being a co-reality. Like a dream I had of

bumping into some Hispanic kids with my car, into their car. They were

really mad at me. I said to them “If you hate me, you hate yourself. Our

cultures are merged, so there’s no defending against that.” Their culture,

our culture, they were co-real, existing simultaneously. The white room

consisted mostly of light and space. There were cubes stacked with icons on

the surfaces, like a Logos of consciousness. It was light but there was a lot

of other information coming in.

Other volunteers found themselves in rooms that seemed like “playrooms,”

or “nurseries,” some sort of holding space, made especially for them, full of

meaning and depth.

Gabe, a thirty-three-year-old physician, lived and worked in a remote

rural community. He was one of the few volunteers who previously had

smoked DMT. After receiving 0.4 mg/kg DMT in combination with

cyproheptadine, he reported the following:

There were some scenes or forms like in a nursery. No babies, but there

were cribs and different animals, vibrant. I went to a childhood scene, or

feeling. It was like I was in a stroller, kid images. It was sort of scary. I can’t

describe it. I could draw it maybe. It was like being in a room, as a child,

with a stroller. There were cartoonlike people in the room, but they weren’t

what I wanted to see.

Aaron was at the cutting edge of consciousness enhancement using legal

technologies: electronics devices such as brain-wave-driving machines,

supplements and vitamins, and Eastern spiritual disciplines. He was forty-

six years old when he started working with us. Aaron was one of the few

Jewish volunteers in our study, and I felt a certain kinship with him at that

level. He was hopeful but skeptical, looking forward to the experience, but

praying he would survive intact.

During his DMT-plus-pindolol session, he beheld two elements of unseen

worlds: the informational language aspect, and the nursery/playroom theme.

There are no doors, there’s nothing to go through. It’s either over here—

it’s dark; or over there—there are images. You just can’t do anything with

them. It was Mayan hieroglyphics. It was interesting. The hieroglyphics

turned into a room, like I was a child. There were toys there, like I was a

kid. It was like that. It was cute.

On a slightly larger scale, the spirit molecule led another volunteer to an

“apartment” of sorts. Tyrone was thirty-seven years old when he

participated in the dose-response study. He was a former student of mine, a

junior psychiatrist I had supervised for a year.

As he emerged from his double-blind 0.2 mg/kg dose of DMT, he

reported:

It was a scene of apartments from the future!

He laughed at how unexpected it was.

Like living quarters, they were gorgeous. Pink, orange, those kinds of

colors, yellow, real bright.

I asked, “How did you know they were of the future?”

The places to sit, do things, the counters, they were molded out of the

walls. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was really modern looking. The

almost organic nature of the apartment was beautiful. It wasn’t just

functional. There was life in the furniture, like it was molded out of

something alive, an animal, a living being. I felt in awe of the apartments.

An artistic appreciation, like looking at a beautiful painting and getting lost

in it, lost in the happiness. At the end I went past, beyond the apartments. I

entered into a space, a crack in the earth. It wasn’t horizontal, it was

vertical. A crack in space.

Aaron also participated in the EEG study. Several days after the session in

which he received the 0.4 mg/kg DMT dose, he sent us handwritten notes

that capture, better than mine, a description of where he went that day. Here

we see some glimmerings of the inhabited nature of these strange spaces.

There was no turning back. After a moment or two I became aware of

something happening to my left. I saw a psychedelic, Day-Glo–colored

space that approximated a room whose walls and floor had no clear

separations or edges. It was throbbing and pulsing electrically. Rising in

front of “me” was a podium-like table. It seemed that some presence was

dealing/serving something to me. I wanted to know where I was and

“sensed” the reply that I had no business there. The presence was not

hostile, just somewhat annoyed and brusque.

Phillip’s double-blind 0.4 mg/kg dose was definitely easier to negotiate than

his 0.6 mg/kg overdose, and he remembered it well. In this session, the

venue expands to include even larger-scale observations.

The relentless scratchy, crackling visuals didn’t last long. Then I was

above a strange landscape, like Earth, but very unearthly. Mountains of

some sort. It was very friendly and inviting. It was so real I had to open my

eyes. When I did the scene was overlaid on top of the room. I closed my

eyes, and that removed the interference with what I had been seeing. It was

like a super-bright Day-Glo poster, but much more complex. I was hovering

miles above it. I had the very distinct sense of doing this, not just the visual

perception. There were some telescopes, or microwave dishes, or water-

tower things with antennae on them. I wish I could take you by the hand

and show you. A vast expanse of horizon. The sun was different, different

colors and hues than our sun.

Let’s close this chapter with Sean’s description of a DMT world that

seemed much like our own. However, that world had nothing to do with

Room 531, and there were people other than Laura and me inhabiting it. I

like this example because it combines the material from this chapter with

the one that follows. In other words, it is “somewhere else” with “someone

there” and “something happening,” but so familiar as to deceive us about its

“otherness.”

We’ll read about Sean’s enlightenment experience in greater detail later.

However, for our purposes, what’s interesting to note is what he told us

after his third 0.3 mg/kg DMT session during the tolerance study. Almost as

an afterthought, before we began his fourth and final dose, he said,

Oh yeah, there were people and guides. I was with a Mexican family, on

a porch of a house in the desert. There was a garden scene outside. There

were kids and stuff. I was playing with the kids. I was part of the family. I

had a sense of an old man standing behind me or around me someplace. I

wanted to talk with him, but he let me know somehow that it was more

important to visit with the young girl. It was pretty laid-back, benign. It

seemed so natural and complete as it was happening. It wasn’t a dream at

all. I thought, “It seems like a pretty common day,” and then I stopped and

thought, “No, I’m tripping.”

There were some black people, too, sort of pulling at me. There was a

curious feeling of being extracted. It was a jarring feeling. I was being

called away.

Trying to keep his train of thought going, I suggested, “It sounds like

something out of Carlos Castaneda’s books.”5

It does, doesn’t it? No, I hadn’t thought of that.

Perhaps you think these perceptions are not so strange after all. We all

dream of unusual places and things. However, our volunteers not only saw

these things, but felt an unshakeable certainty that they actually were there.

Opening their eyes at any time superimposed this reality with their now-

manifest but previously invisible one.

Neither were they asleep. They were hyperaware and awake, able to tell

themselves to do things in this new space. It’s amazing how often I heard

them say, “I looked around and saw . . .”

Listening to these experiences also began stretching my limits as a

clinical psychiatrist and researcher. I made few comments regarding

people’s reports of these unseen realms. It was hard to keep up, and I didn’t

know what to say. It was at this point that I began having to fight a tendency

to regard these stories as dreams, or figments of their DMT-amplified

imaginations. On the other hand, I also began doubting my own model for

what exactly happens on DMT. Were people really somewhere else? What

exactly were they witnessing?

These are not trivial questions. As we saw in the previous chapter,

sensitive, empathic, and encouraging responses are crucial in working with

people under the influence of DMT. An offhanded, doubting, or skeptical

remark could make someone feel badly and disregarded, which could

rapidly lead to a negative or frightening outcome. We get an intimation of

this in Sean’s flat rejection of my suggestion that his Mexican family scene

was based upon a memory of Carlos Castaneda books. He was with them; it

wasn’t something else.

In addition to the need for close tracking and empathic responses to

volunteers’ experiences, I also needed to help them understand what had

happened to them. When it came to the invisible landscape, we all faced

more difficult challenges in making sense of what was going on. As we’ll

see in the next two chapters, this became an even more pressing issue when

contact with beings predominated people’s sessions.

Contact Through the Veil: 1

The material in this and the next chapter is the most unusual and difficult

to understand. It is the weirdest and the easiest for me to skirt when people

ask “What did you find?”

When reviewing my bedside notes, I continually feel surprise in seeing

how many of our volunteers “made contact” with “them,” or other beings.

At least half did so in one form or another. Research subjects used

expressions like “entities,” “beings,” “aliens,” “guides,” and “helpers” to

describe them. The “life-forms” looked like clowns, reptiles, mantises,

bees, spiders, cacti, and stick figures. It is still startling to see my written

records of comments like “There were these beings,” “I was being led,”

“They were on me fast.” It’s as if my mind refuses to accept what’s there in

black and white.

It may be that I have such a hard time with these stories because they

challenge the prevailing world view, and my own. Our modern approach to

reality relies upon waking consciousness, and its extensions of tools and

instruments, as the only ways of knowing. If we can’t see, hear, smell, taste,

or touch things in our everyday state of mind, or using our technology-

amplified senses, it’s not real. Thus, these are “nonmaterial” beings.

In contrast, indigenous cultures are in regular contact with denizens of

the invisible landscape and have no problems with straddling both worlds.

Often they do this with the aid of psychedelic plants.

Many modern-day scientists possess an abiding faith in the spiritual.

However, these same scientists are caught in a profound conflict between

their personal and professional beliefs. What they say and what they feel

may contradict each other profoundly. It is difficult to be “objective” about

matters of the heart and spirit. Scientists may compartmentalize their faith

and can’t conceive of verifying or validating their spiritual intuition. In

other cases they may water down the nature of those beliefs to maintain

some consistency with their intellectual understanding. Perhaps they simply

ignore the presence of angels and demons in essential scriptures, or regard

them as symbolic or as hallucinatory manifestations of an overactive

religious imagination.

Lack of open dialogue about these issues makes it much more difficult to

even imagine enlarging our view of the reality of nonmaterial realms using

scientific methods. What would happen to the study of spirit realms if we

could access them reliably using molecules like DMT?

In addition to questions regarding the existence of nonmaterial or

spiritual worlds, we also must consider expanding the notion of what we

may perceive in them. Can our spiritual and religious structures encompass

what truly resides within these different levels of existence? The stories

we’re about to hear go beyond reasonably “straightforward” encounters

with the Divine or angels, nor are they especially neat, tidy, or in

accordance with what we consider within the realm of “expectable”

spiritual experiences.

I’m hopeful that these reports will accelerate interest in the nonmaterial

realms, using whatever intellectual, intuitive, and technological tools we

possess. Once there is enough interest in, and even demand for, information

about them, such phenomena might become an acceptable topic for rational

inquiry. Ironically, we may have to rely more upon science, especially the

freewheeling fields of cosmology and theoretical physics, than on our more

conservative religious traditions for satisfactory models and explanations of

these “spirit-world” experiences.

I had expected to hear about some of these types of experiences once we

began giving DMT. I was familiar with Terence McKenna’s tales of the

“self-transforming machine elves” he encountered after smoking high doses

of the drug. Interviews conducted with twenty experienced DMT smokers

before beginning the New Mexico research also yielded some tales of

similar meetings. Since most of these people were from California, I

admittedly chalked up these stories to some kind of West Coast eccentricity.

Therefore, I was neither intellectually nor emotionally prepared for the

frequency with which contact with beings occurred in our studies, nor the

often utterly bizarre nature of these experiences. Neither, it seemed, were

many of the volunteers, even those who had smoked DMT previously. Also

surprising were the common themes of what these beings were doing with

so many of our volunteers: manipulating, communicating, showing,

helping, questioning. It was definitely a two-way street.

As strange as the reports that follow are, our 1990s research was not the

first in the scientific literature to describe DMT-induced “contact.” There

also are reports from the 1950s quoting volunteers to that effect. These

older DMT cases are remarkable in their foreshadowing of the stories we

were going to hear almost forty years later. What is even more striking is

that I have been unable to locate any similar reports in research subjects

taking other psychedelics. Only with DMT do people meet up with “them,”

with other beings in a nonmaterial world.

These older clinical excerpts derive from patients with schizophrenia,

many of whom had been hospitalized for years, if not decades. They were

not especially verbal, insightful, or personable. They received DMT in

studies attempting to determine how similar the DMT state was to

schizophrenia. Researchers also were interested in gauging whether

naturally psychotic patients were more or less sensitive to DMT’s effects.

A patient with schizophrenia in a study at Stephen Szára’s former

laboratory in Hungary reported the following after a high dose of

intramuscular DMT:

I saw such strange dreams, but at the beginning only. . . . I saw strange

creatures, dwarves or something, they were black and moved about.1

An American research team also gave DMT to patients with

schizophrenia. Of the nine subjects, the only one who could say anything

about her experience was an unfortunate woman who, after getting a robust

dose of 1.25 mg/kg IM DMT, stated,

I was in a big place, and they were hurting me. They were not human. . . .

They were horrible! I was living in a world of orange people.2

These little vignettes should keep us from becoming too complacent in

believing that what our volunteers reported is purely a New Age, 1990sin-

Santa Fe phenomenon. The spirit molecule revealed unseen worlds, and

their inhabitants, to Western science long before our research began.

Karl’s early encounter with life-forms, like his visions of DNA described in

the last chapter, offered a prelude to future, more elaborate stories from

other volunteers. Karl was a forty-five-year-old blacksmith. He was married

to Elena, whose enlightenment experience we’ll read about later.

Eight minutes into his non-blind high-dose injection, he described this

encounter:

That was real strange. There were a lot of elves. They were prankish,

ornery, maybe four of them appeared at the side of a stretch of interstate

highway I travel regularly. They commanded the scene, it was their terrain!

They were about my height. They held up placards, showing me these

incredibly beautiful, complex, swirling geometric scenes in them. One of

them made it impossible for me to move. There was no issue of control; they

were totally in control. They wanted me to look! I heard a giggling sound—

the elves laughing or talking at high-speed volume, chattering, twittering.

In the last chapter, we heard about Aaron’s experiences of unseen worlds.

Let’s return to his first non-blind high dose of DMT. He looked at me about

10 minutes after the injection and shrugged, laughing:

First there was a mandala-like series of visuals, fleurs-de-lis–type

visions. Then an insectlike thing got right into my face, hovering over me as

the drug was going in. This thing sucked me out of my head into outer

space. It was clearly outer space, a black sky with millions of stars.

I was in a very large waiting room, or something. It was very long. I felt

observed by the insect-thing and others like it. Then they lost interest. I was

taken into space and looked at.

Aaron summarized his encounters with these beings after a subsequent

double-blind high dose:

There is a sinister backdrop, an alien-type, insectoid, not-quite-pleasant

side of this, isn’t there? It’s not a “We’re-going-to get-you-motherfucker.”

It’s more like being possessed. During the experience there is sense of

someone, or something else, there taking control. It’s like you have to

defend yourself against them, whoever they are, but they certainly are there.

I’m aware of them and they’re aware of me. It’s like they have an agenda.

It’s like walking into a different neighborhood. You’re really not quite sure

what the culture is. It’s got such a distinct flavor, the reptilian being or

beings that are present.

“How about the scary element?” I asked. “What’s the worst they could do

if they are unleashed with access to you?”

That’s what it’s about. It’s the sense of the possibility that’s so strange.

In a later chapter, we’ll read about the physical problems Lucas encountered

after his high-dose session. However, it’s interesting to review part of a

letter he wrote to us a few days after that experience:

There is nothing that can prepare you for this. There is a sound, a bzzzz.

It started off and got louder and louder and faster and faster. I was coming

on and coming on and then POW! There was a space station below me and

to my right. There were at least two presences, one on either side of me,

guiding me to a platform. I was also aware of many entities inside the space

station—automatons, androidlike creatures that looked like a cross between

crash dummies and the Empire troops from Star Wars, except that they were

living beings, not robots. They seemed to have checkerboard patterns on

parts of their bodies, especially their upper arms. They were doing some

kind of routine technological work and paid no attention to me. In a state of

overwhelmed confusion, I opened my eyes.

It was at this point in Room 531 that Lucas’s heart rate and blood

pressure plummeted to nearly unrecordable levels.

We will read about Carlos’s shamanic death-rebirth experience elicited by

his first non-blind high dose of DMT in chapter 15. During one of his high-

dose sessions, he also met beings who tried to help him with his anxiety:

There’s this whole different world with architecture and landscape. I saw

one or two beings there. The beings even have gender. The skin was not

flesh-colored. I communicated with them but there wasn’t enough time. I

was so strung out, excited, agitated when I arrived there. They wanted to try

and reduce my anxiety so we could relate.

Gabe, whose transport into a nursery or playroom we read about in the last

chapter, felt an even greater sense of care and concern from “the spirits”

during his first high-dose DMT session:

There was an initial sense of panic. Then the most beautiful colors

coalesced into beings. There were lots of beings. They were talking to me

but they weren’t making a sound. It was more as if they were blessing me,

the spirits of life were blessing me. They were saying that life was good. At

first it felt like I was going through a cave or a tunnel or into space, at a

fast rate, definitely. I felt like a ball hurtling down to wherever it was.

Many volunteers’ encounters with life-forms in these nonmaterial worlds

involved the powerful sense of an exchange of information. The type of

information varied widely. Sometimes it concerned the “biology” of these

beings.

Chris was thirty-five years old, married, and a computer salesman. He

was quite artistically talented, too, and performed in local theater

productions. He had taken psychedelics fifty to sixty times before starting

our research. He hoped his DMT sessions with us would “propel me into a

state of awareness I have been seeking during eight years of LSD use, but

have only had glimpses of previously.”

His non-blind high dose was “the most reassuring experience of my life.”

The separation of his mind and body was effortless, and he decided that “if

death is like this, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Chris returned for the tolerance study a few weeks later.

He lifted the eyeshades after the first dose and said,

There was a set of many hands. They were feeling my eyes and face. It

was a little bit confusing. There were more individuals. They were

recognizing and identifying me. It was more intimate. At first I thought it

was the eyeshades on my face, but it definitely was not!

Filling out the rating scale, he added,

To get to that space I had to get through some sort of a non-benevolent

space. It felt like there were talons and claws there trying to guard it in a

way.

These were long mornings and he needed encouragement. I let my

intuition guide me: “If need be, let them rip you to shreds, then you can get

on with it.”

Dismemberment is part of the shamanic initiation, isn’t it? I felt a

dragonlike presence. And, there were the same colors—red, golden yellows.

“The colors can be like a drape or a prelude or a curtain. Even though

they’re so pretty, you can get through them to the other side.”

Coming out of his second dose he looked stunned, and he grasped for

words that seemed inadequate.

It was wild. There were no colors. There was the usual sound: pleasant, a

roar, a sort of an internal hum. Then there were three beings, three physical

forms. There were rays coming out of their bodies and then back to their

bodies. They were reptilian and humanoid, trying to make me understand,

not with words, but with gestures. They wanted me to look into their bodies.

I saw inside them and understood reproduction, what it’s like before birth,

the passage into the body. Once I established what they were

communicating, they didn’t just fade away. They stayed there for quite a

while. Their presence was very solid.

I had been hearing about lots of encounters by then and could at least

validate his experience: “You wouldn’t expect it.”

I try and program it and I go in with an idea of what to see, but I just

can’t. I thought I was developing tolerance, but then, Bang! There were

these three guys or three things.

He looked awkward talking about his experience.

I empathized with his perplexity, saying, “It does sound odd.”

It sure does. I wasn’t sure as I was lifting my eyeshades if I wanted to talk

to you about it.

Chris’s third dose was relatively uneventful. He stayed aware of his body,

his heart beating in his chest, his stomach growling from hunger.

His fourth dose built upon the themes of the previous three and

concluded with many features of a mystical experience:

They were trying to show me as much as possible. They were

communicating in words. They were like clowns or jokers or jesters or imps.

There were just so many of them doing their funny little thing. I settled into

it. I was incredibly still and I felt like I was in an incredibly peaceful place.

Then there was a message telling me that I had been given a gift, that this

space was mine and I could go there anytime. I should feel blessed to have

form, to live. It went on forever. There were blue hands, fluttering things,

then thousands of things flew out of these blue hands. I thought “What a

show!” It was really healing.

It was part of me, not separate. It was a reassurance that this wouldn’t go

away, that it was mine, that a connection had been made. The whole thing

was really crucial to my spiritual development. It’s what I tried to do with

LSD, a sort of self-initiation. With LSD, it worked in some ways and didn’t

in others.

Stranger yet are stories of procedures, more or less intrusive, performed by

the life-forms of these nonmaterial worlds upon our volunteers during their

DMT intoxication.

Jim, a thirty-seven-year-old schoolteacher, was a volunteer who didn’t

like to talk much about his experiences. During his tolerance study, we

talked about going further through the bright colors, which he admitted

were distracting him. He felt there might be “beings” behind the colors, and

I encouraged him to see if there were. After emerging from his last dose, he

said almost offhandedly, and with little emotion,

I went with them as you suggested. There were clinical researchers

probing into my mind. There were sort of long fiber-optic things that they

were putting into my pupils.

This was years after we had stopped using the pupil measuring card, so it

had nothing to do with what was happening in Room 531. I asked Jim what

that was like for him.

It was pretty weird, but I figured it was just the drug.

Jeremiah, at fifty years of age, was one of our oldest volunteers. He had

recently retired from decades of service in the armed forces and was

beginning a new phase of his professional life by obtaining training in

clinical counseling. He was also starting his third family, and he underwent

a face-lift halfway through the dose-response study. He was a busy man.

During the first few minutes of his non-blind high dose of DMT,

Jeremiah burst out in several exclamations: “Whoa!” “Wow!” “Incredible!”

He began beaming, a huge smile across his face. He seemed to be having a

great time.

It was a nursery. A high-tech nursery with a single Gumby, three feet tall,

attending me.3 I felt like an infant. Not a human infant, but an infant

relative to the intelligences represented by the Gumby. It was aware of me,

but not particularly concerned. Sort of a detached concern, like a parent

would feel looking into a playpen at his one-year-old lying there. As I went

into it, I heard a sound: hmmm. Then I heard two to three male voices

talking. I heard one of them say, “He’s arrived.”

I felt evolution occurring. These intelligences are looking over us. There

is hope beyond the mess we are making for ourselves.

I couldn’t change the experience at all. I couldn’t have anticipated it or

even imagined it. It was a total surprise! I tried to open to love but that was

silly. All I could do was observe it.

I found this last comment especially interesting because it challenged my

assumption that what Jeremiah encountered was a product of his mind,

rather than a “true” perception. “Opening to love” is shorthand for an effort

to change the anxiety caused by an unexpected or unpleasant experience

into love. If what Jeremiah had just encountered was only a product of his

own imagination, he may have been able to alter his reactions. The fact that

his attempt felt “silly” reminded me of the futility of trying to “open to

love” to a oncoming truck. “Opening to love” as he found himself instantly

dropped into an alien nursery was such an ineffectual and inappropriate

response that it seemed laughable.

Several months later Jeremiah received his double-blind 0.4 mg/kg DMT

dose.

At 5 minutes he began,

That was much more intense than the first major dose. It’s a different

world. Amazing instruments. Machine-type things. There was one person

operating some of this stuff. I was in a big room; he was in another part of

it.

I feel a little shaky . . . a little hypersensitive . . . there are little tremors

going through my body.

“Maybe closing your eyes might help. Here, let’s put a blanket on you,

too.”

There was one big machine in the center, with round conduits, almost

writhing—not like a snake, more in a technical manner. The conduits were

not open at the end. They were solid blue-gray tubes, made of plastic? The

machine felt as if it was rewiring me, reprogramming me. There was a

human, as far as I could tell, standing at some type of console, taking

readings or manipulating things. He was busy, at work, on the job. I

observed some of the results on that machine, maybe from my brain. It was

a little frightening, almost unbearably intense. It all began with a whining,

whirring sound.

Jeremiah’s last double-blind session was the less overwhelming but

definitely psychedelic 0.2 mg/kg dose. At this session he was surrounded by

the orthopedic traction cage, but he denied that it bothered him. Josette was

filling in for Cindy that morning, as our nurse.

At 10 minutes, he began,

There were four distinct beings looking down on me, like I was on an

operating-room table. I opened my eyes to see if it was you and Josette, but

it wasn’t. They had done something and were observing the results. They

are vastly advanced scientifically and technologically. They were looking

just over the traction bar in front of me. I guess they were saying,

“Goodbye. Don’t be a stranger.”

Josette said that some of what Jeremiah described reminded her of some

of her own “weird” dreams, and she went on to tell us about one of them.

Jeremiah replied,

That was a dream you described. This is real. It’s totally unexpected,

quite constant and objective. One could interpret your looking at my pupils

as being observed, and the tubes in my body as the tubes I’m seeing. But

that is a metaphor, and this is not at all a metaphor. It’s an independent,

constant reality.

Josette collected the last blood sample and left the room, closing the door

behind her. Jeremiah and I relaxed quietly together.

DMT has shown me the reality that there is infinite variation on reality.

There is the real possibility of adjacent dimensions. It may not be so simple

as that there’s alien planets with their own societies. This is too proximal.

It’s not like some kind of drug. It’s more like an experience of a new

technology than a drug.

You can choose to attend to this or not. It will continue to progress

without you paying attention. You return not to where you left off, but to

where things have gone since you left. It’s not a hallucination, but an

observation. When I’m there, I’m not intoxicated. I’m lucid and sober.

Dmitri’s sessions continue to fill out themes of testing and experimentation

upon volunteers once the spirit molecule brought them into nonmaterial

realms.

Twenty-six years old when he started in the DMT research, Dmitri was of

Greek extraction. He lived with Heather, whose experience of unseen

worlds we read about in chapter 12. He was a writer and editor and was a

seasoned and steady explorer of inner space. He had smoked DMT about

sixty times and had taken LSD “hundreds of times,” ketamine fifty to a

hundred times, and MDMA about thirty times.

When I arrived in his room, Dmitri was casual about the day’s schedule:

“I’m not too excited about this. I know it’s just a low dose.”

“Wait until tomorrow,” I replied.

Ten minutes after I injected this low dose, Dmitri said,

It was pretty psychedelic, more so than I thought it would be.

The next day, Dr. V. and his assistant, Mr. W., joined us as guests. Dr. V.

worked for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the agency funding my

research. He was developing a project that might treat drug abusers with the

African hallucinogen ibogaine. He wanted to see the effects of a powerful

psychedelic drug given in a research setting.

Mr. W. had been one of the most helpful people during my search

through the regulatory labyrinth for human-grade DMT. I was happy to

share with him the results of his assistance.

Dmitri’s partner, Heather, was with us that day, too. Add Dmitri, Laura,

and me, and there were six in all. It was a crowd in Room 531.

Almost immediately after the injection was complete, Dmitri began

breathing deeply and rapidly. He repeatedly sighed and yawned as if to

dispel physical tension. At about 9 minutes, he asked for some water, and

thanked us when we gave him a few sips. After wetting his mouth, he

began,

I feel like I’m in a mild state of shock. I feel really shaky.

“Here’s a blanket.”

Okay.

“Don’t forget to breathe. There’s a lot of energy being released.”

I asked Laura to go out into the hall and turn off some beeping equipment

outside. Dmitri wasn’t quite sure what we were doing. He decided to ignore

the fuss.

The first thing I noticed was a burning in the back of my neck. Then there

was this loud intense hum. It was like the fan at first, but separate. It began

engulfing me. I let go into it and then . . . WHAM!

I felt like I was in an alien laboratory, in a hospital bed like this, but it

was over there. A sort of landing bay, or recovery area. There were beings. I

was trying to get a handle on what was going on. I was being carted

around. It didn’t look alien, but their sense of purpose was. It was a three-

dimensional space. I expected cartoonlike creatures, like a commercial for

LSD, but this was “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” It was unlike any other

DMT experience I’ve had.

They had a space ready for me. They weren’t as surprised as I was. It was

incredibly un-psychedelic. I was able to pay attention to detail. There was

one main creature, and he seemed to be behind it all, overseeing everything.

The others were orderlies, or dis-orderlies.

They activated a sexual circuit, and I was flushed with an amazing

orgasmic energy. A goofy chart popped up like an X-ray in a cartoon, and a

yellow illumination indicated that the corresponding system, or series of

systems, were fine. They were checking my instruments, testing things.

When I was coming out, I couldn’t help but think “aliens.”

I am so disappointed I didn’t talk to them. I was confused and in awe. I

knew that they were preparing me for something. Somehow we had a

mission. They had things to show me. But they were waiting for me to

acquaint myself with the environment and movement and language of this

space.

The atmosphere in the room was surreal. It was bursting with people and

a very strange story. I hoped Dr. V. and Mr. W. were all right. I also

wondered if I might lose my funding the next week. Or see it doubled.

It was not like any UFO abduction I’ve heard about. These beings were

friendly. I had a bond with one of them. It was about to say something to me

or me to it, but we couldn’t quite connect. It was almost a sexual bond, but

not sex like intercourse, but a total body communication. I was filled with

feelings of love for them. Their work definitely had something to do with my

presence. Exactly what remains a mystery.

Let’s close this chapter with one of the most striking interventions

performed on a volunteer by these otherworld beings. In Ben’s experience,

they not only tested and probed him, but also implanted something into his

body.

Ben was twenty-nine years of age and had recently relocated from

Seattle. He was a drifter, having held thirty jobs in just ten years. He was an

old friend of Chris, about whose entity-contact encounter we just read.

During one of his longest stints of employment, Ben had served as a

military policeman for two years.

Ben was an intense fellow—short-cropped, nearly shaven head, a

muscular build, and a very direct manner. He actively sought novelty and

change, so it’s not surprising that in his written statement about why he

wanted to participate in the New Mexico research, he replied: “I am an

explorer, and I expect this will be an interesting experience.”

As with Dmitri, Ben’s non-blind, low-dose DMT session was relatively

powerful. His high sensitivity to DMT warned us that the next day probably

would be one of the biggest psychedelic experiences of his life. I told him

to be ready.

While a little nervous the next day, Ben was eager for his non-blind high

dose to begin. I spent a little more time than usual getting him ready,

advising him to try and take some big deep breaths as the DMT went in.

“You may take in a breath and have that be the last thing you remember;

you may not even notice the out-breath. That means you’re there.”

Ben tried to breathe deeply as the drug was going in. Then his breathing

settled down as he obviously fell under the influence of the drug. His heart

beat visibly in his chest. At about 3 minutes, his neck showed some hives,

something that had also happened to several other volunteers who had truly

astonishing stories to tell us later.

At 8 minutes, several total body spasms occurred, and he cleared his

throat.

It was time to try and ground him. “We’re going to put a blanket on you.

Try to breathe into that tension if you can.”

He slowed his breathing and starting calming down, a big smile on his

face. He stayed silent for 36 minutes, longer than most of our volunteers,

before I felt the urge to rouse him.

It started with a sound. It was high-pitched like a tightly taut wire.

There were four or five of them. They were on me fast. As crazy as this

sounds, they looked like saguaro cactus, very Peruvian in color. They were

flexible, fluid, geometrical cacti. Not solid. They weren’t benevolent but they

weren’t non-benevolent. They probed, they really probed. They seemed to

know time was limited. They wanted to know what I, this being who had

shown up, was doing. I didn’t answer. They knew. Once they decided I was

okay, they went about their business.

His eyes were open, glazed, staring at the ceiling. He seemed unable to

grasp what he had just undergone.

“I know. It sounds incredible to you. To us, too, but it happens.”

Haltingly, as if he weren’t really sure he wanted to tell us:

I felt like something was inserted into my left forearm, right here, about

three inches below this chain-link tattoo on my wrist. It was long. There

were no reassurances with the probe. Simply business.

Laura asked “Was there any fear?”

Maybe at the onset, at just having my ego brushed aside. When they were

on me, there was a little bit more confusion than fear. Kind of like, “Hey!

What’s this?!” And then there they were. There was no time for me to say,

“Who the hell are you guys? Let’s see some ID!”

There are surprising and remarkable consistencies among volunteers’

reports of contact with nonmaterial beings. Sound and vibration build until

the scene almost explosively shifts to an “alien” realm. Volunteers find

themselves on a bed or in a landing bay, research environment, or high-

technology room. The highly intelligent beings of this “other” world are

interested in the subject, seemingly ready for his or her arrival and wasting

no time in “getting to work.” There might be one particular being clearly in

charge, directing the others. Volunteers frequently comment about the

emotional quality of the relationships: loving, caring, or professionally

detached.

Their “business” appeared to be testing, examining, probing, and even

modifying the volunteer’s mind and body. Sometimes testing came first,

and after results were satisfactory, further interactions took place. They also

communicated with the volunteers, attempting to convey information by

gestures, telepathy, or visual imagery. The purpose of contact was uncertain,

but several subjects felt a benevolent attempt on the beings’ part to improve

us individually or as a race.

I was baffled and nonplussed by the sheer volume and bizarre nature of

these reports. My crude and minimal responses to volunteers’ tales in this

chapter clearly reflect my quandary. At first I tried to avoid the pitfalls

attendant to developing any explanatory model, either for my benefit or for

that of the subjects. After a while, however, we all needed to make sense of

these types of sessions.

As a clinical research psychiatrist, I entertained the idea that the

regularity and consistency of these reports, and the strength of the sense of

reality behind them, supported a biological explanation. We were activating

certain hard-wired sites in the brain that elicit a display of visions and

feelings in the mind. How else could so many people report similar

experiences: insect-like, reptilian creatures?

I believed that these experiences were hallucinations, albeit rather

complicated ones—simply products of brain chemistry brought on by a

“hallucinogenic” drug, like a waking dream. Several volunteers’ eyeballs

did rotate in their sockets during high-dose DMT sessions, reminding me of

rapid-eye-movement sleep, when dreaming occurs. Maybe DMT was

inducing a wakeful dream state.

However, research subjects tenaciously resisted biological explanations

because such explanations reduced the enormity, consistency, and

undeniability of their encounters. How could anyone believe there were

chunks of brain tissue that, when activated, flashed encounters with beings,

experimentation, and reprogramming? Neither did suggesting that it was a

waking dream satisfy volunteers’ need for a model that made sense and fit

with their experience. Many even prefaced their reports by saying, “This

was not a dream,” or, “I couldn’t have made it up if I wanted to.”

At a slightly more abstract level, I tried a psychological explanation. That

is, these experiences were symbolic of something else: wishes, fears, or

unresolved conflicts. However, these “symbolic” explanations weren’t any

more successful. Even gently persistent interpretations fell flat. How could

these experiences reflect unconscious psychological issues like aggressive

or dependent wishes?

In some volunteers the need to make sense of the strangest sessions was

almost academic: “It was just the drug.”

For others, however, this need took on a pressing urgency. How could

they have possibly undergone the experience they just did? Was it their

imagination? How could their imagination generate a scenario that felt

more real than waking consciousness? If it were “real,” how does one now

live his or her life, knowing that existing right now are multiple invisible

realms inhabited by intelligent life-forms? Who are those beings? What is

the nature of their relationship to the volunteers now that they had made

“contact”?

At a certain point I decided to suspend my reductionistic, materialistic, “I

know what this is” approach. Not that doing so helped me feel any more

comfortable with what I was hearing. But at least I no longer would risk

making things worse by explaining away people’s experiences as something

else. Interpreting, explaining, or otherwise reducing their reports usually

caused volunteers to shut down, and I knew I would be missing valuable

and important pieces of the entire story if I couldn’t encourage them to talk.

So, as a thought experiment, I decided to act as if the worlds that the

volunteers visited and the inhabitants with whom they interacted were real,

as real as Room 531, the hospital bed, the research nurse, and myself. There

now was freedom to respond more empathically, and to see where it led. It

also made it possible to start considering other ways of understanding

research subjects’ eerily consistent reports.

Nevertheless, there was a nagging discomfort in taking this approach in

responding to reports of contact. I began wondering if I were starting a

descent into some sort of communal psychosis.

So did the volunteers. Upon hearing of similar encounters by their

comrades at our post-study socials, several subjects decided to form a DMT

support group that met every month or two. Their reason? “I can’t talk with

anyone about these things.” “No one would understand. It’s just too

strange.” “I want to remind myself that I’m not losing my mind.”

Contact Through the Veil: 2

This chapter will describe two of the most complex cases of contact with

beings we saw in our New Mexico research. While qualitatively similar to

the reports we read in the previous chapter, they stand out by virtue of their

detail and intensely personal meaning to the volunteers, Rex and Sara. Their

stories exemplify how far DMT, the spirit molecule, can take us into worlds

and vistas that we cannot begin to imagine. These particular sessions are the

full blooming of this absolutely unexpected and profound series of

experiences.

They also left me feeling confused and concerned about where the spirit

molecule was leading us. It was at this point that I began to wonder if I was

getting in over my head with this research. The experiences were such that

my models of the mind, the brain, and reality started seeming too limited to

absorb and hold the nature of what volunteers like Rex and Sara were

undergoing. They also caused me to start wondering how adequately we

were able to support, understand, and help our volunteers integrate these

otherworldly experiences. Were we opening up Pandora’s box? How were

volunteers going to live their lives from that point on, after having

experienced such an inexplicable but certain reality? What could we tell

them that would ease their confusion?

Sara was DMT-34 and Rex was DMT-42. By the time they volunteered for

the studies, more than two and a half years after the DMT project began, we

had gained a familiarity, albeit an uneasy one, with tales of encounters with

intelligent life-forms. If their sessions had taken place earlier in the

research, we might not have been as supportive of their telling, nor learned

the level of detail we did.

Rex’s and Sara’s sessions may have been so extraordinary because they

quickly suspended their disbelief and shock when the spirit molecule threw

open the doors to the unseen worlds and introduced them to the inhabitants

of those places. They both had been through a lot in their lives and were

remarkably able to keep their wits about them in stressful and frightening

circumstances. They entered those types of situations trying to learn

everything they could from them, disregarding nothing, accepting as much

as they possibly could.

Rex was forty years old when he volunteered for our studies. While in the

armed services, he had taken some PCP, or angel dust, thinking it was THC,

the active ingredient in marijuana. The resulting psychosis landed him in a

psychiatric hospital for a week. He had gone to college for several years,

but financial hardship and homelessness ended his studies. He suffered an

episode of depression after a divorce in his twenties. Despite these setbacks,

his current emotional health was good, and we had few concerns about his

ability to manage our studies.

Rex was a rugged-looking fellow, but he was much more mild-mannered

than he appeared. His dark eyes, hair, and mustache were accentuated by his

pale skin. He was the only volunteer who referred to me more often as “Dr.

Strassman” than as “Rick.” While a journeyman carpenter by trade, he had

also won some local awards for his creative writing. He was loosely allied

with the Wicca religion, a nature-based practice and community.

These were Rex’s reasons for volunteering: “I want to explore the

potentials of the mind, the nature of actual and perceived reality and our

relationship to reality, and to God. I hope to gain at least greater self-

knowledge.”

Rex’s response to his first dose of DMT, the non-blind low dose, was

surprisingly strong, and I knew he would be a having some powerful

experiences the next day. At 5 minutes after the low-dose injection, he said,

There was a humming sound. I couldn’t tell if it was the air conditioner.

Then I felt like I was suddenly in the presence of an alien or of aliens,

vaguely humanoid. There were serpentine colors surrounding them,

producing an outline of their shape. Based on my reading, I expected

leprechauns, not anything like this.

The bed was spinning, rocking, it was uncomfortable, alarming. There

was some constriction in my chest. That feeling then turned into the alien

presence. I tried to make contact and relax into it. It seemed a lot more in

control than I was. It was interested in my fear and in me.

I remember that feeling from when I was a kid. When I was scared I

would relax and say to myself, “The worst thing that can happen is I’ll go

to God” when I was afraid.

I knew that the next day he would have a potentially cataclysmic

encounter with the beings he had just encountered. It seemed only fair to

warn him, to prepare him, as best I could, based upon other’s experiences.

Nevertheless, it felt strange to hear myself say,

“They do seem interested in you, in people, especially in their feelings.”

He tried to sound casual,

Cool.

“Be ready to be dismembered tomorrow. I know that’s a grim suggestion,

but it sounds like you may be in for a fairly rough ride.”

I awoke nervous that next morning. How would Rex do? We both were

alarmed by his reaction to a dose one-eighth of what he’d receive today.

We got right down to business. He told me, “I guess I’m most afraid of

the vertigo, of getting sick.”

His comment reminded me of a Tibetan meditation practice I had learned

many summers before. The method was simply to ask yourself over and

over again, “Is this what I am?” With whatever answer you gave—“my

body,” “my job,” “my relationships”—it was important to ask again, “Is this

what I am?” My body, mind, identity, opinions, feelings, all began falling

away. This meditation upset me so much that I ran outside and vomited.

I wondered if something similar weren’t occurring with Rex:

“Sometimes nausea and vertigo can relate to something that you’re not

wanting to acknowledge, something deep but obvious. Is there anything

important these days that you’re trying not to think about?”

“I broke up with my girlfriend about six weeks ago and I called her this

morning. I’m not sure if it was a good idea to break up with her.”

Women. Relationships. Trust.

“How about your marriage? What was that like?”

“She was diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic. She was horrible. She did

terrible things to me.”

Time for a leap. I suggested, “So, there’s a commitment fear in a way.

Commitment means getting exploited by somebody who is totally crazy.”

“Yes.” And he made the connection: “Also, I was afraid of the physical

reaction to the drug, that I was going to get sick and die from the allergic

feeling that I had to it. I wondered if I was allergic to it, with that pressure

in my chest and head.”

Steering back to his emotions, not his body’s symbolic dealing with

them, I pressed Rex, saying, “The commitment issue is important. A

commitment to yourself and then the commitment to not having a self once

that happens. I guess ultimately a commitment to a faith that you will be

looked after, and not be abused when you’re in need.”

We went on in this vein for a while. Within half an hour, Rex seemed

much calmer, although I was feeling sick to my stomach and dizzy. That

seemed a signal that he had expelled his fear, and it had landed in me. I told

him we could probably start now. I walked briskly up and down the hall a

few times, splashed my face with cold water in the bathroom, and felt

relatively normal.

Rex lay very quietly for the first few minutes after the injection. I see in

my notes the following comment after remarking upon how still he was:

“Thank God.”

At 7 minutes, hives began forming on his neck. Laura pointed to the vial

of antihistamine we had handy in case the hives became too severe or the

allergic reaction spread to his lungs and he began to wheeze. He did have an

overactive allergic system. As if sensing our concern, he reached out his left

hand and Laura took it.

At 10 minutes, Rex removed his eyeshades. He started,

When I was first going under there were these insect creatures all around

me. They were clearly trying to break through. I was fighting letting go of

who I am or was. The more I fought, the more demonic they became,

probing into my psyche and being. I finally started letting go of parts of

myself, as I could no longer keep so much of me together. As I did, I still

clung to the idea that all was God, and that God was love, and I was giving

myself up to God and God’s love because I was certain I was dying. As I

accepted my death and dissolution into God’s love, the insectoids began to

feed on my heart, devouring the feelings of love and surrender.

It’s not like LSD. Things really closed in around me, in comparison to the

spaciousness that I feel with LSD. There was no feeling of space.

Everything was in close. I’ve never seen anything like that. They were

interested in emotion. As I was holding on to my last thought, that God

equals love, they said, “Even here? Even here?” I said, “Yes, of course.”

They were still there but I was making love to them at the same time. They

feasted as they made love to me. I don’t know if they were male or female or

something else, but it was extremely alien, though not necessarily

unpleasant. The thought came to me with certainty that they were

manipulating my DNA, changing its structure.

And then it started fading. They didn’t want me to go.

Remembering many previous stories, I said, “Yes, they are interested in

us and our feelings. And, no, they don’t want us to go.”

The sheer intensity was almost unbearable. The forms became

increasingly sinister the more I fought. I’m going to need therapy after this

—sex with insects!

Still grasping at a psychological explanation for these strange

experiences, I tried this: “That’s them. Your fears, your limits.”

Rex wouldn’t bite:

Mmmm. Maybe, I don’t know. It was nonverbal communication. “Even

here? Even here?” was not spoken in words. It was an empathic

communication, a telepathic communication.

At about 28 minutes, he didn’t yet quite seem “back.”

“How do you feel now?”

Right now? My body doesn’t feel quite my own. There is still something of

the other dimension flowing through it. I feel permeated by something else.

“How about emotionally?”

Emotionally, emotionally . . . I’m slightly euphoric.

“Glad to be alive?”

He laughed, looking at me in a more focused manner:

Yes! Glad to be alive!

“You may have passed out as they were feeding on you. I wouldn’t be

surprised. That would probably make most people faint.”

That’s right. That’s true. Depending on the person, it could throw them

over the edge. Is it self? Is it other? I just don’t know. I just don’t know

where these things come from.

As was often the case, answering the rating scale helped Rex fill out

some of the gaps in his description. He echoed what many volunteers stated

when they thought about the reality of their encounters with these

otherworld beings:

This question about “being high”—I don’t know. I had my capacities. I

was able to observe quite clearly. I didn’t feel stoned or intoxicated; it was

just happening.

Rex came in for several pilot-study days for the pindolol project. First he

would get a dose of DMT. After all effects were gone, we would give him

an oral dose of pindolol and then administer the same dose of DMT 90

minutes later. At that point, the pindolol would be exerting its maximum

effect on serotonin receptors.

The 0.05 and 0.1 mg/kg DMT doses without and then with pindolol were

relatively uneventful. We used the time to process his high-dose encounter

with the feasting alien insects.

I now have the feeling that there’s something more that I can’t access in

my daily life. I guess it’s the feeling of having made alien contact. I guess I

have an expectation of that contact in everyday life. I hope for it. I know it’s

there.

I had to ask, “What is the nature of alien sex? Would you say it is like

intercourse, or is it more the feeling, or what?”

It’s positive and warm. Maybe it’s like an after-sexual effect, feeling alive

and alert.

Rex then came in for two 0.2 mg/kg doses, one with and one without

pindolol. He seemed moderately affected by the first 0.2 dose:

I realize the intense pulsating-buzzing sound and vibration are an attempt

by the DMT entities to communicate with me. The beings were there and

they were doing something to me, experimenting on me. I saw a sinister

face, but then one of them somehow tried to begin reassuring me. Then the

space opened up around me. There were creatures and machinery. It looked

like it was in a field of black space. There were brilliant psychedelic colors

outlining the creatures and the machinery. The field went on forever. They

were sharing this with me, letting me see all this. There was a female. I felt

like I was dying, then she appeared and reassured me. She accompanied me

during the viewing of the machinery and the creatures. When I was with her

I had a deep feeling of relaxation and tranquility.

I was happy he finally was finding some support within his trips:

“At last, a friend!”

Yes. She had an elongated head. I guess the guardians were keeping me

from seeing her.

Trying again to interpret his experiences psychologically, I said, “The

guardians are your own stuff. They’re just the things that prevent you from

seeing what’s there.”

And again, just like last time, Rex gently rebuked me:

I know, but they do seem like something else. They seem like guardians,

gatekeepers.

He continued,

They were pouring communication into me but it was just so intense. I

couldn’t bear it. There were rays of psychedelic yellow light coming out of

the face of the reassuring entity. She was trying to communicate with me.

She seemed very concerned for me, and the effects I was experiencing due

to her attempts at communicating.

There was something outlined in green, right in front of me and above me

here. It was rotating and doing things. She was showing me, it seemed like,

how to use this thing. It resembled a computer terminal. I believe she

wanted me to try to communicate with her through that device. But I

couldn’t figure it out.

We returned in about 90 minutes, knowing this session, 0.2 mg/kg DMT

with pindolol, might be the most intense DMT experience Rex would ever

undergo. I warned him, “Considering how intense your first 0.2 session

was, this may be pretty wild. Are you ready?”

“I guess!”

Rex’s blood pressure was quite high at the 2-minute point, 180/130, and I

gestured for Laura to check it again at 3 minutes. It remained high, and his

heart rate was slowing, a normal physiological defense mechanism to

protect the brain and other organs from too high a pressure. However, he

looked well.

At 5 minutes his diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) remained

over 105. I thought to myself, “This is too high a blood pressure response.”

At 12 minutes, he took off his eyeshades, looking shocked:

I have a sensation that is really strange. It’s kind of like lying in a hot

bath.

“Are you warm?”

Mmm, a little. Mostly I’m drowsy. Things about the room look funny. It

came on real strong. I thought it would last and last and never go away. It

was the same place, neon lights defined everything. I was in a huge infinite

hive. There were insectlike intelligences everywhere. They were in a hyper-

technological space.

He lifted his arms above his head, looked at his right hand, and laughed.

At one point I felt wet stuff hitting me all over my body. They were

dripping stuff on me. Everything in there was friendly. I don’t think I lost

consciousness but I can’t bring it all back.

He stared at the ceiling, perplexed.

I’m sorry, doctor. I can’t remember.

“It’s okay. You came back. That’s all that matters.”

Struggling:

There was one that was with me by my side. There was the same

pulsating vibration. They wanted me to join them, to stay with them. I was

tempted.

“Maybe that’s where you went, that you can’t recall.”

I was looking down a corridor that was stretching out forever. That may

be where I lost it. The buzzing and kaleidoscopic shifting was intense and

went on for a long time. Then it let up and I was in that hive. There was

another one helping me, different from the one I saw earlier this morning.

It was very intelligent. It wasn’t at all humanoid. It wasn’t a bee but it

seemed like one. It was showing me around the hive. It was extremely

friendly, and I felt a warm sensual energy radiating throughout the hive. I

decided it must be a wonderful thing to live in a loving and sensual

environment such as that. It said to me that this was where our future lay. I

don’t know why it said that or what it meant or if that’s a good thing or not.

I recall telling myself as I was coming down, “I want to remember. I want to

remember,” but I can’t.

Where had Rex gone? Who were the insectlike beings with such a keen

interest in and complex relationships with him—devouring and consuming,

but also loving and nurturing? My attempts at suggesting a personal

psychological meaning fell on deaf ears, something that routinely occurred

in our volunteers whenever I tried to help them interpret their experiences

in that manner.

Rex was at peace with his experiences, and he incorporated them into his

understanding of the increasingly complex and symbol-rich dreams that

began developing. He also started reading more seriously about psychedelic

plants and shamanism.

Before one of his last pindolol days, he asked me to look at a festering

mole on his leg. I urged him to immediately consult with a dermatologist,

who diagnosed malignant melanoma. Rex could not be in any more studies

until his cancer was worked up and treated. Thankfully, the melanoma had

not spread, and he was treated successfully with simple removal of the

tumor. By that time, though, I had left New Mexico.

Sara entered the DMT project when she was forty-two years old. She was

living with her second husband, Kevin, their young child, and two older

children from her first marriage. Sara worked as a freelance writer and was

attending graduate school. She was a solidly built woman with red hair and

twinkling blue eyes. Her manner was direct, and her mischievous grin often

emerged during conversations about any and all topics.

Sara probably had suffered from the most serious depression of any of

our volunteers, having overdosed on prescription tranquilizers in her

midtwenties. She had to be involuntarily hospitalized for two weeks after

her suicide attempt and subsequently took antidepressants for several years.

Nevertheless, her mood had been excellent without any medication for over

a decade, and she was one of our most content and insightful research

subjects.

Sara told us that an “angel” had visited her once when she had had a high

fever as a child, and she now had “spirit guides” with whom she

communicated for advice and support. She considered herself “more

sensitive than most people to healing and psychic energies.” Sara practiced

the Wicca religion, as did Rex, and they knew each other through the

greater Wiccan community.

Sara volunteered for this study for “personal understanding and

expansion of consciousness. I hope I will come to a deeper understanding of

myself and my relationship to the universe and unseen worlds.” Her fears

hinged on “being lost in an abyss, and of not being brave enough to face the

challenge.”

Sara’s low-dose experience was typical of that of the other volunteers—

pleasant, relaxing, with a sense of more to come. Her high-dose session the

next day, however, was deep and profound. Let’s turn to her notes, which

she sent me within a week of that morning’s events:

“Rick said, ‘All right; we’re going to start now in about 15 seconds.’ His

hand was cool on mine, a comforting last connection to reality. I tried to

count the heartbeats, something intellectual to hold on to. I got to three

beats.”

There was a sound, like a hum that turned into a whoosh, and then I was

blasted out of my body at such speed, with such force, as if it were the speed

of light. The colors were aggressive, terrifying; I felt as if they would

consume me, as if I were on a warp-speed conveyer belt heading straight

into the cosmic psychedelic buzzsaw. I was terrified. I felt abandoned. I’m

completely and totally lost. I have never been so alone. How can you

describe what it feels like to be the only entity in the universe?

There are sounds: high-pitched singing, like angel voices. But they aren’t

comforting. They are very impersonal and don’t care about me. They are

simply part of the background noise of blasting through the void of the

universe. It felt like going backward from life in a physical body to life as

simply an energy form with no body. The essence of who I am was alone in

the void, back in the staging area for life where souls wait to incarnate. I

was in a place where there are no physical life-forms, only colors and

sounds. The singing angels were there only to observe me, not to comfort

me. But even though they didn’t comfort me, I did bring back an incredible

sense of Love.

A male presence tries to communicate with me, but I don’t understand. I

use my mind to ask, “What?” The reply is garbled. It (he) is trying to tell

me I will see something. But what? I try to ask, “Will I know it when I see

it?” The presence tells me I will see something. Is it by the horizon’s light I

see in the vast darkness? There is a great roaring sound. It interferes with

the voice because I know it is a jet “out there.” I’m coming back. The Voice

is gone.

It starts with my face seeming to harden up, become firm rather than

nebulous. I feel the blood pressure cuff inflate. The rest of my body comes

together, and I know I’m completely back. I lift up the eyeshades. I feel a

deep and poignant love for Laura and Rick, whom I see first. I turn my head

to see Kevin. What a beautiful relief.

Sara also came back for the tolerance study. Let’s again refer to her notes

from that remarkable day. They require almost no additions from the ones I

took at bedside.

Dose #1:

The first trip was lots of spinning colors. I was scared, but I kept telling

myself, “Relax, surrender, embrace.” Then I saw what I can only describe

as a Las Vegas–casino type of scene, all flashing and whirling lights. I was

rather disappointed. Here I’m expecting this profound spiritual experience

and I get Las Vegas! But then, before I had much time to be disappointed, I

“flew” on and saw clowns performing. They were like toys, or animated

clowns. I had the overwhelming urge to laugh. I was kind of self-conscious

about it at first, but I couldn’t contain myself and I laughed out loud

watching those clowns.

Rick told me the clowns are a common experience. In fact, he said, “Oh,

you saw the clowns?” as if they were old friends or something. Then he

said, “Yes, they’re hilarious.” I felt more confident and not as scared.

Dose #2:

This time the aggressive spinning colors were almost familiar. Suddenly,

a pulsating “entity” appeared in the patterns. It sounds weird to describe it

as “Tinkerbell-like.” It was trying to coax me to go with it. At first I was

reluctant, because I didn’t know about finding my way back. By the time I

made up my mind that I did want to go with it, I could tell the drug was

starting to wear off, and I wasn’t “high” enough to follow it. I told it, “I

can’t go with you now. See, they want me back.” It didn’t seem to be

offended and, in fact, “followed” me back until I sensed it had reached its

boundary. I felt like it was saying good-bye. Reentry was slow, and I was

reluctant to take off the eyeshades.

Everyone’s eyes were so sparkling when I took off my eyeshades!

I knew Sara was on the verge of some breakthrough, but that her strong

reaction to the colorful hallucinations were somehow holding her back.

“Can you stop short of contact with the colors? You can’t help seeing

them, but you can stop yourself from responding to them.”

She asked, “Is it best to hope and intend for something, like to see that

little pulsating shining creature again?”

“The best is to have no intention. If you intend something and it doesn’t

happen, you’ll bump against it. You’ll react against it. Just feel your body

lying in bed and try and empty your mind.”

She nodded, and we all paused to look out the window, remarking on the

beauty of the thunderheads building in the spring sky.

Sara looked exhausted.

Dose #3:

I realized what Rick said was true, that the most intense part of each trip

was spent tangled up in these colors. This time, I quickly blasted through to

the “other side.” I was in a void of darkness. Suddenly, beings appeared.

They were cloaked, like silhouettes. They were glad to see me. They

indicated that they had had contact with me as an individual before. They

seemed pleased that we had discovered this technology. I felt like a spiritual

seeker who had gotten too far off course and, instead of encountering the

spirit world, overshot my destination and ended up on another planet.

They wanted to learn more about our physical bodies. They told me

humans exist on many levels. I needed to reconnect with my body in time for

the blood pressure check and blood sampling. It was as if they, rather than

Laura, were collecting the information, and they appreciated my doing it

for them. Somehow we had something in common. They told me to

“embrace peace.”

I could feel myself begin to slip away from them as the drug wore off. As I

started to come down, I saw these things from their world that I really can’t

describe. I thought of how the South Pacific natives could see only Captain

Cook’s small boats, and not his big ships, until they actually climbed on

board and touched them.

The reentry was very difficult. I felt sort of lost, but I sensed a tractor

beam of Kevin’s love and followed it in.

My notes state that Sara got up to use the bathroom. Upon returning she

said, “I’m tired, but I’m ready for the fourth dose.”

“This is the last dose. You can really go for it.”

Kevin added, “Make sure you return.”

At 5 minutes, her blood pressure and heart rate went up higher than they

had all morning, even compared to her 2-minute reading, when people’s

responses are usually greatest. She obviously was exerting herself, but at

what, we would find out only later. At 10 minutes, my records indicate that

she murmured,

We have things we can offer you too. Spirituality. . . . Okay, hurry up.

Right there, right there. I did it for you. There, you can go out.

Sara’s notes from dose #4:

I went directly into deep space. They knew I was coming back and they

were ready for me. They told me there were many things they could share

with us when we learn how to make more extended contact. Again, they

wanted something from me, not just physical information. They were

interested in emotions and feelings. I told them, “We have something we can

give you: spirituality.” I guess what I really meant was Love. I tried to

figure out how to do this. I felt a tremendous energy, brilliant pink light with

white edges, building on my left side. I knew it was spiritual energy and

Love. They were on my right, so I reached out my hands across the universe

and prepared to be a bridge. I let this energy pass through me to them. I

said something like, “See, there I did it for you. You have it.” They were

grateful. I was coming down off the DMT, losing altitude. I would have to

go back.

I was a little disappointed that experience was spent “giving” when what

I wanted was spiritual enlightenment. Should I have asked for something to

take back first? I guess I don’t feel comfortable in my role as an earthly

spiritual emissary. But I did my best. I always knew we weren’t alone in the

universe. I thought that the only way to encounter them is with bright lights

and flying saucers in outer space. It never occurred to me to actually

encounter them in our own inner space. I thought the only things we could

encounter were things in our own personal sphere of archetypes and

mythology. I expected spirit guides and angels, not alien life-forms.

My own notes add this little exchange toward the end of her session:

I saw some equipment or something, sticks with teardrops coming out of

them. It looked like machinery.

“It may have been machinery.”

Sara’s notes describe her state of mind after these sessions:

“It’s difficult to sort through all this. Was it real? It certainly seemed real,

but so do dreams when they are happening. But there was something about

this that was different from a dream, even the lucid dreams I sometimes

have.

“Were there really other life-forms out there? Did I really send them the

power of Love and spirituality? Even more disturbing, did they somehow

mark me? Are they watching me somehow? It makes me feel a little crazy

and very confused. Even worse, I feel very isolated in my experience. How

can anyone except someone who has been there understand? Maybe this

stuff did make me go nuts. I know it sure changed my life. Now, what am I

going to do with it? How do I keep something this big inside?”

I was not at all familiar with the alien abduction literature before beginning

the DMT study. Neither were many of our volunteers. I knew almost

nothing about it, and had little desire to learn more. It seemed much more

“fringe” than even the study of psychedelic drugs! However, once we began

hearing so many tales of entity encounters, I knew I could no longer plead

ignorance of the larger phenomenon. Despite my better judgment, I now

feel compelled to weigh in with my opinion regarding the experience of

contact with “alien life-forms.”

Let’s review the popularly reported “alien abduction” experience. We

will see the striking resemblance between these naturally occurring contacts

and those reported in our DMT study. This remarkable overlap may ease

our acceptance of my proposition that the alien abduction experience is

made possible by excessive brain levels of DMT. This may occur

spontaneously through any of the previously described conditions that

activate pineal DMT formation. It also might take place when DMT levels

rise from taking in the drug from the outside, as in our studies.

Our current culture is fascinated with the alien abduction experience.

Psychiatrist John Mack has published many reports from “abductees,”

people whom he now calls “experiencers,” in his books Abduction and

Passport to the Cosmos.1

As the event begins, Mack says, “consciousness is disturbed by a bright

light, humming sounds, strange bodily vibrations or paralysis . . . or the

appearance of one or more humanoid or even human-appearing strange

beings in their environment.” Mack emphasizes the sense of high-frequency

vibrations many abductees report, which may cause them to feel as if they

are coming apart at the molecular level.

Some find themselves in familiar environments, like “a park with

swings,” and figures “emerge” out of the background. Abductees also often

find themselves on some type of examining or treatment table. Experiencers

are absolutely under the aliens’ control. Despite the obviously unexpected

and bizarre nature of what they are undergoing, there is no doubt in their

minds that it really is happening. Thus, they describe their experiences as

“more real than real.”

Varying degrees of anxiety occur in this preliminary stage, especially if it

feels as if one’s consciousness is separating from the body. For many, the

experience of fear is by itself somehow transformative. “Letting go” into

the terror seems to change the nature of the experience from negative to

positive. The individual may “float” or otherwise make their way “into a

curved enclosure that appears to contain computer-like and other technical

equipment.” Once the person arrives, “[s]trange beings are seen busily

moving around doing tasks the experiencers do not really understand.”

Abductees commonly report seeing energy-filled tunnels and cylinders of

light in these environments.

The “typical” alien looks like the ones portrayed commonly in the media:

large head, skinny body, big eyes, small or no mouth, gray skin. However,

Mack also reports frequent descriptions of reptiles, mantises, and spiders.

Some abductees feel there is some kind of neuropsychological

reprogramming, or an enormously rapid transfer of information between the

beings and experiencer. Aliens may communicate using a language of

universal visual symbols rather than sounds or words.

Many abductees report a complicated scenario revolving around the

aliens using their reproductive machinery to breed “human-alien hybrids.”

However, Mack reports that the hybrid project “is by no means all that

happens. . . . They may be gazed at closely . . . and otherwise examined,

probed, and monitored. Sometimes the experiencers feel that their health is

being followed, especially through ano-rectal and colonic examinations,

and they even report healings. . . . On other occasions, the experiencers

report probes being inserted into their brains through the nose, ears, and

eyes, and they may feel that their psyche has been transformed. . . .

Implants are inserted under the skin . . . and they may feel certain that these

represent some sort of tracking or monitoring devices.”

Abductees report “that the beings appear to be greatly interested in our

physicality and emotionality, seeming, as is said of angels, to envy our

embodiment . . . they need something that only human love can provide.”

This may even take the form of alien-human sexual encounters. These

experiences “can range from cold and bodiless to ecstatic, beyond what is

known to them in earthly love.”

As Mack describes, the “experience of connection between one or more

of the alien beings and the abductees with whom they relate is a powerful

and consistent aspect of the experience. . . . Commonly the initial memories

. . . are of cold, indifferent contacts in which the aliens (especially the gray

reptilian or praying-mantis-like beings) render the person altogether

helpless.” It is common for abductees to feel as if there is one alien in

particular with whom they have a special relationship. It’s as if this alien is

“in charge.”

The relationship may later evolve into a greater sense of familiarity,

meaningful connection, and even love between the abductee and the alien.

Several of Mack’s subjects report that they are “greeted” by the aliens when

they emerge into their reality; the aliens say telepathically, “Welcome

back!” Some report a life-long series of encounters beginning in childhood.

Experiencers often report that the aliens are urgently notifying them that

Earth is in danger. Their abduction relates to this, inasmuch as they either

provide reproductive material for the hybrid project or decide to spread the

message of environmental degradation to a wider audience.

As Mack’s work with his subjects has progressed, he notes another

common, perhaps even basic, element of the abduction experience. This is

the transformational and spiritual nature of the encounter: “[t]he collapse of

space/time perception, a sense of entering other dimensions of reality or

universes . . . a feeling of connection with all of creation.” Abductees’ sense

of belonging in that realm may be so acute as to create a yearning for it—a

desire “not to come back.” Many abductees no longer feared death,

knowing that their consciousness would survive the body’s death. One even

considered the idea of killing himself so that he could return to the blissful

state he encountered during his abductions.

The resemblance of Mack’s account of the alien abductions of

“experiencers” to the contacts described by our own volunteers is

undeniable. How can anyone doubt, after reading our accounts in these last

two chapters, that DMT elicits “typical” alien encounters? If presented with

a record of several of our research subjects’ accounts, with all references to

DMT removed, could anyone distinguish our reports from those of a group

of abductees?

Shocking and unsettling as they were, contact with life-forms from another

dimension was never on the list of volunteers’ reasons for participating in

our research. Neither was it something I expected with any frequency.

Rather, it was the transpersonal, mystical, and spiritual states to which they

aspired. It is to these that we now will shift our attention.

Death and Dying

Since Raymond Moody published Life After Life in 1975, and Kenneth

Ring Life at Death in 1980, the expression “near-death experience” has

been a part of our vocabulary.1 These highly unusual altered states of

consciousness occur when the body faces life-threatening circumstances,

such as when a rock climber free-falls off a cliff. They also may occur when

the body actually has begun to die, such as after a massive heart attack or

when drowning.

The broad outline of a near-death experience (NDE) includes the

sensation of rapid travel through a tunnel, sometimes accompanied by

voices, songs, or music. There is the presence of “others”—living or dead

relatives, friends, and family members. These beings also may take the

form of spirits, angels, or other “helpers.” The realization may come that

one really is dead.

Many experience feelings of great peace and calm, although others report

terrifying images and emotions. Some experience a “life review,” the

organized and rapid recollection of personal memories ending at this

present moment. Some feel “commanded” to return to life because it is not

yet time for them to die.

The NDE may climax with a merging into an indescribably loving and

powerful white light that emanates from the divine, holy, and sacred. This

leads to a mystical or spiritual experience in which time and space lose all

meaning. Those who undergo an NDE feel embraced by something much

greater than themselves, or anything they previously could have imagined:

the “source of all existence.” There’s a certainty that consciousness exists

after death. Those who reach the mystical level of the NDE emerge with a

greater appreciation for life, less fear of death, and a reorientation of their

priorities to less material and more spiritual pursuits.

The sense of reality of what near-death experiencers see and feel is

undeniably certain, and it’s common to hear expressions like “it was more

real than real.” It is difficult for those “coming back” from an NDE to

describe it; they often say it is “beyond language.”

Since one of the theories motivating my DMT research was the belief that

the spirit molecule is released by the pineal gland when we die, or nearly

die, I listened carefully for these types of experiences. If outside-

administered DMT replicated features of the NDE, it would strengthen my

hypothesis that endogenous DMT mediates naturally occurring NDEs.

However, in only two research subjects, Willow and Carlos, did themes

of death and dying clearly dominate the sessions. Therefore, based upon

what we actually saw during our research, I now think this original

expectation was naïve.

The problem with anticipating frequent NDEs in our volunteers concerns

set and setting. Clearly, many of our research subjects experienced a radical

and complete separation of consciousness from their bodies. For most of us,

this would make us feel as if we had died. However, many of our recruits

had already undergone this type of dissociation in their previous

psychedelic experiences. They knew what it was when it happened at the

Research Center. They realized they weren’t dying or near death, and

therefore they could watch the unfolding of effects with far greater balance

and poise. They did not panic, but instead kept alert and focused on

observing and remembering what was going on. Within a few minutes, the

DMT started wearing off, and they reentered their bodies.

Certainly, if their out-of-body state lasted much longer than a few

minutes, and if we actually were making efforts to resuscitate them, a more

“classic” NDE might have developed. However, our volunteers were

undergoing experiences probably only inexperienced and unprepared

individuals would have interpreted as death or near-death.

Let’s first proceed to several volunteers’ sessions that make passing

reference to death themes. In them, they almost casually referred to the

“deathlike” nature of the high-dose DMT experience. Then we’ll look more

carefully at Willow’s and Carlos’s sessions, in which death and near-death

themes took center stage.

Elena’s high-dose DMT sessions partook of many elements of a spiritual

enlightenment experience. We will hear about them in the next chapter. For

now, however, I will share a comment she included in a letter she sent to me

a year after finishing her DMT study:

More than once, the DMT sessions gave me the gift of truly subjectively

knowing the phenomenon described in “Introductions to the Dead” in The

Tibetan Book of the Dead. Even greater is the gift of knowing that I have

had practice dying and returning.

Elena’s comments were not the only time we heard reference to The

Tibetan Book of the Dead. In this centuries-old text, Tibetan Buddhist

practitioners have “charted” out the various bardo states that one enters

along the path from dying to rebirth into one’s next life-form. Bardo is

sometimes defined as “intermediary state,” that is, between life, death, and

rebirth. Many descriptions of the bardos echo unerringly reports gathered

from those who have had an NDE.2

Sean, whose spiritual enlightenment experience we also examine closely in

the next chapter, made this remark on one of the days he helped us develop

the dosage schedule for the tolerance study:

It’s so far out, so weird, so out of control, you have to learn something. I

think I’ve learned what it’s like to die, to be completely helpless in the

throes of something. That’s been helpful.

Eli, whom we met in chapter 12, wrote to us after his first high dose of

DMT:

Stunned, I felt myself holding back. I relaxed and the environment began

to change noticeably. I knew I was going through the first bardo of death,

that I had been here many times before, and it was okay. “This is just like

the last time,” I thought. Enough continuity with my waking consciousness

gave me this thought next: “But this is my first time crossing over.” I

concluded I had broken out of time and space and either was experiencing

my “normal” pattern of dying or was connected to a time in the future

when, once again, I will know “this is the time I was in, back then, now.”

Some months later, in another study, Eli said,

I no longer fear death. It’s like you’re there one minute and then you’re

somewhere else, and that’s just how it is. So I think it had that effect. These

experiments are helping me in my reading of the Tibetan Book of Living and

Dying.3 I know what it’s like to be totally free.

Joseph, a thirty-nine-year-old Italian–Native American businessman, also

noted how deathlike the DMT experience was:

I think the high dose is like a death trauma. It knocks you out of your

body. I could have tolerated death or some major physical leaping-out-of-

this-plane type of experience under DMT. This would be a good drug for

people in a hospice program or the terminally ill to have some

acquaintance with.

Unlike these other research subjects, death and near-death themes

dominated in Willow’s and Carlos’s high-dose journeys with the spirit

molecule. Let’s now turn to their stories.

Willow was thirty-nine years old when she joined the DMT project. She

was married and lived in a semirural part of the county. She was a medical

social worker who treated drug-abusing professionals. She saw the irony in

her own participation in our study and appreciated our overriding concern

with confidentiality and anonymity.

Willow used psychedelic drugs two or three times a year and had taken

them around thirty times in total. She volunteered for the DMT project due

to her “curiosity, and the opportunity to experience deeper or higher states

of consciousness, to gain insights about my own functioning.”

Willow’s low non-blind dose produced stronger-than-average effects.

I’ve never had so many visuals.

I warned her about tomorrow’s session, saying, “It’s kind of like falling

off a cliff.”

I like to think of myself as daring, jumping off a cliff.

The next morning we got right down to business, spending very little time

catching up or chatting. It was not even 8 A.M. by the time I finished

administering the DMT to Willow. Her body made a small jerk.

Even though a jet flew overhead at 3 minutes, the room and ward had

taken on the deep solid silence that every so often blessed our high-dose

DMT sessions. Willow laid nearly perfectly still for the next 25 minutes.

Then I started getting restless and gently asked her how she was doing.

Good. It’s a very enchanting place. I almost don’t want to leave it.

Transitions are completions. How I am. Who I am.

First I saw a tunnel or channel of light off to the right. I had to turn to go

into it. Then the whole process repeated on the left. It was intentional that

way. It was as if it had a source, further away. It got bigger farther away,

like a funnel. It was bright and pulsating. There was a sound like music, like

a score, but unfamiliar to me, supporting the emotional tone of the events

and drawing me in. I was very small. It was very large. There were large

beings in the tunnel, on the right side, next to me. I had a sense of great

speed. Everything was unimportant relative to this. Things were flashing,

flashing by, as if from a different perspective. It was so much more real than

life.

The left and right tunnels joined in front of me. There were gremlins,

small, faces mostly. They had wings and tails and stuff. I paid them little

attention. The larger beings were there to sustain and support me. That was

their realm. A sort of good and evil thing: the gremlins versus the tall

beings. The tall beings were loving, smiling and serene.

Something rushed through me, out of me. I remember thinking at some

point, “Here comes the separation.” I felt my body only when I swallowed

or breathed, and that really wasn’t a physical feeling as much as a way of

setting ripples through the experience. I felt strongly, “This is dying and this

is okay.”

I had heard of the bright light tunnel, but I didn’t expect it to be the way it

was here today. I thought it would be primarily in front of me, but this took

turns on both sides and then joined in front. Nor was it as bright as I

thought it might be.

I’m amazed DMT is in the body. It’s there for a reason. It’s there for

dying today. I had a sense of dying, letting go and separating, after the

beings in the tunnel helped me along.

“How do you feel about returning, being back in your body?”

It’s okay for now.

She sounded wistful.

The other side is very, very different. There are no words, body, or sounds

there to limit things. I first saw deep space, white with stars. Then there was

this multidimensional experience starting. It was alive. It was the aliveness

that I heard. My body was trying to say, “Remember the body” as I was

going into that place. It wasn’t a desperate cry, but an attempt to keep it

real, make the experience real from the point of view of the senses. The

body wanted me back.

I thought I could see light down below, the world’s light. It was like a

little flap was lifted, like a simultaneous alternate reality.

A few months later, Willow reexperienced another high dose of DMT in

the menstrual phase study. As she stirred, she began speaking:

It’s like a cosmic joke. If we all knew what was waiting for us, we’d all

kill ourselves. That’s why we stay in this form for so long, to figure that out.

That’s also why it’s so hard to remember the immediacy of it.

I’ve been reading books about the near-death experience: Saved by the

Light and Embraced by the Light. They really do a good job describing the

DMT state. I’m reading them in such a familiar manner.4

Everyone should try a high dose of DMT once. I don’t know if the beings

today were saying “Try death once” or “Try life once.” That place is so full

and so complete that the idea of this place is to try and be as complete as

possible. Yet when I came back into my body it was so heavy and so

confining. Also, time here seems so strange. Eternity is an attribute of the

place. It would have to be.

While it’s never a good idea to call anyone’s experiences on DMT

“classic,” I think it’s not too far afield to use that term in describing

Willow’s near-death experiences. Her consciousness separated from her

body, she moved rapidly through a tunnel, or tunnels, toward a warm,

loving, all-knowing white light. Beings helped her on the way, and some

even threatened to drag her down. Beautiful music accompanied her on the

early stages of the journey. Time and space lost all meaning. She was

tempted not to return, but realized she needed to share the incredible

information she received with this world. There were spiritual and mystical

overtones to her joining with and basking in the white light.

Willow’s dawning awareness of a “light down below, the world’s light”

also reminds us of one of the last bardos in The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

This is the stage in which the soul starts looking for a new body in which to

incarnate, sees the lights of the world, and starts its descent.

Her comment about everyone committing suicide if they knew how great

the “afterlife” is points out another similarity between Willow’s experiences

and those of “naturally occurring” NDEs: That is, those who have had an

NDE do not rush off to suicide. Rather, they reside in the knowledge that

there is “life after death,” and that transition loses its sting. Thus, they are

able to live life more fully, because the fear of death that drives so many to

distraction is now so much less.

I was interested to hear that she found reading popular books describing

the near-death experience to be like reviewing her own DMT sessions. I

needed little more validation to believe we were on the right track in

relating high levels of DMT to the NDE.

Carlos was a challenge. Exuberant, outspoken, and playfully

confrontational, he was forty-four years old when he joined the DMT

research. He hailed from Hispanic and northern Mexican-Indian families,

had been married for nearly twenty years, and had two grown children.

Carlos was a full-time software programmer and had attended the

University of New Mexico for several years. He also was a practitioner of

urban shamanism. In this capacity, he led a group in which chanting,

visualization, and his teachings provided his students with a wide range of

alternative states of consciousness. He had his feet in several worlds at

once.

Carlos was well-versed in many mind-altering substances. He had taken

psychedelics “over one hundred times” and described their effects as

“complete strangeness.” He recently also had used the seeds of Datura

stramonium, or jimsonweed, a highly toxic and dangerous plant that

induces delirium and, at times, terrifying breaks with reality. There is not

much difference between psychedelic and lethal doses of these seeds.

Carlos was not expecting much from “white man’s medicine.” This set

up a curious dichotomy within me. On the one hand, I wanted to “show him

who’s got the better drugs.” Not the most noble reaction, but true! On the

other hand, I was concerned that his scoffing at DMT was not wise, and that

he might be unpleasantly surprised by the intensity of its effects. Perhaps

his cavalier attitude hid deeper fears.

The morning of his non-blind low dose, we found Carlos sitting in the

rocking chair I used. He had arrived almost two hours early. He was leaving

nothing to chance and was not-so-subtly challenging my “seat of authority.”

“This will be a trip around the block to the local convenience store, rather

than a trip to someplace else,” he opened.

Before we began, he wanted to bless the DMT to “the four directions”

and for the good of the community. This was traditional shamanic

preparation of a mind-altering substance. His benedictions were simple but

profound. They successfully established a feeling of deeper reverence for

the work than was usually the case.

His low-dose experience that morning seemed relatively mild. That is,

until he began shaking at 15 minutes after the injection. First were only fine

tremors, but these quickly progressed to rather pronounced whole-body

shakes.

I hate this part. My own body, my energy starts to shake. It’s like after

any spiritual trip. It’s like an aftershock. Every time I do any kind of

psychoactive drug I shake for awhile. Do other people do that?

An unexpected vulnerability.

I answered carefully, seeing an opening to a more honest and deeper

relationship. “Sometimes, especially after the high dose. Not usually after

the low dose. I wonder if it’s fear.”

He actually seemed quite uncomfortable, shaking, looking somewhat

frightened.

Don’t worry, this is nothing. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big dose or little

dose of anything. I shake because of the post-traumatic effects.

His shivering started going away while he filled out the questionnaire. He

felt fine after completing it, ate a light snack, and left for the day.

Later, Laura and I talked about Carlos’s reaction to this little dose of DMT.

While he described its effects as “miniscule,” his body had a rather different

reaction to it. We thought it best to bend the rules a little and give him 0.2

mg/kg before jumping to 0.4.

When I told him, Carlos offered no resistance to the plan: “You guys

know best.”

This foresight seemed warranted. As I entered the room the next week,

Carlos was shaking badly in response to the ward nurse having failed three

times to start his IV line.

In the offhanded manner we were beginning to recognize, he said, “This

started in the 1970s when I went into a church once.”

I started leaning toward being more concerned for his welfare than that

our white man’s DMT “wouldn’t be enough.”

I warned him, “This will push you. It will give you an idea what twice

this amount might be like. It is a psychedelic dose.”

“Okay, I’m looking forward to it. I’d like to have some more of a

psychedelic effect.”

The injection went smoothly. At 12 minutes, he laughed loudly and

exclaimed:

Oh, boy! There is no spiritual value . . . none! Ask me some questions.

“Well, what happened?”

I was wondering, “What is this?” Then it came to me. This is the drug.

This is what it does. There was too much to process. It’s like trying to listen

to music that is just loud. I didn’t know what was going on. I wondered if I’d

died. I’ve taken so many psychedelics and nothing like this has ever

happened. My nervous system was squashed. My spirit was smashed.

“What do you mean by ‘spirit’? It sounds to me like you are talking

about your self-image, your identity.”

Well, we could argue about terms.

“When I think of spirit, it’s the unborn and the undying. That which is

before and after and doesn’t depend on the body.”

I’m used to the “I” that is the body, and I can leave that, so it’s not

dependent on the body.

Our conversation seemed to increase his enthusiasm.

I saw who I am at a fundamental level. You know sonically or visually

there is a certain spectrum that one can tune into that is one’s individual

self? That was just totally bare and it was there.

“Remember . . . this is only half of the big dose.”

That’s a frightening thought.

It was my turn: “Now you’re getting it!”

Did he really want to take twice this amount of DMT? I would rather he

quit now than all of us regret it later.

“How do you feel about double this dose?”

What is the value? How can this experience help me or humankind or my

community? If I had brought back a wonderful truth, that would be great.

I laughed and said, “Well, you’ve been talking twenty minutes nonstop

about ‘nothing.’”

However, as he finished up the rating scale, he said,

I guess I will complete this study. I’ll take the 0.4 and then I’ll do the

pindolol study. But I don’t think I will do anymore. I think that the shamans

in South America use other plants to fill out and make the DMT more

reasonable. Pure DMT seems empty or hollow.

The morning of Carlos’s 0.4 mg/kg dose, he was sweating and shaking

when I entered the room.

Carlos said, “It’s a body fear primarily. It’s stress. This is no chance to

build up to it. It’s just there so fast. With Datura, I have the fear of death

but you can build up to it gradually. On that 0.2 dose last week, I thought

you gave me the wrong drug, that I was poisoned, that I had died. The

duress is terrible. I take substances to leave my body, not to put it under

duress.”

I tried to provide some consolation: “This dose will be more, but not

qualitatively different.”

He began chanting as I started giving him the drug. His chanting abruptly

stopped halfway through the flush. He let out a big sigh at 2 minutes. He

resumed chanting, more softly this time, at 3½ minutes.

At 12 minutes he said,

Please remove my eyeshades.

Laura did so.

It was really quite special. I wasn’t human for about three and a half

minutes. This dose creates a level of stress that’s unparalleled in the annals

of Carlos’s history.

He cleared his throat and said,

I met myself as the Creator.

“Creator of . . . ?”

The Creator of all. I’ve had that realization before, but not at this level.

“One of our volunteers likes to say ‘You can still be an atheist until 0.4.’”

This is true.

Carlos took a deep breath and began telling us what had happened. It was

difficult to keep up with his rate of sharing his incredible story.

There was the sound of the entire universe, more like a hum. It was

pervasive, overwhelming. I thought, “Holy moly, how did I get into this?”

Things weren’t right and were getting more wrong all the time. Then my

ability to perceive as a human being winked out. There were no more

emotions, because emotions work only up to a certain point.

I saw a man lying in a hospital room. He was naked with a person on

either side of him, one female and one male. At first they didn’t look like

anybody I knew. They were perfect generic human beings. I recognized, in

context, that they were me, you, and Laura. The way of knowing was totally

different from this reality. I didn’t know I was in a study of any kind.

There was something wrong with him. He was there to get better. The

hospital was a healing center. What was wrong with him was death. The

naked person was dead. What killed the person was the stress from the

DMT. None of my guardians or protectors made an appearance. They were

out of the loop.

He was healed, more than healed. He was reborn. He got cured from

death, healed from death. And then he became the creator of a whole

universe.

I gradually became more and more solid and moved toward my everyday

presence. I watched the universe’s creation down from fundamental mental

energy to a vibratory rate to material things. I realized I was recreating the

hospital and the room. As the world jelled more and more, I wanted to see it

and asked to have the eyeshades taken off. I became fascinated with my

fingers, like a newborn.

I’ve taught classes on how the universe is a construct of your own mind.

And here it was happening. My attitude was different when I knew you were

my creations. I felt as close to you as to my own son and daughter.

I would have to say my experience was a classical death/rebirth

experience. I had done it before, but never in the same way as with DMT. It

was spectacular in imagery, texture, and atmosphere and had incredible

lighting and effects. Boil it down and it’s very, very classic.

The 0.2 was harrowing—this was way beyond. I knew the boundary

beyond life existed. I never thought I’d be there, though, at such an early

age. It’s one of those things that old men talk about, like “once I got there.”

It’s just the wrong place and time. I expect these sorts of things in the

mountains with my friends in a more ceremonial setting.

While I was impressed with the features of his session, I also wondered

about other reasons for it. “Creating” Laura, me, and the hospital

environment reversed the balance of power in the room. He no longer

needed to fear us or the DMT. Nevertheless, there was no point in making

such an interpretation. Carlos certainly would have seen little merit in it.

Instead I simply dealt with the feelings that came through as he spoke.

“You were surprised.”

A true surprise.

Carlos did not have the type of near-death experience about which we hear

so often in today’s popular clinical literature. Willow’s case exemplifies this

more contemporary version of the NDE. However, Carlos’s highdose DMT

session did partake of many features that practitioners of shamanism report

as part of the initiation into the more advanced realms of their practice; that

is, the death-rebirth experience.5

Carlos experienced himself as dead rather than dying. He saw his lifeless

body lying on the bed, although not quite the way he left it, as he was

wearing all his clothes before the spirit molecule entered his brain. As he

was reborn, so was his universe reconstituted. Here again we see a mystical

culmination of the near-death experience. He experienced creation in a way

similar to Sara’s first high-dose experience in the last chapter, and to

Elena’s in the next: vast energy slowing to vibrations, finally resulting in

matter. Carlos, feeling like a newborn, marveled at his fingers the way an

infant is fascinated with his newly discovered body.

There is a progression from the personal to the transpersonal series of

experiences DMT elicits. It’s possible to work through one’s own

psychological and psychosomatic problems with the spirit molecule’s light

and power. The near-death encounter spells what seems to be the end of

those concerns by simulating or foretelling what it’s like once our

individual bodies fall away.

Near-death experiences seem to have the greatest impact on those who

take the next step within that mysterious experience—the leap to a mystical

level of awareness. It was these realms, into which DMT might lead, that

the volunteers and I believed held the greatest promise of significant

personal transformation. It is into these fields of DMT’s sight that we now

enter.

Mystical States

One of the most compelling factors fueling my decision to make a career

of psychedelic research was the similarity between high-dose psychedelic

experiences and mystical experiences. Years later, it was these types of

sessions I hoped to see, study, and understand in our New Mexico DMT

volunteers.

The debate regarding the spiritual relevance of psychedelic experiences

has raged on for as long as people have used these chemicals for their

profound psychological effects. For example, books such as The Varieties of

Psychedelic Experience make the obvious connection to William James’s

early-twentieth-century book The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Recently, Entheogens and the Future of Religion continues a long and

controversial tradition of recommending that any deep spiritual practice

include psychedelic sacraments.1

In my early visits to the Zen Buddhist community at which I studied, I

raised this question with many of the young American monks. Nearly

everyone I asked at this training center answered that psychedelic drugs,

especially LSD, first opened the doors to a new reality for them. It was the

pursuit of stabilizing, strengthening, and broadening their initial

psychedelic flash that led them to the discipline of a communal, meditation-

based ascetic life.

Naturally, I wondered if psychedelic drugs could speed up and simplify

attainment of sublime states of mind free of the “side effects” of

institutional practice, such as ritualistic behavior and withdrawal from the

everyday world.

The answer that did emerge from our New Mexico research was

complicated. Yes, psychedelics could induce states similar to mystical

experiences; but no, they didn’t have the same impact. Even more revealing

than these relatively straightforward answers was my Buddhist

community’s reaction to even asking and discussing these questions.

However, I am getting ahead of myself.

In order to establish the close similarities between spiritual experience and

what is possible with the spirit molecule, I will first review briefly the

features of a mystical experience.

The three pillars of self, time, and space all undergo profound

transfiguration in a mystical experience.

There no longer is any separation between the self and what is not the

self. Personal identity and all of existence become one and the same. In

fact, there is no “personal” identity because we understand at the most basic

level the underlying unity and interdependence of all existence.

Past, present, and future merge together into a timeless moment, the now

of eternity. Time stops, inasmuch as it no longer “passes.” There is

existence, but it is not dependent upon time. Now and then, before and after,

all combine into this exact point. On the relative level, short periods of time

encompass enormous amounts of experience.

As our self and time lose their boundaries, space becomes vast. Like

time, space is no longer here or there but everywhere, limitless, without

edges. Here and there are the same. It is all here.

In this infinitely vast time and space with no limited self, we hold up to

examination all contradictions and paradoxes and see they no longer

conflict. We can hold, absorb, and accept everything our mind conjures up:

good and evil, suffering and happiness, small and large. We now are certain

that consciousness continues after the body dies, and that it existed long

before this particular physical form. We see the entire universe in a blade of

grass and know what our face was like before our parents met.

Extraordinarily powerful feelings surge through our consciousness. We

are ecstatic, and the intensity of this joy is such that our body cannot

contain it—it seems to need a temporarily disembodied state. While the

bliss is pervasive, there’s also an underlying peace and equanimity that’s

not affected by even this incredibly profound happiness.

There is a searing sense of the sacred and the holy. We contact an

unchanging, unborn, undying, and uncreated reality. It is a personal

encounter with the “Big Bang,” God, Cosmic Consciousness, the source of

all being. Whatever we call it, we know we have met the fundamental

bedrock and fountainhead of existence, one that emanates love, wisdom,

and power on an unimaginable scale.

We call it “enlightenment” because we encounter the white light of

creation’s majesty. We may meet guides, angels, or other disembodied

spirits, but we pass them all as we merge with the light. Our eyes now,

finally, are truly open, and we see things clearly in a “new light.”

The import and momentousness of the experience stands alone in our

history. It may serve to focus the rest of our life toward the completion,

filling out, and working through of the insights obtained.

Some of these types of experiences occurred in our volunteers within the

context of another more compelling category of encounter, such as mind-

body healing, being contact, or near-death experiences. For example,

Willow’s near-death experiences partook of a deep spiritual nature. And

Cassandra’s DMT-tolerance sessions involved more than simply working

through personal trauma; she also experienced the presence of deeply

loving and healing beings. In this chapter, we’ll hear about spiritual

experiences that predominated the volunteers’ sessions.

These DMT sessions were some of the most satisfying of the research.

Since Elena’s and Sean’s came relatively early in the studies, they

supported the validity and importance of studying the spirit molecule’s

more sublime properties. By the time Cleo’s spiritual experience took place,

I had already begun the process of leaving the university. Therefore, I cast a

somewhat less idealistic eye on her sessions. Nevertheless, if everyone’s

encounters with DMT had been as rewarding as hers, there would have

been less reason to stop the research when I did.

Supervising these sessions was relatively easy, at least at first. I knew the

territory based upon training, study, and experience. The difficulties

emerged in the interpretation of these effects, and my sense of their

importance. Were they “real” enlightenment experiences? How would I

know? And with whom could I consult about them?

While Cleo’s spiritual experience took place later than Elena’s and Sean’s,

it was somewhat less complex than theirs. So I’d like to start with hers. It

gives us a good introduction to where the other two subjects’ encounters

will lead us.

Cleo was forty years old when she started our study. She was legally

blind due to a genetic eye disorder. Nevertheless, she had persevered,

having earned an academic degree and massage therapy certification. She

now was enrolled in a master’s program in counseling. Red-haired, petite,

and with a fiery spirit, Cleo was born into a Jewish family but later began

practicing nature-oriented rituals within the Wiccan faith. Once, while on

LSD, Cleo saw a “past-life experience” in which she was burned at the

stake for being a witch.

Her father had molested her sexually when she was a child, memories of

which emerged for the first time during a recent psilocybin mushroom trip.

Curiously, Cleo had suffered from a phobia to snow as a child,

hyperventilating and vomiting whenever she was out in it. She no longer

was troubled by this irrational fear, having worked it through on psilocybin

several years before. I usually don’t use the word “indomitable,” but Cleo is

as close to exemplifying that attitude as few people I know.

Her reasons for volunteering reflected her pioneering, altruistic spirit: “I

am curious. I think I am ready for the next step. I believe in this type of

research—from an academic stance—and believe there may be a valid

clinical/therapeutic use for hallucinogens.”

When I met Cleo in Room 531 the afternoon of her screening low dose, she

was drawing tarot cards from her deck. The ones she picked were of

butterflies and voyagers—optimistic themes.

At 15 minutes after the injection, she commented,

There was the lightest feeling of a beckoning for me to follow something.

It was like a light on the horizon, like two roads merging with the horizon.

There were some eyes looking at me, friendly. They wanted to see who was

there, and seemed to say that I would follow them later.

The next morning Cleo asked about the advice I had given her the day

before regarding how to prepare for her large dose: “What did you mean

when you suggested I ‘go through’ the colors?”

I replied, “It seems like people can get entranced by the colors. If they

can go through the curtain that the colors seem to represent, there often is

more information and feeling than just the colors themselves.”

At 19 minutes after her high-dose DMT injection, it started snowing

outside. I recalled Cleo’s old phobia to snowflakes. Laura rose from her seat

and turned up the thermostat.

Rick, I can see why you became a psychiatrist.

“Why?”

To give this to people.

I told her she was right.

I had the expectation that I would be going “out,” but I went in, into

every cell in my body. It was amazing. It wasn’t just my body . . . themselves

. . . themselves . . . it’s all connected. Oh, that’s what I did. Okay.

She laughed at her inarticulateness.

By 30 minutes, she spoke more clearly:

I felt the DMT go in and it burned in my vein. It was hard to breathe into

it. Then the patterns began. I said to myself, “Let me go through you.”

At that point it opened, and I was very much somewhere else. I believe it

was at that point that I went out, into the universe—being, dancing with, a

star system.

I asked myself, “Why am I doing this to myself?” And then there was,

“This is what you’ve always been searching for. This is what all of you has

always been searching for.”

There was a movement of color. The colors were words. I heard what the

colors were saying to me. I was trying to look out, but they were saying,

“Go in.” I was looking for God outside. They said, “God is in every cell of

your body.” And I was feeling it, totally open to it, and I kept opening to it

more, and I just took it in. The colors kept telling me things, but they were

telling me things so I not only heard what I was seeing, but also felt it in my

cells. I say “felt,” but it was like no other “felt,” more like a knowing that

was happening in my cells. That God is in everything and that we are all

connected, and that God dances in every cell of life, and that every cell of

life dances in God.

In a letter she sent several days later, Cleo wrote,

I am changed. I will never be the same. To simply say this almost seems

to lessen the experience. I don’t think that anyone hearing or reading this

can truly grasp what I felt, can really understand it deeply and completely.

The euphoria goes on into eternity. And I am part of that eternity.

Cleo was ready and well-prepared for her DMT sessions. Thus, when the

spirit molecule called in Room 531, she leapt up to answer. In her session

we see many of the hallmarks of a mystical experience: the suspension of

normal boundaries of time and space, the ecstatic nature of the encounter,

and how poorly words function in describing it. She experienced the

certainty of her own divine nature and that all her questions were answered

in these brief but intensely felt moments.

Elena was one of our earliest volunteers and was thirty-nine years old when

she began. She was short, wiry, dark, and intense, and her manner was

playfully blunt. She lived with Karl (DMT-1) and her daughter in a little

village outside of Taos.

Elena had taken psychedelics about twenty times in her life. More recent

were her almost one hundred MDMA experiences, which she believed

contributed to her decision to slow down her professional life’s trajectory.

She sold her counseling business and house and began an intense process of

inner work. She hoped her participation in the DMT study might “lead to a

clearer understanding of my spiritual truths.”

Elena and Karl were a fun couple. I had known them socially for years.

They offered steady and consistent support during the grueling time I

describe in chapter 6. Thus it’s no surprise they became DMT-1 and DMT-

Elena’s non-blind low-dose session was uneventful. However, she was

extraordinarily apprehensive the next day as I readied the syringe full of

eight times the previous amount of DMT. Her heart rate soared from 65 to

114 and her blood pressure from 96/66 to 124/70 just while watching me

prepare the drug! Her widely dilated pupils reflected and contributed to a

powerful and unpleasant tension in the room. I tried dispelling the anxious

atmosphere by putting the syringes down and quieting myself as best I

could. No effect. The energy bordered on out of control. Karl and Cindy felt

it, too, and looked restless.

“Well, how about it?” I offered hopefully.

Elena gave a game smile. “I’ll be okay. I’m just scared of what the

unknown will bring. Let’s get started.”

Within 45 seconds of finishing the injection, Elena began groaning,

sighing, and sucking her breaths in and blowing them out. The strength of

her movements made it impossible to get her 2-minute blood pressure and

heart rate. Her hands were cold and damp, and the color drained from her

face. Her pulse climbed even higher, to 134, by the time I got her 5-minute

recording, but her blood pressure held steady. Her head rocked back and

forth slowly, and she nodded occasionally. She licked her lips, yawned,

sighed, and seemed unable to get comfortable. By 4 minutes, she finally

began settling down.

The color returned to her face at 13 minutes, and she lay there quietly.

Ten minutes later she began spurting out laugher, which grew to an

uproarious level. She began to talk excitedly at 30 minutes. While I took

notes, the report she wrote the next day does a better job of capturing what

she experienced than does my shorthand.

Before you spoke the words, “Okay, we’re done,” there arose in me an

energy so forceful that no words could describe it. It drove my heart. The

swirl of color reminded me of the visual experience the day before, but

multiplied a millionfold. I could only hold on, remembering not to fall off

into the distracting light show. Then everything stopped! The darkness

opened to light, and on the other side of space all was utterly still. Then the

words “just because it is possible” emerged out of nothingness and filled

me.

The great power sought to fill all possibilities. It was “amoral,” but it

was love, and it just was. There was no benevolent god, only this primordial

power. All of my ideas and beliefs seemed absurdly ridiculous. I never

wanted to forget this. I was aware I could open my eyes and relate to those

around me. But first I had to wait for all this to solidify, to allow the fullness

of the experience to congeal, so I could bring it back to the others.

I wondered, “Why come back?” I was reluctant to open my eyes. When I

did, the room seemed very bright, but otherwise quite as I had left it.

Several months later, in the dose-response study, Elena had a chance to

revisit this state with a double-blind high dose. This time she was much less

anxious before we started.

At 20 minutes she began:

It came on fast and big, and an incredible pressure arose in my head,

pushing me back. It blasted me into the realm in which pure living energy

begins to take form. As it began to slow down, I saw the process of

separated awareness. This slowing down creates form and consciousness.

Before the slowing down, it’s not there. It’s not unconscious, but not

conscious. It’s real, of its own substance, not fragmented. It’s amazing how

slowly things move here on Earth!

Going out and slowing down into the periphery, to the fringes of it, into

form. There is the endless outflow of creation, effortless, and then this vast

process takes it back in. My little piece of energy goes in and out, too, not

more or less than any other piece. You can’t die. You can’t go away. You can

neither add nor subtract. There is a continual outflow that is immortality.

The “I am” notion goes around and around. I have the certainty of that.

There were loads of paradoxes. I was not disoriented but there was no

orientation. I didn’t know where or who I was, but there was nothing to

know who or where it was. I didn’t have to wonder what to do next. There

are no empty spaces, they were all filled up.

While Elena described the essence of her encounter as “amoral,” her joy

and wonder suggest she found it anything but cold or lifeless. Rather, “it

was love,” and she was so happy there she considered not “coming back.”

She understood the cycle of birth and rebirth with the resulting personal

certainty of immortality. Like Carlos in the last chapter, she also saw what

modern cosmologists propose is the source of the universe. First there is

nothing, then the Big Bang, out of which slowed-down and cooled particles

become the elements of matter. From matter comes our own separate bodies

and minds.

Sean’s story is remarkable for its combination of features. His sessions

partake of unseen worlds and entity contact as well as mystical states.

However, his enlightenment experience is the climax for which the other

types of effects paved the way.

Thirty-eight years old at the time we began working together, Sean

received more DMT than any other volunteer. He participated in every

double-blind placebo-controlled experiment as well as the pilot studies in

which we determined the best doses of DMT to use in combination with

pindolol and cyproheptadine. He also came in for the DMT EEG study and

several psilocybin sessions in our preliminary work with that compound.

Sandy-haired, fair-skinned, of medium height and build, he was mild-

mannered and low-key in the extreme. Only after spending some time with

him did you appreciate Sean’s solid character, keen and searching intellect,

and wry sense of humor.

He was a lawyer at a major Albuquerque firm. However, he worked only

part-time so as to allow himself the freedom to pursue his other love:

growing a wide range of native trees.

He previously had taken LSD around thirty-five times, and psilocybin

mushrooms and mescaline once or twice each. His reasons for participating

in the DMT studies were modest, in line with his general approach to life:

“To experience another hallucinogen. I don’t know what to expect at all—

but I’m not afraid of new experiences or myself or what I may do.”

Sean’s non-blind low dose of DMT went well, but the high dose the next

day was an aberration. The IV line had worked itself loose, and I

inadvertently injected the drug under his skin rather than into his vein. We

suspected this but were not certain until he was well into the full double-

blind dose-response study. He got much higher on several of these doses

than on what we thought was his first “large” dose.

The effects of this initial non-blind 0.4 mg/kg dose were quite slow to

develop and not much more than those from his low dose the day before.

The injection did feel odd as I gave it, but it did not fully dawn on me that it

missed his vein. I didn’t think to repeat it. Maybe he was one of the people I

anticipated might have little reaction to the drug.

During one of the double-blind study days, Sean received what turned

out to be 0.2 mg/kg. Because of his reaction to this unknown dose, I started

thinking that indeed there must have been a problem with that first high

dose. He thought so, too.

I’ll bet this is the high dose, and that I didn’t get the high dose last time.

I’ve never been so high. The grain in the door just opened up!

Sean participated early enough in the studies that we hadn’t begun using

the eyeshades regularly, and at first he liked keeping his eyes open. This

gave me the opportunity to help him think more deeply about the DMT

visuals, and their sometimes distracting nature.

“I wonder if you could focus on that space within the grains of the wood,

rather than the grain itself. You might go further once you’re more familiar

with what happens on DMT. The visions and display are not all that’s

there.”

I was just at the edge of losing it. I had no sense of what you two were

doing, just that you were around. I was glad I knew you both; I would have

been self-conscious if you were strangers.

His comments about being comfortable with us also speak to the crucial,

but rarely discussed, variable of the relationship existing among those who

give and take psychedelic drugs. Comfort with the sitters allows for letting

go; anxiety or mistrust creates the opposite.

A few weeks later he received placebo, which gave him time to reflect

upon his previous session.

I believe the last trip was a near-death experience. Everything is more

alive now. I’m not bored, even when I should be! It was the awe and fear of

God. I thought about barely anything else for the first day or two afterward.

The desire to talk about it to anyone and everyone faded after three or four

days.

It’s curious that Sean had such a deep experience without any of us

knowing about it at the time. It reminded me to remain alert to how

different people were in their comfort or ability to discuss the contents of

their sessions, especially right after they occurred.

Sean volunteered for the tolerance pilot work, in which we worked out the

appropriate dose of DMT as well as how much time should pass between

each injection. One morning he received four 0.2 mg/kg injections at hourly

intervals. As he came down from his third dose, he said,

I couldn’t watch it all, it was so busy. Something asked me, “What do you

want? How much do you want?”

Sean mentioned this rather casually. It was his first time he had spoken of

hearing “the other.”

I answered that I wanted to see fewer things, but more of it. That reduced

the intensity of the busy, crackling, colorful Chinese-like panels. It became

more manageable and focused. I’m feeling freer about going out there. I’m

not lost. I’m asking questions and getting answers.

Sean then came in for four 0.3 mg/kg doses at one-hour intervals. He had an

extraordinarily moving day. While my bedside notes capture much of his

sessions, the letter Sean later sent to me does an even better job:

The first session was a lot of fun. I felt myself lifting off the bed three or

four feet. The visions rapidly developed into an almost sparkling electric

blue-green light pattern. I asked, “Are you here again?” No answer, so I

watched a low-lying city on a flat plane on the far horizon mutate through a

variety of colors and hues, with many ill-defined “things” floating in the

“air” above the city.

Then I noticed a middle-aged female, with a pointed nose and light

greenish skin, sitting off to my right, watching this changing city with me.

She had her right hand on a dial that seemed to control the panorama we

were watching. She turned slightly toward me and asked, “What else would

you like?” I answered telepathically, “Well, what else have you got? I have

no idea what you can do.”

Then she stood up, walked up to my right forehead, touched it and

warmed it up, and then used a sharp object to open up a panel in my right

temple, releasing a tremendous amount of pressure. This made me feel

much better than I’d felt before, even though I realized I’d felt fine in the

first place.

Sean’s second dose was difficult because a loud vacuum cleaner passed

by the room and a garbage truck screeched terribly outside the window.

Temporarily confused and anxious, he regrouped but could do little else

with the session.

Dose 3:

For the first time ever, I went into a blank state before the DMT injection.

I had no thought, no hopes, no fears, no expectations.

The trip started with an electric tingling in my body, and quickly the

visual hallucinations arrived. Then I noticed five or six figures walking

rapidly alongside me. They felt like helpers, fellow travelers. A humanoid

male figure turned toward me, threw his right arm up toward the patchwork

of bright colors, and asked, “How about this?” The kaleidoscopic patterns

immediately became brighter and moved more rapidly. A second and then a

third asked and did the same thing. At that point, I decided to go further,

deeper.

I immediately saw a bright yellow-white light directly in front of me. I

chose to open to it. I was consumed by it and became part of it. There were

no distinctions—no figures or lines, shadows or outlines. There was no

body or anything inside or outside. I was devoid of self, of thought, of time,

of space, of a sense of separateness or ego, or of anything but the white

light. There are no symbols in my language that can begin to describe that

sense of pure being, oneness, and ecstasy. There was a great sense of

stillness and ecstasy.

I have no idea how long I was in this confluence of pure energy, or

whatever/however I might describe it. Finally I felt myself tumbling gently

and sliding backward away from this Light, sliding down a ramp. I could

see myself doing this, a naked, thin, luminescent childlike being that glowed

with a warm, yellow light. My head was enlarged, and my body was that of

a four-year-old child. Waves of the Light touched me as my body receded

from it. I was almost dizzy with happiness as the slide down the ramp finally

ended.

Of course, we had no idea what Sean was experiencing. My notes at 9

minutes after this third injection simply indicate that Sean stated,

I think I’m down.

After filling out the rating scale, he said,

It’s interesting. I chose to enter a bright light.

I offered general support and encouragement: “I’m glad you chose to go

into it rather than waiting and observing.”

It wasn’t too conscious a choice.

“Faith can be leaping off the cliff optimistically.”

It wasn’t that scary.

He paused and smiled,

I can’t believe I’m doing this. That you’re doing this.

Let’s return to his letter for notes on his fourth and final dose that day:

There were wire people everywhere riding bicycles, like programmed

people, like video-game people having fun. I watched them. They were blue-

green, running all around me. Like being in a parking tower. I forget what

happened at the end. They did it for a long time! I kept wondering if

anything else would happen. Slowly the trip ended, but I can’t remember

how.

The morning was almost over. Sean’s face was pale as he removed his

eyeshades. He bent his knees up toward his chest.

Laura said, “You look tired.”

No, I’m not tired, I just feel fuzzy.

He looked around the room and at us and sighed,

What a day!

Clearly there are striking similarities between naturally occurring spiritual

experiences and those induced in certain individuals by DMT. Cleo’s,

Elena’s, and Sean’s high-dose sessions were ecstatic, insightful,

revolutionary, and profound. All three volunteers were steady and solid

people with knowledge of religious concepts. The words they used to

describe their sessions are remarkably like those we read from the great

mystics of the ages.

DMT reproduces many of the features of an enlightenment experience,

including timelessness; ineffability; coexistence of opposites; contact and

merging with a supremely powerful, wise, and loving presence, sometimes

experienced as a white light; the certainty that consciousness continues after

death of the body; and a first-hand knowledge of the basic “facts” of

creation and consciousness.

While gratified and in awe of these sessions, larger questions began to loom

as I heard more of them. Because DMT can elicit mystical experiences, are

the experiences necessarily beneficial? Or, put another way, do they have a

spiritual effect in those who’ve undergone them? If they did, I’d feel

justified in labeling these encounters truly spiritual. In addition, the

occasional negative effects of DMT might be easier to accept in the

presence of real transformational experiences in others.

These thoughts lead to two separate clinical issues: adverse effects from,

and long-term benefit wrought by, encounters with the spirit molecule. In

order to begin looking at the overall balance sheet, let’s turn to the dark side

of DMT.

Pain and Fear

In preparation for writing these chapters on the DMT sessions, I reviewed

every page of my bedside notes. It took a month to look over all of them,

cutting and pasting people’s reports into various groupings of experience.

One of these categories was “adverse effects,” in which I placed difficult or

troublesome responses to DMT. Parts of twenty-five people’s sessions

landed in this “bin.” These adverse effects ranged from being subtle, minor,

and extremely brief to those that were terrifying, dangerous, and lingering.

Twenty-five out of sixty volunteers seemed like a lot. At the time, I never

sensed that nearly half of our volunteers were having problems. Was I

minimizing difficulties in my desire to forge ahead in the research under

any and all conditions?

This number was even more surprising because I hoped to reduce the

incidence of frightening reactions to DMT by studying only normal

volunteers with previous psychedelic drug experience. This seemed a safer

path than enrolling those who had no idea what to expect, or who were

already psychologically troubled.

Looking more closely at these sessions, it became clear that the vast

majority of these problems were, if not especially minor, very brief. This

reassured me to some extent. One of the primary reasons I chose DMT as

the drug with which to resume clinical psychedelic research was that its

effects were so short. I anticipated that no matter how bad things became, at

least they wouldn’t last too long.

The research setting was ripe for the development of negative responses

to the drug, and this may have contributed to the high frequency we saw.

The clinical environment was quite unpleasant, even though it reassured

some research subjects about our ability to respond to medical emergencies.

In addition to the actual physical environment of the Research Center, the

research attitude also created a tension that does not normally exist in

typical psychedelic settings. The blood drawing, questionnaire

administration, and various other experimental manipulations impacted our

relationship with the volunteers. We wanted something from them other

than just their own psychedelic experience, and that expectation was

impossible to ignore.

I expected nearly everyone to feel some anxiety as the DMT effects

began. I knew many people would find themselves struggling to keep their

bearings, especially with the higher doses. My respect for the deeply

disruptive properties of DMT made it easier for volunteers to feel

understood in their natural apprehension before getting big doses of the

spirit molecule.

We did our best in attending to such details as smells, gestures, speech,

emotional state, and the behavior of everyone in the room. This attention to

detail went a long way in protecting our subjects from unnecessarily

anxiety-provoking or otherwise disruptive influences. We realized that

supportive, caring, and understanding attitudes and responses were the best

insurance against serious adverse effects, and the best initial treatment

should they emerge.1

The issue of adverse effects becomes extraordinarily important when we

assess the risk-to-benefit ratio in working with psychedelics. Do benefits

outweigh risks? Are the negative consequences of psychedelics’ use worth

accepting in light of their positive effects? This chapter addresses the dark

side of DMT, while the next looks at how helpful the volunteers’

experiences were in the long run.

The older research literature hinted at what types of negative reactions we

might see with DMT.

One of Stephen Szára’s subjects for a 1950s DMT EEG study was a

female physician. As effects of the intramuscular DMT peaked, she

exclaimed,

It is frightening because I cannot terminate it [by opening my eyes]. . . .

How unpleasant! Oh, how bad. It would be better to fall down in a faint.

Will it endure still for one hour? Give me something so that I shall die

quickly, it would be better to die. How were you capable to do such?2

Szára later summarized the five “paranoid or delusional” reactions in his

thirty original volunteers:

“These subjects reported 1 to 2 days later that they were convinced that

someone wanted to kill or poison them during the experiment. DMT was

the poison, and the person conducting the experiment was the murderer.

One subject became very violent during the experiment and had to be

restrained forcibly.”3

Szára’s descriptions are unusually forthcoming for a psychiatric

researcher. It usually is rather difficult to get a clear sense of what exactly

happens during psychedelic drug sessions in the research environment. This

is especially common when adverse reactions occur in studies when the

research team has a vested interest in demonstrating the drug’s beneficial

effects.4

Our New Mexico volunteers’ negative reactions to DMT were not

qualitatively different from those of volunteers in the other types of sessions

about which we’ve read. They included characteristics of all the previous

categories: personal psychological issues, unseen worlds and contact with

nonmaterial beings, and near-death and spiritual experiences. What made

the effects adverse was not the experience itself, but the volunteers’ reaction

to it. The subjects’ responses to the anxiety-provoking elements

subsequently determined whether they’d continue the fearful descent or pull

out of it into a more positive resolution.

Ida was one of the few volunteers who dropped out of our research after the

non-blind low dose.

Thirty-nine years old when she volunteered for the DMT studies, Ida met

my former wife at a woman’s spirituality workshop in Albuquerque. She

had three children and had been unhappily married for nearly most of her

adult life. She had a dry sense of humor that seemed to hide a great deal of

anger and resentment. It was difficult to relax around her because it wasn’t

easy to tell if she was laughing with you or at you.

She was interested in the DMT research because of her fascination with

shamanism. She had taken LSD and psilocybin mushrooms about twenty

times in her life, but not once since beginning to raise her family nearly two

decades previously.

Walking into Room 531 the afternoon of Ida’s non-blind low dose, I was

surprised to see her sitting on her bed reading a New Yorker magazine. This

was the first and only time a volunteer ever prepared themselves for their

first DMT session in this way. She looked nervous.

She continued riffling through pages as I gave her my orientation. There

was an uneasy tension in the room, and I found myself stuttering my way

through my usual speech, which alerted me sooner than did my conscious

mind to Ida’s intense anxiety.

At 4 minutes after the injection her eyes opened briefly. She looked at

me, then quickly looked away. A minute later, she began,

I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the feeling. My head got real hot. I was out of

my body. It was hard to breathe.

“It’s pretty quick, isn’t it?”

For you maybe.

“I mean the onset. Did it seem to last a long time?”

I was waiting for it to get over with immediately after I started feeling it.

I felt the effects while the flush was going in. I couldn’t have moved if you’d

asked me to. I looked down at my feet and didn’t recognize them as my own.

It was scary, and I didn’t feel safe.

There was no way I could give Ida eight times this dose tomorrow.

“Some people just don’t like the drug, you know.”

I hated it.

“Let’s call it a day, and chalk it up to experience. No need to press our

luck.”

Okay.

The kitchen brought her an awful lunch. Mystery-meat tacos. A fitting

end to a difficult session.

I called Ida that night. She felt fine, but confirmed her desire never to

take DMT again.

For some volunteers, their high-dose experiences were powerfully

unsettling, and several research subjects dropped out after these sessions.

Ken was one of these.

Twenty-three years old, Ken had been in Albuquerque only a few months

before embarking on our research project. Sporting long, permed hair and a

flashy motorcycle, he was one of our more flamboyant volunteers. He

moved to New Mexico to obtain training at one of the alternative health

colleges, having dropped out of another university because of “feeling like

a sheep.”

He had taken MDMA quite often and admitted to having problems

limiting his use. He enjoyed the “fun, celebration, love, bonding, depth, and

spirituality” it provided. Curiously, he neglected to answer the druguse

questionnaire on the typical psychedelic drugs. I didn’t notice that until

after he had dropped out of the studies. If I had, it may have alerted me to

some misgivings about his experiences on these more powerful drugs.

There was something just a little unsettling about Ken. He seemed ever

so slightly “too cool” and “New Age,” and Laura and I both wondered

about his shadow side. Where were his edges, his anger, and his

boundaries? What really made him tick? He seemed to be flitting through

life rather than really taking it in. In retrospect, naturally, this seems to have

been the basis for his subsequent difficulties, but there was little way we

could have truly predicted his negative response to DMT.

Ken’s low 0.05 mg/kg DMT dose went without difficulty.

It’s a little calming and energizing, like MDMA. There were a few colors.

It was pleasant. I wonder how the big dose will be tomorrow.

I wasn’t sure how he’d hold up the next day, either. In my mind, MDMA

is a mild drug. People who prefer it to the typical psychedelics tend not to

do well when stressed, either by life or by taking more potent mind-bending

drugs. MDMA is what I like to call a “love and light” drug, one that

accentuates the positive and minimizes the negative. If only life were so

simple.

Ken wore baggy, tie-dyed thin cotton pants the next day and a wild

psychedelic T-shirt. The nurses at the front desk commented on how cute he

was.

His breath seemed to catch in his throat as the flush cleared whatever

remained of the high dose of DMT from his IV line. Based upon Philip’s

and other volunteers’ reactions to high doses of DMT, this small choking

sound almost always was a sign of a powerful effect. Ken’s head rocked

back and forth, and his feet, involuntarily it seemed, flopped up and down

on the bed, as if to discharge the excessive tension he felt.

He settled down at about the 5-minute point, but grimaced and shook his

head. Within a couple more minutes he took off his eyeshades and stared

straight ahead. His pupils remained large, so Laura and I sat quietly, waiting

for him to come down further. At 14 minutes, looking shaken but keeping

some composure, he started,

There were two crocodiles. On my chest. Crushing me, raping me anally.

I didn’t know if I would survive. At first I thought I was dreaming, having a

nightmare. Then I realized it was really happening.

I was glad he didn’t have the rectal probe in place, this being a screening

day.

Tears formed in his eyes, but stayed there.

“It sounds awful.”

It was awful. It’s the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. I wanted to

ask to hold your hands, but I was pinned so firmly I couldn’t move, and I

couldn’t speak. Jesus!

His experience was over, so there was little advice we could give about

letting go, or trying to get past his reptilian assailants. He had been stuck,

and the most we could do was try and help him accept, and maybe even

learn something from, his session.

“What do you make of it?”

I haven’t the slightest idea. It was as if I were being punished.

He looked directly at me and asked:

Will future doses be this big? I don’t think I could do this much again.

Ken lay on the bed quietly, absorbing what had just happened to him. He

didn’t want to talk much, but answered the rating scale without too much

difficulty. He was calmer and more composed after eating breakfast.

I reentered Room 531 after completing my notes in his chart. He looked

refreshed and was waiting for me before leaving the hospital.

“How are you feeling now?”

I don’t think this is the drug for me. I prefer the mellowness of MDMA.

This is too hard and intense.

“That’s fine. There are other big experiences in store for you in this

study. It’s a good idea to stop now.”

I continued to wonder about the content of his horrific encounter: “Do

you have any idea why crocodiles came up for you?”

Not really. I like reptiles; I used to own a pet iguana.

He laughed,

Maybe it’s some sort of Egyptian past-life experience.

We stayed in touch with Ken, although he soon left Albuquerque and

moved to California. His reaction had been so traumatic that I was

concerned he might have some permanent psychological damage. We

wondered if perhaps he had been sexually molested as a child. He did not

recall any such episodes, so this remains speculation.

In a way, Ken’s session scared him straight. His reptile rape had become

a bad memory, one that he rarely thought about, but whose effects

continued to ripple outward. He stopped taking any psychoactives,

including MDMA, and cut back significantly on his marijuana use. He

found work at an herb store and was living with his girlfriend. It could have

been a lot worse for him.

It’s easy, with hindsight, to relate Ken’s negative entity-contact

experience on a high dose of DMT to his habit of fending off any dark,

shadowy aspects of himself. His psychological defenses were just too weak

to function under the spirit molecule’s powerful influence.

While earth-shattering high-dose DMT sessions could turn and stay dark

and menacing, some volunteers did a remarkable job of turning them

around. For example, Andrea was terrified when the spirit molecule pulled

her toward a near-death experience. However, she used her initial fear as a

catalyst for some important personal work.

Andrea was thirty-three years old and lived north of Santa Fe with her

husband and two children. They were software developers and were quite

familiar with mind-altering drugs. She had taken psychedelics over one

hundred times and had used a lot of cocaine and methamphetamine several

years previously.

As a child Andrea began experiencing what we call “sleep paralysis” and

“hypnagogic hallucinations.” Upon drifting asleep, she would be unable to

move and would see brief, frightening visual scenes. Her mother, a strict

Catholic, told her it was Satan coming to torture her and that she should

pray to Jesus for protection. These frightening experiences continued even

now, although rarely.

This inability to comfortably drop into the sleep state worried her when

she thought of taking DMT at the Research Center. Perhaps she wouldn’t be

able to completely relax into the rush of effects. She thought she might have

a near-death experience on DMT and wondered about her ability to give up

awareness of her body.

Despite her concerns, Andrea enjoyed her low dose. She summed up her

feelings with her first words:

That was fun!

The next day she began by saying, “I woke up this morning with a

momentary fear. Then I thought that since things had been so easy

yesterday, things would be fine this morning.”

For some reason I placed the “emergency kit”—Valium for panic and

nitroglycerin pills for severe high blood pressure—on the blood pressure

machine. I couldn’t remember when I had ever done that before a highdose

session.

Andrea coughed before I had half-finished the DMT injection.

She sighed deeply a time or two while the flush was going in.

She then bellowed,

NO! NO! NO!

For the next minute, she cried,

No! No! No!

Andrea’s legs kicked and flailed. Her husband rested his hand on her leg,

gently patting and massaging her. I placed my hand on her other foot.

At 2 minutes she was sighing, no longer screaming, and seemed to be

settling down a little.

I said, “You’re doing fine. Just breathe.”

She replied softly,

Okay.

I noticed tears forming under her eyeshades at about 4 minutes.

“You can cry.”

She began sobbing, continued for about five minutes, and then started

relaxing a little.

Did I scream?

“A couple of times.”

I thought so. It was hard to let go.

“There’s a lot of feelings in there.”

She laughed quietly,

I volunteered for this, right?

“Yes, I have your informed consent at home.”

I never really left my body. I fought it all the way. I thought I was going

to die. I didn’t want to die. I was afraid. I realized that I had a body for a

reason and that I have work to do in this body.

Andrea now turned her fear into a challenge, rather than a defeat.

When I was coming down, I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to do this again,

but now I think I do. I don’t think it will be as scary next time. It was death.

I saw myself in that void, the void. It was just black, just too much. I’ve

never had anything like that happen before. On LSD and mushrooms you

can build up to things and you are still in your body and you can move in

and out of it. With this you have no choice. I was just totally unprepared

and startled and scared.

When I returned to the front desk to work on Andrea’s chart, several of

the ward nurses asked if everything was all right. They were alarmed by the

screams coming out of Room 531.

“She got off to a rough start, but she’s fine now.”

Andrea looked pretty good at the 30-minute point, and she filled out her

rating scale. Within an hour she was eating breakfast. How amazing the

speed with which DMT hurls us through the abyss and then returns us!

When we spoke by phone a day later, she said, “Things I want to do with

my life before I die are more clearly defined now. I’m not ready to go yet.

We had originally moved to New Mexico so I could go to college,

particularly in bodywork. I got discouraged and never followed through.

My life is finite, though, and if I am to go to school, this is the time to do

it.”

Andrea returned for the tolerance project the next month.

Before getting started, I steered her toward her fear.

“Are you afraid of being unconscious? If so, it’s all right to black out.

You can just pass out. Go for it. You can lose your mind, you will get it

back, it’ll be all right. Four doses of DMT will wear you down today.

Hopefully, you’ll just give up without too much pain and fear.”

“I’m just worried about where I will go. Will I be all right?”

She let out a brief muffled cry as the first 0.3 mg/kg dose went in.

However, anticipating this, her husband, Laura, and I quickly responded by

placing our hands on her arms and legs. She calmed quickly, and

throughout the morning she worked on developing the theme that had

emerged on her first high dose: a fear of death related to the fear of how to

live her life fully.

As was the case with so many of our tolerance study volunteers, Andrea

broke through into an ecstatic resolution of her anxiety and confusion

during her fourth session.

Eighteen minutes into this session, she said,

That was a real gift, this last one. I was in such angst and pain for the

first doses, especially the third one, and I thought, “Oh God, am I going to

do this again in this last dose?” and I thought, “Yes, I’ll do it again.” I just

never gave up. And then it was easy.

There was literally a flood of beings saying, “Okay, remember when you

were young and idealistic and wanted to learn how to do bodywork?”

There’s no reason I can’t do that now.

When we spoke by phone later that week, she said, “I am really grateful

for the experience. I really wanted to blow things out.5 It’s changed my

perspective. It’s helped me refocus on my interest in healing work. There is

so much I want to do.

“There is no feeling of ‘It’s all fine.’ There was no white light during my

session. I still have a lot to work on. Part of my joy at the end was a feeling

of accomplishment.”

Andrea could have continued fighting against painful and frightening

feelings, making a bad situation worse. We knew she might have difficulty

letting go after she told us about her mother’s comparing her sleep-related

symptoms to demonic attacks. Nevertheless, with her husband’s and our

support, she continued on through her fear and found the sadness and

confusion that lay behind it. Facing her anxiety and fears, giving up

resistance, she emerged with a clearer sense of who she was, what she

desired, and plans for carrying out her goals.

Some of the most immediately hair-raising DMT sessions involved real life-

and-death issues related to blood pressure that rose or fell to dangerous

levels. Lucas’s blood pressure dropped to almost shocklike levels, while

Kevin’s rose to frighteningly high ones.

At fifty-six, Lucas was one of our older volunteers. A writer and

entrepreneur, he lived in a remote village in northern New Mexico, where

his greenhouse contained all manner of exotic mind-altering plants. He was

articulate, intelligent, and fearless.

Luca’s outpatient clinic screening electrocardiogram (ECG) tracing was

not 100 percent normal. His heart rate was rather slow, in the high 50s, and

he had what is known as a “sinus arrhythmia.” This means that when

breathing in and out, his heart rate slowed down and sped up more than was

the case with most people. I called the cardiologist who interpreted his

ECG, and he told me that if Lucas had no signs or symptoms of heart

disease, there was little to worry about. It was a “normal variant.”

Lucas’s low dose gave us some idea that he might have a big session the

next day. Like Rex, who passed out upon entrance to the futuristic beehive

(see chapter 14), Lucas also reported a swaying, rocking, slightly dizzy

feeling:

It feels like the bed is gently rocking. Like a hammock swaying back and

forth.

Part of Lucas’s non-blind high-dose session the next day, in which he

approached a space station landing bay where he was accompanied by

numerous humanoid automatons, is described in chapter 12. Let’s now

review the more frightening aspects of that morning.

Immediately after finishing the injection, Lucas became pale and sighed

restlessly. He bent his legs at his knees up and down several times, then

looked at Cindy.

Jesus Christ! I had no idea what it would do to me!

He retched once. I looked around. There was no “emesis basin” into

which he could vomit. Cindy pointed at a gown that was crumpled into a

pile behind me. That was all we had, and I offered it to him. He put the

gown into his hands and looked at it uncomprehendingly.

Hunnh??

“Try that,” I offered.

He retched once into the gown but did not throw anything up.

Jesus Christ!

While retching into the gown, he began sliding off the bed headfirst

toward Cindy’s feet. I got up, walked over to Cindy’s side of the bed, and

helped pull him back onto it. He was holding the gown up against his face.

At 5 minutes his blood pressure dropped from 108/71 to 81/55, and his

pulse from 92 to 45. He was pale; in fact, he was turning green. Holding his

head and trembling, Lucas was going into shock.

Two minutes later his pulse was 47 and his blood pressure was 87/49.

We tried to adjust the bed—to raise his feet and lower his head—to

increase blood flow to his brain. In the confusion, it was impossible to

operate the controls. Should I call the cardiac emergency team? Get ready

some drugs to raise his blood pressure? DMT causes such robust rises in

blood pressure that I worried that if his circulation did recover on its own,

and we gave him a big dose of adrenaline to treat his shock, we might

overshoot and cause a stroke from too high a blood pressure.

I said, “You’re doing fine. Take some deep breaths, focus on your

breathing.”

He looked baffled and ill.

His vital signs recovered on their own over the next 2 minutes. At 12

minutes, his blood pressure was 102/78, and his pulse was 73.

At 15 minutes he began describing his approach to the space station.

More relevant to his terror, he described what he saw upon opening his

eyes:

I looked at Cindy and she had incredible clown makeup on. It was not

funny. It was malevolent. I was afraid to look at her face. I don’t really

know you, Cindy, but you seem real nice. It was the drug. I had just a flash

of you, Rick—like a stainless-steel face, with intimations of protuberances

and knobs. Cindy was bad enough. I couldn’t look at you directly. It would

have ruined your bedside manner forever.

He started to relax and moved on to excitedly describe his outer space

voyage. It was difficult for me to pay attention, thinking about how close to

disaster we all had been. His truck broke down on the way home.

His wife picked him up, and she spent the drive back to their house

describing horrific memories of childhood incest that were emerging in her

therapy. Two messages awaited them upon their arrival: a friend had shot

his head off in a suicide, another friend was dying rapidly of cancer.

When we spoke the next day, he wondered, “What’s real? What’s not? It

felt like a boulder was dropped into the pond, not a pebble, and the wake

was being felt everywhere. The man who killed himself did so at just about

the time I took the DMT. It makes me believe in synchronicity of some sort

or another.”

I had little choice but to tell him, “I’ve been thinking it would be safest to

hold off on any more studies. While I think you’re a great person to have in

the research, I would hate to damage you physically.”

Lucas weakly protested, but he understood. Nevertheless, the day’s

events had seriously rattled him. He asked me to come by to visit him. Later

that week I drove to his house and spent the day with him, the first and only

house call for the DMT studies. We went over his session, what had

happened, and how he felt about it. By the end of the afternoon he had

somewhat regained his bearings. He felt pretty well within a few days and

resumed his normal routine. He attended nearly every one of the post-study

socials over the next several years and came to look back appreciatively at

his DMT experience.

Kevin was thirty-nine years old and married to Sara, whose story we read in

chapter 14. He was a rather serious individual, and in his career as a

mathematician found a certain predictability that suited him. He had taken

psychedelics nearly two hundred times and found them “useful for

emotional and spiritual growth.”

Kevin was a big and burly man, one of those people whose body seems

to provide a certain protective role in fending off the outside world. He had

a dry wit and a sparkle in his eye, but there seemed to be a certain

fearfulness that he spent lots of energy keeping at bay. One of the ways he

expended that energy was in being hyperlogical and extremely talkative.

Kevin also barely squeezed through the cardiac screening gates to our

study. His blood pressure was just below our cut-off point, and his ECG

showed some “nonspecific” abnormalities, meaning they did not indicate

any particular type of heart disease. Showing tremendous determination to

get into the tolerance study, he began exercising regularly, dropped almost

fifteen pounds, and stopped drinking coffee. He paid for an independent

cardiologist examination and an exercise treadmill test, both of which gave

him a clean bill of health.

His low-dose session was thankfully uneventful, but I worried about his

attitude.

At 2 minutes after his low dose, he said,

So when does it start, or is that all there is?

Oh, I feel some physical effects. My heart’s speeding up, and the blood

pressure cuff feels odd.

He seemed too cavalier. I wanted to shake him up, get him ready for a big

trip tomorrow. I felt this even more so when he said Sara and he were going

to have a big meat-and-cheese pizza and beer with some friends that night!

I warned, “I would go into it tomorrow as if you were going to die. Be

prepared for that. Approach it with fear but faith. That’s the way that I get

prepared for people’s sessions when I come into the room.

“I suggest a lighter meal, too. You really want to be nice to yourself

tonight and tomorrow.”

That next morning he looked nervous lying in his bed. Sara sat near the

foot of the bed, ready to offer assistance.

He said, “I’m worried about my blood pressure.”

“So are we, but it should be all right. We’ve had some pretty high blood

pressures and they resolved quickly.”

His breathing sped up after the infusion was done, but he remained still.

His top blood pressure number, the systolic, shot up to 208 at the 2- minute

recording. An alarm I didn’t know existed on the blood pressure machine

began ringing piercingly. Laura couldn’t locate the switch, so she turned off

the entire machine. I passed her a note: “Turn it back on at 4 minutes.”

Let’s turn to the notes that Kevin sent us a few days later for his account

of what happened:

I feel a tingling in my body. A strange lifting sensation. I see colors

coming at me in the darkness. Then I see a light, a matrix of cells that looks

like skin under a microscope, with white light behind them. All of a sudden

off to the upper right I see a figure. She looks like an African War Goddess.

She is black, carries a spear, a shield, and appears to have a mask on. I

have surprised her. She takes a defensive and aggressive posture. She says,

“YOU DARE TO COME HERE?!” I mentally reply, “I guess so.”

The scene before me erupts in a way that I can only relate to what it looks

like in the TV show Star Trek when the spaceship shifts into a faster-than-

the-speed-of-light acceleration. I feel a tremendous rush in my chest. My

heart is hammering. I feel waves coursing through my body. I think, “This is

it. Rick and Laura have killed me.” Then my subconscious or someone said

to me, “You’re dying, don’t die.” Far away I hear what sounds like an

alarm. I think something’s gone very wrong. I think of Sara and my little

son. I fight. I’m not going to die. I feel as if I’ve dived off a 10-meter

platform, hit the water, and am at the bottom of the pool. I swim for the

surface.

The effects are wearing off. I am hypersensitive to people in the room. I

can hear their breathing and their movements. I feel their tension.

My notes indicate that at about 3 minutes Kevin said,

I’m still here.

“Good.”

His 5-minute systolic reading was only two points lower, 206, and the

alarm went off again. Sara looked worried. Laura turned to me

questioningly. What to do? The situation began hovering near chaos.

Is that an alarm?

“It’s okay, your blood pressure’s dropping a little.”

That was incredible!

My bedside notes indicate that as Kevin began speaking, he rubbed the

back of his head.

His blood pressure continued slowly dropping.

He said,

I have a little headache at the base of my neck.

His headache mostly likely resulted from the arteries leading to his brain

stretching, but thankfully not tearing, under the assault from his high blood

pressure.

Kevin then added,

It would be interesting to see if the black woman warrior were there

again during the next sessions. Maybe she wouldn’t be taken by surprise

next time.

I thought, “Next sessions?”

Kevin’s blood pressure was normal by 30 minutes. He was tired, but felt

good. I knew I had escaped a collision with something very dangerous.

I spoke with Kevin later in the day from my office. He sounded upbeat

and pressed to continue in the research.

“I have had many psychedelic experiences in my life,” he said, “but

nothing could compare with or prepare me for what happened today. I feel I

have come back a changed person. I realized that there are many more

realms than the one we exist in. Even though it was terrifying, I am looking

forward to participating more. I want to let go next time and see where I go

and what I experience. I want to know more about the spaces that I went

to.”

Laura and I conferred about bringing him in for four 0.3 mg/kg doses for

the tolerance study. While this was slightly less than the 0.4 mg/kg high

dose, we kept asking ourselves, “What if he suffers a stroke?” The answer

was, of course, “We can’t take that risk.”

Kevin was disappointed, but we tried to make the most out of what he

had undergone.

I said, “You have lots to mull over. You experienced a high dose of DMT,

something few people ever do. I probably shouldn’t have bent the rules in

the first place with your abnormal cardiogram.”

On the drive home through the mountains at the end of that day, I

wondered how the road signs I passed on the highway would have looked if

Kevin were dead. Exhausted, I ate dinner listlessly and went directly to bed.

Effective screening and preparation was key to keeping serious adverse

effects as infrequent as we did. While the rate of negative effects may have

been even lower with better screening, it’s difficult to see how we could

have improved upon our methods. Looking back on it now, one thing I

should have done was to trust more deeply my intuition about certain

volunteers’ psychological suitability or cardiovascular health.

Perhaps our doses of DMT were too high. This was a razor’s edge. Too

small a dose would have fallen short of the psychedelic threshold, but too

high a dose, as we saw in Philip’s case (as described in the prologue), was

dangerous. In retrospect, 0.3 mg/kg may have been better as our top dose.

No one experienced this as “sub-psychedelic.” We chose 0.4 mg/kg based

upon clinical judgement and our research aims. Nevertheless, this high dose

of DMT may have compromised the safety and well-being of the minority

of volunteers who lost their way, struggled to find it, and were traumatized

in their journey.

When all is said and done, the fact remains that the spirit molecule does

not always lead us to love and light. It can open our eyes to terrifying

realities, too, and mark us with those experiences for as long as do any

beatific ones. DMT is a potentially dangerous drug. For that reason, we

must think long and hard about using it in ourselves and on one another.

Part V Taking Pause

If So, So What?

Our volunteers unquestionably had some of the most intense, unusual, and

unexpected experiences of their lives during the DMT research. The spirit

molecule dragged, pushed, pulled, and thrust research subjects into

themselves, out of their bodies, and through various planes of reality. We’ve

read about all manner of sessions, many of which seemed to help people

better understand their relationship with themselves and the outside world.

We’ve also read about the toll some experiences took on our recruits.

Was it worth it? Were those who participated in our research any better

off for their involvement? Did they undergo any positive changes in their

lives? Did anything really good stick to their ribs? In other words, “If so, so

what?”

The answer to these questions, I will tell you now, is “It depends.” It

depends upon what we call “benefit.” Are subtle changes in attitude,

perspective, and creativity adequate reasons to take the risks about which

we’ve read? Or do we require more visible grounds for believing something

truly beneficial happened? What would that proof look like? If not much

really resulted, why not? Did the fault lie in the drug, the set, or the setting?

Before beginning the study, I expected people would have profound

psychedelic encounters. However, we all know how fleeting most of these

insights, understandings, and realizations can be. My hope was that with a

safer, more consistent and reliable clinical environment, our volunteers

would be able to get even deeper and further into the psychedelic

experience than ever before. Perhaps under these circumstances there might

be more long-lasting effects.

What would be testimony to a fuller commitment to putting into effect

the ideas, perceptions, and feelings to which the spirit molecule provided

access? A change in career. Entering psychotherapy. Beginning a regular

meditation practice, within or outside of an organized spiritual discipline.

Concerted efforts to modify lifestyle, such as increasing exercise,

improving diet, or discontinuing potentially harmful drugs or alcohol.

Donating time or money to charitable or community organizations. In other

words, did more enlightened behavior result from their enlightened

experiences?

As volunteers came in for their last session in any particular experiment, I

asked how they felt about their participation. “What did you get out of your

involvement in the study?” was how I began such conversations.

This was a relatively short-term assessment of any benefit, as

experiments generally lasted three to six months. In this context, most did

think they had grown in some ways, especially in response to their high-

dose encounters with the spirit molecule. These were informal, casual

impressions obtained in Room 531, where managing sessions and gathering

data competed for our attention.

We also gathered some longer-term follow-up data from the first group of

volunteers. Laura contacted as many of the original dose-response research

subjects as she could and arranged for more formal personal or telephone

interviews with them. By the time I left New Mexico, we had completed

only eleven formal follow-up interviews. Longer-term followup for the

nearly fifty additional volunteers is obviously of great importance, and I

hope to have the opportunity to complete this in the future.

We read about Sean’s mystical experience during the tolerance study. On a

day during the cyproheptadine study when he received placebo, we had

time to talk about things other than his immediate response to DMT.

He thought for a minute after I asked him about the overall effects of his

research participation, then said, “It seems like you create your own world

in a way. It’s amazing what the mind can do.”

“Are you referring to your big experience during the tolerance project?”

“Yes,” he said. “I call it a mystical experience. I took my mother to

church the other day. It was a ceremony having to do with Easter: Paul on

the road to Damascus. He was blind for three days after he encountered

Christ. I think that’s what happened to me. But I don’t know how it’s really

affected my life. I guess part of it was asking for permission each of the

three times. Maybe a lot of that has been involved in my life changing. I can

do more with my life now. I give myself permission to get involved in new

experiences and then do so.”

Mike was a thirty-year-old graduate student whose sessions were enjoyable

but always a little anxiety-provoking. He wasn’t sure if he remembered his

entire first 0.4 mg/kg session, and he didn’t like losing his bearings. He

received placebo on the last day of the dose-response study, and I asked

about what he had gotten out of his time with us.

He replied, “I think about that sometimes. When I read now, I’m

increasingly interested in fringe areas of my field. When I took LSD when I

was younger, it opened my mind to other possibilities I wasn’t otherwise

aware of. DMT may have had some of that effect, too. Before the study, I

was grinding away. Now I’m looking at other things. I can’t think of

anything else that would have nudged me in that direction.”

However, he was less enthusiastic two years later:

“It was an experience of being poked and stuck and having my brain

assaulted with chemicals—not a life-changing experience. Thoughts of the

high dose might wander through my mind every month or two. I’ve not

changed as a result, though. It only reminded me of taking drugs in my

twenties, when I was more carefree and had lots of time on my hands.”

We read about Willow’s near-death experiences in chapter 15. After a low

dose of DMT one day, she reflected upon her life since involving herself in

the study:

“DMT’s teaching me about transition, change, and death. When my

husband’s father died recently, it was clear to me that much has happened

with my views about death. I knew he had transitioned rather than

disappeared.

“DMT is about death and dying. I had a near-death experience on it. It’s

not a blank death, it’s full. I liked it really. I no longer fear death. Not that I

need to wait to die to be unafraid and know what dying is like. Rather, I’m

more accepting and serene about living.”

Tyrone was the dose-response volunteer who found himself in the “organic

apartment of the future.” During a placebo day, we had a chance to look

back upon his participation.

“Maybe I get drunk less,” he admitted. “I still have one to two beers at

night to get a little buzz, but drinking five at a time, on a Saturday or Friday

night, I’m doing that less. Things are more or less as usual. My girlfriend

wants to get married. I’ve never been married. It’s a big decision. I’m

thinking more of settling down permanently. Maybe it’s a function of the

study, maybe it’s a function of where I am now with my life. It may have

helped a little, but not really.”

At follow-up two years later, he remarked, “There were some insightful

thoughts at the time, but I didn’t necessarily follow through on them. They

were pleasurable to think about, though. However, I haven’t really thought

about it much since the first three or four months.

“I think overall I’m getting healthier, but I don’t see this as related to

DMT. I went through a big move and career change after the study,

although this was in the works all along. There haven’t really been any

changes I can attribute to the DMT experiences themselves.”

Stan, about whose therapeutic experience we read in chapter 11, described

some possible effects of his DMT exposure on his subsequent sensitivity to

psychedelic mushrooms. We had this conversation toward the end of his

double-blind low dose in the dose-response study.

Stan said, “I’ve taken mushrooms two times since I’ve been in the study,

and I’ve never been so high on psychedelics before. I had the experience of

going into and never coming out of the white light. Previously, I never felt

the choice was mine to stay or come back. I saw how the white light is all

there is, and that this world is just shadows and plays of light.”

“How about any positive emotional changes?”

“The psychic channels may have been opened,” he replied, “but the trips

were mostly without content or insights. Maybe I’m a little more empathic,

in tune, receptive. If that’s the case, it’s very subtle. And it’s not because of

the DMT. Maybe if I looked at the last couple of months there have been

some changes, but the DMT experiences themselves have not caused them

directly.”

We followed up with Stan after he finished the tolerance study. He

remained rather reticent about the impact of his DMT sessions:

“Maybe my self-concept has been affected. Taking a ride like that can

cause you to feel a little better about yourself. However, it can go both

ways. There weren’t any insights, however, neither spiritual or

psychological. It did have a cleansing effect, though, and it laid the

foundation for some other things.”

I’ve described some of Aaron’s experiences in chapter 12, “Unseen

Worlds,” and chapter 13, “Contact Through the Veil: 1.” He received

placebo one day during the pindolol study and had a chance to reflect on

DMT’s effects on his life:

“The long-term effects are very interesting. It leaves me in a different

state. It’s not altered, per se, but more open to synchronicity, magic, and

unexpected opportunities.”

In the longer-term follow-up Aaron said, “DMT shook some things loose,

as it was so shattering. I now find I have more control over my reality by

letting go; it’s a paradox. I’ve found that the DMT experience intensified

verbal, visual, and musical abilities. Overall, DMT showed me another

level or process I needed to see. Nothing I thought or felt made any

difference in terms of controlling the sessions. I learned the beneficial

aspects of losing control.”

Sara, who made such complex contact with nonmaterial beings in the

tolerance study, also participated in the pindolol study. On the last of those

four sessions, we had a chance to look back upon her involvement in the

research.

“Things have broadened out. I have an awareness of worlds on the other

side of this reality. I have the feeling of remembering those entities. My

experience of them was so real it doesn’t fade with time like other things

do. They want us to come back and teach us and play with us. I want to go

back and learn. I wish you didn’t control who gets DMT!”

Before Rex underwent his overwhelming 0.2 plus pindolol session

described in chapter 14, “Contact Through the Veil 2,” he received a lower

dose of DMT with pindolol. As that session wrapped up, I asked him how

he had been feeling about his participation.

“I’ve had more creative urges,” he answered, “and I’ve been writing

more. As chaotic as they are, the DMT sessions have helped me be more

centered. Having gone through it gives me more of a sense of strength in

myself.

“I have written some poems of the Other. Many were written before, but

some after getting started in the study. DMT made me face aspects of my

unconscious that I didn’t know were there, like my fear of dying.”

We read about Ken’s terrifying encounter with sexually violent crocodiles.

A few months after that, I called him to see how things were. He sounded

surprisingly philosophical:

“It’s really changed my feelings about death. I’m not nearly as afraid to

die as I was before. It has also really changed my view of life—about how

things are basically not as they seem. There is a certain falling away of

expectations.

“I’m also less afraid of my own insanity. There’s this Jewish guilt to fit in

and be normal but I feel less inclined to be that way now. I’m not as

interested in people or social lubrication situations that don’t have a lot of

meaning to me. Friendships that aren’t that important are fading away.”

We haven’t met Frederick before; his experiences with DMT were not

especially noteworthy above and beyond the “average” 0.4 mg/kg

encounter. One morning, however, after receiving a low dose of the spirit

molecule, he had this to say about how the effects of DMT spread out over

time:

“I’m more relaxed now in general after that 0.4 dose. It seems to have

cleared out some energy blocks. The momentum from two years of pushing

really hard at my job is hard to get rid of. When I was coming down from

the big dose, I saw how the energy was blocked by fears and holding on to

things. Nothing specific, but more alertness and awareness of my state. I’m

not in such a hurry to get things done now. I am more relaxed in general. I

am less goal-oriented. If things don’t get done now, they will sooner or

later.”

Gabe, the physician whose nursery and being contact experiences we read

about earlier, described some positive repercussions from his meetings with

the spirit molecule. This conversation took place during the morning he

received four saline injections in the tolerance study.

He said, “I’ve been feeling a peacefulness from having been in the study.

It’s a whole different realm than other high-dose psychedelics. I can access

deep stuff in the psyche. It’s right there, it’s like a movie screen. It’s in your

face. With LSD it’s not as much a movie as with DMT. For two or three

weeks after the tolerance study, I was much more there for the people I

work with. I was super-there.”

Philip’s 0.6 mg/kg DMT overdose occurred in the initial stages of the study,

when we were testing to find the right dosages for “high” and “low” DMT

sessions. He went on to develop over the next several months mild panic

symptoms whenever he found himself in unfamiliar or uncertain

circumstances. It was as if he had become overly sensitive to any inkling of

losing control. Nevertheless, he worked these through himself and

successfully negotiated his way through the dose-response project.

At his follow-up interview with Laura he stated,

“I now have a much more tangible sense of cosmic and divine

consciousness with an altered sense of selfhood in relationship. A more real

sense of connectedness to all around me. I am more integrated. My own

divinity is less of an abstraction. Thinking and feeling overlap more now.”

While he also believed this had changed his capacity for engaging in

psychotherapy with his clients, he didn’t believe it was outwardly obvious.

Philip had reduced his use of psychedelics since his participation in the

DMT work. He now took them every two or three months, instead of

several times a month, and used them more carefully, in a supportive group

context. He wasn’t sure how much of this was the result of other changes in

his life—moving and getting divorced—and how much was from his DMT

experiences.

Don was a thirty-six-year-old waiter and writer. His transpersonal highdose

DMT sessions destabilized his world view so much that he stopped writing

for the first time in years. As opposed to Elena, when Don met face-to-face

the vast and impenetrable nature of the source of all existence, he despaired.

Elena was steeped in Eastern mysticism, while Don was raised in, and

continued believing in, the Catholic faith. Elena saw the love behind the

“impersonal” void. Don, on the other hand, felt shocked, stunned, and

betrayed by the absence of a personal God or Savior behind it all. DMT had

knocked away his spiritual and philosophical underpinnings, and he found

himself at a loss for something to replace them.

When I called to request his participation in additional studies, he

declined, but updated me. He was feeling quite well.

He told me, “I’m doing better than I was before the study. I have more

enthusiasm for life, as it was a death experience for me. I’ve gotten back

into writing and found a patron to support me part-time. There’s a little bit

of my DMT sessions in my writings, but not too much.”

We read a brief excerpt from one of Ray’s high-dose DMT EEG sessions in

chapter 15, “Death and Dying.” When we spoke with him some years later,

he had this to say about long-term effects of his high-dose sessions:

“I’ve adopted a few new words into my mental vocabulary to describe

the psychedelic experience. I see people more as organisms. I think the

DMT experiences validated certain spiritual ideas, particularly a belief in

the value of the subjective, beyond or in addition to the validity and value

of the scientific.”

He also sent us a photograph of his young son, whose middle name was

Strassman.

Lucas, whose real-life near-death experience nearly ended in circulatory

collapse, nevertheless felt he got something positive out of the session.

“I don’t see the world in quite the same way since DMT,” he said. “I’m

more open-minded and laid-back. The experience reconfirmed my path and

what I’m involved in. As far as my beliefs and spiritual perspectives,

everything was reinforced.”

Elena, about whose mystical experience we read in chapter 16, sent me a

letter one year after she finished the dose-response study:

“Most of my experiences fade with time. Not so with DMT. The images

and ordeals from my sessions have grown more clear and refined. I recall

being able to face the eternal fire of creation and not be burned, to bear the

weight of the entire universe and not be crushed. This brings some

perspective to my mundane life and I am able to relax and embrace it more

easily. Outside me, not much is different. Inside, I rest in the comfort of

knowing my soul is eternal and my consciousness endless.”

Let’s summarize this small number of follow-up conversations and

interviews. Volunteers reported a stronger sense of self, less fear of death,

and greater appreciation of life. Some found they were better able to relax,

and they pushed themselves a little less. Several volunteers drank less

alcohol or noted they were more sensitive to psychedelic drugs. Others

believed with greater certainty that there are different levels of reality. We

also have heard about powerfully felt validation and confirmation of

previously held beliefs. In these cases, views and perspectives became

broader and deeper, but not essentially different.

Thankfully, there also were no long-term negative effects in Philip,

Lucas, and Ken. While we did not formally interview Kevin after his high

blood pressure episode, we saw each other socially a few times afterward,

and he seemed to have suffered no ill effects.

The few examples of visible change in volunteers’ “outside” lives all

were underway in some form or another before they met the spirit molecule.

Several divorces occurred in our subjects, but none were directly brought

on by the effects of DMT sessions. Perhaps Marsha’s high-dose DMT

encounter with white porcelain carousel figures, described in chapter 11,

convinced her that she belonged “with [her] culture” on the East Coast. She

divorced her husband and left New Mexico. However, she had been married

and divorced twice before and clearly knew how difficult was her current

marriage.

No one left an established career for a more heartfelt vocation. Peter, one

of our recruits, had images while on DMT of a community in Arizona to

which he had been considering relocating. He made the move after

completing the dose-response study. He was wealthily retired, however, so

the move was easy and natural for him.

Sean, too, made good decisions about his career, cutting down on his

backbreaking hours as an attorney so he could “tend his garden” and plant

more trees on his remote rural acreage. In addition, he weathered his then-

girlfriend’s departure with grace and began a new, more satisfying

relationship during his DMT participation. In Sean’s case, many of these

events also were in motion by the time he began working with us.

Andrea, whose screams of “No! No! No!” rang through the Research

Center, seemed like one of the most likely people to make major shifts in

her life. Her high-dose DMT sessions showed her the preciousness and

limits of the body and helped her remember some youthful idealism

regarding her career. However, by the time I left New Mexico two years

later she had gone no further than obtaining some catalogs from local

natural therapeutics schools.

Even in Elena’s case, I was not convinced that she really had benefited

from her experiences in a practical way. We remained friends and I

continued to be involved in her and Karl’s life, and there did not seem to be

evidence of basic changes in her everyday pattern of interactions and

reactions to her world. Hers was one of the earliest cases causing me some

reluctance in accepting at face value the transformative power of even the

most profound and incredibly spiritual experiences.

It was especially disappointing that no one began psychotherapy or a

spiritual discipline to work further on the insights they felt on DMT. The

few people for whom therapy was an issue returned to therapy, or restarted

antidepressants, because of relapses into depression at some point after their

high-dose DMT sessions. That is, they sought help for possible adverse

effects rather than capitalizing on psychological or spiritual breakthroughs

from their sessions.

Why wasn’t there more obvious benefit to our volunteers?

Within sessions, we were not focusing on helping people with problems.

These were not treatment studies. Volunteers were relatively well-adjusted.

Neither did we intend to treat our research subjects. We planned to, and

mostly did, sit by and support them rather than steer or guide them in any

particular direction. When we did apply psychotherapeutic principles or

techniques, it was out of clinical necessity or prudence. We scrupulously

avoided working on a psychological level with the vast majority of our

volunteers. In fact, one of my most pressing questions was whether a

neutral environment would lead to positive responses in those having

powerful DMT experiences.

Another answer became clearer only as the study progressed. This was

the deep and undeniable realization that DMT was not inherently

therapeutic. Instead, we again had to face the crucial importance of set and

setting. What the volunteers brought to their sessions, and the fuller context

of their lives, was as important, if not more so, than the drug itself in

determining how they dealt with their experiences. Without a suitable

framework—spiritual, psychotherapeutic, or otherwise—in which to

process their journeys with DMT, their sessions became just another series

of intense psychedelic encounters.

As the years passed, I began feeling a peculiar anxiety about listening to

volunteers’ accounts of their first high-dose DMT sessions. It was as if I

didn’t want to hear them. These psychotherapeutic, near-death, and mystical

sessions repeatedly reminded me of their ineffectiveness in effecting any

real change. I wanted to say, “That’s very interesting, but now what? To

what purpose?” By extension, these sessions’ lack of lasting impact began

eroding the basic foundations of my motivation for performing this type of

research. Additionally, the reports of contact with invisible worlds and their

inhabitants, while utterly amazing, left me grasping at conceptual straws as

to their reality and meaning. My attitude to high-dose sessions started

turning from hope for breakthroughs to relief at volunteers emerging

unharmed and intact.

The need to shift the focus of the psychedelic research in Albuquerque

was clear. Risks were real, and long-term benefits vague. I began looking

for a way to improve the benefit-to-risk ratio. This required a more

concerted effort to develop a therapy study, one that would involve working

with patients instead of normal volunteers. It also called for using a longer-

acting drug that would allow time to perform psychological work during the

acute intoxication.

In the next two chapters, I will describe how the cessation of my work

began with research involving the longer-acting drug psilocybin and with

plans to treat patients. Events from both within and outside of the research

environment combined to exert tremendous personal and professional

pressure. At a certain point I felt I had less to lose, and more to gain, by

discontinuing the psychedelic research.

Winding Down

A wide range of difficulties began affecting our psychedelic drug studies.

Their cumulative effect led to my leaving New Mexico and stopping the

research. I will begin describing those events in this chapter.

Some difficulties were built into the study from its very inception, and it

was only a matter of time before they began causing problems. The

biomedical model was the most obvious of these concerns.

Others resulted from a series of unfortunate events. Such was the case of

the university’s Human Research Ethics Committee not allowing us to take

the psilocybin project out of the hospital into a more pleasant environment.

Many of the stumbling blocks were ones I dimly saw but chose to

minimize, hoping they might “take care of themselves”: There should have

been little surprise that a critical mass of collaborators at the University of

New Mexico failed to materialize as promised. I suspected, but needed to

see for myself, that there would be few sustained beneficial effects on our

volunteers from isolated high-dose DMT sessions. I kept on the research

team an especially troubled and troubling graduate student. I chose to

disregard reports I had heard about contact with beings on DMT and was

unprepared for dealing with their frequency in our work. I ought to have

predicted what would be my Buddhist community’s response to publicly

linking psychedelics with Buddhist practice.

Certain developments truly were completely unexpected, but in

retrospect they appear related to the strain of performing the research, and

its effects on those around me. My former wife’s sudden development of

cancer falls into this category.

The repercussions of working with spirit molecules are so complex, so

widespread and far-reaching, that no one who was not there from the very

beginning could really understand what this research was like. However, the

purpose of this book is to tell the entire story. Part of every story is its end.

For those who are now working, or wish to work, with psychedelic drugs,

it’s important to convey these details, in a spirit of “informed consent.”

You’d better know what you’re getting yourself into.

There were several threads running through these projects, and early on

they all lined up rather neatly. I wanted to give a lot of DMT, see what

various doses did, and then give more. The first two projects, the dose-

response and the tolerance studies, felt like the appetizer and the main

course. Single high doses of the spirit molecule were incredibly

psychedelic, and repeated dosing made it possible to assimilate and work

more effectively with the access it provided to profound altered states.

However, the model that allowed me to begin also negatively constrained

subsequent research projects with DMT.

The biomedical model’s explicit task is to dissect, dig deeper, and

explain-by-describing the biological phenomenon under examination. Since

this model holds sway in psychiatric research, I learned it thoroughly and

presented the DMT studies in those terms.

In the dose-response and tolerance studies, the biological measurements

were less personally compelling than were the psychological effects of

DMT. We drew blood and measured vital signs and temperature, and with

these data we could mathematically demonstrate that something really was

going on. The rating-scale data also nicely straddled the clinical and

objective realities; that is, the questionnaire provided objective validation of

subjective effects. Nevertheless, the most fascinating and rewarding data

were obtained by listening to and watching our volunteers in Room 531.

However, once we began the required mechanism-of-action research, the

biomedical model was going to exert greater restrictions upon the types of

studies we would be allowed to perform. In chapter 8, “Getting DMT,” I

described these follow-up DMT studies, which examined the effects of

pindolol, cyproheptadine, and naltrexone. We combined these receptor-

blocking drugs with DMT and compared responses to this combination with

those of DMT alone. We thus could infer the role of the relevant receptor in

mediating specific effects of the spirit molecule.

These types of studies no longer placed the subjective effects of DMT at

the forefront of our inquiry. The mechanisms were now more important

than the experience. The explicit setting had shifted in a titanic manner.

These protocols now approached our subjects less as individuals

undergoing a psychedelic experience and more as biological systems with

which we could define drug mechanisms more precisely.

It wasn’t easy to be as enthusiastic about these studies as the earlier ones.

In fact, volunteers did as much to encourage me to perform them as I did to

request their participation. Adding to this discomfort was my sense that I

had learned something deep and basic about the workings of the spirit

molecule. In the last chapter, I describe this conclusion—that is, that lasting

or substantial benefit from high-dose DMT sessions in our setting was

difficult to see. Combined with the gradually growing incidence of adverse

effects, I saw the risk-to-benefit ratio turning less favorable. I needed to

change the model to one in which people might benefit from participating

in the studies.

The two frameworks that might contain projects where people “got

better” were the psychotherapeutic and the spiritual. A spirituality-based

project was unlikely in a clinical research environment. So I began work on

a psychotherapeutic project, a psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy study with

the terminally ill.

It was at this point I felt most acutely the lack of a larger psychedelic

research community at the university. While the Research Center and

Department of Psychiatry were consistently and unquestionably supportive

of my studies, there were no local psychiatric colleagues familiar with

psychedelic drug research.

A large part of why I began our work with a strictly biomedical model

related to promises by other psychedelic research scientists, especially

psychotherapeutically oriented ones, to join forces with me once the New

Mexico research started. I was willing to take the set and setting risks

inherent in the biomedical model in anticipation of colleagues later helping

me shift to more treatment-based activities.

There’s a widespread and far-flung network of scientists and clinicians

interested in psychedelic drugs throughout the United States, many of

whom have close affiliations with the academic and the private sectors. I

met nearly all of them at various meetings before the DMT research began.

This psychedelic research network seemed more altruistic and cooperative

than the larger biomedical research community. Perhaps scientists who

believed in psychedelics’ power could join forces, rather than compete.

At these meetings was a unanimous complaint that “the government

won’t let us study these drugs.” If only somewhere someone could begin,

that place would become the center of a psychedelic research renaissance.

As it became apparent that I would receive permission to give DMT and

would obtain some funding for the study, it seemed that the University of

New Mexico would become just that center of psychedelic research.

I was willing to accept the short-term drawbacks associated with the

animal-biology-based model as the price for initiating studies. However, I

hoped that after establishing safe use of psychedelics under medical

supervision, more therapeutic studies would begin with my colleagues’

assistance. It would be a smooth transition from our dose-response and

tolerance work to psychedelic therapy projects.

Topping off this ambitious clinical research framework was the

development of new psychedelic drugs with unique properties. With the full

range of clinical facilities available, it would be easy to assess the effects of

new medications in normal volunteers and in specific patient populations.

It sounded good. The University of New Mexico is the premier university

in the state and has dozens of undergraduate and graduate departments,

professional schools, and a highly ranked medical school. I believed that

once research began in Albuquerque, the half dozen or so carefully

positioned colleagues throughout the country would quickly join me. They

said they would.

After the Food and Drug Administration approved the DMT study and

we began work in late 1990, I asked my colleagues to come on board. The

opportunity for which we all had been waiting had arrived.

Here is how they answered:

“My wife thinks Albuquerque’s too small. There aren’t enough malls. My

daughter doesn’t want to leave her friends.”

“We have to wait until our son graduates from high school in seven

years.”

“The University of New Mexico is second-rate. I’d never take my

research there.”

“We’ve already moved enough. I can’t commit to another move unless I

know it’s the last one I’ll ever make.”

“I have to wait until I get my Ph.D. I don’t know when that will be.”

“I don’t want to work that hard. I like my part-time job at a mental health

clinic. I get to take a lot of vacations and go on meditation retreats.”

In retrospect, I had succumbed to my own wishful thinking. It was easier

to talk about the transformative value of the psychedelic experience than it

was to put into practice some of its contents. My colleagues may have had

inspiring experiences, but they were not committed to goals that required

work and sacrifice.

There were, of course, other less explicit reasons for everyone’s sudden

change of heart about the importance of joining forces to generate a critical

mass of psychedelic researchers. One of these undoubtedly was the normal

and reasonable, although difficult to admit, anxiety about really doing this

sort of work. Anyone who knows anything about administering

psychedelics gets nervous just thinking about it.

Another issue concerned political motives. That is, who was going to

lead the way in psychedelic research? Rather than combining our efforts,

some colleagues saw the breakthrough occurring in Albuquerque as an

opportunity to establish their own research foundations, putting themselves

at the head of such organizations.

While the lack of support by psychedelic colleagues was an emotional

loss, I could deal with that. More problematic was being left holding the

ball. I now was committed to a course of research out of which I had

planned to transition as soon as I could with the aid of those collaborators.

As the dose-response study neared completion, I needed to decide how to

design subsequent grant applications and study designs. It seemed reckless

to begin proposing full-fledged psychotherapy protocols. I had no training

in that field of research and knew that any such proposals would fail to

attract funding. There was momentum to continue biomedically based

studies. We had the data and Research Center support, and it was my area of

expertise. These mechanism-of-action follow-up studies would not be

controversial, and there would be support for funding them.

I could delay this process by performing dose-response and perhaps

tolerance studies with other drugs, such as psilocybin and LSD. However,

the brain-science projects would increasingly take precedence. Any

psychotherapeutic studies would be minor, informal, and peripheral to the

main thrust of my work. I designed several mechanism-of-action

experiments and received approval and a generous grant to perform them.

At the same time, I also received approval and funding to perform a dose-

response study with psilocybin.

Psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, is closely chemically

related to DMT. It’s orally active and much longer-acting. It also is

significantly more popular than DMT, so learning about its effects has

greater relevance to public health issues of drug abuse.

Psilocybin’s six- to eight-hour duration was attractive in many ways.

We’d be able to study its effects in a more leisurely manner than with DMT.

Volunteers could participate in experiments while intoxicated with

psilocybin in ways that were impossible in the case of DMT’s debilitating

and brief peak effects.

However, the setting of the Research Center was an obstacle to designing

and thinking about psilocybin protocols. Many of our DMT volunteers

would have leaped at the opportunity to participate in a psilocybin project if

it were not for the prospect of spending an entire day in an altered state of

consciousness in the hospital.

The short duration of DMT’s effects usually allowed us to find a window

of tranquility at the Research Center. Even so, there were many times when

the sounds of jet planes, laughing and debating medical personnel, crashing

carts, groaning and screaming patients, the overhead duct fan, and roaring

compactors had a major negative impact on people’s DMT sessions. The

smells of burning food, medication, and powerful disinfectants were

especially grim. And the rare but regular occurrence of hospital service

personnel walking into Room 531 was a constant source of anxiety. They

all would combine to make a full-day psilocybin session an exercise in

tension.

The university owned several small houses within a city block of the

hospital. There was a relatively steady turnover of clinical, administrative,

and teaching personnel in them. Several had little courtyards and gardens,

and they seemed perfect for taking the psilocybin research “off-site.”

I approached the Research Center nursing and administrative staff, the

University Hospital legal counsel and risk-management office, and the

Department of Psychiatry about moving the psilocybin research out of the

hospital. They all considered my request reasonable, prudent, and within the

realm of possibility

However, the Human Research Ethics Committee, many of whose

current members were not familiar with our research, was not comfortable

with the safety issues off-site studies might raise. They wanted to make sure

that security guards were close at hand to manage any volunteers who

might act dangerously, and they wanted us to keep studies in the more

contained hospital setting. As is so often the case, their fears led to exactly

the outcome they hoped to avoid.

Several brave DMT volunteers agreed to come in for some psilocybin pilot

work in which we would determine what were “low,” “medium,” and

“high” doses of the drug. A few people dropped out after low-dose

experiences, finding the hospital room and setting too restrictive. There

were no significant problems with these research subjects other than that

they felt cramped and bored. Then we had a serious incident.

One of these volunteers was Francine, a physical therapist I had met

while working in the hospital as a consulting psychiatrist. She was thirty-

five years old when she volunteered for the DMT-pindolol study. She had

taken a lot of psychedelics in college, but stopped using them upon entering

graduate school, after which she got married and raised a large, successful

family.

I was concerned by her tales of driving long distances, swimming in

lakes, and undertaking other tasks requiring focus and attention while under

the influence of psychedelics. Perhaps she was trying to fend off the effects

of the drugs with her hyperactivity. She was physically rather robust, but it

didn’t seem as if her physique was the only thing contributing to the sense

she exuded of being tightly wound, bunched up, and restricted.

Nevertheless, careful questioning on my part failed to turn up any sign that

she could not manage situations that came up while she was under the

influence.

Francine tolerated the low screening dose of DMT without difficulty, but

she kept the head of the bed maximally elevated, at an almost ninetydegree

angle. She looked terribly uncomfortable, but denied feeling any

awkwardness. She talked throughout the entire session, from the time I

began giving the drug until all effects were gone. I gave her fair warning

about the next day’s high dose of DMT.

I doubt it will be that big. After all, I’ve taken a lot of LSD with little

effect in the past.

We asked her to put on the eyeshades and lie down before we began with

the following morning’s high dose. If she were less distracted by her desire

to provide us with ongoing commentary about her experience, she might be

able to let go into the effects more easily. She reluctantly agreed to put them

on her forehead so that she could flip them down over her eyes later, “if I

see the need.” She again kept the back of the bed upright.

Francine’s high dose was unpleasant and reminded her of how much time

had elapsed between her college tripping days and now. She had a busy and

full life, with a lot of responsibilities, and wasn’t sure about the psychic

high risk involved in taking big doses of drugs anymore. As with the low

dose, she kept her eyes open and talked throughout the session. One of her

comments neatly summarized Francine’s attitude towards the spirit

molecule:

The DMT said, “Come with me, come with me,” and I wasn’t sure I could

really afford to go.

Despite her misgivings, Francine followed through with the pindolol

study without difficulty and eagerly volunteered for the psilocybin pilot

work. She believed the slower progression of its effects would be more to

her liking than the “nuclear cannon” of DMT.

Francine had an enormously gratifying peak experience in response to an

early dose of psilocybin. She was much more cooperative with the structure

of the setting that day and laughed, giggled, and exclaimed joyfully for

most of the session. As the day came to a close, she summarized it for us:

It was the most unbelievable thing. I’ve never been that high in my life. It

made 0.4 DMT look small by comparison. It was the ultimate trip. I may

never want to trip again. Why would I? What would be the point? Certainly

no higher dose of psilocybin would be necessary.

I needed to drive her home, as her husband could not break away from

work to pick her up. It was then I learned how anxious Francine’s husband

was about her participation in our studies. We all three chatted briefly at

their townhouse, and I left uncertain about her husband’s fears. By the time

I left, Francine continued looking pale and shaken, but happy.

The dose she received turned out to be less than psychedelic for the other

volunteers, and I raised it by 50 percent for the next set of trials. Francine

called Laura, feeling as if she needed to “keep up” with the rest of the

volunteers, not wanting to be considered a “lightweight tripper.” With some

misgivings, I agreed to let her return.

The day got off to a rocky start, as she had moved the bed into the far

corner of the room before Laura and I arrived. She didn’t want to move it

back into the middle, its usual position. In addition, a visiting medical

student had gone in to see her before we had introduced them, expressly

against my wishes. Francine was extraordinarily attentive to anonymity

issues, as she was a hospital employee. I would have first cleared with her

the idea of a visiting student.

Both of these irregularities—the bed placement and the student—set up

high anxiety in me before we started. I nearly cancelled the study, but

everyone seemed willing to carry on.

Within 15 minutes of swallowing the psilocybin capsule, Francine

became restless, frightened, and anxious. She accused me of “messing”

with her mind. When her panicked cell-phone call to her husband

disconnected mid-conversation, she blamed my “mind waves” for the

technical difficulties. Francine could tolerate only Laura in the room, and

she asked if the medical student and I would step out for a while. While we

were at the nurses’ station deciding how to proceed, Francine’s husband

raced down the hall, entered Room 531, and gathered her up. They pushed

their way past Laura and flew out the Research Center’s double doors

before I got my bearings. As her husband ran past me, he said, “I’ve seen

her this way before.”

I thought, “Now he tells me.”

The security guards came too late. While peaking on psilocybin, Francine

was loose in Albuquerque.

Thankfully, Francine remained under the watchful eye of her husband

that day and came to no harm. Nevertheless, I needed to write up and send

in reports to all the university committees and boards overseeing our

research. The Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute on

Drug Abuse also received copies of a narrative of the incident. I referred to

Francine’s session as “an unfortunate, but not unexpected adverse reaction.

Psychotic breaks do happen under the influence of these drugs, and they are

nearly always brief. The volunteer recompensated quickly and is showing

no ill effects of her session.”

Strictly speaking, this was true. Francine “felt fine” that next morning

and went back to work as if nothing had happened. However, she remained

convinced that leaving the Research Center against our advice, and under

the influence of psilocybin, was the only thing—in fact, the courageously

noble thing—to do. My “negative influence” left her little choice. Neither

Laura nor I, after many months, could make even the slightest inroads into

her fear and anxiety about what she began experiencing that morning.

We made some modifications in our protocols, requiring that we

interview more carefully volunteers’ spouses in order to learn about the

nature and basis for any serious misgivings on their part. We more clearly

stated the requirement that the research team give final permission to leave

the hospital. We also decided to begin with the administration of a high

dose of DMT in anyone interested in the psilocybin project. By doing so,

we could assess more carefully their ability to handle extreme psychedelic

states.

Francine’s session also effectively dashed any hopes for taking the

research out of the hospital.

I was deeply shaken. Francine was intelligent and experienced, and she

had been through our DMT work before. On the one hand, she had warned

us by saying she might never want any more psilocybin after her previous

peak experience. On the other hand, I didn’t want to disappoint her by

refusing further participation. Her unpleasant experiences on DMT could

have warned us about her inability to let go into fully psychedelic states, but

it was hard to tell at the time. In addition, I chose to ignore the warning

signs that morning: the peculiar bed arrangement and the visiting medical

student’s intrusiveness.

I began doubting my own judgment.

I also feared for giving fully psychedelic doses of psilocybin in the

hospital. But if we didn’t give full, active doses, what was the point? We

needed to study the psychedelic, not sub-psychedelic, properties of

psilocybin. Lower doses would not do, and the setting could not hold higher

doses.1

Research team conflicts also began emerging as the study progressed. A

particularly difficult one involved a part-time graduate student who joined

us after we completed the first dose-response study.

I handed over to Bob much of the initial screening of prospective DMT

volunteers. He returned calls, asked the first series of questions regarding

suitability, and explained the studies in which the caller might participate.

He then met with Laura and me to discuss whether to move the person

through the next step in the screening process. If we had additional

questions, Bob would follow up with them as necessary. While his role was

not crucial, it had taken several months to get him up to speed, and he got to

know well many of the second wave of volunteers.

A relative latecomer to the psychedelic field, Bob was like a child in a

candy shop. He exuded enthusiasm about the projects and was very helpful

in recruiting new subjects. He found the volunteers fascinating and wanted

to spend time with them. He loved attending meetings and conferences in

which well-known psychedelic research scientists reminisced about the

“good old days” and the next generation of investigators planned future

studies.

However, he had a difficult time knowing when to stop. One of our

volunteers invited Bob over to his house to take drugs, and he couldn’t pass

up the opportunity. When I shared my concern about this, he looked hurt

and replied, “You’ve been doing this for so long, I need to catch up.” I

advised him against any more of this type of behavior, but came up short of

flatly prohibiting it.

Soon, however, an unrelated “supervisory” incident showed me that I

could not afford to be so casual. This wake-up call took place in the

psychiatry clinic in which I saw patients for the university.

For some years, I had been prescribing medication for Leanne, an

intelligent and personable young woman with manic-depressive illness.

Later, Tom, a new social-work intern, joined the staff and came under my

supervision. He asked me to find him a stable and psychologically minded

patient to see in psychotherapy, and I naturally thought of Leanne. They

began working together, and from each of their reports, therapy was going

well. A little too well, as it turned out.

Leanne and Tom started having sex a few months after beginning

therapy. Neither Leanne, in our medication visits, nor Tom, in our weekly

supervisory sessions, mentioned this. Within a few months, Leanne

demanded that Tom leave his wife and marry her. Tom panicked and broke

off the relationship. Leanne sued Tom, the clinic, and the university. Tom

then threatened to sue me for “lack of supervision” if the university didn’t

let him leave without serious consequences. The university, wanting to

avoid a lengthy, expensive, and highly public trial, settled the case out of

court, and I avoided being named in a lawsuit. Learning from this

experience how liable I was for the behavior of those working under me,

even if I didn’t know what they were doing, I decided it was time to reign in

Bob the wayward graduate student.

Crying and accusing me of being unfair, Bob did not take well to being

told he could not take drugs with the volunteers. My department chairman

suggested I let him go. However, our research team was small, and it would

have taken months to train someone to take his place. I gave him a second

chance and told him that he could continue with the research if he promised

to avoid socializing with volunteers. The university attorney and my

chairman recommended I make him sign a contract to that effect. This

would allow me to cleanly end his relationship with the project if he slipped

up again.

Considering the enthusiasm with which Bob professed his involvement in

the studies, it was surprising to hear him say he “needed time to think about

it.” Within a week, he reluctantly agreed to sign the contract prohibiting

him from inappropriate extra-research activities. However, his poor

boundaries and desire to take drugs with those involved in the research

spilled over into another area: wanting to take drugs with me.

Bob made the hour-long drive up to my house in the mountains behind

Albuquerque one Saturday and appeared at my door unannounced.

Beginning with the cheery, and unlikely, “I was in the area and thought I’d

drop by,” the conversation quickly turned to his interest in “maybe taking

psilocybin mushrooms with you.” I was surprised, and I asked him what

was going on.

“I’ve got so much more to learn about psychedelics. I can’t take them

with volunteers now. But you’ve got so much to teach. I want to tap some

of that knowledge and experience. What better way than to trip with you in

your home?”

Feeling as if I were dealing with a disturbed psychiatric patient, I focused

on ending the conversation and the idea as quickly as possible.

“No. That’s not going to happen. You can trip with your friends, of

course, but not with volunteers nor with me. What seems best, though, is

that you get into some therapy to talk about this. You need to get a bit of

professional distance on this, and it seems hard to do.”

Bob’s face turned red and he started crying again.

“I know I shouldn’t have dropped by! I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s

come over me! I guess I’m lonely. I just want to fit in.”

“That’s okay.” I tried sounding supportive. “Have some lunch, and you

can head back into town.”

That wasn’t the end of it. For the next several months, whenever Laura,

Bob, and I would meet to discuss the research, Bob cried, or came close to

tears, around the issue of taking drugs: either with the volunteers or with

me. Worse, his feelings began spilling over in his dealings with prospective

volunteers. People shared with me some of the comments he casually

dropped while discussing the project with them:

“Rick’s pretty uptight about the research, you know.”

And, “It’s too bad Rick keeps so much to himself about his feelings and

motivations for this work.”

He also wasn’t getting to the volunteers important forms to sign and

articles to read.

Bob had to go, and it wasn’t easy telling him. He actually seemed

relieved that he no longer had to labor under what he thought were such

unreasonably restrictive conditions of employment. Unfortunately, he was

now free to socialize and take drugs with whomever he desired. Despite his

efforts to keep such activities to himself, I never stopped hearing about

them.

Finally, I was having problems taking in and dealing with all that the spirit

molecule was showing us it could do. I expected psychotherapeutic, near-

death, and mystical experiences during our work. However, the lack of

substantial change induced by them made me wonder about their validity.

I also was unprepared for the overwhelmingly frequent reports of contact

with beings. They challenged my view of the brain and reality. They also

stretched and frayed my ability to empathize and support our volunteers.

The lack of any close psychiatric peer colleagues added to my sense of

isolation and concern about how I was responding to these sessions.

The biomedical model was making it difficult to recruit volunteers, or to be

encouraging about what awaited them. Long-term benefits seemed minimal,

while adverse effects stood out more sharply and were accumulating. I

could not comfortably accept nor incorporate the remarkably high

frequency of being contact. Hoped-for colleagues did not join me or

decided to compete for precious funds and collaborators. The hospital

setting for a psilocybin study was impractical and possibly dangerous, thus

making me pessimistic about working with full doses. Research team

conflicts threatened what fragile hold I did maintain over the project.

Even Margot, my massage therapist, was worried, although I rarely spoke

about my research during our sessions. She was a highly intuitive

bodyworker I’d been seeing once or twice a month for years. During one

particular session, she became restless and distressed while looking me

over, lying on the table.

She said, “I see evil spirits hovering around you. They want to come

through this plane, using you and the drugs. I’m worried. This does not look

good to me.”

Margot was a little New Age, even for New Mexico. I laughed and

replied, “Well, Margot, I won’t answer if they knock.”

She was, nevertheless, accurate. Whether metaphorical, symbolic, or real,

there was a tremendous amount of negativity piling up around me. What to

do? I didn’t have to wait much longer for the solution, nor did I directly

choose it. Rather, it came my way in a frightening manner.

My former wife, Marion, suddenly developed cancer. Fortunately the

tumor was localized, and the surgeon was confident none remained after the

quickly scheduled operation. However, “just to be safe,” the physician

recommended more radical surgery, which Marion refused, preferring

instead to pursue alternative medical therapies. At the same time my

stepson, Marion’s youngest child, had become depressed and dropped out

of school while living with his father in Canada.

Marion asked if we could move to Canada to be near family while she

recuperated, to help out her son, and to give me some breathing room.

Uncertain as to how successfully I could commute to Albuquerque, I

nevertheless agreed to the move.

Every two months I scheduled a two-week stay in New Mexico, and I

tried running as many studies as we could during those visits. The wear and

tear was tremendous, and I worried about local support when I was gone.

No one knew the studies, nor the volunteers, as well as I did.

One of the research subjects for the dose-finding work with psilocybin

began having problems. Vladan, about whose experiences we read in

chapter 12, got stuck in a spiral of increasing pessimism with every

psilocybin session—a “what’s the point?” attitude. He never had the

breakthrough he thought would come with higher doses. Instead, he became

more reclusive and preoccupied. When told we wanted him to take a break

from further studies, he bought a semiautomatic weapon, “just in case of

Armageddon.” He adamantly denied any intention of using it against us. I

was not especially reassured, so I invited him to my office during one of my

New Mexico trips to assess his dangerousness. I relaxed somewhat after a

two-hour meeting, but Vladan did not want to give up the gun.

I obtained permission to begin an LSD study, but decided to wait.

Conditions did not look promising for giving LSD at the Research Center.

Finally, my former Buddhist monastic community began criticizing my

research and withdrawing their personal support at the same time. These

events were the final ones that led me to discontinue the psychedelic

research, and they are the focus of the next chapter.

Stepping on Holy Toes

There generally is little support for the incorporation of spirituality, with its

nonmaterial and therefore non-measurable factors, into clinical research’s

fold. We will see in this chapter that neither is organized religion, no matter

how mystically inclined, open-minded and secure enough to seriously

consider the spiritual potential of clinical research with psychedelics.

There are several places in this book where I refer to my interest in

Buddhist theory and practice. In addition to theoretical and practical

contributions to the research, I also received much personal support and

guidance from decades of involvement with an American Zen Buddhist

monastery. From the initial inspiration for the psychedelic research to the

development of the rating scale and our methods of supervising sessions,

my understanding of Buddhism pervaded nearly every aspect of working

with the spirit molecule.

Being raised a Jew in southern California in the 1950s and 1960s, my

religious training emphasized learning the Hebrew language and Jewish

festivals, history, and culture. We also remembered the Holocaust and

supported the newly formed Jewish state of Israel. We learned little about

how to directly encounter God. This was something for the ancient

patriarchs alone: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses.

There were moments of joy in my Jewish education. Singing Hebrew

folk songs and prayers in large groups was ecstatic, although I didn’t use

that word at the time. So were the complex swirling and whirling Israeli

folk dances we learned. In addition, one of my religious school teachers did

try teaching us to meditate. We closed our eyes when she did, and then

looked around the room through half-shut lids to see who was peeking. Our

teacher had a beatific expression on her face, sitting at her desk, fingers

interlaced in front of her lap. Once or twice during this classroom

meditation I glimpsed something inside that felt good, calm, and right, but I

also was startled and a little uncomfortable contacting it.

I later found Eastern religious teachings and practices provided the most

accessible methods to begin satisfying the desires for deeper truths that

emerged during my college years. In this way I’m similar to many of my

generation. These “new religions” included Zen and other forms of

Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sufism. Their emphasis on mystical union with

the source of all being resonated deeply with that need for ultimate truth.

The personal certainty embodied in recently arrived Japanese, Indian, and

Tibetan teachers, and the spiritual exercises that promised results confirmed

by generations of practitioners, combined to make an irresistible package.

My introduction to the mysteries of the East came in the form of

Transcendental Meditation in the early 1970s. I enjoyed the quiet and

peacefulness of this practice, but the intellectual underpinnings did not

appeal to me. Soon thereafter, I discovered in Buddhism both the practical

and intellectual inspiration I was seeking.

Buddhism is a meditation-based religion, 2,500 years old, that in

impartial, psychological, and relatively easily accessible terms describes

and considers all the states of mind one could possibly imagine, whether

horrific, beatific, neutral, helpful, or harmful. In addition, Buddhism offers

practical, cause-and-effect moral codes that apply the insights of meditation

to daily life.

It took a few tries to find a suitable Buddhist community. Once more, Jim

Fadiman at Stanford pointed me in the right direction, this time to a

midwestern United States Zen monastery run by a rather reclusive, but

startlingly solid, Asian teacher. I attended two weekend meditation retreats

there in 1974 and felt as if I had arrived home. The monks were serene but

down to earth, and we enjoyed being with each other. Most interesting was

that most of them had gained their first view of the spiritual path while on

psychedelic drugs.

They did not volunteer this information, of course. But in the

freewheeling early days of the temple, such informal self-disclosure was

common. It was as simple as asking, “Did you take psychedelics before

becoming a monk? How important were they in your decision?” The

overwhelming majority had taken them and had experienced their first

glimpse of the enlightened state of mind with their assistance.

A five-week retreat at the monastery during a break from medical school

helped me develop a portable and efficient Buddhist practice. The

meditation was straightforward: sit comfortably, back straight, and just sit.

“Just sit” as in “just walk,” “just wash the dishes,” “just breathe.” In other

words, focus all your attention on the task at hand. When sitting, therefore,

you just sat. No thinking, daydreaming, fidgeting, emotional reactions,

talking, or whatever else complicated the sitting process. The regular in-

and-out movement of the breath functioned as an excellent anchor, a point

upon which the wandering mind could ground and focus its attention

whenever distracting thoughts or feelings interrupted uncluttered

awareness.

Upon returning to medical school, I reserved a room for lunchtime

meditation and there were always one or two people joining me for a

halfhour “sit.” I stayed in close touch with several monks, visited the

monastery regularly, and hosted a retreat led by priests traveling to New

York.

Buddhism and meditation also seemed a rich field of academic study. I

arranged to take a medical school summer elective for mental health

professionals at the Nyingma Institute, which had been established by a

Tibetan Buddhist lama in the hills of Berkeley, California. During this

course we learned the basic principles and practices of Buddhist

psychology. It was here that I first learned about the Abhidharma, the

Buddhist system of psychology.

Abhidharma roughly translates into “catalog of mental states.” There are

hundreds of Abhidharma texts, but the Nyingma lama was interested in

sharing with us only the most basic principles.

One fundamental tenet was that the normal flow of personal experience

actually was a smooth synthesis of several component parts. These facets

are called the skandhas, or “heaps,” the five “things” that make up our

conscious state: form, feeling, perception, consciousness, and habitual

tendencies. We spent days discussing each of these until we developed a

consensus definition with which we felt comfortable and could express in

familiar Western terms.

Another important point was the possibility of, and methods for,

dissolving the glue that held these skandhas together. By deconstructing, as

it were, the facade of our sense of self, Buddhists believe we can access

deeper layers of reality, compassion, love, and wisdom. There was a

sequence of stages in that process, and a knowledgeable teacher could help

the meditator recognize and progress through those steps. Buddhism had

refined these techniques over millennia, and millions of practitioners had

verified and validated these methods and their results.

While these meditations were more elaborate and complicated than “just

sitting,” they were fascinating, and they produced the promised results. I

needed to write a scientific article on my summer experience, and I used

that opportunity to publish a description of the Abhidharma system and

some of my own meditative experiences. Learning about Abhidharma also

got me thinking about its usefulness in measuring psychedelic states.1

Upon graduating from medical school, I returned to California for

psychiatric training. There, in Sacramento, I helped establish and administer

a monastery-affiliated meditation group that met weekly and sponsored

retreats led by monks. For years the group met in my house, and I had many

opportunities to discuss my interests, psychedelic and otherwise, with

members of the monastic community. At the monastery, I underwent a

layperson’s ordination into the Buddhist sect whose teachings the abbot

followed, and I maintained close ties with my original monk friends, who

now were becoming senior members of the priestly hierarchy.

Career and training opportunities drew me away from Sacramento after

my four-year psychiatric residency at the University of California in Davis,

but I returned two and a half years later to join their faculty. The local

meditation group I helped establish still met, but the parent organization’s

structure had changed substantially. Many monks had left the fold as the

teachings became increasingly focused on the teacher himself and his

spiritual experiences. At the same time the abbot was becoming more

reclusive, surrounding himself with trusted assistants. In addition, there

now existed a hierarchy within the lay community. The atmosphere had

taken a turn toward “who is in, and who is out.” The informal and relaxed

give-and-take no longer existed.

When I later moved to New Mexico, I considered myself loosely

affiliated with the monastery’s extended Buddhist community. I was not

inclined to deal with the political structure now necessary to start a local

meditation group, but I did seek out other local members and I meditated

with them regularly in an informal setting. In addition, I remained in regular

contact with several monks at the head temple, many of whom were now

twenty-year acquaintances. While the monastic community as a whole had

lost some of its luster, I considered it my spiritual home and was married

there in 1990.

There are many ways my Buddhist training and practice affected the DMT

research. One of these was in how we supervised volunteers’ encounters

with DMT.

Supervising psychedelic sessions usually is called “sitting.” Many

believe this comes from the idea of “babysitting” people who are in a highly

dependent, at times confused and vulnerable state. Even more importantly,

though, is “sitting” in the meditational sense. The research nurse, either

Cindy or Laura, and I did our best to practice “just sitting” while being with

our volunteers: watching the breath, being alert, eyes gazing straight ahead,

ready to respond, keeping a positive and aware attitude, letting the research

subject’s experience unfold without unnecessary interference.2

My understanding of meditation also helped me guide people through the

stages of the DMT experience. For example, I applied the Abhidharma’s

model of mind when coaching volunteers not to get swept away by the

onslaught of colors, or to investigate the space within the grains of wood in

the door if they kept their eyes open. Suggesting volunteers let go, focus on

the breath and body sensations, keep an open but fluid mind to whatever

came their way—all of these were tools I had acquired during decades of

meditation practice and study.

Another example of how psychedelics and Buddhist meditation met was

in the development of our rating scale.

Previous paper-and-pencil psychological questionnaires that measured

psychedelic drug effects had serious shortcomings. They assumed that

psychedelics were “psychotomimetic” or “schizotoxic,” and therefore they

emphasized unpleasant experiences. Many of these scales were developed

using volunteers, sometimes ex-narcotic-addict prisoners, who were not

told what drugs they were given, or what the effects might be.

To offer an alternative to these tools for measuring the psychedelic

experience, I used an Abhidharma- and skandha-based method of

characterizing mental states. This purely descriptive model meshed well

with what’s known as the “mental-status” approach to interviewing

psychiatric patients: You talk with someone and gently investigate the

quality of their basic mental functions, such as mood, thinking, and

perceptions.

The familiar Abhidharma terms “form,” “feeling,” “perception,”

“consciousness,” and “habitual tendencies” became the framework or

structure within which the rating scale’s questions emerged, and how we

classified replies to those questions. However, instead of calling them

skandhas, “clinical clusters” seemed more appropriate and palatable for a

Western scientific audience.

We gave and analyzed this new questionnaire, the Hallucinogen Rating

Scale, or HRS, at the end of every DMT session for the entire project. The

results were remarkable.

It is well-known in clinical psychopharmacology that a good

questionnaire is more sensitive than any biological factor in assessing drug

effects. In other words, a well-designed rating scale is better than

measurements of blood pressure, heart rate, or hormone levels in

distinguishing doses of a drug, or different types of drugs, from each other. I

hoped that the HRS would follow in that tradition, and this it did without

difficulty. We were better able to separate responses to various doses of

DMT, or the effects of combining DMT with other drugs, using HRS scores

than by measuring changes in any biological variable, including all the

cardiovascular and blood hormone data. However, it also validated the

wisdom and strength of the Buddhist approach to mental states.

Clifford Qualls, Ph.D., the Research Center biostatistician, and I grouped

together HRS questions using the “clinical cluster” or skandha method and

compared this method of analysis to a large number of alternative purely

statistical models. The Abhidharma’s technique was as good as, if not

superior to, ones developed solely upon mathematical considerations. Since

the computer-derived classification of results was no better than the clinical

cluster one, and since using the skandhas made more sense intuitively, the

Buddhist classification system won out. Other groups have since used the

HRS and confirmed its usefulness in measuring other altered states of

consciousness, drug-induced and otherwise.3

Buddhism also helped me make sense of people’s DMT sessions. Its far-

reaching perspective includes all experiences: spiritual, near-death, and

even nonmaterial or invisible realms. However, I did come up against two

serious limitations in my lack of Buddhist education.

How was I to respond to a volunteer who spoke as if she or he just had

undergone a drug-induced spiritual experience? Was it a “real”

enlightenment or not? As detailed in chapter 16, “Mystical States,” these

sessions certainly left me feeling as if something deeply profound had

happened. And there was no question on the volunteers’ part that they had

undergone the deepest and most profound experience of their lives.

However, it was beyond my training and expertise to determine the validity

or “certifiability” of a volunteer’s understanding with anything other than

psychiatric models of interpretation.

Another problem was how to relate what I knew about Buddhist

approaches to nonmaterial beings with what our volunteers were reporting.

For example, Tibetan and Japanese versions of Buddhism possess a full

roster of demons, gods, and angels. I understood these encounters to

symbolically represent certain qualities of ourselves, not autonomous

noncorporeal life forms.

When volunteers began reporting contact, my first reaction was, “Oh, this

is something they talk about in Buddhism. They are just aspects of our own

minds.”

These encounters got stranger, however, and the beings started testing,

probing, inserting things into, eating, and raping our volunteers. A Buddhist

framework seemed less capable of explaining these types of experiences.

Generically I could apply the inherent skepticism of Buddhism in taking

anything as “real” or “special” about these stories. That is, it was “just

meeting beings.” These apparent life forms were not necessarily any wiser

or more trustworthy than anything else we might meet in our lives or minds.

Nevertheless, I needed some guidance, both for the spiritual experience

and the “contact” aspects of our work. I began sharing our findings, and my

questions, with trusted monk friends. The one to whom I turned most often

was Venerable Margaret, a Buddhist priest I met in 1974 during my first

stay at the monastery.4

A clinical psychologist by training, Margaret became a Buddhist monk

after realizing, “I didn’t want to be let loose on the world the way I was.”

She wanted to experience her own mental and spiritual health before trying

to help others. She loved monastic life, however, and stayed on. Margaret

and I spoke the same language, shared the same concerns, and viewed the

human condition through similarly trained clinical eyes.

Before beginning the actual DMT studies, I happened to spend a few

days at the monastery. My two-year journey through the regulatory

labyrinth, seeking permission and funding to begin giving DMT, was

drawing to a close. Margaret had risen to chief assistant to the abbot, and

her time was heavily scheduled. However, we found an opportunity to meet

and I updated her on my personal and professional life. The conversation

moved into my interest in giving DMT to human research subjects. Sharing

with her my belief that the pineal gland might make DMT at mystical

moments in our lives, I speculated about its possible role in death and near-

death states.

The lanky and shaven-headed woman monk touched the tips of her

fingers together in front of her mouth, tenting them in and out. Her

intensely blue eyes narrowed, and she looked over my shoulder, meeting the

white wall with her gaze.

She said quietly, “What you are suggesting is something that only one out

of a million people could do.”

I took this intentionally unclear remark as encouragement to go deeper

with the topic. Wondering about the role of psychedelics in spiritual

development, I commented on how many of the now-senior monks had

gotten their first sighting of the spiritual path from LSD and other drugs.

Margaret laughed, saying, “You know, I honestly can’t say if my LSD

trips helped or hurt my spiritual practice!”

“Hard to tell, isn’t it?” I replied.

“Indeed.”

She looked at her watch, picked up her tea cup, and graciously excused

herself.

The next year, 1990, I was married at the monastery. At separate

meetings before the ceremony, I chatted with two other monk friends, now

some of the highest ranking officers in the order. Both of them had taken

psychedelic drugs in college with a fellow who later became a close friend

of mine in New Mexico. This mutual acquaintance was well-known for

using MDMA in a psychotherapeutic setting. They both asked about their

friend and his MDMA research and were in kind fascinated by my plans to

study DMT.

After wrapping up the dose-response study in 1992, I wrote a long letter

to Margaret describing the full range of the stories volunteers shared with

us, including near-death, enlightenment, and being contact. I also shared

with her my feelings that the setting was too neutral, and our volunteers too

familiar with psychedelics, for any real beneficial effects to result. I raised

the issue of helping people more directly, along the lines of a psilocybin-

assisted psychotherapy project with the terminally ill.

I was drawn to a terminal illness study because of the promising work in

this area performed during the first wave of psychedelic clinical research in

the 1960s. In addition, its emphasis on the positive effects of spiritual and

near-death experiences possible with psychedelics appealed to my deeper

interest in these drugs.

Margaret replied, “Most interesting! But to what purpose? Maybe future

‘helping’ work will shed some light on that.” She also wondered about the

risk-to-benefit ratio and advised performing such a study only if I was sure

there were extremely few risks and an equally high likelihood of success.

Insightfully, she also asked me to consider the lack of time available to

undo any harm incurred from a painful or disturbing psilocybin session.

The years passed quickly, and by the end of 1994 my questions grew

regarding the utility of my psychedelic research. Adverse effects

accumulated, and long-term benefit was difficult to assess. In addition, the

constant exposure to psychedelicized volunteers was beginning to exhaust

me. I shared these developments with Margaret.

As always, she supported whatever seemed most useful for my own

spiritual growth. If it involved giving up the research, she understood.

However, she encouraged me to look for someone to whom I might transfer

the project so the work I had begun would not end in my absence.

The additional circumstances described in the last chapter led to my

moving to Canada, but I commuted to Albuquerque in order to continue

running studies. After relocating, I met the members of the local monastery-

affiliated meditation group and started sitting with them. There existed a

major branch of the order in a nearby U.S. state across the border, and their

priest scheduled a retreat in our community. Venerable Gwendolyn arrived,

and the weekend workshop began.

Gwendolyn had entered the head temple directly from her parents’ home.

She had had a series of extraordinarily profound spiritual experiences at the

monastery and was a highly ranked teacher. Nevertheless, she was not

especially wise in the ways of the world, and running an urban meditation

center was a significant challenge to her social skills.

During a pastoral counseling session with Gwendolyn, I let her know of

the New Mexico research and some of my growing ambivalence toward it. I

appreciated the opportunity to air my story to a monk who knew nothing

about me, and to listen to her fresh perspective.

I was surprised to hear Gwendolyn’s voice on the phone a week later.

“I was sick for three days after talking with you, it upset me so. I called

the abbot, who as you know is near death. This is the first issue he’s taken a

personal interest in for over a year. He and I talked, as I did with other

senior monks. We have decided you must stop your research immediately.

I’ll write you this week a more formal letter.”

I replied, “Let me think about it.”

Two weeks later, a letter came, not from Gwendolyn, but from Margaret. It

began with, “I hope what I heard third-hand isn’t true. But if it is, let me say

this.” With that introduction, she began an indictment of my research: past,

present, and planned:

“Your psychedelic research is ultimately futile, devoid of real benefit to

humanity, and dangerous;

“The idea of administering psychedelics to the terminally ill is to me

appallingly dangerous. It comes about as close to ‘playing God’ as anything

I’ve seen in the mental health professions;

“An attempt to induce enlightenment experiences by chemical means can

never, will never, succeed. What it will do is badly confuse people and

result in serious consequences for you.”

Gwendolyn’s letter arrived next.

“[Your research] constitutes wrong livelihood according to the Buddha’s

teachings;

“That DMT might elicit enlightenment experiences is delusional and

contrary to the teachings of the Buddha;

“Hallucinogens disorder and confuse the mind, impede religious training,

and can be a cause of rebirth into realms of confusion and suffering;

“This is the teaching and viewpoint of myself, [the abbot], [the order],

and the whole of Buddhism.

“We urge you to cease all such experiments.”

I reminded these monks of the years of dialogue I’d had with them

regarding my interest in and performance of psychedelic research. I also

pointed out the continuous interest in my work by members of the

community, and the absence of any prior recommendations to avoid or stop

it. If anything, there was enthusiasm and encouragement to use these

interests as grist for going deeply into my own spiritual relationship to the

outside world. I recalled the many conversations I’d had with monks who’d

validated the importance of their psychedelic experiences as leading to their

first inklings of enlightenment.

Additionally, I was eager to discuss some of their concerns. These

included the obvious problems associated with thinking that certain

knowledge was accessible only with an outside agent; that is, a drug. I also

accepted the theoretical possibility raised by Gwendolyn that someone

might mistake a real enlightenment experience for a psychedelic

“flashback.”

However, none of these attempts at enlarging the dialogue met with any

success.

What was going on?

The abbot was dying, and he was making sure the teachings he left behind

were as unsullied by controversy as possible. In addition, senior monks

were lobbying for elected posts that would determine the future of the

community. Who was the most zealous defender of the teaching? Those

whose positive psychedelic experiences had led them to Buddhism in the

first place had to remain silent, and close rank behind those without such

backgrounds. Psychedelics could not become a divisive issue at this crucial

moment in the monastery’s existence.

And then the Fall 1996 issue of Tricycle, The Buddhist Review came out

with my article calling for a discussion of integrating psychedelics into

Buddhist practice.

In that article I presented Elena’s first high-dose session, which we’ve

read in chapter 16, “Mystical States.” Her experience served as an example

of the type of spiritual breakthrough possible with DMT in someone open

to them—that is, a person with a serious meditation practice, solid

psychological mindedness, and a deep reverence and respect for drugs like

DMT. I also raised the concern that isolated experiences, occurring without

any sort of spiritual or therapeutic context, were not especially effective in

producing long-term serious change in our volunteers. I therefore concluded

with the following:

“I believe there are ways in which Buddhism and the psychedelic

community might benefit from an open, frank exchange of ideas, practices,

and ethics. For the psychedelic community, the ethical, disciplined

structuring of life, experience, and relationship provided by thousands of

years of Buddhist communal tradition have much to offer. This well-

developed tradition could infuse meaning and consistency into isolated,

disjointed, and poorly integrated psychedelic experiences. The wisdom of

the psychedelic experience, without the accompanying and necessary love

and compassion cultivated in a daily practice, may otherwise be frittered

away in an excess of narcissism and self-indulgence. While this is also

possible within a Buddhist meditative tradition, it is less likely with the

checks and balances in place within a dynamic community of practitioners.

“On the other hand, dedicated Buddhist practitioners with little success in

their meditation, but well along in moral and intellectual development,

might benefit from a carefully timed, prepared, supervised, and followed-up

psychedelic session to accelerate their practice. Psychedelics, if anything,

provide a view. And a view, to one so inclined, can inspire the long hard

work required to make that view a living reality.”5

This article sealed my fate within the monastic community. My lifelong

affiliation with the order would implicate it as contributing to these ideas.

Gwendolyn sent copies of the Tricycle article to members of my new

meditation group as well as to other groups and the monastery. In it she

scribbled comments she remembered I made during what I believed was our

confidential pastoral counseling session. She wrote to the local

congregation, telling them not to enter my house because there might be

psychedelic drugs kept in it.

Her behavior brought these issues to the boiling point. I lodged a formal

complaint against this breach of confidence. As much as calling

Gwendolyn’s behavior into question, I wanted a definitive statement from

the order regarding their attitude about my research. They complied on both

counts.

The monastic review agreed she had indeed broken confidence, but it

was for a “greater good.” That is, it was done to “prevent mistakes from

being made in the name of Buddhism.” One could not be a proper Buddhist

and consider psychedelics to play any part in it.

There was little I could do. Holiness had won out over truth. This

particular brand of Buddhism was no different from any other organization

whose survival depended upon a uniformly accepted platform of ideas.

Only they could determine what were permissible questions, and what were

not.

Later I learned that the monastic community had elected Margaret head

of the order. The two monks who had taken psychedelics years before with

my New Mexico friend also did well in the elections. One was elected

abbot of the monastery, the other his chief assistant. So political ambitions

also took on greater importance than a truthful dialogue. It was unlikely that

the organization could admit and openly discuss that their three leading

teachers were former LSD users, or that they had decided to enter a

monastic life after drug-induced inspiration.

Although I could see beyond the hypocrisy that motivated much of the

monastery’s repudiation of my work, it took its toll. Combined with the

events and circumstances I described in the last chapter, my energy to

continue with the research flagged considerably. After completing two

long-distance research trips to Albuquerque, the extra pressure exerted by

my spiritual community broke down the last remnant of my desire to

continue. It was time to stop.

I resigned from the university and returned the drugs and the last year’s

worth of grant money to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. I wrote

closing summaries on all of the projects and sent copies to the boards and

committees who had been working with me for the past seven years. The

pharmacy weighed all our drugs, packed them up, and mailed them to a

secure facility near Washington, D.C. The supplies of DMT, psilocybin, and

LSD remain there to this day.

Part VI What Could and

Might Be

DMT: The Spirit Molecule

It is almost inconceivable that a chemical as simple as DMT could provide

access to such an amazingly varied array of experiences, from the least

dramatic to the most unimaginably earth-shattering. From psychological

insights to encounters with aliens. Abject terror or nearly unbearable bliss.

Near-death and rebirth. Enlightenment. All of these from a naturally

occurring chemical cousin of serotonin, a widespread and essential brain

neurotransmitter.

It is just as fascinating to ponder why Nature, or God, made DMT. What

is the biological or evolutionary advantage to having various plants and our

bodies synthesize the spirit molecule? If DMT is indeed released at

particularly stressful times in our lives, is that a coincidence, or is it

intended? If it is intended, for what purpose?

In the case reports, we’ve seen how strikingly similar volunteers’

experiences are to naturally occurring psychedelic states of consciousness.

It’s difficult to ignore the overlap of research subjects’ descriptions of

highdose DMT sessions with those from people who have undergone

spontaneous near-death, spiritual, and mystical states. While I was not

expecting contact with nonmaterial beings to be especially common before

starting our work, the resemblance between those occurring “in the field”

and in Room 531 is also undeniable.

The similarities between naturally occurring and DMT-induced

phenomena support my suggestion that spontaneously occurring

“psychedelic” experiences are mediated by elevated levels of endogenous

DMT. In chapter 4, “The Psychedelic Pineal,” I presented a series of

biological scenarios in which the pineal may synthesize DMT, and I

speculated about the metaphysical and spiritual implications of these

possibilities.

How then might this spirit molecule, whether produced from the inside

through these presumed biological pathways, or taken from outside as in

our studies, modify our perceptions so radically? In this chapter we will

give our imaginations free rein to consider any and all possibilities.

Most of us, including the most hard-nosed neuroscientists and

nonmaterialistic mystics, accept that the brain is a machine, the instrument

of consciousness. It is a bodily organ made up of cells and tissues, proteins,

fats, and carbohydrates. It processes raw sensory data delivered by the sense

organs using electricity and chemicals.

If we accept the “receiver of reality” model for brain function, let’s

compare it to another receiver with which we’re all familiar: the television.

By making the analogy of the brain to the TV, it’s possible to think of how

altered states of consciousness, including psychedelic ones brought about

by DMT, relate to the brain as a sophisticated receiver.

The simplest and most familiar levels of change to which the spirit

molecule provides access are the personal and psychological. These effects

may be like fine-tuning the television image, adjusting the contrast,

brightness, and color scheme. These “images” consists of feelings,

memories, and sensations that are not at all unusual or unsuspected. There

is nothing especially new, but what is there is now seen much more clearly

and in finer detail.

Low doses of DMT brought about these types of responses in our

volunteers. They sometimes also occurred at higher doses in those whose

personal needs and makeup required a deeper reworking of their own lives

and relationships.

In performing these consciousness adjustments, DMT does not differ

much from other drugs or processes used in the psychotherapeutic process.

Stimulants, especially the amphetamines and amphetamine-like drugs like

MDMA, enhance mental processes in a potentially helpful way. They make

it easier to remember and think. By magnifying and clarifying the feelings

attached to those memories and thoughts, they make it possible for us to

face and accept those emotions, and move on.

Many of the same mechanisms apply to a deep psychotherapeutic setting.

The persistence and support of the therapist in dredging up painful

memories and managing the powerful emotions they evoke have similarly

beneficial effects. In our DMT work, we saw drug-induced effects on the

normal everyday mind combine with supportive and encouraging attitudes

on our part to produce new and powerfully felt personal insights.

For example, Stan could feel more acutely and directly the anxiety and

stress of his divorce and its effect on his daughter. Marsha, through her

dreamlike sessions in which she saw caricatures of Anglo beauty, faced the

pain of her husband’s difficulty accepting who she really was—physically

and culturally. And Cassandra finally felt the relationship between her

brutal rape and the abdominal pain she carried around with her for so many

years, and thereby began to release it.

There also may be biological components to some of the personal

clearing, therapeutic, and healing effects we saw in these types of sessions.

For example, the euphoria brought on by DMT helped volunteers more

unflinchingly look at their lives and conflicts. These ecstatic feelings may

be, in part, related to the powerful DMT-induced surge of the morphinelike

brain chemical beta-endorphin. DMT also stimulated a massive rise in the

brain hormones vasopressin and prolactin. Scientists believe these

compounds are important in feelings of bonding, attachment, and comfort

with other members of the species. Perhaps the elevations in these brain

chemicals made it easier for our volunteers to trust us, relax into the drug

effects, and share powerfully personal issues in ways that previously were

impossible.

What happens when the spirit molecule pulls and pushes us beyond the

physical and emotional levels of awareness? We enter into invisible realms,

ones we cannot normally sense and whose presence we can scarcely

imagine. Even more surprising, these realms appear to be inhabited.

At a certain point, I decided to accept at face value volunteers’ reports.

This thought experiment replaced my original tendency to explain away,

interpret, or reduce their experiences into something else, such as a

disordered brain’s hallucinations, dreams, or psychological symbolism.

Now, after several years of additional study and reflection, I think it’s worth

considering seriously whether it’s possible that these experiences indeed

were exactly what they seemed to be.1

I have struggled personally and professionally with developing the

following radical explanations for our volunteers’ apparent contact with

nonmaterial beings. Even after stating them, I remain skeptical about their

merit. Why couldn’t I stick with tried and true biological or more traditional

psychological models?

At a brain science level, maybe what our volunteers encountered was a

vivid hallucinatory experience, resulting from DMT activation of brain

centers responsible for vision, emotion, and thought. After all, people

dream and are completely swept up in the reality of the experience at the

time. The rapid eye movements that sometimes took place in our subjects

may have indicated the presence of a “waking” dream state.

However, volunteers were convinced that there were differences between

what they experienced during DMT-induced contact with beings and their

typical dreams. Observing the same things with eyes opened or closed, in

an alert, awake state of consciousness, also made it difficult for them to

accept that it was “just a dream.” Neither did I feel the same way listening

to their stories of encounters as I do when one normally relates a dream to

me in psychotherapy. Our volunteers’ reports were so clear, convincing, and

“real” that I repeatedly thought, “This sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard

about in my therapy patients’ dream life. It is much more bizarre, well-

remembered, and internally consistent.”

In addition, a biological explanation along the lines of a waking dream or

hallucination usually brought on a certain resistance within the volunteer. A

subtle friction might develop between us that limited the depth of their

sharing and disclosure that was so valuable in our work together. A research

subject might say in so many words, “No, that wasn’t a dream, or a

hallucination. It was real. I can tell the difference. And if that’s what you

think it is, then I’ll keep the strangest aspects of my session to myself!”

Even more prone to cause a volunteer to dismiss my interpretations as

inaccurate or inappropriate was any attempt to use psychological

explanatory models. Freudian psychoanalytic systems would understand the

experience of contact with beings as an expression of unconscious conflicts

over aggressive, sexual, or dependency impulses. There were certainly

times I used this approach in reacting to particular dreamlike sessions.

However, I could not in good conscience suggest that any repressed

unconscious infantile drives were behind the experimental manipulations

by, or communication with, these beings.

Jungian psychology includes a broader perspective on the language of the

unconscious, and builds upon and incorporates the fields of mythology, art,

and religion more than the Freudian school usually does. Nevertheless, it is

a psychological model, not a physical or biological one. For example, Jung

referred to the image of “unidentified flying objects” as a yearning for

wholeness as represented by the circle. Responding to beings as mental

constructs or projections, no matter how large the scale, continues to

convert the experience into “something else.” It does not address the

overwhelming and convincing sense of certainty felt by the person having

the experience.

Beyond these intellectual concerns, I was continually faced with the

emotional challenge of the developing relationship between the volunteers’

experiences and my ability to respond to them. My study, background, and

experience meshed well with research subjects’ descriptions of personal and

transpersonal sessions, such as “feeling and thinking,” near-death and

rebirth, and mystical states. I understood these experiences, volunteers felt I

was appropriately tracking and responding to them, and there was little

conflict.

However, whenever I tried to react to being-contact sessions with

anything I knew or believed previously, it just didn’t work. I was stuck. So,

I decided to engage in the thought-experiment to which I refer at the end of

chapter 13, Contact Through the Veil: 1. That is, I tried responding to

volunteers’ reports of contact with beings as if they were true. At first, this

involved simply listening, and asking for clarification. Later on, as more

tales accumulated, I could refer to other people’s accounts in an empathic

manner that made it easier for volunteers to feel I understood and accepted

what they had to say. That way they could share with me their most unusual

and almost embarrassingly unexpected encounters.

Therefore, let’s consider the proposal that when our volunteers journeyed

to the further bounds of DMT’s reach, when they felt as if they were

somewhere else, they were indeed perceiving different levels of reality. The

alternative levels are as real as this one. It’s just that we cannot perceive

them most of the time.

In making this suggestion, I’m not discarding the brain-chemistry and

psychological models. Rather, I wish to add to the options we entertain in

attempting to develop explanations that are helpful to volunteers,

intellectually satisfying to researchers, and perhaps even testable using

methods not yet invented but theoretically possible.

Returning to the TV analogy, these cases suggest that, rather than merely

adjusting the brightness, contrast, and color of the previous program, we

have changed the channel. No longer is the show we are watching everyday

reality, Channel Normal.

DMT provides regular, repeated, and reliable access to “other” channels.

The other planes of existence are always there. In fact, they are right here,

transmitting all the time! But we cannot perceive them because we are not

designed to do so; our hard-wiring keeps us tuned in to Channel Normal. It

takes only a second or two—the few heartbeats the spirit molecule requires

to make its way to the brain—to change the channel, to open our mind to

these other planes of existence.2

How might this happen?

I claim little understanding of the physics underlying theories of parallel

universes and dark matter. What I do know, however, causes me to consider

them as possible places where DMT might lead us, once we have rushed

past the personal.

Theoretical physicists propose the existence of parallel universes based

upon the phenomenon of interference. One of the simplest demonstrations

of interference is what happens to a light beam passing through narrow

holes or slits in cardboard. Various rings and colored edges appear on the

screen on which the light lands, not the simple outlines of the cardboard one

would expect. Scientists conclude from this and more complex experiments

that there are “invisible” light particles that interfere with those we can see,

deflecting light in unexpected ways.

Parallel universes interact with each other when interference happens.

There are, theoretically, an inconceivably large number of parallel

universes, or “multiverses,” each similar to this one and possessing the

same laws of physics. Thus, there would not necessarily be anything

especially odd or exotic about these different realms. However, what makes

them parallel is that the particles composing them are located in different

positions in each universe.

DMT may allow our receiver brain to sense these multiverses.

British scientist David Deutsch, author of The Fabric of Reality, is a

leading theorist in this field.3 Deutsch and I have corresponded about

whether DMT could modify brain function so as to provide access to or

awareness of parallel universes. He doubted that this was possible, because

it would require “quantum computing.” Quantum computing, according to

Deutsch, “would be capable of distributing components of a complex task

among vast numbers of parallel universes, and then sharing the results.”

Thus, its potential power is unimaginably great. One of the conditions

necessary for quantum computing is a temperature near absolute zero, as

cold as deep space. Thus, prolonged contact between universes is unlikely

in a biological system.

Nevertheless, physicists once believed that superconductivity—when

electricity passes through wires or other material with almost no resistance

—could occur only at similarly low temperatures. Over the last ten to

fifteen years, however, chemists have developed new materials that allow

superconductivity at higher and higher temperatures. In fact, it is

conceivable that superconductivity may one day actually occur at room

temperature.

I asked Deutsch if the future of quantum computing might follow a

similar trajectory. While he considered this a “reasonably good” analogy, he

held that the complexity of quantum computing was much greater than that

of superconductivity: “A room-temperature quantum computer would be an

enormously more surprising thing than room-temperature

superconductivity.”4

Because I know so little about theoretical physics, there are fewer

constraints reining me in regarding such speculations. That the analogy

between superconductivity and quantum computing is “reasonably good”

encourages me to take the next step in theorizing about DMT and the brain.

In such a scenario, DMT is the key ingredient changing the brain’s

physical properties in such a way that quantum computing may occur at

body temperature. If this were the case, “seeing into” parallel universes is a

possible outcome.

Along these lines, however, Deutsch did not think that glimpsing parallel

universes would be particularly strange. He said, “Even if there were

quantum computation in the brain, it would definitely not feel, subjectively,

like ‘seeing into quantum realms’ [my phrase]. It would not feel special at

all at the time. Just as in any other interference experiment, one would have

to work backward from the logic, statistics, and complexity of the outcome

of one’s thoughts to infer that one must have been ‘thinking in a quantum

manner’ at an earlier time to achieve that outcome.”5

Deutsch’s comment about how normal a parallel universe might seem

reminds me of some of the stories we did hear about in chapter 12, “Unseen

Worlds”: Encounters with relatively normal-appearing, everyday existences

that had no relationship at all to what was occurring at the Research Center.

People, scenes, and interactions that to all intents and purposes appeared to

be going on parallel to this here-and-now existence.

Consider, for example, Sean’s landing in the middle of an remarkably

ordinary family scene in what seemed to be rural Mexico, and Heather’s

meeting with the Spanish-speaking woman who repeatedly threw a white

blanket in front of her. Many volunteers also found themselves in empty

rooms, halls, or apartments that seemed similar to this world, but also

different.

On the other hand, I wonder if parallel universes that formed, like ours,

billions of years ago would appear especially familiar to us. For while the

same laws of physics, and therefore biology, would hold sway in our world

and theirs, the organisms and the technologies they developed might have

taken fantastically different turns. Reptilian, insectlike, and unrecognizable

shapes possessing intelligence should not be unexpected, nor should be

highly advanced technology of space travel, supercomputation, and a

blending of biology and technology, such as those reported by many of our

volunteers.

The strangest realms to which DMT might lead are those that exist within

the mysterious realms of dark matter. There, which may indeed be here, no

one knows what we will find.

Dark matter comprises at least 95 percent of this universe’s mass. In

other words, nearly all of the matter in the universe is invisible. We cannot

see it. It neither generates nor reflects radiation of any type, visible or

otherwise. The only way we know it is there is by its gravitational effects. It

must exist by virtue of the fact that the visible universe maintains its

particular shape. Without this mass, there would not be enough gravity to

hold the universe together—it would fly apart.

Scientists have nominated several candidates for the “stuff” that

comprises dark matter. “Normal” matter that radiates little or no light—

planets, dead or unborn stars, and black holes—may account for about 20

percent of dark matter.

However, it’s likely that most, if not all, dark matter consists of particles

quite different from our familiar protons, electrons, and neutrons. These

“black” particles may obey entirely different laws of physics, unlike those

in parallel universes. Finding ourselves in a world composed of them, we

most likely would not recognize much.

The leading candidates for being the building blocks of dark matter are

WIMPS, or “weakly interacting massive particles.” They are called massive

only in a relative sense, meaning they are larger than a proton or a hydrogen

atom.

Recent thinking about WIMPS suggests their strange nature, one that

immediately causes us to hearken back to many of our volunteers’ reports:

“If WIMPS were indeed created in the Big Bang, we will be surrounded by

them because of their gravitational interaction with the visible matter in the

universe. Indeed, as you read this article there could be a billion WIMPS

streaming through your body every second, travelling at a million

kilometers per hour. However, as WIMPS only interact weakly with matter,

most will pass straight through you with no hindrance.”6

Science agencies in the United States and other nations are spending

billions of dollars on WIMPS sensors buried deep in the earth. They are

looking for the occasional flash of light that indicates a rare collision of a

dark-matter particle with one of regular matter. These sensitive machines

require such subterranean depths so as to block out other sources of

radiation.

Maybe we do not need such expensive detectors. It may be that DMT

alters the characteristics of our brains so that it is possible to perceive

WIMPS interacting with normal matter.

It is difficult to imagine what a dark-matter world might look like, let

alone how its residents might appear. Maybe some of what several

volunteers described as a “visualization of information” in chapter 12 is a

variety of dark-matter “life”: moving hieroglyphics pregnant with meaning,

numbers and words floating by, imparting information.

Either of these invisible levels of existence, parallel universes or dark

matter, are present at the same time as this reality. Thus, they both are

options we must consider for where DMT takes us when our consciousness

is no longer in this plane of experience. The immediacy of the transition

makes appealing these two alternate viewpoints regarding the incredibly

unusual places our volunteers describe. This is because they are as much

here as there. So the question about “inside” versus “outside,” as many

volunteers posed it, really no longer has any meaning.

The concept of these different levels of reality permeating and suffusing

ours leads us next to the surprisingly common report by the volunteers that

“They were expecting me,” “They welcomed me back.” The beings are at

home working in this environment, and “it’s business as usual” for them.

We, on the other hand, can only gape slack-jawed in awe, barely able to

respond.

Since we usually do not see or feel these beings’ presence at other times,

it’s worth wondering how they know when to anticipate our arrival. Perhaps

before we see them our presence is less real for these beings, too. They

might sense us, but not especially clearly or in a way that allows interaction

with us. It is as if they see us, but only our images, as in a mirror or through

a window. Thus, they could be ready, but not be able to act upon us until we

step through the door or walk around to their side of the window.

Think of an instrument that requires an extremely hot temperature to

record and send information. While at room temperature, not functioning, it

is a dusty gray color and appears nearly invisible as it blends into the

background. When it reaches its operating temperature, in addition to being

able to perform its new receiving and transmitting functions, it now glows

bright red and stands out quite clearly. Perhaps by changing our

consciousness in such a way that we perceive denizens of alternate planes

of existence, DMT modifies the “appearance” of our consciousness, too.

Thus we become real for the beings once they become real for us.

How might these beings be even dimly aware of our presence, if we

normally don’t have an inkling of theirs? Once more, we’re treading on

extraordinarily thin ice by even thinking about explanations for this

phenomenon. The mere need to attempt an understanding shows us how far

afield our thinking has come. Nevertheless, we can take another small step

in the suspension of disbelief, and consider this question.

Perhaps we are not “dark” for the denizens of dark matter, or “parallel” to

those intelligent beings who have mastered quantum computing. We are

limited to inferring these alternative realities exist by employing powerful

mathematical treatment of massive amounts of experimental data. It may be

that those who have evolved in different universes, or according to their

own unique laws of physics, actually can observe us directly with their own

senses or by using particular types of technology.

We must ask the next question that naturally follows. Once we are

“there” and the beings and we have made contact, with what body do they

interact? As we have heard, all manner of manipulations took place:

adjustments, implants, pleasant and fearful sexual or physical contact. It’s

not an especially difficult leap to accept consciousness-to-consciousness

exchanges in dark matter or parallel universes. More problematic is

imagining how changes in our ability to receive new levels of reality affect

our “bodies.” Nevertheless, I think we need to consider this, if only in a

preliminary manner.

While we are watching, or rather are existing in, Channel Normal, our

body is solid, has discrete boundaries, and responds to gravity. While we

are perceiving, or established in, Channel Dark Matter, we may be

experiencing our body using WIMPS rather than visible light and gravity.

With our brain receiving such new and different levels of reality, our body

also no longer appears the same. Just as the certainty of what we see, hear,

and know is unquestionably true in the DMT state, so too does the nature of

our physical self assume a radically different, but similarly real, nature.

Sight and sound play such an inordinately important role in our normal

awareness, and we notice our new location first with these senses. However,

touch, body sensation, and matter also may assume entirely different

capabilities. Using the gray and red instrument analogy above, we can just

as easily substitute “insubstantial” for gray, and “palpable” or “solid” for

red.

Once the dark-matter beings and we are perceiving each other in the

same medium, using WIMPS, they may begin to work on our dark-matter

bodies: adjusting Sean’s ear, placing an implant under the skin of Ben’s

forearm, inserting a probe into Jim’s eye, reprogramming Jeremiah’s brain.

Those interventions take place using “things” made of dark matter (or

existing in parallel universes). Because of this, there is no “physical

evidence” of these interventions back in Channel Normal. They don’t use

the material of this universe. Nevertheless, these interventions did take

place.7

These speculations regarding unseen worlds and their residents return us

to alien abduction experiences. In fact, this discussion could just as well

have been about those experiences and how they happen. This striking

similarity is at the basis of the hypothesis that the alien abduction

experience is related to abnormally elevated levels of brain DMT.

In chapter 4, “The Psychedelic Pineal,” I proposed a pineal-DMT link for

the pivotal experiences of birth, near-death, mystical states, and death. I had

little interest in or knowledge about alien encounters. The results of the

DMT study challenged my ignorance and require that I now include

“contact” as another phenomenon mediated by extraordinarily high levels

of brain DMT.

In his work with naturally occurring alien encounters, John Mack refers

to how often these experiences occur at times of personal crisis, trauma, and

loss. Perhaps in these individuals, stress and pain overcome the pineal’s

ability to prevent excessive DMT release and trigger access to these unusual

experiences. In addition, many abductees have a history of these encounters

that dates back to childhood. Such individuals may possess especially active

DMT-production capacities due to a biological hard-wiring predisposition,

possibly combined with chronic or repeated overwhelming stress. We

previously discussed how some of the tendencies for excessive DMT

formation might manifest using specific enzymes or enzyme inhibitors.

Mack also notes that many abductions from people’s homes take place in

the early morning hours. The pineal gland is most active at this time. Might

early morning DMT production open the portals to alien encounters in these

predisposed individuals?

It’s fascinating to note that Mack has recently suggested that

“reconnection with spirituality” is at the heart of the abduction

phenomenon. Similarly, some of our DMT-induced being contacts, for

example, those of Cassandra, Sean, and Willow, demonstrated a transition

from surprise and shock at the presence of intelligent beings to a greater

depth of spiritual and psychological equilibrium.

These mystical experiences are the last set of encounters to which the

spirit molecule may lead. They were the ultimate goals of many volunteers

who participated in our research. Why, then, did so many of our research

subjects instead find themselves in unexpected unseen worlds?

It may be that the raw, unbridled power of DMT caused our research

subjects to overshoot, or miss, their target. It reminds me of the first time

we get in the saddle of a powerful motorcycle. The thrust is so

unimaginably forceful that we often fly off the back of the vehicle or head

straight into a ditch. Only by learning how to deal with its strength can we

harness the machine and go straight ahead to our goal.

In a similar vein, I believe research subjects with primarily contact

experiences would have gone beyond that level and reached the

transpersonal if given adequate time and practice. Sean’s and Cassandra’s

cases support this theory: They moved on from contact with beings to

mystical and healing experiences with repeated exposure to high doses of

DMT in the tolerance study.

Another explanation is less sanguine. That is, high doses of IV DMT

thrust people into being-inhabited planes of reality because that is what it

does. Give enough DMT to people, and this is what happens.

I’m reminded of Jeremiah, in chapter 13, “Contact Through the Veil: 1,”

when he was swept into the alien laboratory-nursery. He attempted to steer

the sheer intensity of the experience into a spiritual encounter by “opening

to love.” However, he immediately realized it was impossible to do so.

Maybe contact through the veil is the real ultimate function of DMT, rather

than initiating mystical awareness. If the sheer numbers of volunteers’

reports are any indication of the truth of this suggestion, we must consider it

likely.

In the case of near-death and mystical states, let’s consider that DMT does

more than just change channels, providing us with a view of another

channel’s program. I suggest this because of the empty, or contentless,

nature of the peak mystical experience. There is no sound, touch, vision,

smell, or taste. No thoughts or words, and no time. Simultaneously there is

an indescribable completeness, power, and understanding.

In between TV channels is “snow,” the white noise and images

associated with what is “between” the various stations’ programming

material. What is there if we look and listen carefully? It is the very nature

of the activated television itself, electricity coursing through it, energizing

and driving it to display something, but that something seems like nothing

to the pattern-seeking everyday mind.

In this case, the best analogy might be that DMT has reconfigured the

brain’s receptive qualities to now stop receiving “outside” information. It is

only aware of its own existence, its own intrinsic nature. It displays its own

consciousness or resonating frequencies, which have no particular content.

Nevertheless, it is the ground upon which all of the programs depend for

support—the space that the channels fill.

This space between channels, or the absence of channels, is not empty;

rather, it is itself full. The content of the programs replaces this perfect

emptiness with their busy fullness. Neither is its nature necessarily

“potential.” Rather, it is complete unto itself. It needs nothing to exist as it

is. But it needs something in order to take shape or form, to manifest.

For some volunteers, DMT’s ripping away of consciousness from the

body was the stimulus to seek that space between the various levels of

perceived reality. They went straight to that empty totality underlying their

sense of themselves and the outside world, no longer supported by the body.

As Freud commented years ago, “The ego is first and foremost a body-

ego.” With no body, what’s left? These research subjects, like Carlos and

Willow, experienced mystical consciousness by virtue of leaving their

bodies behind.

Other volunteers found their way to their essential nature through a more

direct use of their own will. Sean gave himself permission to go further and

deeper into the unknown. Elena disengaged from the wild display of

psychedelic colors that obscured their formless foundation. Both succeeded

in pulling back and moving forward with just the exquisite knife-edge

balance required to make that daring leap into the space between thought,

perception, and feeling. The spirit molecule led them to the edge, but it was

up to them to take the final step.

Now that we’ve covered some of the ways in which naturally occurring or

outside-administered DMT may provide us with access to such remarkable

and astonishing experiences, let’s consider the evolutionary significance of

naturally produced DMT. In other words, why is there DMT in all of our

bodies? Is it a coincidence? Or is it for a purpose?

From the perspective of plants, mushrooms, and animals that contain

DMT, it is reasonable to propose that other species, especially humans,

would seek and protect them. Those who smoke, drink, or eat DMT-rich

life-forms experience highly desirable transport to worlds beyond the

imagination. Those psychedelic experience–inducing species would rank

high on a list of essential renewable resources, and their survival becomes

important to their neighbors.

But then why do humans produce DMT? To date we have discovered no

life-form that smokes, eats, or drinks human pineal glands, so we must

discard the hypothesis that DMT somehow ensured our physical survival.

Perhaps our ancient ancestors who produced DMT possessed some

adaptive advantage over those who did not. Maybe their access to different

states of consciousness provided superior problem-solving abilities

compared to DMT-less members of our species. Those who had the

capacity to synthesize DMT eventually replaced those who did not.

While there is some appeal to this argument, the presence of DMT in so

many other readily available forms weakens it to some extent. That is, if

someone could not make their own DMT by, for example, deep meditation,

there are plenty of plants full of DMT much easier to use than austere

spiritual practices. This would certainly be the case for people who live in a

DMT-rich environment, such as Latin America.

A more fruitful line of reasoning emerges from the implications of DMT

release at death and near-death conditions. These are the times in which the

life-force or spirit moves into, out of, and through our bodies. We discussed

the biological mechanisms of this proposal in chapter 4. Here, let’s use

those ideas to investigate their possible significance.

At first glance there seems little evolutionary advantage to the individual or

the species in releasing enlightening chemicals as we die. However, Karl

Jansen, a British psychiatrist, proposes that one particular type of near-death

brain chemicals does indeed confer benefit to the nearly dead. This is

because of their “neuroprotective” properties.

In the presence of ketamine, strokes and other acute forms of brain injury

are less destructive. Animal data suggest that ketamine-like substances exist

in the brain. Thus, during near-death experiences the brain may release

these substances in order to minimize brain damage in case that individual

survives. The nature of the near-death experience is due to the psychedelic

“side effects” of ketamine.8

However, there remains the question of why ketamine has psychedelic,

rather than, say, tranquilizing, effects. While the release of neuroprotective

compounds near death certainly is a useful response, the psychedelic side

effects are not as obviously beneficial. We must therefore wonder, are these

spiritual properties a coincidence, or do they have a purpose?

I suggest that near-death chemicals released by the brain are psychedelic

for this reason: They must be. It is similar to asking why there is silicon in

computer chips. Silicon works. It does the job. Near-death brain products

are psychedelic because those are the properties consciousness requires at

that time.

Psychedelic compounds released near death mediate consciousness

exiting the body. This is their function and this is what they do. DMT is a

spirit molecule, just as silicon is a chip molecule. Rather than just causing

the mind to feel as if it were leaving the body, DMT release is the means by

which the mind senses the departure of the life-force from it, the content of

consciousness as it leaves the body.

These theories refer solely to DMT’s role in unusual states of

consciousness. However, might DMT exert an effect on our normal

everyday awareness? The fact that the brain actively transports the spirit

molecule across the blood-brain barrier suggests this might be the case.

In chapter 2, “What DMT Is,” I pointed out that the brain seems to

“hunger” for DMT; it expends precious energy actively transporting the

drug from the blood into its inner recesses. It is as if DMT were necessary

for normal brain function.

Perhaps just the right amount of DMT is involved in the brain’s

maintenance of the correct receiving properties. That is, it keeps our brains

tuned in to Channel Normal. Too much and all manner of unusual and

unexpected programs appear on the mind’s screen. Too little, and our view

of the world dims and flattens.

In fact, these types of numbing, vitality-draining effects are what normal

volunteers describe when they take antipsychotic drugs. These drugs may

block the effects of endogenous DMT. Perhaps we see and feel what we do

on this level of existence because of just the right amount of endogenous

DMT. It is an essential component maintaining our brain’s awareness of

everyday reality. In a way, we might consider DMT to be a “reality

thermostat” keeping us in a narrow band of awareness so as to ensure our

survival.

When all the speculation, no matter how exciting, stimulating, and

revolutionary, is over and done, what are we left with? Even if it turns out

that what I’ve proposed is one day proven true, what do we truly gain from

DMT? Once more, we return to “if so, so what?” To what purpose? As the

New Mexico research drew to its complicated ending, I began to work

through the deepest question that I brought to the studies.

In the beginning of this chapter, I raised the issue of how difficult it is to

accept the existence and effects of the spirit molecule in our bodies. In a

similar way, can we accept the conclusion I have finally reached? That is,

that the nature of DMT is essentially neutral and value-free?

The spirit molecule is neither good nor bad, beneficial nor harmful, in

and of itself. Rather, set and setting establish the context and the quality of

the experiences to which DMT leads us. Who we are and what we bring to

the sessions and to our lives ultimately mean more than the drug experience

itself.

Nevertheless, DMT and other psychedelics will never disappear, especially

those we make in our own brains every minute of the day. We must take

into account all of their complex and mysterious power in any reckoning of

human consciousness. So, this one “neither-nor” answer does not mean that

there aren’t many unqualified “yes’s” to important questions about the best

use of these drugs. The set and setting we used in New Mexico provided a

tremendous amount of information about what is and isn’t possible with the

assistance of the spirit molecule. Now it is time to turn to what to do with

that knowledge. Is it possible to convert that information to good use?

The Futures of Psychedelic

Research

This closing chapter discusses possible futures for using and studying

DMT and other psychedelic drugs. These scenarios assume a willingness to

enlarge the scope of discussion about psychedelic drugs, much as Willis

Harman yearned for during our walk along the California coast years ago.

Well-informed opinion shapers and decision makers will best determine

how accessible and acceptable these drugs become. The most fruitful

applications will emerge only if we can set aside the fear, ignorance, and

stigma associated with the psychedelics. We also must avoid the naïve and

wishful thinking that mars the arguments of some advocates for their use.

These proposals are based upon years of intensive reflection and

discussion over the events at the University of New Mexico. While the

overall picture this chapter will paint may look overly optimistic, it is, on

the contrary, more realistic than my original research designs. This is

because it is based upon anticipating and dealing with most of the implicit

assumptions about working with psychedelics that inevitably lead to

negative outcomes and premature closure.

One of the most important of these is that psychedelic drugs are

inherently beneficial. All that’s necessary for a positive outcome is to take

them.

Another is that psychedelics are “only” drugs. That is, their effects are

independent of the environment in which people take them, and of the

goals, expectations, and models held by those who give them.

We have rediscovered for ourselves in the DMT research that neither of

these common beliefs is true. Thus the model I will present avoids these

two most basic and pernicious fallacies regarding working with psychedelic

drugs.

Before peering into the future, let’s take a brief look at the present research

situation. It will be a quick glance.

Several human psychedelic research projects using mescaline, psilocybin,

ketamine, and MDMA are active in the United States and Europe. No one is

studying DMT. All these projects use the “psychotomimetic” model,

comparing psychedelics’ effects to symptoms of schizophrenia. These are

pharmacology and brain physiology studies.

Two psychedelic psychotherapy programs are underway. One, in the

Caribbean, is an ibogaine treatment program for substance abuse; the other,

based out of St. Petersburg, Russia, is studying ketamine-assisted

psychotherapy, also for drug abuse.

I see many forks in the road when imagining future work with DMT and

other psychedelic drugs. One of the major branches divides into “research”

versus “use.” Some wonder if “psychedelic” and “research” are two words

that even belong anywhere near each other. Let’s first address this concern.

In the research setting there is the expectation of getting data from your

subjects. This affects the relationship between those who administer and

those who receive psychedelics. Volunteers know they need to give

something to the project, and scientists want something from them. For the

person under the influence, just having his or her trip is not enough. For the

investigator, helping that person have the best possible outcome isn’t fully

adequate, either. This sets up expectations, with the inevitable possibility of

disappointment, resentment, and miscommunication. The interpersonal

setting is fundamentally altered.

There are several alternatives to this model, all of which are much more

popular than the research one. However, popular doesn’t necessarily mean

“best.” And the argument against the research model often is just that: there

are better ways to experience these drugs.

Indigenous cultures continue using psychedelic plants much as they have

done for thousands of years. Members of African churches in Gabon take

ibogaine to contact their ancestors; in Latin America, the DMT-containing

brew ayahuasca provides the soul access to other worlds; and in North

America, peyote opens spiritual realms for healing and guidance.

Modern Western use of psychedelics in non-research settings continues

to grow. Many people take psychedelics, by themselves or in intimate group

settings. In these cases of “popular” use, psychedelics might be used to gain

different perspectives on the self, our relationships, or the natural world.

Some use them at large communal gatherings, indoors or outdoors, with or

without music and dazzling light shows. A small number of psychedelic

therapists administer these drugs in individual or group therapy. Pockets of

religious use also exist—for example, ayahuasca-using churches are

spreading to North America and Europe. In all these cases, the illegality of

psychedelics’ use stunts open dialogue about their effects in these settings.

There is nothing wrong with any of these models, but it’s important not

to confuse or interchange them with the research format. Research may one

day lead to ways of using psychedelics that don’t require obtaining data

from participants and adhering to relatively rigid rules of interaction. In the

same way, new medications and therapy techniques, if shown helpful in

research, make their way into everyday professional and social interactions.

Much of this conflict seems to come from muddled thinking regarding

the underlying motives for using psychedelics. Thus, the answer to the

question “What is the best way to take psychedelics?” is “It depends.”

If you want to have fun, take them alone or with friends and spend the

day in a beautiful setting. If you want to learn something about yourself and

your relationships, take them with a therapist. If you want to feel part of

humanity, take them at a concert, rave, or other large gathering. If you want

to experience a deeper relationship with the divine and its creations, take

them with a religious teacher, community, or in Nature. If you want to

contribute to the research endeavor, volunteer for a scientific study. These

categories are somewhat arbitrary, and all sorts of effects might occur in

any one of these possible settings; spiritual experiences may occur in a

research study, for example, and psychotherapeutic ones in a religious

context.

However, trouble and conflict emerge when trying to blend different

models because of confusion regarding authority and permissible behavior.

This was the most obvious to me when dealing with the friction between the

wide-open, rough-and-tumble, trial-and-error methods of science and my

Buddhist community’s competing priorities of faith, discipleship, and

doctrine.1

We need an open dialogue about how best to employ these drugs in our

lives and society. Because legitimate research is significantly more likely to

provide a context for that level of discussion than any other type of use, I

will limit this discussion to a research viewpoint.

At the research level, we can divide projects into those that could be done

as opposed to ones that should take place. That is, while there are numerous

possible questions we can ask and study, doing so may be misleading or

dangerous. Those dangers may affect us directly or indirectly. They also

may be dangerous to other living things.

The overarching concern I have about the use of psychedelic drugs has to

do with applying them in the service of being helpful, rather than in being

smart. Knowing how enlightenment “works,” near-death states occur, or

alien abductions take place is not as useful as learning to be more kind,

wise, and compassionate. That is, the biomedical model, “taking it apart and

seeing how it works,” may be antithetical to the most fruitful applications of

the psychedelic drugs.

I come to this conclusion with a certain amount of irony, as many of the

studies I will suggest are ones that I conceived some years before actually

performing the research. Now that this stage of my involvement with

psychedelics is over, I don’t necessarily feel they are as important as I once

did, nor that I would want to do them myself.

Let’s examine the range of research studies possible with these drugs, and

their potential benefits, limitations, and drawbacks.

Mechanisms-of-action projects will provide increasingly refined

determination of the types of neurotransmitter receptors involved in

psychedelic effects. Modern brain-imaging technologies also will allow us

to localize brain sites affected by these drugs.

However, while it may be possible to relate specific changes in brain

physiology to certain subjective effects, we are far from knowing how one

translates into the other. This, of course, is the holy grail of clinical

neuroscience, but it may be an unattainable goal, similar to finding the

center of an onion: we can pull back deeper and deeper layers, but the

center eludes us.

Nevertheless, we will discover theoretically and clinically important

information. A more sophisticated understanding of thinking, perception,

and emotion may lead to new treatments for patients for whom brain

damage or psychotic illness limits their ability to process information. It’s

also important to be able to reverse acute negative effects of psychedelics in

an emergency setting. Finally, we may be able to develop new psychedelic

compounds with unique properties.

This type of research is heavily dependent upon animal studies. We

should balance our “need to know” with basic tenets of compassion for

non-human animals. This pertains even more to those interested in

psychedelics for therapeutic and spiritual purposes. Is it “spiritual” to kill

countless laboratory animals so as to enhance our religious ecstasy or

creative process?

We already know a great deal about how these drugs work. Primarily

focusing on mechanism of action or new drug development may lull us into

believing that we are studying psychedelics in the best or most important

manner. Perhaps we can spend as much time and energy learning how best

to use the drugs we already have as we now do studying how they exert

their effects, or designing new agents.

We can investigate even the most unusual and controversial experiences to

which the spirit molecule leads us by breaking them down into smaller

component parts. No matter how exotic, however, these remain mechanism-

of-action studies. We should remember the “if so, so what?” mantra as we

probe, analyze, and experiment within even these lines of inquiry. How is

what we learn helping us?

I hope to have convincingly argued that naturally occurring psychedelic

states, such as contact with nonmaterial beings, and near-death and mystical

experiences, resemble those induced by outside-administered DMT in our

volunteers. Many of the following series of studies build upon these

similarities.

The first step is to examine the role of endogenous DMT in mediating the

naturally occurring psychedelic states under discussion. We could begin by

investigating the role of the pineal gland in producing endogenous DMT.

There are many non-invasive ways of studying pineal physiology in the

living person using modern brain-imaging techniques. If the spirit gland is

more active during dreams, deep meditation, or alien abduction

experiences, this would be evidence for its role in their occurrence. In

addition, we could use these technologies to determine if psychedelic drugs

directly affect the pineal gland.

We might remove pineal glands from dying animals at various time

points after death. If there were measurable amounts of DMT in them, it

would support something similar happening in humans. Human pineal

release of DMT near, at, or after death would strengthen the hypothesis that

the spirit molecule accompanies consciousness’s departure from the body.

Elevated DMT levels in body fluids during dreams and childbirth would

suggest a relationship between endogenous DMT and these profound shifts

in consciousness. Even more compelling would be to find high DMT levels

in people in the midst of a near-death, mystical, or abduction experience.

We could explore further the hypothesis that Cesarean-born infants are

not exposed to a primordial “high-dose DMT session” at birth. In chapter 4

I propose that DMT’s absence in their deliveries is responsible for some of

the psychological and spiritual difficulties Cesarean-born adults encounter

later in life. Different responses to DMT in Cesarean-born adults compared

to those born vaginally would support this idea. Controlled exposure to

DMT in Cesarean-born adults might allow them to partake of the subjective

experience of a normal vaginal birth, and therefore may be remedial.

Another series of experiments would give DMT to those who have

undergone spontaneous psychedelic experiences, and then ask them to

compare the two experiences. Substantial similarity would support a role

for endogenous DMT in the original, naturally occurring event. Outside-

administered DMT might then provide more controlled access to those

states for us to study and utilize more effectively.

The simplest of these projects would be to investigate the relationship

between DMT and rapid eye movement, or dream, sleep. If giving DMT

during sleep caused the immediate onset of typical dreams, this would

support a role for naturally produced DMT in this common altered state.

If administering DMT reproduced part or all of a particular person’s

previous spontaneous near-death, enlightenment, or abduction experience,

we’d be on firmer ground proposing a role for natural DMT in these

experiences.

We began approaching the issue of natural and drug-induced

enlightenment with one of our volunteers, Sophie, a forty-two-year-old

former nun. She had had a mystical experience during a retreat at her

nunnery that the abbess confirmed as genuine. She demonstrated a minimal

response to her high doses of DMT, an exciting initial confirmation of my

hypothesis. That is, if DMT were involved in her mystical experience,

perhaps her brain had learned to deal with naturally occurring elevated

levels by reducing its sensitivity to the spirit molecule. This would be

something like tolerance.

However, the next volunteer who demonstrated even less of a response to

0.4 mg/kg DMT seriously challenged this theory. Charles, a thirty-four-

year-old bartender, had never meditated a day in his life. In his case, we

proposed a hard-wiring, genetic predisposition to his mild DMT response.

He was born that way.

I therefore needed to be more modest in attributing Sophie’s minimal

reaction to her prior mystical experience. Of course, it’s possible that each

hypothesis was true for the particular individual, but there would be a

certain intellectual dishonesty in using the data in such a self-serving

manner.2

While the above projects would go a long way toward legitimizing the

study of highly unusual states of mind, they no longer hold the appeal for

me they once did. I am now less interested in the “how” than in the “if so,

so what?” Whether what we learn is ultimately helpful depends upon how

we use that information.

I believe the best research use of psychedelics is to treat uniquely human

disorders and to enhance distinctly human characteristics. Let’s then

visualize an optimal setting for administering and taking psychedelic drugs

that accepts these challenges.

Such a center would exist in a beautiful natural setting but would possess

all the required medical facilities for emergency backup. There would be

examples of exquisite art and architecture that could provide inspiration for

those participating in the research protocols. Research scientists and staff

would possess psychotherapeutic, psychedelic, and spiritual training and

would work under medical direction. Protocols would occur in the fields of

psychotherapy, creativity, spirituality, and the dying process. There would

be studies, too, of the being-contact phenomenon and its relationship to

parallel universes and dark matter.

Time and again we saw how the Research Center environment negatively

impacted our DMT sessions. The clinical environment was even more

problematic for the longer psilocybin sessions. While a more pleasant

setting is essential, one of great beauty is even better suited to guide and

support research subjects during their highly suggestible and vulnerable

experiences. Nevertheless, there are potentially dangerous adverse physical,

especially cardiovascular, effects of psychedelics, and equipment and staff

must exist to respond to them.

Medical doctors’ training and experience provide them unique abilities to

appreciate, understand, and respond to the whole human organism’s

reaction to medications. Therefore, the law places the privilege and

responsibility of using drugs in the hands of physicians. Within the field of

medicine, psychiatrists receive the most exhaustive training in dealing with

human behavior and its relationship to the physical body. However,

traditional psychiatric medical training ought to be only the preliminary

requirement for being able to administer psychedelic drugs to another

human being. One of the most important additional qualifications should be

having taken psychedelics oneself.

In the 1950s and 1960s self-experimentation was a generally recognized

tool in psychopharmacology. Similarly, and in contrast to contemporary

American protocol, European psychedelic researchers must “go first” in

their studies. This approach increases the quality of informed consent

provided by the investigator, provides pilot data for further refinement of

hypotheses and techniques, and enhances researchers’ empathy with

volunteers’ experiences. Future North American studies should request

permission from regulatory boards to follow our European colleagues in

this extraordinarily important matter.3

In addition to “having been there oneself,” a researcher who plans on

administering psychedelics to others must clearly examine his or her

motivations to do so. Formal supervised training in self-examination is

necessary for anyone in the powerful position of giving people psychedelic

drugs. While there are many such systems, I believe the psychoanalytic

model is the most thorough and comprehensive. It explores important

childhood experiences in the context of developing and working through a

close relationship with a therapist. It also examines unconscious

motivations and urges affecting our behavior and feelings. This inner

psychological work is crucial in helping us relate to our research subjects

whose interpersonal needs and fears are magnified powerfully while under

a psychedelic’s spell.

Understanding religious sensibilities in as deep a manner as possible also

is necessary for being fully supportive and understanding while supervising

psychedelic sessions. This does not mean simply having spiritual or

religious experiences oneself, with or without a psychedelic. Rather, it

ought to include training and background in religious sensibilities.

Education in theology, ethics, and ritual additionally will help in

empathizing with and understanding important aspects of the full

psychedelic experience.

Before performing the DMT research, I never would have suggested that

familiarity with alien abduction phenomena would be important in

providing the best possible supervision for sessions. However, I do now. I

also believe it’s helpful to know something about current theories regarding

“invisible realms,” like dark matter and parallel universes.

Equipped with these types of training and experience, research scientists

and staff will be ready to understand, accept, and react to nearly everything

that might come up during deep psychedelic sessions.

Ongoing studies at this ideal research site could generate an exhaustive

dose-response database for old and new psychedelic drugs. By

standardizing and optimizing the setting, we will learn what really is

possible with particular doses of individual drugs.

In addition, there’s a lot to be learned from small doses of psychedelics.

These “little trips” receive scant attention, but they can have highly

desirable effects. For example, many of the early psychedelic

psychotherapy researchers preferred treating patients with low doses in

“psycholytic,” or “mind-loosening,” psychotherapy because they were

easier to use and patients better retained therapeutic effects.

Over a cup of tea one summer day at his house in Switzerland, Albert

Hofmann, who discovered LSD, shared with me his fondness for low doses

of this drug. He and others have described a quickening of thought,

brightening of perception, and elevation in mood that contribute to subtle

but profound effects on mental function. Side effects are nearly nonexistent.

Psychedelics may help treat our most troubling psychiatric and

psychological problems. Our proposed psychedelic research center would

focus much of its work in this area. However, we must be ready for the

potentially clashing views of healing that will surface in the design and

interpretation of such research.

For example, there are several reports in the psychiatric literature

describing relief of symptoms in patients with obsessive-compulsive

disorder, or OCD, after taking psilocybin-containing mushrooms. The OCD

syndrome consists of irresistible urges to repeat useless behavior and

thoughts that consume distressing amounts of time and energy. That

serotonin- active drugs like Prozac help patients with OCD has focused

attention on this neurotransmitter. Researchers now plan to give psilocybin

in an attempt to treat patients with OCD, using serotonin-receptor

physiology as their underlying model. No recourse to psychological

processes really is necessary, although it may prove crucial to a fuller

understanding of its beneficial effects.

We also might treat conditions with deficits in psychological, rather than

only neurotransmitter, health, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, drug

and alcohol abuse, and the anguish and suffering associated with terminal

illness.

Post-traumatic stress disorder causes feeling of being trapped in the past,

endlessly rushing backward on a time machine toward horrible events.

Childhood physical and sexual abuse and exposure to natural and manmade

catastrophes are ever-increasing concerns in our society. Early studies by

psychedelic psychotherapy researchers explored these drugs’ use in post-

traumatic conditions. Up until his recent death, the Dutch psychiatrist Jan

Bastiaans used psychedelic drugs to treat successfully many difficult cases

of concentration-camp survivor syndrome.4

Many people abuse drugs and alcohol in an attempt to resolve similarly

painful memories and emotions. Soon, however, complications of substance

abuse become more troubling than the initial problems. It’s been shown that

membership in the peyote-using Native American Church reduces the

incidence of alcoholism. Similar effects on alcohol and cocaine dependence

seem to occur in members of ayahuasca-using churches in Brazil.5

Finally, negative reactions to the pain and deterioration of terminal illness

trigger a vast array of unresolved feelings. The growing number of aging

and dying “baby-boomers” as well as AIDS and other epidemics give great

poignancy to a desire for a comfortable and “good” death. Several early

studies demonstrated promising results using high-dose psychedelic therapy

sessions.

The implications of our research with DMT may make work with the

dying perhaps even more compelling. If DMT is released at the time of

death, then administering it to the living would provide a “dry run” for the

real thing. The letting go, the experience of consciousness existing

independently of the body, encountering a loving and powerful presence in

that state—all seemed to provide a powerful intimation of what happens as

the body drops away.

However, we are treading in sensitive waters when considering work

with the dying. If a patient has frightening encounters with their own

psyche or nonmaterial realms, there may be precious little time to set things

straight. Furthermore, what if there is nothing at all similar between the

experience of dying and a high dose of DMT? The shock, disorientation,

and fear could make the dying process more difficult than would otherwise

have been the case.

In addition to the treatment of clinical disorders, psychedelics could be used

to enhance characteristics of our normal state of being, such as creativity,

problem-solving abilities, spirituality, and so on. The research institute I

envision will carefully and responsibly take the lead in such studies. This

work may ultimately serve more people, and have greater overall impact,

than strictly pathology-based therapy projects.

We are seeing an ever-increasing availability of relatively side-effect-free

antidepressants, sexual performance enhancers, stimulants, and mood

stabilizers. These new, easy-to-take chemical agents are forcing us to

reevaluate the risks and benefits involved in making us better than average.

Why not use psychedelics, too, for indications other than treating the sick?

DMT elicited ideas, feelings, thoughts, and images our volunteers said

they never could have imagined. Psychedelics stimulate the imagination,

and thus they are logical tools to enhance creativity. The problems facing

our society and planet require the use of novel ideas as much as new and

more powerful technology. It’s impossible to overstate the urgent need to

improve our imaginative abilities. Psychedelics may provide a powerful

tool for doing so.

I’ve mentioned previously Harman’s and Fadiman’s 1960s studies of

psychedelics’ positive effects on problem solving. Research subjects, all

professionals in their fields, found that many of these psychedelically

enhanced solutions were quite effective. There currently are many well-

characterized ways of measuring creativity, including artistic, scientific,

psychological, spiritual, and emotional. It would be relatively

straightforward to renew research into psychedelics’ effects on this crucial

human quality.

Many definitions of imagination refer to the divine nature of this

attribute. To conceive of and produce something new allows us to share in

some of God’s creative power. Our imagination extends us by thought into

places where nothing previously existed. We therefore return to the role of

psychedelics in spirituality.

As I suggested in chapter 20, “Stepping on Holy Toes,” there is a rational

course of action for melding psychedelics within a spiritual discipline. If a

religious aspirant lacks firsthand knowledge of the sublime states that

trickle down through scripture, ritual, and discipleship, carefully guided,

supervised, and followed-up psychedelic sessions may spur him or her on

within the chosen faith. This type of work also may help develop a more

broad-minded and universal approach to the spiritual.

We may quibble about what is biological, psychological, or spiritual.

Resolving inner conflicts, ending damaging relationships with people or

substances, and stimulating the imagination all can be held and supported

using these three models. However, we are pressed far beyond our comfort

zone as clinician-researchers when dealing with psychedelic subjects who

return telling tales of contact and interactions with seemingly autonomous

nonmaterial entities. How, then, do we study these “transdimensional”

properties of DMT?

We must begin by assuming that these types of experiences are “possibly

real.” In other words, they may indicate “what it’s like” in alternate

realities. The earliest attempts at systematically investigating these contacts

should determine the consistency and stability of the beings. With lessening

shock at their presence, is it possible to prolong, expand, and deepen our

interactions with them? Do people encountering beings possessing similar

appearances, behaviors, and “locale” also report the exchange of

comparable messages and information?

Not only research would take place at such an institution. Experimental

studies first would establish the best use of psychedelics for particular

indications: therapeutic, creative, or spiritual. As in any other comparable

setting where innovative treatments take place, greater numbers of people

then would receive these specialized services. During their stay, there would

be less data gathering and more emphasis on outcome measures for follow-

up purposes.

A natural consequence of the expertise available at this institute is that

education and training also would be a prominent activity. There would be

ongoing opportunities for learning from experts in all the fields that might

inform, and be enhanced, by the psychedelic experience. Finally, the

research center would house an exhaustive library and archival service and

could serve as a clearinghouse for all manner of educational materials.

Epilogue

While professionally and personally grueling, the University of New

Mexico psychedelic drug research was undoubtedly the most inspiring and

remarkable time in my life. The resumption of this work in the United

States was my lifelong dream, and I’m glad to have been in the right place

at the right time to do it.

As a clinical research scientist with extensive psychotherapeutic and

spiritual training and experience, I believed I was qualified to initiate this

American renewal of human psychedelic research. In some ways I was, and

in others I wasn’t, ready for where the spirit molecule would lead us. We

succeeded in opening a door that had remained tightly locked for a

generation. However, the box, like Pandora’s, once opened, let out a force

with its own agenda and language. It was a power that healed, hurt, startled,

and was indifferent in wild and unpredictable ways. At every turn, I heard it

call out in a voice that was tender, challenging, engaging, and frightening.

But the question never changed.

This is the same question that Saul, a volunteer whom we’ve not yet met,

encountered on his first high-dose DMT session. Let’s close with his story.

A thirty-four-year-old married psychologist, Saul was wiry and energetic,

with a wry sense of humor and an intense gaze. He had taken psychedelics

about forty times and had been practicing meditation for nearly twenty

years. (I did my best to recruit research subjects with a background in

meditation. They seemed more able to deal with the initial anxiety of the

DMT rush and also helped me compare meditation and drug-induced states

of mind.) Saul volunteered for the dose-response study because “I’ve heard

about DMT and have always wanted to try it. Plus, I like the idea of being

able to try it in the hospital under medical supervision.”

Saul’s low dose was mild, and he returned the following day for his 0.4

mg/kg session.

Saul liked to write, and while my notes are rather complete, a letter he

later sent to me does an even better job of describing his experience that

day:

The empty space in the room began sparkling. Large crystalline prisms

appeared, a wild display of lights shooting off into all directions. More

complicated and beautiful geometric patterns overlaid my visual field. My

body felt cool and light. Was I about to faint? I closed my eyes, sighing, and

thought, “My God!”

I heard absolutely nothing, but my mind was completely full of some sort

of sound, like the aftereffects of a large ringing bell. I didn’t know if I was

breathing. I trusted things would be fine and let go of that thought before

panic could set in.

The ecstasy was so great that my body could not contain it. Almost out of

necessity, I felt my awareness rush out, leaving its physical container

behind.

Out of the raging colossal waterfall of flaming color expanding into my

visual field, the roaring silence, and an unspeakable joy, they stepped, or

rather, emerged. Welcoming, curious, they almost sang, “Now do you see?”

I felt their question pour into and fill every possible corner of my

awareness: “Now do you see? Now do you see?” Trilling, sing-song voices,

exerting enormous pressure on my mind.

There was no need to answer. It was as if someone had asked me, on a

blazing cloudless midsummer afternoon in the New Mexico desert, “Is it

bright? Is it bright?” The question and the answer are identical. Added to

my “Yes!” was a deeper “Of course!” And finally, an intensely poignant

“At last!”

I “stared” with my inner eyes, and we appraised each other. As they

disappeared back into the torrent of color, now beginning to fade, I could

hear some sounds in the room. I knew I was coming down. I felt my

breathing, my face, my fingers, and I was dimly aware of an encroaching

darkness. Were there flames, smoke, dust, battling troops, enormous

suffering? I opened my eyes.

Endnotes

Dedication

1. Jean Toomer and Rudolph P. Byrd, Essentials (Athens: University of

Georgia Press, 1991), 27.

Acknowledgments

1. National Institutes of Health grants funded the melatonin project

(RR00997-10), the DMT and psilocybin studies (R03 DA06524 and R01

DA08096), and general operations of the Clinical Research Center (M01

RR00997).

Prologue

1. The most direct way to get DMT into the brain, of course, is to inject it

straight into this sensitive organ. I know of no studies in which

researchers gave psychedelic drugs to humans in this manner. However,

there is a report describing direct administration of LSD into the

cerebrospinal fluid using a spinal tap. Since the cerebrospinal fluid bathes

the brain, it allows direct access to it. In this case, LSD effects began

“almost instantly.” See Paul Hoch, “Studies in Routes of Administration

and Counteracting Drugs,” in Lysergic Acid Diethylamide and Mescaline

in Experimental Psychiatry, edited by Louis Cholden (New York: Grune

& Stratton, 1956), 8–12.

2. There were people who had used IV DMT in non-research, or

recreational, settings. One of the men I interviewed in the process of

developing the rating scale took it this way in the 1960s. His opinion was

that it was “just slightly faster” than smoking it.

3. William J. Turner Jr. and Sidney Merlis, “Effect of Some

Indolealkylamines on Man,” Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry 81

(1959): 121–29.

Chapter 1

1. For reviews of historical data regarding naturally occurring psychedelics’

importance, see Marlene Dobkin de Rios, Hallucinogens: Cross-Cultural

Perspectives (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press,

1984); and Peter Furst, Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of

Hallucinogens (New York: Waveland, 1990).

For more speculative musings regarding these issues, see Ronald

Siegel, Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise (New York:

EP Dutton, 1989); Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods (New York:

Bantam, 1993); and Paul Devereux, The Long Trip: A Prehistory of

Psychedelia (New York: Penguin, 1997).

Wasson’s work is the most exhaustive regarding early spiritual

functions of psychedelic natural substances—see R. Gordon Wasson,

Carl A. P. Ruck, and Stella Krammrisch, Persephone’s Quest:

Entheogens and the Origins of Religion (New Haven, CT: Yale

University Press, 1988).

For in-depth discussions of specific plants and their roles in

aboriginal societies, see Richard E. Schultes and Albert Hofmann,

Plants of the Gods (New York: McGraw Hill, 1979). For the chemistry

of those plants, see Richard E. Schultes and Albert Hofmann, The

Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens, 2nd ed. (Springfield, IL:

Charles C. Thomas, 1980); and Jonathan Ott, Pharmacotheon

(Kennewick, WA: Natural Products Co., 1993). Albert Hofmann’s tale

of discovering LSD never fails to delight—LSD: My Problem Child

(New York: McGraw Hill, 1980).

2. Neurotransmitters allow chemical communication among nerve cells in

the brain. A transmitting cell releases a neurotransmitter, which then

attaches to specialized receptor sites on the receiving cell. This docking

of transmitter to receptor begins a sequence of events ending in the

release of the receiving cell’s own neurotransmitter, and the process

continues down the line. Other well-known neurotransmitters include

norepinephrine (noradrenaline), acetylcholine, and dopamine.

3. For a sense of the vast amount of information accumulated during those

years, see Abram Hoffer and Humphrey Osmond, The Hallucinogens

(New York: Academic Press, 1967). Remarkably, almost forty years after

its publication, this remains the best available textbook on these drugs.

4. For an excellent review of the scientific basis for psychedelic-assisted

psychotherapy, see Walter N. Pahnke, Albert A. Kurland, Sanford Unger,

Charles Savage, and Stanislav Grof, “The Experimental Use of

Psychedelic (LSD) Psychotherapy,” Journal of the American Medical

Association 212 (1970): 1856–63.

5. Aldous Huxley, Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (New York:

HarperCollins, 1990).

6. Historians often contrast Leary’s freewheeling take-all-comers approach

to the use of psychedelics with Huxley’s view that their use must be

limited to a small elite of leaders and artists. The fact remains, however,

that without the relatively lawless approach of Leary (see Timothy Leary,

Flashbacks [New York: JP Tarcher, 1997]) and Ken Kesey (see Paul

Perry, On the Bus [St. Paul, MN: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1997]), it is

unlikely many of us would have had the opportunity to encounter these

drugs.

7. Rick J. Strassman, “Adverse Reactions to Psychedelic Drugs. A Review

of the Literature,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 172 (1984):

577–95.

8. Later revelations of CIA involvement in dosing unsuspecting citizens and

Army recruits with LSD and other psychedelics added shame and

embarrassment to this already painful assortment of feelings. See Martin

A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of

LSD, the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond (New York: Grove Press, 1986);

and Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream (New

York: Grove Press, 1998), for thorough reviews of this remarkable

chapter in American domestic national security operations.

9. Stanley Schachter and Jerome E. Singer, “Cognitive, Social, and

Physiological Determinants of Emotional State,” Psychological Review

69 (1962): 379–99.

10. In addition to spawning so many names, psychedelics have inspired

quite a following. I know of no other drugs, except perhaps marijuana,

with as many organizations dedicated to educating about them, and

promoting their use. There are dozens of psychedelic organizations with

thousands of dues-paying members. They publish magazines,

newsletters, journals, and Web sites. They organize and sponsor

conferences and publish and distribute books. The late Dr. Freedman

from UCLA, an early LSD researcher and a driving force behind my

study, coined the term cultogen, referring to this zeal with which

advocates and enemies of their use rushed in with simple, one-sided

descriptions of their effects. Opiate, cocaine, or solvent users don’t

organize in such an effective manner. What is so unique about

psychedelics that they provoke such evangelical responses?

11. Drugs from other chemical families also may be psychedelic, but only

within a narrow dose range. For example, compounds in the nightshade

family of plants, such as jimsonweed, cause hallucinations and altered

thinking processes. However, they do so in the context of a confused,

delirious state, with dangerous disturbances of cardiac function and

temperature control. Oftentimes one remembers little, and serious

toxicity, including death, may result from taking “a little too much.” On

the other hand, there are no cases of psychedelic drugs being directly

fatal.

Drugs like ketamine (“K” or “special K”) and phencyclidine (PCP or

“angel dust”) also produce psychedelic effects. However, they first saw

use as general anesthetic agents and cause unconsciousness at higher

doses. The “classical” psychedelic drugs such as LSD or mescaline

don’t cause general anesthesia.

In addition, ketamine, PCP, and nightshade-based drugs exert their

psychoactive effects through pharmacological mechanisms different

from those of LSD, psilocybin, and DMT. For our purposes I will limit

my discussion of “psychedelics” to those with similar structures and

pharmacological properties. For a review of any and all substances

with psychedelic properties, see Peter Stafford, Psychedelics

Encyclopedia (Berkeley, CA: Ronin Press, 1992).

12. Methyl groups, which consist of a carbon and three hydrogens, are

themselves the simplest possible addition to an organic molecule.

13. 5-MeO-DMT is the active ingredient in the secretion from the venom

glands of the Sonoran desert toad, Bufo alvarius. The drug is not

obtained by licking these toads, as inaccurate media reports would have

it. Rather, intrepid users catch a toad and painlessly “milk” the venom

onto a glass slide. They release the toad, dry the secretions, and smoke

them in a pipe. See Wade Davis and Andrew T. Weil, “Identity of a New
World Psychoactive Toad,” Ancient Mesoamerican (1988): 51–59.
Chapter 2
 
1. Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin, TIHKAL (Berkeley, CA: Transform
Press, 1997), 247–84.
2.  R.  H.  F.  Manske,  “A  Synthesis  of  the  Methyl-Tryptamines  and  Some
Derivatives,” Canadian Journal of Research 5 (1931): 592–600.
3.  O.  Gonçalves  de  Lima,  “Observaçoes  Sôbre  o  Vihno  da  Jurema
Utilazado Pelos Indios Pancarú de Tacaratú (Pernambuco),” Arquiv. Inst.
Pesquisas Agron. 4 (1946): 45–80; and M. S. Fish, N. M. Johnson, and E.
C.  Horning,  “Piptadenia  Alkaloids.  Indole  Bases  of  P.  Peregrina  (L.)
Benth. and Related Species,” Journal of the American Chemical Society
77 (1955): 5892–95.
4. Stephen  Szára, “The  Social Chemistry  of Discovery:  The DMT Story,”
Social Pharmacology 3 (1989): 237–48.
5. Stephen Szára, “The Comparison of the Psychotic Effects of Tryptamine
Derivatives  with  the  Effects  of  Mescaline  and  LSD-25  in  Self-
Experiments,”  in  Psychotropic  Drugs,  edited  by  W.  Garattini  and  V.
Ghetti. (New York: Elsevier, 1957), 460–67.
6.  A.  Sai-Halasz,  G.  Brunecker,  and  S.  Szára,  “Dimethyltryptamin:  Ein
Neues Psychoticum,” Psychiat. Neurol., Basel 135 (1958): 285–301.
7.  A.  Sai-Halasz,  “The  Effect  of  Antiserotonin  on  the  Experimental
Psychosis Induced by Dimethyltryptamine,” Experientia 18 (1962): 137–
38.
8. D. E. Rosenberg, Harris Isbell, and E. J. Miner, “Comparison of Placebo,
N-Dimethyltryptamine, and 6-Hydroxy-N-Dimethyltryptamine in Man,”
Psychopharmacology 4 (1963): 39–42.
9. Jonathan Kaplan, Lewis R. Mandel, Richard Stillman, Robert W. Walker,
W.  J.  A.  Vandenheuvel,  J.  Christian  Gillin,  and  Richard  Jed  Wyatt,
“Blood  and  Urine  Levels  of  N,N-Dimethyltryptamine  Following
Administration  of  Psychoactive  Dosages  to  Human  Subjects,”
Psychopharmacology 38 (1974): 239–45.
10. Timothy Leary, “Programmed Communication During Experiences with
DMT,” Psychedelic Review 8 (1966): 83–95.

11. This uncertainty about DMT effects helped the drug remain relatively

obscure until Terence McKenna began praising it publicly and lavishly in

the mid-1980s. More than anyone, McKenna has raised awareness of

DMT, through lectures, books, interviews, and recordings, to its present

unprecedented level.

12. For an excellent review summarizing the endogenous DMT data, see

Steven A. Barker, John A. Monti, and Samuel T. Christian, “N,N-

Dimethyltryptamine: An Endogenous Hallucinogen,” International

Review of Neurobiology 22 (1981): 83–110.

13. J. Christian Gillin, Jonathan Kaplan, Richard Stillman, and Richard Jed

Wyatt, “The Psychedelic Model of Schizophrenia: The Case of N,N-

Dimethyltryptamine,” American Journal of Psychiatry 133 (1976): 203–

14. Despite reservations about the DMT theory of schizophrenia, it is worth

noting that in the twenty-five years since scientists abandoned it, there

have been no other candidates nearly as well qualified for this role.

15. In this context, it is a fascinating study in how the winds of public and

political opinion shape the research community’s scientific agenda. There

now is a flurry of funding for, and publications about, the “ketamine

model” of schizophrenia. As discussed previously, ketamine is an

anesthetic drug, low doses of which produce psychedelic effects. Similar

to the “classical” psychedelic drugs, there is overlap between ketamine

effects and schizophrenic symptoms. However, there probably are as

many differences and similarities between schizophrenia and ketamine as

there are between schizophrenia and typical psychedelics.

There are at least two reasons for the current, relatively unimpeded

progress in the ketamine field. Many more rating scales now exist that

statistically can compare druginduced to schizophrenic states. These

provide more objective, mathematical support for similarities between

schizophrenia and ketamine intoxication. This approach may, however,

tend to gloss over the real clinical differences between the two

conditions. It was these real-life differences that caused earlier

investigators to reject the utility of comparing typical psychedelic drug

effects with symptoms of schizophrenia.

Another, and probably the more important, difference is that

ketamine is a “legal” drug. There are few restrictions limiting its use in

human research. Nevertheless, the recent surge in popularity of

recreational ketamine use is tightening monitoring and controls over it.

In addition, concerns about worsening schizophrenic symptoms with

ketamine, and the nature of informed consent for these studies, are

raising anxiety about psychedelic ketamine research in ways similar to

older psychedelic studies.

16. Making DMT “from scratch” in the laboratory is not complicated. A

reasonably skilled chemist can produce it with modest effort in several

days. The difficulty in making it is not in the mechanics of doing so, but

in obtaining the necessary ingredients, or precursors. Federal drug

authorities monitor supplies of these precursors very tightly, and you

need a permit to purchase any that might be turned into a known

psychedelic drug.

17. Toshihiro Takahashi, Kazuhiro Takahashi, Tatsuo Ido, Kazuhiko Yanai,

Ren Iwata, Kiichi Ishiwata, and Shigeo Nozoe, “11C-Labelling of

Indolealkylamine Alkaloids and the Comparative Study of Their Tissue

Distributions,” International Journal of Applied Radiation and Isotopes

36 (1985): 965–69; and Kazuhiko Yanai, Tatsuo Ido, Kiichi Ishiwata, Jun

Hatazawa, Toshihiro Takahashi, Ren Iwata, and Taiju Matsuzawa, “In

Vivo Kinetics and Displacement Study of Carbon-11-Labeled

Hallucinogen, N,N-[11C]Dimethyltryptamine,” European Journal of

Nuclear Medicine 12 (1986): 141–46.

18. By some unimaginable feat of “pre-literate chemistry,” South American

natives learned to combine DMT-containing plants with others

possessing anti-MAO compounds, or MAO inhibitors. Accompanied by

MAO inhibitors, swallowed DMT can withstand enzyme breakdown long

enough to enter the bloodstream and exert its psychological effects before

MAO recovers sufficiently to dispose of it. This is the secret by which

ayahuasca succeeds in making DMT orally active. The slower absorption

from the stomach and intestines means that DMT effects in ayahuasca

last 4 to 5 hours, rather than just minutes as with injected DMT.

Chapter 3

1. Willis W. Harman, Robert H. McKim, Robert E. Mogar, James Fadiman,

and Myron J. Stolaroff, “Psychedelic Agents in Creative Problem-

Solving: A Pilot Study,” Psychological Reports 19 (1966): 211–27.

2.  More  than  twenty  years  later,  in  1995,  I  met  Dorothy  Fadiman  at  a
meeting in Manaus, in the Brazilian Amazon. When she returned home to
California, she sent me her 1970s video about light, Radiance. The circle
finally was complete.
3.  The  Crown  or  Thousand-Petaled  Lotus  chakra  is  not  the  same  as  the
“third eye.” The latter, located in the middle of the  forehead just above
and  between  the  eyes,  anatomically  corresponds  most  closely  with  the
pituitary gland.
4.  The  relationship  of  cerebrospinal  fluid  to  consciousness  recently  got  a
boost  from  brain  science  research.  There  are  very  high  levels  of
particular serotonin receptors on the cells lining the ventricles. It is these
lining cells that make cerebrospinal fluid. LSD attaches to these receptors
with  extraordinary  vigor.  Perhaps  psychedelics  really  do  alter  our
consciousness  in  such  powerful  ways  by  controlling  production  of  this
unique  brain  liquid.  Descartes  and  his  followers  would  certainly  get  a
hearty laugh out of these “modern” discoveries!
5. Rene  Descartes, “The  Inter-Relation  of Soul  and Body,”  in The  Way  of
Philosophy, edited by P. Wheelright (New York: Odyssey, 1954), 357.
6. We do not know if the opening in the skull, the fontanel, which is located
directly  above  the  infant’s  pineal,  allows  enough  light  in  to  affect  the
gland.
7. Aaron B. Lerner, James D. Case, Yoshiyata Takahashi, Teh H. Lee, and
Wataru  Mori,  “Isolation  of  Melatonin,  the  Pineal  Gland  Factor  That
Lightens  Melanocytes,”  Journal  of  the  American  Chemical  Society  30
(1958): 2587.
8.  F.  Karsch,  E.  Bittman,  D.  Foster,  R.  Goodman,  S.  Legan,  and  J.
Robinson,  “Neuroendocrine  Basis  of  Seasonal  Reproduction,”  Recent
Progress in Hormone Research 40 (1984): 185–232.
9. The pineal gland becomes full of calcium as we age. The calcified gland
is an  excellent marker for the mid-line of the brain in skull X-rays  and
CAT  scans.  However,  little  of  this  calcium  collects  in  the  melatonin-
producing  cells.  While  melatonin  levels  do  drop  as  we  age,  this  is
independent of the level of pineal calcification.
10. Rick J. Strassman, Clifford R. Qualls, E. Jonathan Lisansky, and Glenn
T.  Peake,  “Elevated  Rectal  Temperature  Produced  by  All-Night  Bright

Light Is Reversed by Melatonin Infusion in Men,” Journal of Applied

Physiology 71 (1991): 2178–82.

Early morning also is when we are most likely to be in dream sleep,

and some studies suggested that large doses of melatonin enhanced

dreaming. We were unable to examine this in our experiments because

subjects needed to stay awake with eyes open for light to suppress

melatonin. If melatonin did stimulate dream sleep, we would have

expected less vivid dreams in volunteers whose melatonin production

was inhibited. Interestingly, drugs that suppress nighttime melatonin

formation increase, rather than decrease, dreams.

Chapter 4

1. While DMT may be involved in both spiritual and psychotic experiences,

it is important to distinguish between them. There is some overlap

between spiritual experiences and psychosis; for example, the thrilling

sense of imminence, heightened visual and auditory perceptions, and a

change in the passage of time.

Usually, however, mystical experiences result from a mature and

conscious effort toward obtaining them. The practitioner seeks them

out, there is an intellectual and moral context supporting and

encouraging them, and their expression is socially sanctioned and

acceptable.

On the other hand, symptoms of schizophrenia most often are

unexpected, unwelcome, and occur in those with prior behavioral and

emotional problems. There is little social support for the experiences,

and both the individual and his/her associates wish they would go

away.

Just as is the case in our volunteers, set and setting have as much to

do with the DMT experience as does the drug itself. How one adapts to

the presence of naturally formed DMT in one’s life depends upon an

even larger context of set and setting: who the person is, his or her

experiences and expectations, how he or she interacts with and

interprets the effects of DMT, and the social setting in which they

occur.

2. Rick J. Strassman, Otto Appenzeller, Alfred J. Lewy, Clifford R. Qualls,

and Glenn T. Peake, “Increase in Plasma Melatonin, beta-Endorphin, and

Cortisol After a 28.5-Mile Mountain Race: Relationship to Performance

and Lack of Effect of Naltrexone,” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology

and Metabolism 69 (1989): 540–45.

The runner’s “high” is not just a feeling of euphoria related to

endorphin release. There also are sensory changes: shimmering and

brightening of the visual field; a sense of body lightness, of almost

floating off the ground; a feeling that time dramatically slows. All

these effects also are reported by volunteers on a low dose of DMT.

Maybe runners and our low-dose DMT volunteers are describing

effects of the same biological event: excessive but not fully

psychedelic brain levels of DMT. In runners’ cases, the massive surge

of adrenaline and noradrenaline could stimulate pineal DMT

production and cause a naturally occurring low-dose DMT experience.

Unfortunately, we were unable to measure DMT at the point, and we

could not test this hypothesis.

3. Robin M. Murray, Michael C. H. Oon, Richard Rodnight, James L. T.

Birley, and Alan Smith, “Increased Excretion of Dimethyltryptamine and

Certain Features of Psychosis. A Possible Association,” Archives of

General Psychiatry 36 (1979): 644–49.

4. L. Bigelow, “Effects of Aqueous Pineal Extract on Chronic

Schizophrenia,” Biological Psychiatry 8 (1974): 5–15.

5. Richard Jed Wyatt, J. Christian Gillin, Jonathan Kaplan, Richard

Stillman, Lewis R. Mandel, H. S. Ahn, W. J. A. Vandenheuvel, and R. W.

Walker, “N,N-Dimethyltryptamine—A Possible Relationship to

Schizophrenia?” Advances in Biochemical Psychopharmacology 11

(1974): 299–313.

6. Jace Callaway, “A proposed mechanism for the visions of dream sleep,”

Medical Hypotheses 26 (1988): 119–24.

7. Magnetic fields also may affect consciousness, as in the shifts of

awareness one notices in particular geological sites or formations, so-

called “power spots.” Recent studies describe magnetic fields affecting

pineal function, in particular suppressing melatonin formation. These

effects may redirect pineal energy and raw materials to make DMT

instead.

I propose a relationship between DMT and alien abductions in

another chapter. However, this is a good time to note that these

experiences sometimes take place near high-intensity power lines,

which produce powerful magnetic fields. In addition, alien encounters

often occur at particular land locations, also suggesting magnetic field

effects.

8. Jane Butterfield English, Different Doorway: Adventures of a Caesarean

Born (Mt. Shasta, CA: Earth Heart, 1985).

Grof has developed a non-drug “psychedelic” therapy using

prolonged hyperventilation. Thirty to 60 minutes of controlled

overbreathing results in a highly altered state of consciousness that

many compare to a high-dose psychedelic drug experience. Several

profound metabolic effects result from this technique: blood chemistry

becomes more alkaline, or basic; calcium levels drop; the blood-brain

barrier becomes less effective; stress hormone levels rise dramatically.

All of these may combine to activate rarely used DMT-synthetic

pathways in the pineal. See Stanislav Grof, The Holotropic Mind (New

York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993).

Chapter 5

1. Daniel X. Freedman, “On the Use and Abuse of LSD,” Archives of

General Psychiatry 18 (1968): 330–47.

2. We did not collect these urine drug tests as a tool to screen out

volunteers. Rather, we were interested in seeing if anyone testing positive

had psychedelic experiences different from those of volunteers who were

not using recreational drugs. There were only a handful of positive urines

in our first study, and these volunteers’ data did not differ from those of

volunteers with negative urines. In subsequent studies, therefore, we

dropped these expensive tests.

3. We asked volunteers to guess which dose they got on each double-blind

day. It was easy to tell which was the high dose. But it was intriguing to

find out how difficult it was to tell the difference between the

intermediates doses, 0.1 and 0.2 mg/kg. Even more surprisingly, many

research subjects confused the low dose and saltwater placebo. Our rating

scale turned out to be more accurate than the volunteers in ranking, from

high to low, the dose received on any given day. That is, the

questionnaire reliably showed that 0.2 mg/kg caused a larger

psychological response than did 0.1, and 0.05 more than saltwater, even

when volunteers’ hunches about the dose were wrong.

Chapter 6

1. Rick J. Strassman, “Human Hallucinogenic Drug Research in the United

States: A Present- Day Case History and Review of the Process,” Journal

of Psychoactive Drugs 23 (1991): 29–38.

2. The salt form was necessary so the DMT would dissolve in water. It’s

similar to cocaine—free base doesn’t dissolve in water, but various

cocaine salts do.

Chapter 8

1. Gillin et al. (1976); and B. Kovacic and Edward F. Domino, “Tolerance

and Limited Cross- Tolerance to the Effects of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine

(DMT) and Lysergic Acid Diethylamide- 25 (LSD) on Food-Rewarded

Bar Pressing in the Rat,” Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental

Therapeutics 197 (1976): 495–502.

2. Rick J. Strassman, Clifford R. Qualls, and Laura M. Berg, “Differential

Tolerance to Biological and Subjective Effects of Four Closely Spaced

Doses of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine in Humans,” Biological Psychiatry 39

(1996): 784–95.

Chapter 9

1. The results of the dose-response study in which we characterized the

effects of different amounts of DMT appeared in published form in 1994

in Dr. Freedman’s journal, the Archives of General Psychiatry. One paper

described the biological data, the other psychological responses and the

new rating scale. Freedman took special care to shepherd the articles

through, demanding rewrite after rewrite. Sadly, he had been dead a year

by the time the papers finally came out. He never had the opportunity to

relish seeing a public written record of the fulfillment of his long-held

dream: the resumption of human psychedelic research. See Rick J.

Strassman and Clifford R. Qualls, “Dose-Response Study of N,N-

Dimethyltryptamine in Humans. I: Neuroendocrine, Autonomic, and

Cardiovascular Effects,” Archives of General Psychiatry 51 (1994): 85–

97; and Rick J. Strassman, Clifford R. Qualls, Eberhard H. Uhlenhuth,

and Robert Kellner, “Dose-Response Study of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine

in Humans. II: Subjective Effects and Preliminary Results of a New

Rating Scale,” Archives of General Psychiatry 51 (1994): 98–108.

Chapter 10

1. We must distinguish this classification from those data we obtained using

the Hallucinogen Rating Scale. While I later describe the development

and use of the HRS, it is worth mentioning now what the rating scale did

measure, and how this differs from the groupings of experiences that are

about to follow.

The mind was the object of the HRS, not the individual volunteer.

The HRS provided numerical scores for various aspects of the acute

DMT intoxication based upon a theoretical understanding of how the

mind works. In this system, a handful of functions, including

perception, emotion, body awareness, thinking, and habitual

tendencies, blend together seamlessly, resulting in what we routinely

experience as our present mental state.

The classes of effects I propose in this chapter, on the other hand,

refer to the person’s experience, not just their mind’s. The acute effects

themselves, of course, constitute that experience, but they do not give

it any meaning. It is only within the context of the individual’s unique

body, spirit, and mind that the sessions take on any real significance.

Chapter 11

1. This idea is a common one in people who use psychedelics for personal

growth. It has to do with the purifying and relieving value of catharsis. A

powerful, earth-shattering emotional experience might prove more useful

than lengthy verbal analysis of the same conflict. In clinical practice,

however, both methods of dealing with blocked emotional growth are

necessary. Catharsis without any insight may not have much long-term

benefit. But insight without emotional contact usually leads to little real

progress.

Chapter 12

1. Chaco Canyon is a spectacular ruins site about three hours northwest of

Albuquerque. The Anasazi Indians, probable precursors of the

contemporary Pueblo tribes, inhabited it for centuries. From where the

Anasazi came from, and to where they went upon abandoning this stone

city in the mid-thirteenth century, remain two of the world’s greatest

archeological mysteries. Their astronomical skills were extraordinarily

sophisticated, and they supported themselves using irrigation and

agricultural techniques that stagger the mind, considering the minimal

rainfall with which they had to contend. Chaco Canyon weaves a

compelling spell upon any who visit it, and many people make the

pilgrimage with an almost mystical fervor.

2. Runes are an ancient Nordic divination tool, similar to the I Ching and

the Tarot. Runes date from at least 1000 B.C. and use stones with symbols

carved on them, rather than sticks or cards. Modern runes use twenty-five

different symbols.

3. “Regular” in Spanish means “regular,” “normal,” “everyday.” The proper

pronunciation accents the last syllable.

4. In classical Greek and neo-Platonic philosophy, the Logos is the cosmic

reason giving order, purpose, and intelligence to the world.

5. Carlos Castaneda performed anthropology fieldwork in the Mexican

desert, spending years with an Indian shaman, Don Juan Matus. Many of

the scenes Castaneda describes begin as simple encounters with Don

Juan and his friends, in settings similar to that which Sean described. See,

for example, Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way

of Knowledge (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1998).

Chapter 13

1. Z. Boszormenyi and Stephen I. Szára, “Dimethyltryptamine Experiments

with Psychotics,” Journal of Mental Science 104 (1958): 445–53.

2. Turner and Merlis (1959).

3. Gumby is a character from an American children’s television show from

the late 1950s and early 1960s. Gumby was composed of a claylike

substance molded over metal wire. This made it possible to bend him into

all sorts of shapes, something kids loved doing with their own twelve-

inch-tall Gumby. Gumby’s trusty sidekick was Pokey the horse. The

animators bent and moved Gumby’s and Pokey’s clay bodies, then filmed

them using time-lapse photography, thus giving the impression of

movement.

Chapter 14

1. John E. Mack, Abduction (New York: Ballantine, 1994) and Passport to

the Cosmos (New York: Crown, 1999).

Chapter 15

1. Raymond A. Moody, Life After Life (New York: Bantam Books, 1988);

and Kenneth Ring, Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-

Death Experience (New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1980).

2. W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Book of the Dead (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1974).

3. Rinpoche Sogyal, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (New York:

HarperSanFrancisco, 1992). This is a modern rendition of The Tibetan

Book of the Dead.

4. Dannion Brinkley, Saved by the Light (New York: Harper, 1995); and

Betty J. Eade, Embraced by the Light (New York: Bantam, 1994).

5. Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972); and Michael Harner, The Way of

the Shaman (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990).

Chapter 16

1. Robert Master and Jean Houston, The Varieties of the Psychedelic

Experience (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2000); William James, The

Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Macmillan, 1997); and

Robert Forte, ed., Entheogens and the Future of Religion (San Francisco:

Council on Spiritual Practices, 1997).

Chapter 17

1. It may be a lack of just these considerations that underlies recent reports

of adverse reactions in human ketamine research—see Anna Nidecker,

“Alleged Abuses Accelerate Reform,” Clinical Psychiatry News 26

(1998): 1. That is, did the scientists know what they were doing? Had

they taken ketamine themselves? How carefully did they control the

setting in which their subjects received ketamine? What were their

attitudes and responses toward the ketamine-induced state? Of course, it

is just these variables that one must think about in reading reports of

adverse effects from the first wave of human psychedelic drug research

in the 1950s and 1960s.

2. F. Kajtor and Stephen Szára, “Electroencephalographic Changes Induced

by Dimethyltryptamine in Normal Adults,” Confinia Neurologica 19

(1959): 52–61.

3. Sai-Halasz et al. (1958).

4. More recently, Doblin brought to light a highly stressful negative reaction

to psilocybin in the famous Good Friday study. The original 1966 article

(Walter N. Pahnke and William A. Richards, “Implications of LSD and

Experimental Mysticism,” Journal of Religion and Health 5 (1966): 175–

208) described mystical experiences brought on by psilocybin in Harvard

Divinity School students. However, we heard nothing about the

inebriated fellow whom research team members chased through campus,

pinned against a door, and tranquilized with an injection of antipsychotic

medication! See Rick Doblin, “The Good Friday Experiment: A Twenty-

Five Year Follow-Up and Methodological Critique,” Journal of

Transpersonal Psychology 23 (1991): 1–28.

5. See endnote #1, chapter 11.

Chapter 19

1. The dose of psilocybin that Swiss and German research groups generally

use, 0.2 mg/kg, is less than one-half the dose we found would bring on an

unmistakable psychedelic response; that is, 0.45 mg/kg. While these

groups have published their data as indicating “psychedelic effects of

psilocybin,” I don’t think what they are studying is a typical syndrome.

See E. Gouzoulis-Mayfrank, B. Thelen, E. Habermeyer, H. J. Kunert, K.-

A. Kovar, H. Lindenblatt, L. Hermle, M. Spitzer, and H. Sass,

“Psychopathological, Neuroendocrine and Autonomic Effects of 3,4-

Methylenedioxyethylamphetamine (MDE), Psilocybin and d-

Methamphetamine in Healthy Volunteers,” Psychopharmacology 142

(1999): 41–50; and F. X. Vollenweider, K. L. Leenders, C. Scharfetter, P.

Maguire, O. Stadelmann, and J. Angst, “Positron Emission Tomography

and Fluorodeoxyglucose Studies of Metabolic Hyperfrontality and

Psychopathology in the Psilocybin Model of Psychosis,”

Neuropsychopharmacology 16 (1997): 357–72.

We continued escalating the dose up until 1.1 mg/kg, at which point

the two volunteers receiving that quantity felt it was “too much.” One

became briefly disoriented, and the other experienced a sense of nearly

overwhelming “mental pressure.” We were going to use 0.9 mg/kg as

our high-end dose of psilocybin, more than four times the European

“psychedelic dose,” before additional circumstances led to my leaving

the university.

Chapter 20

1. Rick J. Strassman and Marc Galanter, “The Abhidharma: A Cross-

Cultural Application of Meditation,” International Journal Social

Psychiatry 26 (1980): 283–90.

2. This method is quite similar to what Freud called “evenly suspended

attention” performed by a trained psychoanalyst. The analyst provides

support through mostly silent but present sitting behind and off to the

side of the patient’s couch. This type of unobtrusive listening and

watching mirrors much of what takes place internally during Zen

meditation.

3. For example, there are now Spanish, Italian, Russian, Portuguese,

German, and Dutch translations of the HRS. Various research groups

around the world have used it to measure the effects of ketamine,

ayahuasca, amphetamines, psilocybin, and MDMA. A German research

group has even measured certain features of naturally occurring

psychosis with the HRS.

4. As in most monastic religious traditions, Margaret took a new name after

joining the priestly order. Since her and others’ names are Japanese, and

because I know no Japanese and would hate to make up a name that

accidentally meant something disgraceful or embarrassing, I’ve chosen to

use English pseudonyms.

5. Rick J. Strassman, “DMT and the Dharma,” Tricycle, The Buddhist

Review 6 (1996): 81–88.

Chapter 21

1. There was little if any contact among the volunteers at the earlier stages

of the research. Even when they did meet, either in social settings at my

house or in the support group that formed toward the end of the study,

volunteers were uniformly shy and uncomfortable discussing their

strange being encounters. Neither were Terence McKenna’s lectures and

writings especially popular when we first started hearing these unusual

reports from our research subjects. I often asked volunteers about being

familiar with popular accounts of DMT-mediated encounters with elves

or insectoid aliens. Few if any were. Thus, I don’t think these reports

were a type of mass hysteria or a self-fulfilling prophecy. Indeed, if this

process was operating, I would have expected an “epidemic” of mystical

and neardeath experiences instead, because I was expecting and hoping

for them.

2. Before television engineers developed the “picture-in-a-picture” option, I

could have extended this analogy by saying these levels of reality are

mutually exclusive. That is, we could not watch channel 3 and channel 4

at the same time. However, we now can. The picture-in-a-picture concept

actually helps with the TV comparison, though, if we recall how many

times volunteers opened their eyes to see different levels of reality mix

and blend. Oftentimes, too, volunteers would fully engage in the new

world to which DMT provided access while still remembering that their

bodies were in Room 531 of the University Hospital. They had their feet

in several worlds at once, a truly mythic multitasking effort!

3. David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality (New York: Penguin, 1997).

4. David Deutsch, personal communication, January 2000.

5. Ibid, June 1999.

6. Nigel Smith and Neil Spooner, “The Search for Dark Matter,” Physics

World 13 (2000): 4.

7. Why entities or alien intelligences desire to interact with us is, of course,

a crucial question. Many of Mack’s abduction experiencers describe

human-alien hybrid projects intended to repopulate our dying planet.

Some of our volunteers also returned with a “breeding” motif, having

found themselves in rooms with toys, cribs, and other items from infancy.

Additionally, the transfer of information and the “tuning” and

“reprogramming” of consciousness follow a similar thread of an

advanced race wishing to impart to us some of what they know. This

often relates to the pressing environmental degradation overtaking our

planet. Here, too, there are similarities with a few of our volunteers’

tales.

Several of our research subjects also refer to the nonmaterial nature

of the beings, particularly their lack of emotions of love and

relatedness, as crucial to their interest in us. Somehow, by interacting

and learning from us, they are able to relearn things forgotten or lost

by them long ago. Such descriptions border on “spirit possession” and

take on disturbing overtones. On a less sober note, recall the

playfulness of some of the figures our volunteers described, bringing

to mind fairies, pixies, and elves from our own folkloric past.

8. Karl L. R. Jansen, “The Ketamine Model of the Near-Death Experience:

A Central Role for the N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor,” Journal of

Near-Death Studies 16 (1997): 5–26. (I have searched for and been

unable to find any data regarding whether DMT is neuroprotective.)

Chapter 22

1. There are examples of religious and scientific models seeming to exist on

better terms, such as research occurring within some of the contemporary

psychedelic churches, including the Native American peyote- and South

American ayahuasca-using organizations. However, these are

relationships of convenience and not true hybrids of science and religion.

Scientific results will not modify the practices and teachings of the

churches, nor will the insights and experiences of the religious encounter

change the methods of scientific research.

2. Terence McKenna introduced hundreds of people to DMT, and during a

visit on his botanical preserve in Hawaii several years ago, we talked

about this. He estimated that perhaps 5 percent of people to whom he had

given DMT showed nearly no effect. Terence’s 5 percent estimate is

exactly what we saw in our research: three out of sixty volunteers.

3. F. X. Vollenweider, personal communication, June 1993; and L. Hermle,

personal communication, June 1993.

4. Ka-Tzetnik 135633, Shivitti: A Vision (Nevada City, CA: Gateways,

1998).

5. Bernard J. Albaugh and Philip O. Anderson, “Peyote in the Treatment of

Alcoholism Among American Indians,” American Journal of Psychiatry

131 (1974): 1247–51; and Charles S. Grob, Dennis J. McKenna, James

C. Callaway, Glacus S. Brito, Edison S. Neves, Guilherme Oberlaender,

Oswaldo L. Saide, Elizeu Labigalini, Christiane Tacla, Claudio T.

Miranda, Rick J. Strassman, and Kyle B. Boone, “Human

Psychopharmacology of Hoasca, a Plant Hallucinogen Used in Ritual

Context in Brazil,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 184 (1996):

86–94.

As an example of conflicting models of efficacy, many proponents of

ibogaine treatment for addictions suggest a primarily pharmacological

basis to its benefits. In fact, members of a National Institute on Drug

Abuse ibogaine research panel in which I participated wondered if

there were some way to block its psychedelic “side effects” and still

maintain its therapeutic ones.

About the Author

A native of Los Angeles, Rick Strassman holds degrees from Stanford

University and Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.

Dr. Strassman took his internship and general psychiatry residency at the

University of California, Davis, Medical Center in Sacramento, and

received the Sandoz Award for outstanding graduating resident in 1981. He

spent ten years as a tenured professor at the University of New Mexico,

performing clinical research investigating the function of the pineal

hormone melatonin. He also began the first new U.S.-government-

approved-and-funded clinical research with psychedelic drugs in over

twenty years.

Dr. Strassman has published thirty peer-reviewed scientific papers and

serves as a reviewer for several psychiatric research journals. He has been a

consultant to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, National Institute on

Drug Abuse, Veterans’ Administration Hospitals, Social Security

Administration, and other state and local agencies. He currently practices

psychiatry in Taos, New Mexico, and is Clinical Associate Professor of

Psychiatry in the UNM School of Medicine. Dr. Strassman’s Web site is

<www.rickstrassman.com>.

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system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Strassman, Rick.

DMT : the spirit molecule : a doctor’s revolutionary research into the

biology of near-death and mystical experiences / Rick Strassman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN-13: 978-1-59477-973-2

1. Dimethyltryptamine. 2. Pineal gland—Secretions. I. Title.

RM666.D564 S77 2000

615'.7883—dc21

00-050498

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