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-2.
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, Sea
n 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.
17
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.
DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences Page 26