A Conversation about DMT
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“Psychedelics are to the study of the mind what the microscope is for biology and what the telescope is for astronomy.” — Stanislav Grof
I had an important conversation with a friend. As we sat on his porch on a quiet summer’s day, he looked up at the trees with a warm-hearted smile on his face. He said that for the past couple of years he’d been struggling a lot with depression and anxiety but that recently, a substance called DMT had been helping him.
DMT is a psychedelic that has grown in popularity in recent years. It is a substance that occurs within nature and it has recently even been found to occur within the human brain. One of the things that makes it so unique, is that even while it’s considered to offer one of the most profound psychedelic experiences known to man, it is also among the shortest in duration. “When I use it, after twenty minutes or so I’m more able to go to class than if I’d even smoked a little marijuana,” he explained.
He said that,
“It’s one of the most beautiful things that I’ve ever experienced and I’d be a very different person If I’d never gotten to try it. I think I’d be a far worse person.”
Interestingly, trials have shown that single high doses of psychedelics administered to the terminally ill were often reported afterward to be among the very most important life events that the patients had ever experienced. Some claimed it was the single most important event of their life. Listening to my friend describe his experiences with DMT, I’m beginning to understand just how it is that psychedelics could be so transformative. As he sat there, his brown hair moved idly with a lazy breeze. He spoke tenderly.
He said that,
“It makes so many of the things that I worry about in my day to day life feel small… it makes me understand what an incredibly complicated place this universe of ours is. It puts me in touch with the deep and incomprehensible strangeness of it all. I wish there was an unpretentious way of saying that I’ve gotten a glimpse into the unknowable. But to even be able to impart the smallest fraction of the experience — with the words I have — just doesn’t seem doable.”
It seemed strange that such a brief experience could leave that sort of impression on him.
He said that,
“There are so many interesting things I’ve learned in science and in physics that I felt as though I would never get to see with my own eyes. For example, did you know that light behaves differently depending on whether or not there’s a human observer in the room? That light actually seems to decide whether it wants to act as a particle or as a wave depending on whether it’s being observed? I never quite knew how to make sense of this when I first learned it. I guess that no one knows how to make sense of it. But when I take DMT… I feel deeply in touch with that most abstruse side of the universe. It actually becomes comprehensible that the subatomic universe could make these sorts of decisions. I’ll feel in touch with the universe that cares about our individual consciousness… it really is a grand thing we’ve got going on upstairs. The mind is an amazing place. But recently, I’ve started to wonder just how much of this experience can really occur exclusively within our minds. The experiences I’ve had with DMT truly lend credibility to the notion of a soul. I never used to believe in that sort of thing. The experience is simply that awe-inspiring.”
But he still struggled to describe any of the specifics of what he had seen.
He said that,
“I can attempt to describe the experience for you, but the sad truth that I always have to come to terms with is that my words will never do any justice to it. I can say that there are beautiful colors — that there are complicated patterns of geometry that seem to rotate and gyrate infinitely, but… these are just words that I have. They’re not enough. There’s simply no capturing the absolute, earth-shattering profundity. It’s like being asked to recreate Van Gogh’s entire catalogue but given only four dulled Crayola crayons. But even that analogy falls short.”
I heard another analogy that may also be useful here. If a caveman were suddenly transported from his time and into a city of the 21st century, he simply wouldn’t have the vocabulary to describe it. Back home, if he tried to explain what he’d seen to his contemporaries, he might be able to communicate that it was, “bright,” or that it was “large,” but, nothing of the sprawling towers in every direction, nor the billboards, the airplanes — nothing of the internet and nothing of the world lit up with electricity. To make sense of the complicated world we’ve built around us would demand a vocabulary he simply wouldn’t have had. The attempts to describe the psychedelic experience fall short for similar reasons. We don’t yet have a vocabulary to make sense of these strange places within our minds — the vessels on which these psychedelics act.
He said that,
“They’re not experiences that I can always walk away from with any profound sense of knowing or anything. Usually it’s close to the opposite, truthfully. Sometimes I’ll come away from a fifteen minute DMT experience without a single image I can describe — but every time I take it I’m still confronted with and humbled by what a mysterious place our universe is. It’s all so bizarre. It truly is an experience that takes place in another language. The colors, the imagery — it’s just so strange… but it’s a strangeness that feels deeply purposeful. There’s method to the madness. It’s difficult to deny that there’s some grand, cosmic purpose to the randomness.” Terrence McKenna, a renowned psychonaut, referred to it as, “the cosmic circus.”
“Only the most intrepid can form any coherent impression whatsoever of what’s going on if it’s a strong trip,” he explained. As he spoke, he, too, struggled to conceal the awe within his voice.
“It’s just a long toke away for an ordinary human being!? How could something that titanic and beautiful and cosmic and alien be kept secret? [DMT] is more stunning than the rise of Atlantis… more appalling than the arrival of alien star fleets in the skies of our planet… and yet — it’s here…. The indescribable falls into [our] lap,” explained McKenna.
That DMT occurs naturally within our minds raises truly fascinating questions. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of plants that contain the substance as well. In fact, it is the most commonly occurring of all known psychoactive substances. And yet, science knows next to nothing about why it occurs naturally within our minds. It can profoundly alter the way we look at the universe around us, even time itself, and yet — this illegal substance floats around in our bodies and we’re not sure why. Perhaps it’s precisely because DMT is innate that users so often report that the experience on it is, “realer than real.”
Toward the end of our conversation, he began to speak a little more soberly with me. Doubt and dejection had crept into his gentle smile.
He said that,
“It’s a colossal disappointment that these substances are illegal. The right to experiment with our minds is an important one. Every time I emerge from these experiences I’m baffled that these substances have been kept from us — that so few of us will ever even get to try them. It’s deeply saddening. I may never come up with the words to convince people to explore themselves and their minds. But, ‘an unexamined life is not worth living.’ And millions — billions of us never even get that far. We’re uncurious. We live our lives in confined little spaces and ask very few of the questions that matter. And our incuriosity is killing us.”
He said that,
“The truth is — it scares me to my core that I can’t speak freely on this subject. It terrifies me that I can’t publish these thoughts. I’m in perpetual disbelief of how illegal it is to experience ourselves… differently. Psychedelics offer the closest glimpse we as people may ever have into what it would feel like to be someone different. To experience our minds operating on different cylinders is a profound privilege. It scares me that so many of us will never even seek an escape from this stultifying sameness. Problems arise when you spend your entire life as only you. Dissolving the boundaries of our egos is important. It helps love to flow more freely. And in our universe — that’s what’s important. That’s one thing I know is true. And the right to experiment with our minds, to alter the way we think — it’s something I feel very passionately about. It’s important to our very souls. But right now… this passion of mine is illegal. And if I were ever to speak openly about this, to use my name… I might be imprisoned. That’s the sad truth. ”
“The mystery of DMT deserves the attention of scientists, philosophers, psychologists, therapists and anyone trying to make sense of this situation we call reality… The presence of naturally occurring DMT in the body represents a great unsolved mystery and a tangible link between altered states of consciousness and human physiology… let’s determine if DMT, the only psychedelic known to be produced by humans, plays a role in the most fundamental mystery of science — human consciousness.”
— Nick Glynos
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