4

The DMT World

Where Is This?

In this chapter, I will review the DMT research that I performed at the University of New Mexico in the 1990s. I will focus on the subjective effects resulting from administering this endogenous psychedelic molecule to a group of human volunteers, and note those effects that the models I had brought into my studies failed to satisfactorily explain. It was these findings that prompted me to search for an alternative model that led to the Hebrew Bible’s notion of prophecy.

THE PROJECT

The DMT experiments took place in the General Clinical Research Center, a federally funded inpatient and outpatient facility of the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque. Because no human studies had occurred with these drugs in more than twenty years in the United States, the regulatory hurdles were daunting and required two years to overcome. The study itself took place from 1990 to 1995. I received grants from federal, university, and private sources, including the National Institutes of Health and the Scottish Rite Schizophrenia Research Program.

My interest in the biology of spiritual experience was a significant motivation in performing this project. At the same time, I utilized conventional psychopharmacological methods that would help explicate the biological and psychological effects of DMT. Animal research suggested that DMT modified serotonin function in the brain and elsewhere, so I measured in our human subjects multiple serotonin-related physiological variables, such as blood levels of various hormones, blood pressure and heart rate, pupil diameter, and body temperature.

Ours were not typical normal volunteers. They all had previous experience with psychedelic drugs, although not necessarily with DMT. There were several reasons for recruiting this type of research subject. I believed that informed consent was possible only in those who knew from their own experience the nature of psychedelic drug effects. I thought that experienced subjects would be better able to manage adverse psychological effects should they arise. They also would provide more articulate and nuanced descriptions of responses to the drug than would psychedelic-naïve individuals, as well as be able to compare the DMT state with that resulting from other psychedelic drugs. Many of our volunteers had experience with meditation and other spiritual practices and therefore could compare the effects of these mind-altering techniques with those of DMT.

The DMT volunteers were high functioning, healthy, psychologically sophisticated, and well educated. They hailed from the fields of medicine, psychology, media, software design, engineering, civil service, business, and education. In addition to satisfying their curiosity about DMT, altruism played a role in their participation. They believed that psychedelic drugs were potentially useful psychological or spiritual tools (or both) that deserved further research. They wished to contribute to expanding the frontiers of knowledge regarding these drugs as well as the frontiers of consciousness itself.

Recreational users of DMT vaporize and then inhale it. This is what people mean when they refer to “smoking” DMT. This was impractical on our research unit because of the repulsive smell and potential lung problems. Previous human studies had used the intramuscular method of administration. However, the one subject we gave DMT to by this route described its effects as slower and less intense than those he had felt from vaporizing it several years before he volunteered for our project. Because I wanted to replicate as closely as possible the experience of recreational DMT use, I decided to give the drug intravenously (IV). In the handful of subjects who had previously smoked DMT, they confirmed that the IV route elicited a similar time course and level of intensity of effects. During the five years of this research, I administered more than four hundred doses of DMT at varying strengths to nearly five dozen volunteers.

Each research subject received IV DMT while lying on a bed in a room in the research unit while a research nurse and I sat on either side of him or her. Sometimes a family member, friend, or invited guest(s) would join us. I prepared volunteers for DMT’s effects during the preceding prolonged screening process, as well as on the morning of the session. I told them that DMT effects would begin very rapidly, within a few heartbeats, peak at two to three minutes, and end within thirty minutes. During the session we would be checking blood pressure regularly and drawing blood from an IV tube that the nurse had previously placed in one of the volunteer’s forearm veins. The subject most likely would feel the mind separating from the body, and as a result, might fear that he or she had died. I advised the volunteer to hold on to the thought that this was a drug effect, that there were no known deaths from DMT, and that a resuscitation team was on stand-by for any medical emergencies.

Our method for supervising drug sessions partook of the “just sitting” meditation practice I described in the previous chapter. The nurse and I sat silently, directing attention outward toward the volunteer and the activities in the room, as well as inward toward our own responses to what was taking place in the suite. I chose this approach to provide an atmosphere in which subjects felt relatively unburdened by any expectations other than to have an individual experience and share it with us afterward. At the same time, we were able to respond to whatever needs arose in the session—providing physical and psychological support, dealing with equipment malfunctions, and so on.

In addition to informing our method of supervising sessions, Buddhist psychological principles also helped me advise volunteers in contending with particular obstacles during their DMT experiences. For example, if someone felt unable to move through the buzzing, swirling display of colors into a deeper level of the experience, I suggested meditation techniques such as shifting attention toward other elements in the visual field.

The “just sitting” method of supervising sessions shared features with Freudian psychoanalytic “evenly-suspended attention.” This is a mental technique whereby the therapist attends equally to and attempts to resonate with all aspects of his or her interactions with the patient. At the same time, the therapist is aware of his or her own psychological processes stimulated by this interaction. My own direct experience and study within a psychoanalytic framework, analogous to my firsthand knowledge of Zen Buddhism, helped inform our work in this regard as well. I had previously undertaken years of treatment as a patient in Freudian psychoanalysis and this assisted me in empathizing with, understanding, and responding to the highly regressed condition of our temporarily incapacitated, dependent, and helpless volunteers at the height of the drug effect. My academic training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy also provided valuable skills for this work. Offering brief interpretive comments in response to psychological conflicts emerging in drug sessions often facilitated a more satisfactory outcome for the volunteer.

PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS

DMT’s effects on serotonin-related systems were consistent with our hypotheses. We observed rapid and robust increases in blood levels of beta-endorphin, cortisol, prolactin, vasopressin, adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH), and growth hormone.*26 There was no effect on thyroid stimulating hormone, nor, interestingly, on melatonin. Heart rate, blood pressure, pupil diameter, and body temperature also increased after DMT administration.1 Two volunteers experienced potentially dangerous blood pressure responses, one high and one low, that resolved quickly without intervention and with no lingering aftereffects.

SUBJECTIVE EFFECTS

I assessed the subjective effects of DMT in two ways. First, we developed a pencil-and-paper rating scale that volunteers filled out immediately after their sessions. I drafted a preliminary form of this instrument after interviewing nearly twenty recreational users of DMT before we began the project, to get a sense of what to expect from drug administration. We then used Buddhist psychological and clinical psychiatric principles of mental function to parse responses into several categories, such as perceptual alterations, emotional responses, and changes in thought processes.2 This rating scale generated numerical scores for subjects’ psychological responses to DMT.*27

Second, I took detailed bedside notes during every drug session. Because DMT’s effects were so short, forty-five minutes or less, I was able to capture every detail from the beginning to the end of volunteers’ experiences, as well as from the thirty- to sixty-minute discussions that came on the heels of the acute drug effects. These records constitute about one thousand pages of notes and are the source for the narrative material I used in DMT: The Spirit Molecule. They also provide the subjective data I use in this book to compare the DMT and prophetic states.

Below, I will present a general description of the DMT effect. In the chapters that follow in which I compare the prophetic and DMT states, I will provide many examples of specific effects.

The “Rush”

After receiving an intravenous injection of a psychedelic dose of DMT,*28 volunteers felt effects nearly instantly. These effects quickly became so overwhelming as to completely replace previously ongoing subjective experience. Responses to DMT were maximal at two to three minutes. Nearly every subject was unaware of the first blood pressure measurement, two minutes after the injection. This was all the more remarkable because the machine we used was rather noisy and exerted an uncomfortable squeezing of the upper arm. Subjects were usually only dimly aware of the second check at five minutes. The altered state began resolving at eight to ten minutes, and one could begin speaking relatively normally by twenty to thirty minutes. Volunteers felt back to “baseline” consciousness by thirty to forty-five minutes.

An extraordinarily powerful “rush” filled the initial thirty to sixty seconds of the experience, a rapid and intense buildup of internal pressure and a startling sense of acceleration. Visual coherence broke down, usually producing a pixilated quality in the visual field. Intensely vibrating, rapidly morphing geometric designs that exerted tremendous psychic force appeared whether eyes were open or closed. Volunteers experienced unpleasant disorientation if they opened their eyes at this point, trying to make sense of two simultaneous and overlapping but categorically different levels of ongoing experience. We soon required that subjects wear black silk eyeshades during their sessions. This also encouraged them to focus their awareness inward. At the climax of the rush, most volunteers felt a separation of their consciousness from their bodies, and they found themselves occupying an incorporeal disembodied world.

Physical Sensations

There was a sensation of physical lightness as the rush built in intensity. Within a minute, most volunteers felt that their consciousness had left their bodies, moving in an upward and outward direction. Additional somatic effects included shakiness, heart palpitations, feeling hot or cold, nausea, or sensing a crushing weight.

Emotions

Nearly all research subjects experienced some degree of psychological anxiety during the rush. How well one managed this initial anxiety usually determined the overall quality of the session. Volunteers who had the most positive responses were those who could “let go” of this anxiety and trust that everything was going to be all right. Those who found it difficult to right themselves if knocked off balance during the first few seconds—and were unable to quickly move through any fear, panic, or disorientation—usually found their sessions unpleasant, perhaps even terrifying. That being said, the vast majority did pass through the rush with emotional equilibrium and then described an extraordinarily ecstatic, blissful state. Not infrequently, however, volunteers reported that the DMT state was relatively free of emotion.

Auditory Effects

During the initial rush, subjects described a “wa-wa” oscillating sound or a crackling, crinkling noise similar to the crumpling of plastic wrap. At other times, the auditory effects were musical, “angelic,” or “heavenly.” Occasionally volunteers noticed cartoonlike “sproing” or “boing” sounds. While a volunteer may have perceived a spoken voice during later stages of the drug effect, this never happened during the initial rush. Later in the session, the location of the spoken voice was usually, but not always, inside the subject’s mind, something the “inner” rather than “outer” ears heard.

Visual Effects

The initial morphing, geometric kaleidoscopic visual responses to DMT usually developed into more recognizable, albeit often fantastic, imagery, such as star fields, planets, architecture, animals, plants, machines, or some combination thereof. The intensity and saturation of the colors, their variegated hues, were far beyond anything they had ever witnessed during normal waking consciousness, dreams, or even in response to other psychedelic drugs. In the majority of cases, the visual contents of the experience morphed into “beings,” which I will discuss shortly.

Cognitive Effects

Despite the overwhelming perceptual, physical, and emotional effects of DMT, volunteers reported relatively intact thinking processes. Most felt mentally alert, were aware of their “surroundings” within the altered mental state, and remembered what occurred there in remarkable detail.

Within this cognitive category resides what I refer to as a reality-appraising function. This provided volunteers the ability to assess how “real” the experience felt relative to normal waking and other states of consciousness. This function comprises several elements, including temporal continuity, stable self-image, perceptual solidity, and familiarity. It was striking how often subjects referred to the DMT state as being as real, or even more so, than everyday reality. In addition, they usually distinguished the DMT experience from dreams and other psychedelic drugs’ effects. Many opined that it seemed as if DMT allowed them to perceive another world rather than that the drug generated the perception of it.

Volition, Will, and Self-Control

The strength of the DMT experience nearly universally overpowered volunteers. However, once the initial shock subsided, most subjects were able to maintain a sense of self-efficacy in the state. They could decide what to attend to, what to ignore, and how to interact with the contents of their visions.

Beings

More than half of the DMT research subjects perceived what they described as living and sentient “beings” in the DMT state with whom they interacted in various ways.*29 They were distinct figures possessing shape, color, movement, intelligence, and awareness of the volunteers, frequently expecting them. At other times, subjects did not directly see them, but heard them or felt their presence, or viewed their silhouetted or shadowed forms.

The beings possessed specific features, such as emotion, color, shape, movement, and intelligence. They also elicited particular effects in the volunteers, such as causing them to see images, feel emotions, or conceive thoughts. They were busy, actively working on or doing things, sometimes to the volunteer or else pursuing their own ends. The beings were powerful, often overwhelmingly so. It was their world, they were in charge, and while resistance was futile, it was possible to negotiate with them as well as modify one’s reactions to them.

Relational Effects

A category of the DMT effect that I did not especially attend to when analyzing the volunteers’ reports before beginning work on this present book is that of “relatedness.” This property of the DMT experience pertains to the nature of the interactions between the volunteer and the DMT world, in particular the beings in that world. This element of the drug state only became clear once I had progressed rather far along in my comparison of the phenomenology of prophecy and the DMT effect. At a certain point, I realized that while a tremendous amount of overlap existed between the two sets of altered states, I sensed that they still differed in some essential manner. This difference was in the realm of relatedness. In retrospect, I believe my emphasis on eliciting the unitive-mystical state with DMT contributed to overlooking this important feature.

The beings and the volunteers interacted with each other, engaging in a relationship within all the categories I have just reviewed: perceptual, physical, emotional, volitional, and cognitive. However, as my analysis of the prophetic state was maturing, it seemed that a new relational category was important in characterizing both sets of experiences for two reasons. One was that it helped organize disparate solitary phenomena using a higher-order level of abstraction. For example, the single relational property of “healing” subsumed an aggregate of emotional, somatic, and perceptual effects on the volunteer. Individually analyzing each component didn’t adequately capture the essential feature of the exchange. Second, there were relational effects that didn’t neatly fit into any of the other categories; for example, arguing or guarding.

Direct communication between the volunteer and beings occurred using the spoken word, telepathically mind to mind, or using visual symbols. Communication also occurred indirectly, in which case someone might overhear a conversation between beings in the DMT world about him or her. There were times when difficulties arose in understanding the medium of exchange, nearly always on the part of the volunteer. The intent of communication was most often to impart information to the research subject.

THE MESSAGE AND MEANING OF THE DMT STATE

The consistent experiences of volunteers entering into a seemingly alternate universe, external to themselves, nearly instantly manifest after receiving an injection of DMT and, at least as real as this reality, were undoubtedly profound and compelling. However, beyond its existence and qualities, what were the volunteers learning there? Here they were less able to articulate the nature of the information the DMT state contained than they were able to characterize the state itself; for example, its visual and auditory properties. When discussing this informational content, subjects generally focused on personal issues. When they did describe more universal insights, lessons, or theological, moral, and ethical themes, they used the concepts and vocabulary they possessed regarding spiritual matters. These were usually New Age, Eastern religious, nature based, or scientific.

I was surprised by the relative paucity of information that the DMT volunteers brought back and the seemingly related lack of change resulting from their participation in the study. While several factors contributed to the project’s end,*30 the absence of more profound insights or practical effects in the context of a relatively high-risk experimental setting played important roles.

I have since met with several former volunteers and have modified my conclusions regarding the benefits of participation in the study. Some remarked that their problem-solving abilities had become more creative or that they felt a sense of greater altruism and less fear of death. They all noted that any long-term positive sequelae such as career or lifestyle changes took years to manifest. Perhaps this slow and subtle process was the result of a “ceiling effect” related to volunteers’ high level of preexisting psychological health. I intentionally chose stable and successful individuals who had already established a mature relationship with their inner and outer worlds. There may not have been much room to improve on a relatively successful life. In addition, my studies were not psychotherapeutic or spiritually oriented in either concept or execution.

I also wondered how much of this long incubation period resulted from volunteers’ and my difficulty recognizing and articulating the nature of the information that ultimately effected those personal changes. These cognitive factors may have influenced how quickly or deeply any benefit the DMT state conferred became evident. If volunteers had possessed a more sophisticated vocabulary and concepts appropriate for the DMT experience, would that have enriched their ability to mine more meaningful information from their sessions? Would these additional tools have made it easier for them to know what to expect, recognize and interact with what they did encounter, and communicate and integrate what they learned once returning to normal waking consciousness?

DMT AND ENLIGHTENMENT

I had hypothesized that if volunteers received a large enough dose of DMT, they would undergo an enlightenment-like state, in which they totally identified and merged with the undiluted essence of reality. In this condition there would be no form, feelings, concepts, sense of self, images, or physical sensations. However, those types of experiences were extraordinarily rare. Only one, perhaps two, volunteers had what we might call a “typical” enlightenment experience.*31

The scarcity of enlightenment-like mystical-unitive states and the abundance of interactive-relational effects were major sources of perplexity for me. When I began my studies, I believed that Buddhism was going to provide an ideal model for the highest state of consciousness one might attain on DMT. I had proposed that DMT’s effects on brain chemistry were similar to those occurring during the Zen enlightenment experience. When faced with the facts of my volunteers’ reports being so different than those I expected, I felt my theoretical framework begin to totter.

WHERE IS THIS?

Soon after beginning the DMT project, I found that my preconceptions regarding drug effects impacted volunteers’ comfort in sharing with me what took place during their sessions. Implicit in all of my models—psychopharmacology, Zen Buddhism, and psychoanalytic psychology—was the belief in the essential unreality of the DMT experience. It was “something else”; for example, brain chemistry changes, illusory and distracting brain-mind noise on the way toward the ultimate goal of enlightenment, or symbolic representations of unconscious wishes and conflicts. Any such approach dismissed one of the most significant features of volunteers’ sessions: the DMT world’s sense of reality.

Research subjects were already struggling with coming to terms with how shockingly real their experiences felt and how bizarre and unexpected they were. Any additional skepticism they sensed coming from me, despite my attempts at clinical and Zen neutrality, added to their discomfort. They gradually became more circumspect in describing all that they perceived, thought, and felt on DMT. I was losing access to the full range of the most interesting results of the project because of the constraints my theoretical models were imposing.

In response, I decided to perform a “thought experiment.” I took at face value the claim of research subjects that they had indeed entered into a parallel level of reality. Adopting this stance allowed me to regain access to uncensored reports of the world my volunteers had just visited. I could postpone coming to any conclusions regarding the merits of this approach until I completed the studies. Then I could consider more thoroughly how this might possibly be the case and where to look for models that supported such conclusions. That is, if the DMT world were externally objective, what explanatory models were compatible with such a notion?

GENERATING THE DMT WORLD

When approaching the nature of the DMT experience, I began with the basics: DMT is a chemical substance that affects brain chemistry. These effects modify brain function, which in turn occasions the DMT experience. There are two ways to conceive of this “occasioning.” One is that the mind-brain complex under the influence of DMT generates these experiences. The other is that DMT affects consciousness in such a way that it is now capable of perceiving something real and external to us that it could not perceive before.

The model that supposes that the brain on DMT generates the DMT world is what we might call the “bottom-up” approach and is the province of neurotheology. This discipline addresses how observable changes in brain function are associated with spiritual experience. For example, when a practitioner of Western or Eastern prayer or meditation enters into a state of consciousness he or she describes as spiritual, a researcher scans that person’s brain and compares this scan with one taken in that same person during the normal waking state. This approach has allowed scientists to establish correspondences between spiritual experiences and alterations in the activity of particular brain areas.

The neurotheological model proposes that spiritual practices activate an innate response or reflex that manifests as a unique subjective effect. The brain generates these “spiritual” experiences when one of any number of appropriate stimuli activates this reflex. These stimuli may include prayer, fasting, sensory deprivation, or DMT injection. The material brain creates a spiritual experience. This is a bottom-up approach.

Neurotheology’s answer to why this reflex occurs is consistent with its biological philosophy. Spiritual experiences provide evolutionary advantages to individuals, or to the groups to which they belong, who undergo them. Such states may enhance problem solving or lead to altruism. In this model, the “spiritual” in “spiritual experience” is an overlay, or epiphenomenon, that culture has placed on a biological reflex that provides greater evolutionary fitness.3

PERCEIVING THE DMT WORLD

I had immersed myself for five years in listening to DMT volunteers describe how real their drug experiences felt. And with the goal in mind of attaining as thorough accounts as possible when interviewing subjects after their sessions, I entertained the possibility that indeed they had entered into a parallel level of reality. Later, when considering how their reports might actually be describing real external existents, I began building an alternative “top-down” model. This posited that the brain is not the source of spiritual experience, but is instead the organ by which volunteers apprehended*32 a previously invisible level of existence that DMT-induced changes in brain chemistry made possible.

This model proposes that the catalysts occasioning these states change brain function, which in turn affects consciousness. Consciousness, as our apprehending faculty, now perceives things it could not before, comparable to what occurs when we use any other technology, such as the microscope or telescope. This then leads to our next question. Where might such previously invisible levels of reality reside outside of our own minds? I began with answers that contemporary science suggested.

Modern physics hypothesizes that at least 90 percent of the universe’s mass consists of “dark matter” which neither generates nor reflects light; that is, it is invisible. Other theories speculate that an infinite number of “parallel universes” exist, each taking its origin from the present moment. Perhaps DMT allowed research subjects to perceive these alternate levels of reality using the mind-brain complex’s new receiving characteristics. These planes of existence might contain “beings” in the same manner that normal reality does.*33 The appeal of this notion is that it is scientifically testable. Once we are able to capture images of what exists in the dark matter universe, for example, we would be able to confirm with our own eyes what the DMT subjects saw with their “inner” eyes.

When considering whether this seemed to be a “truer” or “better” model than the neurotheological one, I found myself returning to Dr. Freedman’s nagging question: “If so, so what?” What if DMT makes it possible to peer into previously invisible levels of reality? What good comes from knowing this? What truths and benefits do we obtain that are inaccessible through simply using the neurotheological model?

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

The deeper understanding of the natural world that science provides does not necessarily lead to either social or individual benefits. These benefits relate to how we use that new knowledge, applying ethical and moral guidelines. While it is possible that we might learn about new ways to generate energy, travel through space, and other technological advances, these are simply ways in which we’d become smarter, not wiser. Thus, while reflecting on the DMT volunteers’ sessions, I decided that even a top-down “scientific” model didn’t provide enough guidance regarding the information that the DMT world contained. Nor, for that matter, did it address the even more perplexing question of the ultimate bases and functions of those realms. What other models were available?

The world’s great religious traditions also have occupied themselves for thousands of years with invisible worlds that humans perceive during spiritual experiences. However, unlike science, they have tried to extract meaning from those states of consciousness in order to improve our lives. In particular, they have articulated guidelines regarding optimal relationships between the human and invisible worlds, and within the visible world, both natural and social.

There is no doubt that religious institutions for millennia have misused the authority and power that spiritual experiences possess. At the same time, they have developed concepts and vocabularies relevant to these states that science has yet to maturely formulate. Thus, in the spirit of “enlarging the discussion” about psychedelic drug states, I decided to remove one of my feet from the edifice of the natural sciences and place it onto that of religion.

Biology, psychology, pharmacology, and physics were no longer my exclusive default modes when it came to explaining the “how?” “why?” “from where?” and other questions my DMT research raised. Rather, I would begin investigating them by using a spiritual mindset in addition to, not instead of, a scientific one. While taking such a position could turn out to be a slippery slope toward dogma and fundamentalism, I was determined not to use either science or religion to necessarily disprove the other. Instead, I wanted to see how both could contribute to providing the fullest possible explanation of the DMT effect.