DMT allows Alien communication? How DMT Works | Neuroscientist Andrew Gallimore

The central problem with DMT is our inability to explain how the brain is able to construct these realities that are so different to the normal waking world with such adroit, uh, with such effortless precision and ability. And it's, it's a remarkable thing. Um, unless there is some kind of alternate sensory information input, is the brain picking up, or is information being input into your brain from somewhere else? Andrew Gallamore is a neurobiologist, pharmacologist, and author with a new book on DMT coming out this July. Rick has a colleague called Andrew Galmore, uh, who teaches at the University of Okinawa, uh, in Japan. And Rick and Andrew have together developed a technology, uh, for releasing DMT into human volunteers in a very slow drip that will keep them in the DMT state if they wish for hours.

In this interview, Andrew lays out the history, science, and subjective experience of DMT while talking about why it's so mysterious and unique compared to other psychedelics. The classic psychedelics, they nudge the dial just out of tune a little bit. Um, what with DMT, what happens is that the model is completely obliterated, uh, and it's like you, you've found a completely new channel. The brain stops constructing the null, awaking world model in its entirety. It's, it's gone, uh, and suddenly starts to construct this entirely, uh, novel, completely alien model. It's a completely different world model. Your brain is constructing an entirely different world that bears no relationship whatsoever to the normal waking world, to the world that your brain evolved to construct. Infinitely detailed, higher dimensional, filled with these beings, with these coherent narrative structures, despite it bearing no relationship to the world that your brain evolved to construct. It's like your brain is suddenly switched to speaking an entirely different language that has no relationship to English. There's no way this, this level of alienness, uh, was, could be something that my brain was just cooking up.

We're here with Andrew Gallamore; he's a neurobiologist, a chemical pharmacologist, and a writer. He's got two books out. Andrew, why don't you introduce yourself real quick?

Yes, so, um, as you said, I'm a chemical pharmacologist originally. Um, was interested in, still am, of course, interested in how drugs interface, uh, with the human body and in particular the, the human brain. Um, but then shifted after my PhD, uh, well after a couple of postdocs towards, um, neurobiology. So try to understand how, um, these molecules, particularly psychedelics, interface with the human brain to cause these extremely dramatic changes in the structure and the dynamics of one's subjectively experienced world. Yeah, but I gave all that up now, so I'm, well not quite, but academically I've extracted myself from the academic world now and focus entirely on, on writing. So I'm, I guess I'm a full-time writer, author.

Your claim to fame, as it were, was developing a kind of new way, is it, is it a new delivery method for DMT? Is that the way to put it?

Yeah, exactly. So, so DMT is, to give a bit of background on what DMT is, so DMT is a, it's a type of psychedelic. Um, it falls into the, the category of what I often call the classic psychedelics. Um, so the most famous members of that group are LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide, um, psilocybin from magic mushrooms, uh, mescaline is also a classic psychedelic, and they are unified by their mechanism of action in the brain. They bind to a very specific, um, type of serotonin receptor called the 5ht 2A receptor, um, in certain layers of this outer layer of the brain, the cortex. And this is what, through a kind of complex and not fully understood mechanism, this is what, um, kind of elicits the, the, the changes in conscious experience that characterize the psychedelic state. Um, and DMT is one of these classic psychedelics and naturally occurring psychedelic. It's found in countless, um, plant species across the globe, uh, with a very long history of, um, traditional use by indigenous people, particularly in South America. Um, the ayahuasca potion, which you've certainly heard of, um, the active component of this is, is DMT. But modern DMT users in the, in the 20th and 21st century tend to use, rather than these plant-based preparations, um, tend to use a, the purified version, you know, the pure isolated, uh, alkaloid. Um, and the normal mode of administration, the way that most people, uh, ingest it, is by inhalation of, of the vapor. Um, so vaporize the, you know, 30 to 50 milligrams is a kind of a normal dose. Um, one or two lungfuls is normally quite enough. Um, and then within about, well, basically you, before the pipe leaves your lips, the world will begin to change, uh, in a very dramatic fashion. A few seconds later, um, you will be hurtled through this rapidly changing procession of exquisitely complex and dynamic geometric imagery, uh, from behind your eyes. So normally you lie back when you do this; this isn't a, um, it isn't a dance club kind of drug to take. Um, it's very fast; it's like being fired out of a cannon, really. I mean, it's extremely dynamic, this sense of acceleration as you're hurtled from the normal waking world. The normal waking world is basically obliterated, um, in just a few seconds. And assuming that the dosage is sufficient, you will then break through, uh, as it's commonly referred to. You can, there's a sense of pushing through some kind of threshold or veil or membrane, something like that. Um, and then you will find yourself in, uh, an entirely novel, uh, extremely complex and dynamic and utterly alien alternate reality populated, normally teeming, often, uh, with, uh, this a diverse range of incredibly intelligent, seemingly intelligent, um, inordinately advanced beings from some other domain. Um, you then look around, wide-eyed, shocked, appalled, astonished, um, for a few minutes, 2, 3, 4 minutes, and that's it. Um, and then you, you start to be dragged back into the normal waking world. So it, so from the beginning of the experience, from inhalation until entering the space and then returning back to baseline consciousness is just a few minutes. You know, we're talking 10 minutes really, uh, you know, by 15 minutes you'll be giggling and shocked and shaking and, you know, all of these things, traumatized perhaps, uh, but you will be, you know, pretty much back to sober.

When you say 10, you know, 10 minutes tops for the actual trip itself?

Yeah. Does it feel like 10 minutes to the subjective? Well, some people describe, I mean, it's really kind of timeless. There's a sense that time doesn't apply in the same sense in that, uh, in that domain as it does in, in normal waking reality. Um, but whether that's because there is, there is, um, truly a change in the kind of the temporality of this domain where time operates differently in this space, or whether it's simply that you're, for most people they're just so, by the time they kind of recognize what's going on, um, they're already kind of coming back. There's no time to kind of think about these things in a way, um, because it is so shocking, it is so utterly unlike normal human experience, it's so completely unanticipated. Um, you can, you can read all the Terence McKenna books and listen to his lectures and his lovely baroque oratory on, on the machine elves and all this kind of stuff, but really you can't prepare yourself for what this molecule is going to do to you. It's, it cannot be anticipated, uh, it cannot be predicted, it can't be prepared for really. Um, so yeah, so that's kind of the DMT experience. Um, there's a lot more, of course, that we could get into in terms of the specifics, the types of beings and the, the types of spaces that people find themselves within, but you know, broadly this is a, a world that bears no relationship whatsoever to the normal waking world, world. Uh, it is completely utterly disjoint, uh, there's nothing Terence McKenna used to say, nothing is taken from our world, uh, and found in this alternate world. It is, it is a completely alien kind of space, uh, which is why I, as a neuroscientist, find it particularly fascinating because it's a mystery to me, um, as to why this experience is even possible. Uh, people describe seeing higher dimensional spaces; they, they describe seeing these diminutive characters, you made famous by Terence McKenna with the machine elves, um, these tiny, giggling, lively beings that dance and sing and kind of jump in and out of your chest and just have a, a crazy old time, you know, clearly enjoying themselves and enjoying your presence, uh, you and these beings. They will sing objects, impossible objects into existence. So objects that, um, not only don't exist in our world, but objects that simply cannot exist in our world, you know, objects that are, that possess more dimensions than the three spatial ones that we're used to. So for me, as a neuroscientist, that's, it's kind of confounding. I don't think it's trivial. Well, I will contend, I will assert that it isn't trivial, uh, to explain how this, um, is possible.

So to get back to your original question, um, yes, the problem with DMT, if you like, um, well, there's two ways to look at it. It's, it's in, in one respect it's mercifully brief. Most people could not stand to be in that place, um, in, it's so bizarre, uh, for more than a few minutes. So it, it's mercifully brief, you know, if you took DMT, you know, your first time and you had to stay in this domain for, you know, the same length of time as, as you would on LSD, for example, you know, 6, 8, 10 hours or something, then that would be, I think, um, yeah, mind-blowing would be the word I would, I would, I would use here. But on the other hand, um, the brevity of the experience means it's very difficult to really analyze, um, and explore all the space. You know, once you are used to it, um, how can you go into that space? How can you be induced into this space and then actually do more formal analysis of the space and looking at the geometry, looking at the spatial structure, uh, trying to establish some kind of two-way communication between these beings within a space? Can we analyze their language? These kind of things that's very difficult when you've only got, you know, three or four minutes after breaking through into their world.

Um, so in 2015, I think it was, I wrote to Rick Strassman. So Rick Strassman was the, uh, New Mexico, um, University of New Mexico hospital, I think it was. Uh, he was a psychiatrist, um, originally. He started working on melatonin; he thought the melatonin might be psychoactive in high doses, but it wasn't. So he, he was kind of, you know, looking for something else to do. Um, and he was at a conference giving a lecture, um, and that, okay, so he was giving a lecture, and Terence McKenna was at this conference. So this was, I think, in the very early 90s. And after the lecture, Terence pulled him aside, uh, and said, "Do you know anything about DMT?" And he said, "No, but I'd like to learn," uh, and that, that was it. That's when he had his first DMT experience, Rick Strassman. Um, and then he thought, "Right, this is it." Uh, he gave up his melatonin work and went back to the University of New Mexico and started the unenviable task of trying to get, uh, permission from the powers that be in the United States to actually perform these experiments with this schedule one drug, uh, DMT, uh, and, uh, he recruited, uh, uh, five dozen, like 60, 60 volunteers, injected them all with various doses, different dose levels of DMT. Um, the rules was that he was measuring their blood pressure and, you know, all this kind of physiological parameters, but that was, that was the, the official line, but of course, really what he was interested in was the, the trip reports, what, what were these people going to experience. Um, and this formed the basis of his modern classic, uh, DMT: The Spirit Molecule, um, which really recounts the experiences, the incredibly strange, uh, encounters that these, these 60 volunteers had, uh, when he injected them, uh, with this drug. So, so that's Rick Strassman. Uh, so I wrote to him 'cause I had an idea, um, in 2015. Um, DMT, it's kind of, it's a very strange molecule for a number of reasons. So not just in terms of its effects, which are, you know, very, very strange, uh, but also it has these unusual, uh, what you might call pharmacological peculiarities that aren't shared with other psychedelics. Um, firstly, as I mentioned, the, the, the brevity of its, its action. It gets into the brain; it's very rapidly, um, has its, um, psychedelic, world-shattering, world-transforming effect, uh, then it's very rapidly metabolized. It's in the brain very quickly cleared out again. Um, it also has this unusual property, uh, which was first noticed, uh, back in the, I think in the 60s, uh, was that when you injected somebody with DMT, um, you can kind of measure the intensity of the, of the effect that you can have, sort of rating scales for this. And what they began to notice is that you can give someone, unlike with the classic, the other classics like psychedelic, you give someone, let's say, LSD, uh, and they will have a certain, you know, depending on dosage, a certain intensity of experience. If you then give them LSD the following day, the, the level, the intensity will be very much diminished. You get this tolerance effect, very rapid tolerance effect. Um, but with, with DMT, unusually, and the same applies with psilocybin, you know, for magic mushrooms, but with DMT it's kind of unusual in that you can inject somebody with DMT, they have, you know, an effect that's of a certain intensity, and then you inject them 30 minutes later, and the, the effect is exactly the same. So there, there's no tolerance effect. We now know, um, that it's the way that when, when DMT binds to these particular receptors, it doesn't cause these specific changes, um, in the receptor which are normally responsible for kind of this, uh, desensitizing effect. Um, so it struck me that DMT, its properties, its particular pharmacological properties would make it an ideal candidate for a, a technology that's been in use in anesthesiology for decades, uh, which is called target-controlled intravenous infusion. Um, so to break that down, so intravenous infusion simply means to infuse the drug rather than injecting kind of all at once, which is called a bolus, um, IV injection is to slowly infuse the drug using an infusion machine into their bloodstream. So you're constantly pumping the drug into their bloodstream. Um, target-controlled means that what you're trying to do is to maintain the level of the drug in the brain. So the drug, when it goes into the body, into the bloodstream, it immediately is diluted by the blood; it goes into soft tissues, into muscles, into fats, uh, it starts to be metabolized. All of these things are going on before it even gets to the brain. Um, so you need to have a kind of a mathematical model, um, of what's called the, the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, the distribution of the drug. Um, but if you get that right, you can control the infusion rate of the drug into the bloodstream such that you can bring the brain concentration of the drug to the desired level. So in the case of anesthesiology, of course, this is going to be an anesthetic, a general anesthetic, um, which is a fast-acting drug; they use that doesn't have subjective tolerance, just like DMT, uh, and then you can bring them into an unconscious state and atiz state, um, and you can hold them there, hold the, the patient in that unconscious state for as long as you like, and you can bring them, push them deeper when you make incisions, or you can bring them to a more shallow level so you don't disturb breathing and that kind of thing. Um, you can, you have much more control than you would if you simply sort of inject people, think that, you know, they just inject you with a drug and you go to sleep, then you're at the mercy of, you know, the pharmacokinetics. Once the drug starts to wear off, they wake up. Um, and if you're in, it's an 8-hour operation, then you don't want them waking up. So the idea is to maintain this steady state of the drug in the brain over time. Um, so this, this technology has been developed and somewhat perfected by anesthesiology, um, over the last few decades. So it occurred to me, well, let's just replace the anesthetic drug with DMT, right? So we can, we can create this model, this mathematical model. I knew I could do that because I knew that Rick Strassman had blood data. So he measured the blood concentration of DMT over time after he injected them. So we had some idea of how it was being metabolized and distributed in the body, body. So we could fit that data to this mathematical model; we should be able to develop a protocol for inducing somebody into a breakthrough DMT state and then holding the brain DMT concentration at a fairly stable level and keeping them there, uh, for as long as you want. So it could be 30 minutes, could be an hour, could be two hours, could be a couple of days, right? You know, I mean, in theory there's, there's no end, there's no possible end, you know, there's no theoretical end, um, to this. Um, and then that brings, you know, that opens up a whole new field of scientific inquiry where this space, which before you can just kind of dive in and look around and then pop out again, you know, it's, it's kind of like the difference between scuba diving and deep-sea diving, you know, where you have a line, an airline from the boat that means you can wander around the base of the ocean for, you know, for, for as long as you want, really. And that was said, that's the idea. Then you can perform experiments; you can do all of this sort of exploration and establish communication with the beings in the space, that kind of thing. So that solves the issue that you're talking about earlier, is that the, the five minutes is like just enough for you to get situated in this space and then it's pretty much ending by the time you start to try and confirm or explore anything, right?

Exactly. Yeah. By the time you've got your kind of intellective tools in order and gotten over the, the, the disorientation really and the shock, um, you're already being dragged back out again, uh, unless you're very experienced. Um, so yeah, this technique, which has now been applied in humans, uh, at Imperial College London, uh, the psychedelic research group there, which is probably the foremost, um, pioneering research group into psychedelics in the world, really, um, it's already been, a paper's already come out, I think either earlier this year or last year, forget, um, showing that it was safe, that it was tolerable, uh, that people didn't freak out and go out of their minds or anything like that. Um, so yeah, it's kind of, we're at the beginning now of, of, of the kind of realizing the potential of this, um, this what's come to be known as DMTx technology.

Yeah, that's actually how we got in touch. A monk I know said, "Hey, you need to check out this podcast," or it was a kind of panel, a Zoom panel, maybe you remember that, and then they were discussing the DMTx experience, and I think they had one or two of the people who are actually taking the DMTx and they're talking about their subjective experience and, you know, how they felt and all these different stages; they're asking all these different questions. And that's how I found about it.

Yeah, yeah. So that was a panel I did. So me, myself, and Graham Hancock were the moderators. We had five, actually five of the volunteers there. Only I think 11 or 12 volunteers in that first cohort; it was just a small study, you know, safety and tolerability kind of study. Yeah, we had five of them describe and discuss their experiences. And so I'm not really sure if there's more people doing ayahuasca or there's more people doing DMT, but I imagine some of the people who do ayahuasca say, "Oh, well, there's DMT in ayahuasca, so I kind of know what it's like," but it's kind of completely different. Is that safe to say?

Ayahuasca? Well, I mean, completely, I mean, ayahuasca is a, it's a DMT-based preparation. So ayahuasca, uh, is, is a very old, traditional, uh, plant-based decoction. Um, so you have, you know, it's a remarkable technology, really. Um, DMT is, unlike LSD or psilocybin, it's not orally active. So you can't just swallow it; if you swallow it, nothing will happen. Um, we know this from the guy that discovered DMT, actually, as a Hungarian physician called Stephen Zádor. Um, he, he died not long ago, just a, you know, three or four years ago. He, I think he was like 98 or 99 when he died. Albert Hofmann, who discovered LSD, was like 102, I think 103. So if you discover a new psychedelic, you live a long time, you know, from these two, you know, we can extrapolate. So yeah, so Stephen Zádor, he, um, kind of an interesting story. So there, there are a lot of these plant-based, or a handful at least of these plant-based, traditional indigenous plant-based preparations that contain DMT. Um, but before the 1950s, although these preparations are well documented, you know, ayahuasca was well documented, um, these, um, visionary snuffs. So two of the most famous ones are called yopo and epena. So yopo is this fine powder, which is, um, um, produced by grinding up the seeds of the yopo plant. Um, Latin name, I'm not, I'm going to butcher it, so I won't even say it. I, a paraguayan, I think, is, is the, but the a part is a long word anyway. So, so, so they grind up these seeds and they make this very, very fine powder; looks like ground cinnamon. Um, and they pack it into a tube, um, that's could be like a couple of foot long or three foot long, you know, a long tube, uh, and then you get a partner. So you stuff one end of the tube into your nostril; your friend on the other end puts his mouth over it and, uh, blows it forcefully into your skull. And, um, it's an extremely unpleasant experience, um, as you can imagine. You fall back, you know, your eyes are watering, your nose is bleeding; it's, it's very, very, very unpleasant. Um, and epena is, is a similar thing, but it's made from the, uh, the resin of certain types of, uh, trees of the Virola, uh, genus. So these have been described, um, in the kind of ethnobotanical literature, uh, for, well, ayahuasca was first described by Richard Spruce, a British botanist, in 1852. He discovered, um, identified one of the plants, um, Banisteriopsis caapi, which is the ayahuasca vine, Vine of the Soul or Vine of the Dead. Um, but nobody really understood how it, it worked, um, because when people start to try to kind of recreate this ayahuasca decoction or to extract the alkaloids first, they tried extracting the alkaloids; this was kind of standard procedure. If you find a psychoactive plant, you extract the alkaloids because nine times out of 10 it's going to be an alkaloid that's responsible for the psychoactive effects. Um, so a whole string of scientists, you know, some of the, the brightest minds in pharmacology at the time and chemists were isolating, uh, the alkaloids from this Banisteriopsis caapi vine, the ayahuasca vine, uh, and initially got quite excited when they isolated, um, these alkaloids, which went by several different names: telepathine, banisterine, yin, you know, various names given by different people, but they all turned out to be the same thing, which was harmine and harmaline, um, which, um, were already well known, uh, from this plant called the Syrian Rue, Peganum harmala. Um, so people like, this isn't as interesting as we expected; we know these alkaloids, uh, and when they were, they were injecting them into, into people, um, animals first, of course, um, but they injected people with these harmala alkaloids from this ayahuasca plant, and instead of seeing, you know, being transported to other worlds, they became kind of agitated, somewhat drunken, vomited, you know, nothing particularly interesting happened. And so it was like, you know, what's going on here? This doesn't make any sense. Um, there must be something else; there's some secret that we don't know about. And it wasn't until, um, the 1950s, uh, when one of Richard Schultes, so Richard Schultes was the father of modern ethnobotany, um, you know, the Godfather, I mean, absolute legend, um, if there was a, he's what was they said about him, um, if there's a psycho, if there's a psychoactive drug he hasn't taken, it's because it hasn't been discovered yet. I mean, you know, he, he, he didn't just discover these psychoactive plants, but he tried them all on himself and identified them and described them. So he was, you know, absolutely central to ethnobotany in the, um, the early, in the mid parts of the, the 20th century. Um, so one of his students, a guy called Homer D. Pinkley, um, was in, I think he, it was Ecuador, but he was taking part one night in an ayahuasca ceremony, uh, and

The following day, he was kind of typical botanist style. He was digging around in the cauldron, um, where they were, where they brewed it, looking for clues, right? Cuz nobody knew what was in this, what was the key kind of plant alkaloid containing plant component that was responsible for the psychoactive effects. CU, we knew it wasn't the ayahuasca vine; that had been eliminated many times over the decades prior. Uh, and he found a few seeds and a couple of leaves or something of this plant, uh, called Psychotria viridis, also known as chacruna, uh, and a string of other names as well. Um, and he sent that away for analysis, and it was, it came back as being, uh, as containing one single main alkaloid, which was DMT. So that was kind of the, um, the Eureka moment, if you like, uh, when when people began to suspect that it wasn't these harmaline alkaloids—harmaline and harmine—in ayahuasca that was responsible for the effects, but it was this, um, this chacruna, this other leaf that was responsible, contained DMT. But the problem was, to go back to what I said before, is that DMT isn't orally active. So that was another mystery, is like, okay, if DMT is responsible for the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca, then you know, why is this a drink? You know, why? Because you, you can't ingest DMT orally.

Um, it was then a few years later, um, I think it was in the early 1960s, um, that people began to really look at the harmaline alkaloids more carefully, uh, and they realized that, no, okay, the harmaline alkaloids are not particularly psychoactive—you know, mildly, but not certainly world-transforming psychedelics or anything like that. Uh, but they found that these harmaline alkaloids were inhibitors of this enzyme called monoamine oxidase, uh, which is an enzyme that's found throughout the body, um, in the brain but also in the gut. Uh, it's its main role is to metabolize, detoxify, uh, monoamines, um, that enter your body. So it's a detoxifying enzyme, and dimethyltryptamine is a monoamine. Um, so they began to realize what was actually going on here is that these indigenous peoples of South America had discovered somehow that if you added the harmaline alkaloids via the Banisteriopsis caapi, the ayahuasca vine, together with the DMT-containing plant, chacruna, the harmaline alkaloids in the ayahuasca vine would inhibit this enzyme in your stomach, stop it from working, which would basically allow DMT to escape unharmed, uh, and pass into your blood. Um, so that's the ayahuasca, um, technology.

Um, I had heard somewhere that, so it's like this big mystery of how did they get these two obscure roots and then learn that, okay, these two specific roots, we need to boil them together. And someone had said that when they asked the ayahuasceros, the people who know how to prepare this stuff, they said, oh, well, they just, they just sing to us when the moon is out—duh! Like, yeah, I mean, that's the explanation from them, of course, you know, the plants told us—obviously. Um, now, I mean, how much do you believe of that? I don't know. I mean, there are, there are slightly, um, more mundane explanations, perhaps. We know that some, a number of groups in in Amazonia, um, still use, uh, a preparation of ayahuasca that contains only the ayahuasca vines; it doesn't contain any DMT-containing plants, and it doesn't have a particularly dramatic psychoactive effect. Um, and there's also, there's up, I think, over a hundred different admixture plants have been identified, uh, in in various ayahuasca brews, depending on location, uh, in South America. Different groups will use different special recipes. Um, so it's not crazy that they, they would have stumbled across at some point this particular, um, additive, um, but, but, but certainly it, it's not known exactly how they discovered it, you know, this minimal binary decoction, as I call it—the ayahuasca vine and a DMT-containing plant, chacruna, is the main one. Um, there's another one called chaliponga, which was discovered, um, around the same time, which also contains high levels of DMT. But really, any, any plant that contains the harmaline alkaloids plus a DMT-containing plant will give you a form of, uh, ayahuasca. And you were saying that it's surprising DMT is, is, is like surprisingly prevalent in all kinds of different plant species, like you, I think you said it's in some types of grass the last time I talked to you.

Yeah, yeah. So, so that's another interesting story, actually. Um, so, so after, well, around the same time, so going back to Steven Szara—he discovered that the yopo, or also goes by the name of cohoba, this powder, this snuff made from these ground-up seeds, um, he, um, he analyzed—well, somebody else first analyzed the plant, the seeds and found two alkaloids. One's called bufotenine, which, as the name suggests, was originally identified in the skin of toads. This is nothing to do with 5-methoxy-DMT by the way, which is a different alkaloid; it gets a bit confusing. Bufotenine isn't particularly—in, from—well, I've never tried it, but, um, in the, when, when scientists, chemists first analyzed this yopo snuff, uh, the powder, they found two alkaloids in there—bufotenine and DMT. Bufotenine is the one they latched on to, um, because they already had some suspicion that it was, it was psychoactive. Um, and so they, in some of the earlier experiments, they were recruiting prisoners from, you know, in those days, um, you could just kind of, they had kind of a scheme going on, um, a guy called, oh, Harris Isbell. So he, he worked at, a hospital—the, the, I think the exact title, but it was some institute for the study of drug abuse, this kind of thing, which just happened to be situated next to the penitentiary. Yeah, that was a, you know, just by coincidence. And he had a bit of a deal going on. So basically, people would send him drugs, new drugs, anything. Yeah, he, he loved, he loved to, um, inject people with drugs, basically, this guy, you know, he was, he was, he was connected. You know, if you look at the declassified MKUltra documents, um, his name appears often. He was, he was in up to his neck in this, uh, and he would recruit these prisoners from, um, from the penitentiary, and they would be rewarded with—they were all in there for drug abuse, so they're all, they were all former addicts or current addicts, addicted to heroin, uh, and so they would be, they would have a system whereby if they volunteered, they would get credit; they could swap these credits for, you know, high-class heroin. Really? Wow. Yeah, yeah. So this is well-documented. And so he didn't have any problem recruiting, you know, but, you know, he didn't care, you know, they would, they would, um, volunteer, and then they would be denied breakfast, and then woken up at, you know, 7:00 a.m. or something, and they'd be marched to the treatment room, and they'd be injected with whatever drug, um, Harris Isbell was, um, uh, interested in that day. And one of them was, was this drug bufotenine. Um, but, you know, it didn't elicit particularly psychedelic effects. Um, one of the, a lot of them kind of vomited, and their blood pressure shot up, and one of them went purple, the color of an eggplant, is in one of, one of the papers from that period. Um, but they completely ignored the other alkaloid in this cohoba, this yopo powder, which was DMT. Uh, and so Steven Szara, having read these papers describing the effects of bufotenine, thought, no, this doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense that this revered traditional visionary preparation, um, is dependent upon just bufotenine, um, which doesn't seem to have particularly visionary effects. So he turned his attention to the only other prominent alkaloid, uh, in that, in those seeds, which is DMT, which he synthesized himself, injected into himself. Uh, first, he tried to swallow it—swallowed up to a gram, but had no effects. So that's how we first knew that DMT isn't active orally, because of Steven Szara's, um, first experiments. And then he was basically close to giving up, really, uh, and a colleague says, you should probably try injecting it; it might not be orally active. Um, so he did; he injected intramuscularly, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Yeah, um, so that was going somewhere. I was, that was a preamble to something. Where was I with that? Well, so we started, I was asking you if there was, um, if the ayahuasca experience is basically the same as the DMT experience. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then was about the, the prevalence of DMT. Yeah, okay. And the grass. Okay, so let's, let's talk about, yeah, the plant sources of DMT. So, so, so after DMT was identified in, uh, these, the cohoba, in the, then in the ayahuasca—so these Virola resins was another type of snuffed visionary snuff—in the chacruna, um, it started to be kind to turn up basically everywhere, um, and, you know, in countless different plants. I mean, as long as your arm, you know, a list as long as your arm of these plants that it was identified in, um, often, you know, identified by people who weren't working with or interested in psychedelics; they were just analyzing alkaloid content of plants, and they found DMT. And so you would kind of go into the, the, the, you know, the botanical literature, and you'd find, now this plant contains DMT. Um, the significance of that was lost on many of these botanists at the time, because DMT wasn't well known as a psychedelic. Um, but in the, the 19—I think it was the 1960s—in New Zealand, or it could have been Australia, but anyway, um, these sheep farmers began to notice these very unusual, um, neurological condition in their sheep, uh, called the staggers, um, which was, which was very, very frightening, um, because the sheep would be perfectly healthy, um, and then they would suddenly, um, um, start to kind of stumble around, um, the eyes would be kind of wild, and then they would drop dead. So, you know, you'd, these sheep farmers would wake up in the morning, and then find half of their flock in various stages of rigor mortis, um, and it's like, you know, this, we need to get the bottom of this. I mean, it's a very expensive problem, as you can imagine, and kind of terrifying. Um, and it was actually, um, the culprit was found to be this, this grass called Phalaris—Phalaris aquatica in particular, uh, but various species of Phalaris, um, when the sheep were allowed to graze on this plant, which was used as, a grazing plant for these sheep, um, they would, you know, undergo these, they would die basically, you know. So they, they identified this particular grass, and then they started analyzing it, and they found a number of tryptamines in this grass, one of which was DMT, as well as 5-methoxy-DMT. Um, it turns out that it was actually a slightly different molecule called gramine, which is related to DMT, that was in this grass that was probably actually responsible for killing the sheep. Um, but, but anyway, um, this paper kind of languished in the literature for decades, and it was only in the early '90s when some particularly enterprising young underground chemists discovered this paper and said, hey, this is very easy to grow grass; anyone can get the seeds, you know, it's much easier than obtaining these other DMT-containing plants. Um, and a very famous article was published in, um, uh, a now-defunct magazine, I guess, periodical called The Entheogen Review, um, describing, you know, high levels of DMT in this grass. And so that was kind of the moment when people started to think, hey, you know, maybe we don't have to venture into the Amazonian rainforests or grow tropical plants, uh, but maybe we can get DMT from readily available, um, uh, plants, plants we can grow ourselves easily. And so Phalaris, particularly Phalaris aquatica, uh, was kind of that, that first attempt, uh, at, at creating like a DMT for the masses, really, that anyone could produce. Unfortunately, the Phalaris grass turned out to have a number of problems. One was the presence of this rather toxic gramine molecule, uh, which is only present in certain subtypes and subspecies, but still, people were a bit wary of extracting that along with the DMT. Uh, also, the DMT levels seem to vary a lot, depending on time of day, climate, you know, sunlight, you know, stress conditions of the plant. It was very difficult, basically, to, to, to, to kind of reliably get DMT from this grass. So it kind of fell out of favor. Uh, but then in 19—when was it? In the early '90s, I think it was anyway—this other, um, plant or tree, uh, called Mimosa hostilis, uh, um, was identified, uh, as containing probably the highest levels of DMT of any plant thus far discovered, um, uh, in its root bark, uh, and not only did it contain high levels of DMT, but it contained basically no other alkaloids, uh, and so, and this plant was, you know, common as muck; it wasn't a rare plant at all; it was a practically, practically invasive species that, that grew all along various countries through South America and up into Mexico. Um, so this was a very, um, abundant source of, of DMT, uh, and once this was recognized, very quickly people realized, okay, this is what, this is kind of the Holy Grail, if you like, of DMT-containing plants, is this Mimosa hostilis, uh, and even now, um, it's by far the most, um, widely used source of, of DMT, which means basically anyone with—you can order, you know, a kilogram of this, this root bark, very, very cheaply, and with a few hours in your kitchen, you could, in theory—but you shouldn't, cuz it's illegal—you could, in theory, you can extract rather pure, rather very high-yielding levels of decently pure smokable freebase DMT. And so that's, you know, that's I think somewhat responsible for the expansion, uh, in popularity of, of DMT.

Yeah, I would imagine it would be more poisonous based on the name Mimosa hostilis. Yeah, but fortunately not. Uh, yeah, there's another one called Acacia confusa, which also contains very high levels, similar actually, uh, to Mimosa hostilis—Mimosa hostilis—which is also very popular now, and that grows, um, in, it's more Asian areas. So it's also called, I think, what was it called? The, um, the Formosa Acacia. Um, so it grew in Formosa, which is now Taiwan, um, uh, and in fact, Taiwan is probably contains more DMT per square meter than anywhere else in the world, because that plant is, I mean, it's everywhere in Taiwan. You know, the mountainous regions of Taiwan, I mean, Taiwan is, is covered in mountains and forests, uh, and and this Acacia confusa grows everywhere. So, so there's no history of use of—certainly not of DMT as a psychoactive—in, in, in Taiwan. But it contains probably, you know, the richest supply of DMT anywhere in the world. Interesting. So the discovery of that kind of kickstarted more of this research into smoked DMT, or that was more of a coincidence, or just—well, smoked DMT is—that's again, lots of interesting stories here, but, um, so in, when DMT first emerged, if you like, on the black market and the underground drug market, this was in the 1960s, um, largely due to a small number of very prominent, um, scientific and literary, literary characters—in particular, Timothy Leary, of course, he, he smoked—so he injected DMT—in the 1960s, and William Burroughs. So the writer William Burroughs, the godfather of the Beats, he actually, if we're being fair, discovered chacruna; he discovered the Psychotria viridis, the DMT-containing plant, um, um, during one of his trips to South America, and he actually sent the, the leaves of the plant to Richard Schultes at Harvard and said, said, hey, I think I've discovered the visionary, the essential visionary component of yagé, or ayahuasca, it's more commonly known, um, um, but Richard Schultes didn't really bother to look at what William Burroughs sent him until decades later, uh, when—well, not that many decades later, but years later, anyway, uh, after his graduate student, Homer Pinkley, discovered chacruna, then Richard Schultes went back and checked and realized that, yeah, William Burroughs had actually—so really William Burroughs, the writer of Naked Lunch and that kind of stuff, um, he should really be given credit; he's really the father of DMT in a sense, because he started, um, using the purified—he made friends with a, a British chemist in London, uh, and he would try out, um, the drugs that this guy was making, and, um, he was probably the first person in the United States, or in the world, really, apart from Steven Szara, certainly the first person outside of a clinical setting, um, to inject, um, DMT, um, and he had some wild experiences. I mean, he was seeing insect people, you know, he was, he was describing the kind of beings that would emerge decades later, uh, you know, in like Rick Strassman's study—these, you know, insectoid alien beings—he, he was seeing those, uh, in, in the 1950s and '60s when he first started injecting DMT, um, and, um, so everyone was injecting DMT in the, in, in the '60s, really, but it was still very rare; it was a very rare molecule, um, but it was actually a guy called Nick Sand. Have you heard of Nick Sand? No. So Nick Sand was responsible for the very, the legendary Orange Sunshine, um, um, batch, I guess, of, of, of LSD in the 1960s. He's a very, very famous underground clandestine acid chemist, basically, um, and he was preparing—he also started to work with DMT and to produce DMT, and he was in his lab one day and, uh, purifying this DMT, and a few crystals of the DMT fell on a lab hotplate and immediately vaporized, and he thought, can we just smoke this stuff? You know, no one had thought of it, you know, and it's not like it's the first time anyone smoked a drug—I mean, opium, tobacco, right? So it wasn't such a wild thing, but it, it was this moment of serendipity, and and Nick Sand realized, oh, we, we don't have to mess around with needles, because you people don't like messing around with needles and injecting—even in those days it had a, you know, a bad kind of image. Um, so it was really Nick Sand who discovered that you can vaporize DMT—not really smoke, because you burn it when you smoke it; you shouldn't really—it shouldn't form smoke; it should form a vapor—but anyway, yeah, Nick Sand really discovered that you could vaporize DMT, uh, and that really changed everything; that really kind of democratized DMT, if you could get it, because in those days things like, you know, Phalaris and, um, Mimosa hostilis, they weren't known about. So to get DMT, you had to have access to a chemist who was producing it synthetically, um, and it was kind of rare, because the market was all about LSD in those days, so most chemists weren't particularly interested in diverting their resources and time, uh, towards this, um, what was had a fairly bad reputation—DMT in those days, as being kind of the nightmare drug.

Yeah, I mean, William Burroughs would send, sent a letter, an urgent letter of warning to Timothy Leary; that's how Timothy Leary heard about it—said, you know, dimethyltryptamine, this is strictly, strictly the nightmare hallucinogen. It kind of sounded like, based on what I was hearing from some people, it sounded like if you couldn't, I guess, get enough into your system to break through, then the trip was kind of just bewildering and bad and, and like lacked that wonder and amazement that made it worth it, but it was like if you could only go so far and you didn't get through the breakthrough, then it sucked. Yeah, I mean, sucked probably not—probably not the right word, but yeah, I mean, he would—it would just be very, very fast, um, still astonishing, still shocking, but like you'd come back and go, you know, what the heck was that? Um, and maybe you wouldn't want to repeat it. Many people didn't want to. But if he broke through, which William Burroughs did after accidentally injecting himself with a much higher dose than he normally used to, um, if you do break through, then you're into these alternate realms. Yeah, yeah. So, so speaking of the insectoids, I guess, as a good time—this is one of the things I want to ask you—was some of the commonalities—it sounds like there are a surprising number of commonalities between people's trip reports. There's the so-called machine elves; a lot of people report seeing, like you said, hyperdimensional things; like I had even seen videos talking about people trying to map the DMT realm as if it was this consistent phenomenon that different people could go in, investigate, come back and talk about their shared findings, something like that. Could you comment a little bit more on that?

Yeah, so, so it's the DMT world and and its occupants is, is, I mean, it's clearly vast and and diverse, and everyone's experience is, to some extent, different. Um, it's not like you're entering a single room, right, where everyone goes to the same room; it's like you're entering a vast alternate universe, really. Um, you know, if you dropped somebody onto a random position on Earth, you know, an alien or something, um, depending on where they landed, they'd describe very different worlds. You know, if they landed in the Siberian tundra, they'd describe a very different world than if they landed, you know, in Russia, in Hanoi, or something, right? Um, so you can imagine that if there is this alternate reality, whatever it is and wherever it is, um, it's, it's perhaps not surprising that people's experiences are are different, depending on where they end up. Um, but what is striking about DMT, um, is the number of, um, commonalities people do describe—seeing the same types of beings. Um, this is what really struck, uh, Rick Strassman when he did his, his study in, in the '90s, uh, was that people were, his subjects were coming back and describing these, you know, certain types of beings. They would describe, uh, like reptilian beings, who are often objectionable to some extent, uh, to a greater or lesser extent. You know, there's one subject was described being raped, uh, it was a guy, I think, so I'm, I'm assuming he was anally raped by, uh, some reptilian or alligator-type being, right? So this is kind of rare, I think. Most of the time people just—was it kind of like a V—was he like post-traumatic stress disorder after that? And it was like a traumatizing experience for him? Well, I mean, I don't know about the followup and how, you know, the months and weeks afterwards, but if you read the trip reports—one thing that I have—so I'm writing a book now, um, which chronicles the history of DMT and how we kind of understand it and the neuroscience and the potential future, all of this stuff, uh, and in one of the chapters, you know, I got—Rick Strassman kindly gave me access to his original bedside notes, uh, that he took for all of his volunteers. So rather than just the snippets that made it into his book, DMT: The Spirit Molecule, I had access to everything, um, and some of the stories that didn't make it into the book—and I won't give anything away—you have to read the book when it comes out, but, uh, you know, it's, it's really—they were truly appeared to be deeply traumatized by what they experienced—something that was—this could not have happened, you know, that, that sense of—this is not possible, you know, what I just experienced wasn't just strange or bizarre; it was, it was literally impossible. There's no way this, this level of alienness, uh, was could be something that my brain was just cooking up, which I guess we can, we can get into—that is actually what's going on in the brain. Um, um, but yeah, so a variety of different beings that people will experience. Fortunately, um, from the now, the large number of studies that have been done, either in person, um, you know, giving someone DMT under controlled conditions or mining trip reports from, you know, websites and things, you can get a kind of a picture of, of the, of the range of different beings that people tend to encounter on DMT, uh, and there's certainly groups of beings—it's not—people don't experience completely—sometimes they do, actually, um, you know, completely random, entirely idiosyncratic kind of intelligent beings, uh, but often they will fall into one of a number of categories. So by far the most common type of being is a loving, guiding female presence that takes various forms but is generally there to reassure you and to guide you. Um, so there's this sense of being taken on a tour around the space, um, by this very loving and reassuring female presence, um, often visually some kind of female or a goddess or something like that, sometimes just the sense of, uh, this

Presence, uh, but then you get into the more, um, curious kind of, in uh, beings, um, the reptilians feature prominently. Reptilian-light, um, alien beings. Insectoids are very common; they are often involved in, um, kind of experimentation—what I describe as like alien experimentation-type experiences where where the subject finds themself in a, um, some kind of, um, highly technological, extremely sophisticated, advanced, um, domain—room, ship, whatever—um, and and there are these reptilian-type, sorry, these insectoid-like, like mantis, mantis-like beings who are performing experiments on them, uh, analyzing them, measuring them, doing various things to them, uh, with very sophisticated equipment. So there's this specific correlation between the people who are seen insectoid beings; it's usually in the context of them being some kind of experiment or or is it like you could have it interchange where it's like, oh, I saw the, it was the reptiles who were experimenting on me, or is it like more common like if you seen the insectoids, they're probably experimenting on you? Something like that.

Yeah, that seems to be not exclusively, but but certainly the the insectoids tend to be uh, have a have a more of a, yeah, a an intelligent, technological kind of vibe in that they're there to do business, if you like. Um, a I I interviewed, um, recently—just last year for the book—uh, one of Rick Strassman’s original, um, participants, uh, in the book, uh, he's uh, he's called Spiros, um, he described an experience where he was he found himself instantaneously on, you know, a g—he laid down, and there were these four beings—you, he wasn't quite sure whether insectoid or they sort of had a in elfish stroke insectoid kind of, um, appearance to them. There was maybe three or four or five of them around him doing things to him, measuring, probing this kind of thing, and then there was another being who was in the background who seemed like the supervisor—this one was in truly in control but wasn't doing the busy work.

Um, that's kind of common; you have these—seems to be a hierarchical system where different beings, yeah, doing different things, so often you won't see them, um, um, yeah. And then so that alien experimentation—it's not like super common, but it's also not super rare. So I think maybe 10%, 9, 10% of people, which is quite a big number actually, will have this, um, kind of what's very similar to, um, descriptions of alien abductions, sort of things that you would read in books by John Mack who studied all of these abductees, um, back in the, again, back in the '90s really.

But then you have, you know, various other types of being, so the machine elves are by far the most famous, uh, denisons of, um, the hyperdimensional Realms, and they are characteristically diminutive beings that are extremely lively, um, excited, um, eager to kind of show you things, uh, they kind, kind of com bounding, um, from, you know, out of the walls really of this this space, and they're kind of, you know, wow, you know, they they they seem to kind of welcome you into this world, and they're very—they seem aware that this, you know, time is limited, so to speak, uh, and they they show you things, and they they show you what they can do basically, uh, you know, Dennis McKenna describes them—these—singing impossible objects into existence, you know, um, speaking this visible language as Terrence McKenna described—doing things that are utterly astounding, you know, they seem to be aware of that—you know, pay attention, pay attention, you know, this is—look at what we can do—uh, and of course you are completely dumbfounded, um, because this isn't something that could happen; this isn't just a crazy dream, um, this is like something that is is actually impossible—doing things that could not be done in our world.

So this is why I'm I'm not satisfied with the explanation that, oh, it's just a drug—your brain is just making it up—uh, because yeah, there are limits to what your brain can simply fabricate. Right. One thing I wanted to add real quick is I I remember you saying elsewhere that some people might make the argument that, oh, just everyone's just influenced by McKenna's description of this, and so everyone's seen the machine elves because they've heard of the concept, and now they're they're like kind of fabricating machine elves in their reports, but you said that, well, I I can't remember the timeline, but there was some culture of people, um, they had discovered these creatures a long time ago, and they were—was it the Hera or the—the, there you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's kind of remarkable when you you read the accounts of—there's a great book called, uh, *Falling Sky*, uh, which describes, um, the work of a guy called—I think his name is Dve Copa—I might have butchered that—but anyway, he's Yanami Shaman, and he he describes the whole kind of process of shamanistic initiation, um, and what it involves—first of all, it's a it's a grueling process that takes weeks where the the initiate—normally a young boy or teenage boy—uh, is basically deprived of food, um, is repeatedly over, you know, all day, every day—you barely sleeps, doesn't eat—um, they repeatedly blow this this snuff—aena or yopo—into his nostrils, you know, all every day, uh, and part of this initiation process, uh, is that the idea is that you you, um, you are reborn, but you reborn is in that you are reconstituted—so these very small beings—and David, Davi, this Yanami Shaman describes them in great detail—he describes them as these tiny beings, extremely colorful, uh, extremely numerous—so in all being, you you you can never get to the end of them, he says—there's so many of them—uh, and they're dancing and they're singing, they're playing pipes, you know, they're they're clearly very jovial, lively, kind of energetic beings, uh, and they during the initiation process—when you call them—and they come bounding out of the forests and they enter your chest and they fill your chest—so this becomes their home, right? This is all you—this is really the aim, if you like, the one of the central aims of this—becoming the shaman is your your body is reborn, reconstituted, built from these beings, and they remain with you in your body, constituting your body until you uh, until you die really, uh, and then when you get close to death, they they leave again and reenter the forest. So there's this and this—so this this mythology, if you like, or cosmology, uh, is central, um, to this Yanami tradition, tradtion, and related Traditions—you know, other groups have similar kind of, um, initiation traditions and and similar cosmologies, um, but when you you read these accounts of these these these hura, you think, wait a minute, these sound like these sound like machine elves, you know, these sound like, you know, all these elf, and these diminutive beings, and it's fascinating because you read some of the modern trip reports, uh, and they describe that these these little bit—these little bit—these little elves came and they were jumping into my chest—MH—and then jumping out again, uh, and Terrence McKenna also described this as well, so, um, you know, that is typical Hekura behavior—they enter your chest, and it's like, well, this is a, you know, you could imagine, okay, maybe these people read these accounts from, you know, traditional shamanistic mythology or whatever.

Wait, pardon—how long ago was this report of the huaras? Oh, this goes back—I'm guessing at least hundreds, probably thousands of years—I mean, this is a very old tradition that's built, built up over, you know, many, many, many uh, centuries, I would say, um, so it's it's not a new idea, um, so yeah, I think—and then of course in the 19—I say of course—I'm going to tell you—um, in the 1950s when Steven Szara did his first study of—to the very first study of DMT—and other people after he injected it and himself—he recruited some doctors from the hospital where he worked, and he injected them with DMT, um, you know, that was the good old days when you could just kind of call your—me—yeah, exactly. Um, so he injected these doctors and nurses, uh, with with DMT, and and one of them in this very first study—so one of the first people ever to be injected with pure DMT—described seeing these little tiny beings that moved around very, very quickly—I mean, it was a very brief trip report for sure, uh, but it's—you think, oh, did this person—was this the first encounter, uh, with the with the the elmes—certainly after someone took pure DMT, uh, it certainly looks like it, um, you know, Timothy Leary in the 1960s was describing these alien-type beings, um, so so the idea that this is a purely a McKenna effect—just just doesn't, um, hold water. I mean, that's what certain people will say is that it's all to do with McKenna, but many people describe these beings having never, um, you know, listened to or read anything by Terence McKenna.

Isn't that quite unique then? Because I think with ayahuasca, I guess there's some commonalities in that people say that they felt a feminine, motherly presence, but it's not like there's a consist—like she consistently looks like this, or she's always has this, uh, type of image or something like that, but—and even then it's not even—it's not even that granular, cuz it's like, oh, I just felt a presence—it's just a kind of feeling that you can't even really describe most of the time. And then say with psilocybin, um, it doesn't really—when it comes to like the real fantastical things—it doesn't really sound like there's too many commonalities—sure, people say like, oh yeah, in lower doses, so like, oh yeah, colors started to change and like the saturation of went down or went up, and and like my visual thing that changed—so that's like commonality, but this is—this is very specific—like—have energetic self-dribbling elves coming jumping in your chest—that's that's super specific.

It is. Yeah. I mean, what's important to note is that although the, um, ayahuasca—the key component of ayahuasca is DMT, um, a number of people have measured levels of DMT in the blood after someone takes ayahuasca, and of course after someone takes, uh, DMT—you know, smoking, vaporizing DMT or injection—so the level of DMT that you actually—the level of DMT in your brain that's reached when you inject or vaporize DMT, uh, is about five times higher than it's ever achieved with ayahuasca. So with ayahuasca, it's like 20% of what you get with with with DMT. So DMT, pure DMT, uh, is is kind of the next level. Ayahuasca tends to be much less intense; it's much slower; it's it's it's easier to work with, and that you spend some more drawn-out experience—you you get the rise of the experience and the the peak and the plateau and then the gradual, uh, tailing off—whereas with DMT, it's like you're there, uh, in seconds, um, and and you reach a much higher level than you do with with ayahuasca. So yeah, so there are similarities—I mean, I've, you know, a guy wrote to me last year who took ayahuasca, and he was hoping to see, you know, Mother, Mother Ayahuasca—this goddess—and he was treated to something quite different, which I talk about in the book—I won't I won't spoil it—but yeah, he wrote to me absolutely horrified—he got a Korean guy—yeah, he'd flown to Peru, um, to take ayahuasca, and he thought—I—yeah, I I didn't sign up for this—I mean, he thought—I mean, he was truly traumatized by the experience in that he really thought that they would had harvested his soul—these aliens, you know, he was—he wasn't—his experience was nothing, you know, if any—if there's ever an argument against the whole—set—it's that the experience is entirely influenced by the setting, then this this trip report is it, and it's not the only one who's experienced this kind of thing, um, but yeah, he was expecting anacondas and, you know, lovely, um, flowing, angelic, motherly spirits that were going to guide him, you know, and, you know, heal him and all this kind of stuff, you know, as people—that's why people do it, right?—we want a healing experience, and you got quite the opposite. They wrote to me and says, you know, can you help, um, so yeah, afraid I wasn't—I mean, I did I did chat to him, and we had we kind of had a Zoom call, and I I spoke to him for for for an hour or two, and hopefully he's okay, but yeah, wow.

I'll share with you two quick things on that: is so when I did ayahuasca, luckily I had I had I had all these expectations at first, and then I sort of threw them away after I had been hearing people saying that every single time it's 100% different from what you're expecting, so don't have any expectations. And so yeah, I certainly didn't have this kind of angelic, motherly presence guiding me through an eight-hour time of joy. I did see this kind of like ominous kind of demon creature covered in eyes trying to force me to, uh, go into this dark pit where there was all these like blackened souls kind of wailing down there, and I was like, I'm not going in there. And so they they say the more you resist the trip, the longer it lasts, and so I was just like, I'm not going there for for hours basically, and I was awake until like 3:00 a.m., and everyone had finished around 10:00 p.m. or something like that. And then on the other thing is I feel like this has happened more than once where on, um, I want to say it was on psilocybin, though—was I felt like I was getting closer—well, I okay, I didn't know what was happening, but I did have this thought of—I started to get really fearful, and I had this feeling like something is about to happen, but if I allow it to happen, then this alien mushroom presence, whatever it is, it's going to steal my consciousness and swap it with me, and then I'll never get it back—so kind of—yeah, that's exactly what this guy was scared about—that he described as his soul—but it's yeah, the same thing really, right? He felt that they were fishing—they were fishing for his soul, and they had taken it, uh, that—and then he was like, you know, how do I get it back, um, yeah, so he was—so yeah, you can't guarantee this is going to be a always going to be a lovely, warm, healing experience, and people shouldn't assume that that's going to be the case, because yeah, it can be utterly horrifying, and with DMT all the more so I think, but with DMT of course it is mercifully brief—so they only have you for a few minutes.

Yeah, so just to finish up the the psilocybin thing—and this isn't any sort of advice or anything—but I I had that period of being genuinely afraid of whatever is going on, and then some part of me said, oh, don't worry about it, just relax, and then after that was when I had what I guess you could say is a breakthrough—it felt like ego death and basically dissolving of all available concepts, things like that. So actually, on that, uh, something about that particular trip made it really, uh, made this analogy that you had used before make a lot of sense to me, so I don't know if I'm interpreting it right, but you had this—you explaining how certain less powerful psychedelics may do some tweaks on an existing model and how the brain perceives the world, but then with DMT it seems like—gets instantiated an entirely new model—could you explain that a little bit more clearly?

Yeah, so so basically the world that you experience—your subjective reality—at all times is this model—it's a model that's being constructed by your—what I call your your world-building machinery—which is the the cortex, you know, the outer layer of your brain and other parts of the brain as well, but particularly the cortex. So all of the the the structure, the content, the dynamics, everything that you experience in your world, uh, is represented, um, by patterns of neural activity in your cortex. So your brain is—you know—you never know whether the world that you experience kind of maps one to one, so to speak, with what's actually out there—we never have access, uh, um, to the noumenal world—what Immanuel Kant called the the noumenon—the world in itself—we never have access to that—we only have access to the phenomenon, which is the phenomenal world—the world that you experience—your subjective world—and that's a model constructed by your brain, um, uh, as basically as a model of the environment, um, you you know, our brains evolved, um, to facilitate, um, our survival and reproduction in the environment, you know, whatever the nature of the environment is, uh, and so and so that's really the purpose of the world that we experience is to allow us to navigate and survive and flourish and hopefully pass on our genes to the next generation. Um, that's the purpose of this model, but it's always a model, um, um, the brain doesn't care whether it's true, so to speak—has no way of measuring or knowing whether it's true—it simply knows that it works—that it's adaptive, um, um, and so when you go to sleep at night and when you dream, for example, um, you are your brain is constructing a model, um, in the same way that it does when you are, uh, awake, um, it's a model that's disconnected from the environment, uh, but it's normally a model that's built in exactly the same way, and in fact, normally it's a continuation of the normal waking world. People have studied dreaming for—well, for centuries really—but you know, scientifically people have studied dreaming for many decades, and we know that most people dream about fairly mundane things—they dream about, you know, talking on the telephone, they dream about watching TV, they dream about, you know, doing their everyday lives, you know, it gets weird, and things shift and change, uh, but it's it's the same model—you know, your brain is building the world, if you like, that it learned to or and evolved to construct in normal waking life. The difference is that in normal waking life, your brain has access to sensory inputs from the environment—so visual information—so you know, light patterns of light—patterns of sound, etc.—uh, that it can use to kind of test its model—see—the world you experience is always the model, um, you never have direct access to the outside world, but you do, um, have access to the patterns, uh, of of of sensory stimulation, um, that the brain is basically using to make predictions about its model, uh, basically. So you you—the world you experience in normal waking life is a model that's constantly being tested against sensory information, um, so it's constrained, if you like, by sensory inputs, but the world we experience is always this model.

So when you take a psychedelic, what's happening is it's your—the psychedelic is getting into the brain; it's binding to these particular types of receptors—these serotonin 5-HT2A receptors—specifically, certainly with the classic psychedelics, um, and it is disrupting that model—it's changing that model—it's making the model more fluid, more dynamic, much more sensitive to sensory inputs, um, uh, and that is the psychedelic state—the psychedelic state is a change in this world model that your brain is constructed—it's also changes, uh, your self-model, so you your brain also constructs a model of yourself as opposed to the environment—as opposed to the other, you know, um, so that is also disrupted as well with psychedelics—which why you get this, uh, sense of, uh, ego dissolution—your sense of self starts to dissolve, uh, and also there's a loss of differentiation between yourself and the environment—so you get this what's called oceanic boundlessness where you feel like you are one with the entire universe, uh, because there isn't that clear differentiation, uh, between yourself and the environment.

Um, so with the classic psychedelics—with LSD, with psilocybin, with mescaline, etc.—it's like—it's like a a perturbation of that—your normal waking world model—the model changes, and and the degree to which it changes will often depend upon dosage—if you take a low dose of psilocybin mushrooms, it might be, you know, things might seem more fluid—objects might start to shift and change their identity before your eyes, and colors might seem brighter, and there's just a change in, uh, the structure and dynamics of your experienced world—the model is changing, uh, but with DMT, um, so I I describe it like it's like the classic psychedelics—they nudge the dial just out of tune a little bit, um, what with DMT what happens is that the model is completely obliterated, uh, and it's like you you've found a completely new channel—the brain stops constructing the normal waking world model in its entirety—it's gone, uh, and suddenly starts to construct this entirely, uh, novel, completely, um, alien really—let's face it—that's what it is, you know—it's a completely alien model—it's completely different world model—your brain is constructing an entirely different world that bears no relationship whatsoever to the normal waking world—to the world that your brain evolved to construct, um, so that's kind of very difficult to explain, you know, your brain wasn't dropped to Earth, uh, being able to construct a world model—a model of the environment—it took millions of years, you know, from the moment you're dragged from your mother's womb—your brain is learning, sampling sensory information from the environment and using it to find patterns and to start to construct objects and relationships and learning to build the world—it takes a long time—it's not an easy thing to do, um, and so somehow when you perturb the brain with DMT—suddenly the brain's with, you know, crisp, incredible efficiency—suddenly becomes capable of constructing these worlds that are, you know, crystalline clarity, incredibly dynamic and and intricate—infinitely detailed—higher dimensional—filled with these beings—with these coherent narrative structure, you know, it's like the the best movie you've never seen or could possibly see being created in real time, um, by your brain, um, despite it bearing no relationship to the world that your brain evolved to construct—it's like your brain is suddenly switched to speaking an entirely different language that has no relationship to English, um, you know, if you think about in terms of language—it's like your brain is, you know, suddenly speaking fluent Siberian Yupik, um, you know, having never been exposed to that language—that would be confounding, of course, uh, if that happened, you know, to a child or something—a British child or an American child—um, but in a way that's what your brain is doing—it it suddenly starts constructing these incredibly intricate and dynamic and highly complex, hyperdimensional worlds filled with these, you know, incredible alien beings, um, it's like—I'm sorry—that that is not easy to explain—it's it's not—you can't simply say, oh, it's just hallucinations—the brain is just making it up—because there are limits to what the brain can make up, um, and so yeah, I think that's really the central problem with DMT, uh, is the our inability to explain, you know, in my opinion anyway, how the brain is able to construct these realities that are so different to the normal waking world with such adroit, uh, with such effortless precision and ability, and it's it's a remarkable thing, um, unless there is some kind of alternate sensory information input—just as the normal waking world is normally modulated and constrained by sensory information from the environment—is the brain picking up or is information being input it into your brain from somewhere else—from some other domain—I don't want to say where it is or what it is or its origins or anything like that—that's what it seems like to me—seems like you can only explain DMT if there is some alternate source of information inputs that is directing, if you like, the construction of this alternate world model.

Okay, so to follow up on what you just just said—it it it sounds like what you're arguing is that it's very plausible that there is some sort of input or download of information—it is not your brain just being sort of tweaked and then it's like seeing things in a weird way—in the same way—same way we see dreams—because pretty much any other psychedelic and any dream seems kind of like a riffing on what we normally see—like you have a dream, and they're all weird and stuff, and it's like, I was in a car, and then the the road turned into a waterfall, and and then we were transported into a field, but like those are all common concepts—to cars, waterfalls, fields, things like that—but what you're saying is that the content of the DMT—

Experience is just so completely removed from anything that we experience in waking life or even in the dream world that it's almost like, where are these concepts coming from? Because it's like they they're literally not branching off of anything that we could conceptualize. Like we never see things, you know, dribble itself out of thin air and, you know, speak things into existence, stuff like that. Um, and and so I want to get your thoughts on that, but then I also want to ask about the, for example, they'll say insectoid creatures, and then people might think like, oh, okay, so DMT is just riffing off of normal experiences, cuz I know what an insect is and things things like that. What do you think about that kind of argument?

Okay, so so yeah, so what I think is happening, I mean, when people do commonly describe what's often called a, uh, like a download effect, and they they get this very strong sensation of information flowing into their brain at a very high rate, you know, like imagine, you know, you know, a trillion bit per second or something like this, you know, something that's way beyond any normal kind of information input. Um, there this strong sense that there is information coming in that's directing the experience, and that's really what I think's uh going on. I think there is, you know, I lean towards the possibility, you know, I I can't escape it, um, the lean towards the possibility that there is some kind of intelligence here that you are accessing, but I don't think, you know, the idea that if there's a discarnate, which means of course without a body, uh, some kind of discarnate intelligence that actually looks like an insect or actually looks like a reptilian, that's that doesn't make any sense. Um, and so I don't think that you're seeing, I'm pretty sure, in fact, that if there is some kind of intelligence, and we can perhaps talk about what form that might take, why that intelligence might be there, uh, but I I, you know, if you want to experience or interface with this intelligence, whatever it is, your brain has to build a model of it. There's no escaping that. You know, if I'm I'm talking to you now, my brain is constructing a model of you. I don't know what you're really like, um, so to speak, you know, I don't know anything about, and you don't know anything about me either really, but your brain is constructing a model of me. Um, and your brain is very good at constructing models of people in particular. Um, um, so we so when people talk about, let's take the insectoids for example. First of all, no, I don't think that you're interacting with insectoid aliens. I don't think they're actually insectoids. I think they appear to you as insectoids, but I don't know. Um, I don't even know if it's possible to faithfully represent this kind of discon intelligence in a visual form, but there that's the only thing that we can do. Our brain is a, you know, we are visual species. We have to be able to construct a visual model of it, and so how does your brain, the question then is is, you know, how does your brain model this intelligence? And I think it is it's directed in the sense that, um, I always say you don't break through into the DMT world, the DMT world breaks through into you. Um, it is taking control basically of your world-building machinery, uh, and it decides what you see. It is directing the visions. Um, so you're going to see forms that to a certain extent, um, are going to be perhaps reminiscent of forms that you see uh in the normal waking world, which kind of contradicts what I said earlier, uh, and that nothing's taken from, so it's kind of it's not entirely true that yes, nothing is taken from this world. There are often, uh, certainly with in terms of the the beings, um, your brain has to kind of find some way of representing these beings or has to be induced to represent these beings in a way that that makes sense to you as a living being that you're interacting with. Um, so why they choose uh the insectoid, why that's such a common motif, I don't know.

One thing that people of people often talk about and is often a what I consider to be quite a lazy explanation for DMT is is the Jungian idea uh of archetypes, right? So archetypes are one of the most universally known concepts, cept but also just as well misunderstood, I think. Um, the archetypes that they aren't that mysterious really. Um, you know, an archetype is a an inherited um neurological pattern. It's basically an in in animals, we we would call it we would call these things instincts, right? So a spider doesn't need to learn how to build a web. It's born with that instinct. It contains, you know, certain patterns, certain certain important ways of interacting with the environment. Yeah, can be embedded, certain programmed routines, right? Can be um that are absolutely essential, um, can be embedded in your neural architect, neural architecture from birth. These deep programs, they're very deep in the brain, uh, they're fixed, uh, they're no good for, um, you know, kind of um, interacting with a very uncertain, ever-changing world, but they provide you with the the bare bones apparatus, uh, how to interact uh with things in the world. So to kind of crystallize that a little bit, um, you know, the spider building the web, right? It's something that's very important that a spider is able to do. Doesn't need to learn how to do it, right? It's so important that it's it's kind of embedded, it's an instinctive behavior. Uh, a a newly hatched turtle will instinctively move towards the ocean, right? This is very important, if not they get predated, right? So um, in humans, we also have these basic fundamental ways of interacting uh with the world, um, which also influences how we model the world as well. So we have a, you know, a child from uh from about a year old, uh a baby, uh if you if a snake is brought into the room, and people have done this, um, they will they will be particularly fascinated with this creature, you know, more so than other types of creatures, uh living animals that you can bring into the room, um mice. I go back to smaller animals, uh if you raise um mice uh entirely independently in a cage, so they've never interacted with any other mice, uh and they've never interacted with any other animals, um you bring these mice and put them together, they immediately start playing. So this is another instinctive behavior. They roll around and tumble and stuff and all this kind of stuff. They don't need to learn to do it. Instinctive behavior. You then drop some cat hairs, um I've seen that book actually, effective neuroscience by Panp, this is a classic and it describes this, uh, um, so you drop cat hairs into the cage, the mice who have never seen a cat will immediately stop playing and they will stop eating, uh and they will be clearly nervous and fearful. It's like we need this is we need to be careful around this, we don't know what it is, but instinctively they know uh that this is something that needs to be careful of. It doesn't work with dog hairs, right? Interestingly, right? Yeah, it works with cat hairs, right? So these mice, rats, they don't know that this is their arch enemies' fur, but they have an instinctive response to it. Yeah. Um, so humans, again going back to humans, we have certain programmed ways of interacting with with uh certain things in our environment, and normally these are important for our survival. So uh snakes, spiders, um, you know, other types of animals, but those particularly are particularly strong, but also other humans, right? Uh a baby will instinctively um be attracted towards its mother. Yes, it will feel a sense of of warmth and comfort and safety in the presence of its mother. If you separate the baby from the mother, it cries. Yes, he gets the separation distress. Um, um, and there are also, you know, if you think about the fundamental distinction between humans, you know, we have friends and we have enemies. Um, so you need to know that a stranger is someone you need to be keep a distance, be careful, you don't know their intent, they could, you know, someone from another tribe, let's say. Um, the the wise old man, we're talking about archetypes here, right? The wise old man, right? What is that? Well, that's, you know, a more senior member of the tribe, someone you should listen to carefully, someone who has lots of experience, you need to listen to what he or she is telling you because that could be useful as well. So we have these programmed patterns uh of interacting with um other humans and other animals, um with animal, you know, insects, it's one of it's one of basically fear uh and withdrawal and keeping your distance. Same with snakes. With humans, it's much more complicated, you know, various types of humans if you like. So these are these all form part of our uh archetypal archetypal toolbox if you like. Uh, so an archetype is simply a a an inherited pattern of of neural connectivity that um enables us to respond reliably and uh appropriately and adaptively with other beings in the environment, and it also means that we tend to build models uh in certain ways. Um, so we're very good at building models of insects, right? And they have certain characteristics attached to them, right? An insect is something you need to be careful of. It's it has its kind of has sort of an alien almost character to it, right? Um, and and again, different types of humans. The mother archetype is simply that inherited pattern of behavior that response, the emotional response and behavioral response to the presence of your mother. So this loving figure if you like, you uh is basically, um, could you could see it as a manifestation, this this loving female presence that people so often experience, you could say that is a manifestation of like the mother archetype, but it's not uh it's simply the um the brain's placing this pattern onto, you know, it's using the archetype if you like. You know, archetypes are being used all the time. You have information flowing in from the outside world, and you have information flowing from these deeper neurological structures, these archetypal ancient structures as well that are helping you to interact with the world. When you meet a new person you've never seen before who's approaching you, yeah, your archetypal patterns are kicking in. This is a stranger, I need to be careful, you need to be wary uh of this this individual, yeah. Uh, so you're using your archetypes all the time. So even when your world model is being so dramatically altered uh by DMT, it's not surprising that your brain dips into its archetypal typal toolbox to try and find something, some kind of um model that's going to work, um to kind of make sense of this, and you know, it wouldn't surprise me if this intelligence was indeed drawing upon that and using uh what's familiar to us to kind of get across what they want to get across. If they want to reassure us and make us feel um calm and relaxed and that we're in safe hands, we don't need to worry, then they're not going to show us an insectoid, right? That wouldn't make any sense. Um, so the presence is going to be female, right? They're using that. Um, if they want to scare you, um then an insectoid is is a much more appropriate model um to use. So I think I think, you know, that's what's going on. So you can't you certainly can't explain using archetypes. It's a very simple, basic like templates if you like, you know, that's all an archetype. It's a basic template for how to build a certain type of human or build a certain type of animal. That's all it is. It certainly can't explain these extremely dynamic and uh, you know, hyper complex um behaviors and and and geometries and all that kind of stuff. Um, so yeah, so that's why I kind of I don't dismiss the archetypal explanation, but I think it's only it's just the surface level of what's going on there. So the the insect or the reptiles, it's more like it's the best token that was available. Kind of like you're making a diorama and you only have Legos, and then someone says like, that's that's not Jesus, that's a Lego man. It's like all all I had was Lego man, that's what I had to use. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's that's basically I think what what's going on, you know, whether whether whether it's your brain drawing on these archetypes to try and make sense, I think this is what best fits, you know, the kind of experience that I'm having here, the kind kind of entity I seem to be interacting with, or whether it's actually the intelligence that's directing this that is that is using these these types of models, because I think ultimately it's the information coming in that's the intelligence that's actually directing um the type of experience that you have. Mhm. Sorry, it's kind of it's complicating a bit. Yeah, difficult to understand, but hopefully that makes no that that makes a lot of sense for sure. It's it's um or at least what I'm getting is it it kind of sounds like the, let's say whatever is directing the DMT experience is just using the limited resources that is available in the human brain's world-building toolkit, kind of thing, right?

Yeah, exactly. You know, you can't you can't experience a world that your brain can't construct, you know. Um, so whatever, you know, I I describe the DMT world as a directed world as as opposed to being a, you know, there's three types of worlds: a sensed world, which is a world that is being modulated by information from the environment. This is the normal waking world um that you're experiencing. A dreamt world, where you disconnect um the information during sleep, um this is a world your brain is using the the object models and the world models it's developed over, you know, the period of evolution, development and experience to construct the dream world, which tends to look a lot like the the sensed world, except being generally more dynamic and, you know, ever shifting and unstable, uh, and then you have what I think the DMT world is, which is a directed world where the information is coming, you know, when you take DMT you're gating the flow, your your the brain enters this this what's called a state that's close to criticality, which basically means that it's much more fluid and dynamic and malleable. So just like heating a piece of glass, you know, glass is very rigid, but when you heat it up it becomes much softer and you can you can you can, you know, glass blowers will create these beautiful shapes out of glass, but only when it's hot. And so with DMT your brain reaches this very hot state, so to speak, uh where it's much more fluid and dynamic and in my opinion much more susceptible to being commandeered by this um agent, this intelligent agent, whatever it might be or wherever it's. One one thing that I just thought of, maybe you've heard this before, but uh another thing I was thinking of is, so like you said, it's like you take DMT and then your your existing model is completely obliterated and then you're going into a new model, right? Do you think, for example, it could be the case that while you're under the influence of DMT you are utilizing this model, but then once you come off of it you disengage from that and re-engage into the old model? So you can only make sense of that memory in terms of this this human model that you have, like so maybe you could be experiencing the whole DMT thing in all its glory, but then when it comes to go back and remember it or report it, like you can only use it speak about it in terms of this previous model. I guess that could be something that could be never confirmed.

So this is a very good point, and you're absolutely 100% right, is that memory is always a process of reconstruction. Uh, a memory is uh when you remember something, you're reactivating to a certain extent patterns of the same pattern of neural activity that occurred during the experience. Um, so so if you want to remember, and this is why DMT is so difficult to remember, uh is that if you want to remember, recall the experience, your brain has to find a way of kind of reactivating um that experience in the absence of DMT, and that seems extremely difficult for the brain to do. It's almost like you have to kind of um form like a lower dimensional projection of that higher dimensional experience after the DMT trip ends. So you're trying to find a way um to kind of uh reconstruct it in your brain such that you're remembering it, recalling it, so you can describe it uh in the absence of DMT, and so that does open exactly as you said, that the question of are you is it a true memory? Uh, um, is your brain trying to make sense of it after the fact? Um, but actually during the experience itself, maybe it was completely different, um and it's actually your brain is using these archetypal structures and stuff to try and make sense after the experience. So actually it's not a true memory, whatever that might be, uh but actually a in a sense a reconstructed um memory, you know, a lower dimensional projection of the original experience. Interesting. Okay. Um, to to switch gears a little bit, I was curious if you've [Music] um spoken to, let's say, some monks or Buddhists who on the topic of DMT.

I haven't. Um, I mean, certainly I mean, I know a little like if you look at the particularly Tibetan Buddhism, which is very rich with, I was very interested in um in Buddhism, you know, 20 years ago, um actually went on a two-week-long retreat so in the UK, which was completely different to what I was expecting by the way, but it was it was it was a variation of um Tibetan Buddhism or actually Vietnamese uh version of Buddhism, uh which is I think closely related, but it's they have these that they love these the these gods and characters um that populate these different worlds, and they describe going to different lands, you know, after death, for example, describing going to, you know, Deini land I think is is is one that rings a bell, which is a a land filled with these strange creatures, um and and so there's you you can't help but think is it possible because and we're not just talking about Buddhism here, but the idea of there are other realms that are populated by um beings that are more more intelligent and more wise and more powerful than us, that it's certainly not restricted to Buddhism. I mean, you can go into Hinduism as well, and you can find the the, you know, the the pantheon of of all these different gods, you know, often very very strange creatures. Um, so I think one is forced to confront the possibility that perhaps um these Buddhists, um perhaps in the past, perhaps not so much now, I don't know, uh were able to access these domains uh through other means, you know, I think DMT is certainly the most efficient tool for for g uh for gating access to these very strange domains, but um it's there's no reason to assume that there couldn't be other techniques, and that that that certain people, certain individuals who are very well trained over time can access these. I mean, they have to come from somewhere, right? You have these rich cosmologies of entities and deities and gods and goddesses and strange creatures, and you you it seems, I don't know, perhaps slightly insulting or patronizing to say, oh, this is just somebody, you know, cooking it up, just making it up. Um, it seems like it must have some kind of origin though, some kind of experience that underlies that that that these people are actually going, having access to these places, and that maybe the modern human is is uh is has kind of it's become more and more disconnected uh from that alternate reality. We've kind of our brain has become much more, if you like, rigidified. It's probably not the right word, but you get the idea, is that we' we've cemented ourselves in this very um um mundane really um slice of reality and and convinced ourselves that this is it, um you know, with a great degree of of hubris that we have this is it, and this is all there is, and there's nothing else to see, and if you see something else, then it's just a hallucination, and that you're you this is this is just you're deluding yourself if you think it's anything more than that. Um, so certainly, you know, modern DMT users are probably not the first to discover these kind of realms or even um the indigenous peoples of South America. It probably goes back thousands and thousands of years, and I do entertain the idea that perhaps that we are simply we we have become more disconnected from um these other realms.

I think one of the reasons why these more fantastical states are so difficult for people to imagine occurring sober is that it seems like when people are having these mystical experiences, say on a very long meditation retreat, that much of what is necessary to get to a position to where you can even start on the work necessary to get there is like a long dramatic dopamine detox, especially for the modern person. So it's maybe, let's let's say in the past when there was no computers, TVs, radio or anything, it's like half the work of the meditation retreat was already completed for the average person, and so they could just go in and then it would be a lot more feasible for people to go speak to whoever is teaching the meditation and then actually get somewhere and say a meditation retreat and say, oh, okay, hey, there there is something um a bit there, there's a kind of mystical realm.

I think absolutely correct. I mean, we are in the modern world, we are bombarded, you know, literally our brains are bombarded with with sensory inputs all the time, uh and ever more so, exponentially more so in the last few decades, you know, it's constant. We're being bombarded through screens mainly and media of course, and this is literally shaping our reality, you know, and constraining our reality. You know, sensory inputs constrain your world model, and so um it's literally directing in in a sense um how you view the world, and disconnecting from that, you know, by going on a retreat or something, um you know, you as you said, you're doing kind of half the work, you are removing that source of sensory inputs, removing that constraint, and then it's simply a matter of getting yourself into the right um neurological state, um perhaps um that would allow these alternate sensory inputs to take control and a few to experience these alternate realities.

One, have you ever heard of the concept of stream entry or or a stream enter, something like that?

No. So there's several different types of Buddhism, let's say sects of Buddhism, and I think what Americans are most familiar with is Zen Buddhism, which doesn't really have any sort of map that leads to enlightenment. It's just it's something that'll happen, but if you want enlightenment, then that's an oxymoron or that's that's a paradox. So, you know, let's not talk about it or anything. And however, there are, I can't remember the name of the of the the one most associated with the map, but there's this kind of four-path model where there's four stages to awakening, and so you do some insane amount of meditation, and then you have what's called a cessation experience, where basically as you're doing the meditation, the mind gets quieter and quieter and quieter until basically it kind of sounds to use your analogy where you have gotten to a point where you've completely disengaged the model, the world-building model, and you are in a point of basically nothingness. You don't start a new model, but it's you have completely disengaged this one, and then there's this kind of short cease in consciousness, and then when consciousness boots back up, you you see the model construct itself, and seeing the model construct itself leads to this massive insight of you, you can kind of see how the building blocks are put together, and you see the trick, and you see how the self is built, and you're like, wait a minute, that's that's not what I've been told, and then you have this kind of like the biggest epiphany imaginable by a person, and so at that point there is said to be a permanent shift in the person's consciousness and then but that's that's only the first stage, and then you do it again, but to to I guess to a more intense degree, and then you do it again and you do it again, and then the fourth is the point when you actually say someone is quote-unquote enlightened. But what's interesting about this is they have actually been doing brain scan research on people who have claimed to achieve these different stages, and there's this one

Person in particular who I interviewed, his name is um, Delson Armstrong. He, he is alleged to have achieved the fourth stage, and they put him in the brain scanner, and they're like, "We don't know if he's achieved this mystical thing, but his brain is something—about his brain is totally different—to where he can do, do this technique where it's basically he can at will, whenever you want, goes into that cessation stage that I said, where it's basically you've disengaged the model." And so he does the technique, and they're scanning his brain while he's doing it, and they're like, "We don't know exactly what he's doing, but it looks like the brain suddenly goes into a state akin to, say, anesthesia, like ketamine. Like it, it basically looks like he can willingly make the brain go into a state that is similar to ketamine." So my, my what I'm getting at is I'm wondering if the DMT experience would be any different for these kinds of people who have achieved this kind of permanent change in their, in their brain configuration. Is that anywhere on your horizon? Or I think it would be, it would make for a great study. Yeah, if you could get a number of, a number of these individuals—I don't know how rare they are—they're quite rare, incredibly rare, incredibly rare. So if you could convince, well, at least one, if you could convince at least one to, to, to take DMT under controlled conditions and also measure their brain activity and see how do they differ from someone who is, um, you know, who doesn't have that, who isn't the sub-enlightened kind of normous, um, then that would be great to look at. But it's, it's interesting.

Um, you mentioned—have you heard of John Lilly? Oh, that sounds very familiar. Dolphin Whisperer. Oh, okay. He, he did an insane amount of ketamine, right? He did insane amounts of ketamine. I mean, he was one period in his life he was injecting it every, every couple of hours. Like he would, he would sleep, uh, but the only time he wasn't injecting ketamine was when he was sleeping, basically. So, but he started—he invented the, the flotation tank, the sensory isolation chamber—not all people know that—um, but initially it was kind of quite a complex thing, and you would, you know, have eye shades and, um, you know, on a bed or something, like a gurney or something, and it was very difficult to isolate all the senses. And then he discovered that, you know, if you could float in, um, salted water, um, um, that would provide buoyancy. You can enclose this chamber that was complete dark; you could create a perfect sensory isolation chamber. Um, and he found very, very quickly that after lying within this sensory deprivation chamber, in this flotation tank, he was expecting to see nothing, or, you know, a void of some sort, but that's not what happened. Um, again, the brain stopped constructing its normal world model, uh, and it started to construct another world model, and he found himself in these extremely technological alien domains, interfacing with what he described as an alien intelligence. Then he started taking ketamine. Uh, initially he started with LSD, that was sober, initially, right? Um, he started taking LSD inside, um, these tanks, and that kind of upped the level of the experience. But then, um, this was about the time when the kind of the government was cracking down on LSD, and so he was unable to—had to send all of his LSD back, uh, to Sandoz, um, and, um, he needed an alternative, and a friend of his said, "You know, you should try ketamine, um, might do the trick." And so that's how he got involved in ketamine, and he started taking ketamine and going into the flotation tank, and he was interacting, you know, he had, he built this, this whole cosmology of these levels of alien intelligences that he was interacting with and communicating with, uh, over, over many years. Uh, he was eventually sectioned, um, because he called the White House and said that there were aliens were planning to kill the president or something like that. So the police came and took him off and put him in a mental institution. So people think that he's kind of mad, uh, but you know, I mean, yes, he, he took it far, further than anyone I can think of, uh, certainly, you know, with, with this ketamine use. But, but he's describing interacting with advanced, you know, non-human intelligences, just as people who take DMT, uh, and in, in a sense it's perhaps not that surprising. You, you, you cut off the sources of sensory input, which normally constrain and basically force your model, your brain to construct a certain model of the world as a model of the environment, and then you basically you allow it to kind of reset, right, in a sense, uh, and begin constructing an alternate model. And whether that is being directed by some kind of other intelligence, um, who knows, but I certainly wouldn't dismiss the idea, um, that, that, that John Lilly was in fact interacting with some kind of, discard advanced intelligence from some other place.

It, what happened to John Lilly after he got sent away? Well, I mean, he, he was, you know, he wasn't sectioned permanently, U and, you, he, he continued taking ketamine until, until the end, I think, you know, um, um, oh yeah, yeah. I mean, this guy was absolutely committed, and he was, he did some really important work. I mean, this guy was—if you, he published so many, you know, academic papers. I mean, he was a proper, you know, button-down academic neuroscientist, you know, physician, um, before he got involved with this weird stuff, and he, you know, did amazing work studying the language of dolphins as well. Uh, yeah, so the ketamine had nothing to do with the dolphins. Well, h—um, he, he did give dolphins LSD. H, and they all had very nice trips, so he says. I don't know how he measured that, but they all had good experiences. I mean, this was, this was in, I think the 1960s, um, you know, he was speaking at conferences about, you know, giving LSD to dolphins, and, um, but yeah, he believed that they were higher intelligence, the dolphins, which that may well be the case, certainly higher than humans, um, and that, that we could—he learned to decode, you know, uh, their language, and he made great headway in that, in kind of trying to understand the, um, the language of the dolphin. So he was a very important figure, and you know, often just, often discredited or dismissed as being just a complete wacko, and he might, you know, to a certain extent he was, but you kind of need that, you need to be to take these ideas and go with, run with them, um, you need to be a little bit unhinged, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

You know what it reminds me of is these speedrunning communities on the internet of people who will—they're playing some video game, and they figure out the most ridiculous glitch, where like if you take five steps this way, jump three times, and then use this item, and then use that item, but then you switch to a different—like just the most ridiculous sequence of events leads to some sort of bug so that they can like shave down their, the time it takes to complete the game by, I don't know, five minutes or something, and they're doing all this crazy stuff, and it's like, "How did you ever figure this out?" It's like, "I just did a bunch of weird stuff, and then something happened." Exactly, yeah, exactly right. So you need that—scientists are often very much—they, you know, they paint themselves into, into a corner, to, in a sense, and that what experiments are permissible and which ones, um, um, which ones are not, and which, you know, what, what is the, the framework, um, uh, under which we try to understand a phenomenon. This is kind of codified in, in, in the, in, in the kind of the orthodox paradigm of modern neuroscience and physics or whatever, um, so you need people to push outside of that. I mean, without that, you wouldn't have people like Einstein, you know, or CERN, right? This kind of thing goes back, so it's not a new thing. You need people who are willing to say, "Actually, I'm going to take a different approach. I think, you know, I'm going to entertain what for most people seems like a completely insane idea, which is the idea of communication with a discar alien intelligence, which is something that which I do," and there aren't many that, that will do it with a straight face and actually take it seriously. There's a lot of mystics and, uh, people who approach it from the kind of what's often, uh, disparaged, call the kind of the woo, edge of things, right? People say, "Oh, it's demons and angels and, um, you know, what's the astral plane?" And for me that's never—it's never particularly satisfying because you're so far—I always tried to keep one foot in, you know, established evidence, evidence-based neuroscience and then reach out into alternate territories and say, "How far can we push this? You know, can we use, can we use the modern paradigm of, of, of neuroscience to, to at least show why the DMT experience in particular is so difficult to explain?" Uh, and if you can do that, which I think we can—that's what I've been trying to do. I'm not trying—I've not been trying to convince people for the last decade or so that the DMT world is a real place, so that we are interacting with real intelligences, but simply to convince people that actually it's not very diffic—it's not easy to explain, or in fact it's almost impossible to explain away these experiences using the, um, the neuroscientific paradigm that we have at our disposal, uh, which is why we need to start to think outside of that paradigm and start to consider things that most people would, you know, think of the unthinkable, think of things that most people would consider to be beyond the pale, right?

Something about this reminds me of how you have to use the right words, or you'll be, you know, you'll, you'll be judged in a particular way. So, for example, you could have one person—it's been known for a long time that epilepsy is cured by fasting, but you can only fast for so long. But something about fasting seems to stop epileptic seizures, and so it used to be said that, "Well, the person is possessed by a demon, and now they're shaking around because of the demon," and we figured out that the cure for the demon is to, to fast in like a secluded room somewhere. If you said that, you sound nuts, but you've arrived at the correct solution. And then now, of course, we say, "Oh, they have epilepsy," and then something about the fasting works on the GABA receptors in the brain or something like that. But, and then, but you know, it's like, "Wait, we arrived at the same solution. What's wrong with my explanation?" Kind of thing. It, it's what I mean to say is like there's like a, a limitation of putting these ineffable experiences into words, right? So yes, that's always the problem, um, the, to, f, the, in, yeah, to English, the un-English. This is what we're, we're trying to do with the DMT, and, and yeah, I think with DMT, this Extended State Technology, I think that's going to be much more straightforward, uh, and you can, you can start to ask questions like, you know, "Do people—are the correlations—can you have two people, uh, who are given DMT at the same time in different rooms, completely independently, uh, and can you find correlations between their experiences in real time? So are they going to the same place, um, or are there correlations between their neural activity, which would suggest, you know, some statistically significant correlation between their experiences?" These sort of things can be done now and I think are being, at least thought about and planned in places like Imperial College London. So, um, yeah, we might be—people who dismiss, you know, the DMT world and its inhabitants as mere hallucination, figments, figments, um, uh, of the brain, I think they might be in for a bit of a surprise in the next few years, hopefully, right? I think that's a, a good place to stop. You should tell people about your book, or—um, yes, this one, or would you prefer to advertise the upcoming one? Adver—all one? Where do I put this? Here, is that, is it on, on screen? I don't know. Yeah, that's per—I don't have my—yeah, I can see it there. We go. My eyes aren't very good. Yeah, so this is my second book, *Reality Switch Technologies*. Um, so this is, um, in my opinion, the kind of the most detailed and comprehensive guide to how psychedelics—not just the classic psychedelics, but you know, salvia divinorum and the tropane alkaloids and even ketamine—um, how these psychedelic drugs, how they interface with the brain and how they, uh, alter the—how they perturb the brain and alter the structure and dynamics of your world, and how we can use these drugs to kind of explore alternate models of reality, this kind of thing. So if you're really interested in understanding at a deep level—from the level of molecules, brain cells, networks of brain cells, you know, the brain's whole brain's world-building machinery, all that stuff—and how it's changed by psychedelics and what that might mean for us as a human species, then, um, *Reality Switch Technologies* is definitely the book I would recommend, as recommended by Hamilton Morris, no less. Um, but yeah, my next book, um, which has a title, but I'm not going to tell you what it is yet, um, is going to be published in summer, early summer, I think, uh, next year. So it's just in the final stages of editing that now with my editor over in New York, and, um, yeah, that will be the first book published by one of the big five publishing houses that is entirely focused on DMT—the history, the science, the mystery, uh, what it all means, um, you know, uh, the kind of future that we can look towards, all of this stuff, um, so that's, yeah, that's the book to look forward to, hopefully, um, but you'll have to wait for another, well, almost a year. Wow. Okay. But, um, you can also find me—so I have a website, buildingalienworld.com; interviews; read many of the articles that I've written, um, that kind of thing. My Twitter is @AlienInsects, so that's where I generally hang out and post a lot. I also have an Instagram, which is the same handle, but I don't use it as much. Um, yeah, I think that covers it. Great. Okay. Well, Andrew, thanks so much. Thank you very much, Joe.