Everything to know about the hallucinogenic “spirit molecule”—common side effects include seeing aliens and finally connecting with the universe.
When Jonathan Bell first tried DMT, he was already well-acquainted with psychedelics—at 34, he had taken acid and used mushrooms on dozens of occasions. Even so, he was staggered by the intensity of his first DMT trip.
“It’s such a bungee jump into a new realm that it can be quite disorienting,” said Bell, now 44, who lives in Denver. Since that first trip, he estimates that he’s used DMT hundreds of times.
As he thought about what it’s like to take the drug, he made a motorboat sound with his lips. “It is a completely immersive experience of seeing and feeling,” he finally said. “Within the space of a breath, you go from regular waking consciousness to something wholly different.”
Describing what any drug “is like” can be difficult. But users say the profundity and variety of the DMT trip makes it especially difficult to put into words. The late biochemist Alexander Shulgin was an early drugs-as-therapy pioneer. In a 1997 book that he wrote with his wife and collaborator, Ann Shulgin, he described one of his personal experiences with inhaled N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT.