DMT: The Spirit Molecule Page #2

and the different parts of the brain that can merely not become active.

One of the other interesting things about the pharmacology of DM

is that it is actively transported into the brain,

and so you have to wonder about the world of DMT in just every day normal perceptual, you know, activity.

Too much DMT and things become very psychedelic or you know

not enough, you know, DMT and the brain can make things dull and flat and gray.

There's something that, for me, makes sense about DMT. You call it the "spirit molecule"

To me it must be called the "reality molecule"

Philosophically, it makes sense that something that would be so fundamental to em

the way we perceive reality, would be in..em out there in reality.

There was a sense about it was something special.

That it wasn't like anything else. That wasn't like other psychodelics.

Its intensity and speed was such that it really produced a different kind of response.

I mean, I remember almost getting the sense that is was a kind of like a, like a psychedelic bungee jump.

That there was a kind of raw leap into this rapidly changing environment

that was very different from the more gradual approaches of other psychedelics.

Smoking DMT is sort of like the drive-by shooting of psychedelics.

You're in one place, BANG, you're in another place and then BANG, you're back down.

So it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for that narrative of

"Who am I?" "What am I doing here?" "Why am I in this space?" "What am I learning?"

It's almost like there was too much information to process in a few minute span

to integrate once you're dropped back down.

Dimethyltryptamine, when is administrated, has a very rapid onset

and a very short duration of action.

This is because it is very rapidly broken down by the body so that it can be cleared.

DMT is rapidly degraded by an enzyme in the liver called monoamine oxidase (MAO).

That is the reason why is not active when you take it by mouth.

In contrast, psilocybin

when you take it by mouth, it is not broken down by monoamine oxidase very quickly at all

so it gets through the liver and passes on into the bloodstream and into the brain.

Yea, I'm very interested in Ayahuasca.

When I begun my studies in the early 1990's,

Ayahuasca was just starting make it roads into the West.

Obviously it has become a lot more popular in the last 10, 15 years.

And the visionary ingredient in Ayahuasca is DMT.

Through some amazing feed of preliterate chemistry, the Amazonian natives

stumbled upon or combined, whatever. I don't know how they did it but they

found one plant contains DMT and one plant containes an enzyme inhibitor.

Combine them and you can drink DMT and it's orally active.

So it starts working in half an hour, last 3 or 4 hours

and you can, you know, maneuver a lot more comfortably

within that state then you can when you're just smoking it injecting it.

Orally active Ayahuasca tends to pick you up and gently carry you into the space and hug you

and embrace you and clean you and

show you all sorts of mystical visions and then it very gently brings you back

like you're floating on a feather back to the ground.

As valuable as my DMT experiences have been, I, em,

I feel there is lot more enduring value, really, in this folk technology

which streches it out and makes a navigable space.

Our whole western, you know, European-drived tradition of destilling alcohols and

isolating chemicals and making everything stronger

and taking it and out of nature and putting it into the biggest punch that we can.

I do not think that, generally, that's the most useful way.

I think there's a reason that cultures have learned to turn a 5 minute experience

into a 5 hour experience.

It seems to me that Ayahuasca has had a plan and that its reached out

into the world and brough DMT into many many thousands of lives

much bigger canvas than it had reached for the last ten thousands or however many years,

and it has done very rapidly, and it has done with form to go with it.

The Ayahuasca is much harder

for the power structures that we have now, it's much harder for them to put down

because it has been a part of a legitimate religious and spiritual practice

for thousands of years, certainly in the Amazon.

And we can't just dismissal that as primitive mumbo-jumbo and superstition.

We have to get a grips with that on its own terms.

I think there is a growing number of people who feel this desire

get back in touch with nature

with plants, with animals and who know

that through the shamanic path, there is way of doing this and that

actually these tools, these psychoactive tools for plants like Ayahuasca is a very

direct way of doing this. Now

it may not be everybody's cup of tea and I think

a lot of people are actually, with a reason, afraid of it.

I think like a lot of people in my generation

I first heard about DMT through Terence McKenna

there was a very funny way to become aware of such a poweful and interesting

and anthropologically rich topic as a compound like DMT because

it really became more, it was more of a concept

then something that people were necessarily taking.

DMT flash makes it clear that a disembodied consciousness is a possibility.

I that think the whole tension of history and the tension of life seems to be about the shedding of the body.

Terence was very ... he was a good promoter.

Basically he said it's the ultimate metaphysical reality pill.

Even though it's not a pill but

I though that was a pretty good characterization after I took it.

It would seem to be of a different order then LSD and mescaline and some of other things that were around.

DMT really did seem to be a whole different level of experience.

I ask you to suspend any opinions, either negative or positive about these compounds.

Whatever you believe their value to be

they continue to have profound effects wherever we find their use,

whether it's contemporary Western culture or in the Amazon rainforest.

It was in the 50's that the Ayahuasca churches starting going public.

You know there was a kind of transition from indigenous Indians to mestizo people in cities

and then these churches - the Santo Daime church and then the UDV church later

started doing ceremonies that would made

the Ayahuasca accessable not just to Indians

but to urban people in big cities

who are as far from the shamans as we are.

In the early 1990's, the UDV established

a branch of their church in the United States.

In the late 90's the U.S. customs department along with the DEA intercepted a shipment of ayahuasca.

The church protested the goverment action, they contented that it violated

the religious freedom restoration act.

And the case was heard in the U.S. Supreme Court, and in February 2006

their decision was announced and it was a unanimous decision on the side of the UDV.

Why is it that in the entire Western world, these substances that have been found to be

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