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124 * SET, SETTING, AND DMT We all gathered around to watch Alex's veins bulge under his skin after the nurse placed the tourniquet above his elbow. Good veins were an important element of a volunteer's successful participation because we drew so much blood. If Alex's veins collapsed or clotted easily, it would cause a lot of stress on study days. I went over a painstakingly detailed medical history and performed a physical examination. The results of the medical tests were important, but equally so was the continuation of our building a close, basic relation- ship before giving and receiving any DMT. Asking Alex sometimes embarrassing health questions, touching, and otherwise relating at a fun- damental and physical level helped establish a foundation of trust and familiarity upon which I hoped we could rely when he was in the throes of powerful, disorienting, and potentially regressive DMT sessions. Alex's laboratory values and ECG were normal, so we scheduled the psychiatric examination. This formal psychiatric interview followed a ninety-page form and could take several hours. Laura, our research nurse, performed all these interviews; it was their first opportunity to get to know each other. Laura then sent Alex off with one more pile of questionnaires and rating scales. After he returned them to us, we scheduled Alex's first non-blind, screening DMT sessions: a low dose of 0.05 mg/kg, followed by a high dose of 0.4 mg/kg the following day. For Alex and the other men, the first sessions could occur whenever our schedules permitted. In women's cases, we needed to standardize when in the menstrual cycle we studied them. We arranged for the women's first two doses, and all subsequent ones, to occur during the first ten days after their menstrual bleeding stopped. On the morning of his admission, Alex left his car across the street in the monolithic parking structure facing the south side of the hospital. He told the guard he was coming in for "a research study" and got his appro- priate sticker. Walking across the footbridge over busy Lomas Boulevard, he found the hospital's Admitting Office, where clerical staff checked him in as DMT-22. They directed Alex upstairs to the fifth-floor Research Center. He walked past the outpatient clinic and entered the ward through a set of double doors.