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within these reports. While most people's actual drug sessions partook of at least two of these types, one particular category usually predominated.' 154. * THE SESSIONS While most sessions involved psychedelic amounts of DMT, there also were many low-dose and placebo days. These were more relaxed and gave us an opportunity to discuss and work through earlier high-dose sessions. It was quite helpful for volunteers to do this in a less altered, or even completely normal, state of mind. The shock waves elicited by a big DMT experience extended far beyond a single session, continuing to reverber- ate in all aspects of someone's life for days, months, or years. DMT does a lot to our consciousness, but not everything. If we can limit the number of types of experiences DMT produces, we can start focusing on a manageable number of hypotheses to help understand them. Devel- oping coherent and reasonable groupings helps us make sense of the amazingly wide array of stories we're about to hear. Another reason to categorize these experiences is to support the hy- pothesis that outside-administered DMT elicits altered states of conscious- ness similar to those that people report during spontaneous psychedelic experiences: near-death and mystical states and the phenomenon we call alien abduction. If drug-induced and naturally occurring conditions appear to have sufficient overlap, it supports a role for endogenous DMT in the production of these spontaneous psychedelic experiences. This would then open a wide range of possibilities for us to study, understand, and apply these findings beneficially. Three major groupings capture nearly all the various experiences These three categories are personal, invisible, and transpersonal experiences. Personal DMT experiences were limited to the volunteer's own men- tal and physical processes. DMT helped open avenues to his or her personal psychology and relationship to the body. Chapter 11, "Feeling and Think- ing," presents several examples of this type of response. Once volunteers began approaching the furthest boundaries of this category, near-death and spiritual themes began to emerge. The personal then became transpersonal.