Page Content (OCR)
158 * THE SESSIONS call it 'acid' for nothing," he laughed during our first meeting. He took LSD or mushrooms every few months, using them with several close friends with whom he shared a strong belief in their beneficial effects. Stan was married, had a young daughter, and held a highly respon- sible position in the local government. He was of medium height and build, good-looking and attentive to his appearance. He was rather disin- clined to talk about his inner experience, and he stated his interest in the DMT studies in a typically concise manner: "To further legitimate studies and for personal exploration." Stan's low screening dose of DMT, 0.05 mg/kg, was uneventful. Like many others, he felt an urge to smile early on in the session. The next day was Stan's high-dose session. Carrying my varied as- sortment of needles, syringes, and disinfectant swabs, I entered his room and found Stan sitting in cross-legged position on a meditation cushion with the back of the bed raised as close to a right angle as possible. He was one of the few people who felt better sitting up than lying down. Stan didn't say a lot about that morning's high-dose experience. Mostly, he was impressed with the power of the onset of effects. In fact, he thought he might even have liked a dose slightly higher than 0.4 mg/kg. He wasn't sure if DMT had any beneficial effects, either. It's not as useful as LSD or psilocybin. It's too much toofast. You can't really work with it. You're totally out ofcontrol. It wasn't a spiritual expe- rience. There was very little emotionalflavor to it at all. Regarding what he actually saw, all Stan ventured was that there were "lots of kaleidoscopic blues and purples." Stan went through the dose-response study successfully, but without it making a particularly deep impression on him. However, he enjoyed participating in the research and wanted to be notified when the tolerance study began. About a year later, Stan signed on for the DMT tolerance project. A lot had happened. His wife had experienced a recurrence of her serious psy- chiatric illness and was filing for divorce. A very difficult child custody