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began, Okay. 196 * THE SESSIONS "I'm not too excited about this. I know it's just a low dose." "Wait until tomorrow," I replied. Ten minutes after I injected this low dose, Dmitri said, It was pretty psychedelic, more so than I thought it would be. The next day, Dr. V. and his assistant, Mr. W., joined us as guests. Dr. V. worked for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the agency funding my research. He was developing a project that might treat drug abusers with the African hallucinogen ibogaine. He wanted to see the effects of a pow- erful psychedelic drug given in a research setting. Mr. W. had been one of the most helpful people during my search through the regulatory labyrinth for human-grade DMT. I was happy to share with him the results of his assistance. Dmitri's partner, Heather, was with us that day, too. Add Dmitri, Laura, and me, and there were six in all. It was a crowd in Room 531. Almost immediately after the injection was complete, Dmitri began breathing deeply and rapidly. He repeatedly sighed and yawned as if to dispel physical tension. At about 9 minutes, he asked for some water, and thanked us when we gave him a few sips. After wetting his mouth, he I feel like Vm in a mild state of shock. I feel really shaky. "Here's a blanket." "Don't forget to breathe. There's a lot of energy being released." I asked Laura to go out into the hall and turn off some beeping equip- ment outside. Dmitri wasn't quite sure what we were doing. He decided to ignore the fuss. The first thing I noticed was a burning in the back ofmy neck. Then there was this loud intense hum. It was like thefan at first, but separate. It began engulfing me. I let go into it and then... WHAM! I felt like I was in an alien laboratory, in a hospital bed like this, but it was over there. A sort of landing bay, or recovery area. There were beings. I was trying to get a handle on what was going on. I was being carted around. It didn't look alien, but their sense of purpose was. It was