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thority." DEATH AND DYING «+ 227 tional, he was forty-four years old when he joined the DMT research. He hailed from Hispanic and northern Mexican-Indian families, had been married for nearly twenty years, and had two grown children. Carlos was a full-time software programmer and had attended the University of New Mexico for several years. He also was a practitioner of urban shamanism. In this capacity, he led a group in which chanting, visualization, and his teachings provided his students with a wide range of alternative states of consciousness. He had his feet in several worlds at once. Carlos was well-versed in many mind-altering substances. He had taken psychedelics "over one hundred times" and described their effects as "complete strangeness." He recently also had used the seeds of Datura stramonium, or jimsonweed, a highly toxic and dangerous plant that in- duces delirium and, at times, terrifying breaks with reality. There is not much difference between psychedelic and lethal doses of these seeds. Carlos was not expecting much from "white man's medicine." This set up a curious dichotomy within me. On the one hand, I wanted to "show him who's got the better drugs." Not the most noble reaction, but true! On the other hand, I was concerned that his scoffing at DMT was not wise, and that he might be unpleasantly surprised by the intensity of its effects. Perhaps his cavalier attitude hid deeper fears. The morning of his non-blind low dose, we found Carlos sitting in the rocking chair I used. He had arrived almost two hours early. He was leav- ing nothing to chance and was not-so-subtly challenging my "seat of au- "This will be a trip around the block to the local convenience store, rather than a trip to someplace else," he opened. Before we began, he wanted to bless the DMT to "the four directions" and for the good of the community. This was traditional shamanic prepa- ration of a mind-altering substance. His benedictions were simple but profound. They successfully established a feeling of deeper reverence for the work than was usually the case. His low-dose experience that morning seemed relatively mild. That is, until he began shaking at 15 minutes after the injection. First were