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"Some people just don't like the drug, you know." / hated it. 250 ¢ THE SESSIONS Ida was one of the few volunteers who dropped out of our research after the non-blind low dose. Thirty-nine years old when she volunteered for the DMT studies, Ida met my former wife at a woman's spirituality workshop in Albuquerque. She had three children and had been unhappily married for nearly most of her adult life. She had a dry sense of humor that seemed to hide a great deal of anger and resentment. It was difficult to relax around her because it wasn't easy to tell if she was laughing with you or at you. She was interested in the DMT research because of her fascination with shamanism. She had taken LSD and psilocybin mushrooms about twenty times in her life, but not once since beginning to raise her family nearly two decades previously. Walking into Room 531 the afternoon of Ida's non-blind low dose, I was surprised to see her sitting on her bed reading a New Yorker maga- zine. This was the first and only time a volunteer ever prepared themselves for their first DMT session in this way. She looked nervous. She continued riffling through pages as I gave her my orientation. There was an uneasy tension in the room, and I found myself stuttering my way through my usual speech, which alerted me sooner than did my conscious mind to Ida's intense anxiety. At 4 minutes after the injection her eyes opened briefly. She looked at me, then quickly looked away. A minute later, she began, / didn't like it. I didn't like thefeeling. My head got real hot. Iwas out ofmy body. It was hard to breathe. "It's pretty quick, isn't it?" For you maybe. "I mean the onset. Did it seem to last a long time?" / was waitingfor it to get over with immediately after I startedfeeling it. [felt the effects while the flush was going in. I couldn't have moved if you'd asked me to. I looked down at myfeet and didn't recognize them as my own. It was scary, and I didn'tfeel safe. There was no way I could give Ida eight times this dose tomorrow.