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IF SO, SO WHAT? + 277 As the years passed, I began feeling a peculiar anxiety about listening to volunteers’ accounts of their first high-dose DMT sessions. It was as if I didn't want to hear them. These psychotherapeutic, near-death, and mys- tical sessions repeatedly reminded me of their ineffectiveness in effecting any real change. I wanted to say, "That's very interesting, but now what? To what purpose?" By extension, these sessions’ lack of lasting impact began eroding the basic foundations of my motivation for performing this type ofresearch. Additionally, the reports of contact with invisible worlds and their inhabitants, while utterly amazing, left me grasping at concep- tual straws as to their reality and meaning. My attitude to high-dose ses- sions started turning from hope for breakthroughs to relief at volunteers emerging unharmed and intact. The need to shift the focus of the psychedelic research in Albuquer- que was clear. Risks were real, and long-term benefits vague. I began looking for a way to improve the benefit-to-risk ratio. This required a more concerted effort to develop a therapy study, one that would involve working with patients instead of normal volunteers. It also called for us- ing a longer-acting drug that would allow time to perform psychological work during the acute intoxication. In the next two chapters, I will describe how the cessation of my work began with research involving the longer-acting drug psilocybin and with plans to treat patients. Events from both within and outside of the re- search environment combined to exert tremendous personal and professional pressure. At a certain point I felt I had less to lose, and more to gain, by discontinuing the psychedelic research.