Page Content (OCR)
some delusional experiences and sometimes by anxiety and clouding of consciousness."” to make an intravenous injection [of an antidote] in a squirming, oriental- martian snake?"!° This i is as good an example of the power of a negative indeed. WHAT DMT Is « 47 researchers other than Szdra gave regarding its psychological properties. For example, after Szara left Hungary, his former laboratory reported only that DMT in normal volunteers caused "a [psychotic] state ... domi- nated by colored hallucinations, loss of time and space reality, euphoria, One of the busiest American centers for human psychedelic research was the Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. There, men serving prison sentences for narcotic law violations received dozens of mind-altering drugs, hoping their research participation might lead to more favorable treatment. However, all we read about the effects of DMT in these studies is that "the mental effects consisted of anxiety, hallucina- tions (usually visual) and perceptual distortions."® Even less revealing were studies at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health. Here, a group of research subjects with experience using psyche- delics needed only to provide a number indicating "how high" they were on a full dose of DMT. The authors do comment, however, that most of these seasoned volunteers were "higher than they had ever been."® The "psychedelic subculture" discovered DMT soon after the research community did, but the earliest reports of its effects earned it the title ofa "terror drug." William Burroughs, author of The Naked Lunch, was one of the earliest field users of DMT. Burroughs's and his British colleagues’ encounters with it were unpleasant. Leary relates Burroughs's tale of a psychiatrist and his friend who injected DMT together in a London apart- ment. The friend began panicking and, to the psychiatrist, appeared to transform into a "writhing, wiggling reptile." "The doctor's dilemma: where set and setting as there is: two people high on injected DMT in a seedy flat at the same time, one being responsible for the other. "Terror" drug, It was difficult for DMT to shake its frightening reputation, even after Leary's later positive descriptions of its effects. DMT did see some popu- larity among those who appreciated its short duration. Some bold