“It may be that DMT makes us able to perceive what the physicist call “dark matter” — the 95 per cent of the universe’s mass that is known to exist but that at present remains invisible to our senses and instruments.”

― Graham Hancock

There’s something uncharacteristic about DMT (when compared to other psychedelics): it’s naturally produced by the human brain. It’s theorized that this is why DMT is often referred to as the ‘Spirit Molecule’, along with the fact that DMT reliably elicits an other-worldly, often spiritual or mystical experience.

What’s more is that this particular tryptamine is found commonly throughout nature — in the cells of animals and produced in many species of plants. Most notable among its characteristics is the rapidity of its onset and the intensity of its effect. Consuming DMT catapults a user into vivid visual hallucinations and temporal distortions within moments of being consumed (when consumed through smoking or vaporizing).

When inhaled (by smoking or using a DMT vape pen) the effects of DMT last only a short amount of time — between five to twenty minutes — though they’ll last much longer if orally ingested, usually in the form of a compounded ayahuasca brew.  When consumed, DMT initiates a physiological response as it forms a bond with serotonin receptors in the brain, sending a signals throughout the central nervous system and altering sensory perceptions.

Out of this world

What’s perhaps most controversial about DMT, aside from the above-stated fact that it’s produced endogenously by the pineal gland of the human brain, is the particular set of insights that it may lead the consumer to experience. Aside from being extremely revelatory, such insights are often said to originate from external, extra-dimensional or otherworldly ‘entities’.

These reports of interaction with entities while under the influence of DMT is why the substance seems to be one of the most trending, mysterious and highly sought-after psychedelics today. The consumption of psychedelics is often associated with expanding perception— helping a user break through the confines of everyday perspective and transcend the limits of our routine cognitive capacity—however DMT is unique in the appearance of entities who are reported to bestow these shifts in perception and personal realizations to the user. 

While substances like LSD and psilocybin can certainly achieve perspective shifts to a considerable and varying degree, DMT seems to shatter the ends of the spectrum altogether, prompting the kind of temporal distortions and imaginative contemplations that would occur far outside the realm of anything we may consider routinely psychedelic.

It’s no wonder that it’s often associated with near death experiences, which are themselves theorized to instigate a neurological flooding of DMT into the sigma-1 receptors of the brain.

From Angels to Elves

Famed psychonaut and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna had coined the term ‘machine elves’ to describe the entities which he had reportedly encountered when consuming DMT, and McKenna hadn’t been the only one. 

Numerous researchers detail these entities in an eerily similar manner, going as far as to correlate various biblical interpretations (encounters with angels, for instance) to DMT experiences and reinforcing such experiences with the accounts of participants in modern studies.

Regardless of whether such encounters emanate directly from benevolent external entities or from within the mind of a user, layers surrounding the nature of reality itself tend to peel away, offering profound insights that can culminate themselves into a life-changing experience.

It’s for this reason that DMT is situated atop the list of ‘must-try’ psychedelics, as its potency remains as unparalleled as the intrigue surrounding it.