I took a controversial and largely feared hallucinogen to understand more about Near-Death Experiences.
Earlier this year, I began podcasting. The subject of choice for my initial limited series podcast was something I had been interested in for years: cults and thought reform.
I loved working on it, and one of the things I liked the best about it was talking to people about the things people don’t talk about in polite company.
So, I decided my next podcast would be about the biggest taboo: Death and grieving.
I have as messed up a relationship with death as most people, but with a little something extra: I stood and watched my Grandfather, whom I was very close to, die in front of my eyes, while I held his hand.
Something like that is a trauma unlike any other. Adding to that trauma was what came next: a week of planning and executing a funeral, visitations, and interacting with people who, while well meaning, said some profoundly terrible things to me.
No one likes death or talking about it, but no one (except the pros) are good at talking about it, and I think that needs to change.
So, I blocked out the episode topics I wanted to cover by talking to the pros or people with intimate knowledge of these topics.
I wanted to know what these people know about death and grief that we don’t.
That meant I had to start at the beginning: the act of dying, and what meagre knowledge we have of it, from those who have experienced Near-Death Experiences and those who studied it.
But then it occurred to me that there was a way to get even more answers about this: by experiencing a Near-Death Experience myself.
At the risk of getting myself into a Julia Roberts in Flatliners scenario, I was going to have to find a way to try the one (relatively) safe way to have this experience: by taking 5-MeO-DMT.
What is 5-MeO-DMT? Well, it’s colloquially known as “The Toad” as it is found in the venom of a very specific toad, and that’s where it was first ingested for recreational purposes (the venom is collected, then heated to remove the poison, leaving only the active ingredient, which is then smoked.) (I did not ingest it this way.)
You can’t really find someone to give you DMT in the classifieds, and a lot of ‘DMT tourism’ focuses on NN-DMT, which is a different type of DMT, and according to psychedelic experts “behaves like a completely different drug”
I won’t say how I got in touch with the person who ended up giving me the DMT (and coaching me through the experience, because it’s not as simple as dropping acid), but once I found this person, they immediately tried to talk me out of it.
“It’s very scary if you’re not prepared. Have you seen any videos online?”
I admittedly had not seen any videos of “5” trips online.
“OK, don’t. You’ll never go through with it if you watch the videos.”
(The videos, if you look them up, often depict people screaming in terror, flailing, dumping gallons of flop sweat out, and otherwise looking like they are experiencing the most violent experience you can fathom.) He was right.
I suffer from Generalized Anxiety and generally telling me something is going to be a bad time goes into my brain, gets noodled about, exacerbated, and then turned into a dread scenario. I’m very glad I didn’t look at the videos.
But there was still the outlying possibility that this could happen to me, regardless of how gentle or well guided the experience is, there is always a chance, due to your internal resistance, brain chemistry, or mood at the time that this horror could be the outcome.
I also had a very strong urge to not scream, throw up or otherwise in front of my guide or the other people who were going to be present.
I am a risk taker in certain situations only. For instance: I will go on any roller coaster that you throw at me. Yes, they’re terrifying, but no, you won’t die, and no, you won’t come out of the vehicle.
I definitely thought about it a lot and definitely had a lot of anxiety about even the possibility of taking it. I had to start thinking of this as the ultimate roller coaster. Yes, it could suck, but it WILL END.
But then, I sent my guide a message, asking them to book an appointment.
The appointment lasts about 2–3 hours, depending upon how much instruction and prep you need to receive. There is also recovery time built in at the end. While the drug exits your system fairly quickly (it maxes out at about 15 minutes), you have jiggly legs and a few trailers in your eyes for a while afterward. You’re not getting behind the wheel of a car, but I was able to hold conversations, read and concentrate on the reading, even tweet and email fairly soon after the experience.
Before I went to my appointment, I spoke to an expert on psychedelics. They’ve taken EVERYTHING. “Have you tried DMT?” I asked. They said, “I couldn’t get it to work. And I’ve tried it multiple times.” I was gobsmacked. I had not considered this was possible.
Soon, my anxiety went from “holy shit what if it works?” to “holy shit what if it DOESN’T?” Weirdly, that was comforting, because it meant that I had made peace with the idea that I was going to do this and I was going to jump in the whole way.
Well, it did work. It was an experience unlike any other. It was not a spiritual experience, like so many people claim it was for them, but it definitely gave me some answers.
If you’d like to know more, you can hear audio from the experience, plus my interview with Neurosurgeon, Near-Death Experiencer and Author Eben Alexander on the first episode of my new podcast On Grief: A Podcast about Death.
Listen to the episode here:
https://ongrief.fireside.fm/101
Visit ongrief.fireside.fm and patreon.com/ongriefpod for more information.