
If You’ve Met Aliens While on DMT, These Scientists Would Like to Hear from You - fraqed
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjpjxm/dmt-aliens-study-johns-hopkins
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kreutz
The book A Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark by Carl Sagan
goes in depth as to the origin of peoples propensity to believe that they have
indeed encountered such creatures. I would highly recommend reading it.

~~~
benbreen
I love Carl Sagan and especially love when he branched out into topics like
this. But I also wonder if he ended up being on the right track - does anyone
happen to know if contemporary research backs up many of his speculations
about human evolution in books like _Dragons of Eden_ or _Demon-Haunted
World_?

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OrganicMSG
I saw them a few days after taking DMT. I was sitting on a sofa, reality
paused, some tube-limbed harlequins stepped out sideways into it, cut a few
things up, looked inside them then put them back together, then they fucked
off and reality restarted.

~~~
OnMyPhone
That's what my buddy said about them too. He only saw them when he blasted
off, but could feel them around for a while after.

Definitely on my todo list.

~~~
andrei_says_
Having met a person who started having regular psychotic episodes after a dmt
trip, I’ve removed this from all of my todo lists.

She would start hissing, cursing in gibberish, clawing etc. and is the most
horrific thing I’ve witnessed to date. If there’s demonic possession, this
must be what it looks like.

So, no thank you.

~~~
hosh
It sounds like some wires got crossed up on the way back down; it might be
fixable, though probably not through conventional means. (Stuff like tantra or
properly taking part in Ayahuasca with a trained shaman comes to mind). But
then again, when I hear about those God-drunken yogis wandering around in
India, sometimes with followers, I wonder too if this was her destiny.

Blasting out on a whim without preparation is like getting launched into outer
space without a spacesuit. (And the things we think we are preparing for are
usually the very things that create a lot of turbulence in the journey). Lots
of people are lucky, have guides watching over them, the way little kids gets
watched over by parents on the playground. ("Ok, come away from the busy
street -- oh look, would you like to play with this?") Sometimes, people are
not so lucky. There is a vast knowledge and wisdom in the old traditions about
this, and scientific knowledge is ill-equipped to understand or even handle
the misadventures.

I wouldn't say never though. DMT is an endogenous neurotransmitter produced by
the pineal gland, so under rare circumstances, dosages of DMT can be released
naturally and directly into your brain.

~~~
filoeleven
> DMT is an endogenous neurotransmitter produced by the pineal gland

Has this actually been proven? I’ve heard it repeated often but never seen any
evidence to back it up.

~~~
hosh
Rick Strassman, MD wrote about it in his book back when he was conducting
research on the effects of DMT.

I could not find a paper that did a targeted study, but did find this:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5048497/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5048497/)

~~~
filoeleven
Strassman is certainly more trustworthy than McKenna =) I should have been
more targeted in my question. I was wondering more about the pineal gland as
the source of production than if endogenous DMT exists. According to the link
below, they have Rick on their podcast saying that DMT is produced by the
lungs and then transported to the brain, maybe stored in the pineal gland? I’m
gonna have to give this a listen.

[https://www.naturalstacks.com/blogs/news/rick-strassman-
pine...](https://www.naturalstacks.com/blogs/news/rick-strassman-pineal-gland-
dmt-and-consciousness)

~~~
hosh
Cool! I did a search on "DMT produced in lungs" and found this one:
[http://q4lt.com/qa-with-dr-steven-barker](http://q4lt.com/qa-with-dr-steven-
barker)

"Dr. Barker: The only studies conducted on lung tissue were not specific to
lung anatomy. My comments were based on an assumption that, if DMT is
primarily produced in the lung (where, at that time, the highest enzyme
activity had been described) and DMT played any role in schizophrenia, it
would, thus, be considered a lung disease. However, I think DMT may primarily
be synthesized in the lung during specific physiological states; controlled
breathing, such as occurs in many meditative practices, extreme physical
exertion, hyperventilation, near-death changes in respiration rates, hypoxia,
etc. DMT synthesized in the lung would go directly to the brain, by-passing
the metabolic destruction that would occur from liver metabolism. There is
some evidence that DMT is neuroprotective and may play a role in neuronal
survival in extreme physiological states (either intentional of unintentional)
that also alter lung function. Similarly, DMT can have a dissociative quality
(OBE) that is also protective in extreme events (trauma, etc.). While DMT
produced in the lung may have many other “normal” biochemical functions, it
may be one of the hormones that responds to extreme stress (physical and
mental) and the role of the lung in such events is well understood."

~~~
filoeleven
Good find! That would provide a mechanism to support the mind-altering claims
of holotropic breath work, which I have never tried but understand to be a
close cousin of hyperventilation.

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nul_byte
I have seen them doing an ultra marathon on the second night of no sleep. It's
weird how you brain fills so much detail in. The creatures I could see were
like gollum from LoTR but with reptilian skin..they were either smoking pipes
or playing elaborate music on instruments I have never seen before..

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The non-fiction book "Why people believe weird things" begins with the
author's recounting of his own meeting with aliens, during a coast-to-coast
cycle race where he had gone without sleep.

In reality it was his crew trying to get him off his bike before he fell
asleep and fell off

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herbst
I've done DMT quite a few times and I can totally see why religious people
make this a religious experience. Or as in this case use aliens or other
'mythical' creatures instead of God figures.

There is this very strong feeling of being connected to more and just being
able to get a short glance to a different world that is always there but
hidden from you.

Most people will explain it like this, but everybody also ads 'graphics' or
concepts based on their own believes in order to even comprehend the
experience.

I love DMT but I also highly believe that we are seeing some kind of natural
process in our brains here and not some kind of deeper connection.

In other news I saw genesha dancing for me on a rainbow of thousands of never
seen colors and I had a fox helping me getting back from something I can only
describe as lost in my own head. Dmt is strange but beautiful

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stupidcar
If I had to hypothesize, I'd say that most hallucinogens generally stimulate
lower-levels of the neocortex's sensory perception hierarchy, resulting in a
distorted and more vivid experience of basic things like colors, textures,
etc. But DMT is somehow particularly able to stimulate a higher-level
representation that corresponds with the perception of a fellow intelligent
creature. This is combined semi-randomly with one or more high-level
representation of animals and objects to create the perception of intelligent
"aliens" with a bizarre form.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
What is wrong with hypothesizing that invisible beings around us can only be
seen under certain circumstances?

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arx1422
Every few years I get stuck for a few moments in the state between sleep and
waking up. Always manifested the same way. In the middle of a dream
environment a gateway with a totally alien, totally inexplicable intelligence
would appear. I'd be paralyzed by it for a few seconds. As I got older a
realized the terrifying alien world/intelligence was waking consciousness
intruding into the dream state. Always interesting after I wake but true
Lovecraftian horror as it happens.

~~~
aalleavitch
This is called sleep paralysis. It’s surprisingly common, and the source of a
lot of folklore and ghost stories. I get it often:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis)

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pietroglyph
It seems like an anonymous internet survey won't solicit very high quality
data... I suppose even a rough idea of how common these experiences are is a
start.

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pstuart
They weren't aliens, they were Persian elves.

~~~
benbreen
Can you elaborate? I see to be one of those rare people who is genuinely
fascinated by peoples' DMT experiences (and dreams!).

Speaking personally, I've done DMT twice but never at the doses necessary to
break through. I've experienced ego death from psilocybin but it seems as if
the DMT experience is different in terms of the vividness and visual
complexity.

~~~
tzahola
Google “machine elves”

~~~
pstuart
I just did, and that was indeed the experience.

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tzahola
Universal love, transcendent joy!

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-
the...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the-cactus-
person/)

~~~
filoeleven
That was fantastic, thanks for posting it! It would make for a great story to
be read aloud too, if one could find a way around the several-dozen-digit
number...

