Daniel McQueen - Extended-State DMT Research (DMTx)

here we are with daniel mcqueen daniel thanks for joining us again yeah it's great to be back today we are going to be chatting about um a really interesting subject dmtx really excited to get into it with you because this is something you you kind of clued us into a few months ago and you even invited me down to do some live stream in boulder around your kind of launch of the idea um so can you give us just a really quick picture of what what dmtx is sure yeah uh dmtx that's like the shorthand uh how we type it um and share it in kind of unofficial ways uh the the official term is extended um and uh it was a model proposed by dr andrew gallimore and dr rick strassman to create an extended state uh dimethyltryptamine experience uh one of the biggest complaints around dmt like pure dmt experiences as opposed to uh dmt and ayahuasca is that it's very short acting uh either if you're injected intravenously or uh like what rick strassman did in the original uh spirit molecule studies or if you smoke it uh that the peak only lasts five to seven minutes uh and so it can be a very big experience but uh sometimes very confusing given the short duration and intensity and so the dmt extended state dmt research proposal that dr gallimore wrote about and that we are looking to step into is to use a target controlled intravenous infusion technology it's this little medical pump that's used in anesthesiology and also in like chemotherapies and other treatments even ketamine treatments uh it's um to make an extended state stable over a period of time so it can be a very big challenge for us to be able to do that it can be up up uh what's the word i'm looking for it can be intensified it can be a low dose md dmx dmt experience uh um but for longer than the five to seven minute peak um so you can have a low dose type experience for an extended period of time or a full peak experience for an extended period of time and so we're we're wanting to step into this research to explore what the limits are of the consciousness movement and what we can learn from that experience one of the things i like about it's nobody's ever done it before it's really interesting because there's so much to study there um that just opens up like a lot of subjective stuff a lot of quantitative stuff we can do some really interesting uh brain imaging i think i don't know if you saw this i sent you the the message um yesterday on this yeah that um whose lab was that was that carhart harris um did the london imperial school yeah so like the first brain imaging with dmt which is super cool i would love to know the route of administration or a little bit more data there guessing it's probably iv yeah they're looking at the extended state stuff but i don't think they're stepping into it for these um for these research uh uh projects that they've got going on right now right like they seem explicitly focused on brain imaging yeah which is cool we need that um but yeah the the way you and your team are going about it is interesting because it's um how best to put it it's for it's for the psychedelic community who's really interested in this work in a lot of ways like what does this stuff mean what do the limits look like like if we get to go beyond what strauss straussman did what happens yeah what are the yeah what are the images we can explore yeah so uh you know i really uh support the the movement and and and uh legalization of psychedelics and how people and researchers are bringing uh psychedelics into the mainstream um but what i find is that some of the interests or values of the psychedelic community uh get undervalued in those conversations either because the mainstream doesn't have the context to discuss it and understand it or it sounds too unusual or weird for it to be uh accepted by the mainstream there's also this need to be uh proven you know or useful psychedelics is useful so psychedelics for the treatment of uh ptsd or depression right and that's i mean there's a huge movement in the these areas right now uh but i was curious of what what kind of research project would um inspire the psychedelic community the what would the psychedelic community be most interested in if we weren't always trying to heal something or uh resolve some trauma um or try to fit into being accepted by uh civil society you know uh what what are our real interests and um what would we really want to do and to me those questions are well it's to explore the unknown it's to explore the edges what what things in the psychedelic movement uh that we don't already know about like we know mdma can help treat um ptsd right um and we're you know we're going through the the mechanisms to make it more accessible to me that's incredibly important and i wouldn't be talking about dmt extended state dmt research and i wouldn't be talking about the the the the research for the sake of exploring what it is if we didn't have those threads but now that we do i'm really curious to create a space and a voice for the psychedelic community what are we really interested in and um and dmt is a very important molecule for our community it's uh you know it has an incredible history uh for for our community and um and rick strassman's work with dmt in the was what reignited the uh whole psychedelic renaissance that we're in and so from an energetic or a symbolic perspective i kind of feel like this would is like going back to that original flame and igniting it in a new way you know expanding it exponentially like what what are the edges now in 2017 versus 1990 or 1972 or you know even earlier you know so so i'm really uh curious about this um about this work so we haven't had the chance to get daniel gallimore or andrew gallimore on yet but his presentation before yours at the initial launch event was incredible because to me he put together this argument that that almost proved dmt entities to me like you know just laying out this theory laying out this data that can be generated in labs just studying complexity and system flows and i before you even got on stage i'm going okay like there's there's this is a real argument that that i haven't seen before that brings far more validity i guess in a lot of ways to dmt entities than you know even personal subjective stories and i don't know how he so he was one of the guys that initially proposed this in a in a paper is that right yeah he wrote a paper that was co-authored by rick strassman uh it was using rick strassman's data it's called a model for the application of target controlled intravenous infusion for a prolonged immersive dmt psychedelic experience that's a mouthful another language pretty much um yeah he proposed this idea of like if it had more time to you know to orient to this inner space uh this dmt space more than the five to seven minute peak experience he can uh comprehend the experience um more and have a better understanding of the phenomenology of it uh this you know these ideas of you know entity encounters uh you know understanding what's really going on and uh and yeah he does make a case for um this idea that you know that complexity doesn't stop at the human brain level that there are even higher levels of complexity and intelligence that are far beyond what we understand and uh and you know the people who have dmt experiences uh rick strassman said to me recently that the the thing that was most surprising in the research was that everybody said it felt more real than real um so how do you wrap your your understanding of reality and how do you wrap your understanding of reality and reality when something feels more real than real and it's so foreign to what we understand understand our concept of intelligence and the universe to be, you know. And, you know, I'm really curious about that. We would get a lot of flack if we were to try to create an experiment, you know, to try to prove the existence of entities and things. And I don't think that's necessary. But one of the edges that we are going to speak of, name, and create a space for is the possibility that this phenomenon might be real. And if that's the case, how would we frame the experiment differently than if we were a bunch of neuroscientists thinking it was all an inner neurological experience? Maybe there would be things that we would do differently to support the volunteers going into it. And maybe there's certain strategies that the volunteers could learn to feel safer in these encounters with other entities. It's just reminding me of like maybe prepping like an astronaut to go into space. It's like, all right, much different than, yeah, going under like an MRI machine. Yeah. You're exactly right. It's not. Yeah, we're not astronauts. We're psychonauts in this space, right? But given the real potential for an extremely profound but also intense or difficult experience, we would be training people to treat this as if it were a real journey, like an astronaut would going, you know, to the moon or Mars, you know, that there might be some mindfulness practices that people can, you know, work on to develop. And also, you know, like you need some physical endurance. This doesn't, I don't think having just healthy volunteers is the right approach. So one of the edges that we want to kind of support and promote is that, yes, we want healthy volunteers, but from this foundation, we want the best of the best, you know, the most gifted psychonauts that we can find because that's what astronauts are. You know, like they're like astronauts are like highly intelligent and incredibly athletic, very creative human beings, right? We want that kind of level of capacity so we can better, you know, best understand what's going on inside, you know, and to keep the person safe, you know. Yeah. Have you ever chatted with Kalindi IE? I feel like he would be a candidate for this. That's a great point. Yeah. He's got like 25 to 40 grams of mushrooms and he says he's an explorer. Like he is really trying to explore what is out there in the cosmos or within the psyche. Yeah. Are you familiar with this guy? Um, tell me. Kalindi IE out of Detroit. Yeah. Really into martial arts and psychedelics. Martial arts guy, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have heard of him and we've wanted, we've been wanting to get him to talk out of psychedelic shine, but we haven't had a chance to do that yet. But yeah, he's definitely on my radar. That's a really important, yeah. So martial artists, right, would definitely be a prime candidate for this work. People who have experience in indigenous settings, of course, we want to, you know, we don't want to create a criteria that doesn't include, you know, different cultures, you know, because there's a lot of ways to develop these skill sets. But one of them is focus, the ability to stay focused in these states. Right. And so martial artists, a long term meditation practitioner, these are the, these are one of the things that I'm learning, like, if you can't stay focused on what's going on, then it's just going to, you're just going to spiral in it, you're just going to spin in it and go from like, like changing a channel on cable television with like 300 channels, you just keep popping through them too much, you know, so, so that's one of the areas that we, that we are going to really focus on is the ability to stay focused in interstates. And this is something that we can assess, I, you know, I see different capacities for this all the time in my work. So, I guess let's, let's give a little background for people who haven't heard from you before. I bring your name up all the time. And I'm kind of surprised people don't know it every time and bring it up. Oh, you don't know him yet. Yeah, right. So, Daniel, you're in Boulder, Colorado. So, we've met a handful of times. We get to hang out in Oakland as well. You run an organization. You run an organization called Medicinal Mindfulness, which is, it has a bunch of parts, including a psychedelic sitter school. And you teach a breathwork method and you do a really intense psychedelic cannabis ceremony or event. I don't know how you phrase that, but people get a lot of experience in those states and then, then they're more functional. You do some skills training too, more functional in other psychedelic work, more able to function in those states. I don't know the best way to put that, because I don't necessarily like putting boundaries on psychedelic experiences like that. But it's, yeah, it's fascinating. You're doing a ton of work. You're working with a ton of people. You've even stopped, I think, doing one-on-one therapy with folks in a licensed setting. And you've kind of switched over to this full time. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, we started Medicinal Mindfulness. We started Medicinal Mindfulness about five years ago. And I've been facilitating what we call conscious cannabis circles for the last four years pretty regularly. And that's my day job is I, you know, I'm a psychedelic facilitator. I also coach people on the side who are interested in being facilitators or using medicines more intentionally. So, I do a lot of pre and post preparation and integration coaching with people. And then we have the psychedelic. So, we have the psychedelic sitter school program where we're teaching people how to hold space with cannabis. But all those skill sets are, you can translate into other medicines pretty easily. And for those of you who don't know about cannabis as a psychedelic, you know, this is the, you know, we get this a lot that people don't believe we can do what we can do with psychedelic or with cannabis as a psychedelic. And I think we talked about it in the last one. So, I won't go too far into the conversation here. But psychedelics. But psychedelic cannabis experiences similar to either a psilocybin or MDMA experience or some combination of both psilocybin MDMA like experience. So, it can be very hard opening. It may be very visual. It may not be, but it can be very visual. And MDMA can, excuse me, cannabis can mimic other medicines, particularly if you've had them before. So, if you're a ayahuasca person. Your cannabis experience might be very ayahuasca like. I've had experiences with cannabis that are very DMT like. And other people have too. So, you know, I'm not like, it's not just me. And then most recently, the cannabis experiences have been very mescaline like, very peyote like, which is interesting. For the whole group or for you? For me. And then some of the individual journeys that I'm doing. Like, the way people describe them, I can kind of feel into what the experience is like. So, very hard opening, but very alert and present, sharper, like more, more present, more clear than normal. You know, some of the, sometimes the medicine can do interesting things like that. But yeah, it's, I'm deeply inspired by working with cannabis and breathwork. And I work with a lot of people. Multiple times a week now, I'm working with people in cannabis spaces or breathwork spaces. And then we have the ongoing groups. And working with a lot of trauma healing, a lot of trauma resolution. And, you know, most recently I did a journey for somebody who had a traumatic ayahuasca experience. I won't go into the details of it, but, you know, he came in unresourced and with a severe headache or something. And it popped. The ayahuasca popped him in a really negative space, like a lot of anxiety and panic attacks afterwards. And he flew in and we did a cannabis session and we were able to complete whatever process that was for him. And he's in a much better space, you know, has completed whatever that was. So, that's kind of a new thread is helping people complete other psychedelic experiences with using cannabis. So, that's, you know, it's been really wonderful to do. How long is a, say, that one-on-one session or that session you just talked about? How long was he in the thralls of the psychedelic experience with you? Yeah. Normally, I schedule four to six hours for a journey. And then about, depending on the person, the cannabis part of the experience is two to three hours long. On average, about two and a half is about where people's capacities are. So, it's like a short version. It's not a less intense version sometimes. It's a real powerful experience, but it's a shorter version. uh psychedelic experience so in between the dmt experience and you know the mdma psilocybin experience um and uh yeah they're you know the peak is pretty quick like you smoke it we we smoke we don't use edibles or anything and so the peak is pretty immediate and then it lasts as long as you want it to um uh just you know like maybe there's a break in the middle where the person smokes more i forget who i was talking to but they told me they were high for like 14 hours i don't know who it was it's probably somebody who has a lot going on um you know because obviously there's a normal half-life to this stuff yeah that would be a pretty extreme yeah right experience was it edibles or was it uh smoked smoked i don't know yeah that would be an abnormal duration that would be something that we would look at like for clinical stuff too you know if um and just other psychedelic work like you'll see even in our form of breath work like holotropic style somebody will only be breathing for you know x amount of time but they're deeply in process for a ton of hours after and um that's one of the risks i don't think a lot of folks see is like okay you might have to be strapped in here for a bunch more hours than you really thought um and i've seen things like that but i don't think a lot of folks see is like okay you might have to be strapped in here for a bunch more hours than you really thought um and i've seen some ayahuasca facilitators able to hang out for a lot of hours after working with folks but i don't know that that's common knowledge in the psychedelic world i hope people pick that up yeah there's a like a bell curve of a normal duration you know and in the middle there's you know everybody it's about eight hours for certain experiences or about six or with with cannabis it's about two 52 hours and 15 minutes if done correctly um but then other people you know some people who are like really heavy smokers might have a shorter right you know journey and then others who are either new you know to smoking cannabis um might have a much longer journey or there might be like like neurological tendencies to have longer experiences on less medicine and that's something with other medicines you have to be really uh careful about because it could like somebody take a half a hit of acid and they could be you know incapacitated for days and um and other people take a half a hit and they're you know they barely feel it the first time i ever got high was brownie and it lasted 24 hours it was terrifying i was like texting friends like how long is this last yeah like i don't know three hours maybe max and i'm like i'm going on 24 like what the hell's going on here um yeah that's why we don't use edibles it's there's so many different physiological responses to it yeah and there's this this difference too like there's the pharmacology right the individual's person individual person's reaction to chemicals and how quickly they metabolize or like probably even secondary metabolites or whatever and then there's the psychological um situation you're coming into the experience with like maybe you have some pretty extreme repressed stuff or you don't so it's like you know happy days or like you know you're reliving vietnam over the course of eight hours you know something like that yeah um so so what's the interest looking like for this dmtx uh research oh wow yeah so uh when we first did our first presentation um after uh when we invited dennis mckenna to speak down here uh and then uh psychedelic science has happened you know so february we first talked about the dmt work as an idea and then we talked about the dmt work as an idea and then we talked about the dmt work as an idea and then psychedelic science has happened and then an article came out in a local uh paper called the rooster uh which um really promoted the idea like scientists are building a dmt machine or something was the title and that went viral uh i think you know like 30 40 000 people read it or something like that uh and then uh and then through my organization and another organization a note new anonics new anonics if i'm not mistaken and then uh and then i'm saying that right um uh there have been 800 over 800 people uh expressing interest in being a research volunteer um and before we even have like really been recruiting volunteers so to speak i i was interested in uh exploring who was interested in this work like what kind of person would be interested in extended state dmt so you know i really engaged it and we we've gotten all their info and contacts and we're going to keep everybody in touch with them everybody informed um but right now i mean that's it's it's a unparalleled i think how much interest there is in excitement around the idea of extended state dmt um so that's been fun and also a little overwhelming too uh like we've we're not able to respond to everybody now and and uh we've started a dmt update newsletter if anybody's interested they can email us at dmtx at medicinal mind fullness.org uh to get the uh newsletter to get signed up for the newsletter and that's how we're responding now to um inquiries and things because a lot of people are asking the same questions um so that's been fun to see who uh who wants to show up for a research project like this it's fascinating um what does strassman think about all this like when you've talked to him he's a interesting character strassman is incredibly inspiring to talk to like like he's i think just hanging out with him and talking with him we invited him a couple of years ago to psychedelic shine and that's when i really started to uh get to know him and um and then uh visited him a few times at his home in gallup um i've taken a guy at tv to go interview him for their new series on psychedelics called psychedelica that'll be out in january or something like that uh he's really deeply inspiring to talk to about this uh about dmt in general and his experiences um you know i asked him did you know what you were getting into did you know what you were stepping into when you did dmt research and wanted to do that and he's like yeah i had an idea you know um as far as extended state dmt he's excited about it but it's not his passion to be a part of it um you know this is you know this has been his life for a long time and he's ready to pass the torch to other people um but he's been an ally and somebody that i uh that i speak to and ask technical questions around the research um but he's he's he's he's excited but he's also hesitant you know he um you know he's written book called the spirit molecule and he's also written a book called dmt in the soul of prophecy he really you know he has a big question in his head of whether or not this is um a real phenomenon or just something going on in a neurological way and and if it's if it is more than just neurological like do we want to mess with it it's kind of his his um take and um my response to that was well i think we're already messing with it i think you know people are using dmt in uncontained environments they're using it now at festivals and raves maybe we should better understand what's going on so we can better protect ourselves from it you know yeah we need to know what's happening if there's something paranormal going on fine but let's find out yeah to me the experiences are are pretty profound and extreme in and of themselves but it's not just the experience it's almost the implications of the experience that are the more of the the big question like if this is real like it sure felt real then the implications of it are the implications of the experience that are the are pretty extreme are really big you know it means we live in a universe that is not just inhabited by other entities or beings but it's like immensely inhabited by other you know like it's not some microbe on another planet in another solar system somewhere like we're we're thick in the middle of something amazing all these other dimensions are just right there just right there yeah we don't have to build a billion dollar machine to access them this is uh something that we all have the capacity to do you know i remember i saw the um premiere at cosm when strassman uh and was it uh schultz released dmt the spirit molecule and he was telling like the audience that you know he hasn't talked about it's a research in a while because it was like really intense to process all of it um but so you know that was actually the first book that i read that got me into the psychedelic literature because i had this near-death experience and experience with psilocybin and i was just in the bookstore and saw near-death experiences and the spirit molecule i was like i need to i need to read this so when i got to talk to him i was like really excited and he was just like if you want to do this research just stick to the physiological research he's like like science is not interested in these entities and these transpersonal experiences um yeah yeah for sure he and you know he did it when he did all this he's a you know he you know he did it as a psychiatrist in the effects of a drug, and he got funding by the National Institute of Drug Abuse. We don't really have that option to be undercover anymore in our conversations, but we can design a scientific experiment to assess the safety of an extended-state DMT experiment or an experience without having to try to scientifically prove entities or anything like that. I think it's jumping the gun to try to prove anything like that. I think maybe it'll come out through the process. We'll have a better idea how to measure that from experience. But you've got to remember, the DMT Spirit Molecule, that book, was super inspiring. It was one of my first books, and for a lot of people, it was their first introduction to the psychedelic world, for whatever reason. The name is catchy. I don't know what it is. But there is very little about the physiology in the book. It's all from his notes. It's all from the phenomenon and him taking good notes of people's experiences. That as an experiment, you just have to say, "Yeah, we're going to take notes," and then we can do a lot with those notes later. We can do anthropological studies. That's interesting. Let's play with the idea that this is real in some way. What would it look like if we were to study it like another culture? What would we learn about these beings? What types? What kinds are there? Are they all the same and just being perceived through different filters, or is there a big difference between something that's seen as an alien versus something that's seen as an angel or an animal spirit or something like that? Yeah. Do you have any concerns about this at all? I don't know, like risks involved, or what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. Yeah. I think like with any big adventure, you're going to have some pretty significant risks to look at and manage. That's again why we're wanting to work with really skilled psychonauts as opposed to just novice, healthy volunteers. One of the biggest questions for me is, is it psychologically safe to have an extended state DMT experience? It's not uncommon for people who are like heavy DMT users to come off as a little ungrounded in their beliefs and in their excitement. There's a lot of excitement and a real strong belief that it's real, but there's a little bit of a coming off as a little off in their orientation and presentation. Psychologically, there might be a little bit of mental health stuff going on there. Did the medicine cause that, or is it were they predisposed and that's just how they are and they're attracted to the medicine in that way? The question is, is an extended state DMT experience similar to somebody just overusing DMT? Does it disrupt their ego boundaries to the point that… They're not functional. That's one question. What that might look like is being unable to return from that space, at least to some degree, or feeling overly open to energetic or spiritual energies. You see people who sometimes do too much ayahuasca or are in an uncontrolled or unsafe space. It's like they're… The flow of information… They're unable to turn off the flow of inspiring information. It can be overwhelming to them, too much content. That psychologically can look like either psychosis or mania, specifically. I believe, though, that we can assess for that, at least the higher probability that that could happen in certain people. Usually, people who are predisposed… Yes. …to that already have things that we can see and acknowledge. There would be a lot of assessment tools that we would incorporate into people being selected by this. Carla Clements, who is a friend of mine and our principal investigator, she's a Naropa professor. She's an assessment expert. She did the independent rater assessments for the MDMA study in Boulder, the Phase 2 study. I think we can assess for safety around mental health stuff. The other areas that we have concerns around is the physical and psychological health of the team. To us, another edge that we really want to focus on is the mental health of the team. The mental health of the team is one of the areas that we really want to focus on. To us, another edge that we really want to promote and push is that to be congruent with the psychedelic image, like the values that we have, is that the medicine work that we do should help us be healthier human beings, not unhealthy human beings. In any intense research environment, there's a lot of push to not take care of yourself, to get the research done, or to move the movement forward. I don't think we have that capacity in an extended-state DMT research study. I think it's too big of a process to not take care of ourselves from the beginning. We're playing with, what does it mean to have a healthy team? What does it mean to be healthy ourselves so that we can be most resourced to take care of people and stay healthy? As a sitter or guide in an experience like this, everybody in the room is going to feel it to some degree. Everybody's going to be on the journey to some degree. We need to take care of our people as much as the participant. Then the last area that we're really exploring and paying a lot of attention to is that we might face backlash from the mainstream culture. We might also face backlash from psychedelic researchers and things. We're somehow hurting the movement by talking about something that's too far outside of the box of mainstream acceptability. That's one edge. Then the other edge is it's either a psychological phenomenon or it could be a spiritual one. I don't know the answer to that. We can speak. We can speak in psychological terms. That is, we each have a part inside of us that doesn't want to wake up and doesn't want to explore consciousness and spirit. It's a scary process. Sometimes that part that doesn't want to wake up will present itself in the collective field and will challenge us and attack us. We've had these experiences before where we've been psychologically or ridiculed publicly. Question our legitimacy to do this work for unusual reasons. It feels like a psychological attack as opposed to a rational critique or something like that. We're trying to figure out a way to protect the core community and the team from these energetic disturbances that we've encountered so far. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it does sound like it's kind of a problem. It's kind of on the fringe on the outside of psychedelic research, but I also think it's really fascinating to even want to explore it, right? Just to kind of explore what else is out there and kind of unravel this mystery question of what's consciousness. I mean, whether we can find that through substances like DMT or if we'll ever really figure it out or if it has to be through like neuroimaging, I mean, I just think it's fascinating to explore that and to come up with a creative solution. It's a creative research project to, you know, maybe push the limits a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the research itself is fascinating enough. Just, you know, just the act of doing it, I think, is inspiring enough. But yeah, these are big questions. And one of the reasons I thought this would be a good conversation to start is that it's really evocative. People have very strong opinions about it, both negative and positive. And I really, I really admire that. I'm inspired by being part of that conversation. It's, it's, it's intriguing. It's interesting. And people are deeply affected by even just the idea of it, you know. And I think we need that as a community, you know. Kyle, you mentioned this idea to me a while ago about like, all right, so let's talk spiritual for a moment because there's, you know, more people believe in God than don't. So. If DMT somehow separates the body from the soul in some way. i don't this is kind of like far out words for me on this show i don't usually go here on the show but uh so how far could dmt allow the soul to go from the body um could it go in fact too far and can we bring it back i think the cool thing about the research that we're you you guys are going to do daniel is that you know we can do really slow stages you know start at five minutes go to 10 minutes whatever i think that's not too much um but you know maybe three days in the dmt state you're in you're gone but we don't we don't know that yet like is is the mind able to come back um and interface with a human body again you know so you know that and it's cool that we're going to screen for that we're going to you're going to use um experienced psychonauts first probably martial artists who want to be in their body or in you know probably other athletes as well well-rounded folks um i don't know like has that thought crossed your mind or like what how do you think about that yeah i mean it's part of like that uh it's part of the one of the things we're we're asked to fully surrender into in these medicine experiences is trusting that we will be okay and that we will return from them no matter how far out we go and and it does appear we have a mechanism to do that and i think that's a good example i think it does appear we have a mechanism like uh to attach us to our bodies you know and again whether or not we're actually leaving our body or not right the experience is we are somewhere else you know yeah um so we would like any expedition there's risk um but like you were saying we would step into it um and so the the first question scientifically is is the equation that doctors and doctors have to deal with is is the equation that doctors and doctors have to deal with is is the equation that doctors and doctors have to deal with is is the equation that dr gallimore came up with based on dr strassman's data is it accurate um we don't want to assume that and so just doing reproducing rick strassman's work with the machine as opposed to just a syringe that's a that's a significant step right and then if we were to just add five minutes to the dmt experience that is doubling the psychedelic experience of the dmt state that's doubling it right and and most people experience these spaces as timeless or eternity already so what does it mean to double that um that's a big question right and then uh and then and then and then theoretically because there's no tolerance to dmt which you know that's another question we're we're curious about is there really no tolerance to dmt or is there just an endpoint you know that we can't pass and uh but theoretically we could extend it for several hours that peak state um but maybe we don't start with the peak experience that's several hours maybe we start with a uh an experience that's several hours but it's 25 percent of the dmt peak right um maybe there's a you know a conversation can happen in these states maybe it's more like a psychedelic psychotherapy session at that point you know there's a lot you could do but i think if the conditions are correct the person's been safely screened and we have the person already has experience of returning um that i don't think there would be much of a chance for somebody to not come back from this um but that's a question you know that's a good question uh people have asked me if i would do it and uh i've come to the conclusion that yeah i would totally i would totally do it and i think that's a good question i think that's a good question and uh i would step into it i wouldn't do a six hour pure day first i i would i would want to do that five extra minutes first um you know um i i that would be too much for me for sure so um so we'll see you know the biggest the biggest constraints might be physiology you know like uh do we want our psychonauts to wear a diaper um how comfortable is a dmt experience after you used a diaper like um do do do people want to actually go through that like psych or astronauts they wear diapers right so uh there's a precedence for it in these spaces but you know maybe it's not that comfortable to be in those states that long um yeah it's like thinking about like damage to the psyche or soul or whatever um i was just listening to this this like the history of mk ultra and how uh you know not to not to jump down the you know this whole too much but just thinking about you know if they did use like high amounts of lsd back in the day and thinking about weaponizing it and using these substances in really inhumane ways like what was the psychological damage to those participants or like victims of of that error um i guess that's something i don't know if that's out there probably produced a lot of homeless people yeah yeah it's traumatizing you know like overexposure to psychedelics can be absolutely traumatizing to people and uh um and uh you know like so we you know we talk about ego like in dissolving ego but there's another concept of called ego strength you know we all have to have some ego strength to engage the world to go to work to get up in the morning to you know put our clothes on right things like that um and that and that extreme uh and unhealthy psychedelic states can damage that capacity to have solid ego strength um so that's my biggest concern and and and again though but if we address it then we assess for it the more of the question that we're really exploring is what's the potential for this work what how can it heal the psyche that's a big question maybe there's you know the psilocybin research is showing significant changes in personality traits um that i would expect there to be positive personality trait changes in an extended state dmt uh experiment and then maybe there's a creative process that occurs in these states whether you're being told by an entity or you're figuring something out yourself uh we have an opportunity to perceive problems differently and resolve them you know to work through them understand them come up with novel solutions to them all of that and and to me you know that possibility far exceeds um the risk of of injury and again we're you know like we're you know i'm a trained therapist carla is a is a master assessor um and we're not going to be the only people on the team you know assessing people it would it would be quite a process to be chosen for something like this um you know because of these questions yeah it would be uh it's like i keep coming up against this idea um for whatever reason i have no idea but of getting some sort of cruise boat or like some sort of barge in international waters maybe some anesthesiologist out there is really excited by this episode and you own a large yacht um and so you're anesthesia equipment yeah yeah right yeah yeah uh i would be happy if we could just get it out of the hospital setting i think that would be a really important uh edge to try to push in this research put it in a container that is very sacred um very quiet you know the equipment that we use couldn't be you know um uh you know so like putting it in a safe container but yeah like if the fda doesn't want to do this then we're gonna we're gonna create the protocol we're gonna get everything we need to do it and if we can't do it here then we will look for places that we can do it um and i mean the the the political environment right now is so chaotic and so unhinged that we don't know what's going to happen in the next couple of years the next five years it could be completely open to this or it could be uh completely shut down and um and so i think it's going to be a really important thing and if it's shut down that's probably our least dmt research is probably our least concern at that point so i'm really stepping into yeah let's just keep stepping into this just keep living into it and uh and we'll figure it out as we go you know and and one of the things joe that you mentioned the anesthesiologist you know so i i was asking dr strassman about this and he said oh you need an anesthesiologist uh to work the machine you need an anesthesiologist anesthesia anesthesia machine um and i'm like well i'm not going to do that i'm not going to do that i'm not going to do that uh well you know like that anesthesia machine that's actually um something that i didn't understand correctly at first uh that there are these big anesthesia machines you know in hospital settings but then there are also these little pumps and uh and actually we need to work with these little pumps as opposed to these big anesthesia machines um and that we may not need an anesthesiologist to figure out these pieces or or to work it um because these pumps are used in chemotherapy and they're also used in ketamine uh research um and so right now i'm working with some people in the boulder area talking to them and uh and then there's the ketamine training institute that just started on california and so we're exploring ketamine assisted psychotherapy as a bridge for psychedelic research into dmt we can buy the pump use it for ketamine assisted psychotherapy learn how to use it with ketamine we can do this legally now and uh and then we'll gain the expertise um and knowledge and experience using the machine with ketamine that we can then translate to dmt research um it's actually way simpler than we first thought it would be i remember having this conversation with you and i don't know a few weeks into us like having having some sort of back and forth on this subject i ran the idea by my sister who's a veterinarian you and uh she goes oh that that machine like for animals is only a couple hundred dollars i was like what crazy but uh yeah like i'm looking online right now i'm seeing stuff for sub three thousand dollars um and i guess really you would just need a nurse um to set up the iv yeah you need somebody to stick a needle in somebody's arm and you need somebody to uh program the machine so somebody doesn't get a hyper dose of dmt you know like we want to be really careful we want to be really careful about that and um but yeah yeah we can learn how to do that pretty easily like i i work with medical doctors here in boulder now uh we have um office space available for us to do ketamine work uh and so it might be a really um realistic step to to dmt research to step into uh ketamine assisted psychotherapy um and so that's kind of the edges that we're exploring right now and and so we're looking at it like some sort of kickstarter campaign and and you know making uh the the goal of the kickstarter is to is to buy one of these machines um it would be a symbolic gesture right like okay we got the machine to do the research um but it would also be immediately useful we could we could use it for ketamine work um and that's amazing like we weren't talking about ketamine assisted psychotherapy you know um more than a couple of years ago really in in like the larger conversations and now it's a real big thing you know um but we could you know we i have i i know multiple um therapists that could step into that work legally um safely and then we have medical doctors that can prescribe it so yeah that's fascinating and great i uh it's very encouraging right to have that many people on the team um yeah ready there's a ton of nurses i've talked to who just want to be involved or people uh we have a a new uh friend of the show quasi and do say out of buffalo new york he's about to be a nurse practitioner and he's super interested in this work and um you know i'm sure you've talked to a number of nurses and doctors who just want to jump right in yeah more nurses than doctors they're there you're right there are a lot of nurses that and this would be a a nurse would be some would be a position that would be a sitter in the room um you know somebody to um provide support to the medical doctor uh and also you know be a kind presence and putting needles in people's arms and all that um they would be um trained as a sitter as much as the facilitators and and the doctor giving the medicine out you know yeah that's cool um kyle with your training um that you're going through right now like how how do you feel your university education is prepping you for this kind of work or would it be at all um i mean academically i guess just the uh learning about the body but and like body psychotherapy but um you know i think most of my training in um say transpersonal realms would probably be um you know i think most of my training in um say transpersonal realms would be much more applicable and uh with working with breath work um and then you know any clinical experience is definitely helpful for learning how to um sit with people in you know extreme states or whatever's going on trauma yeah yeah my you know my i got my master's in counseling at naropa and it's a very um uh mindfulness based transpersonal program and uh you know i got i got a lot of really good training there but i also uh have learned that we needed to add a lot of somatic psychotherapy training to our to our repertoire you know as healers psychedelic facilitators and you know we were just talking about that like peter levine's work and somatic experiencing how about how the body discharges trauma uh physically speaking these would be um things that would be helpful for us to be able to that would probably show up in the experience so somebody started to shake or tremble um in a dmt state being able to differentiate and understand that that might be a a healing experience as opposed to a um medical emergency you know it's not freak out if somebody starts to shudder or tremble or shake you know um but that might be something we really want to support them in as opposed to oh we got to shut down the experiment they're they're going to go away and they're going to crisis so their heart would be monitored of course and a lot of a lot of um a lot of those physiological signs would be uh you know checked but um we would probably do our best to hold the course and unless there was a major you know unsafe physical release or something like that um yeah yeah kyle you want to join the team joe we got hey i would love to i heard you have a spot for me in boulder so sounds good i uh coming down man yeah well i'm really fascinated it's going to be a really cool thing to watch play out like obviously it's not happening in 2017 like maybe maybe you'll have the equipment by mid 2018 which would be really cool start doing some some yeah training with the ketamine stuff because that's available right now there's doctors all over colorado doing this ketamine work and that's not too hard to jump in and especially if you're a doctor you're going to especially if um the organization that you're forming has some volunteer time like the doctor prescribes the medicine you come in as like a volunteer therapist or something and you're just there trying to level up that experience um maybe it's fee-based maybe not i don't know but it's a it seems so possible to get those skills well people yeah yeah right it does it seems very feasible and people are i mean it's a it's a it's an industry ketamine assisted healing is an industry people are used to paying for it it would just be like so we would be more advanced facilitators than most of the medical doctors already doing this work you know like most of it's not um assisted psychotherapy it's here i'm going to inject you with ketamine and hopefully that your neurological there'll be a neurological healing take place right so uh so we know how to hold space we know how to really deepen experiences and then we would have the medical support you know to ensure physical safety um but maybe the ketamine assisted if we do charge for it the ketamine assisted work pays for the dmt experiment you know like we're really like how do we make this work so we're not beholden to uh donors uh and the large numbers of people with all kinds of opinions you know like we really need to keep it simple and be focused and not have a lot of agendas in the in the experiment and so the more self-reliant we can be the better you know and uh and right now all of this is being funded by cannabis assisted healing work you know so we're using other modalities to pay for it and uh and and with the with the gathering that we're going to do um you know uh creativity art and music are going to pay for this and so these are these are important threads in um of the psychedelic community uh and so if we can create a opportunity for the psychedelic community to gather that's a that's right there uh healing for our community and then we're going to use the money that we make on those gatherings to fund dmt research um why not right like absolutely it's a win-win and i love that you guys are actually charging real money for this next event because it is a real fundraiser we have to treat things we're taking seriously uh as as you know real meaningful events it's just not like pay what you can fundraiser it's a real fundraiser and um yeah that was a big step for me to do that it feels risky right like i i get it um and it makes sense to maybe try to do a couple smaller ones too in different cities as awareness raising events also fundraising events at the same time um like an obvious next step might be denver but um yeah maybe that's a little too close to home yeah well not really i I mean, Denver's a whole other ecosystem. of psychedelics than boulder is um but yeah you know uh you know it's costing a lot of money to even put on the event so we didn't want to just break even we wanted to make a little money to put into the research um you know so we're you know we've got uh should we talk about that now do you want to absolutely yeah we're at about an hour so let's kind of talk about what we're doing all right yeah so uh december 16th uh it's a saturday night we're having a uh we're calling it psychedelic shine dntx update and psychedelic society social and uh and it's uh 49 for students it's a very limited uh number of tickets are available because it's a small venue but it's really a wonderful venue um it's 49 for students and 99 for you know other people and then um and uh less than 100 tickets are available and they're starting to really sell so if anybody's interested i'd encourage you to um to buy a ticket uh the information you can find it at dmtx.org um and then there's also a facebook page event page through medicinal mindfulness facebook page um carla and i are going to give a update on the dmt research we've talked about some of it here you know particularly the ketamine piece but we're going to talk a little bit more about the um selection criteria too uh and so we're only going to talk about 30 45 minutes and then we have three um uh different bands we have a couple of djs and then our band uh our breathwork band uh nabumbu uh is going to play and they are getting incredibly good at um orchestrating psychedelic inspired medicine journeys through music um and so they're they're our headliner um and it's also a cannabis friendly event uh this is something that we're another edge we're we're stepping into and acknowledging that uh cannabis is a legal recreationally legal psychedelic and is incredibly uh amazing in social situations and dances and uh you know cannabis assisted um authentic movement and dance is a big part of our program you know so we're really opening up a hey this is what psychedelic society looks like um in a safe environment in a contained environment and we're going to celebrate our community and we're going to promote extended state dmt research um so we're going to have food music um can't bring your own cannabis cannabis friendly we're going to have art a really unusual art installation outside uh and then uh we'll probably have a fire like a fire circle outside and then a big dance party inside um and uh december 16th uh and joe are are you coming down for that are you tbd tbd i really want to um i've got a pretty crazy schedule unfortunately well you are gonna miss out yeah i feel like that every time you do an event anyway but uh i actually just had the opportunity to see the venue the venue is amazing yeah it's at valley soul sanctuary which is this kind of yoga temple um and a beautiful hexagon shaped space with the stage and uh if we can figure out how to live stream it so joe that's kind of your you know kind of your area if we can figure out how to live stream the event uh or make it available for everybody who's out of town um to you know at least see the presentations we'll figure that out you know so yeah well that's awesome all right cool um so dmtx.org medicinalmindfulness.com.org.org yeah i think both get you there yeah yeah i think dmtx redirects to your main site which is awesome um yeah it's a sub page yeah yeah check it out it's it's gonna be fun um it's really exciting and inspiring so yeah i'm excited all right daniel thanks for your time and can't wait to run into you in the near future yeah i'm looking forward to it too guys and uh thanks for having me on your show um keep up the really good work and i look forward to the next one so you you you