Why Do DMT Users See Insects from a Parallel Universe? | Hacker News Reader

Why Do DMT Users See Insects from a Parallel Universe?

sprott.physics.wisc.edu

204 pointsquakeguy175 comments

There is some evidence that seems to indicate that the humans have an evolved "built in" reaction to snake/snake like patterns:

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/cd/12_1/Ohman.c...

As reptiles, snakes may have signified deadly threats in the environment of early mammals. We review findings suggesting that snakes remain special stimuli for humans. Intense snake fear is prevalent in both humans and other primates. Humans and monkeys learn snake fear more easily than fear of most other stimuli through direct or vicarious conditioning. Neither the elicitation nor the conditioning of snake fear in humans requires that snakes be consciously perceived; rather, both processes can occur with masked stimuli. Humans tend to perceive illusory correlations between snakes and aversive stimuli, and their attention is automatically captured by snakes in complex visual displays. Together, these and other findings delineate an evolved fear module in the brain. This module is selectively and automatically activated by once-threatening stimuli, is relatively encapsulated from cognition, and derives from specialized neural circuitry.

This makes sense, as humans have evolved along venomous snakes for presumably a very long time.

Is it possible that when drug users of a wide variety of backgrounds report similar hallucinations (here insects), it taps into similar mechanisms, activating neural pathways that deal with the recognition of insects?

As a 12 year old I lived on a ranch that had not been fully purged of rattlesnakes (in central California, if your property has water near it and not too many roads, you probably have a few rattlesnakes).

My most terrifying experience was going into the horse barn to grab a lead rope coiled up on top of a bale of hay and not seeing the juvenile rattlesnake coiled inside the lead rope.

I grabbed it and the lead and by pure luck I had it right behind the head. It was rattling and writhing and trying to get a bite on me. No one was home, and I had no idea what to do. I have no recollection of anything other than holding the snake in a panic, but my parents found me holding an exhausted snake trembling violently, it was at least an hour after I had picked it up.

It stands out as a totally singular experience in my life, nothing ANY degree of chemical stimulation has ever replicated. My fear was so intense I basically blacked out in place with my arm locked rigid for an hour.

I've had similar experiences while rock climbing. It's totally irrational and you have no control over it. It's really fascinating but only in retrospect. :)

One day when I was a teenager I was in the backyard and stepped off the sidewalk and onto the grass like I had done a hundred times before. After taking a couple of steps I froze with an uncomfortable feeling and turned around to see that I had stepped over a very large cottonmouth viper. There wasn't any standing water near the house so I guess it had gotten lost or was sick and wandering. I've always remembered how seemingly automatic my reaction was, like I was controlled by some other thing.

FWIW I've always hated snakes.

Cats display what appears to be an instinctual (and often hilarious) fear of some snake-shaped objects, like cucumbers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNycdfFEgBc

As a cat owner, I recently heard about this phenomenon and looked it up. Many of the Quora answers [1] seem to concur that cats would be startled by the sudden appearance of any novel/unusual object in their vicinity.

1: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-cats-afraid-of-cucumbers-1

If that were the true explanation, I'd expect followup videos of cats freaking out just as much over other innocent objects -- it's what some people would try and others would upvote. I didn't see any when I first heard of the cucumber thing, so I'd guess that the phenomenon's real: cucumbers seem especially like poisonous snakes to cats. I won't try a controlled experiment on my own cat, though.

The opinions on quora don't appear to be backed up by anything more than 'not proven'. I think it's reasonable to be skeptical, but also that experts are still pretty ignorant and prone to dismissing phenomena they don't already know about.

Sagan's "The dragons of Eden" is almost entirely on the topic of primal snake fear, and the resultant hypothetical origins of dragon myths - it's a neat read.

This response is a _very_ long way from the very real and extremely alien experience.

> This makes sense, as humans have co-evolved along venomous snakes for presumably a very long time.

I always find appeals to evolution for phenomena like this a bit weak. In the Darwinian sense, this response would have to be a random mutation that is environmentally selected for. Not a biologist, but that seems a very high-order function to be subject to random mutations.

I don't think you understand evolution. Evolution is not just random mutations.

I take it you do. Thanks for enlightening me!

That's a general argument against any complex adaptation. Here's some experimental evidence I found on a quick search: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... (I only skimmed this paper.)

Thanks! That's excellent. Different measurements from populations with varying exposure to snakes certainly seems to weigh in favour of an evolutionary explanation.

> That's a general argument against any complex adaptation.

I know my comment looks remarkably close to typical poorly-informed arguments for ID (eyeballs, even bananas lol), which probably explains the poor reaction to it. There's a lot of fuzzy thinking about evolution all round, and I'm just as guilty of it as the next person.

Thanks for taking the time to give me a good read :).

You're welcome! I actually agree that it feels weird that selection can work effectively on such a long chain of causes between genes and behaviors. It'll be exciting to learn more.

The "co-evolved" was a mistake on my part, thanks for pointing it out. Removed for clarity.

Interesting that Satan is described as a "serpent" in the Old Testament/Garden of Eden story.

I know this is off topic, but Satan didn't exist when the OT was written, by the way.

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bib...

Not quite true, or at least not so baldly. Job describes the "satan", or accuser, in a manner that clearly anticipates his later depiction as "the accuser of the brethren" in Revelation. And while not providing a name, the descriptions of the mythical falls of the kings of Babylon and Tyre in Isaiah and Ezekiel seem to draw on legends similar to the later Christian elaboration of the story of demonic rebellion and exile.

I might be wrong, but AFAIK the old testament Eden story features the serpent, but has no mention of Satan.

The identification of Satan with the serpent is a Christian and Islamic thing.

The verse most specific to a "built in" reaction to snake/snake like patterns (per OP) is Genesis 3:15:

"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspringe and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." (ESV)

I think we are onto something here.

Interesting.

On larger doses of acid where I'm suffering immense mental agitation, the common visions are spirals, coils, and snakes.

In particular, a snake with no head, but rather attached to itself to form a hula hoop. Trying to turn over, but it can't. So it's there writhing infinitely.

The futility of it is a good representation of the abject overstimulation I'm feeling in my head. And, of course, a nice feeling of terror to go along with it.

Whenever snakey things are on the mind, I know that it was a bigger dose than I intended, and I'll soon be holding on to a panicking brain.

Look into Ouroborous, Jungian Archetypes, and Kekules notes on his dreams.

Crazy world we live in...

I wonder if the ororobous imagery has an origin in this variety of experience...

I always thought the same was true for spiders. Snakes don't do anything for me, maybe because they look too much like earthworms, but the distinct shape of some spiders gives me an instinctual reaction.

Same. Don't get me wrong, I would freeze if I came across a dangerous snake in my path, but spiders, for me, produce a visceral disgust and freight. However, the feelings have lessened a bit since moving to Florida where these guys [1] took up ownership of my back porch for a while.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_silk_orb-weaver

I'm the same, snakes don't bother me at all, but spiders... well, I'm slightly ashamed to say I am terrified of spiders. I know it's completely irrational, but I can't even go near little ones.

straya represent: walking home one night at about the 8th hr (so definitely coming down). It had rained so much the path was covered in water, and the frogs were out making a racket. There was a pinch on my heel, and I thought I felt a yabby grabbing hold of me. I shook my leg to shake it off, and looked back to find someone long and snakey hanging off my heel - obviously a harmless treesnake hunting the frogs. My mindstate immediately leapt up a level, and the path was writhing with snakes the whole way home.

Supposedly it's the same reason cats hiss and put their ears back - to mimic a snake.

Datura users are also commonly reported by observers to act out hallucinations involving insects. While the user often recalls an entirely different mental experience, it's common for their physical selves to be seen picking at imaginary bugs on the floor in a primal manner (among other reflexive actions, such as convincingly smoking imaginary cigarettes).

It is interesting and darkly humorous (keep in mind that datura is very dangerous) to read the Erowid trip reports for datura. Quite a few of them are along the lines of "I took datura, I had vivid hallucinations for three days with no relation to reality, and then I woke up naked in a hospital / jail".

https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Datura.shtml

A long time ago I had an experience not with datura, but a close relative - benedryl (both are dissociatives).

Came home after rolling on ecstasy all night and wanted to go to bed. It's not that easy though after taking a bunch of stimulants. So I took a little bit of a lot of benedryl (iirc ~200mg or 8 pills). Ripped my bong for a bit and felt nice and chilled out. About 30 minutes later though, things started to get weird. Was taking a piss and all these really vivid tears started appearing, like someone ripping the movie screen of my vision with intense psychedelic swirls and stuff behind it. These weren't like lsd or mushroom hallucinations, they were far more real and vivid. It wasn't anything overwhelming though, just small little pockets here and there.

I went back to my room, and holy shit, there were thousands of flies pouring out of my blinds. Like this amorphous mass of flies dripping from between the slats. All the other hallucinations were gone. It was just the flies, and I cannot stress enough how real it was. I went up to it and could get in real close and see all their little wings and glittery eyes. I got in bed and now there were hundreds of spiders crawling on my computer chair. I just laid in bed watching in awe of how real it looked. Then huge spiders started crawling on my ceiling, like the ones from jumanji. It was unsettling, but I was oddly sober (mentally) and knew how common reports of insects and dissociatives were. Except for the psychedelic rips, there were no other hallucinations besides the bugs. I don't even have a fear of spiders or bugs, and always assumed that was the underlying cause.

Isn't it technically the deliriant effect that causes these hallucinations (and not the dissociative effect)?

I read somewhere (erowid perhaps?) that a dissociatives are very dangerous precisely because it's very hard to tell which things are real.and which aren't so people get hurt trying to escape from these very real images.

Scary as fuck...

It's not just Datura, either. Belladonna/Nightshade and anti-histamines like Benadryl/diphenhydramine/dimenhydrinate do the exact same things: you see lots of bugs, hear and talk to people who aren't there, smokers tend to smoke imaginary cigarettes, your body feels very heavy, and it screws with your vision.

The most horrifying aspect of the whole experience is that, no matter how much you warn yourself going in, you'll always believe you're completely sober and rational during the experience. It's not until after it wears off completely that you were basically completely schizophrenic during the experience.

Just for anyone thinking this sounds interesting ... even for an entomologist, there is not one single microscopic ounce of euphoria from this experience. Don't try it. There's a reason those who do never try it a second time.

This needs to be said over and over again. There's two different species of plants commonly known as Datura: Jimsonweed, Datura stramonium, and Sacred Thronapple, Datura wrightii. It's Datura wrightii that the Native Americans used as a hallucinogen, while Datura stramonium seems to have only been used as medicine or poison.

People don't bother making this important distinction anymore and end up foolishly taking the more common D. stramonium. This is probably why Datura has become so infamous, not that D. wrightii is "safe", but it certainly appears to be safer than D. stramonium.

From the Native American Ethnobotany Database:

Datura wrightii: http://naeb.brit.org/uses/species/1244/

Datura stramonium: http://naeb.brit.org/uses/species/1243/

When I was 17, I had a cold and the doctor prescribed some homeopathic remedy containing Atropine. Now, the whole point of homeopathy, of course, is to dilute any ingredients to the point where you are lucky to find even a single molecule of it in a given pill. (In my defense, I did not know anything about medicine back then.)

But I think I must have gotten a package from a batch where they forgot a couple of dilution steps or something. Also I may have misread the instructions. Anyway, it took me about six days to go through the pills, and during that whole time, I could not help but grin almost the entire time. Also, two or three times, I very clearly heard someone talking to me who was not there. I did recognize the voices, they belonged to people I knew. Then again, I looked around, did not see the person and figured that it must have been in my head, which apparently people hallucinating from Atropine are rather incapable of.

OTOH, I had none of the side effects Atropine has according to Wikipedia, so who knows what was going on with me back then. But I understood something was off, and the only thing that had changed from the weeks before were those homeopathic pills. (Just to be clear, all in all the experience was pleasant.)

There's bee a bit of fuss over here in the UK recently about homeopathic medicines, which are supposed to be ridiculously over-diluted, containing dangerous amounts of various substances.

The basic idea that tiny amounts of substances that harm you in various ways might benefit you in a related way is magical thinking. But when you can't rely on the 'tiny amounts' part, you're in pretty nasty territory.

Indeed. I remember reading about some event in the UK where people deliberately "overdosed" on homeopathic "medicine" to demonstrate it has no effect. That could end badly if the stuff is not diluted as much as the label says.

Come to think of it, the company I work at does process engineering and plant design/construction mainly for companies in the food industry, but we have a a couple of customers from the pharmaceutical industry as well.

And the impression I got so far (being the in-house IT admin, I can only watch it from a distance), is that the pharmaceutical customers are extremely meticulous. And with good reason, of course. Imagine if a batch of paracetamol/acetaminophen tablets contained 5g instead of 0.5g.

But if the engineering and QA at homeopathic companies is as scientific as homeopathy itself, that is not surprising. :(

Magical Thinking, eh?

Vaccines and the entire concept of hormesis is something you should research when you get the chance.

Vaccines operate on a completely different principle....You get exposed to live but neutered or dead bacteria/viruses so your immunoresponse mechanisms learn how to fight it if you ever come across the full strength version. It has nothing to do with homeopathy.

Sadly, there is no vaccination against stupidity

Oh, that's hilarious. Wow!

My latest working theory for why DMT elicits similar experiences across different users was actually inspired by Google's "Deep Dream" art: https://research.googleblog.com/2015/06/inceptionism-going-d...

"We know that after training, each layer progressively extracts higher and higher-level features of the image... The final few layers assemble those into complete interpretations—these neurons activate in response to very complex things such as entire buildings or trees."

I'm not an expert, but from the little I know of neuroscience, the human brain also has higher level interpreters inside of it. It is why, for example, that pareidolia (seeing faces in objects) is a thing (https://www.reddit.com/r/Pareidolia/).

"So here’s one surprise: neural networks that were trained to discriminate between different kinds of images have quite a bit of the information needed to generate images too"

"One way to visualize what goes on is to turn the network upside down and ask it to enhance an input image in such a way as to elicit a particular interpretation"

So I believe that what DMT is doing is triggering our high level interpreters to make sense of thoughts and emotions that we have. We do the same thing when we dream, where we interpret an event of the day in a very vivid, novel fashion, sometimes even creating story arcs around it.

I had the same thought when I first saw deep dream (which look exactly like drug hallucinations) and read the explanation behind it. That's when I first had my "oh shit" moment, realizing that DNN researchers really are onto something. I started taking discussions about AI a lot more seriously after that.

"We do the same thing when we dream [..]"

I think you don't go far enough: We do the same thing when we are awake, too.

I tend to agree with your interpretation. This plays good also with the other post in the first page about the possibility of visual grammars ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13615273 ). If you play with your grammar you get strange languages.

Ever since Deep Dream came out, I have occasionally found myself exhausted enough to start hallucinating eyes/insects/tentacles/etc in anything I look at hastily. And when this happens, it's an immense comfort to be able to say "oh hey I'm just tired and my brain is running its own Deep Dream".

Hmm...I've never tried psychoactive drugs but way back when I worked on hardware I was debugging a board in a lab that had poor ventilation, cleaning flux off it with Freon when I saw a little green Dragon rise out of the green solder resist film and breathe the tiniest lick of fire at me.

I haven't met anyone who described insects. Most of the entities experienced seem to be abstract, with the possibility of focusing it into an object but not a negative one. DMT seems to be generally a positive euphoric experience filled with geometric shapes of love. Although a mild dose can be unpleasant.

What I've experience sometimes looked like UFOs, that when you focused on them would burst into the sky far away. Like a ship taking off in a rapid dimensional-type shift. Similar to the graphics in the movie Dr. Strange.

The presence is more like feeling the wind, and getting a sense that the wind itself is saying hello and making fun of you.

I've seen the roots of a tree (at at distance of about 300 feet) through the ground, while on LSD (about 500ug). I'm sure those really were the roots, because the visible part of the tree (the trunk and the roots that came up above ground again at a few spots) matched completely with roots in the ground I was seeing. The image was stable and lasted for about 45 seconds. Something (not like an external voice, more like an internal voice/thought/intuition told me "yes, of course, you just need to tune into the frequency of the thing you want to see"). As soon as I tried thinking/questioning, the view vanished, and I guess it was because of the ego starting to interfere.

Conclusion: We still have no clue what reality really holds and how to use our brain in order to access our real potential. Interesting times to come, stay tuned.

I've had similar experiences, but I don't think they're anything other than internally generated by the brain, especially since I've also been able to morph what I've seen into other objects at will.

I've also been able to see objects in more detail on LSD, like I was wearing extra glasses or something, but again I suspect the extra details were just created by my visual system, though it would be interesting if there were more scientific studies of this stuff.

I do a few outdoor sports and I have noticed that when I get into a particularly bad scenario time seems to slow down. Actually I am not sure that it does, but the adrenaline seems to turn off the filtering so I remember it in slow motion and in a lot more detail.

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) can fill-out missing parts of images that fit plausibly into the existing scene. These are computer programs that are much less complicated than our brains.

So, you have one interpretation, but there's no reason to think it's more likely than the fact that your brain is really good at filling in missing details.

That was my first thought, too. But there are other elements which are relevant:

I could literally walk my eyes along the roots, up and down, they were static and didn't move an inch.

And during an earlier experience (and to a good extent during the 2-3 following days), using about 150ug only, I felt something like a strong connection with the tree I was standing in front of. It was like we were communicating (for as long as I wanted), but not like an exchange of sentences, rather like a constant bi-directional stream of information, or better: a "mutual understanding without speaking/thinking".

This "shared state of being/feeling" was extended to the roots of the tree: I could feel their presence in the ground (but not see them yet, which changed later, as stated above). And I had that feeling whenever I passed a tree during the 2-3 following days.

There is definitely a lot going on (or possible) between humans and other forms of life, which we are currently missing. And I'm sure our spiritual dimension is definitely part of the mix. So if you're into meditation, keep it up.

There's nothing in your extra elements that precludes it was just your brain filling in the details. I think you're underestimating how capable we are of hallucinating things in proper spatial placing, even with motion going on. The strong connection feeling is often felt by LSD users, but is a separate phenomenon from being able to see through solid objects (the ground), and is just a feeling that your brain can arbitrarily assign to anything, including hallucinated objects. Ex. you can easily feel connected to things in dreams that have never existed in real life at all.

I'm all for meditation and realization of the interconnected nature of all life, though. Keep at it.

I believe this world is basically a playpen in a universe having 5 spatial dimensions.

I've had a very interesting side-effect immediately after coming back from a DMT trip of being able to see around things. Like you look at a box on the table in front of you and you can see the side facing away from you. Faded gradually after 5 minutes. This seems like extremely fruitful territory for trying with ESP test cards, MRI imaging and more.

Why would you believe that?

Because that's my experience. I investigate theoretical models but I don't have the math skills to develop the idea more rigorously at present.

Can you elaborate on "I investigate theoretical models"? Are you involved in some branch of math or science?

No this is strictly amateur hour and most of my ideas are probably not even wrong. If I went into any more detail I'd feel like a crank, though :)

Why not?

Mainly because most people lack the capacity to invent sound new theoretical models of the universe to believing whatever interesting idea springs to mind is 99.9999999% likely to be wrong.

"A few experimental attempts have been made to elicit parapsychological phenomena through the controlled administration of LSD-type substances... None of them produced statistically significant results" http://stanleykrippner.weebly.com/lsd-and-parapsychological-...

Not surprising. I've only had this experience with DMT and am skeptical that it's perceptual rather than imaginary, but a) I couldn't think of a better way to describe it and b) it was really hard to ignore.

It's not something I've ever seen referred to in other people's reports, though I don't really keep up with research in this area. I have no hesitation in saying that DMT fundamentally altered my worldview though.

Testimonials like that do tempt me a little, though I'm conservative about drugs.

It's not something that strikes me as having hedonistic appeal. On the other hand it would be pretty drastic for an inexperienced tripper and imho better worked up with some less intense drugs. There are certainly 'smart' ways to structure drug experimentation and minimize risk, but it's important to feel comfortable about your consumption decisions precisely because drugs temporarily make your psyche more malleable.

Do people of all cultures see insects, or is it just westerners on DMT?

For example, I've heard that schizophrenia manifests itself in different ways across cultures. Voices are almost always negative/destructive in western cultures, but often times take on playful manners in non-western cultures.

From what I've heard they are rather abstract, unidentifiable (or indescribable) entities. Terrence Mackenna called them "machine elves".

What if someone was raised without ever having seen an insect?

It is most prevalent among westerners writing fiction novels about alien praying mantis entities[1].

Jokes aside, as far as I know DMT is not the only compound that makes you see insects. For me, it kinda makes sense to interpret little 'irregularities' in your visual / tactile perceptions as, say, ants.

[1] http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/neoreality.html

On the other hand, perhaps insects are ideal for (subconsciously) describing alien encounters. The mind has a good understanding about how insects look like (not like us), but it can barely imagine how it feels to be an insect.

I have no idea what a DMT trip is actually like but I liked the depiction in Enter the Void: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCIe9gh84NE.

Just a fair warning, I've never once seen a depiction of the effects of any kind of psychedelic drug that matched the effects I've personally experienced. And I've tried quite a few of them.

A lot of the experience is the head space and body load, which you're just never going to get from way over the top visual approximations. If you haven't experienced those, you aren't going to be able to imagine them very accurately.

The actual hallucinations are often much more subtle, but it's the headspace that makes them seem more significant. For instance, the most psilocybin does (for me) is cause text on a screen to wiggle around by a few pixels, and things to kind of zoom in and out by maybe 1% of their actual size, and colors on pictures to kind of bleed around by a few pixels if you stare at it long enough.

Now granted, I have not tried dimethyltryptamine. I don't have the courage for that one yet :P

> For instance, the most psilocybin does (for me) is cause text on a screen to wiggle around by a few pixels

Take more. I've been sitting in my living room literally holding my eyelids open seeing a completely different world. I agree 100% about the visual depictions though. Never gets close.

I've gone as high as I could before the body load became truly threatening. That's around 5-6g of cubensis, or 50mg of 4-AcO-DMT. Psilocin and its analogs tend to cause hypothermia for me that gets worse as dosages increase. Freezing cold yet sweating profusely. Muscles unable to keep still. At that level, it's a struggle for me to stay conscious and not black out. I have to move constantly to avoid that. It ceases to be enjoyable beyond 2-3g or 20-30mg here; low visuals there but amazing euphoria. Though to be honest, the constant nausea ruins regular mushrooms regardless of dosage.

I think there's just something off with me and visual hallucinations. I've gone as high as 1.5g on dextromethorphan, and the most I've gotten there was seeing the vague outline of what looked like my room while my eyes were closed, or seeing a grayscale wall that seemed to go up forever. Sometimes with eyes open it seems like in the darkness there's a shadowy silhouette of some other place, but the second I try to focus on it, the illusion breaks. Much more boring than the description sounds.

Note that I'm only 150lbs, too. So it's not a mg/kg dosing issue.

> I agree 100% about the visual depictions though. Never gets close.

It makes me wonder if they're just trying to give a good show for the viewers, like the way they portray computer hackers and such. Or if the people making these depictions have just never in their lives tried psychedelics themselves. Probably the former.

the visuals in Enter the Void _understate_ those offered by dmt

The thing about hallucinogens is that they really change how you think. The visual changes are such a small part of the experience, compared with the complete transformation of your consciousness. DMT itself is particularly potent in this regard, it basically completely strips away your sense of self.

I highly recommend a heavy dose of ayahuasca at least once in your life. It is pretty much guaranteed to radically change your perspective on a lot of things.

Here's a fun question...

If it has a such a profound change in consciousness, would it be easy for a non-DMT user to identify someone who has used DMT, albeit with some training?

there's a very simple heuristic to determine whether someone has used dmt, and even those who haven't can use it: they never shut the fuck up about it

Haha. I have done quite a bit of hallucinogens, but I never bring the subject up myself. My ideas are wild enough, I don't want to give people an easy excuse to dismiss them :)

There's a pretty easy test. Just start talking about the illusion of the ego. People who've never experience ego death will have no idea what you are talking about. Given that ego death is pretty much only caused by epic trips or a profound mastery of meditation, you should be able to get an idea fairly quickly.

> would it be easy for a non-DMT user to identify someone who has used DMT, albeit with some training?

No. There is basically 30% of the population that will believe anything no matter how stupid. Because the percentage of people who have smoked DMT is probably closer to 0.1%, it would be very difficult to separate people who believe dumb-sounding things for good reasons from the people who believe dumb-sounding things for dumb reasons.

I'm curious whether or not there's even a test for the presence of this drug or it's metabolites in the blood of a user who has taken it within say even just the past hour, due to its purportedly short lived effects...

Not curious enough to consult the literature, but curious.

Its naturally occurring in the body, and quickly broken down by mono-amine oxidase enzymes (taking MAOI's, mono-amine oxidase inhibitors, with it extends the duration of the trip).

I think the reverse would make more sense.

I'm not sure if it's a valid test -I'd think that a better test would be to identify if there is a significant positive change before/after use of DMT, without telling anyone of the use.

No.

This scene from Renegade recreating an ayahuasca trip is amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxtkoE-HV-k

The problem is - some people never come back from their ayahuasca trip.

https://youtu.be/uzpey20hQwE

This video is a better depiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpCqOPFG6V4&list=FLugyqeLh8e...

That's not to say it's more 'accurate' than the other, but rather I think it more fully captures the impossibility of the experience.

Thank you for introducing me to a great channel.

Visually it's not dissimilar. But this is kinda like the difference between looking at a postcard and actually going somewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFCvkkDSfIU&t=8m5s

^My favorite way I've seen it described, and also a really cool video even without the subtext. (but ya this is one rabbit hole that I've yet to travel down. guess i took the blue pill, but more pills just seemed unnecessary at the time)

That movie was very exhausting to watch, but it was well worth it!

Six to seven foot tall praying mantis like entities are a common element in many alien abduction accounts. They're typically in the background, silently watching the proceedings while letting the little greys carry out the examinations.

In "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" author Rick Strassman theorises that DMT enables the brain to tune in to other parallel realities beyond "channel-normal". If the interdimensional hypothesis for alien abductions is correct, perhaps DMT allows one to occasionally tune into the source of this mysterious phenomenon.

Maybe they visit a parallel universe where they meet insects.

Funny how most in this thread are unwilling to interpret the experience at face value, probably because of certain taboos among scientific and technically minded types.

Maybe people here have more knowledge of neuroscience, and physics, than the general population?

Knowledge brings biases, of course. But those biases aren't necessarily wrong.

You have a blind-spot (at least one) on each retina that you never see. Does this mean that there is a secret hole in reality, just out of sight, that science won't accept? Or does it mean that there's an area on your retina with no visual sensors, and that the brain fills in the gaps?

I'm not saying that the experience is not likely an illusion. But its funny that you mention a blind spot, because why entertain every theory except the most obvious one?

When you try to apply supernatural concepts to the natural world, you either have to dismiss the relevance of the body of scientific knowledge which contradicts the premises of magical thinking, and assume that the universe doesn't actually follow any knowable physical laws, or explain it within the constraints of what is known to be true in the universe in which we live.

There is no scientifically credible evidence that the mind exists as a coherent entity outside of the brain - and there is evidence that the mind and the brain are the same thing, or at least, that the latter cannot exist outside the former.

There is also no scientifically credible evidence that arbitrary and instantaneous travel to parallel universes is possible. Rather, it appears to either be impossible, or at least, infeasible without burning entire galaxies to a cinder - about as difficult a problem as traveling faster than lightspeed.

One can credibly dismiss this theory because it requires astral projection and ESP to be true, despite there being no evidence of truth behind either, and the laws of physics (in particular, the laws of thermodynamics) to be false, despite the evidence in their favor.

You are making far too many assumptions here. I said nothing of "supernatural" or "unscientific" ideas, and "magical thinking" is an insult in my opinion. I said nothing of the mind and brain being separate entities or astral projection or ESP. You are applying your own failure of imagination in explaining the concept within your limited realm of knowledge and projecting it onto me.

You are mistaking explanation for reality. Your ability to explain something using whatever mental tools you happen to possess at the moment doesn't make that the truth. People three thousand years ago explained things with the tools they had, and ended up creating religions, which are in all likelihood not very accurate representations of reality. In the cosmic scale, our knowledge of reality now will probably look more primitive to humans in 10k years, than humans of 3k years ago look to us. It's needlessly self centered to think otherwise, and we are probably wrong about almost everything we know.

You're essentially claiming that "the map is not the territory," which is correct and, indeed, a fundamental scientific premise.

However, for the models that science provides to be useful, they need to appear, predictably and repeatably, to describe the real world. I don't know what science will look like in ten thousand years (and neither do you) but given that current knowledge of physics, biology, neuroscience, etc do seem true to a reasonable degree, it seems unlikely that the science of the future would somehow discredit modern science entirely, while coincidentally validating a more primitive, shamanic point of view regarding altered states of consciousness.

Accusing me of being ignorant and self-centered in defense of a premise you can't support beyond faith and personal belief seems hypocritical. And as far as imagination goes, accepting altered states at face value is literally the least amount of imagination or intellectual effort one can expend in attempting to understand them.

Once again, assumptions. "A more primitive, shamanic point of view". "faith, personal belief". This is quite the opposite. No one is asking you to believe anything. There is no presumption of human-like deities without a shred I'd evidence. There is just direct, personal observation of phenomena. Choosing the most obvious explanation for it doesn't make it pseudoscientific crankery. It is just a first pass of a hypothesis without much evidence for anything else. And it is no more or less valid than other hypothesis.

The hypothesis you're presenting not the most obvious, Because it requires discrediting existing and established science and starting over from "direct, personal observation of phenomena," as if humanity hadn't already been doing that for centuries, with the cumulative effort of that observation being precisely the process by which we arrived at the conclusions that modern science reaches.

The flat earth may once have been obvious to many people, but it would be absurd to expect anyone to approach any modern discussion about geology from a first principle that all hypotheses regarding the shape of the earth are equally valid, and require that the curvature of the earth be reproven with each discussion. Some hypotheses have evidence to support them, some don't, and there is good reason to assume that the hypotheses which have evidence are more true than those which don't.

Now, mind you, sometimes the hypothesis with evidence is proven false, because the nature of the evidence has been misunderstood. Miasma theory was proven false by germ theory. The luminiferous aether was proven false by quantum mechanics. The solid state universe was proven false by cosmic expansion. Plenty of accepted science has been proven false. Hell, people once believed the only reason the brain existed was to keep the skull nice and round.

But you have to prove the existing paradigm wrong before you assert that another is more correct.

The problem here is that science isn't the only paradigm or even the most relevant paradigm with which to interpret these experiences. That is not to say that scientific method cannot be applied, but there is little in the way of frameworks and tools for exploring altered states of consciousness and subjective experience. There isn't anything even close to a consensus on the nature of consciousness or whether it even exists, let alone the specific phenomena experienced subjectively by consciousness, so trying to cram them into inadequate scientific models will not bring about much insight. This is all addition to the fact that science has really only tackled the capture of knowledge about the objective world, that being the shared world between humans, but is not the best tool for approaching the subjective individual experience. Philosophy and metaphysics are better suited to this, as science says nothing about the "reality" of something.

What is obvious depends on your prior beliefs. To me, it's a lot more obvious that messing with your brain causes hallucinations, especially when we can program similar hallucinations in neural-inspired programs.

How would you define reality?

I doubt it's a conscious thing. Some kind of explaining reflex.

Considering what Humans understand about time and space - at least for now - travel between X & Y probably is going to take a different form than filling up rockets or using nuclear power to slog through the ether to...wherever...

The more common term is "entities" or "elves"-and I can't really say I've ever seen them.

I read that "The Machine Elves" are more associated with LSD than DMT. Perhaps they activate different parts of the brain associated with object recognition - LSD for humans and faces, and DMT for insects/reptiles as other comments have speculated - it makes me wonder what myriad other substances out there that we haven't discovered yet and what otherworldly effects they could have.

"Machine Elves" was coined by Terence McKenna to describe the beings in the DMT world. He didn't do much LSD and wasn't a big fan of it.

Maybe others have had different experiences but at the very least the origins of the term are tied to DMT.

^_^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9z4uYEKvJw

What if it's real? What if the DMT is disabling some kind of filter that normally keeps this reality hidden?

Occam's razor says no.

Occam's razor is a guideline, not an immutable law.

Occam's razor would immediately discard quantum theory. Does that make it false?

Forgive my ignorance but haven't there been experiments that prove quantum theory? Why all the fuss about quantum computers if its just a pie in the sky hypothesis? (It's not a field I am familiar with other than on a very superficial level, so an "explain it like I'm 5" would be most useful in responses to my points).

> Occam's razor would immediately discard quantum theory

No, it to wouldn't; quantum theory is quite plausibly the most parsimonious explanation consistent with the evidence.

The point is that it would seem ridiculous to start from nothing and jump to such a counter-intuitive theory.

Occam's Razor has nothing to do with starting from nothing, it has to do with selecting among competing explanations for a set of known facts.

"CYP2D6 is therefore a relatively highly specific, high-affinity, high-capacity 5-methoxyindolethylamine O-demethylase. Polymorphic cytochrome CYP2D6 may therefore exert an influence on mood and behavior by the O-demethylation of these 5-methoxyindolethylamines found in the brain and pineal gland."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12777961

SG-1 fixed this once...

Is there a theory that the DMT "beings" are actually your bodies cells and proteins visualised and communicating as different entities?

The whole "You should not be down here, but hello" at a very very self macro level? Maybe even at the atomic level?

> "You should not be down here, but hello"

this line sent shudders down my spine. does this happen to everyone?

Because they read about others seeing them, so they already have an expectation of what to see in their minds.

This is either a joke or a bunch of conspiracy theorists of the trippy-dippy sort.

this explains mr. mime in my visuals

I saw these weird drapes folded around me that were brown, green, and white stripes. They were gently heaving, and I knew that they were living creatures that were watching over me. I didn't take enough to have a full breakthrough, but in that moment I was certain that I was dying, with all of my consciousness welled up into my head, as if that's all I was. When I came to and regained awareness of my limbs, I was relieved to feel tears on my face because I guess that meant I was still alive. For a couple of weeks I wondered if I really had died. The feeling was that strong. Now, I think that's absurd, but still a tiny part wonders...

The lesson learned was that I needed to start questioning my convictions more. Just "feeling sure" isn't enough to certain of something. I try to maintain a little bit of skepticism and doubt toward every thing these days.

> Just "feeling sure" isn't enough to certain of something.

Back when I was a teenager, I got interested in the idea of lucid dreaming. One of the suggested ways I'd read of gaining awareness that you are in a dream is to habitually ask yourself if you're dreaming -- sooner or later, you'll do it in a dream.

I tried that for a while, and sure enough, I did actually ask myself if I was dreaming while in a dream, and concluded that I wasn't in dream, because I just felt sure that I wasn't dreaming! Was rather amused when I woke up and realized that I actually had been dreaming all along...

What I should have done -- as I later learned -- was to try to do something impossible while anticipating that it will happen. For example, jump with the intention of levitating, expecting to just hover in the air. Dreams work on anticipation -- what you expect to happen is what happens next. (That's why nightmares always seem to do whatever you're afraid is going to happen next; you expect your fear to come true, so it does.)

Empirically testing reality on occasion is a good thing to do; sometimes you'll find out that what you think is real is just a dream.

I had a peculiar experience of heuristically testing a dream not long ago: I had determined I was dreaming, because my field of vision felt too incomplete, that the balance of what I was seeing was titled too far toward interpolation versus observation. That is to say, if waking experience were interpolated from 100% throughput of the visual cortex, I was working on something like 8% (though still interpolating a complete scene from it).

Looking at a wall, I thought "ha, I can't see what color it is", only to realize it was actually a vivid shade of golden-yellow, feeling the color on my retinas. Impressed, I walked over toward a door with a crash bar on it, challenging once again "ok, I can never really feel anything in dreams, so I'll just have a vague sense of touching the crash bar", only to actually feel the heft of the door, and the cast steel on my fingertips.

But as I felt the crash bar, my visual sense of the scene collapsed again, as if all the processing power had just been redirected to haptic from visual. The room and the hallway were just vague ideas drawn once again from a trickle of sensory information. This was amusing enough to wake me up.

Now of course, I don't know if this was actually an insight into how the mind dreams – it's entirely possible that the mechanics themselves were something I dreamed.

I used to be quite good at this. In a similar vein as asking "am I dreaming?" I got into the habit of slapping my hand palm up on a table and saying "apple!" while willing an apple to appear. One day, it did. I realized I was dreaming and simply started bicycling my legs into the air, and I proceeded to fly around my city (Boston at the time.) The first time, it was exhilarating, but my excitement kept me from easily falling asleep, and I'd wake from dreams really easily. Then, few months later during a period of high stress, I did it again and managed to stay asleep while swimming above my neighborhood. I found when under high stress, I'll get these aware dreams where I can just imagine whatever and it manifests. However, its sorta boring after a bit, you can't surprise yourself, and my life is not so stressed anymore, so I have not had such a dream in a few years.

> For example, jump with the intention of levitating, expecting to just hover in the air.

The following quotes neatly sum up how flying in a lucid dream feels to me:

> There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. [...] Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that presents the difficulties. [...]

> Do not listen to what anybody says to you at this point because they are unlikely to say anything helpful.

> They are most likely to say something along the lines of "Good God, man, you can't possibly be flying!" It is vitally important not to believe them or they will suddenly be right.

Conversely it is impossible in dreams to read the same thing twice. Take a book, newspaper and read a sentence. Look away. Try read again, the text/meaning will have changed.

Ha, I've found printed text in dreams (or at least in semi-lucid ones) to be the most amusing source of random words, almost as if whatever level of consciousness is awake is sampling them in transit from some less-conscous level.

The book Art of Dreaming has some good tips... Such as remembering to look at your hands. That action for some reason if performed in a dream will help you realize you're dreaming. The other thing is there's two factors of realization (according to the book), the first is realizing you're dreaming. The second is realizing you are asleep in your bed right now. Surprisingly, it helps to realize and acknowledge these independently for the lucid state to properly kick in.

Once all that happens, the next challenge is of course holding it together without waking up. That just takes practice, but some people are naturals at it I hear.

Looking at your hands doesn't seem like enough a test to me. I think you need something more convincing. My reality test when I was interested in lucid dreaming was to count my fingers, and one day I happened to count to 6, and was then pretty sure it was normal and went on with my day. When I woke up, I couldn't believe how easily I convinced myself that I wasn't dreaming

I guess it's a personal thing. For me, the reminder to look at hands worked. Perhaps when you did it, the activity of counting was enough to distract you and prevent you from realizing. Above all, the recommendation is to keep reminding yourself during your normal waking day to look at hands (or whatever routine you prefer). That's the key, to keep the technique in recent memory, which your dreaming self with any luck, will access.

My first ever lucid dream I was about 17, and the week before read about lucid dreaming for the first time. I don't think that's a coincidence. I read about lucid dreaming, then had one. This supports the theory of thinking about lucid dreaming in everyday life in order to trigger them.

Best tests. Easily done in the waking world (which is which?) Without looking like an idiot. 1. Lightswitches, they dont work right in dreams, shading is hard. 2. Clocks, or digital readouts. Time has no refrence and displays are oddly hard. 3. Hands. You do not know the back of your hand. Might be why so many people stare at their hands on psychedelics.

Right, "complex scenes" are never completely static; spaces and textures changes if you move around. I find that particularly interesting because I can perceive and remember details (for instance the pattern of a mosaic), but whenever you check again, it change, so it seems like the buffer were this images are coming from is separated from the region of my brain in charge of remembering my current dream.

Written text is non-persistent too. If you're dreaming and look away and back at a sign, newspaper, whatever, the words all change.

I've used the light switch thing to trigger a number of lucid dreams too, I always assumed that your brain just doesn't bother wiring things like that up, rather than the complexity of shading being an issue.

> For example, jump with the intention of levitating, expecting to just hover in the air. Dreams work on anticipation

Yep, either you're dreaming or you're now dead.

> Just "feeling sure" isn't enough to certain of something.

This, I believe, is one of the most powerful and profound lessons hallucinogens can teach us.

If you can experience, first hand, that even the sensory input from your eyes and ears can not always be trusted, then it tends to make you very, very skeptical of things that are held as immutably true beliefs.

It would be hilarious if math, science, and logic turned out to be consensus hallucinations that were not only incomplete but could not make more than limited patches of sense.

It's possible to give a person posthypnotic suggestion that number four does not exist, for example. When they try to count their fingers, hilarity ensues: 1,2,3,5,6,7,8,9,10,11. WTF! 11 figers, this is wrong. I try to count fingers in both of my hands separately and sum them together. 1,2,3,5,6 and 1,2,3,5,6. 6+6=12 WTF, now I have 12 fingers.

If math and logic were hallucinations, they would lead into contradictions.

You could just keep adding spatial dimensions until 12 fingers are predicted by the theory. Of course, everybody knows you have both 11 fingers and 12 fingers, depending on how the hand is observed.

The existence of contrary hallucinations does not imply that all hallucinations are contrary.

There's an old saying, if a problem seems insoluble, perhaps you are asking the question the wrong way. It ties (ahem) in with the parable of the Gordian knot. We've got a few seemingly insoluble questions (such as the nature of consciousness, the unification of gravity and quantum theory, etc) that are just screaming at us.

Everyone knows that we inherit physcially from our ancestors going back millions of years, but why not psychic inheritance. for instance, children are afraid of the dark. dont forget for thousands of years prehistoric animals killed humans in the dark. i believe we inherit from our ancestors and this explains some of our current psychology.

wouldnt be surprised if dmt is halping the mind tap into some human psychological archetype, the insects repesenting something in the numan experience. of course, also, maybe we are a huge experiment by extraterrestrial aliens and they examine us, block our minds from this and dmt is an antidote! the point is, were trapped in our conciousness its all we know.

There is an idea known as "morphic resonance" which encapsulates this idea.

Another sideline issue that this idea addresses is: how did the cells of your ear know to grow into that shape. Obviously we know that stem cells are the base building blocks that can be 'reprogrammed' to become various parts of the body -- but how specifically do the cells know how to arrange themselves to make the specific 'ear-shape'?

The proposal morphic resonance states is that somehow those cells become in tune with some specific frequency and that frequency controls the growth rate. Almost as if nature has a wifi network that holds the 3D CAD files that cells use to organize themselves.

Obviously pure speculation, but fun to think about nonetheless.

In the same vein, after a couple experiences with hallucinogens, I've started having some amusingly pedestrian reactions to some of the effects. I still enjoy them all the same.

For example, when I look at a tree and notice that the clumps of leaves all have the same shape, I'll just immediately blurt out something like, "Well that doesn't seem correct," almost as a reflex. They keyword of course being "seem."

There's no reason those clumps of leaves can't all be the same shape, but my brain seems to want to reconcile what I'm seeing with what I know is pretty unlikely, but not impossible. I've had similar reactions to leaves on the ground arranging into gridlike patterns at first glance. I see no reason why the leaves can't naturally fall into a grid pattern, and I likely won't notice minor variances in how they're spaced out if they actually were in that pattern.

All in all, some of the most positive and personally insightful experiences I've had.

With the same skepticism you could also ask yourself to which extent the hallucinations were actually due to subconscious recall of all kinds of memes surrounding hallucinogens like "out-of-body experience", "consciousness", "parallel worlds", "breakthrough", "feeling like dying", as well as imagery from all kinds of drug films and literature etc.

It's a good point, but I had a similar experience in my teens, before I'd been exposed to any such influences.

Humans are however very bad at retrospectively telling which memes they were exposed to in the past and which not. That is basically the reason why highly specialized people in academia are often bad teachers if they didn't practice teaching a lot. The inferential distance between expert and novice (i.e. the difference in knowledge) simply becomes so large and complex, that the expert forgets what the actual gap is.

We basically have to distrust our memories all the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHd_TNHsyVA

I do agree, but at ~14 years of age, in a small village, during the days when only the privileged had even 28k dial-up access, I'd had rather limited opportunity to be exposed to such things!

It would be enough for a friend having bragged about how they hallucinated about certain things. Words can convey very complex imagery like that and these experiences are encoded everywhere (in scripture, folk wisdom, idioms, songs, jokes, tales); in a web of distributed representations of the noosphere that we share via language. It is pretty much impossible to escape it and it seems conceivable that it might strongly bias our experiences under influence of hallucinogens because the mind is basically always concerned with interpreting inputs by the most suitable explanation (which will likely stem from stories and memories). Of course, we are only talking about a certain extent to which these experiences are determined by shared concept spaces, because there is no indication this is the only sensible hypothesis. The similarity of these experiences by different people may as well be explained by our shared cognitive architecture (e.g. modules for recognition of agency or venomous bugs) as other comments in this thread have suggested.

Same thing for me.

Don't forget UFO's - Their Sightings Coincide with Popular Sci-Fi Films, TV https://www.google.co.nz/amp/www.universetoday.com/37713/rep...

That said there is something DMT that its excreted in your brain at death.

I too remember feeling like I was dying. My consciousness had dissolved and transformed to such an extent that "will I ever be a human living on Earth again? What's stopping me from just being here forever? What's stopping this five minutes as five million years?" Basically every assumption about reality is broken, "real life" takes on a new sense of impermanence. Being alive here at all starts to feel like a fluke, like a hundred-year stop in a trillion-year journey.

I might be full of shit though.

>The lesson learned was that I needed to start questioning my convictions more. Just "feeling sure" isn't enough to certain of something.

Well, that's the life lesson I learned in the maths lectures and exercise sessions I attended. Seems like drugs are not required to understand this ;)

I obviously don't know you, but based off that comment, I think you're missing the forest for the trees and I'd venture to guess that it's because you've never experienced something like DMT. There are definitely levels to certain lessons in life, like learning that "feeling sure" isn't enough to be certain of something. Sure, math class taught you that if something doesn't add up, it's not true. But I see that as an intro to that life lesson of "feeling sure" not being enough. A few levels up from that understanding, a lot of times, involves something like DMT giving you a metaphorical 50,000 ft view from where you can begin to understand that even those math problems might not be the end all, be all of truth.

We live in a world of gray areas, not black and white.

I really think that's walking a very fine line. You may benefit from finding a counselor for periodic visits in the near future.

You talk like someone who has never used hallucinogens.

wow this website is like a trip in time back to the 90's like that internet explorer website that depicts Bill Gates as a devil hahaha

not related, it annoys me that hackernews.com is not part of this site (I don't think so) it reminds me of that guy that wouldn't let go of dropbox.com and put ads on it... again did not research... but I'd think that url redirects here. Oh well. Pretty sweet that ycombinator seeds startups... was not aware, just came here for tech/code stuff.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150820-the-case-for-complex...

Sorry had to do it.

So, assuming you mean to imply that DMT "insects" are real creatures composed of dark matter, such a being would still be affected by Earth's gravity if it was nearby, even if it couldn't interact with our "normal" matter at all. This seems to imply that it would be pulled through the surface of the earth, towards the center.

So if any of you see intelligent insects walking around on your next DMT trip, ask them how they keep from being sucked into the planet.

Easy, they live on a planet of dark matter :)

No apologies needed, we get it right. :)

Lol, no apologies needed. Unless you're Canadian, in which case it's customary. Wonder what those scientists would have to say about dark matter in the midst of a DMT bender. Can they get NSF funds for that?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com