It’s a rainy autumn day, and I’m lying on a hospital bed in West London. I’m surrounded by scientists and doctors. Plastic tubes are attached to the veins in my arms, and my head is covered by hundreds of tiny electrodes. As the minutes pass, I feel more and more anxious about what’s about to happen. I’m not there for an operation. I’m there because the scientists are about to inject me with a high dose of a powerful psychedelic drug.
For six months, I was one of a handful of volunteers on a world-first study at Imperial College that explored the effects of the molecule DMT, or Dimethyltryptamine, on healthy volunteers. When ingested normally, DMT elicits a powerful altered state that lasts for around ten minutes. The team at Imperial, led by Dr. Christopher Timmermann and researcher Lisa Luan, is doing something nobody has done before: seeing what happens if you pump it directly into the bloodstream for half an hour.
