Erowid Extracts D o c u m e n t i n g t h e C o m p l e x R elationship B e t w e e n H u m a n s a n d P sychoactives

November 2012 Number 23

The End of a Chemistry Era: Dave Nichols Closes Shop Aliens, Insectoids, and Elves! Oh My! • Psychedelic Gems of the Comic Book Genre Letters & Feedback

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)ii Erowid Extracts ­— Number 23 / November 2012 Dear Reader, Erowid Extracts With this issue of Erowid Extracts, we’ve temporarily Number 23, November 2012 set aside some of our regular features to bring you two special articles. We begin with highlights from the last interview conducted with revolutionary LSD neurophamacologist Dr. David Nichols before his Founder, Editor in Chief Fire Erowid retirement from Purdue in June, followed by a chapter Founder, Executive Editor Earth Erowid on entity encounters from the forthcoming book, DMT Underground. We hope you enjoy this experimental Managing Editor Sylvia Thyssen departure from the typical Extracts format. Managing Editor Jon Hanna

Best wishes, Crew the Erowid Editors Bläk, JL, Plutonic, Psilo, Kernel

Associate Editors Zachawry, RevMeo, Katherine, Erik Davis, Keeper Trout

Table of Contents Experience Collection - Senior Editor Antheia Letters & Feedback...... ) Experience Collection - Reviewers The End of a Chemistry Era: Dave Nichols Closes Shop...... 2 Abrad, Moetsukiru, Akhenaten, Spent, Blinkidiot, Dendron, Sii Aliens, Insectoids, and Elves! Oh My!...... 8 Through the Four-Color Doors of Perception: Comic Book Reviews .... 22 Experience Collection - Triagers Aetherolea, Elmar, Selggurkim, LotN, Israelite7, The Distillation...... 24 Rain, Yucatanboy, Catskills, Kalle, Danger, Aqua, NightNine, Confucious, Vera, ScAb13, Magiktreez, Erowid Gets Reviewed on GreatNonprofits...... 23 Harmony, Whiterook, Tforceimaj, Willy, Survival, Pearl, Garden, Hux, Uziq, Cutepuppy, Mantra, Designing a Wisdom Cycle Survey...... 24 Toaster, Murple, Jaggerjack, Sugarmagnoliagirl, Tolpero, Bdoodle, Fnord, Naginnudej

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Erowid Extracts — Number 23 / November 2012 The End of a Chemistry Era… Dave Nichols Closes Shop Interview by Jon Hanna & Tania Manning

David Nichols, PhD, started his lab at Purdue University in 1974. Since that time, along with teaching medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology, he has become renowned worldwide for his prolific work synthesizing and studying psychoactive compounds. By using newly synthesized chemicals and known compounds as “molecular probes”, Nichols has explored how psychoactives interact with the struc- tures and systems of neurons and how changes in neurochemistry affect behavior. His laboratory has published dozens of studies elucidating details of the mechanism of action of MDMA and of the biochemical events related to its neurotoxic effects as seen in animals. Nichols coined the term “entactogen” as a descriptor for the unique psycho- pharmacological effects of MDMA and Photos by Jon Hanna similar drugs. He is an expert on the pharmacology and chemistry of these compounds, as well as LSD, mescaline, and their analogs. He has contributed Dave Nichols: more than two hundred scientific papers Aside from halluci- hired a new CEO, and she said, “Why on related topics. nogens, I have a parallel research track, aren’t you looking at schizophrenia as which focuses on dopamine agonists. an indication, because the market is a Nichols is President of the Heffter With a colleague named Richard lot bigger?” Research Institute, a nonprofit orga- Mailman, who was at the University So we paid to have a market analysis nization that he co-founded in 1993 of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I done, and it was something like a $10 to promote research with psychedel- co-founded a small biotech company billion dollar per year market for this, ics “in order to contribute a greater called DarPharma. We developed drugs, for improving memory and cognition in understanding of the mind leading to the improvement of the human condition, and first in class, for Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia. That study is going on to alleviate suffering.” and that may be useful in improving now at Columbia University. If it works, working memory in schizophrenia, as that will be a proof of principle. We’ve In June, Nichols retired as professor of well. We’ve got six or seven patents already proved it works, in monkeys, Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacology now, all in that field, because no one has for Parkinson’s disease. It’s better than at Purdue and relocated to the University paid any attention to it. One of the drugs, anything that’s out there. And if this of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We dihydrexidine, is in clinical trials now. We works in schizophrenia, this would be jumped at the opportunity to speak with a game changer. But also, I have all the him before the move—and before his were going to commercialize it; initially lab was dismantled. Although Nichols we were looking at Parkinson’s disease, patents—so it probably would help me is well known for his work with psyche- although that market is fairly small. It’s in my retirement a little bit. [Nichols delic compounds that affect serotonin kind of an interesting situation; since smiles] receptors, we were intrigued to learn that there is no drug out there marketed that he has also deeply researched medicinal has this kind of pharmacology, nobody Jon Hanna: Could it also be useful as substances that affect dopamine. knew exactly what to do. We eventually a nootropic for normals?

2 Erowid Extracts ­— Number 23 / November 2012 Dave: We don’t know anything about funding for both of those projects. So, think it’s important to look at.” what it would do there. It’s never been really, they’re two separate research Danny’s remarks stuck in my mind tested for that kind of indication. There areas. Being in two different fields made for a long time. Because we’d worked have been studies on drug abuse that me conversant with things that people, if on MDMA, and knew that activation showed these sorts of compounds block they just worked in one area, wouldn’t of serotonin receptors then stimulated cocaine craving. And if it improves have seen. dopamine biosynthesis and turnover, working memory and cognition in I thought, “Well, I wonder if there’s schizophrenia… In the monkeys, Tania Manning: In 2010, at the something there…” We had done they’ve shown that it improves it in aged Psychedelic Science conference, you some other research, within mostly monkeys. My guess is that people my age mentioned how around the fifth hour of the amphetamine/MDMA field, and I or older could probably take this thing. an LSD trip, many people experience a started thinking, “I wonder if we could It’s a weird compound—these kinds of change in the tone of its compounds—because, in monkeys, you effects. Tell us a bit about only have to treat them a couple of times, your research into this. Because we’d worked on MDMA, and knew and the effect lasts a year. The doses are that activation of serotonin receptors 10-4 to 10-5 mg/kg—it’s like 10 µg/kg Dave: Yes, right. Danny then stimulated dopamine biosynthesis of monkey weight. This is a drug that Freedman was one of the and turnover, I thought, “Well, I wonder maybe, as a human, you would take 100 early clinical investigators if there’s something there…” micrograms every other day for a week, of LSD when he was at the and then, your memory will be back for University of Chicago. I a year. That would be the most optimistic knew him; we were at meetings together see a change in the effects produced by scenario. Everybody I run into that’s past and had written some things together. LSD in rats?” Normally we would give the age of about 40 or 50 says, “I would I would see him, and he’d say, “You rats LSD, and then we would train them love to have the memory I had when I was know Dave, when we gave LSD to 30 minutes later, once they were under younger.” So, if it really worked there, people, the first four or five hours it the influence of the LSD, to press a lever you are looking at a market with a size was very psychedelic and wonderful, to get a food pellet. They learned to do that is unimaginable. But I’m basically and then for most people, it would that reliably. They learn to recognize the just keeping my fingers crossed for this change at about the mid-point. It would effect of LSD, and once they feel that, first clinical trial in schizophrenia. get very dark, and some people would they know that they can press a lever and Because I worked in the dopamine get paranoid ideation, and ideas of get food. And if you try to use different area, as well as with serotonin [5-hydroxy- reference, and things that looked a lot antagonists to block the effect, 5-HT2A tryptamine, or 5-HT], I could see a lot of like amphetamine psychosis—paranoid receptor antagonists will block the LSD things. We did the first pharmacology psychosis.” He said, “Nobody’s ever effect and the rats won’t press the lever. of MDMA in 1982, showing that it studied that change in effects, and I I suggested to my research associate, was a serotonin releaser. Then we did work on the so-called neurotoxicity and showed there’s an interaction between dopamine and serotonin. I could see a lot of that because I also worked with dopamine, and I knew a great deal about dopamine agonists, amphetamine, and so forth. My funding for research on hallucinogens and dopamine started at almost the same time and ended at almost the same time. I had 28 years of

Plant collections found in Nichols’ lab represent the two sides of his research: Coca leaves, containing cocaine (a dopamine-affecting stimulant), and ergot, used in making LSD (a serotonin-affecting hallucinogen).

Erowid Extracts — Number 23 / November 2012 3 Danuta Marona-Lewicka, “Why don’t psychotic. So all of a sudden, LSD kinda made sense. Then the question we wait 90 minutes? Give LSD and brought in this dopamine effect. I was, if you had a dopaminergic effect, wait 90 minutes before we train them?” thought, “Well, maybe there’s something what could be the basis for that? It turns So she started doing that. Then she came happening there.” out that, at least in rats, if you pretreat up one day and said, “The rats can learn We published probably half-a-dozen them with something like either DOI or it!” So I asked, “How well?” and she papers on that. Actually, my son is LSD, and you wait two hours—Danuta replied, “Well, I had to double the dose.” following that up. When these rats are did a time course, and we did this in given LSD chronically, rats that were trained to recognize the they start developing very effects of amphetamine—their response I was interested in the possibility that weird behaviors, which to amphetamine is increased; the potency 13-hydroxy-LSD was an active metabolite are very much like models of amphetamine increases. What this that interacted with the dopamine of schizophrenia in means is, pretreatment with a 5-HT2A system, because the fact that some animals. We proposed that agonist causes a delayed sensitization this might be an animal of dopamine systems; that’s the way people were having psychosis-like model of schizophrenia. that we interpreted it. It’s consistent with symptoms during the latter part of their The people who are what happens with MDMA—the way it LSD trips might point us to a direction in heavily invested in the turns on dopamine by activating 5-HT2A terms of understanding schizophrenia. current models didn’t like receptors. So that would fit. it too well. But my son Then there was a PET study published is doing a lot of genetics in Synapse in 2005, where the researchers We had been using 0.08 mg/kg of LSD, stuff now; he was trained in Drosophila administered a PET ligand that bound and she doubled it to 0.16 mg/kg because [fly] genetics. He sees changes in gene to dopamine D2 receptors in pigs. Then they could be trained at the original dose, expression in these rats that parallel they gave LSD to the pigs. Normally you but only about 80% of the rats could learn some of the things that he’s seen in give an animal a positron-emitting ligand the lever-pressing task. So she doubled post-mortem schizophrenic brains. In drug, in this case it was a D2 receptor the dose. And actually, 0.16 mg/kg was fact, today, he just asked me, “What blocker, and then you intravenously give the dose that almost everybody else the drug that you expect to displace it, had used for LSD studies; so it wasn’t and you see whether it was displaced, out of the range of something that and then you follow its disappearance was reasonable. When we gave LSD from the brain. Usually if you give pigs to rats at that dose, and waited 90 LSD, a very high concentration would minutes, and then trained and tested, be there immediately and you would they learned that task really well. But see immediate displacement of the in this case the rat’s ability to recognize radioactive ligand, and then you would the effects and press the lever wasn’t see a long-term, slower displacing blocked by 5-HT2A antagonists, it effect. What these researchers observed was blocked by dopamine receptor was, when they gave LSD to these antagonists! The pharmacology of pigs, they did not see maximal receptor LSD had changed in rats over the occupancy for four hours. They course of two hours or so; it changed concluded that could mean either that at about midpoint from one that was the dopamine system had become mediated by activation of serotonin sensitized over time, which is exactly receptors to one that was mediated what we’d been thinking, or maybe by activation of dopamine receptors. there’s an active metabolite of LSD, We thought that might correspond to which is also what we’d been thinking. Danny Freedman’s observations in Where magic was made… You can’t find anything about the humans. metabolites of LSD in the literature The dopamine hypothesis of from anything more recent than, say, schizophrenia is one that’s held sway the 1970s. But back then, researchers for a long time. It posits that excess weight rat should I use? I’m going to start had identified 13-hydroxy-LSD as dopaminergic activity is responsible for doing this and look at it.” The idea is that one of the human metabolites of LSD. some of the symptoms of schizophrenia, this might be a model for schizophrenia. They just identified it, that’s all. If it’s and—in particular—psychosis. You give The best drugs to treat schizophrenia a metabolite of LSD, well, metabolites amphetamine, or psychostimulants, or block both dopamine D2 receptors and are produced in the liver. And you have cocaine to people in large doses for a 5-HT2A receptors. LSD activates D2 15 or 20 isoforms of these mixed-function long period of time, and they become receptors and 5-HT2A receptors. So it oxidases that can put hydroxy groups

4 Erowid Extracts ­— Number 23 / November 2012 onto compounds during metabolism. It and we probably made 20 or 25 of them, 5-HT2 agonists, because he’s looking at varies, depending on you. Ethnic groups to map out the SAR [structure–activity serotonin receptors in Drosophila, and have different levels of them, there are relationship] and find out what was doing translational stuff into rats. He different mixtures, etc. Depending on going on. He’d just made the compounds asked, “Is there a 5-HT2A agonist that’s what your P450s were, if that isozyme and never really did any SAR studies. not a controlled substance that I can use?” was dominant, it might be producing Heim had studied several of these Since DOI was not controlled, I sent him a lot of 13-hydroxy-LSD; if it wasn’t N-benzyl phenethylamines. We just the isomers of DOI. dominant, it may be that you don’t fleshed it out more, and probably got His team had been using rat aortic produce much of it. So then there’s a a lot more publicity, because his thesis epithelial cells—cells from the inside genetic biological basis for explaining and the publication were in German. of a rat’s blood vessels—and looking why there would be variability, if the at models of atherosclerosis. The change in LSD’s effect is actually due model they’d been using was to take to an active metabolite. these cells, and put in TNF-alpha I was interested in the possibility (tumor necrosis factor-alpha), a pro- that 13-hydroxy-LSD was an active inflammatory substance. If you’ve metabolite that interacted with the seen the advertisements for Enbrel, dopamine system, because the fact that for arthritis, drugs such as that block some people were having psychosis-like TNF-alpha receptors, so they block symptoms during the latter part of the pain. What they would do is put their LSD trips might point us to a TNF-alpha directly into these cells and direction in terms of understanding then they would look at what effect schizophrenia. When they test a new occurred in combination with other drug for schizophrenia, they use it compounds—there were four or five in trials of people who are chronic compounds that they were looking at. schizophrenics, who are already So his post-doc had some of those medicated. If we could understand what cells that were grown up and could be was going on here with LSD, maybe used, and he asked my son, “What if I we could understand the very early run a test with one of our compounds etiology, what happens in people who in these?” And Chuck said, “Well, are twelve or thirteen years old who Red Glass Erlenmeyer LSD Flask I don’t have any anti-inflammatory are going to develop schizophrenia— compounds right now.” “What about what’s the dysregulation that leads to this DOI here?” Chuck laughed and that dysfunction. I thought we would replied, “That’s a hallucinogen. That have some clues there. And that’s what We published in the journal Molecular won’t do anything.” The post-doc said, my son is still following up. Pharmacology, so our work was more “Well, I’m going to have to destroy the accessible. The NBOMes are super- cells. Can I just go ahead and test it?” Jon: You haven’t published yet regarding potent compounds. Initially, I didn’t think And Chuck said, “Yeah, go ahead.” The your speculation that the change in LSD’s they were orally active. guy came back a week and a half later effects after about five hours might be and said, “The DOI completely blocked due to an active metabolite, right? Tania: Switching gears to the Iodo TNF-alpha at 20 picomolar.” Which is compounds, like DOI, did you mention like unbelievable, right? Dave: Right. I could publish something that these are anti-inflammatory? Chuck said, “Nah. You made a like that in Medical Hypothesis. We’ve mistake.” So Chuck went in, made up his given posters where we have said that Dave: Yeah, that’s very weird. own fresh solutions, took the cells, ran it’s been postulated that there may be an the experiment, and reproduced the guy’s active metabolite. But we haven’t really Tania: Some guy called in to Sasha’s data. He wrote me back and asked, “Is explicitly outlined what we think might office, saying that he had rheumatoid there any precedent for this?” And I said, be going on. arthritis, and he took 2C-I, and for two “No, not that I know of.” So he published weeks he was pain-free. Which makes a paper in J PET; it was the featured Tania: Tell us about the NBOMe series. me wonder about medical applications paper in the issue it was published in. Were the first of those compounds for the Iodo compounds… This has extraordinary potency; there’s originally synthesized in this lab? no anti-inflammatory that has potency Dave: My son Chuck discovered like that. Dave: No. Ralf Heim had published that accidentally. He’s an associate a paper, years ago, on some of these professor at Louisiana State University Jon: The dose levels you mentioned compounds. I was intrigued by them, in New Orleans. He wanted to work with would not be psychoactive, so perhaps

Erowid Extracts — Number 23 / November 2012 5 that’s something that could be developed system. There have been almost 600 methyl to ethyl or propyl or things like into a commercial medication. papers published that used DOI. If DOI that, you don’t expect to see the activity is actually scheduled and people can’t change this dramatically, unless there’s a Dave: Exactly, exactly. I’ve sent him a use it, this is basically going to be a unique binding site or there is some steric bunch of isomers. But so far he hasn’t disaster. So we’ve got one analog that restriction binding site. With LSD you found anything that’s as potent as DOI. Tocris Bioscience sells, TCB-2, which change it, and it’s different. We pretty And the thing is, the affinity of DOI at is also a 5-HT2A agonist. It’s never been much knew there had to be some place the human receptor is like one nanomolar, compared with DOI, but it does kind of in the receptor where that was binding. or around there; so at the concentrations the same things. Our new compounds are But to actually be able to demonstrate it, he’s using, the amount of receptor that’s cyclopropane compounds that look fairly and then show that the ethyl groups bind actually occupied has to be incredibly similar to DOI and DOB. We’re going to in this specific orientation, and then do small. There is some mechanism here that publish on this and suggest that maybe the mutagenesis which basically proves nobody really understands; and that was these can “fill in” if DOI is scheduled. that—that was kind of cool. a big controversy when he sent the paper I made all the MDMA that MAPS in. People were like, “What is this?” Jon: What pharmacology or chemistry is using for their research. In fact, I’m do you feel most proud of having come going to ship it to Organix at the end Jon: I’ve noticed that a lot of work has from your team at Purdue? of next week, because they’re going to been done with DOI. Is the reason behind store it for MAPS. I’m proud of being that because it’s not yet scheduled? Dave: I wouldn’t say it’s pharmacology, able to do that. Being able to make but one of the cutest things we did was DMT for Rick Strassman. Being able to Dave: Yeah. That’s really the only to make azetidine analogs of LSD: using make psilocybin. Enabling studies that reason. In fact, I have a paper that I’m the diethylamide, we took a carbon and wouldn’t have happened otherwise. getting ready to send in—we’re just hooked the two ethyls of LSD together I don’t think many people even know waiting for one more piece of data— and that gave us a dimethylazetidine. that my team supplied these drugs. They where we’ve made some analogs of We had the methyls on the same side might know that Dave Nichols is “this DOI due to our anticipating that DOI is of that four-membered ring or on the chemist.” But where did the materials going to eventually become scheduled. opposite sides, either with R,R or S,S come from for the so-called psychedelic And DOI is a really valuable research stereochemistry, showing that it was renaissance that is occurring? tool if you want to study the 5-HT2 just one of those that was most like Rick Doblin called me and said, LSD. This proved that with LSD, “I can’t find anybody to make MDMA. when the diethylamide binds, Can you guys do it?” “Yeah, I can do that.” those diethyl groups bind in a I made a kilo and a half, and MAPS didn’t specific way. Then we modeled need it all, so we donated it; most of the it, and we did mutagenesis of clinical studies have been done with stuff the receptor—and we haven’t that I made back in 1986. Strassman, as published this yet—and found he says, was the first in a generation to that leucine 229 in extracellular give a psychedelic to humans. I worked loop 2 was the thing that closely with him. He said, “Dave, what interacted with that diethyl if I get all these approvals and I can’t amide. The fact that the receptor get the DMT?” I said, “Well, I made has evolved specifically to be the MDMA for Doblin. I can probably complementary to LSD, that make DMT for you.” That’s exactly what is interesting. [Jon intonates happened. He got to the end and he said, Twilight Zone theme music.] “Nobody wants to make the DMT.” So I It took us about ten years to made the DMT. figure out how to do that. Then Roland Griffiths needed some First we tried to make an psilocybin, so I was asked, “Can you aziridine, which is a three- make psilocybin?” Stewart Frescas and I membered ring. I had a worked together to improve the synthesis student, Rob Oberlender, who of psilocybin, and that process has been worked on that for a long time. used to make all the psilocybin for the Those were unstable—the clinical studies. I’m pleased with that ring just broke open. So we contribution. It doesn’t look like a major went to the four-membered thing, but having psilocybin available at azetidine rings. In medicinal an affordable cost for all these clinical LSD Showing Azetidine Substitution chemistry when you go from studies has really opened that whole

6 Erowid Extracts ­— Number 23 / November 2012 area up, by figuring out a better synthesis anxious and depressed. So then you can experience with these things, at least at and getting the material out to clinical say, “Okay, let’s do a clinical study and times when one is not going to get oneself investigators. We spent a couple of years look at those people.” I think we’re going into any legal trouble. figuring out the best way to make it, then to open up some of these other avenues. making that first batch of four grams that For me, it’s just the beginning. Dave: If you would think that, then Roland used in the spirituality study. So you’d probably be thinking correctly. that’s great. That’s a great paper. Even Tania: How does your work with Heffter But I suspect I’m much less experienced though I didn’t discover psilocybin, tie into what you’ll be doing at Chapel than people might imagine that I am. I making it available was a good thing. Hill? am conservative by nature, and this is a To some extent, I’m kind of living vicariously through other people’s Dave: The people at clinical work, knowing that I contributed Heffter are hoping that I’ll I think that if you’re gonna have a drug the material. And now, our synthesis of have more time to work as an entactogenic psychotherapeutic psilocybin is available. Other people for them after I’ve retired. agent, it ought to be one that drug-naive have told me that they sent our improved If I was going to go into people could take without having any synthesis method to more people. So it’s this field today, I might kind of an overwhelming experience. out there. wonder, really, how many Eventually somebody will do a more ligands do we need? study with LSD. We didn’t do it at the I made a bunch of them. Sasha made a conservative place. Set and setting are Heffter Institute, just because there was bunch of them. Other people have made not really conducive. When I initially still so much social stigma, and it’s a some. But I don’t know what all of those started, if I had a strong feeling that long-acting compound. We discussed tell you, at this point. something was going to be interesting what we should use when we were going We have lots and lots of tools. What’s and it was a new substance, well… to treat terminal patients. We went with missing is how to connect those tools bioassays were the tradition in chemistry. psilocybin because it was more benign, with how they produce altered states of So certainly I had some feedback at times shorter-acting, and nobody knew what consciousness. And there, I think you on compounds where it seemed indicated it was. need more clinical stuff, more PET scans, that this is worth looking at, and that more EEG, functional MRI, magneto- other things weren’t worth looking at. Jon: The Heffter Research Institute’s encephalography, which nobody has used well-considered, cautious decision with a psychedelic at all; you actually Tania: Considering all of the years regarding what material was used with get the brain currents. And it’s all tied up that you studied the neurotoxicity of that cancer anxiety study laid some solid with the nature of consciousness. entactogens, is there one drug that stands stepping stones… What is consciousness? What out, other than MDMA, that might be produces consciousness? Those are big suitable for therapeutic use? Dave: Heffter is where I’ve been able issues. Psychedelics could be really to do the clinical stuff, which I couldn’t useful tools in understanding that. Dave: As an entactogen, probably otherwise have done because I don’t MBDB. I’m still intrigued by the have an MD. Working with Franz Jon: Changing gears, what is your possibility that it could be useful as an Vollenweider… with the research he’s favorite psychoactive plant or chemical? adjunct to psychotherapy. For people doing with brain imaging, he’s helping who experimented with MDMA before it unravel the mystery of consciousness Dave: [laughs] I’ll refuse to answer that. was a controlled substance, the thing that itself. That’s the big question: What is they said was that with MDMA, there’s consciousness? Because if we’re not Jon: Well, it might be coffee, or chocolate, this grandiose euphoria that hits you. conscious, we’re not here. You can’t really or wine! And certainly there was a time And MBDB doesn’t really produce that. understand altered states of conscious- not that long ago when consumption of With MBDB, there have been people ness, unless you understand conscious- many of the entactogens scheduled these who have taken it who have said, “You ness. That’s tied up in a lot of what Franz days was not illegal. How many times, know, I didn’t really notice when it is doing, but also a lot of what Heffter is for example, have you taken MDMA, started. It was just that all of a sudden, I doing. MDAI, MDE, or MBDB? realized that I was in, and had been in, We may treat terminal patients, this altered state of consciousness.” because that’s the first indication and that’s Dave: Before they were scheduled? I think that if you’re going to have where we have the biggest benefit-to-risk a drug as an entactogenic psycho- ratio—in cancer patients. But I think we Jon: Absolutely before. I’m not therapeutic agent, it ought to be one that are going to find things there that are suggesting that you’re a scofflaw! But I drug-naive people could take without going to lead us into other areas. People would think that someone with an interest having any kind of an overwhelming who aren’t dying are also sometimes in this area would have some personal experience. •

Erowid Extracts — Number 23 / November 2012 7 “No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite Aliens, disregarded. How to regard them is the question—for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness.” Insectoids, — William James The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) and Elves! “You give DMT to ten people. They’ve never had DMT before, and you tell them When writing about spiritual on Edgar Allen Poe stories may believe only that they might see something. If nine out of ten of them come back matters, it is important to be upfront in ghosts. Children of Hindu households with descriptions of elves, and four of about one’s biases from the start. I may worship a pantheon of deities, while them use the word elves unprompted, was raised without religion. My father Muslim kids may bow to a single God. we think you should investigate the was an atheist; my mother is agnostic. Staid atheists may be “born again” into phenomenon of elves seen on DMT.” I can count on one hand the number of Christianity. And so on. Individuals’ times that I went to church as a child. In ideas regarding the truth or “reality” of — Zarkov “Coming Out of Left Field with my teens and early twenties, I became the existence of non-material beings, Gracie and Zarkov”, High Frontiers 3 fascinated with studying world religions, including gods or God, may change (1987) looking for clues that might help me multiple times over the courses of their better understand my psychedelic lives. Such beliefs can fade, disappear experiences. Although I never adopted entirely, or be replaced by beliefs in the “The only appropriate attitude for man any specific religion, I resonate most existence of other non-material beings. to have about the big questions is with ideas from Hinduism. There was Psychedelic plants have been not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt. Doubt a time in my life when I probably employed for thousands of years as is humble, and that’s what man needs believed in God, in the idea that humans spiritual tools, due to the perception to be, considering that human history is have souls, and in the concept of karma. that they can provide an experience of just a litany of getting shit dead wrong.” These days, I’m a die-hard agnostic and non-material realms—be they heavenly, devil’s advocate. hellish, or anything in between. — Bill Maher In this chapter, I’ll largely avoid Traditional ethnographic use of these Religulous (2008) proposing personal theories regarding plants for such purposes inspired the the origin or meaning of entity contact coining of “entheogen”, a word that experiences. I have no idea what the means to “generate God within”.1 It truth of the matter is in these situations. is not uncommon to hear stories of Such experiences are powerful enough agnostics or atheists “finding God” that they influenced paradigm shifts during their psychedelic trips2, 3, 4, 5, 6 in some people who have had them. and subsequently changing their views Speculation and debate about entity on the reality of spiritual realms and encounters have occurred over the years, beings. Direct experience can be mighty and I’ve compiled a few interesting persuasive. Even if that experience takes articles on the topic in the chapters that place solely within a mental landscape. follow. Inclusion herein should not be Even if one was on drugs at the time. interpreted to imply that I am promoting Under the influence of psychoactive any particular ideas; I am not. plants or drugs, users have reported Throughout history, humanity has experiences of watching, receiving described contact with “others”: angels, messages from, communicating with, demons, spirits, elves, aliens, etc. A girl and/or interacting with “non-human raised on tales of the Brothers Grimm intelligent beings”, hereafter described may believe in faeries; a boy brought up as “discarnate entities”.

from the forthcoming book — DMT UNDERGROUND: A COMPENDIUM OF UNAUTHORIZED RESEARCH

8 Erowid Extracts —­ Number 23 / November 2012 Oh My!

by JON HANNA

For some, the word “discarnate” may Although Strassman located brief solely evoke ghostly specters of indistinct mentions of entities in a couple of DMT form. Here, the word is used to describe reports from the scientific literature of Invaders, by Naoto Hattori perceived beings that do not have a physical the 1950s, he related that he had: body within consensus reality, yet often do have a form that gives an appearance of …been unable to locate any similar physicality. Those who perceive them may reports in research subjects taking be able to describe what they look like other psychedelics. Only with DMT who had consumed the peyote cactus and/or sound like, sometimes what they do people meet up with “them,” with (Lophophora williamsii): feel like, and on rare occasions even how other beings in a nonmaterial world. 7 they smell and/or taste. However, a video A platinum snail about twelve feet camera wouldn’t be able to record images Strassman’s remarks seem odd, since high and studded with rubies was or audio of them. “Entities” conveys that visions of discarnate entities generated pulled along on its wheels by a much for those who perceive them, they seem to via numerous other psychedelics smaller and brightly painted dwarf be independent beings. certainly aren’t absent from writings in carved from wood. The curious “Discarnate entities” should be the field. In a chapter titled “The World couple was closely followed by considered to encompass angels and of the Non-Human” from their 1966 book a host of metallic, gem-covered aliens, demons and dragons, faeries The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, insects—grasshoppers and beetles, and felines, elves and insectoids, ghosts authors Robert Masters and Jean Houston bumblebees, and mosquitoes, all and goblins, harlequins and humanoids, describe such visions: of fabulous size and brilliantly plant teachers and other creatures—even gleaming, gliding or walking or morphing machine minds and fractalline These images are usually seen with hopping with the precision of Fabergé footballs, as long as they’re eyes closed […]. They are almost wound-up toys. These then were non-physical and seem sentient. always vividly colored and the followed by strange creatures from In his 2001 book DMT: The Spirit colors typically are described as some wildly imaginative bestiary— Molecule, author Rick Strassman presents rich, brilliant, glowing, luminous, or all converging upon a lush oasis in first-person accounts from subjects who “preternatural”—colors exceeding the golden desert where the foliage participated in his DMT studies between in their beauty anything the subject seemed to have been created by 1990 and 1995. Over the course of his has ever seen before. Rousseau.8 work during these years, Strassman was surprised to discover that “at least half” The images are most often of Another example is presented from of his subjects experienced some manner persons, animals, architecture, and a four-year-old boy, “S”, who had of contact with: landscapes. Strange creatures from unwittingly consumed an LSD-dosed legend, folklore, myth, and fairy tale sugar cube from his mother’s refrigerator: …“entities,” “beings,” “aliens,” appear in wonderful surroundings.8 “guides,” and “helpers” […]. The Among the first hallucinations “life-forms” looked like clowns, Masters and Houston go on to to appear were a number of reptiles, mantises, bees, spiders, provide several examples of specific crustaceans, especially (as it could cacti, and stick figures.7 visions; one was from a male subject be gathered) crabs and lobsters. […]

ART BY: NAOTO HATTORI • JASON WA TUCKER • VIBRATA CHROMODORIS

Erowid Extracts — Number 23 / November 2012 9 S also hallucinated a whole array of everything was now bathed in a induced by drugs, hypnosis or “monsters”—apparently creatures curious yellowish-warm, glowing any other means, bears a striking such as elves, dwarfs, and other radiance. An ordinarily rather resemblance to “the Other World,” small, deformed human-like beings. nondescript, somewhat messy, and as we find it described in the various Fearful at first, he gained confidence ugly room had been transformed traditions of religion and folklore. when his mother encouraged him into something out of a fairy tale.9 In every culture the abode of the to “make friends with the monsters” gods and souls in bliss is a country […]. After some of his anxieties were In his May 12, 1955, lecture of surpassing beauty, glowing with disposed of, several of the “monsters” “Mescaline and the ‘Other World’”, color, bathed in intense light. In came and sat on S’s knees and in the presented at the annual meeting of the this country are seen buildings of palm of his hand and he talked with American Psychiatric Association, indescribable magnificence, and its them. Others danced around him Aldous Huxley commented on the inhabitants are fabulous creatures, and made faces. From time to time, discarnate entities that may populate like the six-winged seraphs of S’s fears would return; then, with his humanity’s mental geography: Hebrew tradition, or like the winged mother’s help, he would overcome bulls, the hawk-headed men, the hu- his fears again and enjoy playing and Through these landscapes and man-headed lions, the many-armed, talking with the hallucinated beings.8 among these living architectures or elephant-headed personages of wander strange figures, sometimes Egyptian, Babylonian and Indian Masters and Houston compare this of human beings (or even of what mythology. Among these fabulous child’s experience to that of philosopher seem to be superhuman beings), creatures move superhuman angels Jean-Paul Sartre, who took mescaline sometimes of animals or fabulous and spirits, who never do anything, under the supervision of a psychiatrist. monsters. Giving a straightforward but merely enjoy the beatific vision.10 At one point Sartre described that he was: prose description of what he used to see in his spontaneous visions, John Lilly, the famous dolphin …fighting a losing battle with a devil William Blake reports that he researcher and inventor of the isolation fish and [he] mentioned a number frequently saw beings, to whom he tank, recounts his first LSD experience: of other disturbing experiences. He gave the name of Cherubim. These reported umbrellas changing into beings were a hundred and twenty I saw God on a tall throne as a vultures and shoes changing into feet high and were engaged (this is giant, wise, ancient Man. He was skeletons, faces became hideous, and characteristic of the personages seen surrounded by angel choruses, crabs, polyps, and “grimacing things” in vision) in doing that he saw from the corner of his eye.8 nothing that could be thought of as being Even after the drug had worn off, some symbolic or dramatic. weeks later Sartre complained of being In this respect the “on the edge of a chronic hallucinatory inhabitants of the psychosis” and said that he was “being mind’s Antipodes followed by lobsters and crabs” and differ from the figures “assorted other monsters”. inhabiting Jung’s Jerry Richardson, an insurance archetypal world; for underwriter from San Francisco who they have nothing participated in Bernard Aaronson’s LSD to do either with the research in the 1960s, wrote: personal history of the visionary, or even with I saw goblins in green and yellow the age-old problems and blue; red devils with sinister, of the human race. twisted faces; and then bodies, faces, Quite literally, they ghostlike creatures in white, coming are the inhabitants of out of nowhere, rushing toward me, “the Other World”. tumbling over each other, and disap- pearing into the back of my mind in This brings me to a a seemingly endless procession of very interesting and, ludicrously grotesque imagery. […] I believe, significant point. The visionary Opening my eyes stopped the experience, whether D.MentiTies, by Vibrata Chromodoris mental imagery. Around the room, s p o n t a n e o u s o r

10 Erowid Extracts —­ Number 23 / November 2012 cherubim, and seraphim, the saints ketamine, or coincidence control chance would have it, I happened to run were moving by his throne in a stately officers. How do you explain this in into a friend from SF who was passing procession. I was there in Heaven, terms of your theories? through England on his way to Germany. worshiping God, worshiping the He slipped me two gel-tabs. One night I angels, worshiping the saints in full Lilly: You don’t have to have any dropped both tabs and went out walking and complete transport of religious concept of Beings. When you take the with a few new friends from school. ecstasy. 11 drug you enter into their conscious- Lacking any foreknowledge of how my ness. You don’t have to see them or companions felt about illicit drug use, I In later experiences, both aided and know them as Beings. They engage kept the fact that I was tripping to myself. unaided by drug consumption, Lilly your mind. Before matter, energy, The acid came on, and I was enjoying our contacted a pair of discarnate entities there was consciousness without an walk and discussions, during which it who told him that they were his guardians object. Out of that came Beings.12 came out that one of the women with us and who appeared to give him some was a practicing Wiccan. After we turned instruction on the nature of the universe. Over his lifetime as an author down an old deserted Roman road, our In contemplating these experiences, and lecturer, Terence McKenna often group fell quiet for a moment. It was late Lilly remarked: discussed the topic of entity contact in in the evening, and the only sound was conjunction with the mental effects of the crunching autumn leaves beneath our In my own far-out experiences in high doses (five grams) of psilocybin- feet. As we walked, a wind blew down the the isolation tank with LSD and in containing mushrooms: road, releasing more leaves from the trees my close brushes with death I have and whirling them into a sort of tunnel come upon the two guides. These Yes, first come the dancing mice, above our heads. The Wiccan woman two guides may be two aspects the little candies, the colored grids, began to sing in Gaelic—a language of my own functioning at the and so-forth and so-on. But what that I’d never heard before. Despite supraself level. They may be entities eventually happens, quickly, like ten the fact that I couldn’t understand the in other spaces, other universes minutes later, is there is an entity words, the minor tones of her song than our consensus reality. They in the trance, in the vision. There is were hauntingly beautiful. At the first may be helpful constructs, helpful a mind there, waiting, that speaks note she sang, some of the airborne concepts that I use for my own future good English, and invites you up leaves transformed into about a dozen evolution. They may be representa- into its room. […] And what it is, is faeries—exactly the sort of traditional tives of an esoteric hidden school. it’s a voice in the head […]. I come winged pixie-like creatures painted by They may be concepts functioning into a place. It’s hard to describe. the artist Brian Froud. I had never seen in my own human biocomputer at It’s a feeling. And the content of anything like this before on acid. While the supraspecies level. They may be the feeling is, “now the elves are luminous and sparkly, they appeared members of a civilization a hundred near.” But they won’t appear unless quite solid and each seemed to have an thousand years or so ahead of ours. I invoke them.13 independent existence, as they playfully They may be a tuning in on two darted amongst the swirling leaves. It networks of communication of a How often do psychonauts see was truly magical. I was transfixed. civilization way beyond ours, which or interact with entities? Within the As the final note of my friend’s song is radiating information throughout framework of documenting the kind sounded, I watched all the faeries morph the galaxy.11 and frequency of “religious” images back into wind-blown leaves. Being the that occurred among their 206 subjects, only one of us on acid at the time (to During some of Lilly’s later Masters and Houston reported that 58% the best of my knowledge), I presumed experiences, under the influence saw figures such as Christ, the Buddha, that no one else had experienced the of the drug ketamine, he believed saints, godly figures, and William Blake– profoundly moving vision that I had seen. himself to be communicating with type figures, while 49% saw devils and Our group remained respectfully quiet discarnate entities who shared with him demons, and 7% saw angels.8 for a moment. Then someone asked our knowledge about humanity’s future—a vocalist the name of the song that she’d time when the planet would be taken My Own Entity Encounters just sung, and she replied, “Oh, that one over by a malevolent “solid-state The topic of psychedelic-induced is known as ‘The Song to Call in the entity”. In an interview on May 14, “contact” has interested me since 1987, Faeries’.” 1998, ketamine research Karl Jansen when I had my own initial discarnate About a decade later, I was camping asked the 83-year-old Lilly about his entity encounter while on a couple with three friends at Island Lake near contacts with entities: hits of LSD. I was attending college in Nevada City, California. A couple of Stratford-upon-Avon via a program run us decided to take “heroic” doses of Jansen: Many persons do not through San Francisco City College, Psilocybe mushrooms one evening. encounter Beings when they take where I’d been studying art. As strange I chewed down four grams, retired

Erowid Extracts — Number 23 / November 2012 11 to my tent, closed my eyes, and got whom it fed. Yet I had a nagging feeling Most of my psychedelic experiences horizontal on my air mattress. As the that it might not be telling me the whole over the past three decades have not effects of the ’shrooms came on, my truth. Maybe these creatures had some featured any manner of discarnate inner vision revealed what looked like influence on inciting wars or disasters entity contact. In New Orleans, I got a a dank moss-green hospital emergency in the human realm? The experience weird ghostly dwarf thing once on the waiting room. I seemed to be sitting on left me feeling unsettled for some time combination of psilocybin-containing a bench in this room, and it occurred afterwards. mushrooms and Peganum harmala. to me that it was odd that there were Moving even further into unpleasant Nitrous oxide revealed dimensional no patients being wheeled in or out. entity contact realms, there was my one doppelgangers and WALL-E–style Kinda quiet for an ER. After some time, (and only) trip on 3 mg of DOB (2,5- robots. Ketamine has ponied up a pygmy I noticed a few off-white football-sized dimethoxy-4-bromoamphetamine). I shaman, proto-human ape-like creatures, larvae floating three or four feet off the was attending Burning Man, where my and some tentacled cephalopods. DPT ground in various spots. Following one wife and I had pitched our tent near a (dipropyltryptamine) has provided tiny of these with my eyes, I then saw an camp called Disturbia. In retrospect, cartoon-like insectoid creatures. Once insectoid entity about the size of a small the camp’s name should have been a on the combination of ketamine and sign that this might DPT, I witnessed two distinctly different not be the right place discarnate entities seemingly thrust into Indeed, the diversity of “beings” to first try a potent each others’ realms for the first time. encountered in DMT space leads one phenethylamine that Both of these aliens were infused with a to think that everyone can’t really be can last up to 24 bad-ass attitude reminiscent of denizens describing the same “creatures”… hours. The Disturbia of the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars. folks had kindly set They brokered a deal—one of them up a loudly amplified passing a small unidentifiable item into theremin for public the other’s hand while mentally shooting dog, whose back was facing me. It had use. The theremin is an electronic me a warning that I had fuck-all idea of a long mosquito-like proboscis that I musical instrument that is played by what I was dealing with—and I was left could only partially see. Suddenly, it bringing one’s hands into varying with the strong impression that I should turned, and—realizing that I saw it—it proximity to its metal antennas without consider myself lucky that they let me made a high-pitched buzzing/shrieking actually touching them. Manipulated by a off the hook, since it was my chemical sound. (I got the impression that it was novice (and, well, everyone on the playa cocktail that had drawn the three of us sending out a warning alarm.) The entity appeared to be new to the instrument), together in the first place. On 2C-B, then initiated telepathic communication it sounds like a beehive in a slinky. It I’ve also sometimes encountered small with me, explaining that it was quite was approximately right after the DOB insectoids. On ayahuasca, I’ve gotten surprised that I could see it, as this had fully kicked in that I became aware large insectoids. And yes, on smoked usually didn’t occur. It said that it lived of the theremin, when someone started DMT, I’ve entered the trans-linguistic by extracting human thought/emotion. “playing” it, thereby attracting more alien dimension populated by McKenna’s Human thoughts were both the currency folks who wanted to “play” it—for hours mercurial and mischievous mutating of its species, as well as their sustenance/ on end. It was bumming me out. At one machine elves. (A realm well-captured energy source. (The needle-like proboscis point, when my wife could tell that I was by the artists Naoto Hattori, JWA Tucker was looking less friendly by the minute.) not doing so well, she tried to comfort me and Vibrata Chromodoris.) According to I was given the impression that—as by saying, “I’m here, honey. Just focus McKenna: the coin of its kind—different types of on me, and you’ll be okay.” As I looked thought/emotion were valued differently; into the eyes of the person I love most in It is true, that when you smoke DMT, those with a more intense energy charge, the world, I watched cockroaches crawl for example, in a sufficiently high such as fear or love, were worth more. out from under her eyelids and swarm and prepared dose, you get elves— The entity explained that it existed in over her face. Buoyed by the buzzing everybody does. All you need do, is another dimension so that it could feed theremin, the “bug” theme continued. I inhale deeply three times, and you off of human thought unhindered. (I got was confronted by several human-sized know… You want contact? You want a feeling that the relationship wasn’t chitinous Gigeresque entities that spent elves? You want alien intelligence? symbiotic; perhaps these “thought the rest of the evening probing me You’ll have that up the kazoo.14 drainers” somehow suck life energy from and performing invasive “physical” humans, along with the mental energy.) It experiments on my immobile, unhappy For some who’ve seen DMT elves, claimed that it was the psychic equivalent body. It was pretty much the classic alien the beings looked similar to traditional of an actual insect that feeds on blood, abduction scenario, sans space ship. After fairyland creatures. But many users skin, etc., with regard to the extent of a long night, there was at least a beautiful describe them differently. Indeed, the any damage it might do to those on (and quiet!) sunrise the next morning. diversity of “beings” encountered in

12 Erowid Extracts —­ Number 23 / November 2012 DMT space leads one to think that world, syntax is something you see. everyone can’t really be describing the There, the boundless meanings of same “creatures”, and that the space language cause it to overflow the must be populated with a multitude normal audio channels and enter of discarnate entities: typical sci-fi the visual channels. They come extraterrestrials, humanoids, jellyfish, bouncing, hopping toward you, and insectoids, clowns/Pierrots, reptilians, then it’s like—all this is metaphor; robots, octopods, and other sorts of they don’t have arms—it’s as though beings have been mentioned. Author they reach into their intestines and D.M. Turner had apparently catalogued offer you something. They offer you at least nine distinct types of entities that an object so beautiful, so intricately he’d encountered. In discussing these wrought, so something else that with a fellow DMT psychonaut, Turner cannot be said in English, that just found that his friend had experience gazing on this thing, you realize four of the exact same entities, plus such an object is impossible. The two others that Turner had never seen.15 best comparison is Faberge eggs. […] With rigorous review, one might create a Bestiarum Vocabulum, charting which The archetype of DMT is the entities appear, and with what frequency, three-ring circus. The circus is all in response to the consumption of various bright lights, ladies in spangled psychedelics. costumes, and wild animals. But McKenna was gifted at painting a right underneath, it’s some fairly picture of the DMT entities and proposing dark expression of Eros and freaks and unrootedness and mystery. theories about what they might mean: Actual Contact, by JWA Tucker DMT is the quintessence of that Trying to describe them isn’t easy. archetype. The drug is trying to On one level I call them self- tell us the true nature of the game. transforming machine elves; half Reality is a theatrical illusion.16 machine, half elf. They are also like self-dribbling jeweled basketballs, In his pioneering article “Apparent With respect to the alien contact about half that volume, and they Communication with Discarnate phenomenon, I do wonder move very quickly and change. Entities Induced by Dimethytryptamine about the power of suggestion. And they are, somehow, awaiting. (DMT)”,17 author Peter Meyer presents McKenna’s ideas have been so When you burst into this space, a number of possible theories regarding widely promulgated that it’s hard there’s a cheer! Pink Floyd has a the true nature of these experiences. In to find someone who hasn’t heard song, “The Gnomes Have Learned November 1989, a year before Strassman of him or his ideas before smoking a New Way to Say Hooray.” Then obtained final government approval to DMT. On the other hand, there are they come forward and tell you, start his DMT studies, Meyer sent a draft many who know McKenna and his “Do not give way to amazement. of his article to Strassman, sparking a ideas well, have smoked a lot of Do not abandon yourself.” You’re discussion of the topic of communication DMT many times, and have had no amazingly astonished. The most con- with the alien DMT entities that some alien contact experiences.18 servative explanation for these elves, people have reported from their visions. since these things are speaking In his response, Strassman agreed On the surface, it is easy to agree English and are intelligent, is that that assessing the significance of “alien with Strassman’s sentiment. McKenna’s they’re some kind of human beings. communication” was important, noting: comment, “you get elves—everybody They’re obviously not like you and does”, is clearly not a universal truth, me, so they’re either the prenatal I’ve interviewed about 15 people as evidenced by the following dialogue or postmortal phase of human who have smoked DMT, and have about the DMT experience between existence, or maybe both […]. found several who describe “alien comedian/actor Joe Rogan and author contact.” I’m not quite sure what to Daniel Pinchbeck: They are teaching something. make of such reports.18 Theirs is a higher dimensional Rogan: Describing it in words always language that condenses as a While Strassman felt that the feels so fake. It’s like, there’s no visible syntax. For us, syntax is the phenomenon needed much closer words that have been invented structure of meaning; meaning is investigation, in a follow-up letter, he that are going to describe that something heard or felt. In this remarked: experience, you know?

Erowid Extracts — Number 23 / November 2012 13 Pinchbeck: You didn’t like “hyper- seems increasingly unlikely that a DMT and disappointment fills me as transforming machine elves”? user would never have heard sound bites they come at me faster and faster; of McKenna on the topic. The belief that where I start to crumble under Rogan: It wasn’t like that to me, McKenna’s ideas have either directly or their onslaught, so I open my eyes you know… indirectly affected the kinds of visions but still they come; where I realize I that people have, in any case, seems have to face them, so I close my eyes Pinchbeck: It wasn’t like that to me, fairly common. and focus on my breathing, and the either. However, after Strassman actually demonic forces back off […].20 began administering DMT in late 1990, Rogan: I heard [them say] some he changed his mind about the scope of Psychedelic researchers Bernard things that McKenna said, like, awareness of Terence McKenna’s ideas Aaronson and Humphry Osmond have “look at this”. They say, “look at this” and the power of suggestion as factors stated that these drugs “make available a lot. And I heard them say, “Don’t influencing reports of discarnate entities exotic and forbidden landscapes. In these give in to astonishment”. But I was among his research subjects: landscapes, the images of nightmare from wondering, is that because I knew which we have fled since childhood, move that McKenna [had] said that, and… […] volunteers were uniformly and take shape.”21 If true, this could go shy and uncomfortable discussing some way toward explaining the current Pinchbeck: Right, right, right. He set their strange being encounters. preponderance of visions featuring the template. […] Neither were Terence McKenna’s extraterrestrial beings and advanced lectures and writings especially technology. Since the 1980s, the scare Rogan: But it didn’t seem to me to be popular when we first started stories from fairylands have been solidly like hyper… what did he call them, hearing these unusual reports from supplemented with alien abductions and uhm… self-transforming machine our research subjects. I often asked tales of Transformers. Science fiction is elves. […] They didn’t seem like elves volunteers about being familiar with widely accepted as a more plausible genre to me. It seemed like… what I always popular accounts of DMT-mediated than fantasy. Contemporary society’s fears describe them as is these complex encounters with elves or insectoid have been captured in movies such as geometric patterns that are made aliens. Few if any were. Thus, I don’t the Alien series (1979–2012), They Live out of love. That’s how I describe think these reports were a type of (1988), The Lawnmower Man (1992), them, you know. And that means mass hysteria or a self-fulfilling eXistenZ (1999), The Matrix series nothing. Those are just a bunch prophecy.7 (1999–2003), and TV shows such as of words. You know what I mean? Doctor Who (1963–2013) and The X-Files It’s just like, I try to say it in a way In DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Strassman (1993–2002). that’s interesting and funny. But you presents a number of intriguing Several times, Strassman mentions a know, [in] reality, what is it? There’s speculations regarding the origin and “nursery/playroom theme” brought up by just some incredible patterns that meaning of discarnate entities. his research subjects,7 and spring-loaded you can’t even really look at. It’s like In discussing entity contact, Masters wind-up toys such as the perennially they’re too beautiful to take in, and and Houston remarked that, “The popular Jack-in-the-box may contribute they’re changing all the time.19 hallucinated monsters are the monsters to the common childhood fear of clowns. of childhood, the forms fear takes when Fear of arthropods (arachnids, I’ve known numerous people who one regresses to feelings of childlike crustaceans, and insects) is widespread, have never experienced any sort of contact helplessness.”8 Within that context, and understandable on a variety of levels. with discarnate entities from smoking consider the following DMT trip report: From the warm-blooded perspective of DMT. While I don’t know how familiar fuzzy mammals, arthropods seem hard, these people were with McKenna’s […] I arrive in a place filled with cold, unfeeling, parasitic, robotic, and descriptions of the experience, by intense white light where hideous, alien. A universal symbol for death is the late 1980s, I had certainly come bodiless, pointed-eared, purple and the human skull—all that’s left when across mentions of “DMT entities”. It green entities bound toward me and the tissue reflecting each of our unique is indeed hard to imagine that many of they laugh, jeer and ridicule me; lives has been stripped away. With the “required-to-have-been-experienced- where these grotesque elf, joker or their fleshless exoskeletons, arthropods with-psychedelics” subjects volunteering clown-like caricatures rush at me inherently carry an intimation of death to take DMT in Strassman’s studies one at a time and in clusters; where so fear-inducing to some humans that wouldn’t have already been aware of they curl their hideous, clown-like their gut reaction on seeing a spider, the “elf phenomenon” that had been—as mouths and wag their tongues in an ant, or some other small arthropod, Strassman characterized it—“so widely my face; where I relive every real is to smash and kill it. Beyond their promulgated” by that time. And these and imagined humiliation I suffered symbolic “otherness”, we have a long days, with ubiquitous Internet access, it in childhood; where a great sorrow history of fighting them off of the crops

14 Erowid Extracts —­ Number 23 / November 2012 we’ve cultivated for food, clothing, parsimonious hypothesis, and I and shelter. Our species’ battle against tend to return to this view in the arthropods is so prevalent that we’ve long intervals between big trips. come to refer to any small, potentially It’s not all that different from damaging microorganism (such as a virus dreaming, I reason, and I don’t or bacteria) as a “bug”—our common have too much trouble believing name for tiny arthropods. Cold-blooded that my unconscious mind reptilians and cephalopods are also designs most of my dreams. very “other” to us, so the appearance I always end up denouncing of discarnate entities resembling such this viewpoint from on high, life forms wouldn’t be surprising as though; somewhere I think that additional “forms fear takes”. I actually have a recording of Yet fears aren’t the only visionary myself saying something like, inspiration to shockingly explode in “I’m looking at this stuff right our mind fields; mental geography now and I’m TELLING you is a complex, fractal, holographic that there is no…possible… space where unconscious “memory” way…that the person who continually serves up amazing realities I think of as myself could on the fly. We commonly believe that ever in a million years be Filigree , by Vibrata Chromodoris we see the world as it exists, but—in generating all of this content reality—many of our perceptions of “the this fast. That would be like world out there” are just approximations saying that I could produce filled in from our mind’s unconscious all of the most amazing art memory. The “double take”, a shift in the entire world in every single the existence of entities “within what in perception based on the flip from a millisecond without even thinking seems to be an alternate reality.”23 Early “fill in” to a more accurate perception about it…”22 in the DMT dialogue, Meyer proposed of external reality (or vice versa), can that DMT may provide access to a happen with any of our five senses. What is mind? No matter… post-death realm.17 Of the 340 reports Consider the viewpoint expressed What is matter? Never mind. that he’s collected, he has marked 226 in “Virtuality” by Teafaerie, wherein By definition, discarnate entities of them (66.5%) with an “entities” tag, she proposes a possibility for her DMT have no physical bodies. Could this due to their mentions of “experience of visions that is “simultaneously the most mean that they are only able to exist one or more apparently independently- boring and the most exciting explanation” within minds? Is it possible for several existing beings which interact in an that she could come up with: discrete intelligences to inhabit a single apparently intelligent and intentional brain? Can mind(s) exist without matter? way with the observer.”23 Meyer suggests The mind is absolutely dripping Does curiosity collapse probability that folks should read ten reports each with untold processing power, and into actuality, materializing the meat day, think about them, and at the end of it can instantly generate a full-scale of the matter, seeding a substrate, 34 days reflect on what his collection of masterwork alien spaceship from creating consciousness, promulgating first-person accounts implies about the scratch, complete with all the the paradoxical process, forever and nature of reality. This excellent exercise trimmings. It can furthermore si- ever, amen? Bootstrapping at its best? may result in raised eyebrows from at multaneously create and animate Chicken and egg? I have no answers least a few skeptics. a number of fully interactive to such questions. Yet my agnosticism non-player characters, who are doesn’t negatively impact my wonder, Yourself, his ET… often described as possessing amazement, and fascination with the The elf is yours! an uncannily intense sense of experience of discarnate entities— While some of those who “are “presence” (whatever that means). whether they are only mental or whether experienced” lean toward the “external In this model, my amazing brain they have some external, other-dimen- existence” viewpoint, others find such can do all this while very powerful sional, or spiritual basis. a perspective illogical and frustrating. drugs are scrambling the bejesus Terence McKenna seemed inclined to Consider Martin Ball’s screed, out of it, and it can do it without any believe that DMT space is an independent “Terence on DMT: An Entheological awareness or deliberation on the part reality populated with intelligent Analysis of McKenna’s Experiences of the hopelessly unsophisticated discarnate entities. Peter Meyer appears in the Tryptamine Mirror of the Self”, frontman program that plays the role to have also come to this conclusion. He published by Reality Sandwich. Ball’s of the astonished psychonaut. On the feels that his collection of 340 DMT Trip rant against McKenna—as a flawed surface this one sounds like the most Reports provides objective evidence of individual and as the promoter of flawed

Erowid Extracts — Number 23 / November 2012 15 ideas—is largely a conglomeration of encounters I have never experienced discarnate entity contact. This falls insults, straw-man arguments, and ironic anything remotely describable as a “Gaia roughly in line with the 49–58% that egotism. (Ball’s dogmatic refrain focuses consciousness” (although I recognize Masters and Houston reported8 as having on projections of McKenna’s ego, that some other people have reported had visions of devils, demons, Christ, painfully oblivious to those of his own.) this). But I wholeheartedly agree with the Buddha, saints, godly figures, and Despite dismal dialectic, Ball brings Kent’s later remark that “none of [what William Blake–type figures. However, up a couple of points worth thinking any entities have said to me] points the Masters and Houston percentage about. The first is that “all contents of definitively to any deeper truth about range can’t be compared directly to entheogenic experiences are projections what they are or where they come from.” Strassman’s or Meyer’s percentages of the self” [emphasis in the original].24 Setting aside speculations regarding for two reasons. First, with a narrower (Ball’s remark might win over more “what they are or where they come from”, focus on specifically religious entities, supporters if it were expressed as “all a more accessible question may be: How the Masters and Houston figure may be contents of entheogenic experiences often are entity contact experiences the slightly lower than it would have been if could be projections of the self”. I’ll result of any particular psychedelic? they had also included other categories refer Ball to the Bill Maher quote of beings. Second, Masters and Houston above, “Doubt is humble.”) The second lump all 206 users of psychedelics point worth contemplating, together in one group, with no distinction brought up by Ball only in made based on what specific chemical passing, is his total dismissal each of them consumed. Presumably of the concept of a “soul”. In a at least some of their subjects had world where some entheogen their entity experiences as a result of evangelists would like nothing DMT consumption. (Indeed, in one better than to set their iPhone such report included in their book, the alarms for the final 8:12 p.m. DMT user describes encountering “the sunset and fly off through face of God” as that “of a very wise DMT-induced double rainbows monkey!”8) Without access to more on their winged unicorns, Ball’s details from Masters and Houston’s monism is, at least, a refreshing data, it is not possible to know how alternative perspective. many of their 206 respondents In “The Case Against DMT experienced entities while under Elves”,25 James Kent presents the effects of DMT and how many a neurologically based theory of them experienced entities after , by JWA Tucker regarding the origin of discarnate Actual Contact taking other psychedelics. entities. Kent proposes that these In order to solicit input from “seasoned experiences are a product of heads” for this chapter, a handful of individual human minds, rather people were directed to an online survey. than an interaction with independent More Entities on DMT? Participation was anonymous, and about external intelligences. However, Kent Clearly, Strassman’s statement that half of the people who were contacted backpedals a bit, claiming that, “The this phenomenon only occurs with DMT responded. Potential participants were ‘Gaia consciousness’ that infuses is not accurate. In addition to the few believed to either (1) have a solid amount the experience is undeniable,” and examples provided above, contemporary of personal experience with DMT, and/ entertaining the possibility “that this trip reports published in print26, 27, 28 or (2) have “sat” for others experiencing ancient plant consciousness actually and in numerous places online,29 bear DMT trips. Eight people completed the exists and is attempting to make itself testament to the fact that this is not solely survey. All of them answered “yes” to known through the DMT-enlightened a phenomenon that occurs with DMT the question of whether or not they had mammal brain.” He later states, “I also consumption. But is DMT more likely ever experienced anything that seemed believe in samsara [reincarnation] and to generate such experiences than other like contact with a discarnate entity. the transmigration of souls, which makes psychedelics? However, one potential participant, who the notion that these entities could be Strassman stated that at least 30 out declined to fill out the survey, did offer: ‘disembodied souls’ floating around of his 60 subjects reported having such in hyperspace very tempting to latch experiences.7 Meyer says that 266 of I saw all sorts of things in my onto.” I’m not sure why a theoretical the 340 DMT trip reports he collected trips: dancing skeletons, jaguar external “plant consciousness” rates mention some manner of discarnate priestesses, bee aliens, dancing as being any more plausible than a entities.23 Together, these two sources rats, cartoon characters, and so on, theoretical external “elf consciousness”, suggest that perhaps 50–66.5% of those for many years. I never thought of and within my own discarnate entity who consume DMT may experience them as “discarnate entities”; they

16 Erowid Extracts —­ Number 23 / November 2012 were just hallucinations. Then I When asked how many of the people The total number of reports for heard Terence McKenna and began that they had turned on to DMT had any given substance may, to an extent, looking for “discarnate entities” in mentioned some manner of “discarnate represent that substance’s popularity (and my trips. And suddenly, I began entities”, the answers were: 1%, availability). However, it is reasonable to seeing “discarnate entities” instead somewhere less than 10%, 15%, 30–40%, presume that people are more likely to of hallucinations. My point is, 50%, 75%, 75%, and there was one be inspired to write experience reports humans are so suggestible, they non-response. following a powerful experience than will believe of their hallucinations Several questions were asked they are following a mundane one. For whatever you tell them to expect. regarding the possible external reality of example, there are a large number of If I am expecting cartoons, I see discarnate entities. Expressing an opinion daily tobacco smokers, but only a small cartoon characters. If I am expecting shared by a few people, one respondent number of tobacco reports on Erowid. No “discarnate entities”, then suddenly answered: one would suggest that LSD is consumed those cartoon characters have more by ten times the number of people who “meaning” or “value” because I call It’s made me question my rational, use tobacco, despite the fact that the them “entities” instead of “cartoons”. scientific worldview; I had to admit Experience Vaults contain ten times In other words, Terence was a master that there’s much we don’t know more LSD reports than tobacco reports. of semantic bullshit. about these questions; an open At the time this chapter was written, the mind is needed without abandoning five drugs with the largest number of To preserve anonymity, questions about critical thinking. experience reports written about them gender and age were not included on this were psilocybin-containing mushrooms, survey. Respondents expressed a variety of Echoing the remark of the person who Cannabis, Salvia divinorum, MDMA, spiritual beliefs, including atheism. declined to complete the survey, another and LSD. Responses to a question about respondent asked: As of mid-October 2012, there were approximately how many times they 22,640 published experience reports on had experienced entity contact ranged What is meant by “entity” and how Erowid. Of these, 1,159 were categorized from 2 to more than 100. Year of first is that defined? I’ve met people for by Erowid as mentioning Entities/Beings contact experience ranged 46 years, from whom all voices in their head belong (representing about 5% of all reports). 1961 to 2007. Four people’s first contact to someone or something else and Correlating the use of any individual resulted from DMT, one from LSD, one for whom almost anything they see psychoactive drug to entity experiences from psilocybin-containing mushrooms, after using DMT is a McKennaesque within the Vaults immediately runs into another from mushrooms in combination entity. Mainly because they read a challenge: psychonauts often consume with Peganum harmala, and the final McKenna telling them that this more than one drug at a time. Common person’s occurred at age four closely is what [one sees] when [one “add on” drugs—such as Cannabis, following a head trauma. smokes] DMT. […] For me to think alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine—may When asked to name any substances of something as an “entity” there has not be terribly contributive to many that had resulted in entity contact to be a clear sense of “other”and a entity experiences. But what about an experiences, the following drugs clear sense of it being something entity experience that occurred while were mentioned (number of mentions fully conscious and interactive. under the influence of psilocybin-con- indicated in brackets): DMT [7], taining mushrooms, methoxetamine, ayahuasca [6], psilocybin-containing It is clear that different people and 4-hydroxy-N,N-ethyl-methyltrypt- mushrooms [5], mescaline [2], and will have differing standards for what amine? Or one induced by nitrous oxide, Salvia divinorum [2]; 5-MeO-DMT, constitutes contact with discarnate Salvia divinorum, and 5-MeO-DMT? Brugmansia, Cannabis, ketamine, LSD, entities. Or MDMA, dextromethorphan, GHB, nitrous oxide, psilocybin-containing Among the responses to this tiny cocaine, and mushrooms (plus, of course, mushrooms with Peganum harmala, survey, DMT and ayahuasca were most Cannabis and alcohol)? S. divinorum, and P. harmala were all often associated with entity contact When examining experience reports mentioned a single time. experiences, followed closely by psilo- for mentions of entity contact, those The number of times each respondent cybin-containing mushrooms, with categorized as involving more than had smoked/vaporized/injected DMT mescaline and Salvia divinorum trailing. a single substance were excluded. ranged from “maybe 6” to “probably Because of their similar chemistry, less than a thousand”. Respondents were A Larger Data Set reports for Brugmansia and Datura also asked how many times they had In the Erowid Experience Vaults, species were combined. The number of introduced others to smoked/vaporized/ entity contact is associated with nearly single-substance reports for each of the injected DMT; three of the eight answered a hundred different substances, although ten substances that were analyzed ranged in the 3–5 range, two answers were in the over half of those substances have only from approximately 150 to approximately hundreds, and the rest fell in the middle. one or two entity-related reports. 1,300. These substances, sorted by the

Erowid Extracts — Number 23 / November 2012 17 number of reports mentioning entities part in a longer psychedelic trip, and it identifiable bias regarding the data [noted in brackets], are: Salvia divinorum could be that—for the psychonaut—other generated: Respondents are from a [314], DMT [76], Brugmansia/Datura aspects from their experience seemed specific niche that does not represent [74], psilocybin-containing mushrooms more important to record. There are also the general population, though the [68], ayahuasca [66], LSD [25], mes- certainly publication biases; reports with demographics are consistent with the caline-containing cacti [16], diphen- particular keywords or for particular demographics seen in several previous hydramine [15], ketamine [14], and substances may be published sooner surveys on Erowid.org. dimenhydrinate [11]. than others, or Erowid reviewers may be The idea with Survey #1 was to see Dividing the number of entity more likely to focus on topics that they how often entity contact is reported for a contact reports for a given substance personally find interesting. few well-known psychoactive drugs. The by the total number of reports for that first question was, “Have you ever (sober, substance provides a rough estimate Surveying Erowid Visitors high, or in any state) experienced contact of the frequency of entity contact by To gain another perspective on the with a non-human, intelligent, discarnate substance: DMT [38%], ayahuasca subject of entity contact, I ran three short entity (angel, faerie, alien, spirit)?” [36%], Brugmansia / Datura [29%], surveys on Erowid.org. This allowed respondents to indicate Salvia divinorum [25%], mescaline- All three surveys asked for gender and how often any such contact might have containing cacti [10%], diphenhydramine age. After removing invalid responses, occurred. The second question offered [9%], ketamine [9%], dimenhydrinate there was a variation of 3% or less the choice of eight specific drugs that [7%], psilocybin-containing mushrooms between surveys: 84% of respondents the respondent might have been on when [5%], and LSD [3%]. were male and 15% were female, with 1% the entity contact happened; respondents There are limitations to any transgender. The age ranges were: 18–22 could also select “other drug”, “multiple interpretation of this data. People may [47%], 23–29 [23%], 15–17 [14%], substances”, “multiple occasions with be more inclined to write about their 30–39 [9%], and 40–79 [7%]. As gender different substances”, “no drug/sober”, DMT experiences, because the effects are and age were fairly consistent from “don’t know/not sure”, or “prefer not to both powerful and short. After a grueling survey to survey, one might envision answer”. A final question asked about voyage on DOB, for example, one may the average respondent as a male 18–29 the respondent’s religious inclination. be less inspired to sit down and write years old, who has computer access Among 4,910 valid responses, nearly a novel about what one went through. and an interest in psychoactive drugs. 37% reported having had contact with Also, entity contact may play a smaller Right off the bat, this provides an discarnate entities, while slightly over 8% said that they didn’t know or weren’t sure whether they had experiences that would qualify. Atheists and agnostics were more likely to report “never” having had an entity contact, whereas the highest percentage of entity contact was reported among people who gave their religious inclination as “other mystical/spiritual”. Of those who reported having had an entity encounter (either sober or after having taken a drug), and given the option of eight drugs to select from as the drug they may have been on when entity contact occurred, respondents reported: DMT [11.7%], psilocybin-containing mushrooms [9.8%], LSD [9.0%], Salvia divinorum [7.4%], Cannabis [5.7%], ayahuasca [1.5%], ketamine [1.1%], mescaline [0.6%], other drug [9.5%]. Additionally, 15.4% reported they were sober during the experience, 20% said that their experiences happened on multiple occasions with different substances, and 8.4% reported an experience while on multiple substances.

Existengine, by Vibrata Chromodoris One immediate challenge to this survey is that the results don’t take

18 Erowid Extracts —­ Number 23 / November 2012 into consideration how common use As noted earlier, 15.4% of respondents frequently than gods; such experiences of any given substance is among the were not high at the time of their entity often occurred when the individual was group being surveyed. Ayahuasca, for contact experience—a larger percentage a young child, or the experiences were example, is widely reported to occasion than reported for any individual drug. related to contact made via dreaming. entity contact. A recent study of 131 To get a better sense of the sorts of sober Contact sometimes happened North American ayahuasca users, who situations that result in contact with immediately before, during, or just had a combined total of over 2,267 discarnate entities, Survey #3 entirely after sleep [79], with sleep paralysis, sessions, found that 74% believed that avoided mentioning psychoactive drugs. night terrors, out-of-body experiences, they had a personal relationship with It included an open comments field, to nightmares, and lucid dreaming all “the spirit of ayahuasca”, which was solicit users’ own descriptions of their described as contributing factors. “most often described as a wise teacher, contacts with discarnate entities. About a dozen reports mentioned astral grandmother or healer from a higher The question was posed: “Have projection. Sometimes more than one spiritual dimension and intelligence”; you ever experienced contact with a of these sleep-related conditions was some ayahuasca users also reported a non-human, intelligent, discarnate entity presented as being causative: “belief in the sentience in plants and (angel, faerie, alien, spirit)?” Among in spirit entities from other realities.”30 the 5,717 valid responses, 26.9% said In my dreams, when I have OBE Yet because of its relative rarity, only they had experienced at least one entity or when I am lucid during sleep 1.5% of those reporting an entity contact contact, while another 11.7% said that paralysis. experience in Survey #1 mentioned they didn’t know or weren’t sure whether ayahuasca as an inspiration for that they had experiences that would qualify. Many people mentioned seeing a contact. At the same time, the propensity Compared to Survey #1, this is a 10% figure standing somewhere near the bed. for Cannabis to induce contact with lower reporting of entity encounters Such sleep-related accounts sometimes discarnate entities is undoubtedly fairly along with a 4% rise in uncertainty. The described ghosts, aliens, demons, and low, while it certainly has to be the single bracketed number following categories of angels, though faerie folk were rarely most-used drug of those that the survey entity or activity below shows how many mentioned. mentioned. Therefore, the 5.7% figure for people mentioned it, based on manual A small number of respondents Cannabis is at least partially the result of evaluation of the open field comments. expressed their opinions that the survey’s a vastly larger number of users and drug Within Survey #3, discarnate entities focus was either entirely hogwash exposures than for ayahuasca. in the forms of aliens [105] and UFOs (i.e.,“none of these things exist”), or at Survey #2 sought more information [32] were mentioned most often, and the least partially so: about which of the above-mentioned idea that interaction with these provided drugs are more popular among Erowid access to novel information came up The terms angel and faerie make users. Of 11,464 valid responses, 96% repeatedly: this question less credible. Aliens had used Cannabis, 70% mushrooms, objectively exist, however; just ask 60% LSD, 28% DMT, 26% ketamine, On high doses of psilocybin, I the government. “Spirit” or “entity” 17% mescaline, and 6% had used achieve contact and communica- would suffice for the other terms. ayahuasca. This survey also asked the tion with an entity that appears approximate numbers of use instances for alien. It possesses knowledge Despite this vocal minority of each of these substances. For example, beyond my imagination and uses naysayers, faeries (elves, gnomes, etc.) Cannabis users, who represented around concepts that are vast in scope. [59], angels [52], and demons [41] all got 96% of respondents, were most likely a number of mentions: to report (48.6%) that they had used it Contact with God/gods/goddesses “1,000 or more” times; whereas only 6% [104] was mentioned at a level similar I saw an angel with a 64-mile-long of respondents reported having ever tried to aliens: OG Mudbone erect cock. ayahuasca and, of those, half said that they had used it a single time, and about a My most intense and directly was less typical than third “2–5 times”. With DMT, there were revelatory conversation with God 1,067 people [9.3%] who said that they was my first, and was of the LSD- When I was five an angel took me in had used it “once”, 1,203 people [10.5%] inspired variety. I asked God why my sleep out of my body and showed who said they had used it “2–5 times”, it created the universe. The answer, me the world. Then it dropped me and 370 people [3.2%] who said they “The one became many, that I may back into bed and said goodbye. had used it “6–10 times”. That’s a total know myself.” Six years later, this of 4,767 DMT trips split between 2,640 is still the cornerstone of my faith. Several people [26] expressed the people—not even two trips per person on feeling that the entities were guardians average. Just a handful of people could Ghosts (deceased loved ones/haunted or guides that allowed them access to a easily match that number in pot highs. houses) [93] were reported slightly less bigger picture:

Erowid Extracts — Number 23 / November 2012 19 It was a being made of light, which Although the agnostic viewpoint from childhood; there’s a sense I’d describe as a spirit guide. I wasn’t entirely missing: of “having always known them”, was floating through the fabric of and they can be elf-like or take on existence, and it brought me to I had a vision of the God of Doubt, bizarre qualities for which there are a viewpoint from which I could who said that I had too much faith in no words/concepts. With psilocybin, observe all of time/space. It was rad. Him. His message was, “Doubt Me.” there are occasional entities with I watched my favorite pornstars take elf-like essences but a futuristic showers. While in numerous cases the metallic-like form who tend to be of experiences were described as having a guide or teacher type. While there Though less common, people happened while the respondent was are many forms, it is the subjective also mentioned reptiles/reptilians [25] sober, descriptions specific to certain feeling of their existence outside of and orbs/balls of light [25], drugs were more common: just being a creation of the mind, with even fewer describing insects/ which is the common feature of all insectoids [15], cephalopods [11], entity encounters. and shadow people [11]. The remaining categorizable Drugs mentioned in the comments discarnate entities were: tree field of Survey #3, without prompting, or plant spirits [10], fractal included DMT [233], LSD [87], Salvia beings [9], clowns, jesters, divinorum [87], psilocybin-containing harlequins [9], felines/cats [9], mushrooms [81], dextromethorphan Satan/Lucifer [8], Jesus [7], white [35], ayahuasca [29], ketamine [22], light experiences [7], Buddha [6], Cannabis [17], methoxetamine [15], dragons [6], Gaia [5], ancestor and mescaline/cacti [13]. spirits [4], entities wearing all-in-one While we might get a general wet- or motorcycle suits [4], faceless sense of the sort of drugs that are beings [3], and machine elves [3]. likely to produce such effects by Many of the entities described did not counting which drugs are named easily fit into any categories. most often, as discussed above, Meditation [35] played a part in such an approach doesn’t control some people’s experiences, and a for the fact that some drugs may few folks [8] said that a Ouija board simply be more popular, more facilitated their contact experience. , by Naoto Hattori frequently consumed, or more Several people felt it was important Prayer 007 available than others. they expressed that they were currently Survey #3 also asked the atheists: question, “Do you know who Terence McKenna is?” While the notion that I don’t think any of them really With various ayahuasca prepara- McKenna’s ideas have influenced the happened, but I’ve seen and tions, entities seem to be either (1) type or interpretation of visions that spoken to God, aliens, demons, doorway guardians who decide other people have probably has some sexy demons, 300-foot Frankenstein, whether one is ready to proceed truth to it, almost half of the respondents and once I saw my dead friend’s further, (2) random benign or to the survey would have been 6–10 rotting corpse behind me in the mischievous entities who happen years old at the time of McKenna’s mirror at a friend’s house. Despite to drop in to have a look and seem death in 2000. The audio samples all of that, I’m still not a believer in curious about one’s presence in the of his lectures in popular electronic aliens or UFOs or God or anything “space” beyond the doorway, (3) music and his strong influence on supernatural. I love hallucinogens, teacher or guiding entities within the contemporary authors make it difficult but I also know it’s a chemical ayahuasca space. Ayahuasca entities to assess how much influence his views show in your mind, nothing more. I can be anything from harlequin have among current psychedelic users. humor myself and interact with my clown–scary, to laughing goblins Strassman’s DMT book, which has sold made-up world under the influence, attempting to relax [the observer], over 102,000 copies and been made into but I understand it’s unreal and of to angelic ethereal beings, to snakes/ a documentary, might now have more of no consequence. Knowing all this spiders who just seem to be there in an influence on generations coming of lets me stay safe; no matter how the background, to alien and inde- age after McKenna’s death. much acid I drop, flapping my arms scribably complex insect-like forms. Including a question about McKenna and flying is impossible. Is any of Using chewed Salvia divinorum inspired some comments from individuals this weird? leaves, the entities can seem to be less than enamored with his ideas, as

20 Erowid Extracts —­ Number 23 / November 2012 well as some comments from his fans. REFERENCES A few people remarked that their own entity experiences “pre-dated [their] knowledge of McKenna and his entities”. 1) Ruck CAP, Bigwood J, Staples D, Ott J, 15) Beifuss W. Personal communication. 1995. In fact, 54% of survey respondents Wasson RG. “Entheogens”. Journal of 16) Miller S. “Interview: Terence McKenna”. indicated that they had some knowledge Psychedelic Drugs. 1979;11(1–2):145–146. Omni. 1993;15(7):69–70, 74, 90–92. of Terence McKenna. Of the people who 2) Aiken JW. “The Church of the Awakening”. 17) Dev N (Meyer P). “Apparent Communication had never heard of McKenna, 73% also In: Aaronson B, Osmond H (Eds). with Discarnate Entities Induced by said that they had never had contact Psychedelics: The Uses and Implications of Dimethyltryptamine (DMT)”. No publisher with a discarnate entity. Of the 27% of Hallucinogenic Drugs. Anchor Books. 1970. listed. 1991. Republished in: Lyttle T (Ed). the survey respondents who indicated 165–182. Psychedelic Monographs and Essays 6. that they had experienced contact with 3) Care Control. “A One-Time Atheist Found 1993. 29–69. a discarnate entity, nearly 69% of those God: Experience with 2C-I”. Erowid.org. 18) Strassman R. “MSP 93, Rick Strassman had heard of McKenna. In the end, it’s Erowid.org/exp/25486. 2003. Papers”. Archives and Special Collections, not clear that this tells us too much. 4) Grey A. Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art Purdue University Libraries. 1989–1991. It feels appropriate to close out of Alex Grey. Inner Traditions. 1990. 19) Pinchbeck D. “2012: Time for Change this chapter with some text from one 5) Grof S. LSD Psychotherapy. Hunter House. Presents: Joe Rogan”. Reality Sandwich. respondent’s description of his sole 1980. Posted Apr 6, 2010, Realitysandwich.com/ “entity” encounter: 6) Oroc J. Tryptamine Palace: 5-MeO-DMT and video/2012_tfc_presents. No Date. the Sonoran Desert Toad. Park Street Press. 20) Anonymous. “DMT Entities”. The Entheogen I was in the woods with two friends, 2009. Review. 1995;4(2):6–7. passing along a tale that I’d just 7) Strassman R. DMT: The Spirit Molecule. 21) Aaronson B, Osmond H (Eds). Psychedelics: heard about Terence McKenna. It Park Street Press. 2001. The Uses and Implications of Hallucinogenic was a story about a tree in his back 8) Masters REL, Houston J. The Varieties of Drugs. Anchor Books. 1970. yard with a vine growing on it. He Psychedelic Experience. Holt, Rinehart and 22) Teafaerie. “Virtuality”. Teatime: had noticed that the vine wouldn’t Winston. 1966. Psychedelic Musings from the Center grow on one of the dead branches of 9) Richardson J. “Who Am I, and So What if of the Universe. May 2012. Erowid.org. the tree. As he was observing this, I Am?”. In: Aaronson B, Osmond H (Eds). Erowid.org/columns/teafaerie/ the dead branch fell. It was almost Psychedelics: The Uses and Implications of 2012/05/31/virtuality. as though the vine knew that this was Hallucinogenic Drugs. Anchor Books. 1970. 23) Meyer, P. 340 DMT Trip Reports. bound to happen, so it stayed away 50–58. Serendipity.li/dmt/340_dmt_trip_reports. from that branch. 10) Huxley H. “Mescaline and the ‘Other htm. 2010. Lysergic Acid But just as I was telling the exact World’”. In: Cholden L (Ed), 24) Ball MW. “Terence on DMT: An Entheological part of the story about how the Diethylamide and Mescaline in Experimental Analysis of McKenna’s Experiences branch had fallen from the tree Psychiatry. Grune & Stratton. 1956. 46–50. in the Tryptamine Mirror of the Self”. while Terence had been thinking 11) Lilly JC. The Center of the Cyclone: An Reality Sandwich. Realitysandwich.com/ about it, a branch in the tree right Autobiography of Inner Space. Julian Press, terence_dmt. 2010. next to us simultaneously fell off. Inc. 1972. 25) Kent J, Pickover C. “The Case Against I believe it was Terence’s spirit that 12) Jansen K. Ketamine: Dreams and DMT Elves”. Tripzine. Tripzine.com/ made this branch fall, as a way of Realities. Multidisciplinary Association for listing.php?id=dmt_pickover. 2004. telling me he appreciated that I was Psychedelic Studies. 2001. 26) Aardvark D. The Entheogen Review. sharing his story. 13) McKenna TK. “Terence McKenna the 1998–2008. Entity and the Elves of Psilocybin”. Audio 27) DeKorne J. The Entheogen Review. McKenna was fond of paraquoting excerpt from unspecified lecture; posted 1992–1997. the British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, Jul 15, 2009 to YouTube by “planetunion”. 28) Turner DM. The Essential Psychedelic who wrote in his 1927 book, Possible Youtube.com/watch?v=KfgRWZx7Q00. Guide. Panther Press. 1994. Worlds (imagine here, Terence’s nasal No Date. 29) Erowid. Experience Vaults. Erowid.org. twang repeating the following): 14) McKenna TK, Leary TF. “You Get Elves, Erowid.org/experiences. Everybody Does”. Audio montage sampling 30) Harris R, Gurel L. “A Study of Ayahuasca Use Now, my own suspicion is that the unspecified lecture(s); originally aired on in North America”. Journal of Psychoactive universe is not only queerer than The Trip Receptacles radio show, KPFA Drugs. 2012;44(3):209–215. we suppose, but queerer than we Berkeley. Web.archive.org/web/2002081 31) Haldane JBS. Possible Worlds and Other can suppose. 7175817/www.nvo.com/cd/nss-folder/ Essays. Chatto & Windus. 1927. tripreceptaclemp3s/SH1PT7.MP3. No Date. I wholeheartedly concur. •

Erowid Extracts — Number 23 / November 2012 21 Through the Four-Color Doors of Perception Psychedelic Gems of the Comic Book Genre

by David Bey here’s something essentially trippy about comic books. A medium in which words and images converge is going to be at least somewhat psychedelic. Reading comics engenders a novel mode of cognitive operation, T one capable of generating mental events entirely different from those derived through either reading pure text or absorbing moving image alone. J Furthermore, comic book superheroes are the closest thing contemporary culture has to living mythology, and those with pretensions to modern shamanism will tend to share traits with them. Ever since Ken Kesey began dressing up as his childhood hero, Captain Marvel, and encouraging his entourage to follow suit, the counterculture has continually reenacted the primal superhero traditions of outrageous costumes, taking on a totemic moniker, and cultivating the use of unusual abilities and extraordinary perceptions. J Here are some gems from the field of sequential visual art that focus on the exploration of alternative consciousness.

mystery of his long-vanished comrade’s of non-ordinary states of consciousness uncanny disappearance. to heal psychic trauma and transmute At the same time in an alternate pain and fear into wonder, it is a story reality, an unnamed rock singer is about psychedelic psychotherapy. dying of a drug overdose in the rain. Insofar as the structure of the miniseries He’s taken everything in the house, mirrors and discusses the history of including quite a bit of LSD, and he’s superhero comic books, Flex Mentallo talking on a mobile phone to the unseen is, well… about comic books. voice on the other end of a suicide For years Scottish author Grant prevention hotline. All he wants to talk Morrison has been using the medium about are comic books. of superhero comics to saturate his Meanwhile, in a third version readership with an all-out assault on of reality, a legion of all-powerful ordinary reality. His comics read like super-beings faced with inescapable catalogs of ultra-hip esoterica and annihilation devise a plan to survive cutting-edge visionary speculation. death by projecting themselves into Additionally, Frank Quitely’s another universe as fictional characters. illustrations for Flex Mentallo are the Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery Naturally, as the story progresses clearest, most precise realizations of by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely the walls between worlds begin to break fantastic reality since Winsor McKay’s (DC Comics, 1996/2012) down, culminating i n c o l l i s i o n w i t h Don’t let the leopard-print Total Reality and Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery is one short-shorts fool you! Four-part comic emotional catharsis of the most sophisticated representations book miniseries Flex Mentallo: Man in which there are of Muscle Mystery (reprinted at long “no more barriers of a drug trip ever written or drawn. last in a handsome hardcover “deluxe” between the real and edition) is one of the most sophisticated the imaginary”. If the representations of a drug trip ever world of psychedelic comic books dished Little Nemo in Slumberland. Together written or drawn. out awards, Flex Mentallo would win they cut an astounding swath across In a world on the brink of collapse, “Best Comic Book Depiction of an Acid the limits of what is conventionally the last of the comic book superheroes—a Trip” and “Best Narrative Depiction possible to represent, telling a story half-naked cartoon strongman with of Successful Psychedelic Therapy”. that’s both formally intriguing and psychic muscles struggles to solve the Insofar as Flex Mentallo is about the use genuinely moving.

22 ErowidErowid Extracts Extracts ­— — Number Number 23 23 / /November November 2012 2012 that with the electric offspring of punk-rock pop art to produce a lurching, spiral play of hyper-color lotuses, sitar-rayguns, corridors of endless uncertainty, ashrams of the absolute, and the dead-end sprawl of South London. A psychedelic classic from the early 1990s which deserves to be better known, Rogan Gosh combines a tryptamine-style romp through transpersonal existentialism with the neon-cartoon fireworks of a night out on high-quality phenethylamines—a bizarro cultural mash-up pulled off with wit and weirdness.

Rogan Gosh: Star of the East The Technopriests comics. It follows the adventures by Brendan McCarthy and Peter Milligan by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Zoran and education of “the Albino”, a (Vertigo/DC Comics, 1994; first serialized Janjetov, and Fred Beltran prophesied individual who must pass in Revolver 1–6, Fleetway, 1990) (Humanoids/DC Comics, 2004/2011) a variety of tests and penetrate various realms of existence in his quest for Turn off your mind, relax and Alejandro Jodorowsky is a the power to lead humanity towards float downstream… into the sitar- profoundly strange and intensely a society in which “healthy human fantastic surrealist wonderland of prolific individual, having put in relationships will be valued more Rogan Gosh, where multi-cephalic solid time as a filmmaker, actor, highly than scientific advances”. Hindu gods, karma-surfing superheroes spiritual teacher, ceremonial psycho- With illustrations by Janjetov and and long-dead Orientalist writers crash therapist, international expert on brain-melting color by Beltran, The headlong into the bleak drizzle of Tarot symbolism and, yes, comic book Technopriests is an eye-popping visual London suburbia. author. Probably best known for his feast. Jodorowsky has been quoted Rogan Gosh, written by UK comic films, including cult classics such as as saying, “I ask of film what most book bad-boy Peter Milligan, is either The Holy Mountain or acid Western North Americans ask of psychedelic the story of the eponymous “Karmanaut” epic weird-fest El Topo, Jodorowsky drugs”. The same would seem to be in his struggle to free himself from is also somewhat infamous for having true of his work in comics. Indeed, the illusionary machinations of the tried and failed to make the first in collaboration with Janjetov and villainous Soma Swami—or—it’s what cinematic adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Beltran, he brings worlds to life that happens to curry-house waiter Raju and Dune. Considering that he planned on would be impossible to film, even with boorish lout Dean after the goddess casting Salvador Dalí as Emperor of today’s CGI wizardry. Kali rips their heads off—or—it’s the the Known Universe and wanted to All the same, The Technopriests opium dream of a disgraced Rudyard commission Pink Floyd to do the film might best be appreciated as a Kipling—or—it’s the dying thoughts score, it’s little wonder the project went predominantly visual experience. To of an unnamed post-punk, post-gender down in expensive flames. Jodorowsky call the dialogue “wooden” would existentialist youth on a suicide trip. had also almost completely rewritten be charitable, and there’s hardly a Milligan’s writing is amazing if the sci-fi classic, recasting it as his character in the series who is anything occasionally absurd. Much of it reads own epic of transhuman visionary less than a cardboard cut-out of mythic like Tim Leary trapped in the semantic mythology bearing slim resemblance caricature. Additionally, the writing is universe of an Indian restaurant menu. to the original. almost completely lacking in humor. As Once again, it’s the interaction When the Dune project imploded, humor is often the best and sometimes between the writing and the illustration Jodorowsky recycled his voluminous the only guide to states of altered that provides such a lush and unique additional material into a triptych perception, it seems like a psychedelic means of expressing the psychedelic of comic book epics, of which The super-myth that isn’t also funny is going experience. To bring the world of Rogan Technopriests is one part. The story to be lacking something. That said, The Gosh to life, artist Brendan McCarthy combines influences from Gnostic Technopriests is hands down one of mined his own childhood obsession Christianity, technopaganism, and the most gorgeous, mind-boggling with the Amar Chitra Katha tradition visionary shamanism fed through the examples of visionary narrative art of Indian comic books—cross-wiring wormhole of space-opera superhero available in any medium. •

Erowid Extracts — Number 23 / November 2012 23 Erowid Gets Reviewed on GreatNonprofits Erowid Center has been recognized as a “Top-Rated The Nonprofit” by GreatNonprofits.org, a respected site that provides ratings and reviews of nonprofit organizations. Distillation More than 300 people have rated Erowid, giving us an average of 4.75 out of 5 stars. Though we frequently receive positive (and critical) Published Images 7,684 New in Last 6 Mos. 46 feedback directly, having reviews published by an independent system helps establish credibility. The Image Vaults 301 Submitted Each Day 1.7 comments are especially useful for those first learning about Viewed Per Day 21,980 Awaiting Processing 12,355 Erowid such as media organizations and potential funders. Erowid Center is guided by steadfast ethical principles and provides honest, experience-based drug information unavailable anywhere else. DMT / Psilocybin Bottle, Photo by Erowid Crew —Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director, Drug Policy Alliance

Erowid is a bridge between academic knowledge about drugs and the more “real-world” experience of the people who take them. —Polquintana

The appreciation expressed through reviews on GreatNonprofits has yielded clear statements about the positive impact of Erowid’s unbiased information about psychoactive drugs. The collective belief in the importance of this project is what keeps Erowid Center going.

Experience Reports

Published Reports 22,674 Published in Last 6 Mos. 362 Active Triagers/Reviewers 43

Testosterone Gel, Photo by Eduardo Hidalgo

Two Tins of Swedish Tobacco Snus (Moist Snuff), Photo by Scilence

24 Erowid Extracts — Number 23 / November 2012 Daily Erowid Visitors (1995–2012) 110,000

100,000

90,000 Unique Visitors per Day per Visitors Unique 80,000

70,000

60,000

50,000

40,000

30,000

20,000

10,000

0

11 04 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2003 20 2002 n 2011 Jul 2011 Jul 2005 Jul 2006 Jul 2007 Jul 2008 Jul 2009 Jul 2010 Jul 2012 Ja Jan 2005 Jan 2006 Jan 2007 Jan 2008 Jan 2009 Jan 2010 Jan 2012 Mar 2011 Nov 20 Sep 2011 Mar 2005 Mar 2006 Mar 2007 Mar 2008 Mar 2009 Mar 2010 Mar 2012 Nov 2005 Nov 2006 Nov 2007 Nov 2008 Nov 2009 Nov 2010 Sep 2005 Sep 2006 Sep 2007 Sep 2008 Sep 2009 Sep 2010 Sep 2012 May 2011 May 2005 May 2006 May 2007 May 2008 May 2009 May 2010 May 2012

Designing a Wisdom Cycle Survey Erowid Statistics As part of our Generations Project, Erowid is designing a structured survey to explore the knowledge Visitors 82,158 File Hits 3,806,635 that elders have to share with younger generations about 29.78 GB 359,716

DAILY Transfer Page Hits psychoactives, as well as discover what younger people most want to learn. Avg Daily Avg Daily Avg Daily File As the first generations of modern Westerners who Visitors Page Hits Hits have had access to psychedelics are aging, we are at a Oct 2012 77,603 338,959 3,425,956 73,441 337,289 3,405,147 critical point in history. This survey is being designed Sep 2012 72,047 334,307 3,452,414 to gain a better understanding of the hard-earned Aug 2012 Jul 2012 73,539 339,107 3,461,206

knowledge of elders who have used psychedelics in BY MONTH Jun 2012 76,622 350,637 3,685,890 their life. Specifically, it will target wisdom about how May 2012 82,549 358,321 3,822,863 to maximize benefits and minimize risks associated with intentional use of psychedelic/empathogenic drugs 2011 86,237 387,683 3,977,250 and psychoactives in general. 2009 59,483 384,788 3,682,793 We need two groups of psychedelic veterans—one 2007 51,979 409,501 3,559,761 to assist in the creation of survey seed questions and 2005 41,412 402,567 2,544,202 another to test the survey and provide feedback. Please 2003 25,999 347,012 1,421,800 BY YEAR let us know if you would like to participate. 2001 19,138 206,418 885,099 1999 4,608 36,867 140,093

Summary EcstasyData Statistics Daily Visitors 3,115 Daily Page Hits 10,514

General Content Pages 16,788 2012 Results 245 Daily File Hits 385,390 Archived Site Pages 4,678 Experience Reports 22,632 Results Published In Testing Results (1996–2012) References 8,154 2011 298 Total Results 2,530 Ask Erowid 596 2010 183 MDMA Only (30%) 766 The Erowid Review 298 2009 161 MDMA + Something (20%) 499 Content Images 5,663 2006–2008 143 No MDMA (44%) 1104 BY YEAR – 433 108 Visionary Art 2,021 2003 2005 – Nothing – 965 104 Total 60,830 2000 2002 – Unidentified 1996–1999 102 Non-Ecstasy Samples ( 6%) 161 Erowid Monthly Subscribers 18,481 Twitter Followers 3,695 Current Members 1,630 Daily Visitors 82,158

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“I’m sure the universe is full of “If reality differs from person to “Sometimes you can see things intelligent life. It’s just been too person, can we speak of reality happen right in front of your eyes and intelligent to come here.” singular, or shouldn’t we really be still jump to the wrong conclusions.” ― Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) talking about plural realities? And if ― Jodi Picoult’s Mariah (b. 1966) there are plural realities, are some “We’re made of star-stuff. We are a more true (more real) than others?” “The advantage of a bad memory is way for the cosmos to know itself.” ― Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) that one can enjoy the same good ― Carl Sagan (1934–1996) things for the first time several “You could claim that anything’s times.” “The simplest truth about man is that real if the only basis for believing in ― Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) he is a very strange being; almost in it is that nobody’s proved it doesn’t the sense of being a stranger on the exist!” “To be able to forget means sanity.” earth. In all sobriety, he has much ― J.K. Rowling’s Hermione (b. 1965) ― Jack London (1876–1916) more of the external appearance of one bringing alien habits from “There is nothing new except what another land than of a mere growth is forgotten.” of this one.” ― Rose Bertin (1747–1813) ― G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936) Est quoque “Think of everything you have ever “The day science begins to study cunctarum read, everything you have ever non-physical phenomena, it will novitas learned from holding a book in your make more progress in one decade hands and how that knowledge than in all the previous centuries of carissima rerum. shaped you and made you who you its existence.” are today.” ― Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) ― Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) [ In all things what we “The important thing is not to stop most prize is novelty. ] “Every addition to true knowledge is questioning; curiosity has its own an addition to human power.” reason for existing. One cannot help ­— Ovid (43 BCE–17 CE) 子 ― Horace Mann (1796–1859) but be in awe when contemplating the mysteries of eternity, of life, of “I have been and still am a seeker, the marvelous structure of reality.” but I have ceased to question stars ― Albert Einstein (1879–1955) “There is nothing which can better and books; I have begun to listen deserve our patronage than the to the teaching my blood whispers “The scientist is not a person who promotion of science and literature. to me.” gives the right answers, he’s one who Knowledge is, in every country, the ― Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) asks the right questions.” surest basis of public happiness.” ― Claude Lévi-Strauss (1928–2009) ― George Washington (1732–1799) “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you “...what we observe is not nature “The constant questioning of our care.” in itself but nature exposed to our values and achievements is a ― John C. Maxwell (b. 1947) method of questioning.” challenge without which neither ― Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) science nor society can remain “For me, I am driven by two main healthy.” philosophies, know more today about “Penetrating so many secrets, we ― Aage Niels Bohr (1922–2009) the world than I knew yesterday. And cease to believe in the unknowable. along the way, lessen the suffering But there it sits nevertheless, calmly “Reality leaves a lot to the of others. You’d be surprised how far licking its chops.” imagination.” that gets you.” ― H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) ― John Lennon (1940–1980) ― Neil deGrasse Tyson (b. 1958)