Name: What Is Happening in the Brain During a DMT Trip?
Uploaded: 2022-08-10T18:07:29.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'What Is Happening in the Brain During a DMT Trip?' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-08-10. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'What Is Happening in the Brain During a DMT Trip?' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-08-10. Transcript available.

Well, you know, one of the interesting things about endogenous DMT, and
especially with his
discovery in such high levels in the brain, is that it may be the endometrics.
It could be
kind of regulating everything all of the time. What do you mean by that,
regulating everything
all the time? It could be the way we interact with reality, is through endogenous
DMT, which
is always at a steady level. Well, the way I began wondering about that is
because, you
know, what is the purpose of endogenous DMT? You know, why does the brain make
DMT?
Can you do a DMT test on a person's blood level?
It's pretty hard. It's pretty hard. It's really low in the blood. It's like,
you know,
billionths of a gram per milliliter.
Okay, so you'd have to measure it in the actual brain itself?
In the brain or spinal fluid, maybe spinal fluid, but most likely brain.
When they start doing stuff like Neuralink, where they're going to insert wires
into your
brain, and, you know, you're going to have an app to control your brain, to
control your
mood. I mean, it seems like that would be one of the ways they would do it,
right?
Well, you'd need to find, you know, where in the brain the main source of DMT
is, and then put an
electrode there and keep that going.
Do you think it's limited to one specific area where it's developed?
Oh, man, they're just beginning to unravel the whole role and location of endogenous
DMT.
So when they know that it's in the liver and they know that it's in the lungs,
the lungs,
to me, sound interesting because of holotropic breathing.
Right.
You know, because people have done breathing exercises and achieved states of
altered states
of consciousness.
Yeah, yeah.
That kind of makes sense, doesn't it?
Well, yeah, but I think it's not working through the lungs because those more
recent
studies haven't really demonstrated DMT in lung.
Oh.
Yeah, yeah.
I used to say it's made in lung.
Everybody used to say it's made in lung, but it seems like it's made in brain.
So if it's made in brain, then all the other stuff, you're just getting like a
trickle-down
effect?
Well.
Does it go through the whole body?
Yeah, but it's metabolized so quickly that, you know, by the time it gets into
the blood that
you're drawing, the concentrations are pretty minuscule.
Wow.
What a sneaky molecule.
Well, you have to wonder what it's doing, right?
Right.
What is it doing?
What is endogenous?
What's the function of it?
You know, there's the possibility we have a DMT neurotransmitter system like
serotonin
or dopamine, in which case, you know, what is it doing?
Wow.
So this is a really wild way to think about it because to this time, I'd never
even considered
that.
I always thought of it as being something that was responsible maybe for very
vivid dreams
or something that was responsible for near-death experiences or what happens to
you when you
die, the idea of a portal.
But I never thought about it as being something that is regulating regular,
everyday reality.
Well, you know, one of the hallmarks of the DMT effect is that it feels more
real than real.
Yeah.
And you study the function of endogenous neurotransmitters by giving, you know,
drugs that modify the effect
of that endogenous neurotransmitter.
You know, so we've got the SSRI antidepressants and they affect serotonin,
although they may not all that much.
But still, that's been the working model for decades.
And, you know, so because SRIs are useful for depression and anxiety, you then
can speculate that serotonin is responsible for mood or anxiety.
You know, so the hallmark of the DMT effect is it's more real than real.
It feels more real than anything else.
You know, so it's tempting to speculate.
But again, when I go back to that disembodied mind thought process of, like,
thinking, like, what am I thinking when I'm over there?
Since my body doesn't seem to be there and I'm there and it seems more real
than real, is that me just tricking myself into thinking that it's a different
place?
I mean, how could you tell?
How could I tell, right?
Yeah, I mean, how would you know?
I have one way of looking at it that I always describe.
This is what I say to people.
I say, if there was a thing that you could do, like a door you could go through,
and that door would take you to another dimension where you would communicate
with some entity beyond your wildest imagination that's constantly visually
changing and communicating with you telepathically.
And knows everything about you, sees all your bullshit, and is trying to impart
some ideas that will help you with your life.
Because it's a godlike experience.
Like, you're experiencing, like, some sort of uber-powerful entity, some more uber-intelligent
entity.
Something beyond any, if we just looked at humans and thought of the evolution
of human, one day we'll get to this.
We're not going to get to that.
That is a different, it seems like it's so beyond the body.
It's so beyond the human monkey body.
This is what I tell people.
I go, if I could give, if you would open a door and you would go there and you'd
have that experience, would you do it?
And most people are like, yes, I'm going to do it.
If I gave you a drug that gave you that experience, you still have the exact
same experience.
It's the exact same experience.
You've just decided it's not real.
And you've decided it's not real because you're putting it in this category of
hallucination.
Like, what does that even mean?
What does that even mean?
You're actually having that experience.
I don't know what it is.
I mean, I like to play devil's advocate and I like to think that maybe I'm
messing with my own head and maybe I'm just like, it's like, I'm like, well,
through doing what?
Looking at it like maybe it's just my neurochemistry going bonkers and, you
know, interacting with my visual cortex could produce this hallucinations.
But it doesn't feel that way.
That's what I'm, that's why I'm trying to figure out if you're bullshitting
yourself when you're over there or if it's, you really are over there.
But what I tell people is it's the same experience.
Yeah.
What difference does it make?
What?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's previously invisible.
Yeah.
And it contains information.
A lot.
Yeah.
And I think that's all you can say about it.
It contains information about you, right?
Well, it could only be happening to you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not happening to somebody else.
It's like it gives you advice.
It can.
But you, I mean, how do you judge the value of that advice?
Yeah.
Well, what is the advice?
One of the things that happened to me, I've talked about this adenoseum,
unfortunately, if you've heard this before, folks.
But one of my experiences, there was like a bunch of jokers, like jesters, well,
like jester hats.
And they were giving me the finger.
They were going like this, fuck you.
And it made me realize I was taking myself too seriously.
Like instantaneously, I went, oh, I get it.
And they were like this.
They went like, don't do that.
Don't do that.
But like saying fuck you to me, it was so clear what they were doing.
It was so clear.
It was like a little lesson.
Like, don't do that.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
You know, don't do that.
That's like three syllables.
And they correspond to a heartbeat.
You know, when I tripped on DMT the first time, these beings came out of this
waterfall and they said, now do you see, now do you see, now do you see.
It was the same three beat thing.
I love you.
They say, I love you a lot.
I love you.
And I think it corresponds to the heartbeat because it's in sync.
You know, the vocalizations in sync with the heartbeat.
I love you.
Yeah.
Bum, bum, bum.
Bum, bum, bum.
The one time I did it and these entities were talking to me and saying, I love
you 600 million, 500,000 times.
Like the way a child would say, I love you with like some crazy number, seven
billion zillions.
And every time they did that, it would show a more beautiful image.
Like every image.
Like I love you 600 million, 500,000 times.
I love you 700 zillion, 400 million.
And every time they did it, it was just this bigger and bigger experience
visually to the point where I was like crying.
I was like openly weeping at the beauty of just what I was seeing.
It sounds beautiful.
It was wild.
But it was that simple sort of, there's just like a, like they'll say simple
things to you in a way that you're not really hearing it, but you know what
they're saying.
Well, it kind of penetrates you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's very weird.
Mm-hmm.
And.
It's very weird.
Very weird.
Yeah.
You used to not talk about your personal experiences with it.
I know.
I figured to hell with it.
Yeah, I think so.
I think it's good that you did that.
Because I remember when we first met, you were reluctant to discuss it.
You, you, I mean, you didn't really want to talk about it publicly or want
people to know about it publicly.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I figured that I had some legitimacy to maintain.
A few years back, I had this conversation with Dennis McKenna, you know, like
about your reputation.
And, or, you know, one's reputation, he said, I've just given up on my
reputation.
It's just, you know, so.
Well, you talk as openly about psychedelics as Dennis.
He's the best guy to talk about it, too.
Because his, he's got a really interesting way of discussing things, you know,
and he's had so many personal experiences.
And he's so smart, and he's got this incredible vocabulary to just draw from.
And when he describes the actual impact of psilocybin and psychedelic chemicals,
particularly in formation of language, he was describing the stoned ape theory.
The stoned ape, yeah.
It's incredible listening to him say it, because the way he describes it, like,
he actually understands what psilocybin and what all these various molecules
are doing to different parts of the brain and why that would facilitate the
development of language and compassion and connect the tribe more.
Well, I mean, you know, do you think it actually is information coming from the
brain?
Or do you think, you know, that the portal is being opened up and the
information is coming from above?
I think that's more likely.
I think the more likely is that the brain is an antenna.
You know, it's one of the things that creative people will always tell you.
Like, someone sits down and writes a song.
It just, like, came from the air.
They're getting things from somewhere else, almost.
And it's almost like you just got to get out of your own way.
You got to put enough good juice out there in the world and take enough bad out
and, like, and then just, and see the world from a clear perspective, at least
in these brief moments of creativity, and then things come to them.
They just, like, they're sitting in front of the computer and, bam, they got an
idea for a book.
Like, where the fuck is all that coming from?
It seems like people always want to say it's a muse.
Like, that's the Steven Pressfield analogy.
He's got a great book about it called The War of Art, all about, like, inviting
the muse into your life and being disciplined and sitting there at the computer
every day and summoning it and treating it like it's an entity.
And if you do that, it works.
Like, this is what's crazy.
Like, people who are disciplined and also creative, like, that decide, I'm
going to write this book, I'm going to sit down, and I'm going to force myself
every day.
Like, ideas come to them.
Like, where are they, where the fuck are they coming from?
Like, is it possible that the brain really is, like, some sort of an antenna
and that wisdom and love and all these different things, they're just all
around us.
We're just confused by our monkey bodies.
Well, do you think we're getting that information from God?
If that's what you want to call it, you know, the only problem I have with the
word God, and it's not really a problem, but it's a recognition, is that it's a
loaded word.
It's a loaded word, but so is love.
Yes.
You know, so I think you just got to take the good with the bad.
Well, that's Alex Gray's position.
Alex Gray says we have to take it back the same way we take back love and say
God all the time, and, you know, that's what he does.
Yeah, and that's the reason I think it's good to use the word psychedelic
instead of hallucinogen or entheogen or anything like that.
And theogen's a cool word.
It's cool.
It assumes a lot, though.
Yeah, it's like people that call weed cannabis.
Yeah.
I like to smoke a lot of cannabis.
Like, okay, settle down, buddy.
Yeah, like the term entheogen, it refers to God, entheos, and it refers to en,
which means that God exists within.
And it has the word gen in it, which means it's a drug which is generating
something like God.
You know, so that assumes a lot.
And there are people who could benefit from psychedelic experiences who might
not caught into those ideas and would avoid entheogen, but might take a
psychedelic.
Yeah, I think psychedelic sounds manageable, and theogen sounds like you're
joining a cult.
It's a bit cultish.
Well, isn't everything a bit cultish?
It seems like whatever anything, you know, really affects people in a lot of
ways, there's always someone who looks to sort of take the reins and sort of
dictate what the experience is and how to do it and what the ritual should be
and how you should, you know, manage it.
And it gets culty.
It gets culty, but I think you could, you know, decultify it to some extent.

What Is Happening in the Brain During a DMT Trip?

Well, you know, one of the interesting things about endogenous DMT, and
especially with his
discovery in such high levels in the brain, is that it may be the endometrics.
It could be
kind of regulating everything all of the time. What do you mean by that,
regulating everything
all the time? It could be the way we interact with reality, is through endogenous
DMT, which
is always at a steady level. Well, the way I began wondering about that is
because, you
know, what is the purpose of endogenous DMT? You know, why does the brain make
DMT?
Can you do a DMT test on a person's blood level?
It's pretty hard. It's pretty hard. It's really low in the blood. It's like,
you know,
billionths of a gram per milliliter.
Okay, so you'd have to measure it in the actual brain itself?
In the brain or spinal fluid, maybe spinal fluid, but most likely brain.
When they start doing stuff like Neuralink, where they're going to insert wires
into your
brain, and, you know, you're going to have an app to control your brain, to
control your
mood. I mean, it seems like that would be one of the ways they would do it,
right?
Well, you'd need to find, you know, where in the brain the main source of DMT
is, and then put an
electrode there and keep that going.
Do you think it's limited to one specific area where it's developed?
Oh, man, they're just beginning to unravel the whole role and location of endogenous
DMT.
So when they know that it's in the liver and they know that it's in the lungs,
the lungs,
to me, sound interesting because of holotropic breathing.
Right.
You know, because people have done breathing exercises and achieved states of
altered states
of consciousness.
Yeah, yeah.
That kind of makes sense, doesn't it?
Well, yeah, but I think it's not working through the lungs because those more
recent
studies haven't really demonstrated DMT in lung.
Oh.
Yeah, yeah.
I used to say it's made in lung.
Everybody used to say it's made in lung, but it seems like it's made in brain.
So if it's made in brain, then all the other stuff, you're just getting like a
trickle-down
effect?
Well.
Does it go through the whole body?
Yeah, but it's metabolized so quickly that, you know, by the time it gets into
the blood that
you're drawing, the concentrations are pretty minuscule.
Wow.
What a sneaky molecule.
Well, you have to wonder what it's doing, right?
Right.
What is it doing?
What is endogenous?
What's the function of it?
You know, there's the possibility we have a DMT neurotransmitter system like
serotonin
or dopamine, in which case, you know, what is it doing?
Wow.
So this is a really wild way to think about it because to this time, I'd never
even considered
that.
I always thought of it as being something that was responsible maybe for very
vivid dreams
or something that was responsible for near-death experiences or what happens to
you when you
die, the idea of a portal.
But I never thought about it as being something that is regulating regular,
everyday reality.
Well, you know, one of the hallmarks of the DMT effect is that it feels more
real than real.
Yeah.
And you study the function of endogenous neurotransmitters by giving, you know,
drugs that modify the effect
of that endogenous neurotransmitter.
You know, so we've got the SSRI antidepressants and they affect serotonin,
although they may not all that much.
But still, that's been the working model for decades.
And, you know, so because SRIs are useful for depression and anxiety, you then
can speculate that serotonin is responsible for mood or anxiety.
You know, so the hallmark of the DMT effect is it's more real than real.
It feels more real than anything else.
You know, so it's tempting to speculate.
But again, when I go back to that disembodied mind thought process of, like,
thinking, like, what am I thinking when I'm over there?
Since my body doesn't seem to be there and I'm there and it seems more real
than real, is that me just tricking myself into thinking that it's a different
place?
I mean, how could you tell?
How could I tell, right?
Yeah, I mean, how would you know?
I have one way of looking at it that I always describe.
This is what I say to people.
I say, if there was a thing that you could do, like a door you could go through,
and that door would take you to another dimension where you would communicate
with some entity beyond your wildest imagination that's constantly visually
changing and communicating with you telepathically.
And knows everything about you, sees all your bullshit, and is trying to impart
some ideas that will help you with your life.
Because it's a godlike experience.
Like, you're experiencing, like, some sort of uber-powerful entity, some more uber-intelligent
entity.
Something beyond any, if we just looked at humans and thought of the evolution
of human, one day we'll get to this.
We're not going to get to that.
That is a different, it seems like it's so beyond the body.
It's so beyond the human monkey body.
This is what I tell people.
I go, if I could give, if you would open a door and you would go there and you'd
have that experience, would you do it?
And most people are like, yes, I'm going to do it.
If I gave you a drug that gave you that experience, you still have the exact
same experience.
It's the exact same experience.
You've just decided it's not real.
And you've decided it's not real because you're putting it in this category of
hallucination.
Like, what does that even mean?
What does that even mean?
You're actually having that experience.
I don't know what it is.
I mean, I like to play devil's advocate and I like to think that maybe I'm
messing with my own head and maybe I'm just like, it's like, I'm like, well,
through doing what?
Looking at it like maybe it's just my neurochemistry going bonkers and, you
know, interacting with my visual cortex could produce this hallucinations.
But it doesn't feel that way.
That's what I'm, that's why I'm trying to figure out if you're bullshitting
yourself when you're over there or if it's, you really are over there.
But what I tell people is it's the same experience.
Yeah.
What difference does it make?
What?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's previously invisible.
Yeah.
And it contains information.
A lot.
Yeah.
And I think that's all you can say about it.
It contains information about you, right?
Well, it could only be happening to you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not happening to somebody else.
It's like it gives you advice.
It can.
But you, I mean, how do you judge the value of that advice?
Yeah.
Well, what is the advice?
One of the things that happened to me, I've talked about this adenoseum,
unfortunately, if you've heard this before, folks.
But one of my experiences, there was like a bunch of jokers, like jesters, well,
like jester hats.
And they were giving me the finger.
They were going like this, fuck you.
And it made me realize I was taking myself too seriously.
Like instantaneously, I went, oh, I get it.
And they were like this.
They went like, don't do that.
Don't do that.
But like saying fuck you to me, it was so clear what they were doing.
It was so clear.
It was like a little lesson.
Like, don't do that.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
You know, don't do that.
That's like three syllables.
And they correspond to a heartbeat.
You know, when I tripped on DMT the first time, these beings came out of this
waterfall and they said, now do you see, now do you see, now do you see.
It was the same three beat thing.
I love you.
They say, I love you a lot.
I love you.
And I think it corresponds to the heartbeat because it's in sync.
You know, the vocalizations in sync with the heartbeat.
I love you.
Yeah.
Bum, bum, bum.
Bum, bum, bum.
The one time I did it and these entities were talking to me and saying, I love
you 600 million, 500,000 times.
Like the way a child would say, I love you with like some crazy number, seven
billion zillions.
And every time they did that, it would show a more beautiful image.
Like every image.
Like I love you 600 million, 500,000 times.
I love you 700 zillion, 400 million.
And every time they did it, it was just this bigger and bigger experience
visually to the point where I was like crying.
I was like openly weeping at the beauty of just what I was seeing.
It sounds beautiful.
It was wild.
But it was that simple sort of, there's just like a, like they'll say simple
things to you in a way that you're not really hearing it, but you know what
they're saying.
Well, it kind of penetrates you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's very weird.
Mm-hmm.
And.
It's very weird.
Very weird.
Yeah.
You used to not talk about your personal experiences with it.
I know.
I figured to hell with it.
Yeah, I think so.
I think it's good that you did that.
Because I remember when we first met, you were reluctant to discuss it.
You, you, I mean, you didn't really want to talk about it publicly or want
people to know about it publicly.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I figured that I had some legitimacy to maintain.
A few years back, I had this conversation with Dennis McKenna, you know, like
about your reputation.
And, or, you know, one's reputation, he said, I've just given up on my
reputation.
It's just, you know, so.
Well, you talk as openly about psychedelics as Dennis.
He's the best guy to talk about it, too.
Because his, he's got a really interesting way of discussing things, you know,
and he's had so many personal experiences.
And he's so smart, and he's got this incredible vocabulary to just draw from.
And when he describes the actual impact of psilocybin and psychedelic chemicals,
particularly in formation of language, he was describing the stoned ape theory.
The stoned ape, yeah.
It's incredible listening to him say it, because the way he describes it, like,
he actually understands what psilocybin and what all these various molecules
are doing to different parts of the brain and why that would facilitate the
development of language and compassion and connect the tribe more.
Well, I mean, you know, do you think it actually is information coming from the
brain?
Or do you think, you know, that the portal is being opened up and the
information is coming from above?
I think that's more likely.
I think the more likely is that the brain is an antenna.
You know, it's one of the things that creative people will always tell you.
Like, someone sits down and writes a song.
It just, like, came from the air.
They're getting things from somewhere else, almost.
And it's almost like you just got to get out of your own way.
You got to put enough good juice out there in the world and take enough bad out
and, like, and then just, and see the world from a clear perspective, at least
in these brief moments of creativity, and then things come to them.
They just, like, they're sitting in front of the computer and, bam, they got an
idea for a book.
Like, where the fuck is all that coming from?
It seems like people always want to say it's a muse.
Like, that's the Steven Pressfield analogy.
He's got a great book about it called The War of Art, all about, like, inviting
the muse into your life and being disciplined and sitting there at the computer
every day and summoning it and treating it like it's an entity.
And if you do that, it works.
Like, this is what's crazy.
Like, people who are disciplined and also creative, like, that decide, I'm
going to write this book, I'm going to sit down, and I'm going to force myself
every day.
Like, ideas come to them.
Like, where are they, where the fuck are they coming from?
Like, is it possible that the brain really is, like, some sort of an antenna
and that wisdom and love and all these different things, they're just all
around us.
We're just confused by our monkey bodies.
Well, do you think we're getting that information from God?
If that's what you want to call it, you know, the only problem I have with the
word God, and it's not really a problem, but it's a recognition, is that it's a
loaded word.
It's a loaded word, but so is love.
Yes.
You know, so I think you just got to take the good with the bad.
Well, tha