Morris: Exactly how DMT alters
human consciousness
has eluded scientists, mystics,
and the average Joe
that smokes DMT.
I'm just...the average Joe
that smokes DMT occasionally
and paints Mickey Mouses.
Morris:
Joe Roberts is a painter
whose work breaks with
the conventions of visionary art
to explore new ways
of depicting the DMT experience.
Can you show me some of the work
that you've been doing?
Roberts: Wow, they really do
a good job.
I -- I -- for me, I feel
like whe-- when I'm...
uh, attributing, oftentimes,
I'll see something
way off in the distance.
And I'll be like,
"Oh, yeah, there's, like --
I saw, like, that guy
over there mowing his lawn
or whatever weird shit that
little guy is doing over there.
But I don't really know
how to describe the little guy,
so that's kind of the idea
behind the background
there out the window.
It's just like far things
off in the distance
that you can kind of see.
That's actually about DMT,
for sure.
Morris:
And that's something you saw?
If you simplified what I saw
down to, like, one symbol
that I used, you know...
'Cause I feel like some people
know what's going on
when they see it.
Like, I imagine.
I get a lot of positive feedback
on Instagram.
These are all kind of --
they're just like notes
from smoking DMT basically.
Could you take me through
one of the drawings?
Sure.
Yeah, this guy.
So, like, you know...
Roberts:
You end up in this place,
it's kind of like a palace.
You can kind of like
move through it.
When you look down the hallway,
and there'll be, like,
millions of other
hallways to look at.
The walls are, like, pink,
but they're not pink,
they're all the colors that you
can think of, kind of changing.
And it's always something
that I'm always kind of like,
"I didn't know if I should be
looking over there anyways."
Like, there's some
cooler shit over here
that is probably not gonna,
like, scare me.
'Cause there is
weird shit in there.
There's, like, weird rooms
or there'll be, like,
canals filled with water.
The water, you look at,
and it's just...
there's like a sea monkey heaven
or something in there,
and they're all just, like,
shooting around and...
A -- like the face
from the anonymous guys,
do you know who
I'm talking about?
-Guy Fawkes?
-Yeah!
But extra smiley, like
he's smiling his brains out!
And he's in there.
He's -- he's, like, a part
of the wall or something.
Or like the floor
will be missing
and there will be outer space.
I'm bad at describing stuff
while I was in there.
I really am.
Um...
Well,
it's hard to describe.
I'm, like, ashamed
of my drawing skills
'cause they're like --
I'm like, "All right,
so, like,
there's like this happy shit
shooting at me
that I feel, like,"
but it's like -- it doesn't look
really like this, like kind of.
I see it, and I'm like, "Well,
this is the best I can do."
Kevin, go away --
you're farting!
Oh, my God!
Is that a new painting?
-This one?
-Yeah.
So this is the one
I was starting for you.
I started making,
like, paintings like that
about the process
of extracting DMT.
This will be mimosa,
this will be a red lye,
this will be vinegar.
That's gonna be a crock pot,
coffee filters, a funnel,
and, like,
measuring cups and stuff.
It's beautiful.
What do you think about the fact
that it's a drug
that anyone can make on
a small scale in their kitchen
as opposed
to something like LSD?
I think
that's the best part.
More people should.
Phalaris aquatica,
Acacia confusa,
and most commonly,
Mimosa hostilis,
a thorny tree
in the legume family
that grows wild
in Southern Mexico.
♪♪
Alexander Shulgin wrote
that DMT is everywhere.
And there's nowhere
that's more true
than the mercados of Chiapas,
where Mimosa hostilis,
locally known as tepezcohuite,
is a staple in
traditional medicine.
♪♪
Oh.
Sí.
♪♪
For centuries,
the bark of Mimosa hostilis
has been used as a treatment
for burns, wounds,
and is an ingredient
in beautifying creams.
But I'm not here on
a dermatological investigation.
♪♪
When chemists first detected
DMT in Mimosa hostilis,
it was still thought
to be synthetic.
It had never been found
in nature previously,
and it's been used in Mexico
for, at the very least, decades,
and probably hundreds
of years, as well.
Even though this plot of land is
exclusively used to grow
Mimosa hostilis commercially,
none of it
is intentionally planted.
♪♪
This purple bark...
that surrounds the root
is the part of the tree
that has the most concentrated
natural sources of DMT.
Look at the depth of this color.
It's really magnificent.
Have any of you
ever heard of DMT?
DMT?
Do you know if there
are any other ways
that people use this plant
other than as a skin treatment?
What happens to the bark
when you're done harvesting it?
♪♪
Now that the bark has been
reduced to small chips,
it's gonna be powdered.
Do you think there's something
special or magical
about the tepezcohuite tree?
So after the roots have been
ground to a powder,
this is the final product.
It's shipped anywhere that
people want
Mimosa hostilis root bark.
Used to make soaps, skin creams,
but it can also be used
as a source of DMT.
♪♪
Though most people in Mexico
are unaware of tepezcohuite's
DMT content,
there are some
notable exceptions.
♪♪
Outside of the legality,
what do you think
these workers would say
if they realized that this bark
that they're harvesting is used
as this incredibly
powerful psychedelic drug
that transports people
to other dimensions?
Man #2: Uh, they don't need
to know about DMT,
because in their minds,
they're gonna feel like
they are doing illegal things.
I mean, we all know that they're
not doing nothing illegal.
♪♪
♪♪
Between the two of you,
how much DMT have you extracted?
'Cause we are not rich.
Do you think couples
that have problems,
that argue a lot
could benefit
from learning to extract
DMT together?
[ Chuckles ] No. No, I think
they can have a better...
So you have four buckets,
four kilos of sodium hydroxide.
He's going to prepare aqueous
sodium hydroxide solution
that's highly basic.
That will be used
to liberate the DMT freebase
from the Mimosa tenuiflora
root bark.
[ Coughs ]
-Careful with...
Yes.
It's caustic.
♪♪
1.4 liters for
one kilo sodium hydroxide.
And we have to wait now.
So you're waiting for it
to dissolve.
Ah. We're -- it's gonna take
about 20 minutes.
Do you think the process of
extracting the DMT is spiritual?
The sodium hydroxide has been
dissolved in the water.
It's about a pH 14.
The pK of DMT is 8.68,
so any bark that is
introduced to this water
is going to
immediately react
and all the DMT will be
in the freebase form,
which is not
water soluble.
DMT's basic nitrogen is
deprotonated by hydroxide ions,
liberating the freebase,
which is soluble
in non-polar solvents.
It looks like
rising bread.
♪♪
A solution of naphtha
and hexanes is added
to the alkaline
root-bark mixture
and stirred for two hours
to extract the DMT freebase.
♪♪
Do you see?
The DMT-containing solvent
is filtered
and put in trays
under high-pressure sodium lamps
to evaporate.
The concentrated solution
is then placed in a container
to freeze-precipitate overnight.
Tomorrow
12:00, you can smoke this.
[ Chuckles ]
♪♪
So I begin giving DMT
to the people inside jail.
Do you think it's worth the risk
to extract DMT?
♪♪
So this was left
in a freezer overnight.
Overnight.
Only normally,
I leave it 24 hours.
But for this special occasion,
we're taking it early.
So after the solvent
has evaporated,
you scrape it off
of the dishes, dry it out,
and this is
the finished product?
Yeah,
that's the finished product.
♪♪
It's a very nice smell.
It's indolic, but a little
bit floral, as well.
Very complex...
compelling odor that...
I love.
The traditional use
and ubiquity of Mimosa hostilis
in Mexico allows
for its sale and cultivation
without government interference.
But in the United States,
the purchase of this bark
can result in arrests
and penalties
that threaten the freedom
of peaceful alkaloid extractors.
Hi.
Nice to meet you.
Travis.
♪♪
♪♪
Morris: Travis Riddle was
a pizza delivery man
and psychedelic enthusiast
whose interest in DMT extraction
almost resulted in
a decade-long prison sentence.
This is
the Bird Gardens of Naples.
It's a cool little oasis
out here,
a little place where
I do my community service.
Just a rescue
for parrots.
A lot of them are aged and kind
of like a retirement home.
-Wow.
-Yeah.
Wow.
That could be me
in a little cage.
Kind of looks like
a jail.
Morris:
It's a very dramatic story
and I want people
to appreciate
that this is an absurd thing
to have occurred.
Break it down slowly
and dramatically.
[ Thunder rumbles ]
So there's a legal gray area
with DMT.
I'd read different things,
that it was legal,
that you could get the bark
because it's not really DMT
in that form.
I had seen it online,
I ordered it.
You weren't
ordering DMT.
No, no, no.
Mimosa hostilis root bark.
It's actually
a common ingredient
in a lot
of beauty care products.
So I didn't really hesitate
at that point.
And there's not many people that
have gotten in trouble for it.
And I got 4.5 kilograms
of it.
And that triggered something
with the French government
to let Homeland Security know
that there was a package coming.
♪♪
And when you don't
about the substance,
you treat it like something
that could be dangerous.
That's what
they're trained to do.
And treated me
as like a dangerous criminal.
♪♪
I got it ordered to
my grandparents' house.
♪♪
Which was only being there as
surveillance video being done.
♪♪
Homeland Security essentially
starts stalking you.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
They flew
a helicopter in.
Cost them like 20 grand just to
launch a helicopter from Miami,
and I was being watched the
whole day from the helicopter.
I never noticed it.
I should have.
They were watching
pretty closely.
Picked up the package,
and I thought I was all clear.
I did have everything
in the car,
It was the plan
for the night.
Get right to it,
extract it.
[ Birds squawking ]
♪♪
♪♪
Less than five seconds
after getting in the car,
I was on
a one-way circle.
They came and hit my car
head-on, pretty hard.
It was -- I thought I was
getting robbed at first.
Undercover agents with AR-15s
threw me on the ground.
Pinned me down to the floor,
with like a gun like this.
It was very traumatic.
I didn't know
what was happening.
They brought me in
for questioning.
And -- and you were up
against decades in prison,
millions of dollars
in fines.
They were treating it
as DMT the whole time.
If you look at
any of the reports I have,
I ordered DMT,
not the bark.
It was like 4.5 kilograms
of DMT,
which on their scale,
is the equivalent
to 700 to 1,000 kilograms
of marijuana.
Uh...
-What does that mean?
There's a whole guideline
for sentencing.
They do equivalencies.
And, like, marijuana
is kind of the base.
So they convert
the Mimosa hostilis root bark
into DMT, and then convert
the DMT into marijuana.
For sentencing, which...
And that's
how you're sentenced.
It was like a level 28, which
is minimum of 7 to 10 years.
I thought, "This is it.
Like, I'm gonna be in jail
for a long time."
In order to expedite
the unjust punishment of people
who use drugs unfamiliar
to judges and prosecutors,
a system was devised
to convert certain substances
into chemically
and pharmacologically
unrelated cannabis equivalents.
One gram of DMT is
sentenced as being equivalent
to 100 grams of "marihuana."
One gram of DOM is equivalent
to 1.67 kilos of marijuana.
And one gram of PCP
is equivalent to 10 kilos
of marijuana.
There's a Mimosa hostilis
right at a park by my house
that the county
is growing.
-Really?
-Yeah.
On county property.
So they arrested you
for possessing a plant
that they
themselves possess.
-Yeah.
-You sure it's Mimosa hostilis?
Yeah,
there's a tag on it.
So this is the county-grown
Mimosa tree.
Exact same thing
I ordered.
I don't know whose idea
it was to bring this here,
if they had any idea
that it has DMT in it.
Does it not look like
someone was digging there?
Oh, yeah, for sure.
You think people are illegally
harvesting the roots?
Not me.
♪♪
Morris: DMT, like a lot
of psychoactive drugs
that are now known
to be found in nature,
it was initially thought to be
a synthetic compound.
Yeah, it was first
synthesized 1930s by Manske,
believed to be synthetic.
And it was subsequently
found in nature.
And they later found
that that was, in fact,
consistent
with the synthetic DMT.
A lot of the research back
then was done
with injected DMT,
usually IM,
which I think limited
its more widespread use.
But it was then,
shortly thereafter,
discovered by Nick Sand
that you could smoke it.
And so I...
I think, nowadays, that's
definitely the most common route
that pure DMT is taken.
Morris: Nick Sand was
a legendary clandestine chemist,
best known for his work
synthesizing vast quantities
of LSD in the 1960s.
But his true passion was DMT.
DMT is a drug ill-suited
to underground manufacture
due to the high dose required
and relatively
complex synthesis.
Yet Sand still produced
a reported 30 kilograms
over the course of his career,
which ended abruptly in 1996
when his lab in British Columbia
was raided by the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police.
In the past,
it was generally synthetic,
and it can be synthesized
fairly straightforward,
but it's definitely not
something that anyone could do.
Some of the chemicals,
like lithium hydride
are extremely pyrophoric
and dangerous.
The reactions
need to be done
under an inert atmosphere
of nitrogen
or argon to prevent flammability
and to get a good yield.
♪♪
With a new generation
of botanical extractors
replacing the chemists
of the past,
synthetic DMT and the people
that risk their freedom
to produce it
have become far less common.
♪♪
I'm on my way to meet a chemist
who's doing underground research
on different DMT derivatives.
He doesn't sell the products
that he creates,
he doesn't give them
away to other people.
His interest is solely
in self-exploration
and has used his experiments
to develop new ways
of synthesizing DMT.
♪♪
♪♪
Chemist: What a chemist
really is is, you know,
you're a quantum
mechanical engineer.
You're moving little tiny bits
of things that aren't even real
and creating
new things out of it.
I've always just been
drawn to that
alchemy of transformation.
The only thing is, like,
for video, like,
the amount of shots
that are in my apartment...
-Yes.
-...I want to keep them
to a very minimum.
Yeah. Okay.
All right, ready?
Can you tell me
a little bit about
how you first got
interested in chemistry?
So my interest in chemistry
began when I was pretty young,
you know,
10, 11 years old.
My interest
in chemistry today
evolved really through
discovering psychedelics
because they expand my mind
to what's really possible.
What was the first psychedelic
that you synthesized?
Well, the first psychedelic
that I actually synthesized
was mescaline
from vellen.
That's a pretty tricky
first synthesis.
I wanted a challenge,
'cause I knew,
you know, I would have
trouble along the way.
But through doing it,
that I would become
a better chemist
because of it.
The big draw towards DMT is
that fact that it's ubiquitous
and found everywhere
in nature.
'Cause,
in my opinion, that's --
that's the be all,
end all on --
on what you can do
with chemistry.
It's trying to do what nature
does so effortlessly.
Some people see the two as being
at odds with one another.
We are the natural
living essence.
We're the ones doing it.
Like, what makes us, you know,
a human, you know,
fumbling around
with chemicals
any different than,
you know, a plant?
We're not very good at it,
but it's like, you know,
we might as well, like,
it's fun, you know?
It is fun.
But, you know,
in all seriousness,
let's make a plan here.
The first thing is make that --
triacetoxy borohydride.
Powdered sodium borohydride is
added to a round-bottomed flask
and suspended in DCE.
Three molar equivalents
of glacial acetic acid
are added dropwise.
So this is perfect.
It's almost,
like, meditative
just to watch
the stirring reaction.
It's good.
An initial protonolysis reaction
produces borane,
sodium acetate,
and hydrogen gas.
Borane accepts an electron pair
from the acetate anion,
forming sodium
mono-acetoxy borohydride.
The reaction repeats itself
with the two
remaining equivalents
of acetic acid
to yield sodium
triacetoxy borohydride.
Why are you using
triacetoxy borohydride
as opposed to sodium borohydride
or sodium cyanoborohydride?
Right, so the thing about
triacetoxy is it's great
for reducing amines,
but it's not very good
at reducing carbonyls.
So if it reacts with
the formaldehyde, you're fucked.
You know.
In a separate
round-bottomed flask,
tryptamine is dissolved in DCE
with brief microwave radiation,
followed by two molar
equivalents of triethylamine,
three molar equivalents
of the formaldehyde
sodium bisulfite adduct,
four molar equivalents of
sodium triacetoxy borohydride,
and a dash of four-angstrom
molecular sieves.
Actually, I'm gonna give
this little bit to stir.
I think of the monoliths
of the ancient past,
you the pyramids, and the kind
of, you know, Stonehenges.
Like, in a way,
those things are a tribute
to the gods
and to nature.
And you think, like, it's --
it's art, right?
That's all -- I think all art
is drawn from the same thing.
It's a tribute to something
greater than yourself.
And I think that's exactly
what total synthesis is.
An offering or a tribute
to say I admire this,
and here's my best effort.
You know,
and through that,
I think that's exactly
what we're doing.
You know, like, we're --
we're -- we're alive, too.
We're in nature, too.
And, you know, we --
we're trying, you know?
Yeah.
And it's silvery.
When it's silvery
like that,
usually means
it's good, you know.
Just that's how I know.
After giving the reactants
10 minutes to condense,
four molar equivalents
of sodium triacetoxy borohydride
are added dropwise.
There.
We're all done.
The reaction begins
when triethylamine
deprotonates the formaldehyde
sodium bisulfite adduct,
freeing the aldehyde to condense
with tryptamine's
basic nitrogen,
forming an iminium ion,
and eliminating water,
which is sequestered
by molecular sieves
preventing hydrolysis
and driving the reaction forward
in accordance with
Le Chatelier's Principle.
The reductive amination begins
when hydride attacks
the electrophilic iminium carbon
and electrons flow
into the ammonium cation,
producing NMT and restoring
nucleophilicity for the amine
to attack the second
formaldehyde carbonyl.
An analogous reduction of the
tertiary iminium ion yields DMT.
It's been a long time
since I used DMT.
I kind of see it
as nothing
that I can immediately
gain from it, right?
It's like -- I mean, I'm not
on the brink of death, right.
If the time comes where,
you know,
I'll use them,
then I'll use them.
But, you know, it's not an --
an active activity of mine.
Some pursue DMT for the joy
of its chemistry.
But for others,
the fun doesn't start
until the DMT is in
a very different type...
of glassware.
♪♪
Morris:
In the United States,
where DMT
has no traditional use,
enthusiasts and distributors
sometimes take on
the role of a shaman,
whatever they think that is.
Man: Personally, myself,
I see a shaman
as a glorified trip-sitter.
It's gonna happen no matter
who's standing next to you,
what kind of bells
are being rung
or whistles are being blown.
I'm just gonna be there
to make sure you don't choke
on your tongue.
We're all shamans in a way.
We're all healers.
That's interesting.
Can you tell me
about what you did
before you were selling DMT
and acting as a DMT guide?
I was working at Silicon Valley
as a director of marketing
and inside sales
for a tech company.
But it wasn't
spiritually fulfilling?
No, it left something, um,
a hunger within me.
And I found DMT
through someone from Reddit,
and it started this --
these questions in my head,
like what is this,
where can I find this?
And what kind of people come
to your door asking for DMT?
Everyone
who you can think of.
Moms, dads,
a lot of young people,
professionals,
blue-collar people.
I've been able to share it
with Silicon Valley people,
artists from
Industrial Light & Magic,
Apple engineers,
Google engineers.
I can't even describe
all the titles.
Everybody wants to try
the spirit molecule.
And try to hold this
as long as you can.
♪♪
Big hit,
finish it, finish it.
I'm gonna give you
another one.
I want you to hold
this much longer.
Oh, I'm good.
Whoa.
You can do it.
No, I'm good.
Whoa.
♪♪
Whoa, this is cra...zy!
[ Chuckles ]
Wow.
[ Breathes deeply ]
[ Laughs ]
♪♪
♪♪
Wow.
♪♪
That was amazing.
I'm still here.
[ Laughs ]
Wow.
This is so strange.
[ Laughs ]
Man: Welcome back.
Hello.
Kind of back.
Things are
still dancing around.
What did you
just experience?
In English words,
it was a lot of...
geometric
carnival-esque colors.
Very fun.
It's -- It's like
really interactive.
I felt like I kept
holding up my fingers.
Was I doing that?
I felt like I was going
like this a lot.
-You were.
-Okay.
[ Laughs ]
That was very inspiring.
Inspiring in what way?
For a moment,
it felt good that I existed
and I had no control
over it.
I was...
happy and scared
at the same time.
I was scared because
I couldn't control it.
But I was happy that
it was going that direction.
Man: There's a reason
this stuff is so illegal.
It's because once you do it,
you see through the Matrix.
What about the government
and the people
that don't
understand DMT
or don't think people
should be using it?
What would you say to them
so they understood
why what you're doing
is valuable?
They know about it
already.
-Do they?
-Absolutely.
They harvest pineal glands,
and they use it themselves.
-The government?
-Yeah.
Yo, Pizzagate revealed
a lot of this.
I don't believe
in Pizzagate.
Um, uh, some people do.
Certain people
really do.
I didn't realize
there was a connection
between Pizzagate
and DMT.
Oh, absolutely, because
they're eating the...
the kids
and all the people.
And they're consuming
all the organs.
There are certain elements
specifically,
adrenochrome
and pineal glands.
Huh.
The idea that DMT is present
in the human brain
and is responsible for
altered states of consciousness
is deeply entrenched
in the popular understanding
of the drug.
But DMT has never been found
in the human brain.
There is
a small body of research
reporting its detection
in the brains of rodents,
notably a 2013
microdialysis experiment
that found nanogram quantities
in samples
obtained from the pineal
glands of living rats.
Morris: What do you think
about this idea
that DMT is produced
in the brain and is...
Oh. Yeah, I don't know.
I've heard about it.
I've read that
they found it in rats now,
and I guess that means
it's probably in people.
Uh...
Yeah.
That's --
That's kind of like...
I don't know
what that means.
But it makes sense,
I guess.
Despite the fact that DMT
is unstable in the body
and only present
in trace quantities, if at all,
I wanted to see
if it could be detected
in the whole brain homogeny
of rat and pig
by a gas chromatography
mass spectrometry.
♪♪
DMT and most tryptamines
are rapidly degraded.
In some instances, you know,
after an hour,
it's at very low levels
relative to what it was.
Well, this is definitely
the brain stem.
Brain stem there, too.
Let me take some
of visual cortex.
You know, freezing would
block the enzyme activity,
but as soon as you thaw and it
gets to a certain temperature,
that enzyme activity
will pick up again.
If there's
any monoamine oxidase present,
it might break it down.
The cerebellum
is so beautiful.
There are several
glandular structures.
The next step is
to homogenize the brains
to facilitate
the extraction process.
♪♪
Looks like
a strawberry milkshake.
After homogenization in
a phosphate buffer,
the brain samples
were centrifuged.
The supernatant was decanted
into a C8 cation
exchange SPE column
designed to bind polar amines,
non-polar components
of the supernatant dilute
with a series of wash solutions.
There's a graduated
cylinder somewhere.
Finally, a solution of
dichloromethane, isopropanol,
and ammonium hydroxide was used
to liberate the bound amines
from the stationary phase
in their freebase form.
A single fraction was collected
from each sample
and prepared for GC-MS analysis.
In case there's any uncertainty
relative to plans,
the brain is a totally
nonviable source for DMT.
This is just an
analytical experiment
to see if detectable
quantities exist.
And if there is, it is
absolutely a trace quantity.
There is no way that
everyone could ever use
the brain of an animal
as a viable source for DMT.
No way.
If you were killing people and
extracting DMT from their brain,
they might prosecute you
for DMT manufacturing...
and murder, but...
♪♪
Morris:
With the final samples prepared,
we ventured off to the GC-MS
to see what we'd found.
The tension was felt by everyone
in the room, include Jason.
♪♪
Both of us were skeptical about
the possibility we'd detect DMT,
even with
the exquisite sensitivity
of the mass spectrometer.
But to our great surprise,
we saw a peak at 188.3...
Could it be actual evidence
of endogenous DMT?
Yeah, I don't know.
We repeated the experiment
three times,
and never saw
the elusive peak again.
Perhaps it was trace
contamination
from a reference sample,
or perhaps self-transforming
machine elves
were dancing
on the mass spec's detector.
[ Both laugh ]
So, yeah, neither
the cow brain synaptic zones
or the pig brain had DMT.
And the rat brain
is inconclusive.
Inconclusive,
but it was detected.
Yeah, but needs
to be replicated.
Okay.
Yeah, it's been done before,
but it's clearly difficult.
♪♪
Even if endogenous DMT
plays no role human biology,
it doesn't make
the experiences people
have using it
any less transformative.
♪♪
Chemist: I get a rush out of
just
kind of making something new
and then kind of moving on
to the next thing.
So, really, it's a hobby.
So this has reacted
for the last...
Yeah, for the last
12 hours or so.
The reaction is done,
but the DMT still has to be
extracted from
the reaction mixture
using pH manipulations
analogous to the ones
that were used to isolate DMT
from Mimosa hostilis,
and had it been present,
from the brains of animals.
Half of chemistry is cleaning up
the mess you make
to get
that crystal product.
Yeah.
Looks good.
Oh, my gosh.
It's like crystalline, too.
You can filter that.
Wow. So that's instant
precipitation of DMT freebase.
Exactly.
I've never
just seen that happen.
It's beautiful.
And this is the only way
I know how I can share
with other people,
is to pursue, you know, the kind
of research I'm interested in.
So this is essentially
the end of it.
It has been precipitated out of
the fumarate salt
in this ether, acetone,
DCM mixture.
But this is it.
That -- that's...
DMT he's just
synthesized, so...
Yay.
Yay.
♪♪
♪♪
So, what are your plans
for this DMT?
I don't know.
I --
I don't think
I'll consume it.
I think I'll do
some analysis on it
to make sure it's,
you know, pure DMT,
to make sure the kind of
procedures worked as expected.
That's probably as far
as I'll go with it.
If it's pure, then it's nice
to have a synthetic standard.
♪♪
To do a bunch of crazy,
you know, things,
mixing a bunch of weird,
smelly chemicals together
and then get this crystal
and have the same experience,
you know,
it's crazy for anybody
because it's like,
"Whoa, you know."
That is the same thing as the
thing that came out of a plant.
But, you know,
I did it synthetically.
♪♪
It's sort of like art.
If someone makes a painting,
you can tell the difference
between someone
who's in it
for something greater
than themselves.
You can see it
in their art.
Roberts:
The chemists that are making
DMT are kind of like wizards.
Like, they're making magic
you can smoke, I guess, maybe.
Casts this crazy spell
on you for a little while.
Another way to look at it.
♪♪
Morris: Whether it's synthesized
by chemists in a lab
or enzymes in a cell,
the molecule is the same.
It's everywhere around us,
but that's easy to forget
without the help
of a wizard to conjure it.
♪ Since there is nothing left ♪
♪ Come and dance now ♪
♪ Everybody dance now ♪
♪ Now let's dance now ♪
♪ Everybody dance now ♪
♪ Now let's dance now ♪
♪ Everybody dance now ♪
♪ Now let's dance now ♪
♪ Everybody dance now ♪
♪♪
I also believe
in unicorns and fairies,
but that's a story
for another episode, my friend.
♪♪
