Encountering DMT Entities: Are they Real?

A recent scientific study has found a large number of DMT users’ meet entities during their trip. Can we say they really exist?

Evan Lewis-Healey
5 min readJun 23, 2022
Artwork by DavidZydd. Retrieved from Pixabay.

If you take a trip to the Amazonian basin, you can find the perennial shrub, Psychotria viridis. While this plant may seem unassuming to the untrained eye, it actually contains the compound N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Dubbed ‘The Spirit Molecule’, DMT is one of the most potent naturally-occurring psychedelics known to humankind. Traditionally, Psychotria viridis makes up one half of the sacred brew ayahuasca, which, when drunk, will send you on a mind-bending psychedelic journey. However, DMT can also be smoked.

When smoked in sufficient quantities, this can lead to a ‘breakthrough’ experience — an intense but short-lasting psychedelic trip that catapults the user into another world.

While the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca have been heavily documented (psychologist Benny Shanon took ayahuasca over 100 times, and wrote extensively on his encounters), the widespread experiences of smoked DMT is understudied comparatively.

However, in a recent scientific paper, published in Scientific Reports, researchers from the US, Canada, and the UK took a deep dive into the DMT-world, to map the…

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Evan Lewis-Healey

PhD candidate at Cambridge University. Studying the cognitive neuroscience of altered states of consciousness.