The following is an excerpt from p. 155-156 of Chapter 3, “Everywhere, All the Time: DMT and Drugism” from my book, Drugism (2022):
Terence McKenna’s first solo full-length work, The Archaic Revival (1991), deals extensively with DMT. The drug is just one of many topics covered in the book, and from it we can glean how DMT fit into McKenna’s broader worldview. In it, he explained that he had been interested in DMT since the mid-1960s, “because of both the experience and its rapid onset.”[i] LSD, mescaline, and the other similar drugs available to him at the time could take an hour or more to kick in. The idea of a fast-acting, strong trip appealed to the young McKenna. In this way, he exemplified the mid-20th century US culture in which he found himself: hungry for novelty and desirous of instant gratification.
In Section III, we learned that McKenna obtained his first dose of DMT from his friend Rick Watson. Years later, McKenna openly recalled that the stuff had come from one of the Stanford Research Institute’s research projects, many of which were backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the time. Watson even speculated whether he was given access to the DMT as part of some sort of experiment. The implication—that McKenna’s first dose of DMT may have come from a source that was funded and overseen by the CIA—is interesting to consider.
We also learned earlier that McKenna was completely enamored with DMT after his first dose, telling Watson he would devote his life to understanding it and its attendant experiences. In The Archaic Revival, McKenna explains, “it was really the DMT that empowered my commitment to the psychedelic experience. DMT was so much more powerful, so much more alien [than other drugs].”[ii] In this passage we see that DMT is, in McKenna’s mind, clearly linked with power. His very understanding of DMT is inextricably bound up in notions of power. It empowered him, and was more powerful than the others. For McKenna, DMT was “the most powerful of the psychedelics,” “the strongest psychedelic there is.”[iii]
Despite his love for DMT, McKenna was also aware that its effects could be quite challenging. He remembers being “appalled” by at least one of his trips.[iv] He also noted the drug’s ability to inspire fear. He even went so far as to describe DMT as an “intellectual black hole,” insisting that the more one seems to understand it, the less other people are able to understand one’s explanations of it. Regardless, he managed to slip in more or less explicit endorsements of the drug in nearly all of his writings and talks. He concluded the “intellectual black hole” reflection with, “but I recommend it.”[v] It might make you unintelligible, but you should try it.