The Rediscovery of Smoked DMT
It started (again) in Brooklyn...
The following is an excerpt from p. 139-140 of Chapter 3, “Everywhere, All the Time: DMT and Drugism” from my new book, Drugism (2022):
[This piece is about the modern rediscovery of smoked DMT. I say rediscovery rather than discovery because there is substantial evidence that various indigenous populations smoked DMT-containing botanicals hundreds of years ago. The story shared here pertains to the first known smokers of pure, crystalline DMT: Nick Sand, et al. This excerpt picks up where “William Burroughs's DMT ‘Overdose’” left off.]
In 1964, Beat figures Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady rode with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters to visit Timothy Leary at the Millbrook estate in New York, where the travelers first personally encountered DMT. Cassady received an injection of DMT while the crew partied at Millbrook, and Ginsberg took a supply of the drug with him when they left.[i]
Shortly thereafter, Ginsberg offered a shot of DMT to Jack Kerouac, famous author of On the Road and other Beat classics, during a visit to Ginsberg’s Manhattan apartment in fall of 1964.[ii] In late 1965, Ginsberg recalled the visit in his journal, noting, “it is now over a year since I have seen [Kerouac] in my house when we took injections of DMT together.”[iii]
A journal entry from early November 1965 describes Ginsberg’s experience smoking DMT “in [a] treehouse at Ken Kesey’s.”
From Ginsberg’s journal we also learn that, by 1965, injection was no longer the preferred route of administration for DMT in his circle. By then, Ginsberg—and others—had started to smoke it. A journal entry from early November 1965 describes Ginsberg’s experience smoking DMT “in [a] treehouse at Ken Kesey’s.”[iv] Trip-sitting for Ginsberg was a member of the Hells Angels, who tended to the DMT pipe and the radio.
That DMT could be smoked or vaporized was first noted by chemist Nick Sand, “around 1964/1965,” according to Graham St John.[v] Sand, born during World War II to communist parents, would become quite important for the culture around DMT and tryptamines more broadly. Sand’s father, Clarence Hiskey, worked for the Manhattan Project[1] as a chemist during the war. He was later dismissed from the project after he was seen meeting with a Soviet agent.[vi]
A student of Sand’s father introduced the young Sand to yoga as a teenager.[vii] He developed an intense interest in spiritual practices and, soon, drugs. In the early 1960s, Sand made a pilgrimage to Oaxaca, Mexico, to meet Maria Sabina, one of many who made such a trip.[viii]
That DMT could be smoked was first noted by chemist Nick Sand, “around 1964/1965,” according to Graham St John.
Sand made his first batch of DMT in 1963. He performed the synthesis in a bathtub at his mother’s apartment in Brooklyn.[ix] A year or so later, working in his lab (he had moved out of his mom’s, but was still in Brooklyn), Sand dropped some DMT on a hot plate and noticed that it vaporized rather cleanly. This inspired him to try smoking it.[x]
It was in this time period that Sand first met Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass), Leary’s colleague from Harvard, Millbrook, etc. In 1964, Alpert gave a talk at Brooklyn College, where Sand had enrolled in 1962.[xi] After the talk, Sand invited Alpert to check out his lab, where they wound up taking some DMT together. Alpert then invited Sand to visit him and Leary at the Millbrook estate in New York.[xii]
In 1965, Sand visited the Millbrook estate, bringing some DMT with him.
It was a tempting offer for the young Sand—one that would drastically expand his world, but also eventually lead to immense legal trouble. He agreed to Alpert’s invitation and, the following year, in 1965, visited Millbrook, bringing some DMT with him.[xiii] Millbrook was a private estate owned by William “Billy” Mellon Hitchcock and rented to Leary, et al as a psychedelic playground, protected and funded by one of “the richest jet-setters on the Eastern seaboard.”[xiv] Hitchcock’s family possessed enormous wealth due to their ownership of Gulf Oil, as well as the legacy of Andrew Mellon, the former Secretary of the Treasury.
But Hitchcock’s protection was conditional, as we will see, and it would prove short-lived for Sand.
[1] The Manhattan Project is most known for the development of the atomic bomb used in World War II to decimate the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, a lesser-known part of the Manhattan Project was the development of truth drugs, presaging later CIA attempts at the same goal. Security for the Manhattan Project was overseen by the OSS, which later evolved into the CIA. Some of the early truth drug candidates were tested on Manhattan Project personnel. It is unknown whether Sand’s father, a chemist, participated in these projects, wittingly or unwittingly. Regardless, Sand himself would later become one of the largest producers of LSD, itself a candidate for the CIA’s much-sought-after truth drug. See Cockburn & St. Clair, White Out, 152-153.
Endnotes
[i] St John, 59-60.
[ii] Ibid., 60, 62
[iii] Ginsberg then wrote what seems to be a trip report from the experience, which apparently taught him that buffalo experience religious impulses, form churches, etc. The journal entry waxes poetic on DMT, buffalo, humanity, disease, and death. See Ginsberg, The Fall of…, 85-86.
[iv] Ibid., 60
[v] St John, 72.
[vi] Scully, “Nick Sand.”
[vii] Hanna, “Nick Sand: Extended…”
[viii] St John, 68.
[ix] Ibid. and Lee & Shlain, 241.
[x] St John, 72.
[xi] Scully.
[xii] Ibid. and St John, 68.
[xiii] St John, 68.
[xiv] Lee and Shlain, 97.
Sources
Cockburn, Alexander and Jeffrey St. Clair. White Out: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press. Verso, New York, NY. 1998.
Ginsberg, Allen. The Fall of America Journals, 1965-1971. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. 2020.
Hanna, Jon. “Nick Sand: Extended Biography.” Erowid Character Vaults, Nov 5, 2009. https://erowid.org/culture/characters/sand_nick/sand_nick_biography1.shtml
Lee, Martin A., and Bruce Shlain. Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond. Grove Press, NY. 1985.
Scully, Tim. “Nick Sand.” Erowid. May 5, 2017. https://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/sand_nick/sand_nick_biography2.shtml
St John, Graham. Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT. Evolver Editions, Berkeley, CA. 2015.
#DMT #drugs #drug #drugism #history
Curious, if Nick Bercel was part of this CIA funded(?) “Hungarian exodus”?
Stephen Szara was apparently denied access to Sandoz in late 1940’s. Sandoz denied any researchers from “Communist” countries access to LSD(Sandoz being in cooperation with request from CIA)which is why he sought an alternate psychoactive drug finding DMT.