Some People See Aliens While on DMT. Researchers Want to Find Out What They Can Teach Us

A canvas of EEG electrodes covered Anton Bilton’s scalp like a jeweled headdress.

The machine would map his brain activity while the powerful psychedelic dimethyltryptamine, commonly known as DMT, circulated through an intravenous drip and into his bloodstream. With some trepidation, he awaited being plunged into a supernatural realm that was familiar to him, given his many years of psychedelic experience, and yet, as was inevitably the case with every DMT trip, completely new.

“I didn’t know when they were going to light it,” he said. “It was eight minutes of having your head in a guillotine, waiting for it to fall.”

Then, like a rocket blasting out of Earth’s atmosphere, it arrived. And he knew he was being watched – not only by the humans in the hospital room, but also by an array of alien beings within the DMT realm itself.

The summit of Bilton’s trip lasted about half an hour, considerably longer than a typical DMT experience. (Vaping, the most common method of ingestion, produces peak effects lasting 10 to 15 minutes.) The year was 2022, and he was one of 11 volunteers participating in the world’s first clinical study with “extended DMT,” nicknamed DMTx, at Imperial College London. The idea had been suggested six years earlier in a paper by neurobiologist Andrew Gallimore and psychiatrist Rick Strassman, which claimed that a technology called target-controlled intravenous infusion, originally developed to maintain stable levels of anesthesia during surgery, could be repurposed to prolong the state of DMT.

For Gallimore, one of the goals of DMTx is to study a particularly strange aspect of the DMT experience: perceived encounters with non-human, seemingly superintelligent entities. On March 18, he and a team of experts will launch a new retreat center-psychedelic research center on the small Caribbean island of Bequia, aimed in part at establishing lasting, two-way communication with these beings. A “SETI for the mind,” Gallimore calls it, in reference to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Called Eleusis, the facility is named after an ancient Greek city that once attracted spiritual pilgrims for the ritual consumption of what some experts consider a psychedelic potion. DMT is currently a Schedule 1 drug in the United States, the category most closely controlled by the federal government, but it can be administered legally in Bequia by licensed healthcare providers.

The Eleusis research wing will be overseen by Noonautics, a nonprofit organization led by Gallimore that “explores the limits of human understanding,” according to its website, while the therapeutic aspect will be managed by Charles Patti and Christina Thomas, a couple who also co-own a ketamine clinic in Florida. (Although DMT’s therapeutic potential has not been studied as rigorously as that of some other psychedelics, it has shown promise for the treatment of alcohol use disorder and major depressive disorder.)

DMTx sessions will be offered to Eleusis guests (the resort is expected to welcome 30 this month) under the supervision of medical experts, and alongside a plethora of new-age offerings like breathwork and sound healing. All applicants will be pre-screened to exclude anyone with “clear contraindications such as certain cardiovascular diseases, unmanaged psychiatric disorders or medication conflicts,” says Thomas.

The Eleusis Experience — starting with a four-day package costing $9,500 and including two DMTx sessions, lodging and food — is touted as a more customizable and manageable alternative to ayahuasca, which in addition to lasting several hours can also be a physical ordeal and, like any psychedelic, sometimes end in a terrifying trip. In the Amazon, where some experts believe ayahuasca has been used by indigenous people for millennia, the physical and psychological discomfort caused by the potion are considered important parts of the healing process. But the IV-based DMTx system can be increased or decreased depending on the comfort level of the psychonaut. If they wish to have an abortion, the flow of medication can be stopped and its effects will wear off within minutes.