Notes on a Weekend with Terence McKenna
A First Encounter with DMT
Page 2

Terence's enthusiasm for DMT
over other psychedelics.
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I left Esalen that Sunday feeling revitalized.

Not only had I lingered in cliff-side hot-springs, philosophizing while watching gray whales migrate northward, but my sense of curiosity had been reawakened by dialog and my desire to write had returned since completing my novel. The conference also replaced my earlier pessimism concerning the plight of humanity with renewed vigor for exploring "the mystery." As I drove my vehicle north toward Santa Cruz, I felt ready to accept whatever life gave me. Therefore, it came as little surprise the next day when a Native American friend of mine produced a vial of yellowish crystals, opened the lid and offered to share them.

"Is that DMT?" I asked fearfully.

"Man, you've been hanging out with McKenna too long," he said. Turns out it was just a vial of speed.

That night however, I conversed at length with a UC Santa Cruz student named Tanya. She had heard little of McKenna's rap but she had taken DMT a few times and immediately identified with his description of "self transforming elf machines." After we'd gained each other's trust through conversation, Tanya described her most recent trip.

"These ... colored balls of light kind of ... swam up to me," she said, "and they went, I don't know, Bu-du-bu-du-bu-du-bu-du. So I looked down at them and didn't really say, but it kind of came out of me, Bu-du-bu-du-bu-du-bu-du."

That night after dinner and a bowl of good herb, this wonderful woman who I'd only just met produced a vial of pure DMT. Now, the fact that I'd never even seen DMT until I'd spent the weekend with the West's premiere expert on the subject did not go unnoticed. This was textbook synchronicity. But as I inspected and sniffed the pungent, orange crystals, I couldn't suppress the gnawing of fear. When considering whether to ride in a spacecraft, the crux of the issue is you have to leave. But then I considered the aftermath of refusal: a future of kicking myself for too long. A full fifteen minutes after her offer I broke my silence and said, "Well, of course it will have to be done."

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