[This is part three in a three-part series on a very special molecule: DMT. Find part one here and part two here.]
“I try to save myself, but myself keeps slipping away.”
I don’t know if it’s what Trent Reznor intended when he penned those lyrics, but they’re a pretty accurate description of ego death: when you let go of the story about your separate life and self and realize that you are an infinite soul, interconnected with a greater, unified consciousness. It’s a hallmark of many psychedelic trips, but none deliver the experience as reliably as 5-MeO-DMT (5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine), also known as “the God Molecule.”
Described by ancient wisdom traditions as the source of peace, ego death can nonetheless seem more terrifying than actual death. After all, it’s what we’re really afraid of losing—the idea of being us. We try to hold on even as that identity sifts through our fingers, just like we might when the big day comes. Yet when we surrender, the realization that we aren’t these transitory things—worker, child, parent, sibling, even human—often comes as a great relief. So we’re compelled to seek these experiences, practicing for death to more fully live.
Both 5-MeO-DMT and its structural analog, DMT, are psychedelics that our bodies produce, and they can teach us much about ourselves. Experientially, however, they have little else in common. They’re unique from other psychedelics as well as from each other—yet each of those reveals a different layer of existence.
There’s the consensus world, the one your brain is always building a model of, which you can experience more profoundly through classic psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD. There’s the DMT world, a freestanding place outside our dimension, which requires a whole new mental model to navigate. And then there’s 5-MeO-DMT, which zooms out further still, revealing the web of life in which we’re all embedded and dissolving the concept of models altogether.
Ralph Metzner, a psychologist who helped launch the first psychedelic revolution during the 1960s, described 5-MeO-DMT as “perceiving the molecular level of reality”: a geometric net of interconnection that branches into infinity, mirroring neural pathways and capillaries, root systems and mycelial networks; as above, so below. Psychiatrist Stan Grof likened 5-MeO-DMT to the stage between reincarnations that Buddhists call the “bardo.”
“The God Molecule” is six to seven times more powerful than DMT, but without the immersive visuals. The trip is physical, emotional, and conceptual; you’re both of this reality and outside it, beyond space and time yet beholding their aggregate. Some people have “content-free experiences,” with complete sensory deprivation and loss of bodily awareness; others report the opposite, rediscovering their own physical form with all the wonder of a newborn infant.
Chemically, 5-MeO-DMT interacts with your brain the same way as other tryptamines, binding to serotonin receptors and initiating psychedelic effects. Like DMT, it’s naturally produced by a number of plants and animals, including people and, famously, frogs: the Sonoran desert toad, native to northwestern Mexico and the southwestern U.S., secretes a white venom that contains 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenine, another DMT derivative. 5-MeO-DMT is nicknamed “bufo” for Bufo alvarius, the toad’s former name (it’s now Incilius alvarius).
Toad venom was first publicly identified as a psychedelic source in a pseudonymous pamphlet by reclusive artist and researcher Ken Nelson in 1984. He claimed to be reviving an ancient Indigenous practice by “milking” the toad’s glands, then drying and smoking the venom (there’s no clear evidence of this, though there may have been a sacred role for the toad in ancient Central and South America). Milking doesn’t physically injure the toad, but the stress can indirectly harm or kill these creatures that live underground and only surface to mate in the rainy season; overharvesting has caused endangerment and even extinction in some places.
It’s also not necessary, as there are other sources of 5-MeO-DMT that provide comparable benefits. The compound can easily be synthesized, and is found in plants, flowers, fungi, and several Central and South American tree species, such as Virola theiodora and Anadenanthera peregrina, colloquially known as “yopo”: a common source of entheogenic snuff used for centuries by Indigenous Amazonian people.
However it’s obtained, 5-MeO-DMT is typically smoked, vaporized, or inhaled in tiny doses, effective in quantities as small as 3-5 mg. While the trip is much shorter than that of other tryptamines, it’s longer than DMT’s five to 10 minutes, setting in within 30 seconds but lasting up to half an hour. And that’s all the time you need for your whole life to change. Research has been limited by legal status, but some studies and anecdotal reports show that a single hit can treat multiple co-occurring psychiatric conditions, increase life satisfaction, and assuage complex trauma, and the results can reverberate for months.
Combining 5-MeO-DMT with therapy and group settings can amplify the healing potential even further. A 2019 study found that 80% and 79% of people with depression and anxiety, respectively, found relief taking 5-MeO-DMT in groups. Even Rick Perry, former Texas governor and energy secretary to Trump, backed a bill—now state law—that explores group psychedelic therapy for veterans after seeing the incredible results from Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS), a nonprofit that helps vets heal “untreatable” conditions using 5-MeO-DMT and ibogaine, another psychedelic.
Yet these lifesaving medicines remain federally illegal in the U.S., placed under the most restrictive classification, Schedule 1: substances with “no medical benefit” and “high abuse potential”—completely contradicting clinical trials, research studies, and user reports that find DMT and its analogues possess anti-addictive properties and can alleviate substance-use disorder. (The extreme experience itself can be a deterrent; some users even report being “kicked out” of the DMT realm by extra-dimensional entities if they attempt to enter too often.) These molecules also boast anti-inflammatory capabilities and can boost neuroplasticity and neuroendocrine functions.
But perhaps the most potent force is metaphysical. The “mystical experience” of psychedelics is the primary predictor of positive therapeutic outcomes, from enhancing creativity to alleviating PTSD, and here, the God Molecule delivers: 90% of people in one study reported transcendent experiences, another name for ego death. In the amorphous liminality outside objects and entities, it becomes clear that everything and nothing is about you, and this is both relieving and terrifying.
Psychedelics have a way of continually surprising you. I don’t know what I expected the void to be like, but I guess I imagined drifting through outer space, surrounded by planetary bodies and stars sparkling in blackness, which is not what this is. By definition, the void is the absence of space and form, matter and energy. You’re floating in it, like interdimensional amniotic fluid, but with one foot in the consensus realm, straddling dimensional realities.
I thought they called it “the God molecule” because you met your maker, but instead, you realize that you are God—all of us are, every living thing. Ego death doesn’t mean you disappear, it means you become more than you’ve ever been. Losing the separate self means merging with everything; you exist on all planes and perceive them simultaneously. You can re-experience your own birth from both sides, parent and child; in the past, present, and future all at once. You can hold your infant self as they cry, struggle, and emerge victorious; see and hear them in all the ways they never were. And you realize the meaning of a phrase that once sounded so trite: You have everything you need, and it’s been with you the whole time.
But having everything you need includes the community, for nobody can do it alone. After all, “the substance doesn’t really ‘do’ anything,” as Metzner wrote. “The biochemical changes produced in the brain permit the shamanic-alchemical practitioner to amplify their healing and visioning practices.” Sometimes even God needs help pulling their pants down, so your guides are waiting outside the door, ready to offer their own divine hand.
In the end, the lines that divide these experiences are so fine as to be illusory. Maybe it’s all one reality, and it’s just about how tightly we hold onto it. The void will have its way, and you can fight it, or surrender. And when you do, you just might find yourself reborn, delivered into your own arms.
