Blog Post

1. Introduction

In the context of my subject-scientific research activities with persons suffering from burnout depression and their treating physicians, psychiatrists, and social workers, I explore different possibilities of prevention, treatment, and aftercare of stress [1,2]. In interviews or workshops, the advantages and disadvantages of medication are also a frequent topic of discussion. In these settings, the possibilities of therapeutic use of psychedelic resp. entheogens [3] such as psylocibin, DMT or dissociatives such as ketamine were discussed at different points.

The evidence that psychedelic substances, such as psilocybin, DMT or LSD, are effective against depression, stress, and anxiety is highly significant that in the US, for example, Johns Hopkins University has opened a Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, psychotherapists are being trained in the use of psychedelics at the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research in San Francisco, and the US Food and Drug Administration has granted the substance psilocybin a breakthrough therapy status as a therapeutic for depressive disorders. As a result, the development of drugs based on psychedelic substances is considered by the US Food and Drug Administration to be particularly urgent [4,5,6,7].

In general, DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) is a psychedelic of the tryptamine class. Parts of the structure of DMT occur within biomolecules like serotonin or melatonin. There are functional and structural analogs of psychedelic tryptamines such as psilocybin (4-PO-DMT), psilocin (4-HO-DMT), bufotenin (5-HO-DMT), 5-MeO-DMT (5-Methoxy-N,N-DMT), and N,N-DMT (N,N-DMT). N,N-DMT is a naturally occurring alkaloid, which can be found in plants, animals, and humans. Bufotenin and 5-MeO-DMT are found in a smaller number of plant species and animals. Psilocybin and psilocin can be found in fungi. The difference between the substances can be found in the potency of the tryptamine and duration of the experience. 5-MeO-DMT is considered as one of the most potent hallucinogens and has been used as an entheogen in the US since Mayan culture. It is found, among other sources, in seeds of leguminous plants. Additionally, 5-MeO-DMT is found in the skin secretions of some toad species, such as Bufo Alvarius. Especially for psychiatric use, 5-MeO-DMT seems to have potential: “those who reported being diagnosed with psychiatric disorders, the majority reported improvements in symptoms following 5-MeO-DMT use, including improvements related to post-traumatic stress disorder (79%), depression (77%), anxiety (69%), and alcoholism (66%) or drug use disorder (60%)”. [7] I had the opportunity to be present at a treatment of 5-MeO-DMT in a professional setting and had the chance to interview drug users (see Section 2). For this reason, unless otherwise described, the article highlights the research about 5-MeO-DMT, or refers to DMT in general as a psychedelic of the tryptamine class.

Currently, the long duration of the substances is still problematic for their use in psychotherapy. Depending on the dose, the effect of psilocybin or LSD can last 3–10 h. However, the duration of 5-MeO-DMT is much shorter (15–90 min) and seems to be more suitable for a broad use in psychotherapy. When 5-MeO-DMT is inhaled, the effect occurs within seconds. Reports of experiences describe encounters with God, enlightenment experiences, the feeling of being reborn, or the feeling of becoming one with the universe, as well as near-death experiences [8,9].

The new developments in terms of the pharmacology of psychoactive substances are curious and noteworthy, but no one and certainly not persons with depression, should be expected to have near-death experiences. This raises the question of why psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy seems promising. The spectrum of effects of psychedelic substances seems even more promising that universities and pharmaceutical companies are focusing their research on bringing appropriate drugs to the market, e.g., with shorter duration or the reduction in undesirable effects, such as hallucinations. Meanwhile, there is an ongoing narrative of a psychedelic renaissance in pharmacology [10]. At a time when every fourth European is at risk of suffering from stress-induced depression (burnout) at least one time in his or her working life [2,11], the efficacy of psychedelics also seems to fit the narrative of the post Fordist working society: If psychedelic drugs served in the rebellious counterculture of the 1960s to break out and to live a life beyond social conventions, psychedelic drugs are now intended for neuro-enhancement, performance enhancement, and precisely to be able to reintegrate into the world of work. Therefore, the new spirit of capitalism prepares an access to substances that serve to enable the subject to optimize itself [12].

Clinical and pharmacological studies explore less the subjective experiences or philosophical dimensions of psychedelic substances. Instead, the effects on the organism are deciphered to more specifically isolate mechanisms of action and control appropriate tolerances, dosages, and side effects. Psychedelic drugs have been proven to influence serotonin levels, as well as tricyclic antidepressants, such as Prozac. It is also still unclear whether fluctuations in serotonin levels are responsible for the antidepressant effect or even a change in the living and working situation [13]. The implication is that there is still a quest to answer the question of why psychedelic drugs are effective in combating depression.

Questions in pharmacological studies on whether psychedelic substances produce their full effects only in a specific cultural setting or if the function of the integration of the experience into the everyday life is important are less asked here. A cause-and-effect narrative of drug impact is attempted, based on a simple stimulus/response mechanism specified at an intentional operational level of a regulative interaction between anticipation and event production. In this way, pharmacologically regulated operations are supposed to refer to superordinate social goal constellations whose partial goals are these operations themselves [14], namely, the production of a functional organism or social body.

Furthermore, theories based on theological or metaphysical views assume that the self is no longer the processor of substance and the cause of experience, but that a spiritual entity transcends itself through substance [15]. Drug experiences here are quickly absorbed into or assigned to the common categories and codes of spirituality. The term entheogen was specifically invented for this purpose [3,15,16,17,18]. Even pharmacological studies and research projects investigate the thesis that mystical experiences have a long-term effect on well-being. But in a meta-analysis by McCulloch et al., the researchers assume self-critically that qualitative analyses are often limited by biased selection of quotes that fit the narrative of the researchers [19] (p. 14).

• Question

Philosophically, therefore, the question is how to analyze the phenomenon of a psychedelic drug experience in its multiple dimensions without resorting to epistemological duplications. This includes the action-theoretical question of whether the subject or the substance is the processor or cause of the experience, as well as the question of whether the praxeology of the drug experience itself does offer the possibility of extracting explanations of drug experiences that go beyond the current codes of the effects of the drug.

To methodologically approach these three questions: (a) question of experienced dimensions, (b) causation of the mental state, and (c) of the materiality of experience, there will be a recourse to the philosophical pharmaco-analysis of Gille Deleuze and Félix Guattari, as well as to the experimental or non-philosophical method of philo-fiction of François Laruelle.

• Methodological Approach

Deleuze and Guattari describe the pharmaco-analysis as an investigation of experiences of consciousness that split off from the molar perception [20] (p. 60f), i.e., experiences that are qualitatively different from experiences within the order of everyday experience, of being mired in a functional everyday life. These experiences lead to realms of the unconscious, the molecular perception. For Deleuze and Guattari, perception is seen as an activity shaped by socio-political influences, in which different things interlock, overlap, block, catalyze, interrupt, etc. To explain this, distinctions are made between molar and molecular lines or types of perception. The molar line strictly separates areas from each other, e.g., perception of work/leisure and family/profession, including the corresponding perception schemata as father, mother, worker, boss, etc. and the corresponding action schemata as father, mother, worker, boss. The molecular is not present in the self-conception of father, mother, worker, boss. The molecular can best be recognized in a perception or a body that is liberated from the molar. In Anti-Oedipus (1977) and A Thousand Plateaus (1987), Deleuze and Guattari developed the figure and the call to action of the Body without Organs (BwO). The BwO can be understood as a concept that implies a psychophysical experience of the self through a critique of societal modes of subjectification, of a de-subjectivation. Accordingly, in order to create a BwO, it is necessary to eliminate the meanings and regularities of society and to fill oneself with intensities. For Deleuze and Guattari, life is more intense the more it is molecular and inorganic. Dissolving the organism and becoming intense can also be understood in a figurative sense, not by killing the body but by developing multiplications, superimpositions of meanings and codes, and by going into the unknown, the undescribed, the unorganized, the formless of the desert, the high mountains or psychedelic experiences. Deleuze and Guattari suggest that this aggregation of intensity to smooth, reduce, and remove subjectivity takes place in ecstasy, experimentation, sound production, and movement. Deleuze and Guattari describe the BwO as a variation of different intensities that have no clear structure: The BwO is a permanent becoming, a developing, a life before the formation of established structures, opinions, meanings, and interpretations. A psychedelic experience can be described as a perception of the molecular, because psychedelic perceptions refer to the infinitely small, they are infinitesimal, and an identitary consciousness as father, mother, etc. is irrelevant. An essential element of this pharmaco-analysis is the critique of bias within the analysis of drug experiences, e.g., that psychological theories are themselves part of a molar organization because they assume certain determinants of drug use that result from maldevelopments in the psychosexual stages, in unmastered challenges in coping with life [21], or in attachment problems with parents [22]. According to Deleuze/Guattari, especially in questions about drug experiences, deterministic theories cannot develop adequate conceptions of how substances affect the body and mind or are subjectively experienced, because patterns of justification are themselves shaped by the determination of the molar apparatus of meaning (this or that drug is dangerous because it produces hallucinations, i.e., no real experiences, disintegrates the family, etc., this or that drug is not dangerous because it maintains the family order or produces socially productive behavior). Determinism here can be described as an idea that assumes that events are completely dependent on pre-existing causes. For example, the cause of drug use is seen as a problem in early parent-child attachment or as a developmental disorder in the psychosexual development. The pharmaco-analysis emphasizes more the idea of indeterminism, i.e., the view that events are not caused deterministically, but rather occur multicausally or unilaterally. On the one hand, a pharmaco-analysis has such deterministic resp. ideological discourse productions in view. On the other hand, it observes not only how substances decompose or recompose the body and mind on the molecular level, but also how substances enter a society, produce discourse positions, reinforce relationships, dissolve them, and develop them [20] (p. 286ff).

In this sense, for an additional procedure, this pharmaco-analysis offers a framework to look at the molecular experience of drug users. The analysis of the molecular experience has the challenge not to create premature epistemological doublets [23] towards already existing discourse positions.

For this reason, François Laruelle’s concept of non-philosophy and philo-fictions are used in the following. At the heart of Laruelle’s non-philosophy is the assumption that a phenomenon cannot be grasped through existing interpretations. Existing interpretations and assumptions lead to epistemological duplications. In particular, if existing epistemological ideas are transferred to a phenomenon, then copies and duplicates of existing assumptions are created. Epistemological duplications turn the phenomenon into a clone of reality, into a fetishistic realism. For instance, in the photorealism of passport photos, product photos (fashion, food, cars), etc., representations of the world are created which function as copies of reality. These copies help to organize the perception of reality in such a way that it becomes an incontestable fixed idea, because images take the place of the real. With such an onto-photo-logical perception or an epistemological duplication, one observes the real itself through a photograph—not the object itself, but a representation of an identity. Therefore, epistemological duplications have a symbolic dimension: they are based on memories that classify the seen and make it identical with reality. This in turn leads to the problem that we become incapable of discovering new things because we are trying to discover the familiar in the unknown. The same can be applied to other sensory perceptions. By means of philo-fictions, a life of its own can be discovered in phenomena, independent of common scientific or philosophical assumptions. In particular, an interpretation of phenomena through philo-fictions means a rejection of already existing epistemological foundations [24] (p. 67). Simply explained, for example, with a materialistic, psychoanalytical or theological epistemology, I do recognize materialistic, psychoanalytical or theological content. Or if I pursue moral ideas, I discover in drug use a decomposition of moral ideas, wherein the drug abuse decomposes family or society. Philo-fictions counter this cognitive bias by substantiating epistemological reasons not according to the principle of “right” or “wrong”, but according to the principle of “as-if”. In order to find out what makes substances effective, specific drug experiences are investigated with non-philosophical experiments [25] (p. 235). Here, non-philosophy is to be understood as a practice that has its own non-autopositional rules (the suspension of philosophical authority) to develop a chaotic universe of multiple as-if representations (philo-fictions) [25] (p. 99) (see also [26]).

Important to this approach, as with Deleuze and Guattari, is the assumption that a phenomenon cannot be grasped through pre-existing interpretations. Furthermore, the point of philo-fictions is not to develop a copy or duplication of experiences, terms, concepts, etc. by means of ontological distinctions or aesthetic terms, but to expand the epistemological conceptual apparatus by means of hyperspeculations and fictive characterizations [25] (p. 239f). To set up experiments with hypothetical assumptions and conjectures that go beyond experiential reality is to establish the inherent life of phenomena independent of scientifically or philosophically common assumptions [25] (p. 22f). Such a turn away from identifications, or such a non-standard aesthetic of phenomena, means at the same time turning away from justifications of what is perceived, because cognition is traced back to existing coding. This allows phenomena to be de-subjectified and become a life of its own [27,28].

To produce a non-ontological cognition, the as-if representation, experimentation with fictions matters. This is also to be understood in analogy to science fiction literature. Laruelle transfers the principle of science fiction literature to philosophy, in order to separate science fiction from pure literature [27] (p. 488ff). Since fictional statements are neither true nor false, theses and antitheses are conceived as developmental possibilities in the form of as-if indeterminacies. The results of the synthesis thus remain open, as they can always be de-subjectified and subtracted in the sense of philo-fictions [24] (p. 132ff). An experimentation with philo-fictions does not verify or falsify the phenomenon but transcends it by preserving the identity of the hypothesis and preventing it from referring to existing philosophical assumptions. I.e. philo-fictions will not be supported in the last instance by an ultimate (positivist, critical, realist, idealist, absolute, etc.) insight [28] (p. 60f). In particular, instead of translating insights about phenomena into philosophical analogies, the experimental, non-philosophical work does not interfere with a particular scientific theory but models it in favor of the principle of internal self-similarity, in which recurrent structures and objects of fractalization emerge, generating an open ensemble, a universe of fractal epistemology. Methodologically, therefore, philo-fictions are to be applied via hyperspeculations [25] (p. 230). Hyperspeculations have the task of producing philosophical variables and indeterminants. [28] (p. 69ff).

Conclusion: At the core of Laruelle’s non-philosophy is the assumption not to assign a phenomenon with the real by means of prefabricated conceptions, but to develop epistemological duplications by ontological distinctions or aesthetic concepts, and thus to let the phenomenon become a clone of reality. Rather, the reversal of this order should be made possible: in speculative philosophical experimentation with the phenomenon, a relative reality can be established. Thus, there is a chance for a phenomenon to develop a life of its own [24] (p. 22ff). A rejection of a cause–effect interpretation of the phenomenon means at the same time a rejection of the justification of what is perceived, because, as Gadamer suggests, “domination makes us deaf to the thing that speaks within its tradition” [23] (p. 274, translated by the author). Philo-fiction as a generic science of hyperspeculations does not produce the specific, but hypotheses which remain philosophically indeterminate as unilateralizations [25] (p., 69ff, 97f, p. 140ff). Philo-fictions are therefore to be understood as the practice that:

1. Perform theoretical operations to produce hyperspeculations.

For example, philo-fictions are a provisional tool, since psychedelic experiences, which exist in the mind of the drug user, cannot be answered with existing logical means.

2. Develop their own non-autopositional rules of interpretation.

For example, philo-fictions defend speculative thinking as a way of achieving new insights and theories. However, for them to be accepted as “scientific”, they must be also critically examined.

3. Assume multiple “as-if” representations.

For example, philo-fictions can be used to make claims that lack a rational basis. However, these claims could be proven wrong or right in the future through appropriate investigations and studies.

Now, in order to find out how the psychedelic experience, the molecular perception takes place by means of a non-philosophical framing through philo-fiction, psychedelic experiences of 5-MeO-DMT are investigated (Section 2). Subsequently, as suggested by Laruelle, psychedelic phenomena are viewed through distance and framed within hyperspeculations [24,28] (Section 3). Finally, these hyperspeculations will provide an open synthesis for the question of how to understand experiences by taking entheogens beyond the usual epistemological narratives (Section 4).

2. Phenomenon of 5-MeO-DMT Experience

Many scientific research reports, self-experiments, and experience reports of the phenomenon of a 5-MeO-DMT experience are contained in the largest psychedelic databases of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) as well as the Erowid Center. Hundreds of similar procedures are described here. Some exemplary excerpts from 5-Meo DMT experiences are included below. These reports can be seen as an introduction to the phenomenon of the 5-MeO-DMT experience (the main report for this article will follow these short descriptions). In all cases, 5-MeO-DMT was vaporized and inhaled or injected:

Field reports collected by Ralph Metzner, psychotherapist, and former professor of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, on exploring 5-MeO-DMT also describe qualitatively similar experiences:

The 5-MeO-DMT self-experiments of Alexander Shulgin, chemist and pharmacologist who became known for the systematic development of synthetic tryptamines (e.g., DMT) and phenethylamines (e.g., MDMA) [34], described dissociative episodes:

The accounts of Stanislav Grof, the founder of transpersonal psychology, also describe similar experiences:

Ralph Metzner, who had been researching LSD and psychotherapy since the 1960s with Timothey Leary and Ram Dass, among others, experienced 5-MeO-DMT as follows:

To interpret these descriptions of aspects of molecular perception and levels by means of a hermeneutic method instead of by philo-fictions would mean to pursue the distinction between the latent sense structure and subjective sense representation [36] (p. 241). To this end, it would be possible to follow in the traces of Grof, for example, who retrospectively describes the experience in that he believed he experienced the Bardo (the tibetian intermediate state before rebirth into the next incarnation) or believed that he experienced the “Dharmakaya, the primal Clear Light that, according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, appears at the moment of our death” [35] (p. 251). Also helpful would be the reflections of Metzner, who places his experience within themes of Tantra and Kundalini Yoga [9] (p. 42). However, this would lead in the context of a pharmaco-analysis and philo-fictions to analytical and conceptual duplications. The analysis would lead precisely to theological, spiritual, or anthropological traces and would run the risk of reproducing epistemologically familiar concepts, despite the clear analogies to themes in the world of religious or spiritual practices.

Therefore, I refer to my own observed experiences, in order to subsequently create hypotheses for the interpretation of the 5-MeO-DMT experience. Due to my own research interests, I was in San Francisco in 2022 and received an invitation to be present during the medication of 5-MeO-DMT in a professional setting. The small group included the provider who gave the 5-MeO-DMT, a counselor who supported the participants directly before and after the treatment, and six participants. Among them was M., who was able to free himself from his long-standing opiate addiction through the support of recurring 5-MeO-DMT sessions. For him, he explained that the way out of addiction had been long and connected with setbacks, but the “medicine” had shown him the way.

The following explicit report, by another person of this group, is especially authorized for this text. This report also serves in the following article to make hyperspeculations. In this report only the immediate sensory impressions are presented. Conceptual interpretations or identifications of the person are excluded:

Now, to prepare this fantastic narrative for philo-fictions, in the next section hypotheses will be developed. Therefore, the next section describes the exegetical order of a non-philosophical philo-fiction, followed by the first hypotheses for speculations about the described 5-MeO-DMT experience.