Overview

DMT is the world's strangest and most mysterious drug, inducing one of the most remarkable and yet least understood of all states of consciousness. This common plant molecule has, from ancient times to the modern day, been used as a tool to gain access to a bizarre alien reality of inordinate complexity and unimaginable strangeness, populated by a panoply of highly advanced, intelligent, and communicative beings entirely not of this world. In a story that begins in the Amazonian rainforests and ends somewhere beyond the stars, Andrew Gallimore presents the first detailed account of the discovery of DMT and science's continuing struggle to explain how such a simple and common plant molecule can have such astonishing effects on the human mind. The history of the drug involves many fascinating characters from the scientific and literary worlds - including legendary ethnobotanist Dr. Richard Schultes; renegade beat writer and drug aficionado William S. Burroughs; philosopher and raconteur Terence McKenna; and the high priest of the 1960s psychedelic revolution, Dr. Timothy Leary. In the end, the story of DMT forces us to reconsider our most basic assumptions about the nature of reality and our place within it.

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9781250357755

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Reviews

""An exhilarating, yet rigorously grounded, account of DMT's rapidly increasing influence on human consciousness. What if an unimaginably powerful psychedelic molecule, made in the human brain, could be harnessed to reliably provide contact with super intelligent beings from other dimensions of time and space? Gallimore's project provides an essential understanding of this nascent field, and its implications for our species' evolution."" - Rick Strassman MD, Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of New Mexico School of Medicine and author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule and My Altered States. ""Compulsively readable and impossible to put down, Death by Astonishment is a page-turning odyssey into the enigmatic history of the world's strangest drug. Bringing together many of the most pivotal stories in psychedelic history, Gallimore not only connects the dots but also fills in the missing pieces, shedding new light on the mysteries of this extraordinary molecule."" - David Jay Brown, author of The Illustrated Field Guide to DMT Entities ""Peeling away the many layers of one of our greatest mysteries while leaving intact the enigma at its core, combining the erudition of a scholar and the precision of a scientist, Andrew Gallimore leads a fascinating inquiry into the heart of the unknown."" - Graham St John, author of Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna (MIT Press, 2025 )

Author Information

ANDREW R. GALLIMORE is a chemical pharmacologist, neurobiologist, and writer, and one of the world's leading experts on psychedelics. He is the author of two books on the science of psychedelics, Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game and Reality Switch Technologies: Psychedelics as Tools for the Discovery and Exploration of New Worlds. He lives and works in Tokyo.

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