Adam Butler | The Psychedelic Spirit Molecule: DMT Realms & The Hard Problem of Consciousness
Adam Butler, author of Butler's DMT Field Guide, joins InnerVerse to talk about how the most powerful (and natural) of psychedelics was part of his path of transformation from living with a stressed out deathwish to experiencing the wonder of life with awestruck gratitude. We discuss what DMT does endogenously in the body, what the blast off, hyperspace beings, and cosmic consciousness are like, the eternal question of "who am I?" and much more.
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In this episode
Core themes
From The Silver Spoon To The Bottom
Butler tells Chance Garton that by his early forties he had multiple properties, multiple businesses, an inheritance from his grandfather and, in his own words, every possible advantage, while internally conflicted and drinking through morning, afternoon and night. He describes losing two good jobs inside a year and a half, two bad breakups and a confrontation over 900 dollars that made him snap. The Monday after, he left Cape Cod and drove toward California to hug a redwood tree, 26 hours to Kansas City, then lived on the road for roughly eighteen months while contemplating removing himself from the planet. He is now a little over three years sober.
The Question That Comes Before Everything
Both men circle the identity question Butler puts at the front of Butler's DMT Field Guide, whose chapters ask who the hell am I and who the hell are you, and whose seventh chapter opens with the word chance. Garton, who identifies with the number seven, riffs that chance is the absence of concept, a state not yet defined. Butler says he is opening his next book, on psychedelic integration, with the same question, and admits he once paid a therapist 240 dollars an hour while trying to outsmart him and present a false picture of himself. Ask it before anything else, he argues, and not rhetorically.
The Molecule The Body Already Makes
Butler says the endogenous nature of dimethyltryptamine is what first gripped him, and points to Rick Strassman's study in the 1990s and its account of the compound being pulsed at points in the life cycle, including shortly after conception. He connects it to near death experiences, trauma and childbirth, while Garton relays accounts from mothers who gave birth unsedated and described crossing a veil. Butler says he is not the physiologist, naming Andrew Gallimore and Imperial College as the people asking whether consciousness is produced in the brain or received through it. He also flags temporal lobe epilepsy, migraine and autism reports that echo the same territory.
Rocket Fuel, Not A Magic Pill
Asked for disclaimers before the miracle stories start, Butler says psychedelics certainly are not for everybody, that he does not condone use, is not trying to sensationalize anything, and that everybody has to do their own homework, including on medication interactions. He calls it rocket fuel that can carry a rocket ship out of space or blow it up on the way, and insists it is a tool rather than a crutch. Garton neither recommends nor discourages it, compares an intense session to opening a multiverse portal that swaps in a parallel version of you, and warns that a lit up energy body attracts curious moths.
Entities, Future Selves And Synchronicity
Butler describes a progression across a year and a half and more than a hundred sessions: first exploring the space, then feeling like the one being examined, an animal in a zoo or a firefly with a flashing head, and finally meeting what he takes to be himself from another time running a calibration check, which he credits with removing his fear of death. The two trade synchronicity stories, Butler on a radio segment mentioning a llama seconds after he passed a llama farm, Garton on handing a stranger a lost backpack at a festival before the man could ask. Garton calls separateness the real illusion.
Quotes
“All of my problems were internal problems and the solutions were internal, and ultimately I was looking for something in the external world.”
“Chance is the absence of concept, it's a potentiated state without a definition, that when you're in the realm of chance you're in the realm of what's not yet been decided or defined.”
“Why is your body producing this? And I think that was one of the main reasons why Rick Strassman did his study in the 90s.”
“The way I metaphorize it is like you're opening a multi-dimensional or multiverse portal, you're sending away the old you and bringing in a parallel universe version of you to come in and be you.”
“It is not a magic pill, and if you're turning to psychedelics like some people do prescription pills, alcohol, it's just going to be the same thing. It's not a crutch you can lean on.”
“In the near death experience you have this psychopomp that shows up, whether it's the person's belief in Buddha or Jesus or even Odin or something.”
“I'm very comfortable with who I am. There'll never be any person or place or thing that would ever make me lie or put my integrity of character on the line.”
“I truly believe we're only as sick as our secrets, and if our first instinct is honesty then I don't think we're going to get led down any really destructive pathways.”
Adam Butler is the author of Butler's DMT Field Guide, and on InnerVerse discussed DMT's role in the body, hyperspace/entity experiences, and his personal transformation through psychedelics.
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