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Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: Dutch Pride on September 02, 2013, 08:38 am

Title: William S. Burroughs: The godfather of recreational DMT
Post by: Dutch Pride on September 02, 2013, 08:38 am
Word of Szára’s experiments leaked thru the Iron Curtain before his escape and other medical groups confirmed his discovery that DMT had to be injected (and not eaten) to be psychoactive. This information made its way to the burgeoning ‘drug-underground’ where William S. Burroughs, the author infamous for his opiate use, would be one of the first people to experiment with DMT outside of strict ‘clinical-research’. Burroughs had already been one of the first non-botanist/anthropologist westerners to experience yagé (the Spanish name by which ayahuasca was then commonly known) in the late 1950’s in Colombia and Peru in search of a cure for his heroin habit - yagé already had a reputation for breaking addictions even then. Burroughs was introduced to the vine by a fellow Harvard alumni, the great plant explorer Richard Evan Schultes, and Burroughs experiences on the brew itself were described in a series of letters to Alan Ginsberg, that would much later be published as a small book titled ‘The Yagé Letters.” (This is one of the first works of modern Western entheogenic literature, and predates Terence McKenna’s popularization of ayahuasca by some 30 years!)

In the early 1960's Burroughs spent time in London, England, (still searching for a cure to his opiate addiction) where he was reputedly working on a theory of "neurological geography" with the idea that the cortical areas were divided into the heavenly and the diabolical. (Presaging some of Julian Jaynes ideas presented in 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' in 1976). Burroughs small circle of friends were mostly psychiatrists and through them he must have discovered of Szara's work and somehow obtained a supply of DMT for he and his English friends to experiment upon themselves with.
 
Burroughs told (Timothy Leary) a gripping tale about a psychiatrist in London who had taken DMT with a friend. After a few minutes the frightened friend began requesting help. The psychiatrist, himself being spun through a universe of shuttling, vibratory pigments, reached for his hypodermic needle (which had been fragmented into a shimmering assemblage of wave mosaics) and bent over to administer an antidote. Much to his dismay his friend, twisting in panic, was suddenly transformed into a writhing, wiggling reptile, jewel-encrusted and sparkling. The doctor's dilemma: where to make an intravenous injection in a squirming, oriental-martian snake?
 
Burroughs subsequently scared himself off the drug after believing that he had nearly overdosed on a 100mg IM trip. He wrote Timothy Leary a letter warning him of the dangers of DMT, later categorizing it as a 'terror-drug'.
 
(Due to his dislike of LSD (which gave him anxiety attacks and left a metallic taste in his mouth) and his general distrust in the late 60's psychedelic culture, Burroughs biographers have mostly maintained that Burroughs was 'anti-psychedelics'. In interviews however he often mentioned his yage experiences – and never seems to mention his DMT experiences. In an appendix in my book Tryptamine Palace titled "William S. Burroughs: The Godfather of DMT", I propose that Burroughs experiences on yage and DMT were in fact the main influences on Burroughs work from Naked Lunch on, and that both, the themes that run through his work (aliens creatures, language as a virus, typewriters transforming into cockroaches etc), and indeed his radical attempt at transforming the English language, all stem from his earlier tryptamine use.