Aiden Jones* took a hit, laid back and closed his eyes. He was transported to another place, a place of colors and shapes he couldn’t imagine in his normal life.

 A place where none of his worries mattered. A safe place.

  Jones was taken on an epic journey down a long path, led by a “spirit guide” who had three eyes, blue skin and was “at least seven feet tall.”

 He saw naked women dancing and chanting. They weren’t speaking a language he knew, but he could understand them. They were trying to tell him something.

 “I only remember the message being unity. That everyone matters, we’re all one world and things need to be better. It felt like it was my job, when I got back, to make the world better,” Jones said.

  Jones opened his eyes. He was back in his dark bedroom and everything was back to normal. He glanced at his watch.

    It had been five minutes.

  N-Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, is a drug known as the “spirit molecule.” The brain produces it when dreaming, and an excess amount of it is released when a person dies. It can also be extracted from 60 different plant types.

  Because it is produced by the human body, it does not show up on a drug test. People who have tried the drug report seeing things they could never imagine.

Comedian Joe Rogan reported DMT to be “like mushrooms times a million plus aliens.”

Though many people who do it report good experiences, those of enlightenment and euphoric thoughts, not everyone is so lucky.

Twenty-one-year-old Jacob White is one of those people.

“My body slowly became numb and I felt paralyzed. I put a blindfold over my eyes and quickly became uncomfortable. Then I realized I was going through what looked like a tunnel of abstract and colorful geometric figures. It was a little scary and then I just remember not liking it. It felt like it lasted two hours, but it was only five minutes,” White said.

Jamie Bentley, coordinator of campus wellness education, hasn’t had any reports of DMT on campus, but is sure some students are doing it because it is easy to access and untraceable.

“Anything, taken in excess can have negative consequences. Having a bad trip, whether it’s five minutes or five hours can cause trauma for a long time.  Especially with a drug like DMT, because people perceive their experience, whether or not they are actually visiting another realm or just experiencing their brain trying to make sense of overstimulated visual chaos, to be reality,” Bentley said.

Sophomore at Keene State College, Philip Smith, has also partaken in the “spiritual journey.”

“I think the most amazing thing about it is that so many people report the same things. Most people see the same shapes and figures. It makes me feel like it’s really another place. There is definitely more out there, DMT just let’s us go there. Trust me, I know how crazy I sound,” Smith said.

Jones, trying to make the world a better place as he was told to do, took that to mean that more people need to experience DMT. He has taken it upon himself to extract the illegal substance from plants and distribute it to those who are “ready to experience it.”

“I’m very careful when I make it. I do it myself before I give it to other people so I know I didn’t screw up. I don’t charge people for it because I think everyone should do it. I don’t want people to not be able to do it just because they don’t want to pay for it,” Jones said with a smile.

There have been hundreds of studies done about the drug. There’s even a documentary about it on Netflix. They all say the same thing: wait until you’re ready.

“If you’re not emotionally ready, bad things may happen to you. There have been reports of alien abductions and darkness. Falling down into pits and feeling lost. It’s important to have a good environment,” Smith said.

Some scientists have changed their views about reality because of DMT. Ede Frecska wrote a book about the phenomena and stated that “humans have a non-material, spiritual component along with the physical one, and the materialist paradigm of modern science is not only out of touch, but may even be pathologically imbalanced.”

“DMT brought me out of a pretty dark place. I was depressed and wondering what life was all about. I know this doesn’t happen to everyone, but I don’t know where I would be without it,” Jones said.