Paul F. Austin@PaulAustin3w
Bryan Johnson livestreamed a 27mg dose of 5-MeO-DMT yesterday to millions of people and called it the most profound experience of his life.
What almost no one in the conversation is pointing out is that 27mg is a MASSIVE dose, well beyond what the clinical research supports, and it reflects a bigger problem in how this molecule is being facilitated right now.
For context, the only Phase 1 clinical trial on vaporized 5-MeO-DMT tested doses up to 18mg. Shulgin listed the upper range at 20mg. Most experienced practitioners I know consider anything above 15mg to be high.
And this isn't unique to Bryan.
Across the 5-MeO facilitator landscape right now, there's a widespread assumption that bigger dose equals deeper experience, that the whole point is to get someone to the white light, the full ego dissolution, the cosmic reveal.
That assumption is wrong, and it's the core reason this space has a safety problem.
I've worked with this molecule myself, and nothing in 12+ years of psychedelic experience prepared me for what it does to the body (not necessarily the mind...)
My first time with 5, I shook so hard I lost track of where I was in the room. I was making sounds I'd never heard come out of my own mouth, heat flooding my chest, tension I didn't even know I'd been holding suddenly leaving in these full-body waves that had nothing to do with my conscious mind.
That's the medicine doing its job. Not the cosmic vision nor the white light. It was all about the nervous system releasing stored-up tension from the past years, if not decades, of life.
The real value of 5-MeO-DMT -- the thing that actually changes people's lives -- is what happens in the physiology. Full release. The nervous system clearing out years of stored trauma, holding patterns, and tension that live below conscious awareness.
You can get there without heroic doses. You get there with precision, with a facilitator who understands what's happening physiologically and who can tell the difference between a healing release and a genuine crisis, because from the outside they look almost identical.
Bryan had Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris on call and a medical team on site. Most people sitting with 5-MeO-DMT facilitators have none of that. They have someone who attended a few ceremonies and decided they were ready to hold space.
If this molecule is entering the mainstream, and thanks to Bryan, it just did in a massive way, the conversation needs to move past "how far can we push it" and toward "how do we keep people safe while the real clearing happens."
What's your experience been like with 5?
