Most DMT experiences are famously brief. A person may enter an intense altered state, encounter vivid landscapes or apparent entities, and begin returning to ordinary consciousness before they have time to understand what is happening. Daniel McQueen believes extended-state DMT could change that.

In a conversation with Ayahuasca Podcast host Sam Believ, McQueen discusses DMTX, a method designed to maintain the DMT state through a controlled infusion. They explore entities, consciousness, cannabis-assisted psychedelic work, and psychedelics as tools for exploration.

What Is DMTX?

DMTX is short for extended-state or stable-state DMT. McQueen explains that the concept grew from work proposed by researcher Andrew Gallimore in collaboration with DMT researcher Rick Strassman.

Instead of smoking or vaping DMT, the approach uses an infusion pump to administer pure DMT into the bloodstream at a controlled rate. Because DMT acts and metabolizes rapidly, the infusion can be adjusted to maintain different levels of the experience.

According to McQueen, the dose can be increased, reduced, or stopped, allowing participants to return toward ordinary consciousness rapidly. This differs from smoked DMT, where the journey is intense but short.

Staying in the DMT State for Hours

McQueen says his group has facilitated around 30 extended-state DMT sessions. Some participants have remained in the experience for two or more hours, while one of his own sessions lasted about three hours.

The goal is not necessarily to remain at maximum intensity. Instead, facilitators can attempt to stabilize participants at different subjective levels. McQueen describes moving through experiences involving ancestors, entities, geometric forms, and more abstract states of unity.

He also emphasizes that the work remains preliminary. Individual responses differ, and even with precise dosing, he does not believe facilitators can fully control what someone will experience.

Encounters With Entities

One unusual aspect of the conversation concerns entities. McQueen says encounters with apparent beings are common in the DMTX sessions he has observed, although they do not occur for everyone.

Participants have reported human-like ancestors, animal or insect-like beings, serpents and dragons, geometric entities, Buddhas, and forms that seem completely unfamiliar. Others experience a presence without seeing a distinct being.

McQueen treats these encounters respectfully while acknowledging that he cannot prove what they are. He describes himself as having both a spiritual interpretation and a skeptical side. Whether the entities are independent beings, aspects of consciousness, archetypes, or something else remains an open question.

Can the DMT Realm Be Mapped?

Extended-state DMT introduces a fascinating possibility: instead of briefly glimpsing an altered state, could researchers eventually study different levels of it systematically?

McQueen says repeated sessions suggest that some themes and experiential spaces may be reproducible for an individual at similar dosing levels. He describes encountering ancestral imagery during two separate journeys at comparable levels.

That raises the possibility of combining controlled dosing with brain monitoring to investigate whether physiological states correspond with particular subjective experiences. McQueen describes much of this as theoretical and preliminary rather than established science.

Beyond Healing: Psychedelics as Exploration

For McQueen, healing is only one reason humans might work with psychedelics. He believes modern psychedelic culture’s focus on treatment can sometimes overlook curiosity and exploration.

He compares psychedelic exploration to earlier eras when people crossed oceans, climbed mountains, explored Antarctica, or looked toward space. Altered states, in his view, may represent another frontier for investigating consciousness and the nature of reality.

DMTX interests him because the experience can potentially be stabilized long enough for someone to orient themselves and examine it rather than simply being swept through it.

Cannabis as a Psychedelic Medicine

McQueen also discusses his long relationship with cannabis. Beginning around 2013, he started exploring whether cannabis could be used intentionally to produce psychedelic states rather than simply recreational effects.

His work eventually developed into cannabis-assisted psychedelic therapy. He describes using carefully structured sessions in his Boulder practice and approaching cannabis as a medicine and ceremonial ally.

He also acknowledges its potential for problematic use. Rather than treating cannabis as entirely good or bad, McQueen favors a harm-reduction approach based on intentionality, accountability, and understanding why someone is using it.

A New Frontier for Consciousness

The larger question behind DMTX remains unanswered: are these experiences generated within the brain, or do they provide access to something beyond ordinary consciousness?

McQueen does not claim to know. What excites him is investigating the question more carefully. Extended-state DMT may allow explorers and researchers to spend more time observing experiences that previously lasted only minutes.

For McQueen, that spirit of curiosity matters. Psychedelics may help people work through difficult experiences and change their lives, but they may also invite deeper questions about consciousness, spirituality, and reality itself. DMTX represents one experimental attempt to stay in that unknown territory long enough to look around.

Listen to the whole podcast episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6XU1dkKvjBEGsGp05Z91Lm?si=yMgmwWxZQ9mL4l3ZV7Zjdg

Can psychedelics fit comfortably inside modern capitalism, or are they fundamentally resistant to being turned into conventional products? That question runs through a wide-ranging conversation between Ayahuasca Podcast host Sam Believ and entrepreneur Ronan Levy.

Levy is the co-founder and former executive chairman of Field Trip Health and author of The Ketamine Breakthrough. His path took him from law into medical cannabis and eventually psychedelics, changing his views on medicine, business, success, and spirituality.

From Law to Cannabis and Psychedelics

Levy says he was once uncomfortable with the idea of losing control and initially skeptical of the term “plant medicine.” His perspective changed after helping build Canadian Cannabis Clinics, which assisted large numbers of Canadians in accessing the legal medical cannabis system.

Seeing cannabis used as medicine challenged his assumptions. When he later investigated psychedelics, he saw potential applications in mental health and a way for people to explore spirituality in an increasingly materialistic culture.

That realization led to Field Trip Health and Levy’s deeper involvement in the psychedelic movement.

Why the Psychedelic Investment Boom Faded

The psychedelic industry attracted enormous excitement and investment around 2020. Levy now describes much of that period as irrational exuberance, fueled by low interest rates, available capital, previous cannabis profits, and growing enthusiasm around psychedelic research.

He does not expect another investment wave of the same magnitude. Instead, he believes psychedelics are entering a healthier phase in which adoption may continue gradually without the same speculative frenzy.

Levy has also become skeptical that psychedelic medicine fits neatly into the conventional Western medical model. He believes many people may prefer experienced facilitators and community-based settings over expensive clinical environments.

Can Psychedelics Be Commoditized?

Levy believes psychedelics occupy an unusual position between products and services. Some substances and lower-dose experiences may function more like products, while others require significantly more support and context.

Ayahuasca is an important example. Levy notes that he has not personally taken ayahuasca and therefore does not claim expertise with it, while Believ emphasizes the importance of experience, skill, and support when working with the medicine.

From a business perspective, Levy increasingly believes psychedelics may resist large-scale corporate models. Rather than becoming dominated by a few enormous providers, he expects much of the field to remain community-driven and relationship-based.

Conscious Capitalism and Spiritual Business

The conversation also explores whether making money from spiritual or psychedelic work is inherently contradictory.

Believ describes the tension of operating an ayahuasca retreat while trying to balance spiritual values with salaries, investors, operating costs, and competition. Levy rejects the idea that spiritual services should automatically be free.

Money, he argues, is simply a medium of exchange. A retreat requires labor, infrastructure, time, and other inputs. Employees need fair compensation, and investors who take risks reasonably expect returns. The challenge is finding a balance without squeezing every possible dollar from customers or workers.

For Levy, conscious capitalism means operating profitably while treating employees, customers, investors, and other stakeholders fairly.

Why Financial Success Does Not Solve Everything

Levy describes entrepreneurship as a kind of spiritual pursuit. Building a company can consume a person’s attention, become part of their identity, and demand years of sacrifice.

The problem comes when financial success is expected to resolve deeper dissatisfaction. Levy says entrepreneurs can spend years imagining that a major exit or financial milestone will finally make everything better.

Then the money arrives, and the same relationship problems, family triggers, insecurities, and emotional patterns remain. The story that success will eventually fix everything suddenly disappears.

This can create a spiritual crisis. Levy believes it helps explain why many successful entrepreneurs eventually become interested in psychedelics, spirituality, or deeper forms of self-exploration.

Living the Game Instead of Trying to Win It

Rather than viewing life as a problem that can eventually be solved, Levy suggests that simply having the opportunity to experience it may be the point.

Humans naturally want to create, contribute, and find meaning. Those pursuits inevitably create obstacles and stress. Removing one problem often reveals another.

The same applies to relationships and personal patterns. Changing external circumstances does not necessarily remove what someone carries internally. Recognizing that can shift attention from constantly trying to escape discomfort toward understanding what it may reveal.

Psychedelics as Tools for New Perspectives

Looking toward the future, Levy sees psychedelics as potentially valuable because they can loosen established patterns of thinking and expose people to perspectives they might otherwise never consider.

He connects this not only with mental wellbeing but also with creativity and society’s ability to approach difficult problems differently. Psychedelics do not automatically provide solutions, but they may help people question assumptions that previously seemed fixed.

His broader prediction is that psychedelics will continue becoming normalized, but perhaps not through the giant corporate structures once imagined. Their future may be smaller, more distributed, and more community-driven—harder to commoditize but potentially better suited to the experiences themselves.

Listen to the whole podcast episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1tdkc3S4dJ7zbhwMsYsYzP?si=1563a924a82441ff