#2403 - Andrew Gallimore

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
The Joe Rogan Experience.

**Andrew Gallimore** (0:06)
Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

**Joe Rogan** (0:14)
How are you?

**Andrew Gallimore** (0:15)
I'm splendid. How the devil are you, sir?

**Joe Rogan** (0:18)
I think it's the first time anyone's answered splendid when I ask them, how are you doing?
So, tell me about your book, man. Let me see the cover of it, first of all. Death by Astonishment, which is the famous Terrence McKenna quote, right? Yes. The only thing you have to fear is death by astonishment.

**Andrew Gallimore** (0:36)
Exactly. Yeah.

**Joe Rogan** (0:38)
You know, the first time I did DMT, I literally heard his words, do not give in to astonishment. I literally heard those words. It's almost like whatever's over there wanted me to hear that. So I could like sink in or whatever, because I had already heard it before. So they wanted to say it to me as well. It was very weird.

**Andrew Gallimore** (1:00)
Yeah. It's sage advice, I think, because-

**Joe Rogan** (1:02)
Oh, it's the only way.

**Andrew Gallimore** (1:03)
It's the only way.

**Joe Rogan** (1:04)
Because if you freak out, well, it's like that's a good thing. It's good advice in most of life. Don't give in to the freak out. Yeah. Confronting the Mystery of the World's Strangest Drug. How did you get involved in this?

**Andrew Gallimore** (1:18)
DMT?

**Joe Rogan** (1:19)
Yes.

**Andrew Gallimore** (1:21)
So you have to go back to my teenage years, really. So I first heard about DMT through Terence McKenna, a friend.

**Joe Rogan** (1:30)
Like most of us.

**Andrew Gallimore** (1:31)
Yeah, like most of us. But this was during the dawn of the Internet.

**Joe Rogan** (1:37)
Right. Long before you were a scientist.

**Andrew Gallimore** (1:39)
Long before I was a scientist. So a friend gave me this magazine. It had this interview with this bearded, cheeky looking bearded fellow on the back called Terence McKenna. And he spoke about this thing called DMT, which of course I didn't know what that was. But the stories that he was telling, that you were going to meet these insectoid aliens and trans-dimensional machine owls jabbering in an indecipherable tongue and singing impossible objects into existence. I mean, it sounded ridiculous. But I was kind of, I was hooked. I thought this is it. This is, this is the most fucking incredible thing I've ever read in my life. And so I was, I was like 15, 16 years old. And there was one computer in the school that was hooked up to the, the World Wide Web. So all of like...

**SPEAKER_2** (2:31)
What year was this?

**Andrew Gallimore** (2:33)
96

**Joe Rogan** (2:34)
Oh.

**Andrew Gallimore** (2:35)
I'm giving my age away here, but...

**Joe Rogan** (2:37)
Early days of the internet.

**Andrew Gallimore** (2:38)
Early days. Yeah. Yeah. So I spent all my time just, you know, going on to Alta Vista. You remember Alta Vista?

**Joe Rogan** (2:46)
I do.

**Andrew Gallimore** (2:47)
Yeah.

**Joe Rogan** (2:48)
I didn't, I didn't remember it until you brought it up.

**Andrew Gallimore** (2:50)
There we go. Yeah. Just kind of trying to find out as much as I could about this. And that was what triggered my decision to study chemistry and pharmacology. My kind of academic journey was, was triggered by, I want to know, you know, it's such a cool thing, the idea that you can, you can put a molecule in your brain and it, it doesn't just change how you feel, but it completely changes the entire structure of your reality. Your entire world is, is obliterated and replaced with one that is completely alien. That isn't a relationship whatsoever to that normal waking world. That's incredible and I kind of wanted to try at least to understand how that actually works.

**Joe Rogan** (3:34)
Well, the weirdest part about that molecule is that your brain makes it. And so then you have to go, why? And what's the purpose of that? And what are we really? You know, what is, what is consciousness? And what is, what is normal consciousness? What's the purpose of it? And why does this chemical exist? What does this molecule exist that's produced by the brain that changes everything? And seems to transport you to a place that's more real than this physical reality that we find ourselves in right now.

**Andrew Gallimore** (4:08)
Exactly. And that is kind of the great mystery. And I don't, I think most people who, even people who've kind of learned about DMT, even scientists, I mean, I speak to scientists. I engage with scientists, neuroscientists often, and they will say, oh, this is just hallucination. This is just your brain kind of making it up. And I don't think most scientists realize how confounding and how difficult to explain the DMT state is. I think it is one of one of life's true mysteries. It is not simple to explain the DMT state.