LSD, mescaline) from my teen years in the early 1970s. I have had no
personal experience with DMT but have seen patients under its
influence. The rich ultra-reality would still require fairly intact
auditory and visual neocortex as target regions in which to generate
such a rich audiovisual experience as I had in coma. Prolonged coma
due to bacterial meningitis had badly damaged my neocortex, which is
where all of that serotonin from the raphe nuclei in the brainstem (or
DMT, a serotonin agonist) would have had effects on visual/auditory
experience. But my cortex was off, and the DMT would have had no
place in the brain to act. The DMT hypothesis failed on the basis of
the ultra-reality of the audiovisual experience, and lack of cortex on
which to act.
- Isolated preservation of cortical regions might have explained some of
my experience, but were most unlikely, given the severity of my
meningitis and its refractoriness to therapy for a week: peripheral
white blood cell (WBC) count over 27,000 per mm^3 , 31 percent bands
with toxic granulations, CSF WBC count over 4,300 per mm^3 , CSF
glucose down to 1.0 mg/dl, CSF protein 1,340 mg/dl, diffuse
meningeal involvement with associated brain abnormalities revealed
on my enhanced CT scan, and neurological exams showing severe
alterations in cortical function and dysfunction of extraocular
motility, indicative of brainstem damage.
- In an effort to explain the “ultra-reality” of the experience, I examined
this hypothesis: Was it possible that networks of inhibitory neurons
might have been predominantly affected, allowing for unusually high
levels of activity among the excitatory neuronal networks to generate
the apparent “ultra-reality” of my experience? One would expect
meningitis to preferentially disturb the superficial cortex, possibly
leaving deeper layers partially functional. The computing unit of the
neocortex is the six-layered “functional column,” each with a lateral
diameter of 0.2–0.3 mm. There is significant interwiring laterally to
immediately adjacent columns in response to modulatory control
