At Chacruna: When Terence McKenna First Smoked DMT

When in 1967, aged sixteen, Dennis visited his older brother in Berkeley, California, Terence stated that he knew what the philosopher’s stone was. “It’s sitting in that jar right there on the bookshelf.”¹ Earlier, in the Fall of 1965, Terence McKenna had been visited one night in his rented rooming house at 2894 Telegraph Avenue by “a very strange friend who lived in Palo Alto.” By then, Terence, who had commenced studies at U.C. Berkeley, had been familiar with the psychedelic effects of morning glory seeds, and had sampled Sandoz LSD by way of neighbor, lead guitarist of Country Joe and the Fish, Barry Melton. But those exposures afforded him little preparation for what transpired that night... continue reading.