Psychonauts and schizophrenics see the same creatures The Journal of Mental Science published an article in 1958 entitled Experiments with Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and Psychotics. The material included the work of researcher Stephen Zahr, a Hungarian-born chemist and psychiatrist who has published several articles on whether certain tryptamines such as DMT may cause psychosis. Zara, in addition to being one of the first clinical researchers to study the pharmacological effects of DMT, also investigated the possibility that such substances could be useful for therapeutic purposes. In a 1958 article by Zara examining the effects of DMT given to patients with schizophrenia, one of his patients reported that he learned of the existence of "strange creatures, gnomes, or whatever" shortly after he was injected with DMT. The following year, several patients were additionally injected with DMT, and only one of them was able to recall any of their experiences after that. “I lived in a world of orange people,” this patient said of her experience with DMT. These studies continue to be notable for being early pharmacological studies that noted an identity between the hallucinatory experiences of patients with schizophrenia and the visual psychedelic experiences that result from DMT use. A second case study of the parallel between visions via DMT and hallucinations in schizophrenic patients comes from a study by psychologist Wilson Van Dusen, Ph.D., who conducted a study in hundreds of schizophrenic patients. In Van Dusen's study, several people suffering from hallucinations reported experiences of seeing humanoid beings appearing in front of them. In an effort to better understand the nature of these schizophrenic hallucinations, Van Dusen took a new approach: by interacting with his patients, he tried to interact with their hallucinations as if they were real. By working with people who could distinguish between their own conscious thoughts and those that seemed to emanate from the hallucinations they perceived, Van Dusen hoped to establish a relationship with both the patient and the entities they described, with the patient acting as a mediator. Van Dusen interviewed his patients, whose hallucinations he treated, as if they were real people in a room with them. When speaking directly to these perceived entities, Van Dusen asked his patients to dictate their answers to him. The results surprised Van Dusen and led to cases where he was able to maintain a full conversation with these hallucinatory creatures for a long time, and his patients acted as translators of this dialogue. At times, Van Dusen was aware that entities were transmitting information to him, which he determined was in many cases beyond the understanding of his patients. Some of his patients also reported that they felt that their encounters with beings were more contact with beings from other places, rather than just hallucinations. Van Dusen believed that there might be a connection between these entities and other types of phenomena such as possession and other cases of the paranormal and demons, wondering if the entities he interacted with could really be something supernatural, or are they really bits and pieces consciousness. Thus, the connection between the appearance of entities, schizophrenia and hallucinogens has been experimentally proven. In other words, we are dealing with something that is beyond our perception until the brain enters a certain state.