Death by Astonishment

“DMT is unique among all the psychedelics in that it affords access to an alternate reality that seems every bit as real as our ‘ordinary reality’ and yet is utterly alien. With the possible exception of Terence McKenna, Andrew Gallimore has been investigating this longer and more thoroughly than anyone else. I believe he may have cracked the code. His conclusions are astonishing. And to some they will be horrifying. This book is not to be missed.” - Dennis McKenna, PhD

“An exhilarating, yet rigorously grounded, account of DMT’s rapidly increasing influence on human consciousness. What if an unimaginably powerful psychedelic molecule, made in the human brain, could be harnessed to reliably provide contact with super intelligent beings from other dimensions of time and space? Gallimore’s project provides an essential understanding of this nascent field, and its implications for our species’ evolution.” - Rick Strassman MD, Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of New Mexico School of Medicine and author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule and My Altered States.

“Compulsively readable and impossible to put down, Death by Astonishment is a page-turning odyssey into the enigmatic history of the world’s strangest drug. Bringing together many of the most pivotal stories in psychedelic history, Gallimore not only connects the dots but also fills in the missing pieces, shedding new light on the mysteries of this extraordinary molecule.” - David Jay Brown, author of The Illustrated Field Guide to DMT Entities“Peeling away the many layers of one of our greatest mysteries while leaving intact the enigma at its core, combining the erudition of a scholar and the precision of a scientist, Andrew Gallimore leads a fascinating inquiry into the heart of the unknown.” - Graham St John, author of Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna (MIT Press, 2025 )

Andrew R. Gallimore is a chemical pharmacologist, neurobiologist, and writer, and one of the world’s leading experts on psychedelics. He is the author of two books on the science of psychedelics, Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game and Reality Switch Technologies: Psychedelics as Tools for the Discovery and Exploration of New Worlds. He lives and works in Tokyo.