Scientists Are Convincing Drug Addicts To Talk To Demons

March 4, 2026

The following is an edited transcript excerpt of The Michael Knowles Show.

* * *

Scientists are using DMT (dimethyltryptamine), a powerful hallucinogenic drug, to allow people to communicate with the seemingly alien creatures they see when they do the drug. I wish I were making this up.

If you’ve ever had a friend who’s done DMT — or shrooms or acid for that matter — and then have them describe what they see, they may claim to see little gray weirdo aliens that all sound eerily similar.

The title of the article in WIRED reads, “Some People See Aliens While on DMT. Researchers Want to Find Out What They Can Teach Us”

I agree with the first sentence. I think the second sentence would not follow from the first sentence. It’s probably not a good idea.

The subtitle reads, “A new psychedelic retreat calling itself a “SETI for the mind” aims to establish two-way communication with the nonhuman entities people encounter while tripping on DMT.”

What could go wrong?

From the article:

The idea had been suggested six years earlier in a paper by neurobiologist Andrew Gallimore.

So, these are not just some weirdo entrepreneurs. These are not just some journalists — he’s a neurobiologist.

The ethnobotanist Terence McKenna…

Boy, howdy, there are just so many specializations in science today, aren’t there? What do you want to be when you grow up, Sally? “I want to be an ethnobotanist.” Whatever that is.

— one of the more gifted articulators of the psychedelic experience — famously described these entities as “self-transforming elf machines” and “jeweled, self-dribbling basketballs from hyperspace …” McKenna likened them to playful leprechauns, but others, like Bilton, have also met more sinister beings: “dark, evil motherfuckers—horrible things,” as he describes them.

Okay. Tell me more. I’ve never done psychedelics.

The thread connecting most perceived DMT entity encounters is an overwhelming sense of technological sophistication and godlike power. “I was confronted with what seemed to me to be the undeniable hand of some kind of intelligence,” Gallimore said of his first DMT trip during his recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, “a supremely advanced, ancient, and yet highly technological intelligence.”

Is this sounding familiar to anyone? If you’ve done psychedelics it might be sounding familiar because you’ve experienced it. If you are familiar with religion — Christianity in particular — this might be sounding familiar, and it might not be sounding good.

Gallimore argues that whatever is happening to the brain during a DMT trip, it’s not mere “hallucination”—a term he uses somewhat derisively. He makes the case that DMT unlocks a realm ordinarily cut off to our senses and populated by unfathomably advanced nonhuman entities.

So right off the bat, there are two options. These things can be one of two things.

They can either be, to use the language of the scholastics: “ens reale” or “ens rationis.”

They can be mind-independent beings — that is, things that have a reality in themselves outside of your own conceptions — or they can be figments of your imagination, things that we come up with in our heads.

Now the whole premise here is that we need to communicate with these things. That very phrase tells us that if these things matter at all — if we’re going to do any of this stuff, have the weird science summer camp DMT trip — then they can’t just be figments of our imagination. Because you can’t communicate with something that is not in itself a cognitive power.

Otherwise you’d just be talking to yourself. But you don’t need a DMT trip to talk to yourself. You can have a conversation in your own head.

WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show on DailyWire+

The only way to communicate is to involve two cognitive powers. I can’t communicate with my tumbler. I can’t communicate with this piece of paper. I can communicate with another person — because he or she has cognitive power.

So right off the bat, we are assuming these things are real — but they’re not physical. They’re not visible ordinarily. They’re purely intelligence. Pure intelligence with which we might communicate, but only if we do things that are bad and sinful, like lose our minds on drugs.

That is a demon.

That’s a long way of saying, that’s a demon.

Invisible, nonphysical cognitive powers are spirits. That’s what a spirit means. Spirits can be angels. They can be demons. There are other kinds of spiritual realities.

Now, the ones we invite in to communicate when we are doing bad things — when we are sinning — they’re not the good ones. They’re the bad ones. They’re demons.

I am not a guy — I’ve said this many times — who sees demons under every rock. I know that’s very popular now. I’ve had conversations with exorcists. I acknowledge spiritual reality. But I take the C.S. Lewis approach: you don’t want to think about demons none of the time, because then you might leave yourself open to danger. But you also don’t want to think about demons all the time, because then you’re obsessing over spiritual darkness instead of focusing on God.

So you should think about demons a little bit of the time. This is one of those times.

Do not go do a bunch of drugs with a bunch of hippie scientists and try to talk to demons. It’s a bad idea.

What is it you desire that would impel you to go do this? There are plenty of people who take psychedelics and want to talk to the aliens — which are demons. Either they’re hallucinations, in which case the whole thing is pointless, or they’re demons.

What would impel you?

Because you want to learn something about yourself or about the world?

Well, if you want to learn something — if you want to learn the truth — you should speak to God, who is the truth, the way, and the life. Christ says that. You would want to speak to the true source and summit of all being, rather than demons whose defining characteristic is that they’re evil and they lie.

Why else would you want to do it?

I’ll tell you why. And to be fair to the drug users, the reason they want this is because they recognize we are partly spiritual creatures. They recognize we don’t comprehend all the truth.

They want knowledge.

But if you want that, the reason you would go do drugs with scientists instead of going to church, reading the Bible, praying, or receiving the sacraments — the difference is this: those things promise the truth on God’s terms, while drugs promise the truth on your terms.

You want to increase your personal agency. You want to become like a god yourself rather than submit your will and reason to God, who is omnipotent and omniscient.

That’s why it’s just a reiteration of the original sin in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve had everything. They were walking with God. It was paradise. But they wanted paradise on their own terms.

And when you try to make paradise on your own terms, it turns into hell.

So, have I made my point clear? Don’t do drugs and try to talk to demons. This should go without saying, but we’re living in a very confused age.