Death is a trip – how new research links near-death and DMT experiences

Over the past several decades, scientists have began to better understand dying as a biological process – whether it happens over the course of weeks or appears to occur in an instant. In this short video, the UK filmmaker and presenter Max Tobin deploys a heavy dose of gallows humour to investigate a groundbreaking series of studies that may offer hints at what the stage between ‘clinical death’ (cessation of vital functions) and ‘brain death’ (cessation of brain activity) actually feels like. In particular, he looks at the biological and experiential similarities between ‘near-death experiences’ and taking the hallucinogenic drug DMT, in discussion with Chris Timmermann of the Psychedelic Research Group at Imperial College London, who led the research.