DMT: The Spirit Molecule

Mitch Shultz – 2010 – USA

With an awkward and incongruous framing narration by comedian Joe Rogan in grainy, 50s-style black-and-white segments, The Spirit Molecule kicks off with a glaring mistake from which it never recovers.  Rogan states, without qualification, that science and spirituality are mutually exclusive concepts, and that this is why there needs to be more use of psychedelics in our culture.  This is a prejudicial notion that calls into question the film’s entire credibility.  It was the great Carl Sagan who once said that precisely the opposite is the case and that science is actually “a profound source of spirituality.”  Heavy-handed and paranoid, the film spends a little time quoting actual scientists about DMT and ayahuasca, but then quickly delves into a long, condescending gripe about how the square mainstream is just a victim of evil government programming, and so on and so forth, and boo hoo hoo.  There is a far better film to be made on this legitimate and fascinating subject, but unfortunately The Spirit Molecule is just a polemical piece of propaganda.  The material that works best are the personal testimonials of users’ experiences, which are diverse while also similarly reverent.  Instead of letting these interviews speak for themselves, however, or giving the audience some credit for having a functioning brain, the filmmakers layer everything with cornball spacy New Age music and endless swirling visuals intended, presumably, to simulate the experience of DMT.  Ultimately, therefore, the film – despite it’s interesting topic – repeatedly skips opportunities to reach objective observers and merely preaches to the choir like nearly all documentaries these days.  Despite its claims of scientific legitimacy, the airy and disorientated comments of the interviewees tells us that the world they live in is not one of science at all but one shared indiscrimanently with ghosts, UFOs, psychics, palm readers and evangelists.  One lady uses the phrase “energy of love” and a man describes his trip as “crossing over,” both with a straight face, and another lady snidely dismisses the concept of God seconds before saying that she now believes that the brain is not the source of consciousness but merely a radio receiver for a higher intelligence.  This, to me, is like saying that astrology is a false science but phrenology isn’t, and expecting to still be taken seriously.

  

I offer this paragraph below as a sober and inspiring response to the fuzzy pseudoscience of psychedelics-worship as seen in The Spirit Molecule:

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.  When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.  So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.  The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”  -Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark