Curiosity leads us to strange places. Sometimes, those places are best seen when we close our eyes.
Enter Bastiaan Woudt, a Dutch artist who had seemingly been everywhere and seen everything—from rural Uganda to Parisian art galleries.
On a recent weekend, Woudt stepped into the lab of researcher Zeus Tipado, a PhD student in Maastricht (and also PsyDAO’s first Early Career Fellow). Tipado provided Woudt with 52 milligrams of a white powder called DMXE and a carefully curated setting. Woudt put on a blindfold, settled into a beanbag–and experienced new realms.
Woudt said he floated on soft fluffy clouds through a cotton candy valley, and stepped into one of his own artworks. The trip provided him new insights into art, memory, and the senses.
“DMXE…feels like a dream,” Woudt wrote later in a trip report, “where emotions are so intense they almost become visible.”
Woudt will soon unveil new art based on his DMXE trip. Look for the drip in mid-May. The project perfectly fits PsyDAO’s mission of joining up psychedelic science and art.
What is DMXE?
DMXE belongs to the arylcyclohexylamine family, alongside famed compounds such as PCP and ketamine. Arylcyclohexamines were first examined by pharmaceutical companies for their anesthetic properties.
Although it belongs to a family of dissociatives, and certainly shares some properties, descriptions of DMXE are reminiscent of psychedelics like DMT. Like other psychoactives, DMXE has its own vibe, its own aesthetic, its own world.
“The DMXE experience is so hard to explain,” says Tipado. (Some things are beyond words, the way a monkey wouldn’t be able to explain going skydiving.) “Once you see DMXE, and you tell other people about it, it’s like you share a secret.”
There’s more though: DMXE’s potential goes beyond “showing someone something new.” Based on his observations of the effect DMXE has on users’ subjective experience, bodily sensations, senses, and emotion, Tipado suspects DMXE may have therapeutic potential. Used in careful ways by trained people, DMXE may contain a secret that, if shared more widely, could change lives.
Over the past six months, Tipado has given DMXE to more than a dozen people. He does so in a carefully curated setting–like a NASA capsule for inner space. The trip reports he’s gathering are providing valuable data about DMXE's effects and potential applications. Our preliminary research suggests DMXE could have applications similar to ketamine, which has become a billion-dollar medicine. In fact, DMXE might even offer advantages over ketamine for certain therapeutic applications.
(Note: arylcyclohexylamines, like all psychoactives, can have downsides–especially when mixed with other substances, taken in a poor set and setting, overused, or in people with certain mental illnesses.)
[Read about PsyDAO’s Early Career Fellowship and our first fellow, Zeus.]
Propelled by a Token
PsyDAO’s mission is to progress psychedelic art and science, and we are doing so with new, community-forward models of research funding. Collectively, our strategies are part of a larger movement: Decentralized Science (DeSci).
DeSci brings pharma development to the people. PsyDAO is a pioneer in DeSci, using Web3 tools to involve anyone with a crypto wallet.
For our DMXE research, we've minted the $DMXE token. The trading fees fund our project. Don’t have a crypto wallet? Here are some easy instructions on how to get a popular wallet.
(The Contract Address for $DMXE is: GWoPQpyPV7yPssPvV3fTtM3NBCwHaYraoM1NtmvVLwPj)
As Tipado shepherds DMXE through the first phases of its development, we're planning a netnographic study, an animal study, then a Phase 1 trial. If we find success, it's on to a clinical trial in humans.
“This scientific voyage will be remarkable,” Tipado says of his project, “as remarkable as a DMXE experience.”
Working together, the PsyDAO community can **bring this substance to the world.
**
(Watch our cheeky launch video here, and follow DMXEscience on Twitter)
DAOs are powered by regular people working toward their passions. If you believe in the power of psychedelics and Web3 and want to contribute to PsyDAO, please: