5MEO Movie

5MEO – Are Some Doors Better Left Unopened? follows three friends on a psychedelic journey, taking them from the comfort of their cosy lives to meet 5-MeO-DMT head-on, and explore the ineffable.

Introduction

Three blokes (Boris, Charles & Frank), men of middle age with little psychedelic experience, set out to go for the biggest of them all, 5-MeO-DMT (5MEO). During the documentary, you follow them as they prepare, which includes a high dose of psilocybin-containing mushrooms, experience, and reflect on their 5MEO experience.

Here is a summary of their journey.

“My biggest fear is coming out changed in some way, in a way I can’t get back the way I am.”

Part 1 – Heroic Mushroom Dose

What is maybe most striking about the documentary is the lack of spirituality in a way that one may expect surrounds a psychedelic experience. It’s just three men who are looking to see if there is more, but who don’t bring any concepts to the table that one might expect on a yoga retreat or local psychedelic society meetup.

This, in our opinion, makes the documentary that much more accessible. They are – especially at the beginning – just like any other psychedelic novice.

“It’s like jumping out of an airplane”

During the mushroom experience, the men both go outside and take time to reflect inside. Boris loses all social filters, and his behaviour might be described as acute Tourrettes. Through experiences like this don’t translate well to the written word, or even the screen, here are three more quotes from the mushroom experience.

• “It does break the mind”
• “It was a very loving and warm experience”
• “You’re there, you’re in it”

Part 2 – 5-MeO-DMT

“The terror inherent within the 5MEO experience or DMT experience, is the ontological shock, you’re very quickly ripped from this general consensus reality, which we take as the reality, into another world which seems as real if not more real than this one, yet is decidedly very different from this world.”

The men meet Ollie, an experience 5MEO guide living in the south of the Netherlands. Though not discussed, 5MEO is legal as a ‘research chemical’, the legal area surrounding personal consumption is best described as dark grey.

Next to his warm personality, Ollie seems very responsible and has let the men fill in an intensive intake questionnaire. He describes the persons who are ‘ready’ for an experience as those who are already at the cliff, ready to jump. He can only guide them, but not lead people to the cliff in the first place.

“I thought that maybe it could be this really profound roller coaster ride and so I was up for it, as opposed to just being a roller coaster ride, maybe it was a roller coaser ride that could reveal this beautiful truth about the nature of who we are.”

The 5MEO the men will be taking is synthetic. Though Ollie has some Sonoran Desert toads, they don’t like to be milked, and as far as the documentary goes, it seems he is now holding them (mostly) as pets. Ollie also argues that the experience is identical between both.

So, there the men go. They are ready for the experience. Their knees are weak, arms are heavy, and then they inhale.

Again, words don’t do justice to the experience, but here we go. There is a sense of endlessness; it is profoundly shocking and overwhelming. You suddenly are everything. The experience of 5MEO is not recognizable in any way. One of them describes it as a death simulation.

“And then there was another phase which was just, really worth the ticket, because it was just some moments of utter, utter bliss and euphoria, and it was just this incredible wash of light – sense of people I loved, everything was going to be alright.”

And then, 5-8 minutes later, you start to come back. You recognize you have a head, a mouth, a body, and you have thoughts. At this moment Ollie provides a blanket to help feel the body and to experience the warm embrace one would recognize as a mother would give her child.

Was it what they had expected? No, but how could they have expected what they experienced? It was much bigger than they could have ever expected.

“It’s like terror and joy all in the same experience.”

Reflections

“It is not necessary to do, on the other hand, I feel pleased, slightly heroic, to have done it.”

Should you have a 5MEO experience? That is an answer only you can answer yourself. For the three men, it was an experience they won’t ever forget.

Psychedelics have a quality which makes you not want to do them again immediately, or even for a long time. The overwhelming nature of it, the brutality and bliss of it, is one of the aspects why you may not want to tap into that again soon. We think most psychonauts will agree.

“If I was to issue a warning to these experiences, specifically for 5-MeO-DMT, it’s like opening pandora’s box. It’s a nuclear explosion of every concept of every idea, every reality, every tiny thing that you hold dear is eviscerated, and that’s the sting in the tale of psychedelics, that the thing people don’t talk about, that’s the no no no, that’s the part where people go holy fuck.”

The roller coaster ride of psychedelics expands one’s perspective on life. In the men, it stirred deep waters and touches them now months (and probably years) after having gone through it.

In a way, the experience is traumatic, not necessarily in the worst sense of it, but overwhelming and life-changing nonetheless.

This is also what Dr. David Luke, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, reflects on “Having an experience with 5MEO-DMT can be life-changing and typically is, you can have a 10-minute experience which can completely change your worldview and I think people seek that out partly for that reason, but probably because they feel they need something to really just shake up the roost and snap them out of whatever rut they may be in.”

Conclusion

This documentary is maybe one of the best introductions to psychedelics, or at least the extreme aspect of it, for the psychedelic naive. It foregoes big pronouncements and does a great job of capturing the experience itself, how difficult that may be.

It also doesn’t touch upon the therapeutic potential, currently under investigation by Beckley PsyTech and others, but firmly sticks to their own lived experience. The focus, the lack of needing to explain every aspect, makes for a truly enjoyable watching experience.