Rick Strassman spent the early 1990s injecting volunteers with DMT at the University of New Mexico, the only human trials of the compound approved in the United States at the time, and this film builds around his findings and the questions they left open. DMT occurs naturally in trace amounts in the human body and in many plants, and Strassman's subjects describe entering vivid, often identical realms populated by intelligent beings, encounters he wondered might explain near-death experiences, alien abduction reports, and even the moment of birth and death. The film pairs his clinical account with voices from outside the lab, including Terence McKenna and Stanislav Grof, who place DMT alongside ayahuasca and shamanic tradition rather than treating it purely as a lab molecule. Animated sequences try to render what subjects describe seeing. Strassman's own pineal gland theory, that the tiny brain structure might release DMT at birth, death, and deep meditation, runs through the film as an unproven but persistent thread.