Meet the Man Who Brought DMT to the Masses

I meet Julian in a cafe in Bowral, about an hour and a half south-west of Sydney. He’s a tall guy, mid-40s, with a loud cackle that peels off at moments you don’t expect. That aside, he seems like a regular and unassuming man. You wouldn’t know that Julian Palmer has done more to perpetuate DMT usage around the globe than almost anyone. 

DMT, or N-dimethyltryptamine, was once described by American psychologist Timothy Leary as “the nuclear bomb of the psychedelic family”. It’s a short-acting but hyper-powerful hallucinogen that’s usually sold in the form of grubby-looking yellow crystals. Once smoked in a glass pipe, these crystals produce fumes reminiscent of burning plasticine and are notoriously hard to keep down.

In the…